He drove down Second—and I told him to cross Main and keep on going. There was no sign of Virgie Beers or the Donner woman. But they knew shortcuts, maybe. I looked around—and the lights of a car were shining in my face. The car was gaining on the cab. Gaining fast.
“Slow down, pull into the curb!” I ordered the driver.
The other car slid up, stopped beside the cab. Butman climbed down from behind the wheel.
“What’s the rush?” he demanded.
I grinned at him. “Hunting for a phone. Got to call the paper.”
He smiled back—that nasty smile of his. He had a mocking tone in his voice.
“How about the phone in the Widow’s house?” he asked.
I kept on grinning. “It’s a long-distance call,” I said. “Hate to run up a bill on her heirs.”
“Get out of the cab—and climb in with me!” he ordered. “I’m thinking up some questions to ask you.”
I got out, told the driver to follow us, and climbed in beside him. He drove up past the Widow’s house, but he didn’t stop. He turned to the right, started the car up a steep hill in low. Then he pulled in at the curb. When the cab driver pulled up beside the car he got his head over the door.
“Go back to the house where you dropped the passenger you brought up,” he ordered. “Wait there—and, say, did you bring this bird out?”
The cab driver was frowning. “Who wants to know?” he demanded.
Butman told him. The cab driver changed his tone. He said he didn’t bring me out, and he volunteered the information that I’d given him twenty for the trip back to Pittsburgh. Butman told him to keep the twenty and to drive back to the Widow’s place and wait.
He shifted into low—and climbed on up the hill. The street became a road that wound a lot. It wasn’t a very good road. The steel mill sprawled along the river for a mile or so, far below. Red smoke hung over it.
Butman was driving with a grin on his face. I asked some questions and he answered them grimly. The road leveled off—we drove past a cemetery. The houses were thinning out—and there wasn’t any traffic. I told Butman that he was going pretty far.
“About five miles more!” he said. “It won’t be a bad walk.”
“It’s a dirty trick, just the same,” I said. “There’ll be hell to pay—when I get back to the paper.”
He chuckled hoarsely. “We’re used to hot stuff out here,” he stated. “I could give you the works—and get away with it.”
“What for?” I asked.
“Trying to run things your way,” he replied.
He stopped the car after about a mile. There weren’t any houses around, but there were a lot of trees. He backed, went forward, backed again. Then he got turned around.
“Slide out!” he ordered. “Keep away from the Widow’s place when you get back. And remember, I’m running this man’s town!”
I slid out. And I kept my eyes on the car. Butman shifted, jerked the car forward. It was an open car, with a black top. It was dark in color. I watched it pick up speed—then it rounded a turn. The taillight faded. I swore softly. My guess was that I’d have a five-mile walk to the cemetery, and that was on the outskirts of the town.
Time didn’t count much. It was the walk that bothered me. I started moving. Butman figured I was a dumb newspaperman. He figured he could do a lot of things before I got back. He figured he was teaching me a lesson. That gave me a laugh. Virgie and the red-haired sister of Wirt Donner would be in the clear. Butman had been hurting his own chances.
I walked along the side of the road. It wasn’t a black night—there were a lot of stars. And the sky was tinted red—over the steel plant beyond. I thought about Virgie—decided to believe her. The redheaded woman was Wirt Donner’s sister—and Virgie Beers had come to her place. Cherulli had been passing along a hundred grand—and it had been grabbed. Virgie didn’t know who had murdered Donner. She had suspected Ben Garren, and that was why I’d seen her at the flat. The Widow’s death didn’t count.
I wasn’t so sure about that. But something was on—something important. I was stringing along with cheap crooks, but one hundred thousand dollars wasn’t cheap crooks’ coin. They were being used, handled. When things went right they got a break. When things went wrong they got rubbed out, or framed. The big boys gave the orders.
Someone had tried to frame Virgie Beers for the murder of the Widow. Salmon had been framed for the kill of Wirt Donner. A wreck from drugs, he had passed out of the picture. If he’d lived he wouldn’t have had a chance. Dot Ellis and Wirt Donner—their killer or killers had reasons. A hundred grand was a lot of coin.
“I wanted to scrap this way,” I muttered as I walked along the road. “And whether I wanted to or not—they were watching me. Maybe they tried to frame me for Dot’s finish—and it didn’t take. Maybe—”
I stopped talking to myself. There was the distant squeal of brakes. They seemed to come from the road, somewhere beyond the turn. There was a little silence—then a single shot. Right on top of it there sounded the staccato beat of a gun—a machine gun. It was regular until the sound broke. Then it sounded again. Then silence.
I ran toward the bend, but before I turned it I got off the road, into the low growth at the right side. There was a level stretch beyond the curve, for perhaps the distance of two city squares. Then another curve. I couldn’t see anything on the road, so I got back on and walked fast. When I reached the next curve I got off to the side again. There were no more sounds—not even the hum of a car’s engine.
The machine was half a city square beyond the second curve. It was slanted to one side—to the left side of the road. Three red lanterns had been set across the road. I walked through the low growth until I got up close. It was the car that Butman had driven.
No one was around but the Duquesne chief of police. He was slumped across the wheel—the engine of the car was still running. The gear lever was in neutral—the emergency brake was on. The windshield was shattered—and the whole car was torn with bullets. Butman had a few in his head, a lot in his chest. His gun lay near his feet.
His derby was in the back of the car, and a cigar was lying on the seat beside him. It was lighted and burning the upholstery. Both of Butman’s eyes were open, but his mouth was closed. Any one of a half-dozen bullets would have killed him.
I walked away from the car and looked at the three red lanterns. They hadn’t been there fifteen minutes ago, when Butman had driven me over this stretch. Someone had seen us pass—or someone had followed. The lantern in the center of the road was smoking—the wicks of the other two were all right. I couldn’t see any tracks of tires that looked important. The dirt was hard packed.
I let the cigar burn the upholstery, and the engine keep on running. I walked on toward the town and the red color hanging over it. I began to think that Virgie Beers was telling considerable truth. A hundred thousand—that was important money. Mistakes were bad business. It looked as though Chief Butman had made one.
8
GREEN ICE
It was twelve twenty when I got out of a cab a square from the Post-Dispatch building. There was a café near the paper, and I looked in cautiously, hoping that I’d see Phil Dobe eating some pie and downing some java. I had a bag checked up in his office, and I wanted to get it without a lot of talk. But I didn’t see him.
He was at his desk when I came into the editorial room, his feet propped up in front of him. He was reading a book and chewing something. A few reporters were around, but it looked a lot as though “thirty” had come in. I got around behind him and peeped at the book’s title: Extraordinary Women. While I was looking at it Phil spoke.
“You lying bum—what was the game you were playing up at Duquesne?”
I sat down on the desk surface, shoving his feet off.
“Who sprayed that chief of police so he won’t talk anymore?” I asked.
The city editor swore. “I said you get around, and hell—I mean it!” he stated. “How�
��d you know Butman was finished off?”
I grinned. “Heard it in town, just before I came down,” I told him. “But I didn’t hear who carved up the Widow.”
Dobe swallowed the stuff he was chewing, tossed the book on the desk, and glared at me.
“You went up there and mixed in,” he said. “You passed off as one of my men. They phoned in and described you. Why in hell—”
“Tell me who did for Butman and the Widow, and I’ll tell you something else,” I said. “It might be news—and it might not.”
Dobe grunted. “It probably wouldn’t,” he returned. “Butman and the Widow had been good pals. She wasn’t much to look at, but there’s no accounting for some guys’ tastes. About a week ago he fell for a Polish girl, working in the steel plant’s General Office up there. The Widow told him to cut it out and stick to her. He said no. She said yes. Maybe Butman cut her up and someone knew about it—and shot him up. How’s that?”
I yawned. “It’s great,” I told him, “but it isn’t what happened.”
Phil Dobe grinned. “All right,” he said cheerfully. “What did happen?”
I shook my head. “What happened up in Duquesne I don’t know. But look here—over in New York Cherulli handles beer and whisky. He has to pass along some coin and it gets lost. He gets killed. The woman he’s playing along with gets killed. And a couple of cheap crooks just out of the Big House get killed. And—”
“And you call a dick in and watch him kill one of those cheap crooks,” the city editor cut in. “I read the papers, even if they don’t write ’em in New York the way we do out here.”
I nodded. “That cheap crook shot out Dot Ellis,” I reminded him. “He confessed. Said the big guys had him both ways. I did that two-year stretch for Dot, and I still like some of the things she used to do. I owed her something.”
Dobe sang a few bars of the Lohengrin “Wedding March” and swore.
“Sure,” he agreed. “Go on with the story, Mal.”
“Donelly shot Garren in self-defense,” I said. “I came out here, and right away there’s a double murder in Duquesne. Funny.”
“Depends on your sense of humor,” Phil observed. “You did come out here—and there was a double murder. But then, there was a triple murder in Duquesne last week. And a single one the week before. There’s so many up there that they don’t count.”
“I’ve got a hunch these two did count,” I told him.
“What are you trying to do, Mal?” he asked suddenly, letting his dark eyes slit on mine. “You’re fairly young, passably good-looking—and you can move your arms and legs. Why mix in with a bunch of killers?”
I shook my head. “Dot Ellis wasn’t any killer,” I told him. “Wirt Donner never squeezed a rod. Maybe Garren figured he’d rather let that dick I called in get him than take the juice. I had him cold. I don’t think Angel Cherulli ever killed. They weren’t killers, Phil—the big ones are the killers, the ones that breed the stuff.”
He stared at me. “What stuff?” he muttered.
I looked foolish. “Crime,” I replied.
“God!” he muttered. “You have gone reformer!”
I grinned. “There never was two hundred grand in this deal, Phil,” I told him. “Maybe a hundred, but I don’t think so. Maybe fifty—that’s more like it. Or maybe something else.”
Dobe swore softly. “You certainly are hot,” he muttered. “How come you hook up Butman and the Widow with the New York killings?”
That was one I didn’t want to answer, so I stalled off. I told him that I’d heard Cherulli and Butman were acquainted, and that that was why I’d come out. I didn’t mention Virgie Beers or the Donner woman. Dobe sat back and smiled. When I got through he stood up.
“Mal—” he said slowly—“I’ve got a hunch. You always did have a yen for crime detection. You got heroic and did a stretch for that tart of yours. You met a lot of crooks up the river, and maybe you learned some things. I think you’re working for somebody. You’re a private dick.”
I tried to look serious. At the moment I couldn’t figure any harm in Phil’s guessing that way.
“I’m tired and I’m going to bed,” I told him. “Where’s my bag?”
He grinned, swore, called to the copyboy. He told him to get my bag. Then he swore directly at me. “I wanted to see you before you got the bag,” he stated. “So I had Zep stick it in a safe place. Lay off imitating my reporters—and instead of going to bed come along with me and down a few.”
I shook my head. “Maybe tomorrow night,” I said. “I’ve only been out of the Big House a few days and my muscles act that way.”
Phil Dobe frowned. The copyboy came along with the bag, and Dobe pointed to me.
“Give it to Handsome,” he ordered. “Did it leak?”
The copyboy grinned and handed me the bag. Dobe and I went down the steps together. On the street he hailed a cab.
“Give me a break, Mal,” he urged. “Remember, I’m not raising hell about what you did tonight. If you know anything—”
He broke off, got inside the cab. I waved at him, went up to the café, and had coffee and a sandwich. There was a phone booth inside the place and I called up the Gurley House. A weary-sounding voice answered my first question by telling me that a Mrs. Howard Evans was registered there. I told him to connect me with the room. There was a little wait and then I heard Virgie Beers’s voice.
“This is hubby,” I told her. “Was the trip to the city a nice one?”
She said that it was all right, and I asked her if she was alone. She said that Mrs. McClellan was with her, and I guessed that she meant the Donner woman. I told her I’d be over in the morning around ten, and she said she’d be glad to see me. I hung up, walked five blocks to the Seventh Avenue Hotel, got a room with a bath. After a shower I climbed into bed, had two drinks, and tried to do some expert thinking. It came down to a lot of guessing, but it helped a little.
I finally got the facts lined up—the ones I figured were straight. Angel Cherulli, in New York, had been careless with some coin. Some big coin, but not so big as I’d heard. Babe Mullens, the Harlem blues singer he’d been playing with, had claimed two hundred grand was missing. I figured she was bluffing. Virgie Beers said one hundred grand. I didn’t like that so much either. It sounded like too much money. Dot Ellis, who had been in soft with Angel until he had fallen for the Mullens brown baby, had come up to see me on my way out of the Big House. Ben Garren, a crook not too long out of Sing Sing, had murdered her. I figured he’d tried to frame me, but he hadn’t. Herb Steiner, a cheap fence, had known enough about the Ellis kill to say funny things about it, on the train down from the prison town. I’d had a meet date with Wirt Donner, but he’d been murdered as I’d gone up the steps of the New York boardinghouse. Virgie Beers had been in that house. I’d trapped Garren for the Ellis kill, and Donelly had shot him down as he’d reached for his gun.
That was easy enough. But Steiner had come over and searched my bag for something not there. Virgie Beers had cleared out, and the boardinghouse landlady had sold me her Duquesne address. Cherulli had been gunned a few hours before Dot had got the works. The coke-eater the bulls had picked up for the murder of Wirt Donner had been framed, and he’d passed out in the police station. Virgie swore she didn’t know who got Wirt, and I believed her.
I smoked three pills and tried to figure who carved up the Widow, up in Duquesne, and why Butman had been given the works after he’d taken me out in the country for a walk back. It was no good—I couldn’t figure it. But I had a hunch that maybe Virgie Beers could. She’d lived in the next house. And the red-haired woman who lived with her was Wirt’s sister. That was a kick—and a help.
The things I wanted to know were why Ben Garren finished Dot, why Dot came up to see me out of the Big House, who murdered Wirt Donner, the Widow, and Butman—and why Herb Steiner had gone through my bag. It added up to a lot of things that I wanted to know. I figured Virgie Beers knew some of the answers, and H
erb Steiner knew some. I decided that Virgie would be easier to get along with than Steiner.
I fell asleep while I was trying to figure why I should think that.
2
It was cold the next morning—cold and murky. Smoke hung over the city, and everybody looked dirty. I had breakfast in a restaurant where the waiters kept out of my way and let me read the morning paper. It was the Post-Dispatch. Chief Butman made the first page. It was “alleged” that he’d been having an affair with the Widow, a “notorious Duquesne character.” The paper seemed to feel that Butman might have been responsible for the Widow’s carving up, but they weren’t quite sure who’d filled him with lead. The Duquesne police, aided by county officers, had the usual clues. So far that was all they had.
It was nine thirty when I walked down toward the Gurley House. I took my time, and kept my eyes open. The city had changed a lot since I’d moved eastward. But it was just as dirty as ever.
The hotel was a good second-class establishment, located on a noisy street about four squares from the spot where Pittsburgh’s two rivers hooked up and became one. It was old, and the desk clerk was old. The lobby needed paint. The place was run by the daughter of the wife of the original owner, and she was a religious woman. The hotel looked that way. It had a musty sort of dignity.
I told the clerk that I was Howard Evans, and that my wife was among those who were guests. He told me she was in room 303, and designated a room phone. I got the room.
“This is hubby,” I told Virgie. “How are you?”
“Sick as hell.” Her voice sounded flat and disagreeable. “I had awful dreams.”
I told her that was too bad, and said I was coming up. She said all right. The elevator had just left, so I walked. The higher up I got, the worse the hotel looked. Three hundred and three was down toward the end of the hall. The carpet was faded and the place smelled of disinfectant.
Green Ice Page 10
