by Otto Penzler
About that time there was a thin but very sharp crack from the corner of the nearest house. Glass broke in the gray car. The gun behind it roared and plaster jumped out of the corner of the house wall, above the bushes. Then I saw the upper part of a man’s body in the bushes. He was lying downhill on his stomach and he had a light rifle to his shoulder.
He was Tom Sneyd, the taxi driver.
Ohls grunted and charged the gray car. He fired twice more into the door, then dodged down behind the hood. More explosions occurred behind the car. I kicked the wounded man’s gun out of his way, slid past him and sneaked a look over the gas tank. But the man behind had had too many angles to figure.
He was a big man in a brown suit and he made a clatter running hard for the lip of the hill between the two bungalows. Ohls’ gun roared. The man whirled and snapped a shot without stopping. Ohls was in the open now. I saw his hat jerk off his head. I saw him stand squarely on well-spread feet, steady his pistol as if he was on the police range.
But the big man was already sagging. My bullet had drilled through his neck. Ohls fired at him very carefully and he fell and the sixth and last slug from his gun caught the man in the chest and twisted him around. The side of his head slapped the curb with a sickening crunch.
We walked towards him from opposite ends of the car. Ohls leaned down, heaved the man over on his back. His face in death had a loose, amiable expression, in spite of the blood all over his neck. Ohls began to go through his pockets.
I looked back to see what the other one was doing. He wasn’t doing anything but sitting on the running board holding his right arm against his side and grimacing with pain.
Tom Sneyd scrambled up the bank and came towards us.
Ohls said: “It’s a guy named Poke Andrews. I’ve seen him around the poolrooms.” He stood up and brushed off his knee. He had some odds and ends in his left hand. “Yeah, Poke Andrews. Gun work by the day, hour or week. I guess there was a livin’ in it—for a while.”
“It’s not the guy that sapped me,” I said. “But it’s the guy I was looking at when I got sapped. And if the redhead was giving out any truth at all this morning, it’s likely the guy that shot Lou Harger.”
Ohls nodded, went over and got his hat. There was a hole in the brim. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all,” he said, putting his hat on calmly.
Tom Sneyd stood in front of us with his little rifle held rigidly across his chest. He was hatless and coatless, and had sneakers on his feet. His eyes were bright and mad, and he was beginning to shake.
“I knew I’d get them babies!” he crowed. “I knew I’d fix them lousy bastards!” Then he stopped talking and his face began to change color. It got green. He leaned down slowly, dropped his rifle, put both his hands on his bent knees.
Ohls said: “You better go lay down somewhere, buddy. If I’m any judge of color, you’re go in’ to shoot your cookies.”
TEN
Tom Sneyd was lying on his back on a day bed in the front room of his little bungalow. There was a wet towel across his forehead. A little girl with honey-colored hair was sitting beside him, holding his hand. A young woman with hair a couple of shades darker than the little girl’s sat in the corner and looked at Tom Sneyd with tired ecstasy.
It was very hot when we came in. All the windows were shut and all the blinds down. Ohls opened a couple of front windows and sat down beside them, looked out towards the gray car. The dark Mexican was anchored to its steering wheel by his good wrist.
“It was what they said about my little girl,” Tom Sneyd said from under the towel. “That’s what sent me screwy. They said they’d come back and get her, if I didn’t play with them.”
Ohls said: “Okey, Tom. Let’s have it from the start.” He put one of his little cigars in his mouth, looked at Tom Sneyd doubtfully, and didn’t light it.
I sat in a very hard Windsor chair and looked down at the cheap, new carpet.
“I was readin’ a mag, waiting for time to eat and go to work,” Tom Sneyd said carefully. “The little girl opened the door. They come in with guns on us, got us all in here and shut the windows. They pulled down all the blinds but one and the Mex sat by that and kept looking out. He never said a word. The big guy sat on the bed here and made me tell him all about last night—twice. Then he said I was to forget I’d met anybody or come into town with anybody. The rest was okey.”
Ohls nodded and said: “What time did you first see this man here?”
“I didn’t notice,” Tom Sneyd said. “Say eleven-thirty, quarter of twelve. I checked in to the office at one-fifteen, right after I got my hack at the Carillon. It took us a good hour to make town from the beach. We was in the drugstore talkin’ say fifteen minutes, maybe longer.”
“That figures back to around midnight when you met him,” Ohls said.
Tom Sneyd shook his head and the towel fell down over his face. He pushed it back up again.
“Well, no,” Tom Sneyd said. “The guy in the drugstore told me he closed up at twelve. He wasn’t closing up when we left.”
Ohls turned his head and looked at me without expression. He looked back at Tom Sneyd. “Tell us the rest about the two gunnies,” he said.
“The big guy said most likely I wouldn’t have to talk to anybody about it. If I did and talked right, they’d be back with some dough. If I talked wrong, they’d be back for my little girl.”
“Go on,” Ohls said. “They’re full of crap.”
“They went away. When I saw them go on up the street I got screwy. Renfrew is just a pocket— one of them graft jobs. It goes on around the hill half a mile, then stops. There’s no way to get off it. So they had to come back this way … I got my twenty-two, which is all the gun I have, and hid in the bushes. I got the tire with the second shot. I guess they thought it was a blowout. I missed with the next and that put ‘em wise. They got guns loose. I got the Mex then, and the big guy ducked behind the car … That’s all there was to it. Then you come along.”
Ohls flexed his thick, hard fingers and smiled grimly at the girl in the corner. “Who lives in the next house, Tom?”
“A man named Grandy, a motorman on the interurban. He lives all alone. He’s at work now.”
“I didn’t guess he was home,” Ohls grinned. He got up and went over and patted the little girl on the head. “You’ll have to come down and make a statement, Tom.”
“Sure.” Tom Sneyd’s voice was tired, listless. “I guess I lose my job, too, for rentin’ out the hack last night.”
“I ain’t so sure about that,” Ohls said softly. “Not if your boss likes guys with a few guts to run his hacks.”
He patted the little girl on the head again, went towards the door and opened it. I nodded at Tom Sneyd and followed Ohls out of the house. Ohls said quietly: “He don’t know about the kill yet. No need to spring it in front of the kid.”
We went over to the gray car. We had got some sacks out of the basement and spread them over the late Andrews, weighted them down with stones. Ohls glanced that way and said absently: “I got to get to where there’s a phone pretty quick.”
He leaned on the door of the car and looked in at the Mexican. The Mexican sat with his head back and his eyes half-closed and a drawn expression on his brown face. His left wrist was shackled to the spider of the wheel.
“What’s your name?” Ohls snapped at him.
“Luis Cadena,” the Mexican said it in a soft voice without opening his eyes any wider.
“Which one of you heels scratched the guy at West Cimarron last night?”
“No understand, senor,” the Mexican said purringly.
“Don’t go dumb on me, spig,” Ohls said dispassionately. “It gets me sore.” He leaned on the window and rolled his little cigar around in his mouth.
The Mexican looked faintly amused and at the same time very tired. The blood on his right hand had dried black.
Ohls said: “Andrews scratched the guy in a taxi at West Cimarron. There was a girl al
ong. We got the girl. You have a lousy chance to prove you weren’t in on it.”
Light flickered and died behind the Mexican’s half-open eyes. He smiled with a glint of small white teeth.
Ohls said: “What did he do with the gun?”
“No understand, senor.”
Ohls said: “He’s tough. When they get tough it scares me.”
He walked away from the car and scuffed some loose dirt from the sidewalk beside the sacks that draped the dead man. His toe gradually uncovered the contractor’s stencil in the cement. He read it out loud: “Dorr Paving and Construction Company, San Angelo. It’s a wonder the fat louse wouldn’t stay in his own racket.”
I stood beside Ohls and looked down the hill between the two houses. Sudden flashes of light darted from the windshields of cars going along the boulevard that fringed Gray Lake, far below.
Ohls said: “Well?”
I said: “The killers knew about the taxi— maybe—and the girl friend reached town with the swag. So it wasn’t Canales’ job. Canales isn’t the boy to let anybody play around with twenty-two grand of his money. The redhead was in on the kill, and it was done for a reason.”
Ohls grinned. “Sure. It was done so you could be framed for it.”
I said: “It’s a shame how little account some folks take of human life—or twenty-two grand. Harger was knocked off so I could be framed and the dough was passed to me to make the frame tighter.”
“Maybe they thought you’d highball,” Ohls grunted. “That would sew you up right.”
I rolled a cigarette around in my fingers. “That would have been a little too dumb, even for me. What do we do now? Wait till the moon comes up so we can sing—or go down the hill and tell some more little white lies?”
Ohls spat on one of Poke Andrews’ sacks. He said gruffly: “This is county land here. I could take all this mess over to the sub-station at Solano and keep it hush-hush for a while. The hack driver would be tickled to death to keep it under the hat. And I’ve gone far enough so I’d like to get the Mex in the goldfish room with me personal.”
“I’d like it that way too,” I said. “I guess you can’t hold it down there for long, but you might hold it down long enough for me to see a fat boy about a cat.”
ELEVEN
It was late afternoon when I got back to the hotel. The clerk handed me a slip which read: “Please phone F. D. as soon as possible.”
I went upstairs and drank some liquor that was in the bottom of a bottle. Then I phoned down for another pint, scraped my chin, changed clothes and looked up Frank Dorr’s number in the book. He lived in a beautiful old house on Greenview Park Crescent.
I made myself a tall smooth one with a tinkle and sat down in an easy chair with the phone at my elbow. I got a maid first. Then I got a man who spoke Mister Dorr’s name as though he thought it might blow up in his mouth. After him I got a voice with a lot of silk in it. Then I got a long silence and at the end of the silence I got Frank Dorr himself. He sounded glad to hear from me.
He said: “I’ve been thinking about our talk this morning, and I have a better idea. Drop out and see me … And you might bring that money along. You just have time to get it out of the bank.”
I said: “Yeah. The safe-deposit closes at six. But it’s not your money.”
I heard him chuckle. “Don’t be foolish. It’s all marked, and I wouldn’t want to have to accuse you of stealing it.”
I thought that over, and didn’t believe it— about the currency being marked. I took a drink out of my glass and said: “I might be willing to turn it over to the party I got it from—in your presence.”
He said: “Well—I told you that party left town. But I’ll see what I can do. No tricks, please.”
I said of course no tricks, and hung up. I finished my drink, called Von Ballin of the Telegram. He said the sheriff’s people didn’t seem to have any ideas about Lou Harger—or give a damn. He was a little sore that I still wouldn’t let him use my story. I could tell from the way he talked that he hadn’t got the doings over near Gray Lake.
I called Ohls, couldn’t reach him.
I mixed myself another drink, swallowed half of it and began to feel it too much. I put my hat on, changed my mind about the other half of my drink, went down to my car. The early evening traffic was thick with householders riding home to dinner. I wasn’t sure whether two cars tailed me or just one. At any rate nobody tried to catch up and throw a pineapple in my lap.
The house was a square two-storied place of old red brick, with beautiful grounds and a red brick wall with a white stone coping around them. A shiny black limousine was parked under the porte-cochere at the side. I followed a red-flagged walk up over two terraces, and a pale wisp of a man in a cutaway coat let me into a wide, silent hall with dark old furniture and a glimpse of garden at the end. He led me along that and along another hall at right angles and ushered me softly into a paneled study that was dimly lit against the gathering dusk. He went away, leaving me alone.
The end of the room was mostly open french windows, through which a brass-colored sky showed behind a line of quiet trees. In front of the trees a sprinkler swung slowly on a patch of velvety lawn that was already dark. There were large dim oils on the walls, a huge black desk with books across one end, a lot of deep lounging chairs, a heavy soft rug that went from wall to wall. There was a faint smell of good cigars and beyond that somewhere a smell of garden flowers and moist earth. The door opened and a youngish man in nose-glasses came in, gave me a slight formal nod, looked around vaguely, and said that Mr. Dorr would be there in a moment. He went out again, and I lit a cigarette.
In a little while the door opened again and Beasley came in, walked past me with a grin and sat down just inside the windows. Then Dorr came in and behind him Miss Glenn.
Dorr had his black cat in his arms and two lovely red scratches, shiny with collodion, down his right cheek. Miss Glenn had on the same clothes I had seen on her in the morning. She looked dark and drawn and spiritless, and she went past me as though she had never seen me before.
Dorr squeezed himself into the high-backed chair behind the desk and put the cat down in front of him. The cat strolled over to one corner of the desk and began to lick its chest with a long, sweeping, businesslike motion.
Dorr said: “Well, well. Here we are,” and chuckled pleasantly.
The man in the cutaway came in with a tray of cocktails, passed them around, put the tray with the shaker down on a low table beside Miss Glenn. He went out again, closing the door as if he was afraid he might crack it.
We all drank and looked very solemn.
I said: “We’re all here but two. I guess we have a quorum.”
Dorr said: “What’s that?” sharply and put his head to one side.
I said: “Lou Harger’s in the morgue and Canales is dodging cops. Otherwise we’re all here. All the interested parties.”
Miss Glenn made an abrupt movement, then relaxed suddenly and picked at the arm of her chair.
Dorr took two swallows of his cocktail, put the glass aside and folded his small neat hands on the desk. His face looked a little sinister.
“The money,” he said coldly. “I’ll take charge of it now.”
I said: “Not now or any other time. I didn’t bring it.”
Dorr stared at me and his face got a little red. I looked at Beasley. Beasley had a cigarette in his mouth and his hands in his pockets and the back of his head against the back of his chair. He looked half asleep.
Dorr said softly, meditatively: “Holding out, huh?”
“Yes,” I said grimly. “While I have it I’m fairly safe. You overplayed your hand when you let me get my paws on it. I’d be a fool not to hold what advantage it gives me.”
Dorr said: “Safe?” with a gentle sinister intonation.
I laughed. “Not safe from a frame,” I said. “But the last one didn’t click so well … Not safe from being gun-walked again. But that’s going to be harder next ti
me too … But fairly safe from being shot in the back and having you sue my estate for the dough.”
Dorr stroked the cat and looked at me under his eyebrows.
“Let’s get a couple of more important things straightened out,” I said. “Who takes the rap for Lou Harger?”
“What makes you so sure you don’t?” Dorr asked nastily.
“My alibi’s been polished up. I didn’t know how good it was until I knew how close Lou’s death could be timed. I’m clear now … regardless of who turns in what gun with what fairy tale … And the lads that were sent to scotch my alibi ran into some trouble.”
Dorr said: “That so?” without any apparent emotion.
“A thug named Andrews and a Mexican calling himself Luis Cadena. I daresay you’ve heard ofthem.”
“I don’t know such people,” Dorr said sharply.
“Then it won’t upset you to hear Andrews got very dead, and the law has Cadena.”
“Certainly not,” Dorr said. “They were from Canales. Canales had Harger killed.”
I said: “So that’s your new idea. I think it’s lousy.”
I leaned over and slipped my empty glass under my chair. Miss Glenn turned her head towards me and spoke very gravely, as if it was very important to the future of the race for me to believe what she said: “Of course—of course Canales had Lou killed … At least, the men he sent after us killed Lou.”
I nodded politely. “What for? A packet of money they didn’t get? They wouldn’t have killed him. They’d have brought him in, brought both of you in. You arranged for that kill, and the taxi stunt was to sidetrack me, not to fool Canales’ boys.”
She put her hand out quickly. Her eyes were shimmering. I went ahead.
“I wasn’t very bright, but I didn’t figure on anything so flossy. Who the hell would? Canales had no motive to gun Lou, unless it got back the money he had been gypped out of. Supposing he could know that quick he had been gypped.”