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

by Unknown

  “Listen, lady. This isn’t—”

  The slamming door almost made a wave in the pool down the walk. I looked at it for a moment, and then I looked at the other bungalows. If we had an audience, it was keeping out of sight. I rang the bell again.

  The door jumped open this time. The brunette was livid. “Get off my porch!” she yelled. “Get off before I have you thrown off!”

  “Wait a minute,” I growled. “This may be a gag for him, but it’s no gag to the police.”

  That got her. Her whole expression got soft and interested.

  “Police?” she cooed.

  “Yeah. It’s serious. It involves a murder. I’ve got to find this Miss Baring. Not that she, you understand—”

  The brunette dragged me into the house and shut the door and leaned against it, panting.

  “Tell me,” she said breathlessly. “Tell me. Has that redheaded something got herself mixed up in a murder?” Suddenly her mouth snapped wide open and her eyes jumped at me.

  I slapped a hand over her mouth. “Take it easy!” I pleaded. “It’s not your Dave. Not Dave, lady.”

  “Oh.” She got rid of my hand and let out a sigh and looked silly. “No, of course. Just for a moment … Well, who is it?”

  “Nobody you know. I can’t broadcast things like that, anyway. I want Miss Baring’s address. Have you got it?”

  I didn’t know any reason why she would have. Or rather, I might be able to think of one, if I shook my brains hard enough.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I have. Indeed, I have. Mister Smarty doesn’t know that. Mister Smarty doesn’t know as much as he thinks he knows, does Mister Smarty? He—”

  “The address is all I can use right now,” I growled. “And I’m in a bit of a hurry, Mrs. Marineau. Later on”—I gave her a meaning look—“I’m sure I’ll want to talk to you.”

  “It’s on Heather Street,” she said. “I don’t know the number. But I’ve been there. I’ve been past there. It’s only a short street, with four or five houses, and only one of them on the downward side of the hill.” She stopped, added, “I don’t think the house has a number. Heather Street is at the top of Beachwood Drive.”

  “Has she a phone?”

  “Of course, but a restricted number. She would have. They all do, those ——. If I knew it—”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’d call her up and chew her ear off. Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Marineau. This is confidential, of course. I mean confidential.”

  “Oh, by all means!”

  She wanted to talk longer but I pushed past her out of the house and went back down the flagged walk. I could feel her eyes on me all the way, so I didn’t do any laughing.

  The lad with the restless hands and the full red lips had had what he thought was a very cute idea. He had given me the first address that came into his head, his own. Probably he had expected his wife to be out. I didn’t know. It looked awfully silly, however I thought about it—unless he was pressed for time.

  Wondering why he should be pressed for time, I got careless. I didn’t see the blue coupé double-parked almost at the gates until I also saw the man step from behind it.

  He had a gun in his hand.

  He was a big man, but not anything like Skalla’s size. He made a sound with his lips and held his left palm out and something glittered in it. It might have been a piece of tin or a police badge.

  Cars were parked along both sides of Flores. Half a dozen people should have been in sight. There wasn’t one—except the big man with the gun and myself.

  He came closer, making soothing noises with his mouth.

  “Pinched,” he said. “Get in my hack and drive it, like a nice lad.” He had a soft, husky voice, like an overworked rooster trying to croon.

  “You all alone?”

  “Yeah, but I got the gun.” He sighed. “Act nice and you’re as safe as the bearded woman at a Legion convention. Safer.”

  He was circling slowly, carefully. I saw the metal thing now.

  “That’s a special badge,” I said. “You’ve got no more right to pinch me than I have to pinch you.”

  “In the hack, bo. Be nice or your guts lie on this here street. I got orders.” He started to pat me gently. “Hell, you ain’t even rodded.”

  “Skip it!” I growled. “Do you think you could take me if I was?”

  I walked over to his blue coupé and slid under its wheel. The motor was running. He got in beside me and put his gun in my side and we went on down the hill.

  “Take her west on Santa Monica,” he husked. “Then up, say, Canyon Drive to Sunset. Where the bridle path is.”

  I took her west on Santa Monica, past the bottom of Holloway, then a row of junk yards and some stores. The street widened and became a boulevard past Doheney. I let the car out a little to feel it. He stopped me doing that. I swung north to Sunset and then west again. Lights were being lit in big houses up the slopes. The dusk was full of radio music.

  I eased down and took a look at him before it got too dark. Even under the pulled-down hat on Flores I had seen the eyebrows, but I wanted to be sure. So I looked again. They were the eyebrows, all right.

  They were almost as even, almost as smoothly black, and fully as wide as a half-inch strip of black plush pasted across his broad face above the eyes and nose. There was no break in the middle. His nose was large and coarse-grained and had hung out over too many beers.

  “Bub McCord,” I said. “Ex-copper. So you’re in the snatch racket now. It’s Folsom for you this time, baby.”

  “Aw, can it.” He looked hurt and leaned back in the corner. Bub McCord, caught in a graft tangle, had done a three in Quentin. Next time he would go to the recidivist prison, which is Folsom in our state.

  He leaned his gun on his left thigh and cuddled the door with his fat back. I let the car drift and he didn’t seem to mind. It was betweentimes, after the homeward rush of the office man, before the evening crowd came out.

  “This ain’t no snatch,” he complained. “We just don’t want no trouble. You can’t expect to go up against an organization like KLBL with a two-bit shakedown, and get no kickback. It ain’t reasonable.” He spat out of the window without turning his head. “Keep her rollin’, bo.”

  “What shakedown?”

  “You wouldn’t know, would you? Just a wandering peeper with his head stuck in a knothole, huh? That’s you. Innocent, as the guy says.”

  “So you work for Marineau. That’s all I wanted to know. Of course I knew it already, after I back-alleyed you, and you showed up again.”

  “Neat work, bo—but keep her rollin’. Yeah, I had to phone in. Just caught him.”

  “Where do we go from here?”

  “I take care of you till nine-thirty. After that we go to a place.”

  “What place?”

  “It ain’t nine-thirty. Hey, don’t go to sleep in that there corner.”

  “Drive it yourself, if you don’t like my work.”

  He pushed the gun at me hard. It hurt. I kicked the coupé out from under him and set him back in his corner, but he kept his gun in a good grip. Somebody called out archly on somebody’s front lawn.

  Then I saw a red light winking ahead, and a sedan just passing it, and through the rear window of the sedan two flat caps side by side.

  “You’ll get awfully tired of holding that gun,” I told McCord. “You don’t dare use it anyway. You’re copper-soft. There’s nothing so soft as a copper who’s had his badge torn off. Just a big heel. Copper-soft.”

  We weren’t near to the sedan, but I wanted his attention. I got it. He slammed me over the head and grabbed the wheel and yanked the brake on. We ground to a stop. I shook my head woozily. By the time I came out of it he was away from me again, in his corner.

  “Next time,” he said thinly, for all his huskiness, “I put you to sleep in the rumble. Just try it, bo. Just try it, Now roll—and keep the wisecracks down in your belly.”

  I drove ahead, between the
hedge that bordered the bridle path and the wide parkway beyond the curbing. The cops in the sedan tooled on gently, drowsing, listening with half an ear to their radio, talking of this and that. I could almost hear them in my mind, the sort of thing they would be saying.

  “Besides,” McCord growled. “I don’t need no gun to handle you. I never see the guy I couldn’t handle without no gun.”

  “I saw one this morning,” I said. I started to tell him about Steve Skalla.

  Another red stoplight showed. The sedan ahead seemed loath to leave it. McCord lit a cigarette with his left hand, bending his head a little.

  I kept telling him about Skalla and the bouncer at Shamey’s.

  Then I tramped on the throttle.

  The little car shot ahead without a quiver. McCord started to swing his gun at me. I yanked the wheel hard to the right and yelled: “Hold tight! It’s a crash!”

  We hit the prowl car almost on the left rear fender. It waltzed around on one wheel, apparently, and loud language came out of it. It slewed, rubber screamed, metal made a grinding sound, the left taillight splintered and probably the gas tank bulged.

  The little coupé sat back on its heels and quivered like a scared rabbit.

  McCord could have cut me in half. His gun muzzle was inches from my ribs. But he wasn’t a hard guy, really. He was just a broken cop who had done time and got himself a cheap job after it and was on an assignment he didn’t understand.

  He tore the right-hand door open, and jumped out of the car.

  One of the cops was out by this time, on my side. I ducked down under the wheel. A flash beam burned across the top of my hat.

  It didn’t work. Steps came near and the flash jumped into my face.

  “Come on out of that,” a voice snarled. “What the hell you think this is—a racetrack?”

  I got out sheepishly. McCord was crouched somewhere behind the coupé, out of sight.

  “Lemme smell of your breath.”

  I let him smell my breath.

  “Whisky,” he said. “I thought so. Walk, baby. Walk.” He prodded me with the flashlight.

  I walked.

  The other cop was trying to jerk his sedan loose from the coupé. He was swearing, but he was busy with his own troubles.

  “You don’t walk like no drunk,” the cop said. “What’s the matter? No brakes?” The other cop had got the bumpers free and was climbing back under his wheel.

  I took my hat off and bent my head. “Just an argument,” I said. “I got hit. It made me woozy for a minute.”

  McCord made a mistake. He started running when he heard that. He vaulted across the parkway, jumped the wall and crouched. His footsteps thudded on turf.

  That was my cue. “Holdup!” I snapped at the cop who was questioning me. “I was afraid to tell you!”

  “Jeeze, the howling—!” he yelled, and tore a gun out of his holster. “Why’n’t you say so?” He jumped for the wall. “Circle the heap! We want that guy!” he yelled at the man in the sedan.

  He was over the wall. Grunts. More feet pounding on the turf. A car stopped half a block away and a man started to get out of it but kept his foot on the running board. I could barely see him behind his dimmed headlights.

  The cop in the prowl car charged at the hedge that bordered the bridle path, backed furiously, swung around and was off with screaming siren.

  I jumped into McCord’s coupé, and jerked the starter.

  Distantly there was a shot, then two shots, then a yell. The siren died at a corner and picked up again.

  I gave the coupé all it had and left the neighborhood. Far off, to the north, a lonely sound against the hills, a siren kept on wailing.

  I ditched the coupé half a block from Wilshire and took a taxi in front of the Beverly Wilshire. I knew I could be traced. That wasn’t important. The important thing was how soon.

  From a cocktail bar in Hollywood I called Hiney. He was still on the job and still sour.

  “Anything new on Skalla?”

  “Listen,” he said nastily, “was you over to talk to that Shamey woman? Where are you?”

  “Certainly I was,” I said. “I’m in Chicago.”

  “You better come on home. Why was you there?”

  “I thought she might know Beulah, of course. She did. Want to raise that bet a little?”

  “Can the comedy. She’s dead.”

  “Skalla—” I started to say.

  “That’s the funny side,” he grunted. “He was there. Some nosy old —— next door seen him. Only there ain’t a mark on her. She died natural. I kind of got tied up here, so I didn’t get over to see her.”

  “I know how busy you are,” I said in what seemed to me a dead voice.

  “Yeah. Well, hell, the doc don’t even know what she died of. Not yet.”

  “Fear,” I said. “She’s the one that turned Skalla up eight years ago. Whisky may have helped a little.”

  “Is that so?” Hiney said. “Well, well. We got him now anyways. We make him at Girard, headed north in a rent hack. We got the county and state law in on it. If he drops over to the Ridge, we nab him at Castaic. She was the one turned him up, huh? I guess you better come in, Carmady.”

  “Not me,” I said. “Beverly Hills wants me for a hit-and-run. I’m a criminal myself now.”

  I had a quick snack and some coffee before I took a taxi to Las Flores and Santa Monica and walked up to where I had left my roadster parked.

  Nothing was happening around there except that some kid in the back of a car was strumming a ukelele.

  I pointed my roadster towards Heather Street.

  Heather Street was a gash in the side of a steep flat slope, at the top of Beachwood Drive. It curved around the shoulder enough so that even by daylight you couldn’t have seen much more than half a block of it at one time while you were on it.

  The house I wanted was built downward, one of those clinging-vine effects, with a front door below the street level, a patio on the roof, a bedroom or two possibly in the basement, and a garage as easy to drive into as an olive bottle.

  The garage was empty, but a big shiny sedan had its two right wheels off the road, on the shoulder of the bank. There were lights in the house.

  I drove around the curb, parked, walked back along the smooth, hardly used cement and poked a fountain pen flash into the sedan. It was registered to one David Marineau, 1737 North Flores Avenue, Hollywood, California. That made me go back to my heap and get a gun out of a locked pocket.

  I repassed the sedan, stepped down three rough stone steps and looked at the bell beside a narrow door topped by a lancet arch.

  I didn’t push it, I just looked at it. The door wasn’t quite shut. A fairly wide crack of dim light edged around its panel. I pushed it an inch. Then I pushed it far enough to look in.

  Then I listened. The silence of that house was what made me go in. It was one of those utterly dead silences that come after an explosion. Or perhaps I hadn’t eaten enough dinner. Anyway I went in.

  The long living room went clear to the back, which wasn’t very far as it was a small house. At the back there were French doors and the metal railing of a balcony showed through the glass. The balcony would be very high above the slope of the hill, built as the house was.

  There were nice lamps, nice chairs with deep sides, nice tables, a thick apricot-colored rug, two small cozy davenports, one facing and one right-angled to a fireplace with an ivory mantel and a miniature Winged Victory on that. A fire was laid behind the copper screen, but not lit.

  The room had a hushed, warm smell. It looked like a room where people got made comfortable. There was a bottle of Vat 69 on a low table with glasses and a copper bucket, and tongs.

  I fixed the door about as I had found it and just stood. Silence. Time passed. It passed in the dry whirr of an electric clock on a console radio, in the far-off hoot of an auto horn down on Beachwood half a mile below, in the distant hornet drone of a night-flying plane, in the metallic wheeze of a
cricket under the house.

  Then I wasn’t alone any longer.

  Mrs. Marineau slid into the room at the far end, by a door beside the French doors. She didn’t make any more noise than a butterfly. She still wore the pillbox black hat and the burnt-orange tweeds, and they still looked like hell together. She had a small glove in her hand wrapped around the butt of a gun. I don’t know why. I never did find that out.

  She didn’t see me at once and when she did it didn’t mean anything much. She just lifted the gun a little and slid along the carpet towards me, her lip clutched back so far that I couldn’t even see the teeth that clutched it.

  But I had a gun out now myself. We looked at each other across our guns. Maybe she knew me. I hadn’t any idea from her expression.

  I said, “You got them, huh?”

  She nodded a little. “Just him,” she said.

  “Put the gun down. You’re all through with it.”

  She lowered it a little. She hadn’t seemed to notice the Colt I was pushing through the air in her general direction. I lowered that too.

  She said, “She wasn’t here.”

  Her voice had a dry, impersonal sound, flat, without timbre.

  “Miss Baring wasn’t here?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Remember me?”

  She took a better look at me but her face didn’t light up with any pleasure.

  “I’m the guy that was looking for Miss Baring,” I said. “You told me where to come. Remember? Only Dave sent a loogan to put the arm on me and ride me around while he came up here himself and promoted something. I couldn’t guess what.”

  The brunette said, “You’re no cop. Dave said you were a fake.”

  I made a broad, hearty gesture and moved a little closer to her, unobtrusively. “Not a city cop,” I admitted. “But a cop. And that was a long time ago. Things have happened since then. Haven’t they?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Especially to Dave. Hee, hee.”

  It wasn’t a laugh. It wasn’t meant to be a laugh. It was just a little steam escaping through a safety valve.

  “Hee, hee,” I said. We looked at each other like a couple of nuts being Napoleon and Josephine.