The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

by Maxim Jakubowski

  I got out of the place just in time to keep from being sick.

  Miss Bryce said: “If he wasn’t there that means there’s still a chance, doesn’t it, Mr Shannon?”

  “I’m afraid it’s slight,” I told her. “What about that ad?”

  “I got a friend of mine who knows a columnist down there to ask about it. It was a girl named Mary Ames who put it in. Does that help you any?”

  “Quite a bit!” Then I told her that I’d keep in touch with her.

  I hung up the phone, feeling even sicker than I had at the morgue. I remembered what the girl had said when I’d mentioned the twenty dollars I was going to give her for the information. She’d said she wasn’t telling me anything because of the twenty, and I’d asked her why she was talking then. She’d said I wouldn’t understand – and I hadn’t then.

  Finding about the ad gave me the answer. The kid had been sticking around and she’d seen he was going to get into trouble. She had tried to get him out of there without telling him anything that would hurt the place too much.

  I didn’t understand this last – but I had a notion I would in a very short time. In fact, just after Darnell’s closed after that night’s business.

  That’s when I planned on crashing the place.

  We went in at half-past four. Just Whitey and I. We waited until the band boys had packed up and left and until most of the stragglers were gone. But we didn’t wait long enough for any of the help to leave. I mean kitchen help and waiters and bar men. I didn’t know who was wrong and who was right in the place. And I didn’t want any of the wrong ones to get away.

  The doors were locked, of course, so we went in through a window we opened on the dressing-room side of the place. I went in first. Then Whitey passed me the gun I’d made for him during the afternoon and followed it.

  It was a good gun, but not handy for housebreaking. I’d gone into a second-hand shop and picked up one of the best guns the Winchester people ever made – an 1897 model twelve-gauge shotgun. That’s the one with the hammer.

  The new hammerless pumps are quieter and maybe they work a little smoother. But those old hammer guns never hung up and there was never a question about ’em being ready for action. All you have to do is pull the hammer back and pull the trigger.

  I’d taken a hacksaw and cut the barrel off just in front of the pump grip. There were five shells in the barrel and another in the chamber, and all loaded with number one buck shot. That’s the size that loads sixteen in a shell, and for close-range work that’s just dandy. They’re big enough to blow a man to hell and back, and there’s enough of them to spread out and take in a lot of territory.

  It was the logical weapon for Whitey, because he didn’t know any more about a pistol than a cat knows about heaven. And he’d shot a rifle and shotgun a few times.

  And he was out for blood. It wasn’t that he’d been roughed up in my room at the time I killed Maury Cullen – because that didn’t bother him. That was just a piece of hard luck to him. When I’d been knocked out and my gun taken from me no doubt the barman had rolled me and found my address and had remembered it.

  Whitey had just happened to be calling when they came after me. It wasn’t that. It was the girl being killed that was getting him crazy. And he was getting crazy, no mistake. He was a little punchy anyway, from a few too many fights, and when he got excited it hit him.

  I whispered: “Now remember! I make the play, if there’s one made. Wait for me and back me up. Don’t start it.”

  He mumbled: “The dirty skunks!”

  I went out to the front and peeked through the curtain shutting off the hall from the main room. There were still a few people finishing up their last drinks. But the lights had been cut and the bar was closed, and only one waiter was in evidence.

  Quite a lot of noise came from the kitchen, and I figured they’d be following the usual roadhouse custom of eating after the guests had left. So I went back to where I’d left Whitey and his shotgun.

  “We’re getting a break!” I said. “I think they’ll all be together in the kitchen. Let’s find the door.”

  Somebody found it for us. We were going down the hall toward the back of the place when a door opened just ahead of us and somebody stepped out. I could hear dishes rattle and heard somebody laugh. The man who’d opened the door turned away from us without seeing us, letting the door slam shut behind him.

  He didn’t get far. I didn’t know who he was or whether he was right or wrong, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I caught him just as he started to open another door. When he turned his head to see who was running up to him I slammed him across the jaw with the side of my gun. It’s no trick – you just palm it and swing.

  Down he went and I took a look in the room. It was empty and I went back to Whitey, who was just outside the kitchen door. Whitey was breathing through his nose, like he used to do in the ring.

  I said: “Let’s go!” and opened the door into the kitchen.

  And I was in, with Whitey and the shotgun right on my heels, before anybody even looked around.

  It wasn’t the way I’d have put ’em if I’d had the placing. There were two guys in white aprons over in front of a big range. One man in a waiter’s uniform was just in back of them. The barman who’d first slugged me was sitting at a kitchen table, alongside the one the dead girl had pointed out as being the boss.

  Another waiter was leaning across the table and telling them something they were laughing over. One other waiter was right in back of them, and two men were sitting at the same table with their backs to us.

  They didn’t stay that way. The waiter saw by the look on the tough barman’s face that something was behind him, and he swung. So did the two men by him.

  The odds were all wrong and I was glad the shotgun idea had occurred to me. Nine of them and two of us – but the shotgun evened it a bit.

  I said: “Everybody over against the wall. Jump!”

  I moved the muzzle of my gun a little, and Whitey croaked: “Move!”

  The two cooks and two of the waiters started to move. But they never had time to get to the wall. All hell broke loose – like I was hoping it would. The big barman stood up and brought a gun up from where he’d pulled it under the protection of the table. I shot him as near centre as I could. When he didn’t fall I did it again.

  He tottered and looked at his boss, just in time to see the front of the man’s face go out the back of his neck. I swear it looked like that. Whitey’s shotgun just blew his face off at that distance. One of the men who’d been sitting with their backs to us fell off his chair. He started to crawl under the table, but the other one stood up, dragging at a gun he must have been carrying in a hip pocket holster.

  I took time and did it right. I lined the sights of my gun on the pit of his stomach and let go. Then he doubled up and fell straight toward me. He landed on his face, without even putting his hands out to break his fall.

  Whitey’s shotgun blasted out again. The waiter on our side of the table went back through the air at least three feet. It was as if there’d been a rope around his middle and somebody had yanked. Then the man who’d ducked under the table shot. I sat down on the floor without knowing how I got there. Whitey shot twice. There was a lot of thumping noise coming from under the table and no more shooting.

  The two cooks and the waiters who were left were against the wall, but only two of them were standing with their hands up. The other two were sitting on the floor holding their hands on their legs and howling blue murder.

  Whitey said: “You hurt bad, Joe?”

  The slug I’d taken had gone through the fleshy part of my leg. I didn’t think it had touched the bone because I could move my foot and not hear anything grate.

  I said: “I don’t think so. Tell those guys over against the wall to come over to me one at a time. I’ll shake ’em down and you watch it.”

  Whitey said: “To hell with it. They’re in this, too. They get the same.”
/>   I don’t know yet whether he was bluffing or meant it, or was just a little crazy with excitement and didn’t realize what he was doing. Anyway, he raised the shotgun and the men by the wall screamed at him not to do it. I shouted the same thing.

  “Go out in front and collect everybody,” I said. “Bring ’em in, customers and all. They see that shotgun and they’ll mind you.”

  Whitey went out of the service door. He came back in a moment with a puzzled look and a bottle of whisky.

  “There’s nobody there and the front door’s wide open,” he said. “I thought you could use a drink.”

  I had the bottle up to my mouth when the big barman – the one I’d first shot – started to move. He’d fallen ahead, so that his head and upper body were across the table. Now he raised his head and looked at me, saying: “I knew I should have taken you and that girl out of the way that first time you came in. My name’s Ames – I was married to Mary.”

  Then he put his head down again, but it didn’t stay there. He slipped down on the floor, moving gradually at first, then hitting the floor with a bang.

  Whitey said to the four men by the wall: “Well, you guys going to talk, or do I turn loose on you?”

  They talked with that, and I didn’t blame them. A dumb man would have found speech if he’d looked at Whitey and that shotgun, because Whitey certainly looked as though he wanted to use it.

  I heard all about it in the hospital. It was a good hospital, too, and I had a private room. With the Bryce girl’s father footing the bills.

  Whitey said: “Yeah, the state cops found Harper’s body back in the woods. One of them damn waiters showed ’em where to look. The kid got looping drunk and kept wandering around the place. Finally he walked into Maury Cullen and his two pals who were hiding out.

  “The barman and Maury and his pals grabbed the kid, but they didn’t knock him off right then. They held him down in the hideout room, in the basement of the joint. That’s what the spot was doing as a side-line – hiding out guys who were plenty hot and willing to pay for a place to stay.”

  “That’s what the cops said.”

  Whitey went on: “Well, the gal didn’t want to turn in her husband, even if she wasn’t living with him. She gets the idea that if somebody come looking for Harper they’d get scared and turn him loose. They didn’t – they knocked him on the head and buried him instead. He’d been nice to the girl – he’d even given her his frat pin after his girlfriend had given it back to him. That killing got the girl. She wanted to squawk, but she was scared of her husband.”

  “She was going to talk to me,” I said.

  “But she wasn’t going to let her husband know about it,” Whitey explained. “He caught her and they knocked her off. Anyway, the whole gang were in the hideout racket and they’re all going up. You know, Joe, I should have told you about Maury, but I didn’t have the guts. I knew the guy the minute I saw him in the can.

  “He was a bad one years ago. He’d come to me when I was fighting and wanted me to throw a fight. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you, see? I figured you’d think maybe I was crooked or something. Say! You going to get in trouble with the cops over this?”

  “Hell, no!” I told him. “Bryce got everything cleared. The cops act like I’ve got a medal coming. They figured it cleared out a bad bunch they didn’t know about. And then, Bryce pulls a lot of weight. It’s all okay.”

  “Swell, Joe,” Whitey said, beaming at me.

  “Tell me something,” I said.

  “Sure, Joe.”

  “Did you throw that fight that Maury Cullen wanted you to throw?”

  Whitey stared at me and said: “Why – hell, yes! D’ya think I’m nuts?”

  DON’T BURN YOUR CORPSES BEHIND YOU

  William Rough

  1. One Corpse – Well Done

  Slabbe lowered his after-lunch quart of beer long enough to rake in the busy telephone. “Yeah?”

  Homicide Lieutenant Carlin answered. “That grifter you’re looking for, Max Lorenz – we got him.”

  Slabbe changed the location of eight ounces of beer. “I should put you cops on retainer.”

  “Oh, you pay your license.”

  “Sure it’s him, Pat? Five feet eight, a hundred and sixty pounds, light complected—”

  Carlin cackled: “Dark complected now.”

  Slabbe’s big hand on the telephone hardened a bit. “That so,” he murmured.

  “He was burned up,” Carlin said. “He went over Bleeker’s Canyon in a jalopy and it caught fire. Some Oybay Outscays found it this morning, what was left of it. Lorenz was in it – what was left of him.”

  Slabbe’s meatblock face registered as much expression as a meatblock. “Accident, huh?”

  “Am I a whirlwind?”

  “They post him yet?”

  “Doing it now.”

  “I’ll be down.”

  Slabbe drank to the last drop, left his office and walked for ten minutes and entered City Hall. The morgue was in the basement. He filled his lungs with the relatively sweet corridor air before turning the knob of the autopsy room door, held his breath, nodding to Carlin, a rangy, slope-shouldered cigar-smoker in blue serge, and squinted at the charred stuff on one of the three guttered tables.

  He said: “Dark complected is right.”

  Carlin never used a word when a grunt would do.

  A pathologist who had rolled up his sleeves but hadn’t bothered to don a gown said to another who was acting as medical stenographer: “It’s a male. Been dead a while. Today’s Wednesday, two o’clock. Say about Monday afternoon or night. Five feet eight’ll do. Can’t guess the weight much from the ashes.”

  Carlin tilted the stub of his cigar close under his long bony nose to mask the smells. “What else, doc?”

  “Some lung tissues in fair shape. Tell you if he was breathing when the fire started.”

  “Suppose you do that.” Carlin looked at Slabbe. “Any reason for him to have got knocked off?”

  “No-o-o.”

  Carlin snorted. “When you say it like that, you might mean—” He stopped; his snort had yanked the cigar stub from under his nostrils and he’d sucked in a good lungful. He gagged, covered it, whitening. He started for the door, controlling himself, then peeked at another operating table bearing something that had been picked off a tide flat and upon which the median incision had not yet been stitched. He ran.

  “Sensitive for a cop,” murmured the pathologist.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Slabbe said. “He can back me up any day.”

  “He shouldn’t mind just one,” the pathologist said. “Monday we had – how many was it, Joe?” he asked the other medic.

  “Twenty-six. Twenty passengers and the crew.”

  Slabbe nodded. A Lockheed Constellation had cracked up on the take-off Monday at the airport and burst into flames. Everyone aboard had perished.

  Slabbe pointed a frankfurter-thick finger at the operating table “That his thigh?”

  The pathologist peered. “Yeah.”

  “Bullet in it?”

  “See for yourself.”

  “Hard to tell,” Slabbe said. “How about an X-ray? A slug, even if it was there, could fall out or melt up. There’s supposed to be one in his left thigh, though.”

  “Oh, this is the right one. Here’s the left.”

  “Still can’t tell,” Slabbe shrugged. “Check it, will you? Check too, if he was pushed around, slugged or like that before he died. A good sock knocks loose fat deposits and the blood takes ’em to the lungs, right?”

  The medic looked up sharply. “How did you know?”

  “Read it in a book,” Slabbe said. He left.

  Carlin had his pacing area of the corridor blue with cigar smoke. He grimaced. “I helped out with those bodies at the airport Monday and didn’t even flutter, but today I had kidneys for lunch. Come on upstairs.”

  In his gopher-hole-sized office upstairs in the Homicide Bureau he went to the wind
ow and nursed two tall green bottles of ale in off the outside sill. He dealt one to Slabbe, fished for an opener.

  Slabbe absently uncapped his bottle with his teeth. “How did you make him, Pat?” he asked. “Car license?”

  “You’re gonna bust your teeth some day.” Carlin caught foam. “Yeah,” he said. “The jalopy had a Pennsylvania license tag and I phoned Harrisburg and it was registered in Lorenz’s name Saturday: ’41 Chevvy, two-door sedan. What was he up to?”

  “Well, I can’t just say.”

  “That’s dandy.”

  “Don’t pop off now. He was a grifter and that’s for sure, so he didn’t just come here for the mountain air; but why he did come, I don’t know. He got out of Lewisburg Saturday, which accounts for him buying a jalopy in Pennsylvania. This is good ale.”

  “What little bird told you this?” Carlin murmured.

  “No little bird, an old buzzard – the New York manager of the Zenith Detective Agency. How come I had the weather eye out for Lorenz is I got a sort of tie-in with Zenith. No retainer, no contract or anything, understand. It’s just that I passed along some dope on a guy they had on one of their readers once and they sent me a check for fifty bucks and said I was an alert investigator that they’d remember if ever they were interested in this neck of the woods again. So last week they wanted a line on Lorenz and called me. They don’t want him for anything he did, they just want to keep him spotted for whatever he might do. Big outfits like Zenith find it pays to get there first sometimes.”

  “Don’t educate me,” Carlin sniffed.

  Slabbe drank. “They probably had a plant at Lewisburg and found out that Lorenz was heading this way, and the old buzzard in the New York office remembers that I’m an alert investigator—”

  “You said that.”

  “If I don’t, who will? Anyhow, I didn’t find out what Lorenz was up to here. I didn’t even see the guy in the flesh.”

  “You saw the flesh, though. What was his rap in Lewisburg for?”

  Slabbe held up an open palm, not quite as heavy and gray as a small granite grave marker. “The Zenith telegram didn’t say. All it said was he was about forty, probably armed, always dangerous. Five feet eight, a hundred and sixty pounds, light complected, blond, natural teeth, brown eyes, a limp in the left leg from a slug in the thigh picked up in a heist of some kind, years back. I told the medics to X-ray for the slug.”