by Otto Penzler
I smiled down at the hand and he took it away from the drawer. I saw a gun just inside the drawer.
I said: “I’ve already talked to the Grand Jury.”
Dorr leaned back and smiled at me. “Guys make mistakes,” he said. “Even smart private dicks … You could have a change of heart— and put it in writing.”
I said very softly. “No. I’d be under a perjury rap—which I couldn’t beat. I’d rather be under a murder rap—which I can beat. Especially as Fenweather will want me to beat it. He won’t want to spoil me as a witness. The Tinnen case is too important to him.”
Dorr said evenly: “Then you’ll have to try and beat it, brother. And after you get through beating it there’ll still be enough mud on your neck so no jury’ll convict Manny on your say-so alone.”
I put my hand out slowly and scratched the cat’s ear. “What about the twenty-two grand?”
“It could be all yours, if you want to play. After all, it ain’t my money … If Manny gets clear, I might add a little something that is my money.”
I tickled the cat under its chin. It began to purr. I picked it up and held it gently in my arms.
“Who did kill Lou Harger, Dorr?” I asked, not looking at him.
He shook his head. I looked at him, smiling. “Swell cat you have,” I said.
Dorr licked his lips. “I think the little bastard likes you,” he grinned. He looked pleased at the idea.
I nodded—and threw the cat in his face.
He yelped, but his hands came up to catch the cat. The cat twisted neatly in the air and landed with both front paws working. One of them split Dorr’s cheek like a banana peel. He yelled very loudly.
I had the gun out of the drawer and the muzzle of it into the back of Dorr’s neck when Beasley and the square-faced man dodged in.
For an instant there was a sort of tableau. Then the cat tore itself loose from Dorr’s arms, shot to the floor and went under the desk. Beasley raised his snub-nosed gun, but he didn’t look as if he was certain what he meant to do with it.
I shoved the muzzle of mine hard into Dorr’s neck and said: “Frankie gets it first, boys … And that’s not a gag.”
Dorr grunted in front of me. “Take it easy,” he growled to his hoods. He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and began to dab at his split and bleeding cheek with it. The man with the crooked mouth began to sidle along the wall.
I said: “Don’t get the idea I’m enjoying this, but I’m not fooling either. You heels stay put.”
The man with the crooked mouth stopped sidling and gave me a nasty leer. He kept his hands low.
Dorr half turned his head and tried to talk over his shoulder to me. I couldn’t see enough of his face to get any expression, but he didn’t seem scared. He said: “This won’t get you anything. I could have you knocked off easy enough, if that was what I wanted. Now where are you? You can’t shoot anybody without getting in a worse jam than if you did what I asked you to. It looks like a stalemate to me.”
I thought that over for a moment while Beasley looked at me quite pleasantly, as though it was all just routine to him. There was nothing pleasant about the other man. I listened hard, but the rest of the house seemed to be quite silent.
Dorr edged forward from the gun and said: “Well?”
I said: “I’m going out. I have a gun and it looks like a gun that I could hit somebody with, if I have to. I don’t want to very much, and if you’ll have Beasley throw my keys over and the other one turn back the gun he took from me, I’ll forget about the snatch.”
Dorr moved his arms in the lazy beginning of a shrug. “Then what?”
“Figure out your deal a little closer,” I said. “If you get enough protection behind me, I might throw in with you … And if you’re as tough as you think you are, a few hours won’t cut any ice one way or the other.”
“It’s an idea,” Dorr said and chuckled. Then to Beasley: “Keep your rod to yourself and give him his keys. Also his gun—the one you got today.”
Beasley sighed and very carefully inserted a hand into his pants. He tossed my leather key-case across the room near the end of the desk. The man with the twisted mouth put his hand up, edged it inside his side pocket and I eased down behind Dorr’s back, while he did it. He came out with my gun, let it fall to the floor and kicked it away from him.
I came out from behind Dorr’s back, got my keys and the gun up from the floor, moved side-wise towards the door of the room. Dorr watched with an empty stare that meant nothing. Beasley followed me around with his body and stepped away from the door as I neared it. The other man had trouble holding himself quiet.
I got to the door and reversed a key that was in it. Dorr said dreamily: “You’re just like one of those rubber balls on the end of an elastic. The farther you get away, the suddener you’ll bounce back.”
I said: “The elastic might be a little rotten,” and went through the door, turned the key in it and braced myself for shots that didn’t come. As a bluff, mine was thinner than the gold on a week-end wedding ring. It worked because Dorr let it, and that was all.
I got out of the house, got the Marmon started and wrangled it around and sent it skidding past the shoulder of the hill and so on down to the highway. There was no sound of anything coming after me.
When I reached the concrete highway bridge it was a little past two o’clock, and I drove with one hand for a while and wiped the sweat off the back of my neck.
EIGHT
The morgue was at the end of a long and bright and silent corridor that branched off from behind the main lobby of the County Building. The corridor ended in two doors and a blank wall faced with marble. One door had “Inquest Room” lettered on the glass panel behind which there was no light. The other opened into a small, cheerful office.
A man with gander-blue eyes and rust-colored hair parted in the exact center of his head was pawing over some printed forms at a table. He looked up, looked me over, and then suddenly smiled.
I said: “Hello, Landon … Remember the Shelby case?”
The bright blue eyes twinkled. He got up and came around the table with his hand out. “Sure. What can we do—” He broke off suddenly and snapped his fingers. “Hell! You’re the guy that put the bee on that hot rod.”
I tossed a butt through the open door into the corridor. “That’s not why I’m here,” I said. “Anyhow not this time. There’s a fellow named Louis Harger … picked up shot last night or this morning, in West Cimarron, as I get it. Could I take a look-see?”
“They can’t stop you,” Landon said.
He led the way through the door on the far side of his office into a place that was all white paint and white enamel and glass and bright light. Against one wall was a double tier of large bins with glass windows in them. Through the peepholes showed bundles in white sheeting, and, further back, frosted pipes.
A body covered with a sheet lay on a table that was high at the head and sloped down to the foot. Landon pulled the sheet down casually from a man’s dead, placid, yellowish face. Long black hair lay loosely on a small pillow, with the dank-ness of water still in it. The eyes were half open and stared incuriously at the ceiling.
I stepped close, looked at the face, Landon pulled the sheet on down and rapped his knuckles on a chest that rang hollowly, like a board. There was a bullet hole over the heart.
“Nice clean shot,” he said.
I turned away quickly, got a cigarette out and rolled it around in my fingers. I stared at the floor.
“Who identified him?”
“Stuff in his pockets,” Landon said. “We’re checking his prints, of course. You know him?”
I said: “Yes.”
Landon scratched the base of his chin softly with his thumbnail. We walked back into the office and Landon went behind his table and sat down.
He thumbed over some papers, separated one from the pile and studied it for a moment.
He said: “A sheriff’s radio car found
him at twelve thirty-five a.m., on the side of the old road out of West Cimarron, a quarter of a mile from where the cutoff starts. That isn’t traveled much, but the prowl car takes a slant down it now and then looking for petting parties.”
I said: “Can you say how long he had been dead?”
“Not very long. He was still warm, and the nights are cool along there.”
I put my unlighted cigarette in my mouth and moved it up and down with my lips. “And I bet you took a long thirty-eight out of him,” I said.
“How did you know that?” Landon asked quickly.
“I just guess. It’s that sort of hole.”
He stared at me with bright, interested eyes. I thanked him, said I’d be seeing him, went through the door and lit my cigarette in the corridor. I walked back to the elevators and got into one, rode to the seventh floor, then went along another corridor exactly like the one below except that it didn’t lead to the morgue. It led to some small, bare offices that were used by the District Attorney’s investigators. Halfway along I opened a door and went into one of them.
Bernie Ohls was sitting humped loosely at a desk placed against the wall. He was the chief investigator Fenweather had told me to see, if I got into any kind of a jam. He was a medium-sized bland man with white eyebrows and an out-thrust, very deeply cleft chin. There was another desk against the other wall, a couple of hard chairs, a brass spittoon on a rubber mat and very little else.
Ohls nodded casually at me, got out of his chair and fixed the door latch. Then he got a flat tin of little cigars out of his desk, lit one of them, pushed the tin along the desk and stared at me along his nose. I sat down in one of the straight chairs and tilted it back.
Ohls said: “Well?”
“It’s Lou Harger,” I said. “I thought maybe it wasn’t.”
“The hell you did. I could have told you it was Harger.”
Somebody tried the handle of the door, then knocked. Ohls paid no attention. Whoever it was went away.
I said slowly: “He was killed between eleven-thirty and twelve thirty-five. There was just time for the job to be done where he was found. There wasn’t time for it to be done the way the girl said. There wasn’t time for me to do it.”
Ohls said: “Yeah. Maybe you could prove that. And then maybe you could prove a friend of yours didn’t do it with your gun.”
I said: “A friend of mine wouldn’t be likely to do it with my gun—if he was a friend of mine.”
Ohls grunted, smiled sourly at me sidewise. He said: “Most anyone would think that. That’s why he might have done it.”
I let the legs of my chair settle to the floor. I stared at him.
“Would I come and tell you about the money and the gun—everything that ties me to it?”
Ohls said expressionlessly: “You would—if you knew damn well somebody else had already told it for you.”
I said: “Dorr wouldn’t lose much time.”
I pinched my cigarette out and flipped it towards the brass cuspidor. Then I stood up.
“Okey. There’s no tag out for me yet—so I’ll go over and tell my story.”
Ohls said: “Sit down a minute.”
I sat down. He took his little cigar out of his mouth and flung it away from him with a savage gesture. It rolled along the brown linoleum and smoked in the corner. He put his arms down on the desk and drummed with the fingers of both hands. His lower lip came forward and pressed his upper lip back against his teeth.
“Dorr probably knows you’re here now,” he said. “The only reason you ain’t in the tank upstairs is they’re not sure but it would be better to knock you off and take a chance. If Fenweather loses the election, I’ll be all washed up—if I mess around with you.”
I said: “If he convicts Manny Tinnen, he won’t lose the election.”
Ohls took another of the little cigars out of the box and lit it. He picked his hat off the desk, fingered it a moment, put it on.
“Why’d the redhead give you that song and dance about the bump in her apartment, the stiff on the floor—all that hot comedy?”
“They wanted me to go over there. They figured I’d go to see if a gun was planted—maybe just to check up on her. That got me away from the busy part of town. They could tell better if the D.A. had any boys watching my blind side.”
“That’s just a guess,” Ohls said sourly.
I said: “Sure.”
Ohls swung his thick legs around, planted his feet hard and leaned his hands on his knees. The little cigar twitched in the corner of his mouth.
“I’d like to get to know some of these guys that let loose of twenty-two grand just to color up a fairy tale,” he said nastily.
I stood up again and went past him towards the door.
Ohls said: “What’s the hurry?”
I turned around and shrugged, looked at him blankly. “You don’t act very interested,” I said.
He climbed to his feet, said wearily: “The hack driver’s most likely a dirty little crook. But it might just be Dorr’s lads don’t know he rates in this. Let’s go get him while his memory’s fresh.”
NINE
The Green Top Garage was on Deviveras, three blocks east of Main. I pulled the Marmon up in front of a fireplug and got out. Ohls slumped in the seat and growled: “I’ll stay here. Maybe I can spot a tail.”
I went into a huge echoing garage, in the inner gloom of which a few brand new paint jobs were splashes of sudden color. There was a small, dirty, glass-walled office in the corner and a short man sat there with a derby hat on the back of his head and a red tie under his stubbled chin. He was whittling tobacco in the palm of his hand.
I said: “You the dispatcher?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m looking for one of your drivers,” I said. “Name of Tom Sneyd.”
He put down the knife and the plug and began to grind the cut tobacco between his two palms. “What’s the beef?” he asked cautiously.
“No beef. I’m a friend of his.”
“More friends, huh? … He works nights, mister … So he’s gone I guess. Seventeen twenty-three Renfrew. That’s over by Gray Lake.”
I said: “Thanks. Phone?”
“No phone.”
I pulled a folded city map from an inside pocket and unfolded part of it on the table in front of his nose. He looked annoyed.
“There’s a big one on the wall,” he growled, and began to pack a short pipe with his tobacco.
“I’m used to this one,” I said. I bent over the spread map, looking for Renfrew Street. Then I stopped and looked suddenly at the face of the man in the derby. “You remembered that address damn quick,” I said.
He put his pipe in his mouth, bit hard on it, and pushed two quick fingers into the pocket of his open vest.
“Couple other mugs was askin’ for it a while back.”
I folded the map very quickly and shoved it back into my pocket as I went through the door. I jumped across the sidewalk, slid under the wheel and plunged at the starter.
“We’re headed,” I told Bernie Ohls. “Two guys got the kid’s address there a while back. It might be—”
Ohls grabbed the side of the car and swore as we took the corner on squealing tires. I bent forward over the wheel and drove hard. There was a red light at Central. I swerved into a corner service station, went through the pumps, popped out on Central and jostled through some traffic to make a right turn east again.
A colored traffic cop blew a whistle at me and then stared hard as if trying to read the license number. I kept on going.
Warehouses, a produce market, a big gas tank, more warehouses, railroad tracks, and two bridges dropped behind us. I beat three traffic signals by a hair and went right through a fourth. Six blocks on I got the siren from a motorcycle cop. Ohls passed me a bronze star and I flashed it out of the car, twisting it so the sun caught it. The siren stopped. The motorcycle kept right behind us for another dozen blocks, then sheered off.
Gray La
ke is an artificial reservoir in a cut between two groups of hills, on the east fringe of San Angelo. Narrow but expensively paved streets wind around in the hills, describing elaborate curves along their flanks for the benefit of a few cheap and scattered bungalows.
We plunged up into the hills, reading street signs on the run. The gray silk of the lake dropped away from us and the exhaust of the old Marmon roared between crumbling banks that shed dirt down on the unused sidewalks. Mongrel dogs quartered in the wild grass among the gopher holes.
Renfrew was almost at the top. Where it began there was a small neat bungalow in front of which a child in a diaper and nothing else fumbled around in a wire pen on a patch of lawn. Then there was a stretch without houses. Then there were two houses, then the road dropped, slipped in and out of sharp turns, went between banks high enough to put the whole street in shadow.
Then a gun roared around a bend ahead of us.
Ohls sat up sharply, said: “Oh-oh! That’s no rabbit gun,” slipped his service pistol out and unlatched the door on his side.
We came out of the turn and saw two more houses on the down side of the hill, with a couple of steep lots between them. A long gray car was slewed across the street in the space between the two houses. Its left front tire was flat and both its front doors were wide open, like the spread ears of an elephant.
A small, dark-faced man was kneeling on both knees in the street beside the open right-hand door. His right arm hung loose from his shoulder and there was blood on the hand that belonged to it. With his other hand he was trying to pick up an automatic from the concrete in front of him.
I skidded the Marmon to a fast stop and Ohls stumbled out.
“Drop that, you!” he yelled.
The man with the limp arm snarled, relaxed, fell back against the running boat, and a shot came from behind the car and snapped in the air not very far from my ear. I was out on the road by that time. The gray car was angled enough towards the houses so that I couldn’t see any part of its left side except the open door. The shot seemed to come from about there. Ohls put two slugs into the door. I dropped, looked under the car and saw a pair of feet. I shot at them and missed.