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

by Unknown

  “No. Levy wasn’t going to use it unless Kirkwood forced him to. Like I told you, Levy was really trying to be a good boy.”

  “Then,” I said, “it doesn’t add up. Kirkwood wouldn’t have any reason to do it.”

  “Maybe I ought to say that Kirkwood didn’t know anything about it until just before the meeting tonight. Levy was tipped off during the day from St. Louis that somebody was checking his record there. He figured Kirkwood must be behind it and he phoned Kirkwood about six o’clock and asked him to come over after the meeting. I didn’t hear the conversation but I’m betting Kirkwood got a hint that he wasn’t sitting so pretty, himself.”

  That reminded me that when I’d called the Woodring house, the butler had told me I couldn’t talk to Kirkwood. And that when he had come into the reception room later, I’d had the feeling he’d just arrived from some place.

  Manners went on: “However, that’s just background. I don’t think Kirkwood pulled it because I’ve got two much better candidates. How do you think Levy got himself set up in this cult racket? It took dough.”

  “I wouldn’t know. Maybe he had some.”

  “He didn’t have two nickels to bounce together when he got out of Atlanta. All he had was a swell idea and a couple of pals that were willing to stake him while he put the idea over. Levy never broke down and told me all this, I just picked it up a little here and a little there, and put it together. The idea was that a lot of rich screwballs, particularly women, fall for cult stuff and will let their hair down in private to the high yogi. Levy was supposed to get the dirt, pass it on to his pals and they’d put the squeeze on the saps.”

  For the first time I felt as though I was getting warm on the case. I said, “Who were these pals?”

  “Two cons that Levy met at Atlanta. One is Skip Morris, a racket guy who went up from Chicago for income tax stuff, and the other is Harry Lake, a hot number from New York. I don’t know what he was in the can for. As a matter of fact, I never saw the pair except once when I body-guarded Levy over to the Roosevelt and he talked to them there. But I know they were the reason the last couple of months why Levy kept me on.”

  “How do they fit into last night’s caper?” I said, killing my Teacher’s. I thought I could guess that but I was willing to let him tell me. I figured also that I knew just about where the Woodring letters had gone, although I couldn’t dope out how anyone had managed to be waiting for me outside the old gal’s house.

  “Levy’s idea was a swell idea,” Manners said, “except that Levy went holy on these guys. He got plenty of dirt on a lot of suckers but he wouldn’t pass it on to Lake and Morris. He paid them back the dough they’d staked him to but they still figured he was double-crossing them. They as much as told him last week they were going to give him the business.” He grimaced, wagged his head a little. “And last night they didn’t do anything else.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the cops all this?”

  “That’s easy. I don’t want a job on the cops, I want a job with International.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Incidentally, you didn’t happen to knock Levy off, yourself, did you?”

  For a moment Manners looked startled. He said, “You serious?”

  “No,” I said. “That was just to keep conversation going.”

  “Oh.” He dripped sarcasm and I couldn’t blame him. “Well, on that basis, sure. I polished him off so Gerda could lose her job at forty a week and I could lose mine at seventy-five bucks. You see, I figured I’d blackmail Kirkwood, so the first thing I did was blab all I knew to the dick that was working for him. It was kind of hard for me because I put in the whole evening lifting beer at the Lotsatime Café until fifteen minutes or so before I got back to the house. But I managed to shoot him from the café, using mirrors.”

  “Oh, well,” I said. “I was just keeping the record clear. If I wanted to locate Morris and Lake, what kind of guys would I look for and where would I look?”

  He described the pair, said, “I don’t know where they hang out but maybe I can find out for you. Now how about that job?”

  I told him I’d put in a word with Tim Harper and he got up to go. I was amused at this kid craving to be a dick.

  At the door, I said, “There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about. Levy had a packing case full of the three apes. What was he doing, starting a curio shop?”

  Manners grinned. “Levy was as nutty about his cult as any of his suckers. He was going to pass the monkeys out the way Rockefeller did dimes. It might have been a good publicity stunt, at that.”

  That sounded nutty to me but no nuttier than the rest of the case so I forgot the apes. What I wanted was the letters and I had a notion that if I could locate Skip Morris and Harry Lake, I’d be locating the letters. When I got the letters, I’d toss the mugs to the cops and ease out of the picture.

  So I phoned a little redhead who works the cocktail bars on Figueroa and on West Seventh.

  She said she knew Skip Morris but she didn’t know the other guy. “If I can find out where Morris lives,” she said, “I’ll call you, Kerry.”

  I said that would make her fifty bucks better off.…

  When the phone rang, I’d been asleep for two hours. The redhead said in my ear, “Try the York apartments, Kerry,” and hung up without saying anything more.

  t ten the next morning I got Harper on the phone at the office. He sounded grouchy and what I had to tell him didn’t make him feel any better and he let me know about it. I said, “Well, maybe things won’t come out so badly. I’m going out to the York apartments and prowl around. Incidentally, have you heard anything from Sue?”

  “No,” Harper said. “And if she hasn’t anything better to tell me than you have, I hope I don’t hear from her.”

  The York apartments were four stories of dingy red brick out on Santa Monica Boulevard. There were brass plates on the hallway wall that held the cards of tenants. None of the cards showed me the names of Morris and Lake; not that I had expected it. I pressed the button under the card that said, “Manager.”

  A woman in a purple wrapper came to the head of the stairs. She was about fifty and very thick through the body and she had a lumpy face, a whiskey-veined nose and blue eyes as hard as agates. When I got up to her I had a card out. The card said that I was Jasper Q. Pahl of the Western Collection Agency.

  I gave her the card and said, “Good morning, madam. I’m looking for a man named Morris and another man named Lake.”

  She backed her thick body away from me and into the open door of an apartment just off the stairway. She looked at the card and back at me and said, “Nobody here by that name.”

  She started to shut the door and I stopped it with my foot. I said, “They wouldn’t be using those names. They skipped with a mortgaged car and it’d be worth ten bucks to locate them.”

  The pressure came off the door and the woman said, “What do they look like?”

  “Morris is tall and about forty with a black mustache and black hair. He’s sort of bald on top.” I remembered Manners’ description.

  I hadn’t heard feet coming up the stairs until I’d gone on with: “Lake is smaller. His nose has a hump where it was broken and he has one gold tooth.”

  The woman said hurriedly, “I told you there wasn’t anybody named Lake or Morris in this building,” and backed away and slammed the door quickly.

  Behind me, about the level of my knees, a man’s voice said, “You looking for a fellow named Lake, buddy?”

  I turned around and a tall mug, who had a black mustache and black hair where it showed below a gray Homburg, was just taking the last step upward to the hallway. He was also just taking his hand out from beneath his coat and it was holding a blue-black automatic.

  The tall man, who was undoubtedly Morris, said, “Come on, buddy. I’ll take you to this guy named Lake.”

  When I didn’t find anything to say, he grinned and said chidingly, “Hell, can’t you even say thanks?”

 
We went up two more flights of stairs to the top floor, where there were only two doors along the hallway. Morris knocked on one of them with his left hand while he held the gun on me with his right. He had to knock again before the door opened and a man in his shirt-sleeves looked out at us. The shirt-sleeved man had very square, muscular shoulders and ropy forearms. He had small eyes like shiny licorice drops and the eyes twinkled at me. His nose had a hump and he had a gold tooth.

  Morris said, “This guy wants to see you, Harry.”

  Lake said in a husky baritone, “Bring him in, Skip. We got quite a party now.”

  We went in single-file, with me between Morris and Lake, into a big living-room. There were two men already in the room. One of them, who was Fred Manners, sat in the exact middle of a big divan. His mouth was bloody and one of his pale eyebrows was torn. He was holding his hands tightly across his stomach and moaning and he didn’t look up when we came in.

  The other man was Paul Kirkwood. His skin was malaria yellow and he looked scared and a little sick to the stomach. He jerked his head like a startled horse when he saw me and his mouth opened and closed a couple of times but didn’t say anything.

  Morris said, “Where did Blondy come from?”

  “Don’t you remember him?” Lake said. “He’s the guy Levy had body-guarding him. When I was coming back here with Kirkwood, I saw the guy just getting out of his car in front, so I brought him upstairs to find out why he was gum-shoeing around.”

  “Has he told you?” Morris asked, interested.

  “He talks but he don’t make sense.” Lake walked over to the kid with a swing to his walk like a boxer, straightened him up with a light left to his face and then sank his right four inches into Manners’ belly. Manners’ retching noise was loud in the room and he doubled over again, holding his stomach muscles.

  Lake walked back to me and twinkled his shiny eyes at me. He said, “From that nosy look you got, brother, you look like a dick to me.”

  “You ought to know,” I said. “You don’t have to put on an act for me.”

  Lake whipped the right at me without telegraphing it. It smacked me high on the cheek and shoved me off balance. I hit the wall and bounced back with my fists coming up. Morris wiggled his gun at me and I put my fists down.

  “I’ll learn you,” Lake said, “to give me funny answers.”

  Skip Morris said soberly, “We’re not getting any place this way, Harry. Let these guys alone and we’ll get our business with Kirkwood over and get going.”

  “We’ve got penty of time,” Lake said. “It always gives me the creeps when guys follow me around and I don’t know just who they are or why. I’ll work on ’em awhile.”

  Morris shook his head. “You’re nothing but a damn sadist, Harry. You like to beat guys up.”

  “Yeah,” Lake said. “And this blond kid is perfect for it—not too soft, not too hard.”

  He stalked Manners again but even the light tap of Lake’s left didn’t straighten him up this time. Lake licked his lips and then he reached down and got a fistful of Manners’ vest and hauled him upright. The kid fell forward and sideways and Lake pulled him erect again, the ropy muscles in his forearm standing out. He let him go and instantly threw his right from the level of his shoulder. The fist hit Manners’ jaw with the sharp impact of a whip being snapped.

  Manners’ knees didn’t even buckle. He went over backward, straight and stiff like a piece of wood. There was a table in the way and the back of his head hit the carved edge of it, making a dull, mushy sound. The table fell over, throwing its legs and its top around Manners’ body on three sides like a fence.

  Manners didn’t move. Not a muscle twitched and if there was any motion in his chest, I couldn’t see it. His mouth sagged wide open and saliva drooled from it; his eyes were wide open, too, but only the whites showed.

  Morris made an angry, bitter sound in his throat. He said, “You damned fool, you’ve killed him. You’ve fixed us up fine.” But he wasn’t upset enough to take his rod off me.

  Lake stooped and felt Manners’ wrist. After a few seconds, he dropped it and stood looking down at him. He said sheepishly, “Hell, how could I guess the guy was a softy?”

  Skip Morris began to storm at him and Lake’s eyes got cold and small. They didn’t twinkle anymore. He said in a soft, nasty way, “Shut up. I’m thinking.”

  I noticed that Morris shut up. He kept the gun pointing my way but his eyes were half on me, half on Lake, and they were worried. After a little Lake turned around and went out of the living-room. He came back right away and he had a wet bath towel in his hands, wringing water out of it as he walked. The drops fell on the carpet, making a damp trail.

  “What’s the idea?” Morris demanded. His voice was anxious.

  “Don’t you worry what I’m going to do,” Lake said. He got a gun out from under his armpit and began wrapping it in the wet towel. “There’s only one guy here that would do any talking about what just happened, Skip.”

  He looked at me and then at Kirkwood. He said, “You wouldn’t do any talking, would you, handsome?”

  The malaria yellow of Kirkwood’s face was turning to green. He didn’t try to speak, merely let his head waggle from side to side. Then he turned around and went wooden-kneed toward a window. He stood there with his back to us.

  “See?” Lake said. “Handsome won’t talk. He doesn’t even want to see things.” He had the gun wrapped in the wet towel now and he looked at me. There were orange lights behind the shiny blackness of his eyes and he looked as though he was enjoying something hugely. Nerves crawled in my stomach and my mouth was suddenly dry and my tongue was stiff. He said, “I’ll bet you won’t talk either, shamus.”

  The towel-shrouded gun was beginning to come up when out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement on the floor by the overturned table. I said loudly, hurriedly, “For cripes sake, hold it! The kid isn’t dead.”

  Manners was moving his hands, his legs with little jerks as though he were receiving a series of electric shocks. His chest moved convulsively and a long sigh hissed through his mashed lips. Lake started to unwrap the gun, looking disappointed about something.

  He said reflectively, “I don’t know; maybe the guy might die yet.”

  He got the gun unwrapped, wiped off dampness from its barrel and put it away in his shoulder holster.

  igured damask draperies divided the living-room from the small foyer through which we had come and the draperies moved a bit now. Skip Morris and Lake weren’t looking that way so they didn’t see Sue Jordan step into sight between the hangings. She had her pearl-handled .32 in her hand and if she had worn wings, she couldn’t have looked any more like an angel.

  She waited until Lake had brought his hand away empty from the shoulder holster and then she said, “That’s much better.”

  Lake and Morris began to jerk around and Sue’s voice was like a whip-lash. “Don’t move, gentlemen.”

  Lake froze but Skip Morris got his head around over his shoulder and stared at Sue and her gun with amazed fascination.

  She said, “Take their guns, Kerry.”

  I did just that in a hurry, saying, “If you had a uniform, Sue, you could double for the Marines at this moment.”

  She grinned. “I talked to the boss on the phone right after you’d told him you were coming out here. These two playboys fitted right in with what I was looking for, so I beat it out here, too. And when the manager downstairs found out I was looking for you, she got the shakes and finally told me you were up here. I talked her out of a key and here I am.”

  On the floor Manners was breathing a lot better.

  I said, “Can you hold these guys a minute or two, Sue?”

  She looked scornful. “Do you think I’m a sissy?”

  I got water from the bathroom, slopped some in Manners’ face. He opened his eyes. I looked at Kirkwood for the first time in minutes. He’d turned around from the window and was watching me with his eyes sunk deep in his head.<
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  There was a bedroom off the living-room. I started through the room like a northeast gale but I didn’t have to go far. The Woodring letters and my gun were in a suit-case under the bed. I stuck the gun in my pocket and, with the other two guns loading me down, I felt like an armory. I went back into the living-room and handed the letters to Kirkwood.

  I said, “How much were they asking for them?”

  He put the letters in his pocket without looking at them, said dully, “Thanks, but they— This isn’t all; there’s something else they know.”

  I got it. “You wouldn’t be meaning something like a New York indictment?”

  He didn’t answer but he didn’t have to. I looked at Morris and Harry Lake. I said, “Where did you guys get that information?”

  Lake’s licorice-drop eyes sparkled hatred at me. He snarled, “You dicks aren’t the only guys that find out things.”

  “Keep your mouth shut,” Morris said swiftly. “They haven’t got a damn thing on us if you’ll just keep that big mouth shut.”

  “Just like that,” I said. “I suppose I didn’t have some letters and a gun swiped from me last night and I suppose I didn’t just find ’em here?”

  Morris’ eyes were opaque and crafty. He said stubbornly, “I don’t know anything about any letters or any gun.”

  “You’ll remember about them,” I said, “when we turn you over to the cops and lay everything in their laps.”

  There was a little laugh. It was Sue. She said, “You’re not really that dumb, are you, Kerry? International is being paid to keep Kirkwood and Mrs. Woodring out of a scandal, not shove them in. We’d be earning our money in a big way, telling the cops about letters and indictments and so on.”

  She was right. I said, “Yeah,” and scowled at Lake and Skip Morris. “But,” I said, “murder is murder, after all. We can’t turn these guys loose.”

  “We don’t have to,” Sue said quietly. “All that’s necessary is to show that they had another reason and a lot better one than blackmail to have killed Levy. The blackmail was just pin money.”

  Maybe I sounded skeptical. “And I suppose you can show that?”