the Hills Of Homicide (Ss) (1987)

by L'amour, Louis

  Then we got a break. There was a window open in the garage. Crawling in, I lifted Karen in after me, and then we walked out the open door and moved like a couple of shadows to the wall of the house. I didn't need to be told that both of us were right behind the eightball, if caught. Blacky Caronna wouldn't appeal to the law if he caught us. Knowing the man, I was sure he would have his own way of dealing with the situation.

  *

  UNTIL MIDNIGHT

  Caronna was seated in a huge armchair in a large living room hung with choice Navajo rugs. With his legs crossed, his great shoulders covering the back of the chair, he looked unbelievably huge. He was glaring up at the girl. Taking a chance, I tried lifting the window. Everything here seemed in excellent shape, so I hoped it would make no sound. I was lucky. Caronna's voice came clearly. "Haven't I told you not to come up here unless I send for you? That damn cowtown sheriff is too smart, Toni. You've got to stay away.

  "But I had to come, Blacky. I had tot It was that detective, the one you hired. I saw him looking at my copy of Billboard."

  "You had that where he could see it?" Caronna lunged to his feet, his face a mask of fury. "What kind of brains you got, anyway?" he snarled, thrusting his face at her. "Even that dope of a dick will get an idea if you throw it at him. Here we stand a chance to clean up a million bucks, and you pull a stunt like that! If he ever gets wise, were through!"

  "But they've nothing on you, Blacky," she protested. "Nothing at all."

  "Not yet, they ain't, but if you think I'm letting anybody stand in my way on account of that sort of dough, you're wrong, see? This stuff I've been pickin' up is penny-ante stuff. A million bucks, an' I'm set for life. What do you think I brought you up here for? To make a mess of the whole works?

  "The way it stands, nobody knows a thing but me. Loftus don't know what the score is, an' neither does this dick, an' they ain't got a chance of finding out unless you throw it in their faces. Let this thing qujet down, an' that dough go where it's gonna go, an' were set."

  "You'd better watch your step," Toni protested. "You know what Leader said about him."

  "Leader's a pantywaist. All he can do is handle that pen, but he can do that, I'll give him that much. I'll handle this deal, an' if that baby ever wants to play rough, I'll give him a chance."

  "You shouldn't have hired that detective," Toni said worriedly. "He bothers me."

  "He don't bother me any." Caronna's voice was flat. "Who would think the guy would pull this truth-andhonor stuff on me? It looked like a good play. It would cover me an' at the same time cinch the job on that dame, which was the right way to have it. Then he won't go for a payoff. It don't make no difference, though. He's dumb. He ain't smart enough to find his way out of a one-way street."

  There was a subdued snicker behind me, and I turned my head and put a hand over her mouth. It struck me afterward that it was a silly thing to do. If a man wants a girl to stop laughing or talking, it is always better to kiss her. Which, I thought, was not a bad idea under any circumstances.

  "Now, listen." Caronna stopped in front of her with his finger pointed at her. "You go back downtown an stay there until I send for you. Keep your ears open. That cafT is the best listening post in town. You tell me what you hear an' all you hear, just like you have been. Keep an eye on Loftus, and on that dick. Also, you listen for any rumble from Johnny Holben."

  "That old guy? You really are getting scary, Blacky." "Scary nothing!" he snapped. "You listen to me, babe, an' you won't stub any toes. That old blister is smart. He's been nosin' around some, an' he worries me more than the sheriff. If he should get an idea we had anything to do with that, he might start shootin'. It's all right to be big and rough, but Holben is no bargain for anybody. He'll shoot first and talk after!"

  She turned to the door, and he walked with her, a hand on her elbow. At the door they stopped, and from the nearness of their shadows I deduced the business session was over. This looked purely social. It was time for us to leave.

  Surprisingly, we got out without any excitement. It all looked pretty and sweet. We had heard something, enough to prove that my first guess was probably right, and it didn't seem there was any chance of Caronna ever knowing we had visited him.

  That was a wrong guess, a very wrong guess, but we didn't know at the time.

  We didn't know that Karen's shoe left a distinct print in the grease spilled on the tool bench inside that garage window. We didn't know that she left two tracks on the garden walk, or that some of the grease rubbed off on a stone under Blacky Caronna's window.

  In the morning I sat over my coffee for a long time. No matter how I sized up the case, it all came back to the same thing. Caronna hadn't killed Old Man Bitner, but he knew who had. And despite the fact that he wasn't the killer, he was in this up to his ears and definitely to be reckoned with.

  That copy of Billboard was the tipoff. And it meant that I had to get out of here and locate the Greater American Shows, so I could have a look at Dick Castro. Richard Henry Castro, showman and importer of animals.

  Caronna came into the cafe and he walked right over and sat down at the table. I looked up at him. "I can clear you," I said. "I know who the killer was, and you're definitely in the clear. All I need to know now is how he did it."

  He dismissed my information with a wave of the hand. His eyes were flat and black. "Here." He peeled off five century notes. "Go on home. You're through."

  "What?"

  His eyes were like a rattlesnake's. "Get out of town," he snarled. "You been workin' for that babe more than for me. You've been paid now beat it."

  That got me. "Supposing I decide to stay and work on my own?"

  "You've got no right unless you're retained," he said. "Anyway, your company won't let you stay withoilt dough. Who's going to pay off in this town? And," he said coldly, "I wouldn't like it."

  "That would be tough," I said. "I'm staying."

  The smile left his lips. It had never been in his eyes. "I'm giving you until midnight to get out of town," he snarled. Then he shoved back his chair and got up. There was a big miner sitting at the counter, a guy I'd noticed around. When I stopped to think about it, I'd never seen him working.

  Caronna stopped alongside of him. "Look," he said, "If you see that dick around here after midnight, beat his ears off. If you need help, get it!"

  The miner turned. He had flat cheekbones and ears back against his skull. He looked at me coldly. "I won't need help," he said.

  It was warm in the sunlight, and I stood there a minute. Somehow, the sudden change didn't fit. What had brought about the difference in his feelings between the time he had talked with Toni and now? Shrugging that one off, I turned down the street toward the jail.

  Loftus had his heels on the rolltop desk. He smiled at me. "Got anything?" he asked.

  "Yeah," I said. "Trouble."

  "I don't mind admittin'," Loftus said, "this case has got me stopped. Johnny Holben knows somethin', but he won't talk. That Caronna knows somethin', too. He's been buyin' highgrade, most of it from the Bitner Mine. That was probably what their fuss was about, but that ain't the end of it."

  "You're right, it isn't." Briefly, I explained about being fired, and then added, "I don't want to leave this case, Loftus. I think I can break it within forty-eight hours. I think I have all the answers figured out. Whether I do it or not is up to you."

  "To me?"

  "Yes. I want you to make me a deputy sheriff for the duration of this job."

  "Workin' right for me?"

  '"That's right."

  He took his feet off the desk. "Hold up your right hand," he said.

  When I was leaving, I turned suddenly to Loftus. "Oh, yes. I'm going out of town for a while. Over to Ogden on the trail of the Greater American Shows."

  "There's a car here you can use," he said. "When are you leavin'?"

  "About ten minutes after midnight," I said.

  Then I explained, and he nodded. '"That's Nick Ries, and he's
a bad number. You watch your step."

  At eleven-thirty I walked to the jail and picked up the keys to the car. Then I drove it out of the garage and parked it in front of the cafe. It was Saturday night, and the cafT was open until twelve.

  Karen's eyes brightened up when I walked into the cafT. Toni came over to wait on us. Giving her plenty of time to get close enough to hear, I said to Karen, "Got my walking papers today. Caronna fired me."

  "He did?" She looked surprised and puzzled. "Why?"

  "He thinks I've been spending too much time with you. He also gave me until midnight to get out of town or that" I pointed at Nick Ries at the counter "gives me a going-over."

  She glanced at her watch, then at Ries. "Are are you going?''

  "No," I said loud enough for Ries to hear. "Right now I'm waiting for one minute after twelve. I want to see what the bear-that-walks-like-a-man can do besides look tough."

  Ries glanced over at me and turned another page of his newspaper.

  We talked softly then, and somehow the things we found to talk about had nothing to do with murder or crime or Caronna; they were the things we might have talked about had we met in Los Angeles or Peoria or Louisville.

  She was getting under my skin, and somehow I did not mind in the least.

  Suddenly, a shadow loomed over our table. Instinctively, my eyes dropped to my wristwatch. It was one minute past twelve.

  Nick Ries was there beside the table, and all I had to do was make a move to get up and he would swing.

  It was a four-chair table, and Karen sat across from me. Nick was standing by the chair on my right. I turned a little in my chair and looked up at Nick.

  "Here's where you get it," he said.

  My left foot had swung over when I turned a little toward him and I put it against the rung of the chair in front of Nick and shoved, hard.

  It was just enough to throw him off balance. He staggered back a step, and then I was on my feet. He got set and lunged at me, but that was something I liked. My left forearm went up to catch his right, and then I lifted a right uppercut from my belt that clipped him on the chin. His head jerked back and both feet flew up and he hit the floor in a lump.

  Shaking his head, he gave a grunt, then came up and toward me in a diving run. I slapped his head with an open left palm to set him off balance and to measure him, and then broke his nose with another right uppercut. The punch straightened him up, and I walked in, throwing them with both hands. Left and right to the body, then left and right to the head. He hit the counter with a crash, and I followed him in with another right uppercut that lifted him over the counter. He dropped behind it and hit the floor hard.

  Reaching over, I got a lemon pie with my right hand and plastered it in his face, rubbing it well in. Then I straightened up and wiped my h'ands on a napkin.

  Toni stood there staring at me as if I had suddenly pulled a tiger out of my shirt, and when I turned, Jerry Loftus was standing in the door, chuckling.

  *

  TROUBLE STOP

  Finding Castro's show was no trouble. It was the biggest thing on the midway at the fair, and when I got inside I had to admit the guy had something.

  There were animals you didn't see in any zoo, and rarely even in a circus. Of course, he had some of the usual creatures, but he specialized in the strange and unusual. Even before I started looking around for Castro himself, I looked over his show.

  A somewhat ungainly looking animal, blackish in color with a few spots of white on his chest and sides, took my interest first. It was a Tasmanian Devil, a carnivorous animal with powerful jaws noted for the destruction of small animals and young sheep. There was also a Malay Civet, an Arctic Fox, a short-tailed mongoose, a Clouded Leopard, a Pangolin or scaly anteater, a Linsang, a Tamarau, a couple of pygmy buffalo, a babirusa, a duckbilled platypus, a half-dozen bandicoots, a dragon lizard from Komodo, all of ten feet long and weighing three hundred pounds, and last, several monitor lizards, less than half the size of the giants from Komodo, India.

  I glanced up when a man in a white silk shirt, white riding breeches, and black, highly polished boots came striding along the runway beside the pits in which the animals were kept. On a hunch I put out a hand. "Are you Dick Castro?"

  He looked me up and down. "I am, yes. What can I do for you?"

  "Have you been informed about your uncle, Jack Bitner?" His handsome face seemed to tighten a little, and his eyes sharpened as he studied me. Something inside me warned: This man is dangerous. Even as I thought it, I realized that he was a big, perfectly trained man, who could handle himself in any situation. He was also utterly ruthless.

  "Yes, I received a forwarded message yesterday. However, I had already had my attention called to it in the papers. What have you to do with it?"

  "Deputy sheriff. I'd like to ask you a few questions." He turned abruptly. "Bill) Take over here, will you? I'll be back later." He motioned to me. "Come along."

  With a snappy, military stride, he led me to the end of the runway and through a flap in a tent to a smaller tent adjoining. He waved me to a 'canvas chair, then looked over his shoulder. "Drink?"

  "Sure. Bourbon if you've got it."

  He mixed a drink for each of us, then seated himself opposite me. "All right, you've got the ball. Start pitching." "Where were you last Sunday night?"

  "On the road with the show."

  "Traveling where?"

  "Coming here. We drove all night."

  "How often do you have rest stops on such a drive as that?"

  "Once every hour for a ten-minute rest stop and to check tires, cages, and equipment." He didn't like the direction my questions were taking, but he was smart enough not to make it obvious. "I read in the papers that you had three likely suspects.""Yes, we have. Your cousin, Johnny Holben, and " deliberately I hesitated a little "Blacky Caronna."

  He looked at me over his glass, direct and hard. "I hope you catch the killer. Do you think you will?"

  "There isn't a doubt of it." I threw that one right to him. "Well have him within a few hours."

  "You say him?"

  "It's a manner of speaking." I smiled. "You didn't think we suspected you, did you?"

  He shrugged. "Everybody in a case like that can be a suspect. Although I'm in no position to gain by it. The old man hated me and wouldn't leave me the dirtiest shirt he had. He hated my father before me. Although," he added, "even if I could have gained by it, there wouldn't have been any opportunity. I don't dare leave the show and my animals. Some of them require special care."

  "That Komodo lizard interested me. They eat meat, don't they?"

  He looked up under his eyebrows. "Yes. On Flores and Komodo they are said to catch and kill horses for food. Men, too, I expect, if the man was helpless. They might even get him if he wasn't. They are surprisingly quick, run like a streak for a short distance, and there are native stories of them killing men. Most such stories are considered fantastic and the stories of their ferocity exaggerated. But me, I think them one of the most dangerous of all living creatures." He looked at me again. "I'd hate to fall into that pit with one of them when nobody was around to get me out."

  The way he looked at me when he said that sent gooseflesh up my spine.

  "Any more questions?"

  "Yes. When did you last hear from Blacky Caronna?" He shifted his seat a little, and I could almost see his mind working behind that suave, handsome face. "What ever gave you the idea I might hear from him? I don't know the man. Wouldn't know him if I saw him."

  "Nor Toni, either?"

  If his eyes had been cold before, they were ice now. Ice with a flicker of something else in them. "I don't think I know anyone named Toni.

  "You should," I said grimly. "She knows you. So does Caronna. And just for your future information, I'd be very, very careful of Caronna. He's a big boy, and he plays mighty rough. Also, unless I'm much mistaken, he served his apprenticeship in a school worse than any of your jungles--the Chicago underworld of the late
Capone era." That was news to him. I had a hunch he had heard from Caronna but that he imagined him to be some small-time, small-town crook.

  "You see," I added, "I know a few things. I know that you're set to inherit that dough, and I know that Blacky Caronna knows something that gives him a finger in the pie.

  "You know plenty, don't you?" His eyes were ugly and sneering. -This is too tough a game for any small-town copper, so stay out, get me?"

  I laughed. "You wrong me, friend. I'm not a small-time cop. I'm a private dick from L. A. whom Caronna brought over to investigate this murder. I learned a good deal and he fired me, and then the sheriff swore me in as a deputy.- He absorbed that and he didn't like it. Actually, I was bluffing. I didn't have one particle of evidence that there was a tie-up between Castro and Caronna, nor did I know that Castro was to inherit. It was all theory, even if fairly substantial theory. However, the hint of my previous connection with Caronna worried him, for it could mean that I knew much more about Caronna's business than I should know.

  This was the time to go, and I took it. My drive over had taken some time, and there had been delays. It was already growing late. I got up. "I'll be running along now. I just wanted to see you and learn a few things."

  He got up, too. "Well," he said, "I enjoyed the visit. You must come again sometime when you have some evidence."

  "Why sure!" I smiled at him. "You can expect me in a few days." I turned away from him, then glanced back. "You see, when you were in this alone, it looked good, but that Caronna angle is going to do you up. Caronna and Toni. They'd like to cut themselves in on this million or so you'll inherit."

  He shrugged, and I turned away. It was not until I had taken two full steps into the deserted and darkened tent that I realized we were alone. While we were talking the last of the crowd had dwindled away, and the show was over.

  My footsteps sounded loud on the runway under my feet, but there was a cold chill running up my spine. Castro was behind me, and I could hear the sound of his boots on the boards. Only a few steps further was the pit in which the huge dragon lizard lay.