Conant’s face was a mask of fury. He balled his fist, took a jerky step forward. “Why you—damn louse—”
Jean Adrian was leaning forward staring round-eyed at Carmady. Targo was staring at him, with a loose grin, pale hard eyes. Courtway was staring at him. There was no expression of any kind on Courtway’s face. He sat cold, relaxed, distant.
Conant laughed suddenly, snapped his fingers. “Okey, toot your horn,” he grunted.
Carmady said slowly: “I’ll tell you another reason why there’ll be no showdown. That shooting at Cyrano’s. Those threats to make Targo drop an unimportant fight. That hood that went to Miss Adrian’s hotel room and sapped her, left her lying on her doorway. Can’t you tie all that in, Conant? I can.”
Courtway leaned forward suddenly and placed his hand on his gun, folded it around the butt. His black eyes were holes in a white frozen face.
Conant didn’t move, didn’t speak.
Carmady went on: “Why did Targo get those threats, and after he didn’t drop the fight, why did a gun go to see him at Cyrano’s, a night club, a very bad place for that kind of play? Because at Cyrano’s he was with the girl, and Cyrano was his backer, and if anything happened at Cyrano’s the law would get the threat story before they had time to think of anything else. That’s why. The threats were a build-up for a killing. When the shooting came off Targo was to be with the girl, so the hood could get the girl and it would look as if Targo was the one he was after.
“He would have tried for Targo, too, of course, but above all he would have got the girl. Because she was the dynamite behind this shakedown, without her it meant nothing, and with her it could always be made over into a legitimate paternity suit. If it didn’t work the other way. You know about her and about Targo, because Shenvair got cold feet and sold out. And Shenvair knew about the hood—because when the hood showed, and I saw him—and Shenvair knew I knew him, because he had heard me tell Targo about him—then Shenvair tried to pick a drunken fight with me and keep me from trying to interfere.”
Carmady stopped, rubbed the side of his head again, very slowly, very gently. He watched Conant with an up-from-under look.
Conant said slowly, very harshly: “I don’t play those games, buddy. Believe it or not—I don’t.”
Carmady said: “Listen. The hood could have killed the girl at the hotel with his sap. He didn’t because Targo wasn’t there and the fight hadn’t been fought, and the build-up would have been all wasted. He went there to have a close look at her, without make-up. And she was scared about something, and had a gun with her. So he sapped her down and ran away. That visit was just a finger.”
Conant said again: “I don’t play those games, buddy.” Then he took the Luger out of his pocket and held it down at his side.
Carmady shrugged, turned his head to stare at Senator Courtway.
“No, but he does,” he said softly. “He had the motive, and the play wouldn’t look like him. He cooked it up with Shenvair—and if it went wrong, as it did, Shenvair would have breezed and if the law got wise, big tough Doll Conant is the boy whose nose would be in the mud.”
Courtway smiled a little and said in an utterly dead voice: “The young man is very ingenious, but surely—”
Targo stood up. His face was a stiff mask. His lips moved slowly and he said: “It sounds pretty good to me. I think I’ll twist your goddamn neck, Mister Courtway.”
The albino snarled, “Sit down, punk,” and lifted his gun. Targo turned slightly and slammed the albino on the jaw. He went over backwards, smashed his head against the wall. The gun sailed along the floor from his limp hand.
Targo started across the room.
Conant looked at him sidewise and didn’t move. Targo went past him, almost touching him. Conant didn’t move a muscle. His big face was blank, his eyes narrowed to a faint glitter between the heavy lids.
Nobody moved but Targo. Then Courtway lifted his gun and his finger whitened on the trigger and the gun roared.
Carmady moved across the room very swiftly and stood in front of Jean Adrian, between her and the rest of the room.
Targo looked down at his hands. His face twisted into a silly smile. He sat down on the floor and pressed both his hands against his chest.
Courtway lifted his gun again and then Conant moved. The Luger jerked up, flamed twice. Blood flowed down Courtway’s hand. His gun fell behind his desk. His long body seemed to swoop down after the gun. It jackknifed until only his shoulders showed humped above the line of the desk.
Conant said: “Stand up and take it, you goddamn double-crossing swine!”
There was a shot behind the desk. Courtway’s shoulders went down out of sight.
After a moment Conant went around behind the desk, stopped, straightened.
“He ate one,” he said very calmly. “Through the mouth… And I lose me a nice clean senator.”
Targo took his hands from his chest and fell over sidewise on the floor and lay still.
The door of the room slammed open. The butler stood in it, tousle-headed, his mouth gaping. He tried to say something, saw the gun in Conant’s hand, saw Targo slumped on the floor. He didn’t say anything.
The albino was getting to his feet, rubbing his chin, feeling his teeth, shaking his head. He went slowly along the wall and gathered up his gun.
Conant snarled at him: “Swell gut you turned out to be. Get on the phone. Get Malloy, the night captain—and snap it up!”
Carmady turned, put his hand down and lifted Jean Adrian’s cold chin.
“It’s getting light, angel. And I think the rain has stopped,” he said slowly. He pulled his inevitable flask out. “Let’s take a drink—to Mister Targo.”
The girl shook her head, covered her face with her hands.
After a long time there were sirens.
X
The slim, tired-looking kid in the pale and silver of the Carondelet held his white glove in front of the closing doors and said: “Gorky’s boils is better, but he didn’t come to work, Mister Carmady. Tony the bell captain ain’t showed this morning neither. Pretty soft for some guys.”
Carmady stood close to Jean Adrian in the corner of the car. They were alone in it. He said: “That’s what you think.”
The boy turned red. Carmady moved over and patted his shoulder, said: “Don’t mind me, son. I’ve been up all night with a sick friend. Here, buy yourself a second breakfast.”
“Jeeze, Mister Carmady, I didn’t mean—”
The doors opened at nine and they went down the corridor to 914. Carmady took the key and opened the door, put the key on the inside, held the door, said: “Get some sleep and wake up with your fist in your eye. Take my flask and get a mild toot on. Do you good.”
The girl went in through the door, said over her shoulder: “I don’t want liquor. Come in a minute. There’s something I want to tell you.”
He shut the door and followed her in. A bright bar of sunlight lay across the carpet all the way to the davenport. He lit a cigarette and stared at it.
Jean Adrian sat down and jerked her hat off and rumpled her hair. She was silent a moment, then she said slowly, carefully: “It was swell of you to go to all that trouble for me. I don’t know why you should do it.”
Carmady said: “I can think of a couple of reasons, but they didn’t keep Targo from getting killed, and that was my fault in a way. Then in another way it wasn’t. I didn’t ask him to twist Senator Courtway’s neck.”
The girl said: “You think you’re hard-boiled but you’re just a big slob that argues himself into a jam for the first tramp he finds in trouble. Forget it. Forget Targo and forget me. Neither of us was worth any part of your time. I wanted to tell you that because I’ll be going away as soon as they let me, and I won’t be seeing you any more. This is goodbye.”
Carmady nodded, stared at the sun on the carpet. The girl went on: “It’s a little hard to tell. I’m not looking for sympathy when I say I’m a tramp. I’ve smothered in too many
hall bedrooms, stripped in too many filthy dressing rooms, missed too many meals, told too many lies to be anything else. That’s why I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with you, ever.”
Carmady said: “I like the way you tell it. Go on.”
She looked at him quickly, looked away again. “I’m not the Gianni girl. You guessed that. But I knew her. We did a cheap sister act together when they still did sister acts. Ada and Jean Adrian. We made up our names from hers. That flopped, and we went in a road show and that flopped too. In New Orleans. The going was a little too rough for her. She swallowed bichloride. I kept her photos because I knew her story. And looking at that thin cold guy and thinking what he could have done for her I got to hate him. She was his kid all right. Don’t ever think she wasn’t. I even wrote letters to him, asking for help for her, just a little help, signing her name. But they didn’t get any answer. I got to hate him so much I wanted to do something to him, after she took the bichloride. So I came out here when I got a stake.”
She stopped talking and laced her fingers together tightly, then pulled them apart violently, as if she wanted to hurt herself. She went on: “I met Targo through Cyrano and Shenvair through him. Shenvair knew the photos. He’d worked once for an agency in Frisco that was hired to watch Ada. You know all the rest of it.”
Carmady said: “It sounds pretty good. I wondered why the touch wasn’t made sooner. Do you want me to think you didn’t want his money?”
“No. I’d have taken his money all right. But that wasn’t what I wanted most. I said I was a tramp.”
Carmady smiled very faintly and said: “You don’t know a lot about tramps, angel. You made an illegitimate pass and you got caught. That’s that, but the money wouldn’t have done you any good. It would have been dirty money. I know.”
She looked up at him, stared at him. He touched the side of his face and winced and said: “I know because that’s the kind of money mine is. My dad made it out of crooked sewerage and paving contracts, out of gambling concessions, appointment pay-offs, even vice, I daresay. He made it every rotten way there is to make money in city politics. And when it was made and there was nothing left to do but sit and look at it, he died and left it to me. It hasn’t brought me any fun either. I always hope it’s going to, but it never does. Because I’m his pup, his blood, reared in the same gutter. I’m worse than a tramp, angel. I’m a guy that lives on crooked dough and doesn’t even do his own stealing.”
He stopped, flicked ash on the carpet, straightened his hat on his head.
“Think that over, and don’t run too far, because I have all the time in the world and it wouldn’t do you any good. It would be so much more fun to run away together.”
He went a little way towards the door, stood looking down at the sunlight on the carpet, looked back at her quickly and then went on out.
When the door shut she stood up and went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed just as she was, with her coat on. She stared at the ceiling. After a long time she smiled. In the middle of the smile she fell asleep.
Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories Page 23
