Shake a Crooked Town

by Dan J. Marlowe

  “I’m sick to think I helped to do that to her,” Jessamyn said in a low tone.

  Johnny looked at her. She had dressed, but she still wore the dark glasses. “No one tried to get in?”

  “Dick Lowell called on the phone,” she remembered. “He’s crazy to talk to you. Said he’d been calling all over town. I didn’t know what to say to him so I finally said you might come by here later. In case you wanted to call him.” A hand brushed absently at her swollen cheekbone. “He insisted that you call as soon as you get here.”

  “He can wait,” Johnny grunted. “I’ve got to get these two under cover first.” He nodded at the bedroom, looked at his watch, and went over and tapped on the door. It opened in a moment and Micheline stood in it with her daughter in her arms.

  “Mommy’s been crying,” Genevieve announced in her clear voice, “and she won’t tell me why.”

  “That’s enough out of you, young lady,” her mother said with an attempt at briskness. “We don’t tell family secrets, remember?”

  “I think we ought to get goin’,” Johnny said to her.

  She nodded. “My place?”

  “I’m afraid of it. I’ve got a better idea. We’ll—” He held up a warning hand as he heard the loud knock upon the apartment door. “Don’t come out,” he said hurriedly, and closed the door. Jessamyn was looking at him inquiringly. “See who it is, Jess.”

  “Who is it?” she called through the door.

  “Dick Lowell,” came the muffled reply.

  “Let him in,” Johnny said resignedly. “I’ll get rid of him.”

  Jessamyn opened the door. Mayor Lowell strolled in, beaming expansively. He looked fresh and jaunty. “Things are looking up,” he announced to Johnny. “Wonderful job you did on Kratz. Wonderful. Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I just this minute got in here,” Johnny lied.

  The mayor was talking, not listening. “Without Kratz to shore him up,” he bubbled on, “I can call a little different tune with Daddario. I’ll bet you in a day or two I’ll be able—”

  “Toby called me last night,” Johnny inserted.

  A cloud passed over the sun. “Toby?”

  “Said he’s comin’ up. He’s a little shook at not hearin’ from you about—I quote—the march of events.”

  “It sounds like him. He can’t come now.” Alarm vibrated in the mellow voice. “I’m just on the verge of straightening everything out. In two or three days—he simply can’t come now!” He said it defiantly.

  “I couldn’t talk him out of it,” Johnny shrugged.

  Mayor Richard Lowell circled dry lips with the tip of his tongue. “I’d better get down to the office. I’d—you’ll come with me?” His tone was pleading.

  What a weathervane the man was, Johnny thought. Whether his affair with the Trent woman had eroded his backbone or whether there had never been a backbone to begin with was a moot point. “I’ll make it a little later,” he said. “The doc says I got to lie down a couple hours an’ let these stitches set.”

  “Oh. Well—you’ll come soon? Maybe we can think of something. If only Toby weren’t such a busybody. I must think of a way to—you haven’t found Micheline?” he asked sharply.

  Johnny could see Jessamyn’s involuntary movement. He hoped Lowell hadn’t seen it. “I thought she might have been behind the door Kratz was in front of, but she wasn’t,” he said.

  “It’s too bad,” the mayor regretted. Reminded of Kratz, he cheered up. “Incredible that you should have been able to handle him. My secretary told me the ambulance driver said he was still unconscious upon arrival at the hospital. When I think of the verbal abuse I’ve taken from that—that musclebound oaf I could—well, I must run. Come as soon as you can. We must think of something that will smooth it over for Toby.”

  “Give him a minute an’ then run out there an’ make sure he really goes,” Johnny said in a low tone to Jessamyn behind the white-maned mayor’s departing back. “An’ bring back a cab.”

  She nodded and went out. Johnny returned to the bedroom and opened the door. Micheline spoke before he could. “Johnny, why can’t we go home? I must get Genevieve some clothes.”

  “The lid’s not on yet,” he argued. “You want to stick your neck back in the noose? I got a place I think is safe. Stay under cover a few more hours. Toby Lowell should be on his way by now an’ if he’s half the man he used to be things are due to begin fallin’ back into shape around here.”

  “But—” She pulled herself up. “You’re right. I shouldn’t argue with you. If it hadn’t been for you—”

  “Fix the little lady up in her blanket again,” Johnny interrupted her. “I’ll carry her.” He walked out to the cherry-paneled living room and listened at the door for Jessamyn’s tap-tap-tap.

  “He’s gone,” she reported when he let her in. “He had a cab waiting. I’ve got one out there for you.”

  “Fine.” He looked to the bedroom and then back at her. “When we go you better not hang around here. Somebody’s liable to put two an’ two together. Go down to the library.”

  “With my eyes like this! Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Get out of this place. It’s only got one door,” he insisted. “Stay out in the bright sunshine. I’m not foolin’. This thing may not be over yet.”

  She shook her head firmly. “I have appearances to keep up as far as my job is concerned, you know. I can’t appear in public like this.”

  He abandoned the argument and went to the bedroom. Genevieve stood on the bed, once again in her blanket cocoon. Johnny picked her up and her arms went around his neck. Micheline followed him back out into the other room. “Thank you,” she said gravely to Jessamyn.

  “Be careful,” Johnny warned her as they left the apartment. She nodded silently. At the outer door Johnny spoke to Micheline. “Let’s make this fast. The less you’re seen in the daylight the better I’ll like it.”

  They went down the cement to the cab at a fast walk. Johnny handed the girl in to Micheline and climbed in and slammed the door. “The Gamecock,” he said to the cab driver.

  CHAPTER XI

  “THIS IS CLOSE ENOUGH,” Johnny called to the taxi driver when they were within half a block of the tavern. He turned to Micheline as the cab swung-into the curb. “Wait for me here. I think the boy who runs this place is ready to chang horses. It’ll make a perfect cover until things quiet down.”

  “You won’t be long?” she asked. “Being in the open on the street like this makes me—concerned.” She glanced at the child quietly watching the passersby.

  “The way I’ll put it to him he’ll give me a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ in about thirty seconds,” Johnny promised. “An’ after I get you two salted down in there I’m goin’ to get in touch with Riley. I think he’s another one about ready to change horses.” He opened the door and prepared to step out on the sidewalk.

  “Be careful with that man,” she warned. The planes of her striking features were all highlights and shadows as she looked up at him through the open door. He thought that she had lost weight since the first night he had seen her. “Jack Riley is much changed,” she continued earnestly. “When I saw him in New York with Dick Lowell he had assumed an arrogance I never saw in Jefferson.”

  “Yeah? Well, he’s had a couple bumps lately that maybe reduced his hat size.” He closed the car door. “Hang on,” he said through the partly opened window, and started up the street toward the Gamecock.

  A dozen yards from the cab the import of her remark struck him. He hesitated, half turned to go back, and then reversed himself. He strode rapidly up the street. Time enough later for the other. Right now he had to get those two off the street.

  He entered the tavern and tried to adjust his eyes to the dimness of the interior. When he could see, he noticed that all the booth lights were out and that only a single shirtsleeved customer stood at the bar. The Gamecock evidently did little business in the daylight hours. So much the better.

  There
was no one in sight behind the bar. “Rudy around?” Johnny asked the shirtsleeved man and saw in the same instant in the back-bar mirror that the man was Rudy himself. “What the hell, man?” he said in surprise. “You workin’ the front as well as the back?” Rudy turned his head to look at him but said nothing. “Listen,” Johnny hurried on, “you look to me like a man who knows which side his bread’s buttered on. We both know there’s goin’ to be some changes in this town. Do me a favor now an’ I’ll see to it you’re not out in the cold when it comes time—”

  He stopped abruptly in his sales talk. Several things had impressed him simultaneously: the complete immobility of the gambler’s dark face, the almost hushed quiet in the tavern’s poorly lighted recesses, the near-rigidity of Rudy’s position at the bar. Johnny backed swiftly to the door.

  “That’s far enough, Killain!” Johnny halted in his tracks as Tommy Savino rose from a crouching position behind the bar, a small automatic level in his hand. Johnny’s heart sank as Jim Daddario stood up at the opposite end of the bar and walked around it. “Over here with your friend,” Savino said with a sneering grin, motioning with the automatic.

  Johnny slowly approached the bar alongside the wooden-faced Rudy and stood with his back to it. They were standing in the room’s best light which came through the half-drawn drapes at the front window. Daddario approached them as Savino covered them with the automatic. Johnny saw that a silk scarf had been wound around his neck and throat. Without a word the politician walked up to Rudy and punched him heavily in the mouth. “That’ll teach you to even think about crossing me,” he said angrily.

  Rudy’s body slammed back into the bar, but he showed no sign of going down. He spat impassively but made no other move under the eye of the automatic. “He’s a big, brave man, Rudy,” Johnny jeered. His hand closed on a heavy ash tray on the bar. “You should have seen him an hour ago like I did.”

  “I’ll get to you,” Daddario assured him.

  Tommy Savino laughed as he angled out on the floor between Rudy and Johnny and the tavern’s front door, the automatic unwavering. “Did you think I wouldn’t go up to the penthouse because the elevator wasn’t running?” he mocked Johnny. “And it was so nice of you to leave your phone number with the telephone operator.”

  “So I’m stupid,” Johnny said. He took a half step out from the bar, raised his arm, and threw the ash tray between the half-drawn drapes and through the tavern’s front window-The window vanished in a dull explosion of glass bursting out on the sidewalk. The automatic punctuated the noise with a sharp crack and Johnny felt a hot wind brush at his ear.

  Jim Daddario rushed at Savino and knocked up his gun hand before he could fire again. “We’ve got to make him talk first!” he cried out. “Don’t you go off half-cocked again!”

  Johnny drew a shallow breath. A girl like Micheline would know what to do when she saw that plate glass come flying out into the street. She’d stand not upon the order of her going. Anything was better than having—

  The front door opened suddenly and Savino pivoted. Dick Lowell dashed in, his white hair flying and his face scarlet. “You fools!” he burst out at Savino and Daddario. “He had them outside in a cab. They just drove off!”

  “How do you know?” Daddario pounced.

  “I followed them over here!” Lowell shouted. “If it wasn’t for you idiots in another two minutes I’d have had—”

  But Jim Daddario had recovered his wits. He silenced the mayor with a peremptory wave of his hand. “He’ll know where they went,” he said with a look at Johnny. “And he’ll tell us. Savino, take him inside. You go, too, Dick.” He glared at the silent Rudy. “You cover up on this. It’s your neck now. Tell ‘em something fermented in the window and blew out the glass. Tell ‘em anything. You let me down and I’ll personally see to it you never turn another trick on the east coast. Understand?” Rudy nodded and Daddario turned to the rest. “Hurry it up, everyone,” he said briskly. “Inside.”

  Rudy opened the door and they entered the gambling room, Johnny in the lead with Savino’s gun trained on his back, then Lowell, and finally Daddario. Rudy flipped a light switch and cold fluorescent light flooded the dark, windowless room, exposing the canvas-covered roulette wheels and the bare green tables. Johnny pulled a stool out from a blackjack table and climbed up on it, careful that a wall was at his back. Rudy closed the door and they all distinctly heard the click of the lock in the silence.

  “Has he got us locked in here?” Dick Lowell demanded. His voice was hysterically shrill.

  “Don’t get yourself jerked off,” Savino advised him comfortably. “Jim’s got a key.” The slim, dark man sat at a table two removed from Johnny’s, far enough away so that Johnny couldn’t rush him, the gun loosely in his hand.

  “Where’s your knife today, pigstabber?” Johnny gibed at him. Savino smiled unruffledly and touched his cloth-covered wrist. “That the one you used on Carl Thompson?” Johnny continued.

  The smile disappeared. “He was dead when I found him, the no-good bastard,” he snarled, glaring.

  “Yeah? How’d you get into the room?”

  “A maid let me in, that’s how!”

  “Too bad your boss never believed you,” Johnny needled. “You know he’s gonna toss you to the wolves when the hot breath is on the back of his neck?”

  Savino flicked a glance at Jim Daddario and slid from his stool in a smoothly deadly suppleness. “You talk too damn much, Killain,” he said deliberately, stalking Johnny. “I’ll fix—”

  “Back off there!” Daddario ordered peremptorily. “Can’t you see he just wants to get you within reach of his hands? I saw Kratz, if you didn’t.”

  Savino hesitated but retreated reluctantly to his chair. Johnny turned his attention to Daddario. “How you gonna feel when you’re in the death cell as an acccessory to a murder committed by that halfwit? You know what you should do?” He cut loose with a flood of rapid-fire Italian at Daddario.

  Instantly suspicious, Savino was on his feet. “Talk English!” he hissed, and raised his gun hand as Johnny continued. “Damn you—!”

  “Drop it!” Daddario roared. “I don’t know what he’s saying!” He glared right back at the dark man’s skepticism. “If he’s saying anything. Are you so stupid you can’t see he wants us at each other’s throats?” He spun on Johnny. “All I want to hear from you is where that cab went.”

  “If that’s all you want, come on over an’ ask me,” Johnny said agreeably. “Or send him.” He looked at Savino, smiled, bit off a short Italian phrase, and spat on the floor.

  Angry dark blood flooded the slim man’s features. “Well, make him talk!” he yelled at Daddario. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

  “Sure, make me talk,” Johnny said. “Can’t you see your killer’s gettin’ nervous? He’ll be foamin’ at the mouth in a minute if you’re not careful. You want—” He fell silent as a key clicked in the door lock. Rudy stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Hey, Rudy!” Johnny addressed him. “Where’s my thousand bucks Riley left for me?”

  “He didn’t call me to release it,” Rudy said before he thought. As the sound of his words hung in the air he cut his eyes to Daddario staring at him.

  “I’m gettin’ goddamned tired of—” Savino began.

  “Shut up.” Daddario walked over and confronted an unhappy-looking Rudy. “What the hell is this about Riley and a thousand dollars?”

  “If you don’t know I don’t,” Rudy retorted with a matching asperity. “He put up a thousand in cash for me to release to this big bastard when he called me.”

  “For doing what?” Daddario bellowed.

  “How the hell do I know?” Rudy bellowed right back. In a rage, Daddario swung a right-hand punch. In a matching rage, Rudy stepped inside it and drilled a short left that sat the politician down abruptly. He looked around, dazed, as Savino started up from his chair.

  “Cut that out, damn you!” he shouted at the gambler. He took three or
four steps in Rudy’s direction as that worthy turned warily to face him.

  On his stool Johnny stood up and pulled off a shoe. With not an eye in the room on him he threw the shoe and hit the long fluorescent tube that ran the length of the room dead center.

  There was a flash and a puff, and total darkness descended upon the room. The tinkling noise of small, falling glass particles was the only sound as the room seemed to hold its breath.

  Johnny had already slid under his blackjack table and was crawling soundlessly in the direction in which he had marked Tommy Savino in the pitch black when Dick Lowell’s voice raised quaveringly. “Don’t anyone s-shoot!”

  A scrambling sound to his right failed to distract Johnny. He wanted to reach Savino before the only man in the room with a gun had time to react. Instinct warned him of a presence immediately in front of him and he slowed. Was it the right man?

  “Strike a match, someone!” Jim Daddario’s voice ordered suddenly from a corner.

  “Strike your own damn match,” Rudy said sourly from the left. With those two placed Johnny took a deep breath and grabbed hard at the thighs of the man before him. There was a startled grunt as he lifted him and catapulted him hard to the floor. Johnny knew he had guessed right when he heard the thud of a metal object hitting the floor and skidding off until it brought up against a wall. He closed tightly with the thrashing body beneath his, knowing he had to immobilize Savino’s hands before he could get his knife from his sleeve holster.

  “Who’s that?” Jim Daddario inquired anxiously. “Dick? Savino? Is that you?”

  Johnny’s weight dropped amidships prevented more than a coughed grunt in return. He felt teeth in his wrist as he secured an arm with his left knee, and he backhanded the teeth briskly. Savino’s head hit the floor with a hollow thump but he fought on desperately. Johnny caught the other flailing arm and forced it backward. “How d’you like it, you woman-beater?” he growled, and Savino shrieked as Johnny applied more pressure. Deliberately he levered himself up and over the suddenly silent figure.