The Fifth Grave

by Jonathan Latimer

  “An eighter from Decatur,” she said.

  She did it the hard way: four and four. The Greek had bet against her, and he said something angrily. Ginger drew fifty dollars and let a hundred ride. The Greek laid twenty against her. She rolled a seven. She drew a hundred and let a hundred sit. The Greek muttered again and took the dice from her. He pulled some other dice from his pocket and dropped them on the table.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  I took his dice and tossed them through the door to the dining-room. I heard them roll across the dance floor. The Greek’s eyes got thin-looking, but he didn’t move.

  “Some house dice,” I said.

  The man back of the table took his time. He pushed aside the box where he had found the first dice and got a pair from another box. I took those and threw them away, too.

  “From the first box.”

  He took a pair out of the first box. He looked scared. He glanced at the Greek, but the Greek didn’t say anything. I gave the dice a couple of rolls. They were okay. I gave them to Ginger.

  The Greek stared at me. “Tough guy, hey?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ginger threw the dice against the backboard. They came up eleven. Then she tossed a seven. She was a tropical heat wave. Her next point was nine and she had to throw for it. I watched her. Her body went into curves every time she pitched the dice. She got the nine, sucked three hundred dollars, and then lost the dice. I figured she was six or seven hundred ahead. The Greek took the dice. Ginger started to bet with him against the house. There was no sense in that.

  I shook my head at her, but she went ahead anyway. She bet twenty dollars and lost it. She stopped betting. After a while the dice got around to her again. She had her point, nine, when three men came into the room. She looked up, shaking the dice, and what she saw froze her hand. She stood with the dice in her hand.

  “Hello, Ginger,” one of the men said.

  He was short, but his chest and shoulders were powerful. He had mean blue eyes and he needed a shave. He had the longest arms I ever saw on anything more civilized than an orang-outang. He was a tow-head and he had a club foot.

  “Didn’t expect me, did you, Ginger?”

  “No.”

  Nobody moved around the crap table. I felt glad the chief of police was there until I saw his face. The man turned his eyes on me; then came towards me, walking with a limp. One of his friends had his hand in his pocket. Either his finger or a pistol made a point under the cloth. He looked tough. I thought it was probably a pistol.

  “Be careful, Pug,” said the man behind the table.

  Pug stopped in front of me. His face came about to my neck. He snarled. “You the guy with Ginger?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know whose babe she is?”

  “No.”

  “Like hell.”

  “No.”

  “Well, she’s mine.”

  “She didn’t mention it,” I said.

  He laughed. It was more like a bark than a laugh. I saw one of his front teeth had been broken. It had turned dark. He came a step closer. I backed away. I didn’t want to start a play with three or maybe more toughs against me. I looked at the chief of police. He was still scared. Ginger seemed a little pleased, as though she’d planned it. Maybe she had. Maybe she wanted to make Pug jealous.

  “Do you know who I am?” Pug said.

  “No,” I lied.

  “I’m Pug Banta.”

  “Oh.”

  He moved nearer me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know she was your girl, Pug.”

  He slapped my face. His arm moved so fast I didn’t even have time to duck. My teeth cut my lip. I could taste the blood.

  “You’ll know it next time, fatty,” Pug said.

  Ginger looked frightened now. The Greek spoke to me. “I guess you’re not so tough.”

  “What’s he been doing?” Pug asked.

  “He thinks the game is wrong,” the Greek said.

  “If you don’t like our games,” Pug asked; “why don’t you go home?’

  I kept saying to myself, don’t start anything. I wanted to kill Pug. I never could stand being hit by anybody, not even a woman. I wanted to take him and his pals. I could taste the blood in my mouth.

  “I like your games,” I said; “with the right dice.”

  “Wise, eh?” Pug said, and hit me on the cheek-bone. It was a good punch. I fell back against one of the slot machines. The metal stand tilted and the machine fell on the floor, shattering the glass front.

  “Don’t get too tough,” I told Pug.

  He hit me again. The dark-haired woman with Chief Piper screamed. He hit me on the right temple. He hit hard with both hands. I sat down with my back to the wall. I felt blood run from my mouth. I was a little dizzy. He tried to kick me, but I blocked his foot with my arm. The dark-haired woman ran to him.

  “Stop that, Pug,” she cried.

  He kicked at me again. The woman jerked his arm, trying to pull him away. He got the arm loose and hit her on the nose. The blow sounded like a ripe tomato dropping on a cement floor. She went over on her back. Blood spilled from her nose. Chief Piper, his small eyes frightened, started to protest.

  “Keep your dames in line,” Pug snarled at him.

  The chief backed away. The blood had gone from his face, leaving it the colour of a turnip. The Greek was grinning, his tongue running over his lips. Pug kicked at me again; not hard this time. It was a gesture. He turned his head to the two bodyguards.

  “Toss him out.”

  They picked me off the floor. Nobody bothered to do anything about the woman. She was sobbing, her breath coming in gasps, blood streaming down her face. Pug had broken her nose. The bodyguards started me out of the room. I looked at Ginger. She stared at me as though she’d never seen me in her life. In her hand was the money she’d won with my twenty. The bodyguards ran me through the dining-room. I was still a little punch-drunk. They halted on a veranda.

  One said: “If we catch you again, fatso, we’ll cut off your tail feathers.”

  “And that ain’t all,” the other said.

  They threw me down the steps. I lit rolling, but gravel cut my hands and face. I got up and walked to the parking place. Nobody bothered me. I got in the car and found a rag and wiped the blood off my face. My jaw hurt when I moved it, but I cursed the Greek and Chief Piper and the bodyguards. Then I cursed Pug. I cursed him longest. I decided I would kill him when I got through the job in Paulton. That made me feel better. I started the engine and drove away. For a long time I could see the neon sign, Tony’s, through the rear mirror.

  CHAPTER 4

  It got really hot again in the morning. I kicked the sheet off the bed, but that didn’t do any good. It was too hot to sleep. My watch said nine o’clock. I got up and peered at myself in the mirror. My face wasn’t so bad. There was a blue mark on one cheekbone, and a swollen lip. I cursed Pug Banta again, but I hadn’t forgotten I had my own business first. My own and then Oke Johnson’s. Somebody would toast for that. I hoped it was Pug Banta. That would tie everything up nice.

  I thought about Oke. He’d been killed by a bullet from a rifle with a silencer. That didn’t sound like a crime of passion, as the newspapers say. What I’d told the chief about husbands not keeping rifles with silencers in the closet was right. Somebody smart and cold-blooded killed Oke, and it could only have been because of our case.

  I shaved and put on a white linen suit and sent four dirty shirts to the laundry and went down to the air-cooled coffee shop. I ordered the sixty-cent club breakfast, with ham and eggs and corn bread. The waitress gave me the Paulton Morning Mail. It didn’t have anything about Oke’s death that I didn’t know. My name was mentioned at the bottom of the story. The name Karl Craven, that is. I was a friend of Oke’s, according to the police.

  I didn’t like the story. It meant somebody might take a shot at me with that silenced rifle. Maybe they’d wait, though, to see h
ow much I knew. I’d worry along.

  I drove around the town in the Drive-It sedan for a while. There was a haze over everything and the air was hot and still. I found a cop and asked him how to get to the Vineyard. He told me. I drove past the brick school and followed the carline. Pretty soon I saw the vineyards. They ran up a range of low hills, broken in spots by flower and vegetable gardens and trees, and disappeared over the crests of the hills a couple of miles away. Green grapes hung from the vines. The road ran between low brick walls, but from the sedan I could see people working in the vegetable gardens. They were mostly women, in bright-coloured clothes that looked like Rumanian or Hungarian peasant costumes. Some of the women had red bandanas on their heads.

  I came to a big gate with a metal sign over it: THE VINEYARD. Up to the left I saw the buildings. The gates were open and I drove in. There were two big five-story buildings, two smaller ones, all of them of brick, and a big marble temple. That was where Solomon lay in state. I’d read about it in a magazine. They had embalmed him like Lenin and had put him in a glass coffin where the people could look at him. They were waiting for the Day of Judgment, when Solomon would jump out and lead his people to heaven in a flaming catafalque. That’s what the story said, a flaming catafalque, but I never found out what in hell that was.

  I drove past the temple and parked in front of one of the smaller buildings. There were some other cars parked there. I got out of the sedan and started to go into the building. A tall guy in a white blouse and black trousers stopped me. He wore boots over the trousers.

  “Only on Sunday are tourists allowed, brother,” he said.

  “I’m not a tourist,” I said.

  “What do you want?”

  He looked damned unfriendly. His hair had been cropped close, almost shaved, and that made his bushy eyebrows seem queer. His eyes were deep-set and they looked as though they had been mascaraed.

  “I want to see Penelope Grayson.”

  He hadn’t been paying much attention to me before, but now his eyes poked at me from under the bushy eyebrows.

  “What for, brother?”

  “You can ask her, brother, after I get through talking with her.”

  “Are you a relative?”

  “No.”

  “You can’t see her.”

  “If I can’t,” I said, “I’ll be back with a court order.”

  His face didn’t change.

  “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll get a warrant charging the Vineyard with kidnapping.”

  He didn’t like me. He’d have liked to take a punch at me. He probably couldn’t because he was a member of the Vineyard. He went in the building. I looked around. I saw a few more men dressed in the white blouses and black trousers moving between the buildings. The clothes made them look Russian. I didn’t see any women.

  He came out and crooked a finger at me. We went along a brick walk towards one of the five-story buildings. Behind the buildings, in a hollow, I saw barns and silos. In one field a woman was ploughing behind a pair of grey horses. It was funny to see a woman ploughing. We went up the building’s front steps and into a big room filled with old-fashioned furniture. A woman about thirty-five with eyes the colour of maple sugar came into the room. She had a soft white face. She wore a white blouse and a red skirt.

  “Daughter Penelope,” the man said.

  I thought I saw interest in the woman’s face, but when she turned to me she had no expression at all.

  “Your name?”

  “Karl Craven.”

  “I will ask her.”

  “I come from her uncle,” I said.

  I saw the maple-sugar eyes light up again. She went out. I sat down on a couch and lit a cigarette. The man touched my shoulder.

  “We do not allow smoking, brother.”

  I put the cigarette out. I started to throw the butt in a waste-basket, but I thought better of it and stuffed it in my pocket. The man stood looking down at me, his face cold and unfriendly. He made me uncomfortable.

  “Hot weather we’re having,” I said.

  He didn’t answer, just stared at me. I didn’t try any more conversation. I sat there and wondered what I’d do if Daughter Penelope refused to see me. That was a funny way to name anybody, I thought. I wondered if all the women at the Vineyard were called Daughter.

  The woman came back, saying over her shoulder: “Here he is, Daughter.”

  Penelope Grayson was thin and blonde and almost beautiful. She was dressed in white. She should have been beautiful, but she wasn’t. There was something strange about her face. It was like the face of a person who is blind. What I mean is she looked at me out of grey eyes that really didn’t see me. The woman and the man both watched her.

  “I’m Karl Craven,” I said. “Your uncle asked me to talk to you.”

  “It’s no use,” she said slowly.

  The woman went away. The man stayed. I turned to him. “We don’t need you.”

  “I will remain.”

  “Do you want him to stay, Miss Grayson?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She spoke as though she was in a trance, or doped, or dreaming. She stared back at me steadily enough, but she didn’t see me. She wouldn’t know me again. Her face was queer, as though it was out of focus. The man looked at me smugly.

  “Your uncle wants you to come home,” I said.

  “I belong here,” she said.

  “He is very worried about you.”

  She stood with her dull eyes on me. Her skin was very pale. “You must tell him I am happy here.”

  She looked anything but happy. I didn’t understand it. “He is lonely,” I said. “You’re his only relative.”

  “No longer,” she said. “I am a Daughter of Solomon. I have abandoned my worldly connections.”

  I began to feel spooked. It was like talking to a medium. Her voice came out of her mouth, low and soft, but it didn’t really seem to have anything to do with her. It was as if she didn’t know what she was saying. I wondered if she could be hypnotized.

  “Have you anything for me to tell your uncle?” I asked.

  “I have no message.”

  “Will you see him if he comes here?”

  “Please tell him I am happy here.”

  “Wouldn’t you be happy somewhere else?” I asked. “Where your uncle would not worry?”

  The man tapped my arm. “Daughter Penelope has talked enough.”

  “Please,” she said; “I must go.”

  “You are keeping her from her duties,” the man said.

  She started to leave. I got in front of her. “Wait,” I said. “Don’t you know you’re in danger here?”

  “I am happy here.”

  “She is going now,” the man said.

  His face was hard. He took her elbow and started to guide her around me. His eyes were as black as ripe olives. I hit his jaw with a right uppercut. He fell on the brown carpet, got up on one elbow. He was dazed, but he wasn’t out. I got my revolver and split his head open with the barrel. That put him flat on the floor. I tucked the revolver in the holster. Penelope Grayson stared at me with her wide, drugged-looking eyes.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I want to talk with you alone,” I said. “You’re in a lot of trouble.”

  She was hearing and seeing me now. I had broken through whatever was wrapped around her mind. She was still dreamy and unnatural, but a part of her was listening to me. “I am in no danger,” she said.

  “I have to talk fast, so listen. I am a private detective. I have a partner, Oke Johnson.”

  I looked at her eyes, but the name meant nothing to her. I kept it simple, as though I was talking to a child.

  “He came to Paulton three weeks ago. At your uncle’s request.”

  “A short, fat man?”

  “Yes. He was to persuade you to go away.”

  “He tried, but I am happy here.”

  I heard voices outside. Some women were coming towards the house. I
grabbed the man by his shoulders and dragged him behind one of the couches. His feet stuck out so I doubled up his legs. There was some blood on the rug, but I put a chair over it. The girl watched me dreamily.

  “Yesterday Oke Johnson was murdered,” I said. “Somebody shot him. You understand, murdered him. It’s in the papers, if you don’t believe me. Somebody was afraid of what he was doing in connection with you.”

  Feet made a noise on the stairs. The girl’s eyes were on me. I stared right back at her. I wanted her to believe. “Do you understand what I’ve told you?” I asked.

  Someone came into the room behind me. The girl said: “Yes, I understand.” I looked around.

  It was the woman I’d seen at the station. The woman with the curves. She stopped by the door and stared at me. She had on a Russian-looking costume, too, only hers was scarlet, both the blouse and the skirt. And besides the others I’d seen, it looked like a number out of Hattie Carnegie’s window. She was beautiful. She was surprised to see me, but she smiled, as though it was a pleasant surprise.

  “I will go now,” Penelope Grayson said.

  She glided out of the room. I said, “Hello” to the Princess.

  She smiled again and said “Hello.”

  I went by her to the door, smelling her perfume. It made me think of black lace underwear. I wanted to stay and talk, but I had to get out before my pal behind the sofa began to moan. The Princess had blue eyes and her breasts pressed against the red silk. I smiled at her and walked down the front steps.

  It was still and hot outside, and the sun was high in a clear sky. Sprinklers worked over beds of yellow flowers. I walked not too fast to the Chevy, passing several men in white blouses. The men paid no attention to me. I wondered what would happen to me if they got me before I left the grounds. A bunch of religious nuts like those might do anything. I climbed in the sedan and eased her along the gravel road. By the time I reached the street-car tracks outside the big gate, brother, I had sweated plenty, just thinking about being caught.

  CHAPTER 5

  I went up to my room at the Arkady and took off my clothes. I lay on the bed in a pair of shorts and poured myself a glass of bourbon. I drank the bourbon slowly, letting it coat my throat. I wondered if I’d been wrong in telling the girl about Oke’s death. I didn’t think so. I had to shock her; start her thinking. It was a thing the people at the Vineyard didn’t want her to do. They were trying their best to stop her from it. I didn’t know if they were doing it with drugs, or by hypnotism, or in some other way, but they were doing it. It was the way some of those places worked. Her uncle had said she was emotionally unbalanced. That was the kind they liked to get hold of, especially when there was a pile of money too.