The Fifth Grave

by Jonathan Latimer

  “I’m going to.”

  She got up and went to a desk. The silk robe clung to her. She didn’t have much on under the robe. She came back with a small leather book.

  “Look.”

  It was a deposit book and in it was a folded bank statement. It was the account of Bethine Gleason. She had a balance of $87,567.46. I blinked at the figures.

  “When it says one hundred grand, I scram.” She put the book away. She sat down by me and drank her drink. I drank mine, too.

  “Now, what do I do?”

  “You’re to work for me.”

  “Okay.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “On the surface you’re to take Pug’s piace–work for the Vineyard. The Elders want to get rid of him.”

  “What do I do for you?”

  “You hand over part of the take.”

  “To build up that hundred grand?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do I get out of it?”

  “Well, for one thing, you don’t get knocked off by Pug Banta.”

  “That’s certainly something.”

  “And a salary.”

  “How much?”

  “A couple of grand a month.”

  “That sounds good.”

  She said: “And when I’ve got my dough, honey, you can come along with me if you want.”

  I poured the last of the decanter into the glasses. “How do you know I haven’t got a wife and five brats?”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t give me that mystery stuff.”

  “You’re a private dick,” she said. “You live at the Bell-air Apartment Hotel in St. Louis. Apartment 912. Your office is in the Hawthorne Building. You’ve been in business three years with a man named Johnson. Before that you were a strike-breaker in Detroit, working for a New York firm. Before that you worked for Burns and before that you were in the army. You’ve got three thousand dollars in the bank and you went to Notre Dame for two and a half years. You …”

  “My God!” I said. “It’s like hearing your own obituary.”

  She went for more brandy. I was shaken. It didn’t seem possible. Even if they knew about Oke Johnson. They were smart, all right. Too smart. I wondered which one of them had killed Oke.

  She came back with the brandy. I poured myself one and put it down. We sat on the divan.

  “Did you know Johnson had been killed?” I asked.

  “I read it in the paper.”

  “Have you got any ideas about it?”

  She touched my leg. “Come on, honey. Let’s don’t talk business.”

  Her robe had fallen open a little. “What’ll we talk about?”

  “Do we have to talk?”

  I put an arm around her and tried to kiss her lips. She wouldn’t let me. Anywhere else, but not her lips. It was damn queer. I tried again, and we struggled. She began to pant.

  “Hit me,” she said. “Hit me!”

  CHAPTER 11

  When I walked to the lane by the Vineyard road, Pug’s car was gone. It meant he was getting tough again. But I was too tired to be scared. I caught the two o’clock inter-urban back to town. The motorman stared at me when I gave him my dime, but he didn’t say anything. I took a seat in the back of the car and closed my eyes. I thought, Jesus, I’m tired! What a woman! I wasn’t good for anything. I wouldn’t be any good for days.

  “Far as we go, buddy.”

  It was the motorman, shaking me awake in the town square. I walked to the Arkady and dragged myself up the front steps. Incense almost strangled me as I walked across the lobby. Nobody was at the reception desk. A paper lay on the counter. There was a long story about the shooting. I read down the first column and found one new thing: Pug Banta had been questioned by the D.A., but he had an alibi. It made me laugh. Chief Piper had provided it. He declared Pug had been in jail all night, on a speeding violation. “I arrested him myself,” he was quoted as saying.

  That was a good one! I could see the chief arresting Pug. The clerk came to the desk. He was a new one.

  “Anything for Craven?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes.” He was a fat man with the bread-dough face of a night worker. “Someone in St. Louis has been trying to get you.”

  I told him to put the call in the phone booth. I lifted the receiver and said “Hello.” The operator said: “Here’s your party, St. Louis.”

  “This is Grayson.”

  “Oh, hello, Mr. Grayson.”

  “What are you bastards doing down there?”

  “We’re making progress.”

  “Baloney! They told me you and Johnson could deliver, but I’ve seen no signs of it.”

  I took a long breath. He sounded as though he was going to fire us. I said: “We’ll have her out in three days.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, that’s better.” He was silent for a couple of seconds. “You need more money?”

  “We could use some.”

  “All right. I’ll send a thousand down in the morning.”

  He hung up. I came out of the booth. I rode up in the elevator with the fat clerk.

  “Still hot,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  I went to my room. I was sweating. I wondered how the hell I was going to get Penelope Grayson out in three days. Or in three years for that matter.

  In the morning I lay in bed for a long time. I was still bushed. I sent down for coffee and six raw eggs. I dropped the eggs into a glass of bourbon and drank the mixture. Then I drank the coffee. I felt bad that it was the wrong month for oysters.

  I propped myself up in bed with pillows and thought about Oke Johnson. He was a big, dumb Swede who thought he was smart. But I had to get the guy who shot him. It would be swell to have people point me out as the private detective who wasn’t bright enough to find his partner’s murderer. Oke would have had to revenge me for the same reason. I certainly had a great start; a guy carrying a staff. McGee seemed to be the only one who might fit. McGee! I got out of bed.

  The Vineyard didn’t look like a place where there could ever be trouble. Women were working in the fields, their costumes bright against the rows of green vegetables. Birds looked for insects on the big lawn. I went to the women’s building and climbed the wooden stairs and knocked on the door. A faded woman in a black outfit came out.

  “I want Miss Grayson.”

  “Have you been to the office?”

  “Yes. They sent me over here.”

  She looked dubious, but she went inside. I waited on the steps. Pretty soon Penelope Grayson came out. She was in a white costume. She looked more awake than she had last time. She had a good skin. Her ash-blonde hair hung over her shoulders.

  “Oh, it’s you.”

  “I came to see if you’d changed your mind.”

  “You’re just wasting your time.”

  I said: “This is what your uncle hired me to do.”

  “Why doesn’t he let me alone?”

  “He wants to help you.”

  “I don’t want any help.” She moved closer to me. “Tell him that. Now please go.”

  “I want to ask you one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Did you tell anyone I spoke about Mr. Johnson?”

  “No.”

  I watched her face. Her brown eyes were calm. I was sure she wasn’t lying. “Please go,” she said. “I must prepare my bridal garments.”

  “Your bridal garments?”

  “I am to be Solomon’s bride.”

  She turned and went in the building. Solomon’s bride, I thought, must be what they called them when they were initiated into the Vineyard. I stood on the steps for a minute, thinking, and then I walked to the car-line. I was just where I’d been.

  I got off the street car and went to the house where I’d seen Carmel. It was hot and the walking made me sweat. I wondered if it ever got cloudy in Paulton. The blinds were drawn in the house, and it looked as though every one was still aslee
p. I rang the doorbell.

  After a long time the fat woman I’d had trouble with opened the door. She had on a pink wrapper. She wasn’t friendly. “What do you want?”

  “Is Carmel there?”

  “You’ve got nerve, coming around at this time of the morning.”

  She would have slammed the door, but I stuck my foot in it. “Is she there?”

  “Get your foot back or I’ll call for help.”

  “Go ahead.”

  She kicked my ankle. I put my shoulder to the door and shoved. She went over backwards on the floor.

  “You bastard!”

  I came inside and closed the door. She had a silk nightgown under the pink wrapper. She yelled: “Jim! Oh, Jim!” She got up and started for the stairs. I grabbed her arm and jerked her into a chair. Her hair hung over her eyes.

  “You get out of here.” she said furiously. “This is a respectable house. I’ve got a permit.”

  “Listen; all I want is a civil answer to my question.”

  A couple of girls came to the top of the stairs. They were both blondes. The fat dame saw them. “Greta, where’s Jim?”

  The blondes started down the stairs. At the same time a man came in a door at the back of the hall by the stairs. A knife scar split his upper lip. He looked big and mean.

  “Throw this bastard out, Jim,” the fat woman said.

  The man came for me, moving light on his feet like a big cat. “We don’t want no trouble, mister. Just get out.”

  “First I get an answer to my question,” I said.

  The man kept coming. “You slob,” the woman said to me; “throwing women around.”

  “Come on, mister,” the man said.

  I let him get close to me “All right,” I said. “I’ll go.”

  “Throw him on his ear, Jim,” the woman said.

  He reached for my collar and I gave him a knee in the groin. He grunted. I let go a right to the face, putting my shoulder back of it. He started to shuffle away and I followed and gave him the old one-two and he went down. He lay on his back on the hall rug.

  “Damn you!” said a woman behind me. “Leave Jim alone.” I turned just in time to get hit on the head with a lamp made of a Chinese vase. The porcelain, or whatever it was, shattered over me. The blonde who’d swung it stood there, waiting for me to fall.

  “What the hell?” I asked her. “What’s the guy to you?”

  She came at me, clawing. I caught one arm, jerked it hard and let it go. She spun into the parlour and crashed against the far wall. From the stairs the other blonde screamed. I looked at Jim. He was trying to get to his feet, an ugly-looking straight-edged razor in one hand. I waited until he got up; then I jerked the rug. He fell on his side. I kicked the razor out his hand. Then I kicked him in the face. The blonde on the stairs screamed again. I picked Jim up by his belt and threw him out one of the hall windows. He took the shade and the lower pane of glass with him. I ran up the hall and shoved the fat woman away from the telephone. I jerked it off the wire and threw it into a big mirror.

  “Now, damn you,” I said to the woman; “where’s Carmel?”

  She was so scared she could hardly talk. “She went out … last night.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who’d she go with?”

  She shook her head stubbornly.

  “The hell you don’t know,” I said. “You don’t let your girls go out that way.”

  I grabbed her arms and shook her. Her false teeth fell out and rolled across the carpet. I stopped shaking.

  “Chief Piper,” she said.

  I gave her one more shake. There were a lot of heads at the top of the stairs, but when I looked up they disappeared. I started into the parlour, but a thin man in shirt-sleeves was in the way. I hit him and he went down. In the parlour the blonde who’d slugged me with the lamp began to scream. She thought I was coming for her. I went to the big radio in the corner. I picked it up, tearing out the plug, and tossed it across the room. It shattered against the wall. I kicked over a table with two lamps on it. I tore some of the fabric off a davenport. I threw a chair at a big oil painting over the fireplace. I took a metal stand lamp and bent it up like a pretzel, I pulled up the oriental rug and ripped it down the middle. The fat woman and the blonde watched me with eyes like oysters. I came out into the hall.

  “After this be more civil,” I told the fat woman.

  I went out the door. Jim was lying in some bushes under the window. I didn’t worry about him. I went back to the hotel walking on the shady side of the street. I don’t know why I did that; I had already sweat up my clothes.

  At the hotel the clerk gave me a number to call. Prospect 2332. I went up to my room and took off my clothes and got in the shower. I had a good bump on my head where the lamp had hit me. After a while I dried myself and called the number. The Princess answered, her voice as smooth as cream. “Hello, honey.”

  “Hello,” I said.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “All right.”

  “You’re coming out tonight, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, but I’m expecting you. Don’t eat; we’ll have dinner together.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “How does it sound, honey?”

  “It sounds wonderful.”

  “About seven.”

  “All right.”

  “Good-bye, honey.”

  “Good-bye.”

  She hung up and I jiggled the hook on the telephone. When the clerk answered, I ordered a bottle of brandy and a dozen raw eggs.

  CHAPTER 12

  McGee’s old touring car had once been green. It had also been painted black, but this had worn thin and you could see the original green coming through on the hood. The fenders were still black. The speedometer said 53,562 miles, but the motor was smooth. McGee drove as though he had a horse in front, saying “Giddap” when he wanted to start and “Whoa” when he was stopping. I was scared he would forget the horse wasn’t there sometime and try to stop by pulling back on the steering-wheel. He didn’t, though. We got through town without a bump. On the highway McGee opened her up to twenty-five.

  “What have you been doing?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You look a mite pale.”

  “It’s the heat,” I said, trying to hide a yawn.

  “I don’t recall a hotter spell,” McGee agreed.

  He began to talk about the heat; remembering every wave for thirty summers. His voice made me sleepy. I tried to keep my eyes on the Vineyard’s buildings on the hill ahead, watching the sunlight come off the red bricks.

  I’d said good-bye to the Princess up there not more than two hours ago. And we had another date tonight, if I lived that long. I yawned. I thought, maybe I could really slug her when she asked to be hit. Maybe that would slow her up.

  “Quite a place,” McGee said.

  “Huh?”

  “The Vineyard.”

  “Oh. Yeah, it is.”

  “Almost like a medieval colony.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Only it changed,” McGee sighed; “when old Solomon died.”

  The road was beginning to climb. All around were the green rows of vines. I felt the sun through the fabric top. I thought it would be fun to lie under one of the vines. It looked cool there.

  “Old Solomon would never have let you and me on the grounds,” McGee was saying. “He ran the place like a kingdom.”

  “Who runs it now?”

  “The Elders.”

  “I heard the Princess–” I began.

  “Whoa, now.” McGee pushed down the brake and turned into the Vineyard’s driveway. I saw a lot of cars parked by the buildings. “I guess she takes a hand, too,” McGee said.

  We parked and got out of the car and walked to the mausoleum. There was a line of people on the stone steps, waiting to get inside. They looked to me like townspeople and farm
ers. Their faces were solemn and they didn’t talk much. A lot of them carried flowers. We got in line.

  “This temple cost a hundred and fifty thousand,” McGee said. “Solomon built it before he died.”

  “It’s bigger than Grant’s tomb,” I said.

  The line moved up the steps. I stared at the building. It was built of marble, the stone kind of pink in the sunlight. Inscribed over the door was: Vanity, Vanity! All is Vanity. That was from the Bible, I thought. From the steps I could not see through the door. It was too dark inside.

  McGee read the inscription aloud. “Don’t look like Solomon took that to mean him,” he added.

  A woman in front glanced back over her shoulder. She didn’t like what McGee was saying. She was dressed in black. McGee didn’t pay any attention to her.

  “Funny thing,” McGee said. “Solomon died the day after the temple was finished. Seemed like he couldn’t wait to try it out.”

  The woman snorted. We moved up the steps. There were people behind us now. I figured at least a thousand people were on the grounds. I saw a brown carpet leading inside from the doorway. The people were walking on that, moving slowly into the darkness. As we came to the door, the line got more compact. My face almost touched the back of McGee’s neck, and the man behind was pushing me.

  McGee said: “The temple that bootleg built.”

  We moved into the doorway. The people all around were very quiet. I began to walk on the carpet. I saw candles burning in the far end of the room. I smelled incense.

  “The Prohibition Prophet,” McGee said loudly.

  The woman turned around. “Keep quiet,” she said to McGee. “This is a house of God.”

  “Madam, I am sorry if I have wounded you,” McGee said. “But I have a right to my opinion.”

  “Have you no respect for the dead?”

  “For certain dead, yes,” McGee said.

  The man behind me said “Shut up.” Other people were muttering. I heard some one say: “Throw him out.” We moved slowly along the carpet.

  My eyes had got used to the gloom. There was nothing in the big room except a coffin at the far end and an altar. There were candles on both the coffin and the altar. On the foot of the coffin were heaped all kinds of wreaths and flowers. While I watched a woman dropped a bunch of roses on the pile and went on.