Moments went by, silent moments, each one an eternity in length. Andre judged that at least fifteen minutes had passed since he had come into the place. Forty-five minutes left in which to wheedle the hidden marksman to miss twice more.
He bent down. His fingers told him that the floor was heavily carpeted. Bending low, he began to creep back toward where, he judged, a wall should be.
A man might not be afraid to face death and at the same time love life. Such a man was Lee Andre. He held dear every moment of living, yet now, crawling along the floor, oblivion waiting perhaps an arm’s length away, his mind was free of the poisons of terror. He was eager to live and in order to get out of the room alive, he realized, he must keep his self-control. What he intended to do was to find the wall and creep along it until he had circled the place. Somewhere in that circuit he might meet his assailant.
His groping hand found the reassuring hardness of a wall. Inch by inch he crawled on all fours along it. How large the room was he did not know; the flash of the gun had revealed nothing, and the silencer had blanketed all echoes. Time was rushing by, but all he could do was edge his way along and trust that, if he should meet his would-be executioner, his attack would be speedier than the pressure of a waiting finger on a trigger.
Suddenly Andre stiffened as if an electric charge had shot through him. A dozen feet in front of him he saw a faint glow. For only a moment it came, then it was gone. A few moments more, while he waited breathlessly, and again he saw it. It gleamed faintly like a bit of rotten wood on a dark night in a swampland or like—Then, abruptly, Andre realized that his adversary had forgotten to remove a luminous-dialed wristwatch when he had entered the room to play this game of death!
Again the glow of the radium paint disappeared only to reappear, after a few moments, and the detective realized that the man was wearing the watch with the face on the inside of his wrist; it was only when he turned that arm at a certain angle that the dial was visible.
As tense as a jungle-cat watching its prey, Andre kept his eyes alert for that glow. At its intermittent gleam he would crawl guardedly toward it, moving his body with exaggerated slowness lest the brushing of cloth once again betray him.
His only fear was that there might be some obstacle in his way, some trap that would betray his presence. Closer and closer he came to where the man with the gun waited. Time and again he was tempted to stop this stealthy stalking and risk all in one grappling leap. The moments were flying, and Andre knew that the second his hour was up, he would die, even if he were within a foot of his goal.
Yet he held his impatience in check; inch by inch he moved on. Finally he was so close that he could hear the faint rush of the watcher’s breath. Slowly, slowly Andre drew himself into position, his muscles tensing for the effort.
At the moment the watch was no longer visible; the reappearance of the radium-dial, he told himself, would be his zero hour. If he charged and hit the other man he had a chance. If he missed!
The dial glowed in the darkness again, and with a low, charging drive Andre dove to where the wearer of the watch should have been. His shoulder hit hard against a human body, a gun exploded so closely to him that he felt the hot blast of released gas, then his arms wound exultantly around a struggling human body.
Six weary, battering months Andre had spent one time learning, in a little village far from the Japanese coast, the secrets of Yawara, science of defense by attack.
Now, powerful though the man with the gun undoubtedly was, he had no chance. The fighting fury of the attack, projected out of the darkness, was the balance against him; one shot of the gun he fired by muscular reaction, and then he was lost. A steel arm twisted about him, a leg shot up with crushing force, and in two minutes he was lying unconscious.
Immediately after he had flung his unseen opponent from him in a terrible thrust of the Yawara attack, Andre groped around for the gun he had heard clatter to the floor. His hand closed on it, and he knew a swift inner surge of exaltation. Without a moment’s hesitation he pointed the gun upward and fired the last shot.
A light flashed on overhead. It revealed a gruesome scene: one man standing, gun in hand, and the crumpled form of another against a wall. Then darkness again, and tomb-like quiet.
Andre groped silently to the fallen man. His fingers played over the body. Then it came, the voice he had heard before, no longer a monotone now, but vibrant with excitement.
“You have won, Lee Andre,” it said. “How, we do not know. You are a greater source of danger to us now than ever before, but the Clique must let you go. With our peers we keep our word.”
Again silence while the detective waited. Then:
“You are a man of intelligence. You must realize, now, that to continue your interest in our affairs means eventual death. No matter where you might go in this world we would reach out and get you.”
The voice deepened suddenly, and its very staccato earnestness held a hidden, menacing threat.
“It would be best to forget us. When the light goes on again, you will find, on a table in a corner, two objects, one of them a glass filled with liquid. The other is a folder containing $25,000 in cash. Take the money, and you are one of us. Refuse it, and before we set you free, you must drink what is in the glass. You have our word that it will not harm you. It is simply an opiate.”
“If you are a fool,” the voice went on, “and refuse the money, remember this: the first move made against us, when you are free, will mean your death. The next time we will play no games. Choose now, and choose wisely.”
On went the lights overhead. At the farther end of the room Andre saw a small table. He walked over to it, and without a moment’s hesitation his hand passed over the heavy billfold and closed on the glass. He lifted it high as if in toast, then drank deeply. Eyes half-shut, a grim, defiant smile on his face, for a moment he stood there, then his legs gave way, and he crumpled to the floor.
* * * *
The moment he opened his eyes, again, Andre knew he was onboard a ship. The tang of salt air sweeping in the porthole across the room, the sway and heave beneath him told him that. He lay still for a moment, his mind going back to the drugged drink he had taken in the room of the Crime Clique.
How long had he been unconscious? He got to his feet slowly and looked around the dingy cabin. He felt strangely weak and unsteady, and he grasped at a table edge to support himself.
The door opened, and a heavy, sullen-faced, bearded man in captain’s uniform came in.
He stopped short at the sight of Andre; then said gruffly, “Up, are ye? You’ve been a long time.”
“What—what ship is this?” asked Andre.
“Ship? You mean to say you don’t—” There was a sudden shrewd gleam in the other’s eyes. “Well, you was plenty drunk, all right, when you came aboard. This is the Scorpion. Your brother it was who fixed up your passage.”
“Brother?” Andre wondered which of the Clique had acted that part.
“Where are we? What’s our destination?” he questioned further, his hand still pressed on the table before him.
“Well, you are the questioning fellow,” commented the captain, scratching his beard. “We’re 300 miles out, bound for Sydney with a cargo o’ cement. Eh—have a drink? You need one. We’ve got a long passage ahead.”
Without waiting for an answer, the captain poured a tumbler full of the liquor for himself and set another into Andre’s hand. Andre looked down at it thoughtfully, then, suddenly, as if memory of something of terrific importance had come to him, he set the glass down on the table and groped anxiously in the inside pocket of his coat. He pulled out a small leather folder, hurriedly ran his fingers through it, then replaced it in his pocket, his face suddenly relaxed and cheerful.
“Got a radio on board, Captain?” he asked.
“Sure,” said the bearded one, amiably. “Sparks there’ll take
anything you want to send.”
“Fine,” said Andre. “I’ll be sending plenty.”
He lifted the glass of whiskey again, while through his mind raced the picture of what would follow when his message hurtled across the ether to his men back in ’Frisco. It had been very fortunate, indeed, for him, that amateur criminals persisted in doing the melodramatic. If the Clique had done away with him as ruthlessly as would have a gang of professionals, their own skins would now be safe.
As it was, they were as good as caught, for as Andre had bent over the fallen hunter, in that interval before the light had momentarily flashed on, he had swiftly picked the man’s pockets. In the leather folder which now lay in his own pocket rested a number of neatly-engraved calling cards, indelibly identifying one of the mysterious five.
With that man in their hands, Andre knew, his boys wouldn’t have very much trouble forcing out the names of the other four.
Andre smiled suddenly and raised his glass of whiskey up on high. Finis, Crime Clique. The bearded captain grinned self-consciously and clicked glasses. He thought the silent toast was for him.
HOPHEAD HOMICIDE, by Robert Carlton
Originally published in Mobsters, February 1953.
Over coffee in the narcotic bureau’s office, Lienster said, “I don’t pick up on the girl, McIntyre. She’s neat and well dressed. She talks decent English. She doesn’t have the look.”
It was three a.m. by the clock over my desk. We’d just returned from the morgue. Both Steele and Charlie were dead. Betty was upstairs in the high-power tank. Lienster was a new man on the force—a brown-eyed, eager lad with crew-cut blond hair, just out of college.
“You can’t tell a book by its cover,” I said. “They don’t all read the same.”
He gave me a puzzled and bewildered frown. He was a good boy, and he’d make a better cop when properly disillusioned.
“Steele couldn’t pick up on her, either,” I said. “That’s why Steele is dead.”
His lips tightened some, so I gave him the story…
She didn’t belong in a dive like Hongkong Charlie’s. Under the powder and paint she was nice. The low-necked blouse, the tight-fitting skirt couldn’t conceal a certain daintiness, a definite character. It was like coming on a rose in a garbage dump. Nothing Steele could see, or exactly define, but he could feel her sweetness, and it knifed through his alcoholic torpor like a clean wind off the Galapagos.
He flipped a silver dollar on the bar and motioned to her. “Come here, you,” he ordered. “I’ll buy you a drink.”
She sidled up to the giant man with the red mustache and gave him a tight smile. Her eyes were big, a deep violet, the color of the water in Acapulco harbor at sunset. Steele tipped his greasy yachting cap back on his sandy head and gave her a slow going-over. He trailed his eyes over her figure, lingering on her curves. He inspected her with deliberate insolence, as if she were merchandise for sale. Her cheeks pinked, and Steele saw she didn’t like it, but it gave him a warm, pleasant feeling in his guts.
“Do you always order women around as if they were cattle?” she asked thinly. “I don’t think I want to drink with you.”
Steele laughed—a nasty, nasal laugh that expressed his contempt. If she was nice she didn’t belong in Hongkong Charlie’s and he’d bring her down to his level quick. He took her arm and shoved her roughly onto the stool beside him. Her skin was soft, smooth, and retained the imprint of his fingers.
“You’ll drink,” he said scornfully. “That’s why you’re here, what you’re paid for. Don’t put on any airs with me, baby. You’re like all the rest. You’ll drink and the bartender will put a token in the register. Tonight at closing they’ll count the tokens and pay you off. Don’t give me any of your lip.”
She faced the mirror. Her shoulders sagged and bitterness etched deep lines around her sensual mouth. Watching her, Steele saw the radiance leave her face, like the afterglow of a waning moon fading down a dark horizon. Nothing he could see, only feel—like a favorite song rising from his memory and then dying in distance. Her face set in harsh, familiar lines, and she became a B-girl in Hongkong Charlie’s. When she spoke her voice was cold, impersonal.
“Sure, I’ll drink. I drink with all the other sea scum that come in here. Why should I be particular about you?”
Steele tossed his drink off. He found Charlie behind a grass curtain in the end booth and transacted his business. The business concerned five tins of Turkish opium Steele had picked up in Constantinople and brought in on the Barbara Mae. Charlie didn’t haggle about price. He’d traded with Steele before and knew the big sailor had other connections. He counted bills out of a cigar box on the seat beside him, and Steele told him the location of the cache in an oil drum at the dock. Charlie nodded like an overgrown toad and said he’d pick it up. He handed Steele a cigar.
Steele peeled the cellophane off the stogie and lit up. “Who’s the new B-girl?” he asked. “The one with the faraway look and the corn-colored hair?”
Charlie’s black eyes glistened in sacks of pink flesh. It was hard to determine Charlie’s nationality. Sometimes Steele thought the flabby man Syrian, from his oily olive skin, but his eyes had an Oriental slant, and he spoke in guttural German accents.
“We call her Betty.”
“You call them all Betty,” Steel grunted. “Where did she come from?”
Charlie spread his fat hands. “Where do they all come from in Pedro? She come off the street, looking for a job. Why do you ask?”
“She’s got something,” Steele said. “I don’t know what, but something.”
“Sure, she’s got something.” Charlie grinned crookedly. “She’s got long hair, a sweet smell, and soft words, like all of them. What do you want?”
Steele flushed and clenched his fists. He stifled an impulse to smash that oily face, wipe the leering smile off Charlie’s loose lips.
“You put them all in the same rat-race, don’t you?” he said. “They’re just so much money, like a shot of hop.”
“What do you expect?” Charlie shrugged. “This is the waterfront, not Fifth Avenue. I’m a businessman. How come you’re so high-minded, Steele? Where does my hop come from? Get the stardust out of your eyes, sailor. You been a long time at sea. You like Betty—go talk to Betty.” Steele got out of the booth—got out because the slob’s face suddenly sickened him and he couldn’t stand his sweaty smell any longer. Charlie reminded him that he was a part of the waterfront fleshpots, a vital part—the drunken roistering seaman off a rusty freighter, stinking of bilge water, unwashed jeans slick with dirt.
Steele laughed harshly and shed his heavy pea jacket. What the hell? Suppose he was no good? He was ashore for the night, his pockets bulging with money. Since when did he give a damn? Since when did a crummy B-girl with dreamy eyes give him religion?
He found a greasy table and flopped down. This was it—this was his life. Swilling booze in a harbor dive, under a canopy of rotting sardine nets; swilling until the blue Jap fish floats hanging over the bar turned green and he lay face down on the sawdust-sprinkled floor, in blind forgetfulness. Somebody else could have the stars, the little white cottage with a picket fence.
He’d take the moon-faced Chink at the lunch counter, frying shrimp in rancid oil. He understood the Chink and the Chink understood him. If he got too drunk the Chink would feed him scalding hot coffee, maybe carry him up to a flea-infested flophouse to sleep it off. Maybe the Chink would roll him. He could understand that, too.
Steele stared at the fuzzy red hair on his forearms, grinned at the hula dancer tattooed on his swelling bicep. When he flexed the muscle the hula dancer wiggled. That was good—he made her dance. He’d make the tony B-girl dance, too, dance good.
There she was now, coming down the bar, her hips swaying under the tight skirt.
“Hey, you!” He crooked his finger. “Come here and s
it down.”
She came and he thought he saw fear in her eyes. He liked fear, wanted her to be afraid of him. He wanted to squeeze that last spark of resistance from her face, have her pride under his feet like the tobacco-stained sawdust.
She sat down slowly, reluctantly—folded her hands in her lap and looked at him gravely. Steele’s eyes felt hot and his shirt clung to his damp skin. He unbuttoned his collar and a tuft of red hair showed at his throat.
“You got a room?” he asked. “After awhile I get sleepy.”
She didn’t answer for a moment. Her face swam toward him in the room’s haze, haloed, it seemed, by her shining hair. She smiled slowly, contemptuously.
“I have a room,” she said quietly. “But get this straight, sailor. I don’t entertain visitors.”
He reached across the table, gripped her wrist and twisted her arm. She gasped, turned sideways as the pain tightened her mouth. Her cheeks went white.
“You go any route I say,” he told her. “Who the hell do you think you are? Madonna in a waterfront dive? Come off it, cutie. You’re talking to Big Tom Steele.”
She glanced at him curiously as he released her arm—curiously, he thought, as if she were looking past his leathery wind-beaten face at an image within. Her eyes were beautiful, he saw; lovely, deep as the blue grotto at Capri.
“That was an odd thing to say.” She rubbed her wrist. “What would you know about Madonnas? About anything for that matter, except your own pleasures and vices? Sailor ashore! By midnight you’ll be reeling around with the rest of the bums.”
He’d seen a Madonna once, on the wall of some church in Rome. He remembered the coloring, the almost unearthly light that shone from the fresco. He remembered that he’d gazed in awe, transfixed for an incredible instant while a tingling current ran in his blood and the world ceased to exist. Only for a moment he had been lifted above the prison of himself. He felt it again now, looking into the B-girl’s face, and he hated it—hated her for bringing the moment back.
The Second Pulp Crime Page 32
