The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Otto Penzler

  She leaned forward quickly and said: “Will you take care of the money? … Dare you?”

  “Sure. I’ll pop downstairs and put it in a safe-deposit box. You can hold one of the keys—and we’ll talk split later on. I think it would be a swell idea if Canales knew he had to see me, and still sweller if you hid out in a little hotel where I have a friend—at least until I nose around a bit.”

  She nodded. I put my hat on and put the envelope inside my belt. I went out, telling her there was a gun in the top left-hand drawer, if she felt nervous.

  When I got back she didn’t seem to have moved. But she said she had phoned Canales’ place and left a message for him she thought he would understand.

  We went by rather devious ways to the Lorraine, at Brant and Avenue C. Nobody shot at us going over, and as far as I could see we were not trailed.

  I shook hands with Jim Dolan, the day clerk at the Lorraine, with a twenty folded in my hand. He put his hand in his pocket and said he would be glad to see that “Miss Thompson” was not bothered.

  I left. There was nothing in the noon paper about Lou Harger of the Hobart Arms.

  SIX

  The Hobart Arms was just another apartment house, in a block lined with them. It was six stories high and had a buff front. A lot of cars were parked at both curbs all along the block. I drove through slowly and looked things over. The neighborhood didn’t have the look of having been excited about anything in the immediate past. It was peaceful and sunny, and the parked cars had a settled look, as if they were right at home.

  I circled into an alley with a high board fence on each side and a lot of flimsy garages cutting it. I parked beside one that had a For Rent sign and went between two garbage cans into the concrete yard of the Hobart Arms, along the side to the street. A man was putting golf clubs into the back of a coupe. In the lobby a Filipino was dragging a vacuum cleaner over the rug and a dark Jewess was writing at the switchboard.

  I used the automatic elevator and prowled along an upper corridor to the last door on the left. I knocked, waited, knocked again, went in with Miss Glenn’s key.

  Nobody was dead on the floor.

  I looked at myself in the mirror that was the back of a pull-down bed, went across and looked out of a window. There was a ledge below that had once been a coping. It ran along to the fire escape. A blind man could have walked in. I didn’t notice anything like footmarks in the dust on it.

  There was nothing in the dinette or kitchen except what belonged there. The bedroom had a cheerful carpet and painted gray walls. There was a lot of junk in the corner, around a waste-basket, and a broken comb on the dresser held a few strands of red hair. The closets were empty except for some gin bottles.

  I went back to the living room, looked behind the wall bed, stood around for a minute, left the apartment.

  The Filipino in the lobby had made about three yards with the vacuum cleaner. I leaned on the counter beside the switchboard.

  “Miss Glenn?”

  The dark Jewess said: “Five-two-four,” and made a check mark on the laundry list.

  “She’s not in. Has she been in lately?”

  She glanced up at me. “I haven’t noticed. What is it—a bill?”

  I said I was just a friend, thanked her and went away. That established the fact that there had been no excitement in Miss Glenn’s apartment. I went back to the alley and the Marmon.

  I hadn’t believed it quite the way Miss Glenn told it anyhow.

  I crossed Cordova, drove a block and stopped beside a forgotten drugstore that slept behind two giant pepper trees and a dusty, cluttered window. It had a single pay booth in the corner. An old man shuffled towards me wistfully, then went away when he saw what I wanted, lowered a pair of steel spectacles on the end of his nose and sat down again with his newspaper.

  I dropped my nickel, dialed, and a girl’s voice said: “Telegrayam!” with a tinny drawl. I asked for Von Ballin.

  When I got him and he knew who it was, I could hear him clearing his throat. Then his voice came close to the phone and said very distinctly: “I’ve got something for you, but it’s bad. I’m sorry as all hell. Your friend Harger is in the morgue. We got a flash about ten minutes ago.”

  I leaned against the wall of the booth and felt my eyes getting haggard. I said: “What else did you get?”

  “Couple of radio cops picked him up in somebody’s front yard or something, in West Cimarron. He was shot through the heart. It happened last night, but for some reason they only just put out the identification.”

  I said: “West Cimarron, huh? … Well, that takes care of that. I’ll be in to see you.”

  I thanked him and hung up, stood for a moment looking out through the glass at a middle-aged gray-haired man who had come into the store and was pawing over the magazine rack.

  Then I dropped another nickel and dialed the Lorraine, asked for the clerk.

  I said: “Get your girl to put me on to the redhead, will you, Jim?”

  I got a cigarette out and lit it, puffed smoke at the glass of the door. The smoke flattened out against the glass and swirled about in the close air. Then the line clicked and the operator’s voice said: “Sorry, your party does not answer.”

  “Give me Jim again,” I said. Then, when he answered, “Can you take time to run up and find out why she doesn’t answer the phone? Maybe she’s just being cagey.”

  Jim said: “You bet. I’ll shoot right up with a key.”

  Sweat was coming out all over me. I put the receiver down on a little shelf and jerked the booth door open. The gray-haired man looked up quickly from the magazines, then scowled and looked at his watch. Smoke poured out of the booth. After a moment I kicked the door shut and picked up the receiver again.

  Jim’s voice seemed to come to me from a long way off. “She’s not here. Maybe she went for a walk.”

  I said: “Yeah—or maybe it was a ride.”

  I pronged the receiver and pushed on out of the booth. The gray-haired stranger slammed a magazine down so hard that it fell to the floor. He stooped to pick it up as I went past him. Then he straightened up just behind me and said quietly, but very firmly: “Keep the hands down, and quiet. Walk on out to your heap. This is business.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see the old man peeking shortsightedly at us. But there wasn’t anything for him to see, even if he could see that far. Something prodded my back. It might have been a finger, but I didn’t think it was.

  We went out of the store very peacefully.

  A long gray car had stopped close behind the Marmon. Its rear door was open and a man with a square face and a crooked mouth was standing with one foot on the running board. His right hand was behind him, inside the car.

  My man’s voice said: “Get in your car and drive west. Take this first corner and go about twenty-five, not more.”

  The narrow street was sunny and quiet and the pepper trees whispered. Traffic threshed by on Cordova a short block away. I shrugged, opened the door of my car and got under the wheel. The gray-haired man got in very quickly beside me, watching my hands. He swung his right hand around, with a snub-nosed gun in it.

  “Careful getting your keys out, buddy.”

  I was careful. As I stepped on the starter a car door slammed behind, there were rapid steps, and someone got into the back seat of the Marmon. I let in the clutch and drove around the corner. In the mirror I could see the gray car making the turn behind. Then it dropped back a little.

  I drove west on a street that paralleled Cordova and when we had gone a block and a half a hand came down over my shoulder from behind and took my gun away from me. The gray-haired man rested his short revolver on his leg and felt me over carefully with his free hand. He leaned back satisfied.

  “Okey. Drop over to the main drag and snap it up,” he said. “But that don’t mean trying to sideswipe a prowl car, if you lamp one … Or if you think it does, try it and see.”

  I made the two turns, speeded up to th
irty-five and held it there. We went through some nice residential districts, and then the landscape began to thin out. When it was quite thin the gray car behind dropped back, turned towards town and disappeared.

  “What’s the snatch for?” I asked.

  The gray-haired man laughed and rubbed his broad red chin. “Just business. The big boy wants to talk to you.”

  “Canales?”

  “Canales—hell! I said the big boy.”

  I watched traffic, what there was of it that far out, and didn’t speak for a few minutes. Then I said: “Why didn’t you pull it in the apartment, or in the alley?”

  “Wanted to make sure you wasn’t covered.”

  “Who’s this big boy?”

  “Skip that—till we get you there. Anything else?”

  “Yes. Can I smoke?”

  He held the wheel while I lit up. The man in the back seat hadn’t said a word at any time. After a while the gray-haired man made me pull up and move over, and he drove.

  “I used to own one of these, six years ago, when I was poor,” he said jovially.

  I couldn’t think of a really good answer to that, so I just let smoke seep down into my lungs and wondered why, if Lou had been killed in West Cimarron, the killers didn’t get the money. And if he really had been killed at Miss Glenn’s apartment, why somebody had taken the trouble to carry him back to West Cimarron.

  SEVEN

  In twenty minutes we were in the foothills. We went over a hogback, drifted down a long white concrete ribbon, crossed a bridge, went halfway up the next slope and turned off on a gravel road that disappeared around a shoulder of scrub oak and manzanita. Plumes of pampas grass flared on the side of the hill, like jets of water. The wheels crunched on the gravel and skidded on the curves.

  We came to a mountain cabin with a wide porch and cemented boulder foundations. The windmill of a generator turned slowly on the crest of a spur a hundred feet behind the cabin. A mountain blue jay flashed across the road, zoomed, banked sharply, and fell out of sight like a stone.

  The gray-haired man tooled the car up to the porch, beside a tan-colored Lincoln coupe, switched off the ignition and set the Marmon’s long parking brake. He took the keys out, folded them carefully in their leather case, put the case away in his pocket.

  The man in the back seat got out and held the door beside me open. He had a gun in his hand. I got out. The gray-haired man got out. We all went into the house.

  There was a big room with walls of knotted pine, beautifully polished. We went across it walking on Indian rugs and the gray-haired man knocked carefully on a door.

  A voice shouted: “What is it?”

  The gray-haired man put his face against the door and said: “Beasley—and the guy you wanted to talk to.”

  The voice inside said to come on in. Beasley opened the door, pushed me through it and shut it behind me.

  It was another big room with knotted pine walls and Indian rugs on the floor. A driftwood fire hissed and puffed on a stone hearth.

  The man who sat behind a flat desk was Frank Dorr, the politico.

  He was the kind of man who liked to have a desk in front of him, and shove his fat stomach against it, and fiddle with things on it, and look very wise. He had a fat, muddy face, a thin fringe of white hair that stuck up a little, small sharp eyes, small and very delicate hands.

  What I could see of him was dressed in a slovenly gray suit, and there was a large black Persian cat on the desk in front of him. He was scratching the cat’s head with one of his little neat hands and the cat was leaning against his hand. Its busy tail flowed over the edge of the desk and fell straight down.

  He said: “Sit down,” without looking away from the cat.

  I sat down in a leather chair with a very low seat. Dorr said: “How do you like it up here? Kind of nice, ain’t it? This is Toby, my girl friend. Only girl friend I got. Ain’t you, Toby?”

  I said: “I like it up here—but I don’t like the way I got here.”

  Dorr raised his head a few inches and looked at me with his mouth slightly open. He had beautiful teeth, but they hadn’t grown in his mouth. He said: “I’m a busy man, brother. It was simpler than arguing. Have a drink?”

  “Sure I’ll have a drink,” I said.

  He squeezed the cat’s head gently between his two palms, then pushed it away from him and put both hands down on the arms of his chair. He shoved hard and his face got a little red and he finally got up on his feet. He waddled across to a built-in cabinet and took out a squat decanter of whiskey and two gold-veined glasses.

  “No ice today,” he said, waddling back to the desk. “Have to drink it straight.”

  He poured two drinks, gestured, and I went over and got mine. He sat down again. I sat down with my drink. Dorr lit a long brown cigar, pushed the box two inches in my direction, leaned back and stared at me with complete relaxation.

  “You’re the guy that fingered Manny Tin-nen,” he said. “It won’t do.”

  I sipped my whiskey. It was good enough to sip.

  “Life gets complicated at times,” Dorr went on, in the same even, relaxed voice. “Politics— even when it’s a lot of fun—is tough on the nerves. You know me. I’m tough and I get what I want. There ain’t a hell of a lot I want any more, but what I want—I want bad. And ain’t so damn particular how I get it.”

  “You have that reputation,” I said politely.

  Dorr’s eyes twinkled. He looked around for the cat, dragged it towards him by the tail, pushed it down on its side and began to rub its stomach. The cat seemed to like it.

  Dorr looked at me and said very softly: “You bumped Lou Harger.”

  “What makes you think so?” I asked, without any particular emphasis.

  “You bumped Lou Harger. Maybe he needed the bump—but you gave it to him. He was shot once through the heart, with a thirty-eight. You wear a thirty-eight and you’re known to be a fancy shot with it. You were with Harger at Las Olindas last night and saw him win a lot of money. You were supposed to be acting as bodyguard for him, but you got a better idea. You caught up with him and that girl in West Cimar-ron, slipped Harger the dose and got the money.”

  I finished my whiskey, got up and poured myself some more of it.

  “You made a deal with the girl,” Dorr said, “but the deal didn’t stick. She got a cute idea. But that don’t matter, because the police got your gun along with Harger. And you got the dough.”

  I said: “Is there a tag out for me?”

  “Not till I give the word … And the gun hasn’t been turned in … I got a lot of friends, you know.”

  I said slowly: “I got sapped outside Canales’ place. It served me right. My gun was take from me. I never caught up with Harger, never saw him again. The girl came to me this morning with the money in an envelope and a story that Harger had been killed in her apartment. That’s how I have the money—for safekeeping. I wasn’t sure about the girl’s story, but her bringing the money carried a lot of weight. And Harger was a friend of mine. I started out to investigate.”

  “You should have let the cops do that,” Dorr said with a grin.

  “There was a chance the girl was being framed. Besides there was a possibility I might make a few dollars—legitimately. It has been done, even in San Angelo.”

  Dorr stuck a finger towards the cat’s face and the cat bit it, with an absent expression. Then it pulled away from him, sat down on a corner of the desk and began to lick one toe.

  “Twenty-two grand, and the jane passed it over to you to keep,” Dorr said. “Ain’t that just like a jane?

  “You got the dough,” Dorr said. “Harger was killed with your gun. The girl’s gone—but I could bring her back. I think she’d make a good witness, if we needed one.”

  “Was the play at Las Olindas crooked?” I asked.

  Dorr finished his drink and curled his lips around his cigar again. “Sure,” he said carelessly. “The croupier—a guy named Pina—was in on it. The wheel
was wired for the double-zero. The old crap. Copper button on the floor, copper button on Pina’s shoe sole, wires up his leg, batteries in his hip pockets. The old crap.”

  I said: “Canales didn’t act as if he knew about it.”

  Dorr chuckled. “He knew the wheel was wired. He didn’t know his head croupier was playin’ on the other team.”

  “I’d hate to be Pina,” I said.

  Dorr made a negligent motion with his cigar. “He’s taken care of… The play was careful and quiet. They didn’t make any fancy long shots, just even money bets, and they didn’t win all the time. They couldn’t. No wired wheel is that good.”

  I shrugged, moved about in my chair. “You know a hell of a lot about it,” I said. “Was all this just to get me set for a squeeze?”

  He grinned softly: “Hell, no! Some of it just happened—the way the best plans do.” He waved his cigar again, and a pale gray tendril of smoke curled past his cunning little eyes. There was a muffled sound of talk in the outside room. “I got connections I got to please—even if I don’t like all their capers,” he added simply.

  “Like Manny Tinnen?” I said. “He was around City Hall a lot, knew too much. Okey, Mister Dorr. Just what do you figure on having me do for you? Commit suicide?”

  He laughed. His fat shoulders shook carefully. He put one of his small hands out with the palm towards me. “I wouldn’t think of that,” he said dryly, “and the other way’s better business. The way public opinion is about the Shannon kill. I ain’t sure that louse of a D.A. wouldn’t convict Tinnen without you—if he could sell the folks the idea you’d been knocked off to button your mouth.”

  I got up out of my chair, went over and leaned on the desk, leaned across it towards Dorr.

  He said: “No funny business!” a little sharply and breathlessly. His hand went to a drawer and got it half open. His movements with his hands were very quick in contrast with the movements of his body.

  I smiled down at the hand and he took it away from the drawer. I saw a gun just inside the drawer.