The Fifth Grave

by Jonathan Latimer

  I decided I’d done the right thing, even though it meant I was going to have to play it the hard way. Now I was out in the open. No skulking around like Oke Johnson. I took another drink and telephoned down for Charley. I was kind of glad to be playing it the way I was.

  It all came back to something I’d figured out once about the detective business. There were two ways to go along: underground or on top. I never found out which was best. Underground you had the element of surprise on your side, but it was harder to move around. On top you went everywhere, taking cracks at everybody, and everybody taking cracks at you. You had to be tough to play it that way. Well, I was tough.

  When Charley came, I told him I wanted him to deliver a message for me.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “To that doll, Ginger.”

  He looked scared.

  “Ask her if she’ll eat with me tonight. I’ll be in the bar at seven.”

  Charley got pop-eyed: “Mister,” he began.

  I gave him five dollars. He shut up and left. I looked in the phone book. There was a Thomas McGee, lawyer, at 980 Main Street. The number was White 2368. The pixie clerk answered the phone and I gave him the number. “I know that number,” he giggled. “McGee, the lawyer.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “I thought it was the morgue.”

  A woman answered the phone. I told her my name was Karl Craven. I said I’d like to see McGee after lunch.

  “I’ll see if Mr. McGee will be free,” she said. Then, after a pause: “Mr. McGee will see you at one-thirty, Mr. Craven.”

  That was an hour away. I took a drink of bourbon and put on my green gabardine and went down to the coffee shop. I had the lunch with pork chops and mashed potatoes. I was about through when a young punk with a thin, pale face sat on the stool next to me. He ordered a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee. He glanced at me, but when I looked at him he turned away. I wondered if he was tailing me. I’d see when I went out.

  I finished lunch and gave the girl a tip. The punk leaned towards me.

  “A lady wants to see you,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  He looked frightened. “This afternoon. She’s at Five sixty-nine Green. Carmel Todd.”

  “I don’t know any Carmel Todd,” I said.

  He slid off the stool and put a fifty-cent piece on the counter and went out. He didn’t look at me. I saw he hadn’t eaten his sandwich. What the hell! I thought. I went out to the street; but he was gone. I went back and paid my bill and got a cab and went to McGee’s office. It was on the fifth floor of a brick building. A girl sat at a desk in the reception-room. She had moist lips and watery brown eyes. I gave her my name. She simpered at me and went into an inner office.

  From the looks of the reception-room I decided McGee wasn’t so prosperous. The furniture consisted of three wicker chairs and a wicker table with tattered copies of the Rotarian on it. Near the entrance was the girl’s table with a telephone and a typewriter. There was one picture on the brown wall: a sailing ship on a very blue ocean. On the floor was a grass rug. I sat in one of the chairs and looked at a Rotarian for January. After a while the girl came back and said Mr. McGee would see me.

  The inner office was dark. Heavy curtains kept out the light. I could just see McGee standing behind his desk. He was a tall man with stooped shoulders, and his eyes were set deep in small triangles of flesh. A shabby black suit made him look like a minister. He shook my hand.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Cah––” he said.

  “Craven,” I said. “Karl Craven.”

  “Yes. Of course. Craven.” He sank down behind the desk and began to make washing motions with his hands. “What can I do for you, Mr. Craven?”

  “Mr. Grayson sent me.”

  “Ah, Mr. Grayson!” His eyes gleamed. “What does he want?”

  He knew damn well what Mr. Grayson wanted, but he wasn’t giving anything away. I liked his being smart. I might need help from him.

  “I’m supposed to persuade”–I let my mouth hand over the word–“Miss Grayson to leave the Vineyard.”

  He got a package of cigarettes and some matches out of a desk drawer. He gave me a cigarette. “I don’t smoke myself,” he said. The cigarette was of the ten-cent-a-package variety. I lit it and threw the match in his waste-basket. I took a deep drag of smoke and blew it out my nose.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “Miss Grayson will be difficult to persuade.”

  “I found that out,” I said.

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “This morning.”

  His eyes were narrow. “She told you,” he said, “that she was very happy.”

  I nodded. He laughed. It was a queer laugh, a sort of high-pitched giggle. It wasn’t what you’d expect to see come out of a guy who looked like a minister.

  “You can see, Mr. Craven,” he said; “that I’ve been talking with Miss Grayson, too.”

  He wasn’t giggling any more. If you ever look at a rattlesnake’s eyes, you’ll see the same triangles. He was thinking. The small eyes were bright with thinking. He watched me for a moment.

  “What are you?” he asked suddenly.

  “A private investigator.”

  “What firm?”

  “My own.” I grinned at him. “You think a respectable firm would handle a job like this?”

  He leaned over the table. “You are going to kidnap her, then?”

  “I don’t like the climate in Leavenworth.”

  “Quite so.” He sank back in the chair and made the washing motions with his hands again. “Quite so. What do you propose to do?”

  “If I knew,” I said, “I wouldn’t be here.”

  “True, Mr. Craven,” he said, giggling. It was weird hearing him.

  “You know how badly Mr. Grayson wants her out,” I said. “You worked for him.”

  He nodded. “Unfortunately,” he said, “the local court refused to grant an injunction against the Vineyard.”

  “That’s why he sent for me,” I said.

  “Mr. Grayson is a very determined man.”

  “And a very rich man.”

  He rubbed his hands together. I felt we understood each other, but to clinch it I said: “Naturally, you’ll get paid for the work you do.”

  “I’ve already received a small fee.”

  “Five thousand,” I said. “Not so small.”

  “Just a manner of speaking.”

  “But,” I went on, “not so big compared with what he might pay.”

  “If we can get her out, Mr. Craven.”

  We discussed it. He let his hair down a little and told me he hated the Vineyard. I didn’t know as I blamed him: from the way he talked it sounded like a hell of a place. He said he’d been trying to shut it up for twenty years, but every time he’d had Solomon and the Brothers in court they’d gotten the decision. When he was the district attorney, back in 1929, the charge was bootlegging. He knew the Vineyard was supplying the whole county with spiked wine, but the defense proved it had been spiked after it left the Vineyard. Later he got some of the Brothers indicted on a narcotic violation, but the dope he’d confiscated disappeared from the chief of police’s office.

  “The closest I ever came,” he said, his eyes peeping out angrily from the triangles of flesh, “was on a Mann Act violation.”

  He’d proven two girls had their railroad fares paid from California by the Vineyard. Privately he had forced the girls to admit they’d been used sexually by the Brothers in their ceremonies. But when the case came to trial, both girls denied all immorality. That was two years ago. Since then the only thing he’d tried was to get the injunction for Grayson.

  “The Vineyard sounds like a fine place to live,” I said. “Liquor and dope and immorality.”

  McGee ignored this. He said: “When Solomon died I thought I might get ’em. I thought he was the brains. But they’re still smart.”

  “How long has Solomon been dead?”

  “Five years.” McGee’s eyes dart
ed from me to the window. “Five years Sunday.” The eyes came back to me and away again. “On Sunday his body will be on view.”

  “Five years and they still look at him?”

  “It’s quite a sight, if you don’t mind the odor.”

  I asked some more questions about the Vineyard. The colony had been founded in 1868 by the first Solomon, a carpenter from Ithaca, New York, who had a revelation one Sunday afternoon. He convinced his family and some of the neighbors that God wanted them to go into a new land. They’d finally settled in Paulton, then a village in the range country, and planted grapes they’d brought from New York. From the first the settlement had been called Solomon’s Vineyard.

  The men lived in one building, McGee said, and the women in another. All the property belonged to the colony. The children were kept in a third building. The Brothers became prosperous, selling vegetables, dairy products and wine. People came from all over the country to join them, giving up their personal wealth to the Vineyard when they took the vows.

  “Not a bad racket,” I said.

  The original Solomon died in 1889 after he had picked a five-year-old boy to succeed him, McGee said. When the boy was sixteen, he became head of the colony. He was called Solomon, too, because he was supposed to have been inhabited by the spirit of old Solomon. Under this Solomon the colony became rich and large. He was the one who’d died five years ago.

  “Why haven’t they picked a third Solomon?” I asked.

  McGee wasn’t sure. He thought possibly it was because Solomon had announced he was going to return.

  “The Day of Judgment?”

  “I think so,” McGee said, “but I’m not sure, Mr. Craven. It’s something they don’t talk about.”

  “Where does the Princess fit in?” I asked.

  McGee’s eyes leaped from the floor to me. “What do you know about her?”

  “She was on my train.”

  McGee said: “Solomon used to take trips incognito. One time he came back with her. He put her in charge of the women and called her Princess. I don’t know where he found her.”

  “Well, she ain’t hay,” I said.

  We talked for a long time about getting the Grayson girl out, but neither of us had any good ideas. I figured it wasn’t much good trying again by the way of the courts, and kidnapping was out. I asked McGee if we couldn’t show her the colony was phony. That would make her want to get out, and then everything would be jake.

  “Yes,” McGee agreed, “but where are we going to find something to show her?”

  “What about those two California dolls?”

  “Dead.”

  “The hell they are!”

  McGee fondled his hands. “A most singular coincidence, Mr. Craven. One died soon after the case collapsed. And a month later the other passed away giving birth to a child in the Vineyard hospital.”

  “They don’t fool out there, do they?” I said.

  McGee put his hands palm up on his desk and raised his shoulders in a shrug.

  “Isn’t there somebody who’ll talk?” I asked.

  “Give me a day,” McGee said. “I’ll try to think.”

  CHAPTER 6

  In the street sunlight stabbed my eyes. The air felt like it had been blown out of one of those driers they use in barber shops. I got a cab and told the driver to take me to 569 Green Street. Carmel Todd. I wondered what she wanted with me.

  It was a big, two-story brick house set among elms on a lot that must have been a half-acre. I went up on the porch and pushed the bell. I could hear chimes in the back of the house. Near the top of the door was a funny eight-sided window with eight panes of different coloured glass. It looked like a picture I once saw of an enlarged snowflake. A cute colored maid opened the door a crack.

  “Carmel Todd.”

  “Carmel don’ feel good today.”

  “She sent for me.”

  “Oh.” The door came open further. “Then she must feel better.”

  “Yeah, she must.”

  The maid stepped back with the door. She had on a black silk uniform with white cuffs and collar. She had dust-colored skin and rouge on her cheeks.

  “You know her room, mister?”

  “I forget.”

  “Upstairs and the last one down the hall to the left.”

  There were oak stairs at the end of the hall. I peered at the living-room as I went by. I saw an oriental on the floor and a combination radio-phonograph and expensive-looking furniture and some lamps with tassels. I went up the stairs and down a hall and knocked at the last door on the left.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Carmel Todd?” I asked.

  “Just a minute.”

  A blonde in a green kimono opened the door. Her hair had been peroxided the shade of sawdust and on her face was rouge, lipstick and mascara. “Good-bye, honey,” she said over her shoulder.

  The blonde smelled as though she’d taken a bath in perfume. I mean she stank. I went into the bedroom. A woman was lying under the sheet on a double bed. She had black hair and black eyes and a bandage over part of her face. There was a bottle of medicine on a table by the bed.

  “I wondered if you’d come,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  “Not with the bandage.”

  “I’m the one Pug socked. For trying to help you.”

  I remembered. The one with the broken nose. The one with Chief Piper. I thought maybe it was a touch. Well, she had something coming. I got out my wallet.

  “I don’t want any money.”

  I put the wallet away.

  She said: “What are you going to do about last night?”

  “What should I do?”

  “Kill that son of a bitch.”

  “And fry?”

  “You’re too smart to fry.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But, lady, I’ve been drawing the line at murder lately.”

  She lay against the pillow, watching me. Her skin was dead white and it made the black eyes look big. She wasn’t young, but she was still good-looking. Her shoulders were round and firm. As far as I could tell she was naked under the sheet. I sat down on a rocking-chair. It creaked under my weight.

  “But you want to get him, don’t you?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Neither would I,” she said.

  “He’s pretty tough for a gal to tackle.”

  “He knocked out my teeth.”

  The way she said it, sounded like a good reason for bumping off a man. Maybe it was, at that. A girl likes to hold on to her teeth.

  “How do you figure on getting him?” I asked.

  “Look,” she said, sitting up in bed and almost forgetting the sheet. “I don’t know anything about you, but I like your looks. Will you play ball if I’ve got a good idea?”

  “Go on,” I said.

  She did. She’d been Pug’s girl once, she said, and now she was Chief Piper’s. So she was talking from the inside. Pug, she said, came to Paulton from St. Louis about four years ago. In a few months he got to be the local Al Capone, not that it was much of a struggle. There was nobody very tough in Paulton. And as Al Capone, she said, he demanded and got a fifty-fifty split with the Vineyard.

  “Fifty-fifty split on what?” I asked.

  “On everything. Liquor, dope, gambling and women.”

  “The hell!”

  “You don’t know the Vineyard’s back of vice in the county?”

  I shook my head. I wondered why McGee hadn’t told me. Maybe it wasn’t true. No, I believed Carmel. She was telling the truth.

  “Pug’s just front man for the Vineyard,” she said. “He’s got plenty of power, but the Vineyard runs everything.”

  “Who’s the Vineyard’s head man?”

  “Pug gets his orders from the Princess, but she gets them from somebody above her.”

  She didn’t know who that was. But she did know, she said, that Chief Piper was
a Vineyard man. He got a grand a month to let things stay wide open. He was afraid of Pug Banta. I said: “I got that idea.”

  The district attorney, Carmel said, was on the payroll too. I said it would be hard to shake Pug loose with a set-up like that. Carmel said she didn’t think so.

  “None of them like Pug,” she said. “My idea’s this: if things get very hot the Governor will threaten an investigation. Then the Vineyard will throw Pug to him. Pug’ll get a long stretch; the Governor will think he’s cleaned up the county, and the Vineyard’ll go on operating.”

  I said that sounded good. Carmel said: “Only how can we turn on the heat?”

  “You got some beer?” I said.

  She rang a bell and the gal got me four bottles of cold Bud. Carmel didn’t want any. Her mouth hurt too much to drink. I poured down a bottle of beer and asked her how much crime paid in the county. The monthly net, as near as she could figure it, was about ten thousand dollars. Banta got about half of this, and the Vineyard the other half. She said she didn’t know how much the D.A. took.

  I said we would probably need help. She said she couldn’t think of anybody she’d trust.

  “What about McGee, the lawyer?”

  “That old fossil!” she said. “He hates the Vineyard, all right, but he isn’t bright enough to do anything about it.”

  I decided McGee wouldn’t be much help. “Anybody in town who really hates Banta?”

  “Is there anybody who doesn’t?”

  “I mean important. Somebody Banta might like to get too.”

  She thought for a while. Then she said: “Gus Papas. He’s got the only independent joint in the county. Pug’s been trying to drive him out.”

  “Good,” I said.