Los Angeles Noir 2

by Hamilton, Denise.

  Channing rolled off the cot, scrambling toward Flavin.

  Flavin fired again, twice, so rapidly the shots sounded like one. One of Padway’s boys knelt down and bowed forward over his knees like a praying Jap. Another of Padway’s men fell. The second shot clipped Padway, tearing the shoulder pad of his suit.

  Channing grabbed Flavin’s wrist from behind.

  “Okay,” said Padway grimly. “Hold it, everybody.”

  Before he got the words out a small sharp crack came from behind the cot. Flavin relaxed. He lay looking up into Channing’s face with an expression of great surprise, as though the third eye just opened in his forehead gave him a completely new perspective.

  Marge Krist stood green-eyed and deadly with a little pearl-handled revolver smoking in her hand.

  Padway turned toward her slowly. Channing’s mouth twitched dourly. He hardly glanced at the girl, but rolled the boy’s body over carefully.

  Channing said, “Did you kill Hank?”

  Rudy whispered, “Honest to God, no.”

  “Did Flavin kill him?”

  “I don’t know …” Tears came in Rudy’s eyes. “Hank,” he whispered, “I wish …” The tears kept running out of his eyes for several seconds after he was dead.

  By that time the police had come into the room, from the dark disused doorways, from behind the stacked liquor. Max Gandara said, “Everybody hold still.”

  Dave Padway put his hands up slowly, his eyes at first wide with surprise and then narrow and ice-hard. His gunboy did the same, first dropping his rod with a heavy clatter on the bare floor.

  Padway said, “They’ve been here all the time.”

  Channing sat up stiffly. “I hope they were. I didn’t know whether Max would play with me or not.”

  “You dirty double-crossing louse.”

  “I feel bad, crossing up an ape like you, Dave. You treated me so square, up there by Hyperion.” Channing raised his voice. “Max, look out for the boy with the chopper.”

  Gandara said, “I had three men up there. They took him when he went up, real quiet.”

  Marge Krist had come like a sleepwalker around the cot. She was close to Padway. Quite suddenly she fainted. Padway caught her, so that she shielded his body, and his gun snapped into his hand.

  Max Gandara said, “Don’t shoot. Don’t anybody shoot.”

  “That’s sensible,” said Padway softly.

  Channing’s hand, on the floor, slid over the gun Flavin wasn’t using anymore. Then, very quickly, he threw himself forward into the table with the lamp on it.

  A bullet slammed into the wood, through it, and past his ear, and then Channing fired twice, deliberately, through the flames.

  Channing rose and walked past the fire. He moved stiffly, limping, but there was a difference in him. Padway was down on one knee, eyes shut and teeth clenched against the pain of a shattered wrist. Marge Krist was still standing. She was staring with stricken eyes at the hole in her white forearm and the pattern of brilliant red threads spreading from it.

  Max Gandara caught Channing. “You crazy—”

  Channing hit him, hard and square. His face didn’t change expression. “I owe you that one, Max. And before you start preaching the sanctity of womanhood, you better pry out a couple of those slugs that just missed me. You’ll find they came from Miss Krist’s pretty little popgun—the same one that killed her boyfriend, Jack Flavin.” He went over and tilted Marge Krist’s face to his, quite gently. “You came out of your faint in a hurry, didn’t you, sweetheart?”

  She brought up her good hand and tried to claw his eye out.

  Channing laughed. He pushed her into the arms of a policeman. “It’ll all come out in the wash. Meantime, there are the bullets from Marge’s gun. The fact that she had a gun at all proves she was in on the gang. They’d have searched her, if all that pious stuff about poor Rudy’s evil ways had been on the level. She was a little surprised about Padway and sore because Flavin had kept it from her. But she knew which was the better man, all right. She was going along with Padway, and she shot Flavin to keep his mouth shut about Hank, and to make sure he didn’t get Padway by accident. Flavin was a gutty little guy, and he came close to doing just that. Marge untied me because she hoped I’d get shot in the confusion, or start trouble on my own account. If you hadn’t come in, Max, she’d probably have shot me herself. She didn’t want any more fussing about Hank Channing, and with me and Flavin dead she was in the clear.”

  Gandara said with ugly stubbornness, “Sounded to me like Flavin made a pretty good case against Rudy.”

  “Sure, sure. He was down on the ground with half his teeth out and three guys holding guns on him.”

  Marge Krist was sitting now on the cot, while somebody worked over her with a first aid kit. Channing stood in front of her.

  “You’ve done a good night’s work, Marge. You killed Rudy just as much as you did Flavin, or Hank. Rudy had decent stuff in him. You forced him into the game, but Hank was turning him soft. You killed Hank.”

  Channing moved closer to her. She looked up at him, her green eyes meeting his dark ones, both of them passionate and cruel.

  “You’re a smart girl, Marge. You and your mealy-mouthed hypocrisy. I know now what you meant when you accused Rudy of being afraid to be questioned. Flavin couldn’t kill Hank by himself. He wasn’t big enough, and Hank wasn’t that dumb. He didn’t trust Flavin. But you, Marge, sure, he trusted you. He’d stand on a dark pier at midnight and talk to you, and never notice who was sneaking up behind with a blackjack.” He bent over her. “A smart girl, Marge, and a pretty one. I don’t think I’ll want to stand outside the window while you die.”

  “I wish I’d killed you too,” she whispered. “By God, I wish I’d killed you too!”

  Channing nodded. He went over and sat down wearily. He looked exhausted and weak, but his eyes were alive.

  “Somebody give me a cigarette,” he said. He struck the match himself. The smoke tasted good.

  It was his first smoke in ten years.

  DEAD MAN

  BY JAMES M. CAIN

  San Fernando

  (Originally published in 1936)

  1

  He felt the train check, knew what it meant. In a moment, from up toward the engine, came the chant of the railroad detective: “Rise and shine, boys, rise and shine.” The hoboes began dropping off. He could hear them out there in the dark, cursing as the train went by. That was what they always did on these freights: let the hoboes climb on in the yards, making no effort to dislodge them there; for that would have meant a foolish game of hide-and-seek between two or three detectives and two or three hundred hoboes, with the hoboes swarming on as fast as the detectives put them off. What they did was let the hoboes alone until the train was several miles under way; then they pulled down to a speed slow enough for men to drop off, but too fast for them to climb back on. Then the detective went down the line, brushing them off, like caterpillars from a twig. In two minutes they would all be ditched, a crowd of bitter men in a lonely spot, but they always cursed, always seemed surprised.

  He crouched in the coal gondola and waited. He hadn’t boarded a flat or a refrigerator with the others, back in the Los Angeles yards, tempting though this comfort was. He wasn’t long on the road, and he still didn’t like to mix with the other hoboes, admit he was one of them. Also, he couldn’t shake off a notion that he was sharper than they were, that playing a lone hand he might think of some magnificent trick that would defeat the detective, and thus, even at this ignoble trade, give him a sense of accomplishment, of being good at it. He had slipped into the gond not in spite of its harshness, but because of it; it was black, and would give him a chance to hide, and the detective, not expecting him there, might pass him by. He was nineteen years old, and was proud of the nickname they had given him in the poolroom back home. They called him Lucky.

  “Rise and shine, boys, rise and shine.”

  Three dropped off the tank car ahead
, and the detective climbed into the gond. The flashlight shot around, and Lucky held his breath. He had curled into one of the three chutes for unloading coal. The trick worked. These chutes were dangerous, for if you stepped into one and the bottom dropped, it would dump you under the train. The detective took no chances. He first shot the flash, then held on to the side while he climbed over the chutes. When he came to the last one, where Lucky lay, he shot the flash, but carelessly, and not squarely into the hole, so that he saw nothing. Stepping over, he went on, climbed to the boxcar behind, and resumed his chant: there were more curses, more feet sliding on ballast on the roadbed outside. Soon the train picked up speed. That meant the detective had reached the caboose, that all the hoboes were cleared.

  Lucky stood up, looked around. There was nothing to see, except hot-dog stands along the highway, but it was pleasant to poke your head up, let the wind whip your hair, and reflect how you had outwitted the detective. When the click of the rails slowed and station lights showed ahead, he squatted down again, dropped his feet into the chute. As soon as lights flashed alongside, he braced against the opposite side of the chute: that was one thing he had learned, the crazy way they shot the brakes on these freights. When the train jerked to a shrieking stop, he was ready, and didn’t get slammed. The bell tolled, the engine pulled away, there was an interval of silence. That meant they had cut the train, and would be picking up more cars. Soon they would be going on.

  “Ah-ha! Hiding out on me, hey?”

  The flashlight shot down from the boxcar. Lucky jumped, seized the side of the gond, scrambled up, vaulted. When he hit the roadbed, his ankles stung from the impact, and he staggered for footing. The detective was on him, grappling. He broke away, ran down the track, past the caboose, into the dark. The detective followed, but he was a big man and began to lose ground. Lucky was clear, when all of a sudden his foot drove against a switch bar and he went flat on his face, panting from the hysteria of shock.

  The detective didn’t grapple this time. He let go with a barrage of kicks.

  “Hide out on me, will you? Treat you right, give you a break, and you hide out on me. I’ll learn you to hide out on me.”

  Lucky tried to get up, couldn’t. He was jerked to his feet, rushed up the track on the run. He pulled back, but couldn’t get set. He sat down, dug in with his sliding heels. The detective kicked and jerked, in fury. Lucky clawed for something to hold on to, his hand caught the rail. The detective stamped on it. He pulled it back in pain, clawed again. This time his fingers closed on a spike, sticking an inch or two out of the tie. The detective jerked, the spike pulled out of the hole, and Lucky resumed his unwilling run.

  “Lemme go! Why don’t you lemme go?”

  “Come on! Hide out on me, will you? I’ll learn you to hide out on Larry Nott!”

  “Lemme go! Lemme—”

  Lucky pulled back, braced with his heels, got himself stopped. Then his whole body coiled like a spring and let go in one convulsive, passionate lunge. The spike, still in his hand, came down on the detective’s head, and he felt it crush. He stood there, looking down at something dark and formless, lying across the rails.

  2

  Hurrying down the track, he became aware of the spike, gave it a toss, heard it splash in the ditch. Soon he realized that his steps on the ties were being telegraphed by the listening rail, and he plunged across the ditch to the highway. There he resumed his rapid walk, trying not to run. But every time a car overtook him his heels lifted queerly, and his breath first stopped, then came in gasps as he listened for the car to stop. He came to a crossroads, turned quickly to his right. He let himself run here, for the road wasn’t lighted as the main highway was, and there weren’t many cars. The running tired him, but it eased the sick feeling in his stomach. He came to a sign that told him Los Angeles was seventeen miles, and to his left. He turned, walked, ran, stooped down sometimes, panting, to rest. After a while it came to him why he had to get to Los Angeles, and so soon. The soup kitchen opened at seven o’clock. He had to be there, in that same soup kitchen where he had had supper, so it would look as though he had never been away.

  When the lights went off, and it came broad daylight with the suddenness of Southern California, he was in the city, and a clock told him it was ten minutes after five. He thought he had time. He pressed on, exhausted, but never relaxing his rapid, half-shuffling walk.

  It was ten minutes to seven when he got to the soup kitchen, and he quickly walked past it. He wanted to be clear at the end of the line, so he could have a word with Shorty, the man who dished out the soup, without impatient shoves from behind, and growls to keep moving.

  Shorty remembered him. “Still here, hey?”

  “Still here.”

  “Three in a row for you. Holy smoke, they ought to be collecting for you by the month.”

  “Thought you’d be off.”

  “Who, me?”

  “Sunday, ain’t it?”

  “Sunday? Wake up. This is Saturday.”

  “Saturday? You’re kidding.”

  “Kidding my eye, this is Saturday, and a big day in this town, too.”

  “One day looks like another to me.”

  “Not this one. Parade.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shriners. You get that free.”

  “Well, that’s my name, Lucky.”

  “My name’s Shorty, but I’m over six feet.”

  “Nothing like that with me. I really got luck.”

  “You sure?”

  “Like, for instance, getting a hunk of meat.”

  “I didn’t give you no meat.”

  “Ain’t you going to?”

  “Shove your plate over quick. Don’t let nobody see you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Okay, Lucky. Don’t miss the parade.”

  “I won’t.”

  He sat at the rough table with the others, dipped his bread in the soup, tried to eat, but his throat kept contracting from excitement and he made slow work of it. He had what he wanted from Shorty. He had fixed the day, and not only the day but the date, for it would be the same date as the big Shriners’ parade. He had fixed his name, with a little gag. Shorty wouldn’t forget him. His throat relaxed, and he wolfed the piece of meat.

  Near the soup kitchen he saw signs: Lincoln Park Pharmacy, Lincoln Park Cafeteria.

  “Which way is the park, buddy?” If it was a big park, he might find a thicket where he could lie down, rest his aching legs.

  “Straight down, you’ll see it.”

  There was a fence around it, but he found a gate, opened it, slipped in. Ahead of him was a thicket, but the ground was wet from a stream that ran through it. He crossed a small bridge, followed a path. He came to a stable, peeped in. It was empty, but the floor was thickly covered with new hay. He went in, made for a dark corner, burrowed under the hay, closed his eyes. For a few moments everything slipped away, except warmth, relaxation, ease. But then something began to drill into the back of his mind: Where did he spend last night? Where would he tell them he spent last night? He tried to think, but nothing would come to him. He would have said that he spent it where he spent the night before, but he hadn’t spent it in Los Angeles. He had spent it in Santa Barbara, and come down in the morning on a truck. He had never spent a night in Los Angeles. He didn’t know the places. He had no answers to the questions that were now pounding at him like sledge hammers:

  “What’s that? Where you say you was?”

  “In a flophouse.”

  “Which flophouse?”

  “I didn’t pay no attention which flophouse. It was just a flophouse.”

  “Where was this flophouse at?”

  “I don’t know where it was at. I never been to Los Angeles before. I don’t know the names of no streets.”

  “What this flophouse look like?”

  “Looked like a flophouse.”

  “Come on, don’t give us no gags. What this flophouse look like? Ain’t you got eyes, can�
�t you say what this here place looked like? What’s the matter, can’t you talk?”

  Something gripped his arm, and he felt himself being lifted. Something of terrible strength had hold of him, and he was going straight up in the air. He squirmed to get loose, then was plopped on his feet and released. He turned, terrified.

  An elephant was standing there, exploring his clothes with its trunk. He knew then that he had been asleep. But when he backed away, he bumped into another elephant. He slipped between the two elephants, slithered past a third to the door, which was open about a foot. Out in the sunlight, he made his way back across the little bridge, saw what he hadn’t noticed before: pens with deer in them, and ostriches, and mountain sheep, that told him he had stumbled into a zoo. It was after four o’clock, so he must have slept a long time in the hay. Back on the street, he felt a sobbing laugh rise in his throat. That was where he had spent the night. “In the elephant house at Lincoln Park.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. In the elephant house.”

  “What you giving us? A stall?”

  “It ain’t no stall. I was in the elephant house.”

  “With them elephants?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How you get in there?”

  “Just went in. The door was open.”

  “Just went in there, seen the elephants, and bedded down with them?”

  “I thought they was horses.”

  “You thought them elephants was horses?”

  “It was dark. I dug in under the hay. I never knowed they was elephants till morning.”

  “How come you went in this place?”

  “I left the soup kitchen, and in a couple of minutes I came to the park. I went in there, looking for some grass to lie down on. Then I come to this here place, looked to me like a stable. I peeped in, seen the hay, and hit it.”