Lady Crymsy

by P. N. Elrod

  “Which is?”

  “I think Shivvey’s got his eye on running the Ace himself. During our talk I hit home on him with that one. With Nevis out of his way, the Ace is up for grabs. Even busted apart he can fix it back quick enough to being a hell of a moneymaker.”

  Gordy digested that one with a frown. “He might just try it.”

  “You’ve met him, haven’t you? Does he strike you as being a shark when the odds are in his favor?”

  Gordy nodded.

  “So where will Shivvey be tonight? He’ll have thought all this through by now and he moving his men out already. My guess is they’ll be eager to go.”

  “Gimme a minute. I’ll make some calls.” He heaved off the couch and went to the kitchen.

  I resisted the urge to follow. There was no need, anyway, since I could hear him well enough. I leaned wearily back in my overstuffed chair, put my feet on the coffee table, and wished I could finish off the drink he’d left.

  The blood I’d taken in had saved my life, healing everything, but though it could give me the same kind of initial jolt as the Scotch, the soporific aftermath wasn’t there. At times like this, while the tremors of a narrowly missed mortality were still quivering under my skin, I really regretted not being able to get thoroughly crocked to the gills.

  Gordy returned and resumed his seat, resumed sipping from his glass. “Nothing on Shivvey, but I found Gris. Think you can sweat him to find the others?”

  I briefly showed my teeth. “Watch me.”

  He drove us to a small men-only hotel leaning close enough to some railroad tracks to punch passenger tickets for the slower trains. Gris lived here when he wasn’t beating up bartenders for fun and vampires for a living. We didn’t bother trying the hotel, but took stairs down to the pool hall in the basement. According to Gordy’s source, the manager of the joint, Gris was packed and waiting there for a ride.

  You could swim in the thick air with its sweat stink, stale beer, and staler smoke. The lighting was bad except for the shaded bulbs hung above the tables. They illumined only the stained green felt, making the rest of the room all the more shadowed. I could see well enough, but Gordy would be hampered. What I saw wasn’t encouraging: a lot of tough mugs with nothing better to do with themselves but give us a hostile eyeballing. Some shot a quick sly glance and looked away, others seemed on the edge of throwing a challenge, and the rest didn’t give a damn.

  Gordy was big enough not to have to worry about collecting trouble. He was also not unknown. I saw recognition for him in a few faces, and the news traveled around the room in the time it took for us to cross to the bar. Every man in the joint was a mind reader when it came to survival. A few stared hard at me. I was in dockyard clothes with my collar high, a cloth hat pulled low, and dark glasses: anonymous muscle for Gordy.

  He stepped up to the bar and muttered at the man there, who muttered a reply. Gordy trundled toward the back with me following.

  A drunk too far gone to know better put himself in front of me. “Hey, four-eyes, think yer some kinda movie star? Why’nt you—”

  I threw a backhand into his belly, my version of a gentle swat. While he was doubled over gasping I added a push that staggered him into four other guys standing by a table. None of them liked it much, but all declined to make an issue of it. Hard to tell if it was because they knew Gordy or if they could see I was in a bone-crunching mood. Didn’t matter to me. I continued on in his wake, not breaking stride.

  He went through a door. Storeroom, no frills. Another door. Another room. Boxes, a card table, mismatched chairs, bad light, two suitcases, and a highly startled Gris just rising from one of the chairs.

  “Gordy? Lissen, I don’t want no—JesusGod!”

  This last was aimed in my direction. Gordy had moved aside, and I’d stepped in, taking off the glasses. While I don’t enjoy scaring people, for Gris I could make an exception. He was flat-footed only an instant, though. In the next he’d drawn his gun, but I was on him by then and wrested it away, handing it off to Gordy.

  Gris didn’t bother to pause for more astonishment. A fight to him was as natural as breathing, so he laid into me. It didn’t last long. I put a fist just under his breastbone, driving out all the air, then hauled him around, slamming him facedown over the table. End of discussion.

  I gave him a moment so he could remember how to breathe again, then bent his arms up and put on a light pressure. He grunted. More pressure and he cried out. If I went far enough he’d have double dislocations. I held him just on the edge of disaster and let him think about it, then leaned close to his ear.

  “You hear me, you piece of shit?” I asked.

  “Y-yuh.”

  “You understand what I can do to you?”

  “Uhn.” An affirmative tone.

  “You know why I’m here?”

  “Uhn.”

  “Then you start talking. Don’t leave anything out, or I’ll knot you like a pretzel.”

  “Bu-uhh…”

  “No buts. You’re not getting paid enough to go through this. Am I right?”

  He made a sort of groaning sound of resignation. Exactly what I wanted.

  The next five minutes were highly informative.

  Gris was waiting for a ride to the train station, where he would board the first one heading out to Atlanta. Shivvey Coker was fixing up a job for him somewhere in Florida, muscle at a betting parlor. Same thing for the other men who had participated in my—well, I couldn’t call it murder since the attempt thankfully failed. They were to stay clear of Chicago until Coker told them it was safe, then return if they felt like it.

  “He’s not worried you’ll talk?” I asked.

  “We talk and we hang ourselves,” Gris pointed out, somewhat thin of voice. He was in a lot of pain. I made sure of that. “But you’re all right. How can—I saw you—how come you’re—”

  “Never mind. Where are the others? All of them.”

  “But—”

  “Any of them worth you losing an arm over?” I twisted the limb in question.

  Apparently not, to judge by the squeal he made.

  He gave up their names and location without more fuss. Coker was going to find them a car, provide a bonus of traveling money, and they weren’t to stop until they reached Miami. Gris would have gone with them, but opted to buy a seat on the train, thinking it would be faster and more comfortable.

  When we had everything from him that mattered, I released my hold and pulled him from the table. A spin and shove and he fell into one of the chairs. He seemed a lot smaller now than when we’d come in. He was a lot more scared.

  Gordy, who was better at looming than anyone else I knew, did just that, his big shadow covering Gris. I crouched to be eye level with him.

  “You know who that is?” I asked, pointing up at Gordy.

  Mute, Gris nodded, rubbing one shoulder.

  “You know who I am?”

  Nod.

  “You ever see either of us again, you are dead. You ever talk about this or what happened at my club tonight, you are dead. You know the kind of connections he’s got?”

  Nod.

  “You say a word, you even think a word about tonight, and he will find out, and then I will find you. When I do, I will finish ripping your arms off and ram them down your throat. You got that clear?”

  Nod. He was definitely on my side for this. But I couldn’t trust him to stay there. Not without a little help.

  “You really enjoyed that,” Gordy commented as he drove us away from the hotel.

  “The last part gave me a headache.” I had enjoyed it. Maybe too much. The scent of Gris’s fear had been sweet.

  “And he ain’t coming back ever?”

  “Probably not. My evil-eye whammy will eventually wear off, but it lasts longer when it goes along with the normal wishes of the person I talk to. That’s why I made a point of first scaring the hell out of him before putting him under.”

  “Looked more like you were disjoin
ting him.”

  “Logic and reason never work as well as direct pain when it comes to certain kinds of persuasion.”

  “You shoulda killed him. Just to be sure.”

  “You could be right.”

  “I know I am. He helped kill you. Almost. If you weren’t the way you are, that would have been it.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  “Suppose he gets too rough with some poor schmuck who can’t bounce back like you did?”

  Gordy had hit a big weak spot in my admittedly flexible principles. “I’ve got no answer for that. I just know I can’t make him the poor schmuck that I get too rough with. Done that before. Don’t like it much.”

  He gave a small shrug. “To each his own. You gonna do the same with these other guys?”

  “Yeah. Have to be one at a time. Need you to cover them while I’m busy.”

  “No problem. But just to let you know… any of ‘em gets outta line…” He opened his hand palm-up in a throwing-away gesture. “That’s all she wrote.”

  “Just like that?”

  “I’m a patient man,” he said. “But I am not patient with disrespecters. What Shivvey and his mugs did to you was disrespectful to us both. To you because it was uncalled for, to me because he knew better.”

  I could see where this was leading for Coker, and it would likely involve a long walk and a short pier. Not that I harbored any friendship for him, but I wasn’t easy about anyone getting rubbed out just for being stupid.

  On the other hand, I could have honest-to-God died tonight. No second chances.

  I gave a small shrug. “To each his own, then.”

  He grunted. It worried me that there was a decided tone of approval in it.

  Our destination was a closed barbershop. The block it was in must have been built right after the big fire, having the look of haste and cheap materials. For the first decade it might have been inoffensive, but five more put it long past the point of decay and in need of a decent burial. The darkened shop was squashed into the middle, an afterthought with a crooked pole and a cracked front window. Gris’s friends were waiting there for Coker to come by with a car. With any luck, I could take care of them, then bushwhack Coker when he walked in. That is, if he hadn’t already been and gone.

  I tried the door just enough to determine it to be unlocked. Good, They hadn’t left yet.

  “There’s a bell inside,” I told Gordy. “Lemme go first.”

  He stood back to give me space but I didn’t need any; I just vanished and slipped in under the threshold. He said something that didn’t sound too happy. Well, I had warned him.

  Within, I went solid and listened. All was quiet. Maybe they were to be found in a basement like Gris. I lifted the bell out of the way, Gordy came in and shut the door softly behind him. He threw me a questioning look, touched a hand to his ear. I shook my head.

  By common consent, since I was more bulletproof, I led the way toward the back. Gordy nearly missed a step, staring as I passed a mirror. Jeez, he should have been used to that by now. The joint was cramped: a simple one-chair operation and none too clean. Unswept hair skittered underfoot, and the air smelled of bay rum, mint, wax, and old cigar smoke. All was quiet. No sign of Gris’s friends. If he’d steered us wrong, I’d go back and finish the pretzel job I’d begun on his arms.

  The door at the rear was partway open, and light showed through. Again, I went first. A dim, dusty room, with furnishings. I went in and stopped. Took an involuntary breath and picked up the bloodsmell along with the stink of cordite and, oddly, burned meat.

  “Not good,” said Gordy, looking over my shoulder.

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “I guess Shivvey wanted to save himself some travel expenses.”

  Two men had guns in their hands. I pointed; he nodded.

  “Cops are supposed to think the game went bad and they shot each other,” he said.

  “That won’t hold.”

  “You’d be surprised what’ll hold in this town. Let’s go. Wipe down anything you touched.” He already had a white silk handkerchief in his mitt and was moving out.

  The four of them had supposedly been playing poker. Small cash and cards were all over a rickety table. Some beer bottles, cigarette butts. One man still had a cigarette end in his mouth, and it had smoked itself down there, burning. The other three, slumped over the table or back in a chair or slipped off to the floor with their chests blown open didn’t make as deep an impression on me as that one sorry son of a bitch with his scorched lip.

  13

  For Lena Ashley’s memorial service I wore a somber black suit with an expression to match. Since both were appropriate to the surroundings, Bobbi hadn’t yet noticed anything off about me. It also helped that she was distracted by the proceedings, busy making sure everything ran smoothly. I was glad, wanting the freedom to think through the previous night’s disasters without having to answer a lot of questions on why I was so quiet.

  The chapel of the funeral home she’d chosen was a nice one, real fancy. Dark-stained oak was everywhere, elaborately carved, and in some spots covered with gilt, particularly the speaker’s podium. Deep red curtains cloaked the walls behind it, and long stained-glass windows depicting lilies and roses protected us from viewing the outside world. As there was no body, a gold-framed picture of Lena stood at the front where the casket would have been. It was the same photo Escott had gotten from Lieutenant Blair. The easel was draped in black ribbon and flowers; dozens of wreaths and bouquets in vases stood around it on tables and on the floor. The afternoon editions had squeezed in a story about the services and John Q. Public had generously responded. Candles burned on either side, and the organist filled the room with a series of well-practiced hymns.

  I’d told Bobbi not to worry about attendance and was proved right; the place was packed. Reporters, curiosity seekers, and cops filled all the pews, so latecomers had to stand. Since I was reluctant to get my picture in the papers again, my seat in the chapel was in a screened-off alcove usually reserved for the deceased’s family. I had a good view through the loose weave of the curtains, but no one could see in unless they were crass enough to come around and look inside. Of course several members of the press had done just that, only to find it empty. There was a decided advantage about being able to vanish at a second’s notice.

  Physically, I was recovered from the impromptu floor show Coker and his clown circus had given me in Lady Crymsyn’s lobby. I’d made a stop at the Stockyards just before dawn for another long drink, then home for a day’s worth of healing oblivion in my basement sanctuary. Though unaware of the passage of time, it still helped put the horrors at a distance. When I awoke, the tremors no longer troubled me. It was just too bad I couldn’t as easily rid my mind of the image of that one dead man and his burned-down cigarette.

  Gordy and I got ourselves away from the barbershop, returning to the pool hall, but Gris was gone by then. The bartender informed us that Coker had come by. Gris seemed surprised, apparently expecting someone else, but went along with him, suitcase in hand and no questions asked.

  “That’s all she wrote,” said Gordy as we drove off.

  “We can’t assume Shivvey killed him.”

  “No, but I wouldn’t take any odds against. I know who runs that Florida betting shop he was supposed to go to. Give ‘em a call in a day or so. If Gris doesn’t show…” he gave a small shrug.

  “Drag the river?”

  “If you wanna go to all that trouble.”

  An idea popped into my head. An ugly one. “Take a right here, I need to check on someone.”

  He made the turn, following my directions without comment, perhaps having come to the same conclusion. My heart clogged itself midway up my throat for the whole time until he braked in front of Rita Robillard’s hotel. He cut the motor and waited while I bolted inside.

  Thankfully, Rita was exactly as I’d left her hours before. At the sound of her healthy breathing my heart crept back to its normal spot. She
was in a deep, sodden sleep and quite unharmed. I wondered how long that might last. Coker had made a lot of threats against her earlier. After what he’d done to his own men I knew she shouldn’t be left alone. Gordy could help there.

  On my way out, I noticed a small alteration in the general disorder of her living room. The man’s tie that had been carelessly discarded on the couch was gone. I looked around, hoping that it’d just fallen on the floor, but nothing doing. As it seemed unlikely anyone else would have business here, it must have been Coker who had come calling to check up on her. He didn’t exactly need his own key, since Rita kept one over the outer door. For some reason he’d chosen not to wake her up, chosen not to kill her.

  Aside from Rita there was only one thing here besides a discarded tie he might be interested in—providing that he knew about it. I went to the radio, pulled the backing away enough to see in. The little records book was gone.

  Huh. So that’s how it was.

  Gordy had about the same reaction when I told him.

  “Think he’s gonna use it against Nevis?” I asked.

  “It could come in handy to a smart operator. I know I wouldn’t want something like that floating loose. The Treasury boys could get real happy over that kind of evidence.”

  I wondered if Coker also knew about the fifty-two grand. Probably not, or he’d never have left it lying there for Rita to accidentally find as I had. “We gotta find where he lives.”

  “I already know.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “I make a point to spot troublemakers, keep tabs on ‘em. Started back when he was still working for Welsh Lennet. But Shivvey ain’t gonna be home, not until he’s sure of being clear of the heat for what he did back there.”

  “How about an anonymous call to the cops? Those four in the barbershop—”

  “Can wait. Shivvey thinks you’re dead. Use it. Give him some slack, then yank the noose.”

  He made sense, but only so far as I was concerned. A picture of that man with the cigarette floated back into my brain again. I could almost smell the scorched meat and stink of urine. Too bad I couldn’t hypnotize myself into losing this particular memory. “Rita needs to get scarce. He could change his mind and come back for her.”