The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  She let him take her arm and they strode off, looking almost comical together like that, due to their difference in size. I let them go, as I didn’t want to ask her any questions anyhow with the gorilla around to overhear. That would just be inviting mayhem, and I have a very well-developed instinct for self-preservation.

  I’d been going at things the wrong way. If I’d been smart, I wouldn’t have stopped the girl at all, but would have followed her home, where I could pick my time and see her alone. Another single girl had come out through the door and was walking past me.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She looked at me blankly. She had a heart-shaped painted face and was wearing a miniature straw hat on top of glittering platinum hair. She had on a white sweater that clung to her full breasts, and a pleated skirt. I didn’t remember her as one of the Nude Ranch girls, but maybe she looked different with her clothes off, and she suddenly smiled at me.

  “Hello,” she said. “Do I know you?”

  She said it hopefully and I told her, “Sure, but we ought to get better acquainted.” I was standing close to her. I nodded up in the direction where the gal in the fur coat and her gorilla boyfriend were walking away. “Who’s that screwy girl that just came out—wearing a fur coat in weather like this?”

  They were still in sight when the painted blonde took a slant at them, but she would have known who I meant anyway because of the fur coat. She sniffed. “That’s Louise Madden. She just wears that coat to show off. She’s only been working here a few days and she thinks she’s better than the rest of us girls.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “And who’s that missing link with her?”

  “Oh, that’s her brother. Or so she says.”

  “The hell it is,” I said. “Well, thanks.”

  I tipped my hat and backed away and she looked startled, said disappointedly: “But I thought—”

  “Some other time, baby,” I promised, turned and walked away.

  The gorilla drove the girl over the bridge into San Francisco in a small and ancient coupé. I followed in a cab. The coupé swung off the bridge approach and went out Mission two or three miles, turned into a district of old frame apartment buildings. There wasn’t much traffic at that hour, but I took a chance on being spotted and had the driver take the cab into the side street after the coupé.

  The side street was dark and deserted, except for the coupé, parked at the curb in mid-block with its lights burning. As we went by it, the lights blacked out and, looking back, I saw the gorilla and the girl getting out before a dark three-story apartment building. I told the driver to turn left at the next corner and stop, where I paid him off.

  When he drove away, I went back to the corner, peered around. It was even more dark and silent and deserted than before. Somewhere down on Mission a truck was making a grinding racket, but the rest of the world seemed sound asleep. I stepped into the side street, moving along it on the opposite side from the coupé.

  Nothing stirred in the deep shadow of the recessed apartment house doorway as I passed it. I didn’t pause, but went on up to the corner, crossed over and came back. I had some idea of examining the cards on the mail boxes outside the door to see if two Maddens were listed—if the two did live together as brother and sister, or if I could count on the gorilla going away and leaving the girl alone.

  But when I came even with the building, the coupé door swung open and the gorilla came out and up from the floorboards, where he’d been crouched, waiting for me; he and the girl had got back in the car when I was up around the corner. I just had time to swing around and set myself when he was on top of me. I didn’t have a chance to duck or dodge. He got a big fistful of the front of my vest and jerked me toward him, growled:

  “What’s da idea, tailing us?”

  I was suddenly mad, not at him but at myself for being so dumb and careless. They’d spotted me tailing them and had suckered me neatly into a trap. I pulled back one foot and aimed a kick at his shin. It connected and he said, “O-ow!” in a very surprised and hurt tone of voice, at the same time flinching back and giving ground. As he stepped back I let go with my right fist and buried it in his solar plexus.

  Delivered right, a punch like that can bend a man double and paralyze him for a minute or so. I guess my delivery was wrong, because he only grunted and my fist bounced back as if his belly muscles were made of spring steel. He didn’t even let go of me and give me a chance to high-tail it away from there.

  Instead, he muttered, “You ast for it, slug, now take it.”

  Then he hit me. His fist felt like a cannon-ball when it slammed into my jaw. It jarred me down to my toes and from the coupé I heard the girl cry out: “Buck, don’t! Buck!”

  And the sidewalk came up and kissed me. The last thing I remembered was the dim roar of the coupé’s motor, which got fainter and fainter in the distance. I don’t know how long the knockout lasted, but when I came out of it I was all alone and Buck and the girl were gone.

  icopetti’s is a hole-in-the-wall bar and restaurant on Columbus in the old Barbary Coast district. They know me there—too well. There was a phone message waiting there for me when I arrived—from Mac, telling me where to meet him, which was at the corner of Kearney and Jackson, only two or three blocks away.

  A bruise was blossoming on my jaw and it was sore as a boil. My head was also giving me merry hell. I needed a drink, but it was after two a.m. and the bar was closed. So I talked the night man, a pal of mine, into slipping a shot of brandy into the cup of coffee I ordered, and also got him to lend me his gun. I needed an equalizer in case I ran up against the gorilla again, as I didn’t want to take another dose of the sample he’d given me.

  When I left Ricopetti’s I was feeling better, but I was still sore. I walked up to Kearney and over to Jackson through empty and lifeless streets, and Mac went, “Hiss-hiss!” at me from a dark doorway on the corner.

  “What gives?” I asked as I joined him in the doorway. “Where is our boy friend you were supposed to be tailing?”

  He jabbed a thumb out and down Jackson Street. “He’s down there in that bail-bond office. That’s his hoopie out in front of it. He drove straight here and went in about half an hour ago and I ain’t seen him come out.”

  Jackson was a dark and narrow street here and the bail-bond broker’s office was in mid-block at street level, inner light making a glowing square of its shaded first-floor window. Staring at it, trying to make out the letters stenciled on the glass, I stepped out of the doorway and thumbed back my hat.

  “Whose office is it?” I asked.

  “It’s run by a fat tub of lard named Jonathan Kline,” Mac told me. “He is not a big shot, but I would not be too surprised if he did a little fencing of stolen articles such as hot ice on the side.”

  “Oh-oh,” I breathed, thinking of Vogelsang’s fat stooge. I was pretty sure who Mr. Kline would turn out to be.

  “Criminy, Beek!” Mac blurted suddenly. “What’s the matter with your puss? You look like you’d happened to an accident.”

  Light from the corner street lamp had got under my hat brim. “I did,” I admitted, palming my sore jaw. “You wouldn’t happen to know a big gorilla by the name of Buck Madden, would you?”

  Mac knew most of the small-time crooks and chiselers in town by sight, name or reputation anyway. He blinked, scowling thoughtfully. “That moniker sounds familiar.” Then he snapped his fingers. “I think a bruiser by that name used to do some strong-arm work for Art Vogelsang, but I ain’t heard of him for a long time. Why?”

  There it was—Art Vogelsang again. Everything seemed to be tying up together. “The guy bopped me,” I muttered, still smarting. “That Nude Ranch gal you think is Hildegarde Ingraham is supposed to be his sister—Louise Madden. I was tailing them and the so-and-so laid for me and then got away. We could find out for sure where they live by greasing someone at the Nude Ranch, but I had to try and play it smart and get my face pushed in for my trouble.” I sighed.

&
nbsp; “I don’t know whether fooling around like this is going to get us anything or not; I don’t know just how I happened to get sucked into it in the first place, but now that I’m in I’m going to stay, and find out what’s what. I owe somebody something for this clout on the jaw. I’ve either got to get paid for taking it or else get hunk some other way.”

  Little Mac clucked sympathetically. “You and me should of stuck together, boss. Together we ought to be able to take the big heel, huh? Let’s get him, huh? The big bully!”

  “Not now,” I said, grinning. “Later, maybe.”

  “But what’re we gonna do here?”

  “I’ve got a hunch,” I explained. “Moore, that Swinnerton op who was knifed in the Nude Ranch, was on the trail of Hildegarde Ingraham, I think. It sounded to me like the last thing he tried to say was her name, only no one else seemed to get it. Art Vogelsang and his fat stooge were after Daisy May, and you know the kind of guy Vogelsang is. Also, Daisy May was in the Nude Ranch with us just before the killing, then disappeared. All that is either a hell of a lot of coincidence, or else Daisy May is Hildegarde Ingraham.”

  Mac’s crooked thin face was screwed up in a scowl of concentration. “But Hildegarde is a brunette.”

  “She could have dyed her hair,” I pointed out. “Probably would have if she really wanted to avoid recognition. Anyway, why would a chiseler like Vogelsang be after a gal like Daisy May, unless there was some dough in it? And if I’m wrong we can always go back to the other gal; I’ll admit she intrigues me, pal.”

  Mac was thinking it over, mumbling in his beard: “The dick said her name before he kicked off.…” He looked up brightly. “Maybe this Daisy May is Hildegarde and she knifed him, huh, because she didn’t want to be caught? Maybe the dick was trying to name his killer!”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But whether she’s a murderess or not, there’s still a five-grand reward offered for her, and the thing for us to do now is to find her. At first she was with this kid you followed, who I think is Johnny Foster, and he was looking for her too. He came here, so—”

  “So what?” Mac said, puzzled.

  “So we’re going to find out what. Something very squirrelly is going on, and there just might be a chance that we could pull that five-grand reward out of the fire yet.”

  “Five grand—boy!” He smacked his lips. “What do we do?”

  “We pay a call on Mr. Jonathan Kline first and see what goes on. I think Mr. Kline is Vogelsang’s fat pal, but I don’t know just what we’ll be walking into, so let’s sort of take it easy. I’ll go in first and you wait outside. If I get in a jam, I’ll holler or something and you can get help if we need it.”

  I nodded back along Kearney past where the Zephyr was parked, toward Portsmouth Square and the gray pile of stone across from it that was the Hall of Justice. “The police station’s only a couple of blocks away, but don’t call a copper unless you have to. We don’t want to have to split that reward with anyone, in case there is a chance of getting it. If we get too many cops in here, they’ll ace us out entirely.”

  “I get it, boss,” Mac said. “Are you heeled?”

  “Yeah.” I touched the short-barreled police special in my coat pocket that I’d got from my pal in Ricopetti’s. “Wait here until after I’m inside.”

  “Take it easy, boss,” little Mac warned pleadingly as I moved off into Jackson.

  From the glow that filtered out through the shaded windows, I noticed that the kid’s car was a low Packard convertible and carried Nevada plates. That wasn’t odd, because Nevada is a taxpayer’s haven and plenty of wealthy people maintain their residence there. I moved on and up to the office door, and had my right hand on the gun in my pocket. I put out my other for the door handle, and paused.

  Thumping sounds were coming from inside, the scrape of furniture being pushed back, a splintering crash that sounded like a chair hitting the floor. On either side of me the window shades were tightly drawn. There was no crack or slit through which I might see.

  Thumping sounds from within continued. I let my hand close on the door handle, thumbed down the latch. The door was unlocked and I pushed it open a little, so that I could see inside.

  A railing bisected the room, and behind the railing were Art Vogelsang and the kid I’d tabbed as Johnny Foster, but they didn’t notice me in the doorway. They were busy, completely wrapped up in each other, engaged in a slug fest that was a furious exchange of lefts and rights. They were viciously in earnest, going at it hammer and tongs, and the room was filled with grunting sounds and the thudding impacts of fists against flesh.

  Battling back and forth, the kid’s dark hair was hanging down in his eyes and his coat was ripped. Sweat and blood streaked Vogelsang’s sharp face. The kid was boring into him like a buzz-saw, forcing the taller man to give ground. As I watched, the kid brought up his right in a pretty uppercut and Vogelsang’s head jumped and he slammed back against a roll-top desk, started to slide down it to the floor.

  The kid stood over him, panting, and behind the kid a bulky shape that I hadn’t noticed there rose up from the floor—the fat man, Kline. I stepped inside, heeled the door shut behind me, said:

  “Hold it!” The heater was out in my fist, but either I spoke too late or Kline didn’t hear me anyway.

  He swung the metal wastebasket he’d brought with him up from the floor. It arced over his head, bonged on the back of the kid’s skull. The kid staggered forward, went to his knees.

  “Kline!” I bit out. “Drop it!”

  He looked at me, his moon face dull, blubbery lower lip hanging slackly. Sweat glistened under the lights on the dome of his almost totally bald head. There was a threat of blood from one corner of his mouth, and his clothes were dusty from the floor. The kid had evidently got in at least one good punch on him before going to work on Vogelsang. He’d really been cleaning house.

  Kline’s eyes glinted, almost hidden in deep folds of flesh. He let the wastebasket drop from his hand to the floor, stood breathing harshly, his bulging torso expanding and contracting. The kid had only been knocked to his knees, catching himself there and holding his head in his hands. His coat sleeves had worked back along his arms and one shirt cuff was stained darkly with blood. His clothing was practically ruined, but he didn’t seem to be marked up much physically.

  Now he sobbed, “You ——!” and came up swinging, going for Kline. “Where is she?” he gritted.

  “Hold it!” I said sharply, moving to the railing. “What goes on?”

  He jerked his head around and stared at me as if he hadn’t known I was there before. Behind the railing, a chair and a typewriter table had been knocked to the floor. Vogelsang had his back propped against the desk, was holding his jaw in one hand and looking up from the floor with dazed, glassy eyes. All three men were puffing, and the sound of their breathing was very loud.

  “They’ve got the girl!” the kid blurted. “And they won’t tell me where they’ve got her. They’re holding her. They’re keeping her against her will.”

  “What girl?” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to mean Hildegarde Ingraham, by any chance?”

  His head jerked in a nod. “Yes. They—they’ve kidnaped her.”

  “Then,” I said slowly, “Daisy May is really Hildegarde.”

  An uncertain light flickered in his eyes, as if he realized he’d spoken out of turn, revealing a confidence, and now regretted it. Then he murmured resignedly, “Well, it’s out now. Yes.”

  “Then these mutts must have kidnaped her right out of the Nude Ranch,” I said.

  “I don’t know.” His eyes were harried and he spoke heatedly. “But I know they’ve got her.”

  I pointed the heater at Kline. “Where is she, fat boy? Give.”

  His face was stupidly sullen and he didn’t answer.

  “Nuts!” Vogelsang said, and I looked down at him. The glassiness had gone out of his eyes, leaving them blue chips of hard sharpness. His thin, blood-streaked face was sneering. �
�We should tell you! So you can hijack her and collect that reward. You ——! You took her away from us once and now you’re sticking your nose in again.”

  “The hell with the reward,” the kid sobbed, quivering. His jaw was set in a rigid white line. “I don’t care about the reward. I want to know where she is. You two aren’t just after the reward. You’re going to try to hold her for ransom or something, at least try to chisel more than the five thousand out of her father. Otherwise you wouldn’t have hidden her somewhere.”

  Vogelsang looked up at him with his mouth tight and hard and unveiled hate showing in his cold eyes. Knowing him, I had a hunch the kid was right. Vogelsang would be up to something very crooked, something very tricky, though I didn’t think he’d go so far as to take a chance on a kidnaping rap.

  “Listen,” I said. “A private dick was killed in the Nude Ranch at the Fair tonight. He was on Hildegarde’s trail. You two mutts were there; you had to be, because you came back for the gal. Either you tell where she is now, or I’m going to call in some cops.”

  Kline’s wet lips sagged at the corners. He looked suddenly sick, gazed questioningly down at Vogelsang. Vogelsang flicked a quick glance at him and then his eyes got very thin and expressionless.

  “We don’t know anything about that!” he lipped resentfully. His voice had a thickness to it, as though it hurt him to move his jaw, but he suddenly changed his tone. “Now, be reasonable, for Pete’s sake. We can all get a cut in this reward.”

  “I don’t trust you, Vogelsang,” I told him. “You’re trying to ease out from under something. But I’ll be reasonable. You tell us where you’ve got the girl, the kid and I will go get her, I’ll collect the reward and we’ll split it—unless it turns out that one of you two lovely personalities knifed that Swinnerton dick.”

  “Hell, we didn’t have nothing to do with that,” Kline said in his deep petulant voice. “What’re you planning to do—frame us?”

  “No,” I told him. “But you had to be near there at the time—you had to follow us back to the Fair grounds to get the girl.”