The Devil's Odds

by Milton T. Burton

  Klevenhagen turned out to be a slim man of about thirty with dark hair and intense eyes, dressed in khakis and a worn leather jacket. Right after we shook hands he lighted the first of a string of Pall Malls he chain-smoked that evening. I was later to learn that he practically lived on coffee and cigarettes.

  The bartender told us that Salisbury was late that evening. He also mentioned that there was a cover charge. Grist told him where to put his cover charge and ordered coffee for the three of us. We took a corner table near the bar and didn’t have to wait long. Ten minutes after we’d sat down the door to the mezzanine opened and three men entered. Two were big men, obviously bodyguards, both dressed in dark suits and unbuttoned raincoats, and both with noticeable bulges under the arm. The third man was smaller, probably about five-nine, and small-boned, with a trim body wrapped snugly in a belted camel’s hair overcoat that sported a fur collar. On his head sat a cream-colored fedora with a dark hat band, while an unlighted cigarette slanted down from the corner of his lips. His mouth and nose were small and delicate, and his face was molded into an expression of utter nonchalance that was obviously studied. I immediately noticed that his movements were curious. His head didn’t bob up and down a bit as he walked; instead he seemed to glide soundlessly as though he were on rollers.

  Sidling up to the bar, he tilted his head toward the bartender, who spoke for a moment into his ear. Then he answered the man briefly, gave him the barest of nods, and glided on toward the office door at the side of the club without even a glance our way, his unlighted cigarette still dangling down from his cherub’s lips.

  “Well,” Grist said, smiling for the second time that day. “We don’t seem to rate very high with this boy. Let’s go see if we can’t raise our standing a little.”

  As we approached the door the bartender came out from behind the bar and blocked the doorway. He was a big, beefy dullard who carried about thirty years and close to two hundred pounds, with a weight lifter’s arms and a face full of self-importance. “Mr. Salisbury wanted me to tell you that he’s not seeing anybody tonight,” he said.

  “Okay, you told us,” Grist said. “Now are you going to push it further, or do you want to let it lie where it fell?”

  The bartender stared at the old man’s face for a few seconds, then stepped back out of the way and raised his hands placatingly, palms outward. “Just doing my job,” he said.

  “Then get the hell out of my way and I’ll do mine,” Grist growled.

  Behind the door loomed a short, dimly lit corridor. At its end stood a fancy double doorway manned by one of the bodyguards. As we approached we fanned out so that Grist was in the center with Klevenhagen on his right and me on his left. The guard’s eyes darted back and forth between us a time or two, and he raised his hand palm forward like a traffic cop stopping an oncoming car. Then he opened his mouth to speak, but before he could utter a word Klevenhagen had his big Smith & Wesson out and its muzzle poked in the man’s left ear just as smoothly as silk. The guard froze and stayed frozen while Grist reached under his coat and pulled out a Walther P-38 nine-millimeter automatic.

  “Turn around and face the door,” Grist said.

  As soon as the guard had turned, Klevenhagen pulled the door open and Grist put his foot in the man’s rump and gave a mighty shove. He shot headfirst through the doorway and the three of us were right behind him, guns drawn. The second bodyguard was on my side of the room, just inside the doorway. His reflexes were pretty good, but not good enough. He had his hand halfway to his weapon when I threw down on him and tripped the safety off my .38 Super. “Naughty, naughty!” I said, grinning right in his face.

  Klevenhagen disarmed him, and then he and Grist quickly cuffed the pair. I turned to look at Salisbury. Now shorn of his coat and hat, he sat calmly in a great, high-backed leather executive’s chair behind about a half acre of polished mahogany desk. Dressed in an exquisitely tailored double-breasted suit of brown silk with faint gold striping, he appeared utterly calm. His head was sleek and seal-like, with jet black hair that was combed down so tightly against his scalp that it appeared to have been painted on. His hands, which were in the process of cupping a kitchen match to his cigarette, were fine-boned, with long, tapering fingers. But his eyes were his most memorable feature. Dark and small and completely void of any emotion, they looked like nothing so much as a pair of tiny, spent coals. “Yes?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows a little, an expression of pure boredom on his face.

  “I’m Virgil Tucker,” I said.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Ahhh, bullshit,” Grist growled in his cement mixer voice. “Any more of your smart-ass mouth and you’re one little piggy I’ll be taking to market.”

  This bought a slight widening of the eyes from Salisbury.

  Grist indicated me with a nod of his head. “This man needs to talk to you,” he said. “And you better give him your time and attention.”

  Salisbury stared at the old man for a few moments, then shrugged and gave him a faint nod. “Sure. Why not?”

  “We’ll be outside in the hall, Virgil,” Grist said.

  He and Klevenhagen herded the bodyguards out the door and closed it behind them. Salisbury took a long pull of his cigarette, then blew the smoke my way. “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

  “Madeline Kimbell.”

  “What about her?”

  “I’m going to be straight and simple with you,” I said. “And you’d better listen and take me seriously no matter who you’re connected with down in New Orleans. We both know that Madeline saw Arno and Luchese strangle Henry DeMour. We also know that you were behind it, but I’m aware there’s no way to connect you to it. They worked for you, but I seriously doubt that they were ever on the official payroll. As for Madeline, you know her story and what happened at my ranch as well as I do. And if you have any sense you should realize that with DeMour’s killers dead she’s no threat to you. As things stand now, I’m no threat to you either. But if you push the issue…”

  I let my voice taper off while I looked him right in the eyes.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “Just be aware that my family is a part of an organization that’s ultimately far more formidable than your uncle’s gang of cutthroats. Did you make the inquiry I suggested?”

  “I asked a few questions,” he said offhandedly.

  “And?”

  There came a long pause before he gave me a brief, acquiescing nod and said reluctantly, “I heard about your friend George Parr and the setup down in South Texas, and about his connections in Washington.”

  “And?” I repeated.

  He wriggled around in his fancy chair for a few moments before he spoke. “Well, as I told you on the phone this is all very interesting, but…” He tried to smile sardonically, but it didn’t come off. I continued to stare at him until finally he asked in a soft voice, “What do you want?”

  “I want my life back. I want to be able to go home and not have to worry about a crew of goons kicking my door down some night. I want to be left alone. And I want the girl left alone, too, since there’s no way she can harm you.”

  He finally managed a coy little smile. “If I were to agree, I’d be virtually admitting—”

  “Cut the crap. I’m not a lawyer or a prosecutor, and Beaumont’s problems aren’t my problems. I think it’s unfortunate that Henry DeMour is dead, but I’m not on a crusade to right all the wrongs of this world. All I want is to be left alone. Now what’s it going to be?”

  He gave me the barest of nods. “Okay. Go on about your business.”

  “How about Madeline?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But what’s with you and that girl that you’d go out on such a limb for her? Was she that good in the sack?”

  I shook my head in mild annoyance. “That’s the way it always is with guys like you, Salisbury. Money and sex. You can’t imagine anybody being motivated by anything else.”

  This didn’t even buy me a shrug. He ju
st continued to stare at me impassively with his dead, dark little eyes.

  “Before I leave I’ll give you one piece of free advice. If Charlie Grist was as pissed at me as he is at you, I believe I’d pack up and leave town.”

  “Who the hell is Charlie Grist?”

  “That old Ranger waiting out in the hallway.”

  He curled his upper lip a little in contempt and waved his fingers at me like a man herding chickens. “Shooo,” he said. “I don’t need no cow cop’s advice.”

  “Have it your way. But if my family or the girl either one is bothered, I’ll be back with the heavy artillery and you won’t like it.”

  I turned around and left then, thinking I’d said enough. I didn’t really have any heavy artillery. Or at least none beyond my friendship with Grist and whatever pressure George Parr and the South Texas machine might be able to mount with the Feds. But Salisbury didn’t know that.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I had done all I could do. From that point on it was in the hands of fate. Or so it seemed at the time. And I was tired. Exhausted, actually. After Grist, Klevenhagen, and I ate a quick supper at a late-night café, I went back to the Creole in Beaumont, planning to sleep until noon. I put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door and piled into bed after leaving instructions with the hotel operator that I didn’t want to accept any calls other than extreme emergencies.

  * * *

  When the persistent ringing of the phone dragged me up out of the warm, dark well of sleep ten hours later, a little voice in the back of my mind told me the whole odyssey had taken a new turn. When I heard Nora Rafferty’s voice on the other end of the line I was certain of it.

  “She flew the coop, Virgil,” she said without fanfare.

  “You mean Madeline, I suppose?” I asked, a cold sinking feeling in my guts.

  “Who else?”

  “How?”

  “She sweet-talked the mail carrier into taking her to the bus station in Palestine about seven this morning.”

  “How do you know she sweet-talked him?” I asked in confusion.

  “I know that because he’s a lecherous fool who’s been after me ever since I came back home. Any good-looking woman could talk him into just about anything. So when I looked out the window and saw her getting into his car at the end of the lane I knew what was happening. Daddy left the house early this morning to go hunting, and it took me a while to get Brenda up and fed and dressed. By the time I got to town the bus for Houston had left, and she was on it.”

  “Where are you now?” I asked.

  “At the phone company office in Palestine.”

  “Which bus did she take?”

  “The Missouri Pacific morning express. But she only bought a ticket to Huntsville, about thirty miles north of Houston.”

  “But why Huntsville?”

  “Because she could get a Greyhound connection from there to Beaumont. That was the quickest way for her to get home.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, Virgil,” she said. “Daddy and I both did everything we could to convince her that she was safe here, but I’m not a jailer.”

  “It’s not your fault, Nora, and I don’t blame you.”

  “I know that. In a way I’m not too surprised she bolted, though. She was as restless as she could be all day long yesterday. Just walking the floor and peeking out the windows.”

  “I guess I’m not really surprised, either,” I said, my voice sounding resigned to my own ears. “I’ve suspected all along that she wasn’t telling the whole truth about this mess.”

  “Anything else I can do?” she asked.

  I thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah. Call Aunt Carmen and tell her I’m going to be here in Beaumont another day or two. I was going to call her myself, but I need to get moving.”

  “Okay,” she replied. “And if she has a message for you I’ll leave it with the hotel operator.”

  “Good.”

  “And Virgil?”

  “Yeah?”

  “For heaven’s sake, be careful.”

  “I will,” I said and hung up. I sat on the side of the bed for a few minutes trying to collect what few wits I had, then I stumbled over to the dresser and found my Texas map. A quick glance told me that an express bus would make the trip from Palestine to Huntsville in no more than two hours. It was also obvious that it would take me almost as long to go from Beaumont to Huntsville, which meant that there was little chance of me getting there quickly enough to meet her. So I had no choice but to wait and meet the Greyhound connection when it pulled into Beaumont. After calling to get its estimated time of arrival, I got dressed, then went downstairs to the coffee shop for breakfast. I ate a leisurely meal, and afterward took my time getting to the bus station. Even so, I had a forty-minute wait until the big Greyhound rolled up behind the building. Madeline wasn’t on it, of course. I don’t know why I’d expected her to be, considering how everything else on this case had gone. Unreasoning optimism, I suppose. How complicated should it have been for someone to get on a bus in one town and arrive in another with only a single connection? But nothing had been simple with Madeline Kimbell.

  During the day I called both the Greyhound office in Huntsville and the Missouri Pacific bus station, but no one at either place remembered seeing her. I called the Huntsville Police Department and the sheriff’s department and gave them her description and told them she was a possible missing person. I went by her apartment a half dozen times, and I had Jim Rutherford call her parents twice. In short, I did everything a good investigator should have done, and still I couldn’t find a trace of her. At least not until Charlie Grist phoned my hotel room early the next morning to tell me that around midnight the previous evening a motorist had found her body a few miles west of town on the Galveston highway.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “You did your best, Virgil,” Jim Rutherford said. It was an hour later and we were once more having coffee in his living room. The old man’s eyes under his bushy brows were world-weary and tired.

  “I’m sorry, Jim,” I said.

  He sighed and drained his cup. “Madeline was always nervous and flighty. And she had trouble taking instructions.”

  “How about her parents?” I asked.

  “I talked to them a little while ago. They’re shattered. Just absolutely shattered.”

  “Was she an only child?”

  He shook his head. “She had one older brother. He’s a high school football coach up at Lufkin.”

  “That’s merciful,” I said. “When’s the funeral?”

  “I’m not sure. I just know that it’s going to be a graveside service. Are you going?”

  “Of course. I feel obliged to give her parents an opportunity to chew me out for doing such a rotten job of taking care of their daughter.”

  He shook his head. “There won’t be none of that. They’re grateful that you tried. But would you mind coming by here to take me with you? I just don’t drive anymore if I can help it.”

  “Sure. I’ll be happy to. Leave a message at the desk at the Creole when you find out when it’s going to be.”

  Just then the phone rang. Rutherford lifted the receiver and listened for a few moments, then said, “I’ll tell him.” He turned to me with a cold smile on his face and said, “That was Charlie.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Right. He said you’d left my number with the switchboard girl at the hotel. He wants you to meet him there at the hotel coffee shop about seven this evening.”

  “What’s brewing?”

  “The governor has finally given the word. It’s time for Mr. Salisbury to go back to Louisiana.”

  * * *

  I’d been waiting ten minutes when Klevenhagen and Grist entered the room. I signaled the waitress to bring them coffee.

  “The time has come, the walrus said,” Grist announced as he took a seat. His face was as grim as ever, but there was a happy light in his eyes I’d never seen there befor
e.

  “Anything new on Madeline?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No. And we’re not liable to get anything either.”

  “It had to be Salisbury,” I said.

  “Maybe and maybe not. We can sure as hell put the question to him, though. But nothing we get out of him would stand up in court and you know it as well as I do.”

  “You’re right,” I admitted. “But I don’t like it. These people always walk on the real stuff. If they get ’em, it’s always for some Tinkertoy crap like when they nailed Capone on tax evasion.”

  “I know,” he said with a sigh. “And I have my own remedy for problems like Salisbury, but in this case they won’t let me use it. So this is the best we can do.”

  * * *

  The Grotto was busy that night. Salisbury wasn’t in his office, and we had almost an hour’s wait during which we cooled our heels and drank coffee. At last he entered with two of his henchmen. Once again the bartender whispered in his ear, and once again he glided off toward his office without so much as a glance in our direction. We gave him a couple of minutes, then followed along. This time the bartender didn’t even look up at us. At the end of the corridor Grist tapped on the office door. A moment later the smaller of Salisbury’s two bodyguards swung it open and motioned us inside. Salisbury was in his big, thronelike chair behind his desk, and both guards were standing. The smaller man was rat-faced under oily blond hair; the big man was bald and stolid and looked slow. Grist pushed the door shut behind us. Klevenhagen had his eye on the two thugs and his hand was comfortingly near his sidearm, so I left them to him and turned my attention to their boss.