“That’s it.”
“Swell if you can arrange it.” They shook hands. “Good luck!”
Cragin had scarcely rounded the angle in the hall when he heard an elevator gate slam. A Negro was saying, “He jest went up a while ago, Mistah Mealy. To Mistah Thorne’s rooms. Yas, suh, right around de corner, suh.”
Healy, Chief of Detectives, finally wanted Cragin badly enough to make a personal call. He was saying to a companion, “Hold it, Jenkins, wait till he comes out, no use rubbing Thorne the wrong way.”
That told Cragin that a D.A. man was along.
Cragin wheeled to duck down the cross corridor to avoid a head-on collision. A handy out, except for one detail: Simon, Thorne’s servant, thrust his head out and called, “Mistah Cragin! Mister Cragin! Mistah Thorne wants to see you.”
That touched things off. Heavy feet pounded down the main corridor. The Chief of Detectives bawled, “Cragin! Hold it.”
Cragin stretched his legs.
Healy was not above pulling a gun; but a hotel was hardly the place for artillery, except in emergencies, so he shouted, “Come here, or I’ll—I’ll throw the book at you!”
In a fair race, Healy would have won. And under any other circumstances, Cragin would have halted, but the indicator of the elevator just ahead tempted him. Whatever the ultimate consequences might be, he had to avoid any detention, regardless of what its purpose was.
The elevator door was wide open. A passenger, stepping out, exclaimed and sidestepped, seeing the race. Cragin took advantage of the confusion. He ducked, squatted, tumbling the dick against the D.A.’s man. Resisting arrest was the last thing Healy expected, in spite of Cragin’s dash. Up till the commando stuff, Healy felt that Cragin simply must have misunderstood, or have been rattled.
Cragin bounded up and into the elevator. He slammed the door and said to the gaping operator, “Sister, pour it down through the bottom! I mean business.”
And she did.
Cragin was out through a ground floor side door before the house dick, in the lobby, had received word by phone.
At the curb, he got another break: a cab was waiting, and he piled in. But sirens were howling when, on Bourbon, he paid off and ducked into the Silver Slipper. As far as the driver cared, it was a quick date and the fare wasn’t waiting for his change. And sirens were often heard in the Vieux Carré.
Cutting through alleys, Cragin backtracked to Royal Street. There, in the glamour-murk, he settled down to a walk, and strolled casually. The siren told him that something was happening along the river front. Whoever was seeking him was doing it quietly. This was hardly a relief.
When he came to the arch which was death’s back door, he was none too sure whether he was the hunted or the hunter. He was certain of but one thing: if the cops nailed him now, he’d not only face Captain Howes and rehabilitation, but a juicy court martial. His brilliant routine no longer looked so sparkling.
Inch by inch, he crept once more into death’s backyard. Play it to a finish, then tell all, and pray. With cops combing the Vieux Carré, there was a chance for anything but the right thing. With two prospects to bait, he’d snagged himself.
Ahead was a small furtive sound. Cragin, shaky, wondered how he had made a disturbance. Then a trick of the breeze brought him a familiarly unpleasant odor. The back door was open. He had closed it on leaving. That was warning enough. Cragin flattened as a porch floorboard creaked in the gloom. There was a dim glint of blued metal, but no challenge.
That meant, it’s not a cop.
So did the thin whack of a pistol. Lead zinged from tin cans. Cragin saw his chance and took it. This was Africa again. A dick may duck for cover, but a soldier doesn’t, not when driving through can win. He was up, gun in hand, facing the fire. He felt a bullet burn him. He kept on.
The gunner yelled, a peculiar sound, shrill yet croaking. He was desperate, rattled: he had to get his man, or else—He almost did. Even a pea-shooter packs a wallop at close range. And then Cragin let him have it, when missing was no longer possible. The heavy gun shook the panes. There was a thud, a thump, and choking sounds.
Cragin had two guesses as to who the man was, but he was too weak to look. He clung to the door jamb to pull himself together. And when he heard the crash of a front door panel, he decided to stand fast.
“Take it easy!” he shouted, as flashlights bored down the shotgun hall. “It’s all over.”
It was. He tried to let go the gun which was frozen to his hand; bad thing to be holding when cops barge in. But he fell with the weapon.
When Cragin could see things clearly he was looking at the familiar faces of Third Precinct dicks. Healy was not among them. Cragin finally got it: Moses Wilson had muttered in his stupor, giving a working hint as to Montgomery Diggs. This was only a routine search of the block. Healy had come to the hotel to ask Cragin for more details of what had taken place just before the old Negro had bounded in front of a cab.
“And what were you doing here?”
Cragin told them, then asked, “Who did I shoot it out with?”
“Harry Ormond. But from the looks of the empties around him, he was shooting it out with you.”
“Last shot is what counts. I bet he looked all over hell for his missing cigarette lighter.”
It took some first aid and a couple of drinks before Cragin could carry on and explain that last quip. A good deal more time was spent before Cragin was free and able to get to Nedra’s suite. This was not until the cops found the mikes in her rooms, and Burnett’s, and Sinclair’s as well. All the wires converged in Harry Ormond’s hotel quarters. Finally, a makeup kit, and traces of make-up on an un-burned scrap of paper towel, behind death’s back door, showed how Harry Ormond and Montgomery Diggs had been one.
When Nedra insisted, Cragin went over it all, point by point. He concluded, “If there hadn’t been so many cockeyed twists, I’d have had a hunch much sooner. After all, Ormond’s position and his hours gave him an edge no one else could have had, and in his mulatto make-up, he could look anyone as much in the face as any flunkey ever looks at anyone, and not be recognized—because it’d just be too improbable, the owner as porter.”
“But that farewell note!”
“Get a guy drunk. A guy that’s sorry for himself. Won’t he write some wash like that, just to make you squirm awhile? Look how Harry went nuts, trying to exterminate your boyfriends. I might start doing that myself—you just get next to people.”
“No reason to, Cliff. Unless you’re afraid of an institution.”
“Huh?”
“You said to tell everyone I was marrying you.”
He blinked. “That was bait. To make me the clay pigeon. What the—say—”
“I’m not ribbing you, Cliff.”
And considering the .25 caliber slugs that had been probed out of him, Nedra’s squeeze was convincing.
“But the rehabilitation—”
“I can take anything,” he told her. “Though the General’s a piker if he squawks about your being an ex-star, he’d be as bad as—”
“As Dave Thorne.” She laughed softly. “I’ll talk sense into the General. In the morning.”
Cragin brightened. “Baby—don’t you be a piker! I don’t need rehabilitation, I proved it plenty.”
That puzzled her. “Why—?”
“I mean,” he explained, “talk him into letting me go hack and pitch, there’s a war to win, and Lord, wouldn’t they welcome you as a WAC or WAVE or something! Say, that’s just what we both need, rehabilitation from civilian life!”
HE PULLED A GUN
Originally published in Candid Detective, November 1938.
When Honest John Carmody swung his light sedan from the Camino Real to the vacant parking lot of the Six Mile House, he knew something was wrong. The neon lights were out; the electrical phonograph was silen
t. And it was long before closing time.
Then the breeze shifted, and John Carmody knew the answer. He coughed. His bluff red face crinkled at the foul stench that billowed out of a shattered window of the road house, and into his car. A racketeer’s stink bomb; San Francisco and the “Peninsula” had gotten acquainted with “protective unions,” and in a big way.
Honest John poured his bulky frame from the wheel. He held his nose and head, hunched forward, charged to the side door that opened into the stairway which led to the owner’s quarters, upstairs.
His heart promised to knock his vest loose. He remembered the ambulance that he had met a few miles north screaming its way toward Palo Alto.
A thin thread of light reached from a doorway into the second floor hall. Honest John stopped at the jamb, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The girl in the tea rose negligee lay face down on her bed. Her shoulders jerked convulsively, and the racking sobs made her shapely form shudder. She was trimly built, with long, lovely legs. Honest John’s idea of a woman, if there ever was one!
She seemed to sense his presence, and she sat bolt upright, making a swift twist to do so. The play of lithe curves was beautiful.
“Alma—” He crossed the threshold. “What the devil—where’s your dad?”
She fished a handkerchief from beneath the rumpled pillow and dabbled her reddened eyes. They were dark and worried; usually they were black and splendid. Alma Juras was one of those Slavonian girls whom nature had given trim ankles to set off her lovely face.
“I was going to phone you.” Alma slid to her feet, pulled the negligee more closely about her. Then she colored a little, realizing how flimsy it was. She said, “I was there when they threw that bomb—I had to get out of every stitch I was wearing—”
“Where’s the old man?” he cut in.
Alma buried her face on his shoulder, and both arms crept around his neck.
“They slugged him—the ambulance took him to Palo Alto—they wouldn’t let me go along—they won’t tell me anything over the telephone—”
“Wait till I get hold of the dirty rats!” he grumbled. He dragged a chair into line, and planted himself in it; the same move deftly swept her to his knee. “What’d they look like?”
Alma shook her head. “I didn’t notice them, much. Everyone was dancing. I think it must be that protective union. Dad ran their collector out, last week. Wait till I tell the sheriff—the police—the—”
“Fat lot of good that’ll do,” he bitterly growled. “Anyway, I’d bet my neck Iron Mike’s behind this. Same as he’s been dumping acid into dry cleaners’ vats in Frisco, and raising Cain with barber shops, and—”
Alma looked up, eyes wide. “Why—if you know all about it—if everyone knows—”
“Baby, knowing ain’t proving! But I’ll get proof.”
In spite of her worry, the girl smiled a bit. “What’s on your mind?” she murmured, raising her eyes to scrutinize that blank, ruddy puss.
Except for his little blue eyes, he looked thick witted. But Honest John inspired confidence, and Alma liked him a lot. He knew that, and if he had not, he might have guessed from the thumping of her heart as she snuggled closer.
“I ain’t been in business around here long enough to be well known,” he began. “You open this road house, whether or no. Me, I’ll be bartender, or something. They’ll come back if you show fight after your old man was conked.”
“I’m terribly afraid—” She shivered, and flashed an anxious glance about.
Honest John stuttered, “Uh—um—what I meant was, I could sort of stick around nights—in—um—your old man’s rooms.”
Alma was not as worried as she had been, some minutes earlier. She raised a red, eager mouth. “Darling.” She sighed, catching a fresh breath, “I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here—”
When Honest John headed for the room vacated by Anton Juras, Alma sat, bright-eyed, for a long time in the gloom.
* * * *
It took several days to get the Six Mile House cleaned up. Honest John had expected that. What caught him short was the way the papers, local and city, played up the lovely girl who was going to defy the racketeers while her father fought for his life. Thus far, no one had been permitted to see Anton Juras.
That unwanted publicity was a challenge. Iron Mike, so called because of iron gray hair, his cold eye, and the rumor that a steel vest had protected him from his rivals, could not ignore it, lest the rest of his victims rise in revolt.
Honest John, tending bar at the Six Mile House, groaned and clamped down on his cigar. The whole Peninsula had come in for a drink, and a look at Alma. The cocktails the big dick mixed were lousy, but nobody cared; Alma’s lovely, vibrant figure within her glove-tight gown, was an eyeful that was all the more splendid for the gallant smile she gave the world.
Once she weakened. She slammed the phone, glided to the bar, and swallowed the catch in her throat. “That darned sheriff! He can’t send a deputy. He says we’ve not been threatened!”
“Tell him to—to—go and—” He jerked toward the sleek young man who had oozed toward the mahogany. “Yes, sir! What’s yours?”
“Sazerac.” Soft voice, too soft; and mocking. Honest John’s ears got red. “You want a whiskey an’ soda, brother.”
“Okay, Mac,” smiled the smooth blond egg. “You only have to know twenty drinks to get a union card. Now listen. You’re no more bartender than I am. So tell the lady she’s way off, hiring a guy that wears a gat with his bar towel.”
Honest John filled the highball glass to the very brim, and spilled not a drop as he heard the customer continue, “There’s slicker ways of doing things. Suppose a stink was cut loose. Suppose a dozen customers—” He airily waved his hand to indicate thrice that number, “sued your boss for ten grand a piece, for mental distress, being poisoned, and so on. That’s her finish, and by a court order she can’t beef. Legal, get it?”
That was gospel. Alma, and her father, if he lived, would be out on the street, busted flat. Honest John said, “Buddy, you said I got a gat. I saw the butt of yours. Reach for it, quick!”
The big dick’s biting whisper made the fellow jerk as though he’d stepped on a live wire. He made a beautiful job of going for his gun. He knew his trade.
But so did Honest John. Only, it was a bung starter, not a .38 that made that sharp smack. The business agent went down with a cold gat dropping from his mitt. John Carmody grinned, and beckoned to Alma. “Customer just passed out. By the way, tell the sheriff we got a threat.”
None of the patrons had even noticed the encounter; only its result. An hour later, a sleeping Buddha of a deputy came in to flash a star and sponge drinks. But Honest John’s face was lengthening, and he set the clock an hour forward, to hasten the two o’clock legal closing.
“Thank Gawd,” he muttered, locking the doors, “we made it.”
He followed Alma up the stairs. He did not have the courage to tell her that he had not foreseen the enemy’s ace in the hole: tailor-made suits…for ten grand each. Her eyes were starry as she looked back over her shoulder and smiled. He could not tell her what he had egged her into. All he could do was assure himself that ruinous lawsuits were better than the vicious bodily attacks from which not even his vigilance could indefinitely save her.
There was a lot that Honest John had not taken into account when indignation had thrown him into this one sided fight.
At her door, Alma’s slow smile brought his thoughts back to her. She murmured, “Don’t frown that way, darling. Wondering whether I’d kiss you good night?”
He made an awkward bluff of having had just that problem on his mind. Better she thought him sheepish and clumsy than know what had and did worry him.
Then her closeness and contagious warmth strengthened him. She looked up, whispering, “I’m not afraid, as long as you�
��re near. And somehow, I think dad will recover. That’s all that matters. One more gas bomb, and we’ll lose our customers. We’ll close the place, and I’ll be glad. There’s been little enough in it, anyway!”
All this as she snuggled kitten-like in his arms. A common enemy had brought them closer together than weeks of hasty kisses. And Honest John, convinced that the menace was legal trickery, rather than violence, was less observant than he might otherwise have been. Neither he nor Alma heard the furtive stirring, down in the darkened bar and lounge.
“Somehow, I know dad’s not badly injured,” she murmured. “They’re just keeping him quiet. He’s so excitable and hot tempered…”
“What was that?” His tense exhalation froze her. “Stay here! Shut up!”
He pulled free of her, and a gun filled his hand. His swift motion was soundless, though somehow, he seemed like an elephant doing a toe dance. But despite his bulk, not a stair tread betrayed his speed. Yet John Carmody was not quite quick enough; that sly stirring had burst into an insane confusion. A chair upset. Glass shattered. There was a momentary, blinding flash which blinked out before it fairly began; yet its instantaneous duration was like a flicker of bluish daylight. A man cursed. Two men, three of them. “Get him! Get that camera!”
“I can’t—it’ll blow up anyway—”
All that was torn by a wrathful cry, a pistol shot, and answering fire. The whole succession was bracketed into a split second; yet, like the slow motion picture of eye tricking speed, it was drawn out in John Carmody’s senses. He added the final touch.
He fired at the shapes milling in gloom laced by headlight flicker from cars swooping down the Camino. One man dropped. The other returned a wild shot. Honest John roared, bounded forward, ducking lead and squeezing slugs.
He tripped over a man he had not perceived in the gloom. The firing ceased. A fugitive gained the door. Then a gusty roar, and a sheet of flame that blinded and dazed the detective. A hammer blow hurled him against the bar. He did not feel the impact. The concussion wave of the explosion had already stunned him. Nor was he aware of the singing fragments, the choking fumes, the flying plaster scattered when the bomb pushed half of one wall into the parking lot.
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