by Otto Penzler
He nodded. “That telephone stunt was slick.”
She shuddered. “I was afraid you were out. They were getting some drinks. I knew it was the only chance— They thought I was shouting at them.”
McFee stared at her. He said slowly, “Think you can put over that Zella Vasquez number?”
She smiled. “I’ve known lots of men, McFee.”
“What you think you’re going to get out of it?”
“I told you at lunch. If Melrose has that Shell-don file—if I should find it—or the police—You said they were raiding the Shawl—” She clasped her hands, whispered huskily, “Perhaps I’m a fool, but I can’t help it. I can’t help feeling something’s going to break—”
McFee muttered, “Let’s get at it, then.”
A clock in the hall showed nine-five as they went out.
They walked down Butte Street to McFee’s car.
“I want to go home first,” the girl said.
McFee smiled one-sidedly, answered, “Right.”
At Irene Mayo’s apartment, McFee poured himself a drink. He took the glass over to the telephone and called Roy Cruikshank, at the Tribune office, then Littner at headquarters. Ringing off, he pushed his face up and set his glass down. Near the telephone stood a portable typewriter. McFee took a chair and slid paper under the roller. He wrote for about ten minutes, then read what he had written, and put the paper inside his jacket pocket.
Irene Mayo came prancing out of the bedroom. She wore a green silk blouse, a blue velvet bolero, a frothy red skirt and a green sash. She looked like a red-headed Carmen. Snapping her fingers, she fell into McFee’s arms. Her green eyes were veiled and humid.
McFee said, “Very nice,” and kissed her. “If Melrose don’t fall, I’ll go peddling fleas to a dog circus.”
It was nine-fifty. McFee drove fast. They took one of the beach boulevards, followed it a while, and turned north. Presently they made a west turn, then a northwest turn into a dirt road that ended in a grove of cypress trees. The trees were on a bluff high above a crashing beach, and garlands of red, green and blue lights hung against them. Crooked in the bright arm of the trees was a sprawling, dark-shingled building with gemlike windows. A horde of cars stood around. Music throbbed. People churned in a splatter of sound and color.
Irene Mayo said, “I’ll go in alone. You come back later—” She added lightly, “If you care to.”
McFee laughed and let her out. She ran under a canopy of colored lights and vanished through a door. An attendant ran towards McFee’s car, but McFee reversed and roared down the road. At the intersection he parked long enough to smoke a couple of cigarettes before he put the car around.
He entered the Spanish Shawl at eleven-five.
12
At one end of the rowdy cafe floor a six-piece colored orchestra—Dutch Louie and his Pals— peddled hot music. The ebony lads looked livid and wet in the overhead yellow lights. A good crowd danced about. The closely regimented tables made a horseshoe about the patch of shining floor. Most of them were taken but Leo Ganns, the head waiter, found McFee one at the lower end of the room.
He ordered broiled lobster and coffee.
The music stopped and the floor emptied. McFee touched a match to a cigarette. The air was heavy with smoke and the odors of food. Some liquor was flowing. Two girls near McFee sat lopsided and very still. Dutch Louie began to shout through a megaphone in his mellow drawl. He ballyhooed one Zella Vasquez, red-headed Spanish dancer, who stood ‘em on their ears in Havana, Cuba. “Yessir, ladies and gem’men, an’ if you don’t think she’s got something you jest gotta have—”
Irene Mayo whirled onto the floor in her Spanish costume. Behind her came a dark, slick-looking number from the Argentine or Chicago, maybe. They did a fox trot, the ebony boys wailing “My Baby’s a Red-head-too.” After that, a tango. Then Irene Mayo went solo and turned in a sweet la jota Aragonese. As she frothed past McFee, her eyes bright with fever, rested on him without recognition. She threw herself into the dark number’s arms, and the crowd stamped. They did another tango. McFee dug into his lobster. The crowd howled for more and got the hat dance.
Sam Melrose came smiling onto the floor. He was an olive-skinned man with an uneven mouth and grizzled hair parted in the middle. His face was old, his forehead was corded by deep lines that never smoothed out. He was thirty-eight.
The hat dance finished, Irene Mayo pin-wheeled towards Melrose. He caught her in his arms, kissed her, and whirled her off through a door. The house yelled its throat dry, but the red-headed girl did not return. The slick-looking number took the bows.
McFee said, “Not bad,” and finished his coffee.
McFee strolled through a door which opened into a red-carpeted hall, pushed through a door in the wall opposite and joined half a dozen men drinking at a bar. The bar was a swivel arrangement that could be swung into the hall behind it on a couple of minutes’ notice.
The barkeep said, “What’ll you have, McFee?”
“Straight.” As the barkeep set up his goods, McFee asked, “Comp’ny tonight, Ed?”
“I dunno,” the man muttered.
McFee walked into the gaming room, which adjoined the bar. Roulette, black jack and craps were running. There were no windows in the room. The only entrance to it was from the bar. The games were at the lower end of the room, and it was possible to swing a false wall across the tables as quickly as the bar could be made to vanish. The device was superficial, but all the roadhouse ever had needed. Some twenty or thirty people were playing, their voices feverish and blurred. Now and then a word pattern emerged. “You pick ‘em—we pay ‘em … Get your money down … Six … point is six … twenty-one … throws a nine. Take your money …”
Art Kline stood near the crap dealer. He looked at McFee, flexed his shoulder muscles, looked away. It was twenty minutes of midnight.
Walking into the hall, McFee glanced down it to where Melrose had his rooms. A woman’s voice lifted hysterically for an instant above the harsh overtones of the Shawl. Art Kline stuck his head into the hall. When he saw McFee, he pulled it back. McFee smiled coldly, waited a minute, then went past the bar to a side door.
It was light outside. He walked to the rear of the building. Here it was dark. Trees threw tall shadows. Light came from a curtained window behind some shrubbery. McFee glanced around, then pushed through the shrubbery. It plucked at his face and throat. The window curtains did not quite meet and he was able to see into the room. He saw a soft, intimate room and a floor with a yellow parchment shade. Irene Mayo reclined in a plush upholstered chair beneath the lamp. Sam Melrose sat on an arm of the chair.
The red-headed girl laughed provocatively. Melrose bent towards her. She pushed him away, her fingers on his lips. They talked a while, Melrose leaning attentively over the girl. McFee heard her slightly hysterical laugh and Melrose’s bleak chuckle, but Dutch Louie and His Pals drowned out their conversation.
The room had three doors. One led into the hall, another opened into a small washroom, the third gave entrance from the business office. A red carpet covered the floor. An ornate flat-topped desk stood in one corner, a chair behind it, a cloak tree beside it. On the desk was a wire letter basket.
Melrose got up and went into the business office, closing the door behind him. Irene Mayo came sharply forward onto her feet. She stared at the closed door, an obsessed look on her face. She ran swiftly towards the ornate desk, bent over the wire basket. McFee saw a flat manila envelope in her hand, and muttered, “Swell!”
Someone behind him said, “We got you covered, McFee.”
13
McFee turned slowly, his palms tight against his thighs. Three men in dinner jackets stood on the other side of the shrubbery, guns in their hands. One of them was Art Kline. An ascetic-looking man with disillusioned eyes and a plume of gray hair on his white forehead had addressed McFee. This was Fred Pope, who ran the Red Jacket, a Melrose enterprise.
Their faces gleamed a little.
Their shirt fronts stood up like slabs of stone.
Fred Pope said, “Sam wants to talk to you, McFee.”
“I had a notion he might.”
“Come outta that.”
McFee stepped into the triangular huddle the three men had made of their bodies. They took his gun away from him.
“Straight ahead,” Pope said. “No monkey business.”
A private door gave them access to the business office. There were comfortable chairs, a couple of mahogany desks, safe, telephone, and a filing cabinet. A desk lamp was lighted. The hall door opened and Sam Melrose entered, a cobwebby bottle in his hands.
When he saw McFee the lines that corded his forehead tightened until they looked like wires embedded in his skull. He set the bottle down, came towards McFee with quiet, quick steps. Fred Pope laughed, dropped into a chair. Kline and the other man laid their backs against the outer wall.
An electric clock on the filing cabinet indicated seven minutes of twelve.
Sam Melrose said, “McFee, I want that Grand Jury Shelldon file.”
“Don’t be a sap.”
“What do you mean?”
“You got it already, Sam.”
“McFee, you been handing my boys that line ever since they ran you down in the Gaiety this morning. I’m damn good and sick of it.” Melrose’s flat-surfaced eyes distended coldly. “But I’ll give you a break. You shoved your nose into my business—got what I paid money for. All right—come through with that file and we quit even. You walk outta here. You go home. You forget everything you figured on remembering. And you let my business alone after this. When I get this town like I want it I’ll throw some sugar your way. Where you put that file?”
McFee smiled, felt for a cigarette, put it in his mouth. He flipped a match at it. Anger puffed across Melrose’s eyes, subsided. The two hard-faced men started forward, but fell back at Melrose’s gesture.
The clock showed four minutes of twelve.
McFee said, “Lemme see, there’s a murder tied up with that Shelldon blow-off, isn’t there, Sam?”
“I can beat it.”
“What’s the idea, then?”
“It looks bad, election coming on. I want it outta the way.”
“Wait a minute, Sam. You got Leclair to make a deal with Damon. Damon is dead. His mother is dead. And the old lady didn’t turn on the gas—” McFee paused, considered the other indulgently. “Can you beat all that, Sam?”
Melrose cut in harshly, “My boys didn’t rub out Damon and his mother.”
“Well, you oughta know. If that Shelldon file don’t turn up at the wrong time, maybe the tax-payers’ll believe you. It’s funny what taxpayers’ll believe. But the Damon-O’Day murders and the Shelldon racket’d make a bad combination.” McFee laughed. “That Shelldon file’s getting pretty important, Sam.”
Melrose said, “Ten grand, McFee?”
“I haven’t got it.”
“Listen, mister—” The lines that corded Melrose’s frontal bone deepened again. “I dunno what you playing for, but if it’s to put the bell on me you got the wrong cat by the tail. I’m running this town. I’m gonna keep on running it. Nob’dy can get to first base unless I say so. McFee—” he prodded the latter in the chest, “—I want that Shelldon file. If you don’t come across my boys’ll walk you out and leave you some place.”
The clock said one minute of twelve.
Dragging on his cigarette, McFee muttered, “Well, I dunno—”
The telephone rang.
Melrose picked it up. He did not remove his eyes from McFee, as he said, “Melrose talking.” … And then, “Yes, Joe … Yes, what’s that? … McFee—That red-head—His sidekick—But you phoned—What? … A frame-up— … You dunno …” Melrose’s violent eyes impaled McFee. The latter stood stiffly, sweat on his temples. Melrose said coldly, “I got both of’em here—Oh, McFee’ll talk—”
Comprehendingly, Art Kline, Fred Pope and the other man crowded McFee. As Melrose rang off, he said, “Watch McFee!” and jumped toward his private room, jerked the door open. His eyes were hot when he faced around. “She musta heard—Fred, that redhead’s the Mayo woman. McFee brought her—a frame—Bring her back.”
As Fred Pope went away, Melrose said quietly, “What’s back of this Mayo woman coming here?”
“Some’dy’s been kidding you, Sam.”
“You gonna talk?”
“Nothing to talk about.”
“Lemme work on him a while, Boss,” Art Kline said.
It was two minutes after twelve.
McFee shook the sweat out of his eyes. Dutch Louie and His Pals were tearing a staccato jazz out of their horns. The music swelled, filled the house with crashing sound. But McFee could hear the ticking of his watch, the pounding of his heart.
“Listen to the music, Sam,” he said.
Melrose shouted, “By God, McFee, if you won’t talk my boys’ll burn it out of your toes—”
McFee struck him in the mouth. As Melrose went backwards, Kline and the other men jumped in. They milled for a minute. McFee got home four or five good ones, but he was taking a beating when the music stopped. The house became completely quiet.
A police whistle shrilled out in the cafe room.
Melrose ejaculated, “The coppers! I forgot—” And then, “I’ll fix those birds—” He checked himself, said less positively, “Art, you stay here—”
McFee cut in softly, “You can’t do it.” Melrose glared at him, dabbed a cut lip with a handkerchief. “Sam, you are in a spot. Littner and Cruikshank are out there. You didn’t s’pose I’d walk in here without having my tail covered? I told Littner to look for me.”
“Lotta good that’ll do you,” Melrose said harshly. To his men, “Take McFee down the beach—the shack. Keep him there till I come.”
Art Kline stood behind McFee. “Get going, sap,” he said, in his gummed-up voice, and shoved metal into McFee’s back.
As McFee moved towards the side door, Litt-ner entered.
Melrose’s eyes turned white. Kline and the other man stared at him, slid their guns away. Littner looked around with his cold water eyes, rubbed his long jaw.
“Hello, McFee,” he said. “Sam.”
“Littner,” McFee said.
“Argument?”
“No,” McFee answered. “Sam bit his lip. He was just going to open a bottle of bubbly.” McFee walked to the desk, picked up the bottle Melrose had placed there. It was moist and cold. “Seventy-six. Elegant.” He turned to Melrose. “Got a glass for Littner, Sam?”
Melrose stared at McFee, his flat eyes inflamed. He did not speak. A flood of sound, shot through with panic, filled the house. Women screamed, glassware shattered. Melrose wiped his mouth, felt at his throat, pulled in a long breath. Then he sullenly crossed to the filing cabinet and took three glasses, a corkscrew and a napkin out of the bottom drawer. McFee ceremoniously handed him the bottle. Melrose wiped the top of the bottle, wrapped the napkin around it. The cork popped. Melrose poured unsteadily.
McFee said, “To the next District Attorney.”
They drank.
Blood from Melrose’s cut lip turned the “seventy-six” pink. He muttered blasphemously, held the napkin against his mouth. McFee hung his arm over Melrose’s shoulders. A white heat played across the flat surfaces of Melrose’s eyes.
McFee asked, “You got the Mayor out there, Littner?”
“Yes.”
“Buy him a lemonade before you bring him in. Sam and I got business to do.” McFee slapped Melrose’s shoulder affectionately. “Five minutes, Littner.”
McFee linked his arm in Melrose’s. Melrose resisted him a moment, then let the other lead him towards the door of the inner room. Littner’s eyes followed them, faintly ironical. Art Kline and his companion glared angry bewilderment.
At the door, McFee said softly, “Tell your boys this is private, Sam.”
Melrose muttered, “That stands.”
McFee looked at Littner. “May
be you better stick close. Some’dy might take a notion.” Littner nodded.
McFee shut the door.
Melrose’s face was yellow and wet. “What’s your proposition?”
14
The room had a secretive intimacy that affronted the uncomplicated McFee, but he marched his somber eyes around it. The washroom door stood ajar. It had been shut when McFee had looked in through the window. His eyes dwelt on it a moment. Then he dug out the “Mr. Inside” notes and handed them to Melrose. “Take a look at these.”
Melrose said thickly, “Would my boys have been tailing you all day, if I had that file here?”
“Sure you haven’t got it here, Sam?”
“What you mean?”
McFee said slowly, “Littner and Roy are here to look for it. It’ll make a swell story—if they find it in this room—A swell story, Sam—”
Comprehending, Melrose yelled, “You planted that file here! You and that readheaded tramp—What you done with it?” He dropped his hand into his jacket pocket. He pushed his face into McFee’s, said in a low tone, “You find that file quick, or take it in the belly.”
“Littner’s out there, Sam.”
Melrose breathed hard. He took his hand out of his pocket. He wiped sweat out of his eyes, rubbed his palms together. “I’ll bust you for this, McFee.” His eyes slid desperately around the room—chairs, desk, washroom, carpet.
McFee said, “Sit tight, Sam, or I’ll call Littner.”
Melrose began to walk the floor. He stopped abruptly, came to grips with himself. “Let ‘em find it,” he said huskily. “I can beat the rap.”
“Think so?” McFee chewed a finger nail. “Damon wasn’t so much, but O’Day was his mother. Nob’dy knew it until today. The old girl had about a million friends in this town and all of ‘em are beginning to feel sorry for her. You know what people are when they begin feeling sorry. Think you got enough drag to beat the Damon-O’Day-Shelldon combination?”
“My boys didn’t rub out Damon and O’Day.”
“This is politics, Sam.” McFee thumbed a match at a cigarette. “It isn’t what a lad does or don’t do—it’s what his public’ll stand for.”