by Cain, Paul
The dealer, who was still standing near the door, spoke for the first time: “No. After you left here, you didn’t get to the hotel till about ten minutes of nine. I found that out from a friend of mine—a bellhop.”
Lorain Rigas looked from the dealer to Shane. Her eyes were wide, surprised. She said: “My God!”
Pedro stopped swinging his feet suddenly. He said: “Where did you go after you left here?” He was staring at Shane and his eyes were thin heavily fringed slits.
Shane was silent a moment. Then he reached slowly, deliberately towards his inside pocket, smiled at Lorain Rigas, said: “May I smoke?”
Pedro stood up suddenly.
The rosy-cheeked youth stood up, too. The revolver glistened in his hand and he went swiftly to Shane, patted his pockets, his hips, felt under his arms. He finished, stepped back a pace.
Shane took out the blue case, took out a cigar and lighted it.
It was silent except for the choked sobbing of the little Eastman man.
Nick came suddenly forward, took Shane by the shoulder, shook him. Nick said: “You answer Pedro when he asks you a question.”
Shane turned slowly and frowned at Nick. He looked down at Nick’s hand on his shoulder, said slowly: “Take your hand off me, you son of a bitch!” He looked back at Pedro. “Ask Nick where he went tonight.”
Pedro jerked his head impatiently.
Shane took the cigar out of his mouth, said: “Did you know that Thelma—downstairs—is Nick’s gal?” He hesitated a moment, glanced swiftly at Nick. “An’ did you know that Charley’s been playing around with her?”
Pedro was staring at Nick. His mouth was a little open.
Shane went on: “Nick knew it.”
He whirled suddenly and smashed his left fist down hard on Nick’s broad forearm, grabbed for the automatic with his right hand. The automatic fell, clattered on the floor. Shane and Nick and the rosy-cheeked young man all dived for it, but the young man was a little faster; he stood up grinning widely, murderously—a gun in each hand.
Pedro said: “Go on.”
Shane didn’t say anything. He was looking at Nick and his eyes were bright, interested—he was smiling a little.
Pedro snapped at the dealer: “Go downstairs an’ send Mario up—you stay at the door.”
The dealer went out and closed the door. They were all very quiet. Nick was staring at the automatic in the young man’s hand and there was a very silly, faraway expression on his face. Shane was watching Nick like a vivisectionist about to make the crucial incision. Lorain Rigas was sitting down again on the couch with her hands over her eyes.
Pedro only waited, looked at the floor.
The door opened and the slight, white-haired man came in.
Pedro said: “What time did Nick go out tonight?”
The slight man looked at Nick bewilderedly. He cleared his throat, said: “Nick went out right after Charley went home. He said there wasn’t any business anyway, an’ he wanted to go to a picture show, an’ would I take the door for a while. He came back some time around nine.”
Pedro said: “All right—go on back downstairs.”
The slight man gestured with one hand. “You seen me on the door when you went out right after we heard about Charley,” he said. “Wasn’t it all right for me to be on the door?”
“Sure.” Pedro was looking at Nick. “Sure—only I thought Nick was down in the basement or something—I didn’t know he’d gone out.”
The slight man shrugged and went out and closed the door.
Shane said evenly: “Nick had a hunch that Charley was going to Thelma’s. He didn’t follow Charley, but he jumped in a cab, probably, and went to her place. He didn’t find Charley—but he found Del Corey.”
Lorain Rigas put her hands down and looked up at Shane. Her face was drawn, white.
“That’s what Del went there for,” Shane went on—“expecting to find Charley. Del’s been making a big play for Thelma—an’ he knew about Charley and her—was cockeyed an’ burnt up an’ aimed to rub Charley.” Shane was watching Nick narrowly. “Thelma must’ve calmed Del down—Nick found them there… .” Shane turned his eyes towards Lorain Rigas. “… And caved in Del’s head.”
Lorain Rigas stood up, screamed.
Pedro crossed to her swiftly, put one hand over her mouth, the other on her back, pushed her back down on the couch gently.
Shane said: “Then Nick beat the hell out of Thelma, made her admit that Charley had been in the woodpile, too, damn near killed her.”
He was looking at Nick again.
“He dragged what was left of her into the bathroom and poured some iodine on her mouth, an’ put the candlestick that he’d smacked Del with in her hands so it would look like she’d killed Del an’ then committed suicide.”
Nick turned to stare at Shane vacantly.
Shane was puffing out great clouds of blue gray smoke, seemed to be enjoying himself hugely.
“She wasn’t quite dead, though,” he went on. He glanced at his watch. “The law ought to be over there by now—getting her testimony.”
Pedro said: “Hurry up.”
Shane shrugged. “Nick took the gun that Del got from Jack Kenny, jumped up to Charley’s. He knew he was in a good spot to let Charley have it because Charley and I had that argument tonight—an’ it’d look like me—or he could make it look like me. Charley evidently stopped some place on the way home—Nick got there first and either stuck Charley up in the corridor and took him into the apartment to kill him, or sneaked in—the door was unlocked—and waited in the dark. Then he went out the back way—the way Charley came in—and came back down here.”
Pedro went to the door, turned to Shane, said: “You and the lady go.”
Shane gestured towards the Eastman man. “What about him?”
“We’ll fix him up—give him some money. It is too bad.” Pedro smiled, opened the door.
Shane looked at Nick. Nick’s face was pasty, yellow, still wore the silly, faraway expression.
Lorain Rigas stood up and took up her hat and went to Shane.
They went together to the door, out into the hallway. Pedro leaned over the balustrade, called down to the little man at the outside door: “Okay.”
Shane and the girl went downstairs, past the doors of the dark and empty barroom, down to the street floor.
The slight, white-haired man and the dealer were whispering together. The slight man opened the door for them, said: “Good night—come again.”
They went out and got into the cab.
Shane said: “Valmouth.”
It had stopped raining for the moment, but the streets were still black and glistening and slippery.
He tossed the cigar out through the narrow space of open window, leaned back, said: “Am I a swell dick?—or am I a swell dick?”
Lorain Rigas didn’t answer. Her elbow was on the armrest, her chin in her hand. She stared out the window blankly.
“You’re not very appreciative.” Shane smiled to himself, was silent a little while.
The light held them up at Fifth Avenue. Theater traffic was heavy in spite of the weather.
Shane said: “The only thing I’m not quite sure about is whether you went to Charley’s to warn him—or whether you’d heard about Del and Thelma—thought that the day Del was yelping about shooting Charley, in front of witnesses, was a swell time for you to shoot Charley yourself.”
She did not answer.
As the cab curved into Sixth Avenue, she said: “Where did you go after you left 71—before you went back to the hotel?”
Shane laughed. “That lousy alibi held up with the captain,” he said. “He didn’t question it.” He unbuttoned the top button of his topcoat, took something wrapped in tissue paper out of his inside pocket. “You know what a sucker I am for auct
ion sales?”
She nodded.
He unfolded the tissue paper and took out a platinum-mounted diamond ring. The stone was large, pure white, very beautiful.
He said: “Pip?”
She nodded again.
He put the ring back in the tissue paper, folded it, put it back in his pocket.
The cab slid to the curb in front of the Valmouth. Shane said: “Where you going?”
She shook her head.
He said: “You keep the cab.” He pressed a bill into her hand, said: “This’ll take care of it—why don’t you take a nice long ride?”
He brushed her forehead lightly with his lips and got out of the cab and went into the hotel.
One, Two, Three
I’d been in Los Angeles waiting for this Healey to show for nearly a week. According to my steer, he’d taken a railroad company in Quebec for somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifty grand on a swarm of juggled options or something. That’s a nice neighborhood.
My information said further that he was headed west and that he dearly loved to play cards. I do, too.
I’ll take three off the top, please.
I missed him by about two hours in Chicago and spent the day going around to all the ticket offices, getting chummy with agents, finally found out Healey had bought a ticket to LA, so I fanned on out there and cooled.
Pass.
Sunday afternoon I ran into an op for Eastern Investigators, Inc., named Gard, in the lobby of the Roosevelt. We had a couple drinks and talked about this and that. He was on the Coast looking for a gent named Healey. He was cagey about who the client was, but Eastern handles mostly missing persons, divorces, stuff like that.
Monday morning Gard called me and said the Salt Lake branch of his outfit had located Healey in Caliente, Nevada. He said he thought I might like to know. I told him I wasn’t interested and thanked him and then I rented a car in a U Drive place and drove up to Caliente.
I got there about four in the afternoon and spotted Healey in the second joint I went into. He was sitting in a stud game with five of the home boys and if they were a fair sample of local talent I figured I had plenty of time.
Healey was a big man with a round cheery face, smooth pink skin. His mouth was loose and wet and his eyes were light blue. I think his eyes were the smallest I’ve ever seen. They were set very wide apart.
He won and lost pretty evenly, but the game wasn’t worth a nickel. The home boys were old-timers and played close to their vests and Healey’s luck was the only thing that kept him even. He finally scared two of them out of a seventy- or eighty-dollar pot and that made him feel so good that he got up and came over to the bar and ordered drinks for the boys at the table. He ordered lemonade for himself.
I said: “Excuse me, but haven’t I seen you around Lonnie Thompson’s in Detroit?” Lonnie makes a book and I had most of my dope on Healey from him.
He smiled and said: “Maybe,” and asked me what I drank.
I ordered whiskey.
He asked me if I’d been in town long and I said I’d just driven up from LA to look things over and that things didn’t look so hot and that I would probably drive back to LA that night or the next morning.
I bought him another lemonade and had another whiskey and we talked about Detroit. In a little while he went back to the table and sat down.
That was enough for a beginning. I had registered myself with him as one of the boys.
I went out and drove a couple of blocks to the Pine Hotel and took a room. The Pine was practically the only hotel in town, but I flipped the register back a day or so and found Healey’s name to make sure. Then I went up and washed and lay down to smoke a cigarette and figure out the details.
According to Lonnie Thompson, Healey was a cash boy—carried his dough in paper and traveler’s checks. I couldn’t be sure of that but it was enough. The point was to get him to LA and in to one or two or three places where I could work on him.
I guess I must have slept almost an hour because it was dark when I woke up. Somebody was knocking at the door and I got up and stumbled over and switched on the light and opened the door. I was too sleepy to take Healey big—I mumbled something about coming in and sitting down, and I went over to the basin and put some cold water on my face.
When I turned around he was sitting on the bed looking scared. I offered him a cigarette and he took it and his hand was shaking.
He said: “Sorry I woke you up like that.”
I said: “That’s all right,” and then he leaned forward and spoke in a very low voice:
“I’ve got to get out of here right away. I want to know how much it’s worth to you to take me down to Los Angeles.”
I almost fell off the chair. My first impulse was to yell, “Sure,” and drag him down to the car; but he was scared of something and when a man’s scared is a swell time to find out what it’s all about.
I stalled. I said: “Oh, that’s all right,” sort of hesitantly.
He said: “Listen… . I got here Saturday morning. I was going to stay here long enough to establish residence and then apply for one of those quick divorces, under the Nevada law.
“My wife has been on my tail six weeks with a blackmail gag,” he went on. “She’s here. When I got back to the hotel a little while ago she came into my room and put on an act.”
I thought then I knew who Gard’s client was.
“She came in this afternoon. She’s got the room next to mine.” He was silent so long that I laughed a little and said: “So what?”
“I’ve got to duck, quick,” he went on. “She’s a bad actor. She came into my room and put on an act. She’s got a guy with her that’s supposed to be her brother and he’s a bad actor, too. You said you were going to drive back to LA. I saw your name on the register when I came in and I thought you might take me along. I can’t rent a car here and there isn’t a train till midnight.”
He pulled the biggest roll I ever saw out of his pocket and skimmed off a couple notes. “If it’s a question of money… .”
I shook my head with what I hoped was a suggestion of dignity. I said: “I’d decided to go back myself tonight. It will be a pleasure to take you, Mister Healey,” and I got up and put on my coat. “How about your stuff?”
He looked blank until I said: “Luggage,” and then he said: “That’s all right—I’ll leave it.” He smiled again. “I travel light.”
At the top of the stairs he whispered: “This is sure a big lift.” Then he remembered that he had to sneak up to his room to get something and said he’d meet me at the car. I told him where it was. He said he’d paid his hotel bill.
I went on downstairs and checked out.
My car was wedged in between a Ford truck and a light-blue Chrysler roadster. There was plenty of room ahead of the roadster, so I went up and snapped off the handbrake and pushed it ahead about eight feet. Then I got into my car and leaned back and waited. The whole layout looked pretty bad, what with him scared to death of a deal he admitted was blackmail and all. He said he didn’t want his luggage and then, right on top of it, he had to go up to his room to get something. That would be taking a chance on running into the wife again. I wondered if she was his wife.
I couldn’t figure out how a wife could blackmail a husband while she was jumping from state to state with a man who was “supposed” to be her brother; but then almost anything is possible in Nevada.
After about five minutes I began to get nervous. I opened the door of the car and stepped out on the sidewalk, and as I closed the door there were five shots close together some place upstairs in the hotel.
I can take trouble or leave it alone; only I always take it. Like a sap, I went into the hotel.
The clerk was a big blond kid with glasses. He came out from behind the counter as I went in the door; we went upstairs togethe
r, two or three at a time.
There was a man in long woolly underwear standing in the corridor on the third floor and he pointed to a door and we went in. Healey was lying flat on his face in the middle of the room, and beyond him, close to the wall, was the body of a woman, also face downward.
The clerk turned a beautiful shade of green; he stood there staring at Healey. I went over and rolled the woman over on her back. She couldn’t have been much over twenty-two or three; little, gray-eyed, blonde. There was a knife in her side, under the arm. There was a .38 automatic near her outstretched hand. She was very dead.
The man in the woolly underwear peeked in and then hurried across the hall and into another room. I could hear him yelling the news to somebody there.
I went over and tapped the clerk on the shoulder and pointed at the girl. The clerk swallowed a couple of times, said: “Miss Mackay,” and looked back at Healey. He was hypnotized by the way Healey’s back looked. Hamburger.
Then about two dozen people came into the room all at once.
The sheriff had been in the pool hall across the street. He rolled Healey over and said: “This is Mister Healey,” as if he’d made a great discovery.
I said: “Uh-huh. He’s been shot.”
I guess the sheriff didn’t like the way I said it very well. He glanced at the clerk and then asked me who I was. I told him my name and the clerk nodded and the sheriff scratched his head and went over and looked at the girl. I wanted to say that she’d been knifed, but I restrained myself.
Shaggy underwear was back with his pants on. He said he hadn’t heard anything except somebody swearing and then, suddenly, the shots.
I asked him how long after the shots it had been when he came into the corridor and he said he wasn’t sure, but it was somewhere around half a minute.
The first interesting thing that turned up was that it wasn’t Healey’s room—it was Miss Mackay’s room. His was next door. That probably meant that Healey had deliberately gone into her room; that she hadn’t surprised him in his room while he was getting something he’d forgotten.
