The Paul Cain Omnibus

by Cain, Paul

Kastner twisted on the couch. Then, suddenly, he spoke rapidly, as if he wanted to say a great many things all at once: “Eddie waited down on the street to give me a buzz on the downstairs bell when you started up. Rose had called Reilly and he was all set with three men to make the pinch—two in front and one in the alley.”

  Kells asked, “How come you sapped Dave?”

  “He was putting on an act for the girl so she wouldn’t think he was in on it. He got too realistic.”

  Kells looked at Rainey and spoke to Kastner: “I thought Reilly was L.D.’s man.”

  “He was. He was L.D.’s spot in the Police Department until Rose started selling him big ideas.” Kastner’s face was growing very white.

  Kells said: “There’ll be a doctor here in a little while; I sent the launch ashore for one.” Then he walked to a port and looked out at the slowly lightening sky. He spoke without turning: “Reilly’s the Lou that Rose and O’Donnell were waiting for at the hotel….”

  “And he’s the Lou they were waiting for on the boat—so they could let you have it resisting arrest—make it legal.”

  Kells went over to the desk. Rainey was abstractedly playing with a little penknife; the woman still sat with her face between her hands.

  Kells turned his head toward Kastner, asked very casually: “Who popped you?”

  Kastner smiled a little. He said: “I don’t remember.”

  The woman laughed. She put her hands on the table and threw her head back and laughed very loudly.

  Kastner looked at her and there was something inexpressibly cold and brittle in his eyes.

  Kells bent over the desk and took up a pen and wrote a few words on a piece of paper. He took the paper and the pen over to Kastner. He said, “It’ll make things a lot simpler if you sign this.”

  The little man glanced at the paper and looked up at Kells. He said: “Nuts.” He grinned at Kells, and then his face tightened and he died.

  Kells and Rainey sat at a table in Rainey’s apartment in Long Beach. The woman, Granquist, was asleep in a big chair. It was about eight-thirty, and outside it was gray and hot.

  Kells said: “That’s the way it’ll have to be. None of us is worth a nickel as a witness.”

  Rainey sipped his coffee and sat still for a little while, then he got up and went to the telephone and called Long Distance. He asked for a number in Los Angeles. He said: “Hello. This is Grant Rainey. I want to talk to L.D.…” There was a pause, and then he said: “Wake him up.”

  He waited a little while and then he said, “Hello, L.D.…There’s a friend of mine here with an idea….”

  Rainey gestured and Kells got up and went to the phone. He said: “This is Kells…Reilly is double-crossing you. He and Jack Rose aim to take over the town. They’re importing a lot of boys from the East, and you’re on the wrong side of their list….”

  There was a long silence during which Kells held the receiver to his ear and grinned at Rainey. Then he said: “My idea is that you reach Ruth Perry right away. She’s incommunicado, but you can beat that. Tell her there isn’t any use trying to protect Dave any longer. Tell her that I said so…. Then see that she gets bail. When Dave finds out she’s confessed, he’ll have a lot of things to tell you…. Sure—he’s guilty as hell….”

  Kells hung up and went back to the table. He said: “That oughta be that.” He sat down and poured himself another cup of coffee and inclined his head towards Granquist.

  Rainey said: “She came out to the boat last night and said she’d been here about a week from Detroit. She says she’s got a million dollars’ worth of information that she wants to peddle for five grand. She says it’ll crack the administration wide open, and that we can call our own shots next election.”

  Kells laughed quietly.

  Rainey went on expressionlessly: “I told her I wasn’t in politics and wasn’t in the market for her stuff, but she thought I was kidding her. She soaked up a couple bottles of Scotch and finally got down to twenty-five hundred. A few more slugs and she’d probably sell for a dollar ninety-eight. She says she needs new shoes.”

  Rainey’s Negro houseboy came in from the kitchen and cleared away the breakfast things.

  Kells stood up. He said: “I’m going to take a nap while the wheels of justice make a couple turns.” He went to the bedroom door, turned and spoke to the boy: “Call me in two hours.” He went into the bedroom.

  When the houseboy woke Kells, Rainey had gone. Kells asked the boy to make some more coffee and shook Granquist awake.

  “How about some Java?”

  She said: “Sure.” They sat at the table and drank a great deal of coffee. Kells sent the boy out for a paper. RUTH PERRY CONFESSES HUSBAND SHOT HAARDT was spread across the front page.

  Kells said: “Ain’t nature wonderful!” He got up and put on a suit coat that Rainey had given him. “I’m going to town.”

  Granquist said: “Me too. Can I ride with you?”

  They went down and got into a cab and went to the parking station near the P & O wharf where Kells had left Cullen’s car.

  It was very hot, driving into Los Angeles. Kells took off his coat and drove in his shirtsleeves. His face was battered and Rainey’s shoes hurt his feet and he wanted very much to get into a bathtub and then get into bed.

  He said: “Did you come out with Kastner and O’Donnell?”

  Granquist looked at him and smiled sleepily. She said: “Uh-huh.”

  “You O’Donnell’s girl?”

  “My God, no! I just came along for the ride.” She slid down into the corner of the seat and closed her eyes.

  Kells said: “Do you think O’Donnell shot Kastner?”

  He looked at her. She nodded with her eyes closed.

  He parked the car off Eighth Street and they went into a side entrance of the hotel, up the service stairway to Kells’ room. He said: “I’ll have to go downtown for questioning this afternoon—if they don’t pick me up before. I want to have four or five hot baths and a little shut-eye first.”

  He went into the bathroom and turned on the water. When he came out, Granquist had curled up on the divan, was asleep. She had taken off her hat, and awry honey-colored hair curved over her face and throat.

  The telephone buzzed while Kells was in the tub. It buzzed again after he had dressed. He answered it and the operator said, “Mrs Perry wants to talk to you.” Kells stared vacantly out the window and said: “All right—put her on.” Then he said: “Hello, baby…. Swell…. No, I’ve got to go out right away and I won’t be back until tonight. I’ll try to give you a ring then…. Sure…. Okay, baby—’bye.”

  Granquist stirred in sleep, threw one arm above her head, sighed. Her eyelids fluttered. Kells stood there for a while looking at her then went out.

  Lead Party

  Gerry Kells from the East, who pulled a “fast one” in West Coast gambling, skirts the edges of the political racket and sits in when the blow-off comes.

  At one-thirty, Kells got out of a cab and went into the Sixth Street entrance of the Howard Hotel. In the elevator he said: “Four.” Around two turns, down a short corridor, he knocked at a heavy old-fashioned door.

  A voice yelled: “Come in.”

  There were three men in the small room. One sat at a typewriter near the window. He had a leathery good-natured face and he spoke evenly into the telephone beside him: “Sure…. Sure….”

  The other two were playing cooncan on a suit-box balanced on their laps. One of them put down his hand, put the suit-box on the floor, stood up.

  Kells said: “Fenner.”

  The man at the telephone put one hand over the mouthpiece, turned his head to call through an open door behind him: “A gent to see you, L.D.” The man who had stood up walked to the door and nodded at someone in the next room and turned to Kells. “In here.”

  Kells went past him into the room and closed the door behind him. That room was larger. Fenner, a slight, silver-haired man of about fifty, was lying on a bed in his trouser
s and undershirt. There was an electric light on the wall behind the bed. Fenner put down the paper he had been reading and swung up to sit facing Kells. He said “Sit down,” and picked up his shoes and put them on. Then he went over and raised the blind on one of the windows that looked out on Spring Street. He said: “Well, Mister Kells, is it hot enough for you?”

  Kells nodded, said sarcastically: “You’re harder to see than De Mille. I called your hotel and they made me get a Congressional Okay and make out a couple dozen affidavits before they gave me this number.” He jerked his head towards the little room through which he had entered. “What’s it all about, L.D.?”

  Fenner sat down in a big chair and smiled sleepily. He took a crumpled package of Home Runs out of his pocket, extracted a cigarette and lighted it. “About a year ago,” he said, “a man named Dickinson—a newspaperman—came out here with a bright idea and a little capital, and started a scandal sheet called The Coaster.”

  Fenner inhaled his cigarette deeply, blew a soft gray cone of smoke towards the ceiling. “He ran it into the ground on the blackmail side and got into a couple libel jams….”

  Kells said: “I remember.”

  Fenner went on: “I got postponements on the libel cases and I got the injunction raised. Now it’s the Coast Guardian: A Political Weekly for Thinking People. Dickinson is still the editor and publisher, and”—he smiled thinly—“I’m the silent partner. The first number comes out next week, no sale, we give it away.” Kells said: “The city campaign ought to start rolling along about next week….”

  Fenner slapped his knee in mock surprise. “By George! That’s a coincidence.” He sat grinning contentedly at Kells. Then his face hardened a little and a faint fanatical twinkle came into his eyes. He spoke, and it was as if he had said the same thing many times before. “I’m a working boss, Mister Kells. I gave this city the squarest deal it ever had. They beat my men at the polls last time, but by God they didn’t beat me—and next election day I’m going to take the city back.” He paused and then very pointedly made the pun, “like Bow took Richman.”

  Kells said: “I doubt it.” He smiled a little to take the edge off his words, went on: “What did you get from Perry?”

  “Nothing.” Fenner yawned. “I got to his wife right after you called and gave her your message and arranged for her bail. She’s witness number one for the State. It took me a little longer to beat the incommunicado on Perry, and when I saw him and told him she had confessed that he killed Haardt, he closed up like a clam.”

  Kells took off his hat and rubbed his scalp violently with his fingers. “It must have taken a lot of pressure to make a yellow bastard like him pipe down.”

  Fenner said: “Who killed Haardt?”

  “Perry’ll do for a while, won’t he?” Kells put on his hat.

  “Are you sure you’re in the clear?”

  “Yes.” Kells stood up. “You’ve got enough to work on. Lieutenant Reilly, who was your best on the force, is in a play with Jack Rose to take over the town and open it up over your head. Dave Perry was in on it. They want it all, and they figure that you and I and a few more of the boys are in their way.”

  He walked over to the window and looked down at the swarming traffic on Spring Street. “Doc Haardt was in their way—figure it out for yourself.”

  Fenner said: “You act like you know what you’re talking about.”

  “I do.”

  Fenner went on musingly: “One of the advantages of a reform administration is that you can blame it for everything. Maybe opening up the town for a few weeks isn’t such a bad idea.”

  “But it’s nice to know about it when you’re supposed to be the boss….” Kells smiled. “And it won’t be so hot when it gets so wide open that a few of Reilly and Rose’s imports from the East come up here and shove a machine gun down your throat.”

  Fenner said: “No.”

  “Me, I’m going to scram,” Kells went on. “I came out here to play, and by God if I can’t play here I’ll go back to Broadway. My fighting days are over.”

  Fenner stared quizzically at Kells’ battered face, smiled. “You’d better stick around,” he said—“I like you.”

  “That’s fine.” Kells went to a table and poured himself a glass of water from a big decanter. “No, I’m going down to the station and see if they want to ask any questions, and then I’m going home and pack. I’ve got reservations on the Chief: six o’clock.”

  Fenner stood up. “That’s too bad,” he said. “I have a hunch that you and I would be a big help to one another.”

  He held out his hand. Kells shook it, turned and went to the door. Then he turned again, slowly. “One other thing,” he said. “There’s a gal out here—name’s Granquist—came out with a couple of Rose’s boys—claims to have a million dollars’ worth of lowdown on the administration. I can’t use it. Maybe you can get together.”

  Fenner said: “Fine. How much does she want?”

  Kells hesitated a bare moment. “Fifteen grand.”

  Fenner whistled. “It must be good,” he said. “Send her out to my hotel. Send her out tonight—I’ll throw a party for her.”

  “She’ll go for that. She’s Scotch-screwy.” Kells grinned and went out the door and closed it behind him.

  He went into the Police Station, into the Reporters’ Room to the right of the entrance. Shep Beery looked up over his paper and said: “My God! What happened to your face?”

  They were alone in the room. Kells looked with interest at the smudged pencil drawings on the walls. He sat down. “I got it caught in a revolving door,” he said. “Does anyone around here want to talk to me?”

  “I do, for one.” Beery put the paper down and leaned across his desk. He was a stoop-shouldered gangling man with a sharp sad face, a shock of colorless hair. “What’s the inside on all this, Gerry?”

  “All what?”

  Beery spread the paper, pointed to headlines: PERRY INDICTED FOR HAARDT MURDER; WIFE CONFESSES. Beery’s finger moved across the page: GAMBLING BARGE BURNS; 200 NARROWLY ESCAPE DEATH WHEN JOANNA D. SINKS.

  Kells laughed. “Probably just newspaper stories.”

  “No fooling, Gerry, give me a lead.” Beery was intensely serious.

  Kells asked: “You or your sheet?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  Kells trailed a long white finger over his discolored right eye. “If you read your paper a little more carefully,” he said, “you’ll find where an unidentified man was found dead near a wharf at San Pedro.” He put his elbows on the desk, leaned close to Beery. “That’s Nemo Kastner of Kansas City. He shot Doc Haardt on Jack Rose’s order and helped frame me for it. He was shot by O’Donnell, his running mate, when they had an argument over the cut for Haardt’s kill. He set fire to the ship….”

  “…And swam four miles with a lungful of lead.” Beery had been thumbing through the paper; pointed to the item.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Who shot O’Donnell?” Kells said: “You’re too goddamned curious. Maybe it was Rose…. Is he going to live?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s swell.” Kells took a deep breath.

  “Now that’s for you,” he said. “Perry will have to take the fall for Doc’s murder for the time being. He was in on it plenty, anyway. Kastner’s dead and I couldn’t prove any of it without getting myself jammed up again. If anything happens to me you can use your own judgment, but until something happens this is all under your hat. Right?”

  Beery nodded.

  Kells stood up, said: “Now let’s go upstairs and see if the captain can think of any hard ones.”

  They went out of the room into the corridor, upstairs.

  The captain was a huge watery-eyed Swede with a bulbous, thread-veined nose.

  Beery said: “This is Kells…. He thought you might want to talk to him.”

  The captain shook his head slowly. He looked out the window and took a great square of linen out of his pocket and blew his
nose. “No—I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “Cullen and the cabdriver say you was at Cullen’s house yesterday afternoon when Haardt was shot.”

  He looked up at Kells and his big mouth slit across his face to show yellow uneven teeth. “Was you?”

  Kells smiled faintly, nodded.

  “That’s good enough for me.” He blew his nose again noisily, folded the handkerchief carefully and put it in his pocket. “Perry’s the only one to say you killed Doc. Lieutenant Reilly thinks you did, but we can’t run this department on thinks…. I think Perry’s guilty as hell.”

  They all nodded sagely.

  Kells said: “So long, Captain.” He and Beery started out of the room.

  The captain spoke again as Kells went through the door.

  “Where was you last night?”

  Kells turned. “I was drunk,” he said. “I don’t remember.” His eyes glittered with amusement.

  The big man looked at him and his face wrinkled slowly to a grin. “Me too,” he said. He slapped his thigh and laughed—a terrific crashing guffaw.

  His laughter followed Kells and Beery down the stairs, through the corridor, echoing and reechoing.

  Beery said: “See you in church, Gerry.”

  Kells went out into the sunlight. He walked down First to Broadway, up Broadway to his bank.

  The teller told him he had a balance of five thousand, one hundred and thirty dollars. He asked that the account be transferred to a New York bank, then changed his mind.

  “I’ll take it in cash.”

  The teller gave him five thousand-dollar notes, a hundred, a twenty, and a ten-dollar bill. Kells took the sheaf of twenty-four new hundred-dollar bills out of his pocket and exchanged twenty of them for two more thousand-dollar notes. He folded the seven thousand-dollar notes and put them in a black pin-seal cardcase, put the case in his inside breast pocket. He put the five hundreds and the smaller bills in his trouser pocket and went out and got into a cab.

  He said, “Lancaster Hotel” and looked at his watch. It was twoforty; he had three hours and twenty minutes to get home and pack and make the Chief.

  “Gerry.” Granquist called to him as he crossed the lobby.