Crandall kept that irritating grin. “Now how would I know what Mrs. Wendel wants? What her idea of fair and reasonable is? After all, Wendel is wealthy, or so I understand.”
I said to Mard: “He won't talk. Let's go. We're wasting time.”
Crandall held up his hand and said: “I just wanted to see if I could take you over the hurdles a bit, Connell. You've got that flary Irish temper and I always enjoy seeing a man lose control of himself. I'll tell you approximately what Mrs. Wendel thinks is fair. Understand, this is tentative; it will bear discussion.”
I'd lost my temper and was sore at myself for doing it. He acted on me that way, as he did on Mard. I've always hated the fat, smooth toad type and he was the perfect example. He knew he could drive me crazy mad and gloried in the knowledge and I gritted my teeth and got a bit of control on the ball. I said: “Okey! What's the bad news?”
He said: “She wants to be fair. Wendel is worth, at a conservative estimate, two million dollars. Of course that isn't in cash. We think this kind of settlement would be easy on him; one hundred thousand dollars at once, and fifty thousand dollars a year for three years. This, you will understand, will give Mr. Wendel a chance to raise the money without bleeding his business. And it will make income tax payments easier for Mrs. Wendel. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in all. With interest, of course, on the delayed payments.”
I said, and tried to keep from choking on the words: “Is that all?” All I wanted to do was get my hands around the fat yegg's throat and be left alone for three minutes.
He grinned back at me and said: “Well, of course that's only the cash settlement. Mrs. Wendel naturally feels she's entitled to alimony as well. But we'll make that a nominal sum.”
Mard was as mad as I was. He asked: “Such as?”
“Let us say thirty-six thousand a year. Three thousand a month, though there will be no objection as to how payment is made. Any time convenient with Mr. Wendel will be all right with her I'm sure. She doesn't want to work a hardship on Mr. Wendel; that is why she's asking for such a ridiculously low settlement.”
I said: “I think it's mighty white of her to only ask for chicken feed like that. Of course you know and I know that Wendel hasn't two million dollars. What he has is tied up in property. Foreign property and a steamship line and both are nothing that he can take around the corner to Uncle Benny. He can't hock that kind of stuff every day in the week. The guy can't pay anything like that and you know damned well he can't.”
Crandall shrugged and grinned. “Well, of course, we can leave it up to the judge. You can trust him to be fair, you know.”
“Sure. To Mrs. Wendel.”
Mard said: “That isn't fair, Connell. The judge is all right. He'll be fair if he knows the facts.”
Crandall made a steeple of his fingers and looked over them at us. “Do you gentlemen know that Mr. Wendel spent three days in our little town a short time ago?”
I said: “Sure. He told me about it.”
“Did he tell you what he did?”
“Yes, you bet. He got chased out of town.”
“Do you know why?”
“Sure. You put the bee on him.”
Crandall shook his head sorrowfully. “That's hardly right. I advised the father of the girl to make no charges. A scandal would only hurt the girl. But he's very bitter about the matter and may change his mind and press the matter. If he does, it will naturally influence the judge. That is only natural. The girl's a Reno girl and the judge has known her all her life. We respect women in this state; I can't understand Wendel's action. You understand, Amos, the position your client is in.”
Mard mumbled something and I said: “Cut out the crap, Crandall. What's the frame?”
“Frame!”
“What's this business about a Reno girl and her father?”
He opened his eyes wide, shook his head at me in a pitying way. “I might have known, Connell, you wouldn't have worked for him if you'd known of it. You seem a decent sort. It's merely this. He assaulted a sixteen-year-old girl during the time he was here. Her father, on my advice, didn't press charges. The police rushed him out of town; if the local people had heard of it they possibly would have lynched him. As I said, we respect women in this state.”
I said: “Let's go, Mard. This will bear a bit of thinking over.”
Mard mumbled something and turned and followed me to the door. Crandall got from behind the desk, came to the door and held it open, then said apologetically:
“I'm sorry about it, Connell, but I thought you knew of the assault. If I'd realized you didn't; that you were here and working for Wendel in good faith, I wouldn't have advised my clients as I did this morning.”
“Now what's this?”
“I have three clients. Tony Marsello, Tommy Ryan, and Walter Rans. They happened to be the three men you assaulted last night at the Three C Club. Thinking you were here in an effort to whitewash Wendel on this assault matter, I advised them to file charges against you. Naturally I had no sympathy for you. I'm really sorry about it now.”
I said: “This is getting better and better. What charges did they file?”
“Assault with a deadly weapon, I'm afraid.”
He was wearing his Cheshire Cat grin and he was just the right distance away. I clipped him on the chin with all I had and he went sailing back and landed all at the same time. Feet, back end, and back of head. He was out colder than any man I ever saw. I said to Mard:
“Well, let's get the hell out of here.”
Mard said: “My God, man! They'll hang you for this.”
“Nuts!” I said. “He'll probably claim I hit him with a piece of lead pipe, but I've got to expect that in this town. Too much is too much.”
We sailed out past his flunkey in the front office and I said: “The mister told me to tell you he wants to be alone. Get it?”
He opened his mouth and gawked and said: “The mister?”
I said: “Yeah! Mr. Bastard!” and jerked my thumb back over my shoulder toward the inside office and Crandall.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LEN MACINTOSH was waiting for me when I got back to the hotel. Sitting in the lobby and smoking his sissy cigarettes. He climbed up out of his chair, met me, and said:
“Hi there! I've been waiting.”
“Long?” I asked.
He shrugged. “A couple of hours, I guess. I've got to take you in.”
“Why you?”
“The beef was outside City limits. It's a County case. Get it?”
I said I understood. I turned around and we went outside and started down the street. He said, in a conversational tone: “You know Kirby and I never did like some people in this town, if you know what I mean.”
“I've got an idea.”
“I've got a notion this charge would be dropped if you left town. It's just a notion of course.”
I said: “That'll be the day.”
“Well, hell, what can I do? I get told what to do, you know that.”
“Sure, I know.”
“If you'd only keep out of sight,” he said, plaintively. “Now if you hadn't just come walking into the lobby like that, I wouldn't have seen you. You make it tough on a man.”
I said: “I'm going to make it tough on a man before I leave town. I'll promise you that. If it's the last crying thing I do on this earth I'm going to make it tough on a man. I've run into some cute capers in my life but this one here has got anything beat I ever saw. It's unique. It's so fool-proof there's a hole in it and I'm going to find that hole.”
“Why d'ya mean, Connell?”
We were about three blocks up from the hotel by then. I said: “It's this. The bigger and better a frame is, the more people there are in it. The more chance there is somebody forgetting to do or say the right thing. Now there's murder, assault, blackmail, and a few other things in this. Maybe coercion. I know for sure there's another attempted murder in it because I was just about the victim. This beef last night was
a frame on me; you know that.”
“I work here, Connell!”
“I know it. I don't blame you.”
“Kirby and I were talking. D'ya think there's a chance of... well...” he coughed... “well, your doing anything?”
I said: “I'm getting ideas, if that means anything.”
“D'ya think that girl getting knifed ties in with the rest of this? Kirby does and always has. That's why he's been sort of ... well, you know.”
I said: “Don't say it. I know. You mean you and Kirby can't go ahead with me unless you're sure you can make it stick. I don't know that the murder ties in, but everything else has and maybe that does. I've got the rest of the frame figured but I'll admit the murder doesn't fit in. I may be wrong on what I think, I'll admit it. But if I haven't walked into as pretty a frame here as there ever was, I'm not the picture in it.”
He coughed again, said: “Now we're coming to a side street. I don't suppose I'd happen to notice if you just sort of walked down it. I can't help it if you escape, can I? But for Christ's sake, tell that partner of yours to take your baggage down the back way at the hotel. Everybody ain't reasonable like I am. And when you check in the Palace Rooms, which is two blocks over and in the middle of the block, don't tell Maude I sent you. Out loud, that is. And for Christ's sake keep out of the Three C Club and away from the police station. There's always phones and I suppose either Kirby or I could break away from the desk if we had to do it. Now here we are at the corner.”
I said: “What's the name of the cop that took Free and Wendel to the airport?”
“Ziggy Hunter.”
“What kind of a Joe is he?”
MacIntosh spit on the sidewalk and didn't say anything. I said: “Okey, keed! I'd see that Ziggy took his vacation or something. I've got to be out on the street sometimes and he's against us.”
He nodded and started walking away. His peaked, cocked-up shoulders were swinging and he was whistling: “When I Leave This World Behind.” It was the first time I'd heard the tune in ten years or more.
I'd stayed in rooming houses before and for two reasons. Lack of money for one, and working at the screwy private cop business for another. But the Palace was a bit different. It wasn't bad and it wasn't good, but a room there cost as much as you usually pay in a first-class hotel. And they didn't want their money in advance and that's a rule in all of them. I just said something to the landlady about a man named MacIntosh mentioning the place and I was in with no questions asked about baggage.
This landlady was a hard-looking baggage but she looked smarter than a whip and she proved she was when she looked at me and said with a straight face: “Don't believe I know him. But a lot of people check out after the first night here.”
She showed me my cubby hole, said: “The phone's outside in the hall. If you'd like anything to eat, and it's too hot to go out or anything, give me a ring and I'll send out for you. If it's anything I can cook in my own place, I'll do it here. I'm always glad to make an extra dollar.”
I said: “This will pay for rent,” and gave her a twenty. Then I gave her another one and said: “And this will pay for what I send out for. It'll be used up by the end of the week, of course, but I like to keep ahead.”
She said: “Thanks, mister,” and clumped away.
There's places like that in a good many towns. If the town is closed for gambling there'll be a big open game running in the upstairs parlor. There's always back and side doors and there will be as many cops in the place as there are hustlers. The cops come in broke and go out with money; the hustlers come in with money and go out broke. A place like that is a necessity. A town is run the way the people want it run, not the way the law says it should be run. There has to be a common meeting ground for the law and the outside-the-law crowd, and it's usually some back-street spot that's not too bad and not too good.
A place like that is appreciated. The cops leave it alone and the sporting crowd do the same. They both have to; neither side can afford trouble there. And it's usually run by some smart old gal who knows enough to keep her mouth shut if she should happen to see something she shouldn't. I'd known what I was running into when MacIntosh had cracked about it and I wasn't disappointed. I got outside and to the phone and got Lester... and he was frantic. He said, with his voice trembling so that I could hardly understand him:
“My God, Shean! Where are you? Don't come home. There's a policeman in the lobby waiting to arrest you. He came up here and told me that.”
I said: “Okey, kid, I saw him. All he was trying to do was have you go out and find me and keep me away from there. No cop likes to have a prisoner escape on the street in broad daylight.”
“What happened, Shean?”
“Nothing much. We've lined up with the cops, is all. That is, some of them. Get my stuff together and bring it to me. Out the back way and to the Palace Rooms. 217. Got it?”
“Well, yes. Are you going to stay there?” I laughed and said I didn't know; that I might be in jail almost any time. Then he said: “What about the car?”
“You'd better bring is over near here. Don't park it by the place, because somebody might see it. Leave it on the next block and remember where, so you can tell me.”
“All right, Shean. Right away.”
I hung up and went back inside the room and rang the bell for the landlady. She came up and I said:
“D'ya suppose you could get me a quart of whisky?”
“Sure. What kind?”
“Maybe UDL.”
I gave her five dollars and she looked at it and said: “Anything you want, mister, is yours. Is there anybody you don't want to see?”
“Hell, yes.” She nodded that she understood and turned and went down the stairs. She was back inside of five minutes with the whisky, took a drink with me, then said:
“Now I don't know. But if I didn't want to see any of the bunch that runs around with Rucci, I'd stay in the room when my buzzer rang two longs and a short. Understand me, it isn't any of my affair.”
I said: “Sure, I know. If I didn't want to run into any of that bunch I'd certainly stay inside.”
She hesitated a moment at the door, said: “I've known Len MacIntosh for twenty-two years. I used to have a place in Silver City and he was Marshal there.”
“Did he smoke the same kind of cigarettes then?”
She grinned and said: “Yeah! They damned near ran him out because of it. You can't change a man; I've found that out.”
Lester came up with my bag and with high blood pressure from excitement. He said: “There were two more cops came, right after you called. One of them was named Ziggy something; I heard the other one call him that.”
“That right?”
“Yeah! And Gahagan called and said Wendel had been down at the office. That he said he was coming up here. With Joey Free. That he was leaving right away.”
“How's he coming?”
“She didn't say.”
“You get back to the hotel in a hell of a hurry and put in a call and find out. Quick, now.”
“And, oh yes, Shean. The girl you were with last night called and wants you to see her right away.”
“What about?”
“She didn't say. Just said to call her.”
Rucci had introduced me to her and I wasn't sure whether she was planted on me or not. I didn't think so but I didn't know. I said: “Here's her number. You call her back and say you heard from me and that I was leaving town right then. Get it?”
“Sure. Find out how Wendel is coming and tell your girl you've left town.”
I said: “You call that wench my girl and I'll beat you black and blue. I may have no morals but, by God, I've got a musical ear.”
“I don't understand,” he said.
I said: “You either have it or you don't. You haven't, or you'd know what I mean. Now get back and get busy. Just call the place here and ask for 217 and tell me. I'll get in touch with you if I want you; if anything conies up call me he
re. Get it?”
“Sure!”
“And if you can't get me, get in touch with the Chief. Tell him who you are. He'll know about it, probably. But don't go to the station and don't talk to him on the street. He'll tell you what to do.”
Lester looked worried and said: “I don't like this, you having to hide around like this. It's serious.”
“You dope! Murder's always serious. I'd rather hide around like this than take a slug in the head, like I almost did. Or end up in the alley like that poor French gal did, with a shiv in my neck. What the hell; d'ya think I like it?”
“Well, no, I guess not.”
He took off his glasses and started to polish them, which meant he was thinking hard about something. I said: “Well, get going, pal.”
He put them back on, said in a quivery voice: “Shean, if anything happens to you do you know what I'm going to do?”
I said I didn't.
“I'm going to kill Crandall. He's back of this whole thing.”
“How would you do it?”
“Well, ugh, I guess I'd shoot him probably. I've practiced, you know that.”
He'd tried, down at the shooting galleries, and he'd been pitiful. His glasses didn't help him much and all he had was ambition. I said: “You forget that gun stuff. That's bad medicine. I won't come up missing.”
“I'll do it, Shean.” I said: “Maybe this will make you feel better. The last I saw Crandall, he was flat on his fanny. He was growing a lump on his jaw that'll be as big as an egg by now. You see?” I showed him the skinned knuckles on my hand and he though that was swell. He told me where he'd left my car, and started back to the hotel, and I took another little snifter of the UDL and thought I'd done better than a green hand on the Crandall job at that. The only way I could have hit him any harder would have been to have been bigger. I only weigh a hundred and ninety and that limits how hard you can sock.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THERE was some connection between the French girl's murder and Crandall and Mrs. Wendel, and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure what it could be. And couldn't. I could see why Crandall would try to keep the woman in the notion of divorce... that was easy. He made money that way; probably some percentage of what he could wangle for her on a settlement. I could see Rucci in the picture as a friend of Crandall's. Undoubtedly, Crandall and Rucci had been together in other deals and Crandall had cut him in this.
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