Dinah Brand’s little Marmon was standing in front of the hotel. I didn’t see her. I went up to my room, leaving the door unlocked. I had got my hat and coat off when she came in without knocking.
“My God, you keep a boozy smelling room,” she said.
“It’s my shoes. Noonan took me wading in rum.”
She crossed to the window, opened it, sat on the sill, and asked:
“What was that for?”
“He thought he was going to find your Max out in a dump called Cedar Hill Inn. So we went out there, shot the joint silly, murdered some dagoes, spilled gallons of liquor, and left the place burning.”
“Cedar Hill Inn? I though it had been closed up for a year or more.”
“It looked it, but it was somebody’s warehouse.”
“But you didn’t find Max there?” she asked.
“While we were there he seems to have been knocking over Elihu’s First National Bank.”
“I saw that,” she said. “I had just come out of Bengren’s, the store two doors away. I had just got in my car when I saw a big boy backing out of the bank, carrying a sack and a gun, with a black handkerchief over his face.”
“Was Max with them?”
“No, he wouldn’t be. He’d send Jerry and the boys. That’s what he has them for. Jerry was there. I knew him as soon as he got out of the car, in spite of the black handkerchief. They all had black ones. Four of them came out of the bank, running down to the car at the curb. Jerry and another fellow were in the car. When the four came across the sidewalk, Jerry jumped out and went to meet them. That’s when the shooting started and Jerry dropped. The others jumped in the bus and lit out. How about that dough you owe me?”
I counted out ten twenty-dollar bills and a dime. She left the window to come for them.
“That’s for pulling Dan off, so you could cop Max,” she said when she had stowed the money away in her bag. “Now how about what I was to get for showing you where you could turn up the dope on his killing Tim Noonan?”
“You’ll have to wait till he’s indicted. How do I know the dope’s any good?”
She frowned and asked:
“What do you do with all the money you don’t spend?” Her face brightened. “You know where Max is now?”
“No.”
“What’s it worth to know?”
“Nothing.”
“I’ll tell you for a hundred bucks.”
“I wouldn’t want to take advantage of you that way.”
“I’ll tell you for fifty bucks.”
I shook my head.
“Twenty-five.”
“I don’t want him,” I said. “I don’t care where he is. Why don’t you peddle the news to Noonan?”
“Yes, and try to collect. Do you only perfume yourself with booze, or is there any for drinking purposes?”
“Here’s a bottle of so-called Dewar that I picked up at Cedar Hill this afternoon. There’s a bottle of King George in my bag. What’s your choice?”
She voted for King George. We had a drink apiece, straight, and I said:
“Sit down and play with it while I change clothes.”
When I came out of the bathroom twenty-five minutes later she was sitting at the secretary, smoking a cigarette and studying a memoranda book that had been in a side pocket of my glad-stone bag.
“I guess theses are the expenses you’ve charged up on other cases,” she said without looking up. “I’m damned if I can see why you can’t be more liberal with me. Look, here’s a six-hundred-dollar item marked Inf. That’s information you bought from somebody, isn’t it? And here’s a hundred and fifty below it—Top—whatever that is. And here’s another day when you spent nearly a thousand dollars.”
“They must be telephone numbers,” I said, taking the book from her. “Where were you raised? Fanning my baggage!”
“I was raised in a convent,” she told me. “I won the good behavior prize every year I was there. I thought little girls who put extra spoons of sugar in their chocolate went to hell for gluttony. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as profanity until I was eighteen. The first time I heard any I damned near fainted.” She spit on the rug in front of her, tilted her chair back, put her crossed feet on my bed, and asked: “What do you think of that?”
I pushed her feet off the bed and said:
“I was raised in a water-front saloon. Keep your saliva off my floor or I’ll toss you out on your neck.”
“Let’s have another drink first. Listen, what’ll you give me for the inside story of how the boys didn’t lose anything building the City Hall—the story that was in the papers I sold Donald Willsson?”
“That doesn’t click with me. Try another.”
“How about why the first Mrs. Lew Yard was sent to the insane asylum?”
“No.”
“King, our sheriff, eight thousand dollars in debt four years ago, now the owner of as nice a collection of downtown business blocks as you’d want to see. I can’t give you all of it, but I can show you where to get it.”
“Keep trying,” I encouraged her.
“No. You don’t want to buy anything. You’re just hoping you’ll pick up something for nothing. This isn’t bad Scotch. Where’d you get it?”
“Brought it from San Francisco with me.”
“What’s the idea of not wanting any of this information I’m offering? Think you can get it cheaper?”
“Information of that kind’s not much good to me now. I’ve got to move quick. I need dynamite—something to blow them apart.”
She laughed and jumped up, her big eyes sparkling.
“I’ve got one of Lew Yard’s cards. Suppose we sent the bottle of Dewar you copped to Pete with the card. Wouldn’t he take it as a declaration of war? If Cedar Hill was a liquor cache, it was Pete’s. Wouldn’t the bottle and Lew’s card make him think Noonan had knocked the place over under orders?”
I considered it and said:
“Too crude. It wouldn’t fool him. Besides, I’d just as leave have Pete and Lew both against the chief at this stage.”
She pouted and said:
“You think you know everything. You’re just hard to get along with. Take me out tonight? I’ve got a new outfit that’ll knock them cockeyed.”
“Yeah.”
“Come up for me around eight.”
She patted my cheek with a warm hand, said “Ta-ta,” and went out as the telephone bell began jingling.
“My chinch and Dicks are together at your client’s joint,” Mickey Linehan reported over the wire. “Mine’s been generally busier than a hustler with two bunks, though I don’t know what the score is yet. Anything new?”
I said there wasn’t and went into conference with myself across the bed, trying to guess what would come of Noonan’s attack on Cedar Hill Inn and Whisper’s on the First National Bank. I would have given something for the ability to hear what was being said up at old Elihu’s house by him, Pete the Finn, and Lew Yard. But I hadn’t that ability, and I was never much good at guessing, so after half an hour I stopped tormenting my brain and took a nap.
It was nearly seven o’clock when I came out of the nap. I washed, dressed, loaded my pockets with a gun and a pint flask of Scotch, and went up to Dinah’s.
17
RENO
She took me into her living room, backed away from me, revolved, and asked me how I liked the new dress. I said I liked it. She explained that the color was rose beige and that the dinguses on the side were something or other, winding up:
“And you really think I look good in it?”
“You always look good,” I said. “Lew Yard and Pete the Finn went calling on old Elihu this afternoon.”
She made a face at me and said:
“You don’t give a damn about my dress. What did they do there?”
“A pow-wow, I suppose.”
She looked at me through her lashes and asked:
“Don’t you really know where Max is?”
Then I did. There was no use admitting I hadn’t known all along. I said:
“At Willsson’s, probably, but I haven’t been interested enough to make sure.”
“That’s goofy of you. He’s got reasons for not liking you and me. Take mama’s advice and nail him quick, if you like living and like having mama live too.”
I laughed and said:
“You don’t know the worst of it. Max didn’t kill Noonan’s brother. Tim didn’t say Max. He tried to say MacSwain, and died before he could finish.”
She grabbed my shoulders and tried to shake my hundred and ninety pounds. She was almost strong enough to do it.
“God damn you!” Her breath was hot in my face. Her face was white as her teeth. Rouge stood out sharply like red labels pasted on her mouth and cheeks. “If you’ve framed him and made me frame him, you’ve got to kill him—now.”
I don’t like being manhandled, even by young women who look like something out of mythology when they’re steamed up. I took her hands off my shoulders, and said:
“Stop bellyaching. You’re still alive.”
“Yes, still. But I know Max better than you do. I know how much chance anybody that frames him has got of staying alive long. It would be bad enough if we had got him right, but—”
“Don’t make so much fuss over it. I’ve framed my millions and nothing’s happened to me. Get your hat and coat and we’ll feed. You’ll feel better then.”
“You’re crazy if you think I’m going out. Not with that—”
“Stop it, sister. If he’s that dangerous he’s just as likely to get you here as anywhere. So what difference does it make?”
“It makes a—You know what you’re going to do? You’re going to stay here until Max is put out of the way. It’s your fault and you’ve got to look out for me. I haven’t even got Dan. He’s in the hospital.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got work to do. You’re all burnt up over nothing. Max has probably forgotten all about you by now. Get your hat and coat. I’m starving.”
She put her face close to mine again, and her eyes looked as if they had found something horrible in mine.
“Oh, you’re rotten!” she said. “You don’t give a damn what happens to me. You’re using me as you use the others—that dynamite you wanted. I trusted you.”
“You’re dynamite, all right, but the rest of it’s kind of foolish. You look a lot better when you’re happy. Your features are heavy. Anger makes them downright brutal. I’m starving, sister.”
“You’ll eat here,” she said. “You’re not going to get me out after dark.”
She meant it. She swapped the rose beige dress for an apron, and took inventory of the ice box. There were potatoes, lettuce, canned soup and half a fruit cake. I went out and got a couple of steaks, rolls, asparagus, and tomatoes.
When I came back she was mixing gin, vermouth and orange bitters in a quart shaker, not leaving a lot a space for them to move around in.
“Did you see anything?” she asked.
I sneered at her in a friendly way. We carried the cocktails into the dining room and played bottoms-up while the meal cooked. The drinks cheered her a lot. By the time we sat down to the food she had almost forgotten her fright. She wasn’t a very good cook, but we ate as if she were.
We put a couple of gin-gingerales in on top the dinner.
She decided she wanted to go places and do things. No lousy little runt could keep her cooped up, because she had been as square with him as anybody could be until he got nasty over nothing, and if he didn’t like what she did he could go climb trees or jump in lakes, and we’d go out to the Silver Arrow where she had meant to take me, because she had promised Reno she’d show up at his party, and by God she would, and anybody who thought she wouldn’t was crazy as a pet cuckoo, and what did I think of that?
“Who’s Reno?” I asked while she tied herself tighter in the apron by pulling the strings the wrong way.
“Reno Starkey. You’ll like him. He’s a right guy. I promised him I’d show at his celebration and that’s just what I’ll do.”
“What’s he celebrating?”
“What the hell’s the matter with this lousy apron? He was sprung this afternoon.”
“Turn around and I’ll unwind you. What was he in for? Stand still.”
“Blowing a safe six or seven months ago—Turlock’s, the jeweler. Reno, Put Collings, Blackie Whalen, Hank O’Marra, and a little lame guy called Step-and-a-Half. They had plenty of cover—Lew Yard—but the jewelers’ association dicks tied the job to them last week. So Noonan had to go through the motions. It doesn’t mean anything. They got out on bail at five o’clock this afternoon, and that’s the last anybody will ever hear about it. Reno’s used to it. He was already out on bail for three other capers. Suppose you mix another little drink while I’m inserting myself in the dress.”
The Silver Arrow was half-way between Personville and Mock Lake.
“It’s not a bad dump,” Dinah told me as her little Marmon carried us toward it. “Polly De Voto is a good scout and anything she sells you is good, except maybe the bourbon. That always tastes a little bit like it had been drained off a corpse. You’ll like her. You can get away with anything out here so long as you don’t get noisy. She won’t stand for noise. There it is. See the red and blue lights through the trees?”
We rode out of the woods into full view of the roadhouse, a very electric-lighted imitation castle set close to the road.
“What do you mean she won’t stand for noise?” I asked, listening to the chorus of pistols singing Bang-bang-bang.
“Something up,” the girl muttered, stopping the car.
Two men dragging a woman between them ran out of the roadhouse’s front door, ran away into the darkness. A man sprinted out a side door, away. The guns sang on. I didn’t see any flashes.
Another man broke out and vanished around the back.
A man leaned far out a front second-story window, a black gun in his hand.
Dinah blew her breath out sharply.
From a hedge by the road, a flash of orange pointed briefly up at the man in the window. His gun flashed downward. He leaned farther out. No second flash came from the hedge.
The man in the window put a leg over the sill, bent, hung by his hands, dropped.
Our car jerked forward. Dinah’s lower lip was between her teeth.
The man who had dropped from the window was gathering himself up on hands and knees.
Dinah put her face in front of mine and screamed:
“Reno!”
The man jumped up, his face to us. He made the road in three leaps, as we got to him.
Dinah had the little Marmon wide open before Reno’s feet were on the running board beside me. I wrapped my arms around him, and damned near dislocated them holding him on. He made it as tough as he could for me by leaning out to try for a shot at the guns that were tossing lead all around us.
Then it was all over. We were out of range, sight and sound of the Silver Arrow, speeding away from Personville.
Reno turned around and did his own holding on. I took my arms in and found that all the joints still worked. Dinah was busy with the car.
Reno said:
“Thanks, kid. I needed pulling out.”
“That’s all right,” she told him. “So that’s the kind of parties you throw?”
“We had guests that wasn’t invited. You know the Tanner Road?”
“Yes.”
“Take it. It’ll put us over to Mountain Boulevard, and we can get back to town that-a-way.”
The girl nodded, slowed up a little, and asked:
“Who were the uninvited guests?”
“Some plugs that don’t know enough to leave me alone.”
“Do I know them?” she asked, too casually, as she turned the car into a narrower and rougher road.
“Let it alone, kid,” Reno said. “Better get as much out of the heap as it’s got.”
&nbs
p; She prodded another fifteen miles an hour out of the Marmon. She had plenty to do now holding the car to the road, and Reno had plenty holding himself to the car. Neither of them made any more conversation until the road brought us into one that had more and better paving.
Then he asked:
“So you paid Whisper off?”
“Um-hmm.”
“They’re saying you turned rat on him.”
“They would. What do you think?”
“Ditching him was all right. But throwing in with a dick and cracking the works to him is kind of sour. Damned sour, if you ask me.”
He looked at me while he said it. He was a man of thirty-four or -five, fairly tall, broad and heavy without fat. His eyes were large, brown, dull, and set far apart in a long, slightly sallow horse face. It was a humorless face, stolid, but somehow not unpleasant. I looked at him and said nothing.
The girl said: “If that’s the way you feel about it, you can—”
“Look out,” Reno grunted.
We had swung around a curve. A long black car was straight across the road ahead of us—a barricade.
Bullets flew around us. Reno and I threw bullets around while the girl made a polo pony of the little Marmon.
She shoved it over to the left of the road, let the left wheels ride the bank high, crossed the road again with Reno’s and my weight on the inside, got the right bank under the left wheels just as our side of the car began to lift in spite of our weight, slid us down in the road with our backs to the enemy, and took us out of the neighborhood by the time we had emptied our guns.
A lot of people had done a lot of shooting, but so far as we could tell nobody’s bullets had hurt anybody.
Reno, holding to the door with his elbows while he pushed another clip into his automatic, said:
“Nice work, kid. You handle the bus like you meant it.”
Dinah asked: “Where now?”
“Far away first. Just follow the road. We’ll have to figure it out. Looks like they got the burg closed up on us. Keep your dog on it.”
We put ten or twelve more miles between Personville and us. We passed a few cars, saw nothing to show we were being chased. A short bridge rumbled under us. Reno said:
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