by Dan Marlowe
“The muscle,” Rick Manfredi said bluntly. “I been askin' a few questions around. Whyn't you hire out?”
“The people that pay the bills get allergic to my not sayin' 'yes, sir' often enough. I been here long enough so nobody bothers me.”
The chubby man offered Johnny a slim panatela. Johnny pocketed it, and Rick Manfredi stripped the cellophane off another, bit off the tip and spat it out. “How'd you like to work for me?” he asked as he reached for his lighter.
“It wouldn't work, Rick,” Johnny said patiently.
“Don't say that so fast,” the gambler said from around the cigar as he rotated it in the flame of the lighter. “Financially I might be able to make it worth your while.”
“I guess everyone can use money,” Johnny said slowly, “but lately I don't seem able to spend much. I accumulate enough cash from odds and ends around here so that every so often Chet Rollins, the hotel auditor, has to get on my tail about cashin' some back pay checks so he can close his books.” He looked at Rick Manfredi. “I'm not sayin' I'll never need it, but I don't need it now.”
“Why do you say it wouldn't work?” the gambler persisted.
“Because, when you had somethin' you wanted done, Rick, you'd put out a set of blueprints with the job. I don't work that way.”
The cigar waved in the pudgy hand. “Think it over, anyway. I could use you, and I think we could work it out.” He paused as though planning his next sentence, and Johnny glanced at Manuel Ybarra. The dark man smiled slightly and nodded his head in the very slightest degree. In agreement? Johnny couldn't be sure. “I been gettin' a bad report card on you, boy,” Rick Manfredi resumed. “Had a visitor a little bit ago. Ed Keith. Said he'd been talkin' to you today, and that you was askin' questions about me. That goin' on all over town?”
“Not all over,” Johnny said lightly.
“I don't like it,” the gambler said heavily. “Trouble I can't use. Why you got to get on my back?”
“I heard you say you didn't fix that fight,” Johnny said evenly. “I haven't heard anyone else say so.”
“Listen!” Rick Manfredi said hotly. “If an' when I fix a fight, mister, I don't wind up behind the eight ball with the slobs countin' the money. When I do somethin', I do it right!” He pointed the cigar for emphasis. “Don't crowd me, man.” The olive features turned a dull red as Johnny laughed.
“We already settled you can't buy me, Rick,” Johnny told him. “You think you can scare me? You know what I'd do, was I you? I'd find out who fixed that fight.”
The chubby man's eyes narrowed. “You say that like you think I don't have far to look. I'm beginning not to like a lot of the things you have to say, Killain.” The cigar was restored to the full-lipped mouth, the tip glowed redly and a thin stream of pale smoke emerged in driblets. “I didn't finish tellin' you about Keith. He wanted to borrow five grand so bad he could taste it. I gave it to him.”
“So you're hangin' up with me because Keith put you on the arm for five thousand?” Johnny asked disgustedly. “If it's that easy, I'll take ten myself.”
“The five grand is nothing, I got a story for the five,” the gambler said. “Come to find out Keith went the same way I did on the fight, but he didn't have it to pay off. Now, who bets five grand he don't have on a fight?”
“So he knew it was fixed. So did you, an' I don't see them pinnin' no medals on either of you.”
“He could go like Gidlow went, an' then where's your five?”
“Newspapermen don't get killed,” the gambler said stubbornly. “And how often do you get a chance to put a big-sheet sportswriter in your pocket? It could be a good investment.”
“Regardless of what other pockets he's in?”
The hooded eyes narrowed again. “Like whose?”
“Turner's.”
The silence built up in the cloakroom. “You sayin' Turner fixed that fight?” Manfredi asked finally. He frowned. “I can't see it. He's got too much to lose.” The frown deepened. “I hope you're wrong. I wouldn't like to think it was him I tied into on this deal. That's a tough rooster.” He looked at Manuel, who shrugged neutrally. The round man snapped his fingers. “I've got to make a phone call.” He pointed at Johnny. “One more chance, boy: I'll put you to work.”
“Some other time, Rick. Phone booths are right outside.” Johnny delayed Manuel as Manfredi went out into the lobby. His eyes were on the mark on the bronzed cheekbone, reduced now to a livid scar. “No more excitement?”
Manuel touched the mark tentatively with a fingertip. “Nothing,” he said easily. “For now.”
“I never did ask you if you recognized them,” Johnny said casually.
“If you didn't ask, I wouldn't have to lie,” the dark man replied gravely, and smiled at Johnny. “I don't think they want to kill me.”
“Why the hell should they? Four or five good head shots, an' you sit in the dark the rest of the way.”
“It has occurred to me.” The eyes were shadowed, but the lips were firm. “Shall we join Rick?”
“You joined him a long time ago,” Johnny said softly. “I hope you knew what you were doin'.” He led the way out into the lobby.
CHAPTER VIII
Johnny's cab pulled up before the lighted canopy at the entrance to the Cafe of the Three Sisters as Consuelo Ybarra came hurriedly out of the door. “Hey!” he called after her as she started up the street without noticing him, and she glanced impatiently over her shoulder but waited while he paid off the driver and joined her. He pointed to the cloth coat over her street-length dress. “Where's all the fine feathers tonight?”
“I asked off.” She gestured at herself with a gloved hand. “Cinderella returns to the fireplace.”
He examined the ringed dark circles beneath her shadowed eyes. “What's gnawin' on you, kid? You look like an accident huntin' up a lawyer.”
“I'm tired.” She flared suddenly with more of her usual spirit. “Tired of being unlucky!”
Johnny cocked an eyebrow at her. “You're unlucky?”
“Desperately,” she said harshly. “All my life. Everything I attempt. I involve all my friends, and drag them down with me. I should be burned at the stake.”
“Why?”
But she as quickly withdrew. “It is not important.” She nodded at the door behind them. “Manuel is at the bar.”
“I didn't come to see Manuel.”
“I hope you didn't come to see me.” Her tone was grave. “I'm not proud of the other night, you understand. I haven't known men of your force of will, but I do not excuse myself. It is my penance that Christian lady and female animal are in too delicate a balance in my nature. I have much need of self-control. You hit an exposed nerve, but it will not happen again.” The classical features were almost school-girlishly solemn. “If you'll excuse me, I'm on an errand,” she continued. The full-lipped mouth twisted bitterly. “Of mercy, its necessity created by my greed.”
“I'll go with you,” Johnny said easily, and took her arm. “We need a cab?”
Angrily she flung off his hand. “Did you hear me? I won't have you trailing after me like a bitch in heat!”
He recaptured the arm, firmly. “Simmer down, kid. I don't need you in bed to like you. There's a difference.”
“There is a difference,” she admitted tiredly. “And I hope, if I had not sensed it, there would never have been the other between us.” She smiled at him somberly. “It's a cushion to bruised nerves to believe it, anyway.” She waved a hand ahead of them down the dark street. “I'm visiting the small hospital the mission sisters maintain. If such a place doesn't dishearten you, it's true I'm tired of my own company. We won't need a cab. It's only two blocks crosstown.”
She took his arm, and they walked in silence. The streets were quiet, the gutters filthy, the shop windows behind heavy steel grilles. In such a neighborhood, Johnny reflected, menace was a part of the atmosphere.
On the stone steps of the hospital building Consuelo took the lead, and inside
the heavy doors Johnny's nostrils automatically tested the antiseptically deadened air. He followed left through the first door; the room was a small chapel, with tiers of candles burning quietly on low stands behind a wooden railing. He stood awkwardly as the girl knelt and, producing a coin from her bag, placed it in the offertory box. She lighted a candle, remained on her knees a moment with bowed head, then arose. They were in the outside corridor again before she spoke in the lowered tone the building seemed to require. “The hospital is so small that visitors are supposed to come singly, but I don't believe the sisters will question your being with me.”
He was beginning to second-guess himself on this trip; these places were just too damn depressing. “Who we gonna see?” he asked her as they passed half-open doors with silent rooms beyond. Consuelo turned toward the stairs.
“My uncle, of course,” she replied, surprise plain in her voice. She stopped in the middle of the stairs. “You didn't know? Rick said-” She looked doubtful an instant, then shrugged. “Never mind. Come along.”
He followed her up the circular, marbled stairs. In the upper hall white-faced sisters in whispering dark robes passed them on silent feet, and the fragmented murmurs of conversation that came to Johnny's ear from the partly opened doorways were all in Spanish.
The room that the girl turned into at the end of the corridor was like all the other rooms Johnny had glimpsed-boxlike, white-walled and dimly lighted. A plump sister rose from the single chair beside the high bed. “He is no worse,” she said gently in Spanish in answer to Consuelo's inquiring look. The calm, authoritative voice was not hushed, but it made no real impact upon the hospital quiet. The sister's glance took in Johnny at the foot of the bed, then returned to Consuelo. “If he should awaken, do not tire him.”
“ 'If he should awaken, do not tire him',” the girl repeated woodenly in English when the nun had left the room. “Three days in a coma, but I am not to tire him. He is no worse, which means he is no better.” She drew off her gloves, and her hands grasped each other with an intensity that whitened the knuckles.
She sank down after a moment into the chair the sister had vacated, and, from the end of the bed where he stood, Johnny looked down upon a shock of white hair upon the pillow and a hawk's nose above bloodless lips-and suddenly he understood a number of things. The man in the bed was Terry Chavez, who had been Charlie Roketenetz's trainer. And, by her own admission, Terry Chavez was also the uncle of Consuelo Ybarra.
He looked at the girl, who was trying to repress tears. “The way I heard it, this wasn't supposed to be serious.”
“He was improving, at first.” Her voice was only a murmur, and her lips drew back suddenly from even white teeth. “It was supposed to be a beating, a warning, but one blow too many or too heavy-” She gestured at the bed. “It's my fault.” He could see the flare of her nostrils as her voice strengthened. “I will swear an oath-if he dies, I will kill a man, and the man will not enjoy it.”
“Who's on your list?”
“Never mind.”
Johnny considered the firm lips and the small, stubborn chin. “Chavez knew the kid was going to dump the fight?”
She nodded. “It worried the boy, but of course it was one thing with which my uncle could not help. My uncle told Manuel. I overhead them discussing it as a matter of professional interest.” Her lips curled in self-scorn. “It took me to suggest that we get Rick Manfredi to capitalize upon it for us. It seemed so easy, since Rick would do as I asked, but from that point on everything that possibly could went wrong.” Her voice sank wearily. “The fight was supposed to end in the fourth. Nobody knows what happened, but they think now that the fighter was out to prove to himself that he could have won if they'd let him. He would go in the fourth, all right, but for three rounds he would fight. At the very end of the third round he very nearly knocked the other man out, and all through the next round had to almost literally carry him, with no chance to lose as he had been supposed to do. It was the sixth before he could find a way, and then very clumsily. It was too late for Rick's money, and the money which had fixed the fight. The fixers suspected Rick's knowledge and, I assume, backtracked from him to me and then to my uncle, who was beaten as a warning- Oh, I've made a fine mess of things!”
“They could come lookin' for you,” Johnny observed.
“God help the man who tries it,” she said soberly.
“All that remark proves is that you haven't wised up very much as to the kind of the people in this operation,” he told her impatiently.
“And all that remark proves is that you haven't wised up very much, as you say, to the kind of people I am.” She rose abruptly to her feet. “See if you can find the sister and bring her back. I can't do him any good here. It tears me inside to see him lying there, knowing it's my fault.”
From the doorway he could see the frozen intensity upon the beautiful face as she hovered over the bed. Maybe you've been underestimating the dynamite in that package, Killain, he thought to himself as he walked down the corridor in search of the nun. It might pay you to add a dimension or two to your thinking about Consuelo Ybarra.
On the way through the hotel lobby to the foyer, Johnny was buttonholed by Marty Seiden, the nattily bow-tied, red-haired, middle-shift front desk man. “Telephone, John,” he called from behind the registration desk, and Johnny grunted acknowledgment and swerved to the bank of house phones.
“Yeah?”
“Johnny? Can you come over to the apartment?” Sally's voice pumped adrenalin through his system momentarily until he realized that she sounded more puzzled than alarmed. “I wish you'd talk to this ridiculous man. He seems to think-”
“What ridiculous man?” Johnny interrupted her. “How'd he get in?”
“Why, I let him in, naturally. He's from the Treasury Department.”
“He's from what?” Actuality was so far removed from his fear that he felt winded. “You gone an' set up a printin' press in the bathroom?”
“Silly, he's from Internal Revenue. He's-”
“Oh, oh,” Johnny said softly. “I'll be right over.” He whistled a tuneless little air as he replaced the phone and resumed his interrupted progress to the street. Internal Revenue. Sure didn't let any grass grow under their feet…
“This is Mr. Quince, Johnny,” Sally said. “Mr. Killain, Mr. Quince.”
Johnny shook hands with a balding man in a conservative blue suit. “You heard correctly, Mr. Killain,” the man said drily. “The name is Quince. Malcolm. And it's not an alias. A name for the job, wouldn't you say?”
“I'd say,” Johnny agreed. He didn't even try to repress his smile, and Mr. Quince gave him a small, neat smile in return. Mr. Quince was small and neat in all departments, including his paunch. “You must be an authority on wisecracks on the name an' the job.”
“It has one advantage,” Mr. Quince remarked philosophically. “People don't forget me.” His examination of Johnny was quick and thorough. “You represent this young lady legally?”
“God forbid!” Johnny protested. “You wouldn't wish that on your worst enemy. I-advise her, let's say.”
“Then let's bring you up to date upon a matter concerning which she could use some advice,” Mr. Quince said briskly. He opened the briefcase at his feet and took out some papers, then removed his glasses from the case in his breast pocket and slipped them on. “I refer to the legacy which in the probate court's due process will be turned over to Miss Fontaine.” He straightened his glasses with one hand, his tone apologetic. “You understand that much of what I have to say is at the moment tentative, due to the lack of time for a more complete investigation on our part, but my superiors thought it best that I have this little talk with you before your hopes-or plans-crystallized.”
He had looked directly at Sally during this little speech, and she shifted restlessly. “You mean I'm not going to get it?” she asked.
“It's impossible in any event that you will receive it in its present form, of course,” Mr. Qui
nce said carefully. “If there were no other considerations at all, the fact of an inheritance tax-double, in this case, since both the Gidlow and Roketenetz estates in turn would be affected-would materially reduce the amount of the legacy.”
“By how much?” Johnny broke in.
“In an estate inheritance situation there is an automatic exemption of sixty thousand dollars. The tax rate upon the passing of the property solely to Roketenetz would be in the neighborhood of twenty per cent. Upon its repassing to Miss Fontaine, the same exemption and tax rate would apply, but as an offset there would be a carry-back credit due to the successive deaths falling within a two-year period.”
“But the bundle gets nipped twice,” Johnny reflected. “Two twenty per cent chops, huh?”
“With the exemptions and the carry-back credit, not that severe in the aggregate,” Mr. Quince said cautiously. “But before either of you starts indulging in mental arithmetic, please remember I said that would be the case if there were no other considerations. Unfortunately, there are.”
Johnny winced. “I can feel it comin'. Uncle wants to know where the bundle came from.”
The tax man nodded. “Exactly. Neither Gidlow nor Roketenetz ever paid taxes upon any earned sums that could normally lead to the accumulation of such an amount.”
Sally appealed to Johnny. “I told him Charlie never had any money like that!”
“On the basis of a hurried preliminary investigation,” Mr. Quince pronounced majestically, “we're prepared to accept that statement.” He paused to smile briefly at Sally. “But that simply takes us back to Gidlow, and there we have complications. He had been to the tax wars before and, from our point of view, unfavorably. He had never paid taxes upon any part of such a substantial sum of money, and in view of his past tax record we feel that this is undeclared income. Consequently, pending some subsequent development that would prove the money had been acquired over a period of years, we're prepared to go into court and maintain that the entire amount is taxable as one-year income.” He paused for breath.