I still didn't know who he was. I didn't wait to find out. I ran out of the steam room. The Finn was standing by the door looking wild. “What's the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing.” I got a fifty-dollar bill out of my wallet. “Get a hammer and some nails.” He hesitated and I shoved the fifty at him. His eyes bulged out. He got the hammer and the nails. “Be fixing something,” I said. He looked around the room. “What'll I fix?” I picked up a chair and jerked the back off it. “Here.” He began to work on it, pounding hard. I hid the pistol under a towel, and then I sat on the rubbing table and began to talk. “There they were with sixty seconds to play,” I said, “and Duke leading three to nothing, and me with one hundred smackers on California. So what do I do? I say to Fritz: 'I'll pay the bet off fifty cents on the dollar.' And Fritz says 'Okay'.”
I looked up, very surprised, as the room clerk and a uniformed cop came running into the room. They stopped when they saw the Finn hammering at the chair. “What's this?” I said.
The clerk turned to me. “Oh, Mr. Craven.” He giggled. “The awfullest thing. I thought I heard shots down here.”
“We didn't hear 'em,” I said, looking at the Finn. “I guess he's been making too much noise.”
The Finn pounded in a nail. The clerk giggled. The policeman snorted and said: “And me eating my lunch.” They went out. I slid off the table and went into the steam room.
I had been scared to death he was going to come to while the cop was around, but I needn't have worried. He was still out, lying on the stone floor just where I left him. I went over and looked down at him. At first I didn't recognize him, and then I did. It was the punk who had brought me the message from Carmel. The one who'd sat at the coffee-shop counter with me. His face was white and “pinched-looking. I didn't know if the steam made him look that way, or the knock on the head. I hauled him out of the steam room. The Finn took off his clothes and I stuck him under a cold shower. That brought him around. He spluttered and gasped, trying to get his breath. He was a little guy, not over a hundred and thirty pounds, and very thin. I could see his ribs. I tossed him a towel. “Now, what's the great idea?” I asked. The punk looked scared, but he said: “There isn't any.”
“You took those shots at me just for the hell of it?”
“No.”
“Well, then; why?”
The punk didn't answer, just stood by the shower with the towel draped around him. I saw this wasn't getting me very far.
“What makes you think your sister's dead?” I asked. He wouldn't say.
“Look,” I said. “I wouldn't kill her. She was a friend. I liked her.”
He stared at me for a minute, still angry, and then he began to cry. “She was all I had,” he gasped between sobs. I thought, well, for God's sake! I called to the Finn and told him to get us a couple of drinks. The punk cried, leaning against the wall, holding the towel around him, until the drinks came. The Finn had gotten rye with ginger ale. I made the punk drink his. After a while he stopped crying.
“Now tell me about it,” I said.
It took quite a while to get him talking. I showed him a card that said I was a special investigator for the Treasury Department, but what really did it was my not being sore because he'd tried to kill me. He said he guessed he had been mistaken. He said he was sorry.
“What makes you think your sister's dead?” I asked again.
“I know.” He began to breathe hard. “I saw her body.”
“The hell!” I yelled for the Finn. “Bring the bottle this time,” I told him.
The Finn went for the rye. “Where'd you see her?” I asked the kid.
“She's-her body's-at an undertaker's in 'Valley.”
I remembered something I'd seen in the paper. I went into the steam room and brought out the paper. It was wet, but the print hadn't smeared. I found the story I was thinking about on page six.
Valley, Aug to.-The nearly nude body of a young woman, presumably beaten to death, was found early today in a ditch by the Daniel Boone Pike. A pretty brunette about twenty-five years old, she had no marks of identification on her. She was clad only in silk stockings and underclothes. It is believed she was thrown from a passing car.
Valley was a village about sixty miles towards St Louis from Paulton. It was a couple of counties away. I showed the item to the punk.
“Yes.”
“What a bad break,” I said.
I thought it was a bad break. She had been a nice little whore, and she had helped me. She had helped me! I began to feel creepy.
“How did you link me with her?” I asked. “They told me at the house you were looking for her yesterday... pretty sore about something.” The punk was crying. “So I added two and two.”
“And got six,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “I'm doing a job of work here.” I flashed the Treasury card at him again. “I wasn't sore at her. I was sore because they wouldn't tell me where she was.”
“The Negro girl wouldn't?”
“Nobody would. So I got sore. You see the wreckage?”
The punk nodded.
“Well,” I said, “I finally found she'd gone out with... somebody.”
He'd stopped crying. “Who?”
“First you do some talking.”
“All right.”
The Finn came with the bottle of rye. I poured a good slug in the punk's glass. “Drink.” He gulped it down.
“How'd you find she was in Valley?” I asked. He shook his head, and I asked: “Do you want me to turn you in?”
“I don't care.”
“Attempted murder's a tough rap. Come on. Who told you?”
“Ginger,” he said. “She called me up. Yesterday afternoon. I wouldn't believe her. But she said to go to Valley. 'Just go,' she said. So I did.”
“Did Ginger mention me?”
“No.” He shook his head, thinking. “But when I told them at the house they said it must have been you.”
“They would say that. But why did you think I'd killed Carmel?”
“I don't know.”
“Did Ginger say how she knew where she was?”
“No.”
I poured us both some rye. I drank mine and filled the glass again. “At the house,” I said, “they told me she'd gone with Chief Piper.”
“So that's...” the kid began.
“Wait a second. Ginger's a friend of Pug Banta's. And so's the chief. But Ginger isn't a friend of the chief. Can you add that up?”
“No.”
“It's not so tough.” I took a drink of the rye. “Pug thought Carmel had spilled some dope to me. And he knew she wouldn't come out to meet him.”
He nodded his head. “That's right.”
“So he got Chief Piper to call her. And when she came, Pug took her.”
“Yeah?” He was a little doubtful.
“Sure. And after he killed her, he gave it away to Ginger. Maybe by accident. And she called you, being sorry for your sister.”
I took a shower while he thought this over. The sweat from the steam room had begun to get sticky. I decided to forget the rub down. I wanted to go where I could do some heavy thinking. It seemed to me things were a little out of control. The poor goddam whore! At that, maybe she was better off dead. When I came out, the punk was putting on his clothes.
“Where're you going?”
“To find Pug.”
“That's no good. Pug's too tough. Besides, we don't know for sure if he did it.”
“I know.”
“Just a little while ago you thought it was me.”
That stopped him.
“Have you claimed her yet?”
“No.”
“Do that first. Give me some time to look around. I'll work out something. Where do you want to have her buried?”
“At home, I guess.”
“Where's that?”
“Temple.”
Temple was another little town about
a hundred miles the other way from Valley. “You got the dough?” I asked.
“I don't know.”
“Here.” I got a couple of hundreds out of my wallet. “This will help. Let me know what you do.”
“Well, thanks....”
“Forget it,” I said.
I took a cab down to the red-brick County Building and went up to the second floor where the records were kept. Half drawn blue blinds made the record room gloomy. An old clerk with thin white hair and the palsy got me the records I wanted. It looked as though McGee had told me the truth. Tony's was owned by Thomas McGee. So was the Arkady Hotel. And the Silver Grove, a dance hall. And the Ship, Paulton's only cabaret.
“One more.” I told the old clerk. “Five hundred and sixty-nine Green Street.”
That was the whorehouse. He brought me the papers. The owner was Thomas McGee.
At the hotel there was a message from Western Union. They had the money order. I went down and identified myself and the girl gave me a cheque for a thousand. I had her call the bank, and then I went around and cashed the cheque. That gave me more than five thousand in cash. I felt like getting drunk.
Instead I went to a jewellery store just off Main Street. “Something nice for a lady,” I told the salesman.
“What sort of a present?” he asked. “A bracelet?”
“Sure,” I said.
He pulled out a tray of bracelets and put it on the glass counter. They looked cheap. There was a lot of gold and coloured glass and fake diamonds. “How much?”
“They range from five to twenty-five.”
“Oh, hell! Something fancier than that.”
He brought out another tray. The stuff didn't look much better. The clerk was fat, and sweat ran off his face. It made me hot to look at him. I wiped my face with a handkerchief.
“Now this one is nice,” he said, holding up one with big gold links. “Solid gold.”
In another part of the showcase I saw a honey. It was wide, and it was made of what looked like diamonds and square-cut sapphires. I pointed at it.
“How much?”
“Seventy-five. It's a very fine imitation.”
“Wrap it up.”
I counted out the money. Then I got a card and wrote: “Baby, why be sore at me?”
I took the parcel and went back to the hotel. I gave the parcel to the giggly desk clerk.
“Give this to Ginger.”
“I certainly will, Mr. Craven,” he said. “The very minute she comes in.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IN THE LOBBY I found the card on which I'd written the name of Oke Johnson's friend. Carter Jeliff. I looked him up in the phone book. He was a butcher, and he lived at 987 Oak Street. I thought Carter Jeliff was a flossy name for a butcher.
I got a cab and rode out to Oak Street. It was hot outdoors, but big trees shaded the street. There were cool places under the trees. I wondered about Jeliff. Oke Johnson was a sour bastard; he didn't make friends with anybody unless there was something in it for him. I didn't see why he'd be fooling around with a butcher.
^ I told the driver to wait. Mrs. Jeliff came to the door. “He's in the garden,” she said.
Jeliff looked the way all butchers should look. He was big, almost as big as me, but not so tall, and he had a face like a ham. He was a blond. He was watering some tomato vines. I told him my name and said I was a friend of Oke Johnson's. He said he was glad to see me, and wasn't it too bad about poor Oke? I said it was.
He turned off the water and asked me if I'd like a beer. I said sure. We went down in the cellar. It was dark and cool. He got two quart bottles of beer out of a washtub and opened them.
“This is where I spend Sunday,” he said.
There were at least two dozen quarts of beer in the tub, and a cake of ice. I wondered if he drank them all himself. He said Prosit! and we drank, sitting in a couple of wicker chairs.
He didn't look like a guy you could buy information from; he looked honest. I told him I was a private detective. I told him I was interested in Oke Johnson's death. Was there anything he knew about it?
He grinned at me. “Do you think I did it?”
“Hell, no. I just found out he was friendly with you. That's all.”
He said that relieved him. He chuckled a little at his joke. Then he got serious. He said he'd noticed one thing. “Oke was nervous about something.”
“What?”
“He never told me. But I knew. He was afraid of strangers, and one night he said he thought he was being followed.”
“Was he?”
“I don't know.”
“Did he ever tell you what he was doing?”
“No.”
This didn't seem to be going anywhere. We had two more bottles of beer while I tried more questions. I began to feel fine; the beer and the cellar were so cool.
“Look,” I said. “Oke wasn't a very friendly guy.”
“He seemed friendly enough to me.”
“Maybe because he wanted to get something out of you.”
He thought that over. “That's a blow,” he said, grinning.
“Did he ever question you about anything?”
“Only about the butcher business.”
The hell! I thought. The butcher business. That had a lot to do with a murder case. I kept on, though.
“In what way?” I asked.
“Well!” He thought for a minute. “He seemed to be interested in the meat I sell the Vineyard.”
“You supply them?”
“No. I just sell 'em left-overs. Anything I can't use. They pay a good price, too.”
I began to get excited. “Who pays you for 'em?”
“Brother Joseph.”
That was why Oke had been friendly with Jeliff. Meat for the Vineyard. I had hit on something. I felt good until I had another thought: Why was Oke interested in the meat?
Jeliff didn't know the answer. All he knew was he delivered meat to Brother Joseph at the Elder's house once a week. It didn't matter how badly spoiled it was; Brother Joseph paid for it just the same.
“If they're crazy out there,” he asked, “should I care?”
I finished the beer and thanked him and said goodbye. It felt twice as hot outside after being in the cellar. I got in the cab. All the way back to the hotel I tried to figure why Oke had been interested in the meat delivered to the Vineyard. I didn't get the answer.
I had a four-pound steak for lunch. I couldn't seem to get enough meat. My system craved it all the time. Rare meat. I had it served in my room. For some reason I didn't feel comfortable outside. I ate the steak lying down.
When the waiter took away the table, I stayed on the bed and read Black Mask. My belly was full of meat. A hot wind blew in the window and I began to sweat. I felt tired again. I thought back and figured I'd had seven hours' sleep in the last three days. I decided a bath and a nap would do me good. I got up and undressed. I found myself ducking every time I passed the windows. I peeked out. They looked down on Main Street, and there were no tall buildings near. No guy would shoot at me from Main Street. Just the same I pulled the curtains.
I filled the tub with cold water and lay in it for a long time. I thought it was funny I should be spooky. Maybe it was the kid trying to shoot me. I'd never feel good in a steam room again. I tried to think about the Vineyard's meat. Slightly decayed meat. What the hell would anybody want that for?
I thought about the Princess. Maybe she could tell me about the meat. I was to see her again tonight. It was to be a regular nightly custom. Well, it was a great experience. I wondered how long I could stand up under it. Maybe some night I...
I heard somebody in the room; feet and the sound of the door closing; I turned my neck, but I couldn't see into the room. The bathroom door was nearly shut. I wished I'd bought another revolver. If I got through this, I would.
“Who's there?” I called.
The feet came towards the bathroom. The door opened a little and I got ready to jump
out of the tub. Ginger stuck her head through the opening, smiling.
“Hello,” she said.
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