The Fifth Grave

by Jonathan Latimer

  “How’s that?”

  I told the old man we wanted the Pendis funeral. He knew about it. It was at Rock Creek Cemetery. He told us how to get there. It was about a mile from town, along a dirt road.

  We could see tombstones in the grass on the side of a hill. There was a winding path into the graveyard, and on it were parked five cars. Ahead, and a little off the path, was a hearse. A sudden breeze made yellow flowers nod in the grass, then died away. Apple trees grew in the graveyard.

  “The funeral’s drawing good,” I said.

  “She was always a popular girl,” Ginger said.

  I looked at her, but there was no particular expression on her face. She drove in back of the other cars. People were standing by the hearse. We got out and went over to them. The punk saw me. He had on a blue suit that was too big for him. “Thanks for coming,” he said. He gave me back sixty-five from the two hundred I’d given him. “And thanks for the dough.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  A wind came again, and with it thunder. The preacher started over to where the coffin was by an open grave. I got the wreath out of the rear of the coupé. Ginger walked on with the punk, and all the others followed the preacher, too. When I caught up I saw there was a bunch of young girls in the crowd. They shied away from me, their faces frightened. I thought, what the hell! Then I saw an older woman with then, and I knew the reason. It was the madam and the babes from the joint.

  While the preacher was saying what he had to say, it began to rain. The drops of water felt queer. They were warm. They didn’t cool anything at all. I looked around the crowd and saw the punk. His face was white and he was crying. He looked as though he were going to be sick. I guess he had loved her. The preacher’s voice died away and some yokels began to lower the coffin in the grave. The babes were weeping, all but the madam. She stared at me, her face sullen. She was probably thinking of her radio-phonograph combination.

  The coffin reached the bottom of the grave and the men slipped off the ropes. All the women in the crowd were crying now, and some of the men. It made me feel a little tight at the throat. The preacher said a few words more, standing bent over so the warm rain wouldn’t hit his face. He finished and some of the people threw flowers in the grave. Flowers had almost covered the coffin. I thought: there goes $135. It was the first time I’d ever spent that much on a doll without getting something in return.

  Ginger grabbed my arm. I followed her eyes back to the cars. Through the rain I saw Pug Banta coming towards us, his arms full of roses. Back of him were a couple of his boys. They came right through the mourners, bumping men and women out of their way. I felt Ginger tremble.

  “Dear God!” she said.

  Pug came up to the grave and dumped the roses on the other flowers. It was raining hard. He walked over to us, looking like some kind of a monkey with his long arms and short legs. His club foot made him limp.

  “Come on,” he snarled at us. “You’re going with me.”

  We didn’t move. His boys stood looking at us from the grave. Carmel’s brother left the preacher by the cars and came towards us.

  “Come on,” Pug said. “Or I’ll bump you right here.”

  Ginger started to go with him. I pulled her back. “Start shooting,” I said. “You got a swell audience.”

  The crow was beginning to leave. I heard the noise of the motors being started. I saw the punk over Pug’s shoulder. I grabbed Pug and threw him down just as the punk fired. I heard the bullet whine. Pug caught me and pulled me down. We wrestled on the ground. I hit Pug and broke away. One of Pug’s men jumped the punk and took away the pistol. He slapped the punk’s face. I got off the ground.

  “Leave him alone,” I said to the hoodlum.

  He pointed the pistol at my stomach. “Don’t get tough.”

  The people by the hearse had heard the shot. They were looking back at us. Pug got off the ground and began to brush the dirt off his coat. I helped him. The people thought he had fallen and turned away.

  “Bring the kid here,” Pug said.

  They brought him. He cried and struggled with the men. “Damn you,” he said.

  “What’s the idea, kid?” Pug asked.

  I said: “He thinks you killed his sister.”

  Pug went to the punk. “You got me wrong,” he said. “Carmel was a swell doll. Would I be bringing her roses if I’d killed her?”

  I said to the punk: “You better pay the minister. We’ll have a talk later.” I gave him a twenty. He threw it on the ground.

  “Why did you pull him down?”

  I picked the bill up and gave it to him again. “Go pay the minister.”

  Ginger said: “Come on.”

  They started to go away, the punk looking bewildered, but the hoodlum with the pistol stopped them. “How about it, Pug?”

  “Let ’em go.”

  They went towards the hearse. Pug scowled at me. “I don’t get it, pal.”

  “The punk thinks you killed his sister.”

  “No. Why didn’t you let him plug me?”

  “I’m your friend.”

  Pug said: “That’s a laugh.” He scowled at me. “I want to talk to you.”

  He moved his head towards some graves further up the hill. I followed him. The two bodyguards stayed by Carmel’s grave. The rain was nearly over. It was raining under a blue sky now. We stopped by a tombstone with an angel cut on it. I saw green apples on a tree below us.

  Pug said: “Anyway, thanks for what you did.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Yeah? If I do can you think of any other reason why I shouldn’t bump you off?”

  “The Princess.”

  “The hell with her,” Pug said. “She’s trying to muscle me out.”

  “No,” I said. “You got her wrong.”

  “Don’t give me that.”

  “She couldn’t muscle you or anybody out. She doesn’t run the Vineyard.”

  “Who does, then?”

  “McGee.” Pug looked blank, and I added: “The lawyer.”

  Pug said: “Crap.”

  “Okay. Don’t believe me. But McGee’s got it in for you. He didn’t like the shooting at Papas’s. And killin’ Carmel.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “I used to work for McGee … up to yesterday.”

  “Either you’re a liar or you …”

  “Do you want me to prove McGee runs the Vineyard?”

  Pug scowled. Then he said: “If you can.”

  “All right. First I’ll show you he owns Tony’s place. And The Ship. And the house where Carmel worked. And the Silver Grove. And the Arkady.”

  “The Vineyard owns them,” Pug said.

  “You wouldn’t bet on that, would you?”

  Pug squinted at me doubtfully. “Why’d you quit McGee if he’s Mr. Big?”

  “I’ll show you that, too.”

  We rode back with Ginger. Pug drove and Ginger sat in the middle. The bodyguards followed in the other car. We made the hundred miles in an hour and twenty minutes. We killed two chickens, a road-runner, a chipmunk and a black-and-white dog. I didn’t think Pug was going to be able to stop the coupé in Paulton, we went so fast, but he did, right in front of the County Building.

  “Where are those records?”

  “Second floor.”

  “You wait here, baby,” Pug said to Ginger.

  She didn’t know what was going on. I winked at her, but she looked scared. We went up the stone steps and into the building. The old clerk got out the papers for us. Pug scowled when he saw McGee listed as the owner of all the places I asked for. He named some more: the Savoy Ballroom, the Beachcombers, The Hut, Cecil’s Grill. McGee owned them, too.

  At the Arkady I had Pug come in with me. “Any calls for me.” I asked the clerk.

  The clerk saw Pug, and for once he didn’t giggle. “There’s a long-distance call from Kansas City, Mr. Craven.”

  While we waited for the call, I told Pug about the guy McGe
e had hired to tail me. The clerk put the call on an extension in the manager’s office. I picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

  “Well, I’ve done what you told me, Mr. Craven.”

  “Listen, Kansas City,” I said; “there’s a fella here I want you to tell what you told me last night. Who paid you, and what he wanted you to do. Wait a second.”

  I gave the phone to Pug. He listened, asked a couple of questions and then turned to me.

  “Anything you want to say?”

  “Tell him I’m mailing the other half of the bill.”

  Pug told him and hung up.

  “Now you get the idea,” I said.

  Pug said: “You were trying to muscle in on McGee, weren’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe hell, fatty. Why else would he try to run you out of town?”

  “All right,” I said. “But remember he’s going to do the same to you.”

  “Oh, no, he’s not.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” I said. “McGee has a library with french windows. It’s in the back of his house.”

  Pug scowled at me.

  “If anybody should want to … see him, he works there every night until one.”

  Pug gave me a dead-pan stare and then went out of the hotel and got in Ginger’s car and drove away. I said to the clerk: “If there’re any more calls, I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  Chief of Police Piper was drumming on his oak desk with my card. “Sit down,” he said. He didn’t look up. His round face was tired, and most of the red had gone out of the skin. There were purple veins on his cheeks.

  I sat down.

  He hit the table with my card again, then stared at it. “We don’t like private dicks in Paulton,” he said, raising his eyes. He blinked at me. He was thinking he’d seen me before.

  “No?”

  “No.” He watched me. “What can I do for you?”

  He said it like he wanted to know so he could refuse. I said: “It’s more what I can do for you, chief.”

  “One of those smart ones, eh?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, go ahead.” He was still curious about my face, but he was tired. “What can you do for me?”

  “A couple of things,” I said. “How would you like to have another high-class murder in town?”

  His mouth came open.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’d be your bucket, wouldn’t it?”

  “Now look here …”

  “You’re in a jam,” I said. “They’re after you because Waterman was killed. Isn’t that so?”

  His face began to get red.

  “And if there’s another big killing, you’ll be out.” I let this sink in, and then said: “And some people will be asking if Pug Banta was really in jail the night of the Papas shooting.”

  “Pug was in jail.” The chief made a pretty feeble attempt to roar. “Anybody who says different …”

  “All right. He was. But some people are saying …”

  “I can prove it.”

  “So long as you’re chief of police, you can.”

  He thought this over.

  “Somebody’s going to try to bump off McGee,” I said.

  “The lawyer?”

  “Either tonight, or some night soon.” I told him about the library, and how McGee worked in it late at night. I told him that I’d overheard a couple of men talking about it while I was in the John at Jazzland. I figured I was overworking the gag about hearing things in the john, but I couldn’t think of a better story. I said I didn’t know who the men were, and that I didn’t hear why they wanted to kill him.

  “We’ll have to warn McGee,” the chief said.

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “McGee’ll give it away. Then you’d never catch the guys. Look, here’s the best way. Put a couple of good men in the yard. Then, when they try for McGee, you can grab ’em red-handed.”

  The idea appealed to him, but he still thought he’d better warn McGee. He hadn’t any right to take a chance with him that way, he said. Better to let the killers go than have McGee in danger.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You got a friend named Carmel?”

  He nodded before he thought.

  “You mean to say,” I said, “You had a friend.”

  “Why? What’s …?”

  “Day before yesterday Pug Banta said he wanted to see her, didn’t he?”

  The chief began to look scared. “You know a hell of a lot, don’t you?”

  “Pug had you call her,” I went on. “Then he met her for you.”

  I paused. The chief didn’t say anything.

  “They buried her this morning,” I said.

  “My God, no!”

  I kept letting him have it. “Her body was found outside a town called Valley. She’d been beaten to death.”

  All the colour had gone out of his face. The veins on his jowls looked green. His eyes were half closed.

  I said: “One more thing about McGee.”

  He looked at me.

  “Pug Banta’s going to kill him.” I got out of the chair. “And if anyone’s interested in getting rid of Pug, the place to do it would be McGee’s back yard.”

  He sat at the desk, watched me walk over to the door. At the last second he jumped up and trotted after me. He caught my sleeve.

  “Was she really beaten?”

  “Her jaw was shattered, both arms were broken …”

  “Oh, God! The poor kid!” He tugged my sleeve again. “Say! How do you know this?”

  “Her brother called me,” I said. “We’re old friends. He had to have some dough to bury her.”

  “Oh, God!” he said.

  “Well, so long, chief.”

  He didn’t answer. When I reached the stairs I looked back. He was still standing in the door. I went out of the station into the street. I felt good. Now I had things moving.

  CHAPTER 18

  Newsboys selling an extra in the street outside the hotel woke me up the next morning. I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock. I telephoned down for breakfast and a bottle of rye.

  “Send along one of those extras, too,” I told the clerk.

  Charles brought the stuff up. I took a shower, drank half a glass of whisky neat and then looked at the extra. Brother, did I get a rear! The headline said: THOMAS McGEE MURDERED. And a sub-head said Pug Banta was being held for the job. I sat down on the bed and read the story.

  It seemed, the story said, one of Chief Piper’s squads had noticed a man lurking around McGee’s house. The squad had followed the man (Pug Banta) around to the back, but before they could grab him he shot and killed McGee through one of the french windows in McGee’s library. McGee never knew what hit him. The cops then jumped Banta before he had time to move and dragged him off to the station. So far he had refused to say why he’d done the job.

  I poured and drank another half-glass of whisky. My plan had sort of back-fired, but I didn’t know. Maybe it was just as good this way. At least McGee and Pug were out of the road. I lifted the napkin off the breakfast tray and then I got the phone.

  “Damn it,” I told the clerk; “I ordered six double lamb chops, not those lousy single ones.”

  He said he would send up six more right away.

  About one o’clock a telegram came. It said:

  Arrive Paulton four p.m. Will cut your heart out if you haven’t got Penelope.

  Grayson.

  I had four neat whiskies and a rare steak for lunch, and then I rode out to the Vineyard on the streetcar. I sat next to a fat lady with a basket of staples from the A. & P., and continued with my thinking. I had a funny feeling that I was close to something, but I was damned if I could tell what it was. I wondered if I had been right about McGee. He had tried to scare me out of town. And he’d known there’d been a robbery at the Vineyard. Yeah, I’d been right. I wondered if he had killed Oke.

  “Pardon me.”
>
  “Huh?”

  “This is where I get off.”

  “Oh.” I let the fat lady and the basket by.

  What I’d been hired for, though, was to get Penelope Grayson out. The telegram had reminded me of that. Just thinking about her gave me a sick-empty feeling in my belly. Those damned graves! And that kid Tabitha! And this was the night of the Ceremony of the Bride. I thought again, what a phony idea; the Ceremony of the Bride. But there was nothing phony about those graves. I thought, if only there was an honest D.A. in the county. I wondered why I was so worried. I thought at heart I must be a pretty honest bastard.

  I went into the Vineyard by the back way. I rolled my knuckles on the door, and the Princess let me in. She looked cool and pretty.

  “Honey, did you bring the money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hand it over.”

  “I don’t know as I ought to.”

  “Yes, you had, honey. You’re in trouble. They got an idea you broke into the vault.”

  “So McGee told me.”

  She held out a hand. “Do you want to be caught with the money on you?”

  “What about you?”

  “They don’t suspect me, honey.”

  I went over and had a drink of the brandy. Then I sat on the divan. “How’d McGee find out?”

  “I told him.”

  “What the hell!”

  She sat down beside me and put her hand on my knee. “I had to … he knew it anyway.”

  “How?”

  “Well,” she said, “one time we discussed breaking into the vault.”

  “You and McGee?”

  She smiled at me. I thought, well, I was right about McGee. I said: “So you worked with him?”

  “I still do,” she said.

  Then I got it. She didn’t know he was dead! I wondered why nobody had told her. I decided to stall her.

  “Are you in love with him?”

  “Oh, no, honey. It’s a business arrangement.”

  “How much does he want?”

  “Half. And you got to leave town.”

  “I’m the fall guy, eh?”

  “If the cops come in. But McGee will see they don’t.”

  “How?”

  “They’re in his pocket, honey. He’s the business manager for the Vineyard.” She laughed. “You’re not such a smart detective.”