Killer Take All

by Philip Race

  "If you will, honest?"

  "Honest," I said solemnly.

  I picked her up in my arms, threaded through the curious mob to the door. The cab was waiting. Carla didn't say a word, just huddled in my arms, shaking with a hiccup-like shudder.

  The cabbie took my fin and my instructions and climbed behind the wheel. Carla settled back in the rear seat, handkerchief crammed in her mouth.

  She was scared damn near to death. I could see that. I didn't know why or what of, but I knew she was terrified. And I had a hunch, one I should have followed up right away.

  But she was game, determined to play the tragedy right on out. I tried again, but she wouldn't tell me a thing; just shook her head and looked at me with those clean, wet, shining eyes. I waved the cab away and watched it go.

  * * *

  Fran took me home in her car. We stopped for coffee, talked a little. I finally found out why she was a crap dealer. Her father was an invalid. He'd been crippled several years before in a mill accident, losing part of both legs and one arm entirely. Fran was the only child.

  "I could have done a lot of things, Johnny," she said. "But I knew I was good looking. Enough people had told me. And the hospital bill was so big. I went to work for Ford Messner, learned to smile and push chips around."

  "No insurance?"

  She nodded. "There was some. You'd be surprised how they word those things. And how hard it is to collect. We got enough for the hospital. But there was the specialist from San Francisco, and therapy."

  Fran sipped her coffee, made a face. She wore a light coat of some woolen material, boldly cut with a high collar. Her tan showed well against the beige, the lime dress.

  "How long you think you can stick with it?"

  She looked up. "Not forever. I'd like to get married someday."

  I grinned. "No prospects?"

  "Oh, prospects. No engagements yet, if that's what you mean. I'm not too hard to please, or anything. Just that I want to be sure. Real sure."

  I hid behind my cup. "What's the matter with George French? Besides his being a cop."

  "You don't mean that," she said quietly. "It's a pose and a pretty poor one. But I like George. He's steady and certainly manly enough."

  "He's manly," I muttered.

  "But I don't love him."

  "That's the bit, huh? All of me. Yours till the end of time. You itch and I scratch." I leaned forward over the table, took her hand. "You really sold yourself that bill of goods, Fran?"

  Her fingers lay in mine. She didn't say anything for a moment. Then, wetting her full lips, she said, "Maybe you think it's a bill of goods. And I guess that's all right. I don't. Lots of people don't." She pulled her hand away. "What it comes down to, Johnny, is that I'm a small-town girl. I want to get married to a man I love. A man I expect to spend the rest of my life with. Not just a couple of sticky hours followed by emotional hangovers. That's..."

  She trailed off, looked out the speckled glass of the diner's window. I lit a cigarette, handed it to her.

  "Emotional hangover, huh? You figure that's what I've been having all my life?"

  She bit her lip. "I don't know anything about you, Johnny. I'm not prying."

  "No, but you'd like to." I shoved back in the chair. "All you good girls are alike. You want to know. You got to know. Christ, is that all there is—one big confession after another? It seems to me a hell of a way to start out life with someone."

  "I told you I didn't want to know anything." Her voice got louder. "What makes you think you're a candidate, Mr. Berlin? How come you imagine I even want to pry into your private life? We were talking about life, that's all. You want one thing, whatever it is, and I want another. All right, so I'm a good girl. And I like the way your lip curls when you say it."

  "Now wait..."

  "No." She stood up, gathered her belongings. "We've been building up to this ever since we met. All right, I'm attracted to you. You're big and you're handsome and I like a whole lot of things about you. Maybe I'd like to see how it would be to have you make love to me. But I'm not going to do it. Because I'm a good girl." Her mouth twisted with the words, and tears came to her eyes, deep purple now in the harsh light of the restaurant. "Whatever you call it, that's the way I am."

  I sighed. "All right. I'm sorry."

  I paid the bill, ushered Fran outside. The night was cool, mist laying low on the ground. Wet streaks marked the asphalt of the highway. The little coupe was mottled with moisture. I stopped her as she was about to climb into the car. She turned, looked up at me.

  "Fran. What do I have to do to be eligible?"

  Her pupils seemed to shrink. She moved forward slowly, then stopped, never moving her gaze from my face.

  "When you're eligible," she said, so low I could barely make out the words, "you'll know it. Take me home..."

  * * *

  Who knows anything about women? Not me. By the time I got to the hotel and into my room, my head was buzzing. Big pictures of Gina, pouting and sensual; Sheila, flaming and vital; Fran, cool and beautiful and strangely more disturbing than the others, flipped around in my head. And I'd had no sleep for quite a while. The bed looked good. Real good. I got out of my coat, started water in the tub.

  Somebody tried to tear the door down. Sounded like it, at least. I started cussing ten feet from the door and had worked up a good head of steam by the time I got it unlocked and the knob turned.

  Lieutenant French straight-armed the door and shoved me back into the room so hard I stumbled. His face was flushed. Behind him was the young cop with the barn-door shoulders.

  "What the hell?" I said.

  "Shut up," French said evenly. "Just stand there and don't say anything. Not nothing. Got that?"

  I nodded. He was hot. Wilder than a bookie with cramps. And with a terrible restraint clamping his actions. I sat carefully on the bed, bare-chested and erect. The McKaneville police tore my room apart. And the valet had just put it back to rights from the earlier visit with my banker friend.

  I sighed. "Second time today, George."

  "Shut up," he said, and the frisk went on.

  They got the clothes I'd been wearing, including the pants I still had on, tagged them, put the whole mess in a white bag and sealed it. I had no idea what the thing was about. And French wouldn't tell me. He made me don a pair of slacks, a short jacket and off we went to jail.

  Only one time he'd opened up. That's when the bluecoat had uncovered my brand-new .38 in the bureau drawer. French grabbed it, shoved it under my nose.

  "This yours?"

  "My own," I said. "For cracking walnuts."

  "Come on, slicker. Never mind the clever dialogue."

  I stood up. "You tell me a lot, French. You give me a lot of consideration. Bust in here, throw my stuff around like it was going out of style. Well, that's fine. Maybe you got a license. But help you don't get. That clear? Until I know what's going on, I don't say a word. Not one God-damn word!"

  French stuck his jaw in my face, glared for a moment. Then some of the hardness seemed to drain out of him. His big shoulders relaxed.

  "You'll talk downtown," he said.

  And that's where we went.

  * * *

  We went through a somber anteroom right into the office of Police Chief Roily Cline. I saw Laddy Layton, Mickey System, Dan Gurion and Bev huddled with Paul Carter and Coley O'Rourke as we went through. A cop stood to one side of the door.

  The chief's office was long and narrow, with one dirty window on the far end of the narrow side. There was a desk, a big chair, several straight-backs, filing cabinets and a long, long radiator running the length of the room. It hissed.

  Rolly Cline didn't dress the room up any. It was the first time I'd seen the chief of police. I wasn't impressed. He was a fat old woman in pants with wrinkles and a food-spattered blue uniform on which the gold braid had tarnished years ago.

  "This is our man, George," Cline said as we entered. "He has that doomed look I've come
to recognize."

  French nodded, motioned me to a chair. "Yeah, sure,

  Roily. You get the testimony of the others? Every one of 'em?"

  "All except the Cole girl. She hasn't shown up yet, George. All right here, George—on the little tape. Now we'll get Berlin's."

  "Now you'll get Berlin's what?" I got up from the chair. I push all right, but only so far. This, I figured, was far enough. "You'll get my lawyer if you don't tell me what this is all about. You got a charge?"

  French sat down, pulled his pistol away from his hip. He looked tired. His eyes asked me to be reasonable, but I didn't feel like it. I didn't feel like anything in the world so much as planting a foot in the middle of Roily Cline's fat chest and shoving.

  French said, "Donetti gets killed. We care, you know? But we don't bust too many guts about it. Somebody else, we care more and we work harder."

  I believe I knew then. How, I couldn't say. But a definite chill started at my sockless ankles, crept upward till my face had hardened, my eyes had lost the scratchy heat, frozen open on the tilted figure of George French.

  "Like who?" I said and waited.

  "Like Carla," the lieutenant said softly. "Seventeen and lovely—and dead."

  In the background I heard the asthmatic wheeze of McKaneville's police chief. And the unmistakable whir of a tape recorder.

  Chapter 12

  "You believe I killed that kid?"

  French sat on the edge of the desk facing me. Cline, with his little tape recorder, was obscured by the beefy lieutenant. But I knew he hadn't missed any of the dialogue.

  "Tell me again about when she came to the club."

  I told him. I'd already told him once in the most exacting detail. When it came to the part about me putting her in a cab and sending her home, he stopped me.

  "You told her you'd get Layton to call her? Go see her, or something?"

  "Look, she was torn up." I sat straighter in the chair, tried to explain. "It was merely a matter of avoiding an incident."

  "Did you do it?"

  "Did I do what?"

  French sighed. "Did you give the message to Layton?"

  Well, there it was. "No," I said finally. "No, I didn't. But what difference does it make, Lieutenant? I only wanted the kid to get out of there all right. I knew she was scared. But she wouldn't say a word. Not a word. I did what I could."

  "You know how she died?"

  I shook my head, looked up at the boring eyes of George French. His slabbed face had lost some of its color.

  "Run over three times with a heavy car," he said, voice flat. "Back and forth with a car. In her hand she had a note. From Laddy Layton. Anyway, signed with his name. The note said for her to meet him there, at Gypsy Hill."

  "Gypsy Hill?"

  "Local lover's lane. On the way in from Edson. Overlooking Clover Canyon."

  I rubbed my eyes. "Such a pretty kid. No reason for it. None at all."

  "Lots of reason, slicker. And you know what it was. You know better than anybody."

  "You mean Donetti's push?"

  "That's what I mean. You said she heard more than you did. Looks like you were right."

  "What time?" I asked. I had to work to keep my mind operating. The shock was catching up with me. Maybe it was silly, but I felt responsible for Carla's death. I couldn't shake it. French said something. "What time?" I asked again.

  "I told you," he said. "Medical examiner says about three-thirty, four. And one thing more."

  "One more thing? What else could there be?"

  "The note was scrawled on a napkin," the lieutenant said softly. "A Club Cherbourg napkin."

  She had been found by a roving patrol making a routine check of the area. A car had run over the girl's soft body several times, tearing it almost beyond recognition. It was a very brutal way to kill.

  "Answer my question," I said, rising from the chair. My face must have been tight because French leaned back, slid his hand around to his hip. "Answer me, French. You think for a God-damn minute I had anything to do with this kid's—with this God-damn—"

  "Take it easy, Berlin." He took my arm, sat me down again. "I know how you feel. She was a nice little girl. Had no business within ten miles of this mess. But that's the way it goes. Now we have to find out who did it."

  "That means you don't think I did."

  "You were with Fran." The big cop frowned, turned away. "You wouldn't say so if it wasn't so. You know we'll check and she wouldn't lie. That leaves you out. But you're mixed in this thing somehow. I want your help."

  "You got it. Anything at all and I'm not kidding. For once in my life," I added, very low.

  French slid off the desk, got a notebook from his coat pocket. Rolly Cline started whispering to him. I caught a few words. The chief wanted it to be me. He said so. French shut him up, motioned me over to the desk.

  "Here's the testimony we've got so far. Listen to it. Remember it. Then if there's anything you know you haven't told me, for Christ's sake, now's the time."

  "Okay. Spin the thing."

  The tape had the stories. Chunks of people's lives, different people, dissimilar people. All brought together because someone's greed had boiled over into violence. After the reel had run out, French lit cigarettes for him and me, settled in the swivel chair.

  "There it is," he said. "I was busy running down a tip on the name thing. Remember Johnny Ronns? Nothing. I wasn't here when the call came in."

  Through the spinning smoke we got it all laid out. The working theory was that Carla had heard Donetti name his killer just as he was going out. She'd known her information was dynamite. Maybe even received a warning. That would account for her strange behavior in the Cherbourg last night. Anyhow, she was scared enough to know that what she had heard could kill her. Nothing in the world could have got her to that spot on Gypsy Hill but a note from Laddy Layton.

  Once there, the killer had eliminated the possibility of Carla exposing him. Permanently.

  Both Dan Gurion and O'Rourke were clean on preliminary investigations. Dan by his wife's testimony and O'Rourke because he'd been with a party including Paul Carter, the owner of the Club Carroll, and several others. French said it was tight. Bev had been brought in only because she had been with Condi Capucho, the Cherbourg's pistol-loving bartender. He was a natural suspect because his gun had killed Donetti. And for another reason I hadn't known about. He was a pimp. Yeah, a pimp. That's why he could afford an expensive collection of guns. You never know. It surprised me, that's all.

  Bev King alibied the bartender. They'd been having coffee till four in a joint downtown. They could prove it. Mickey System had been in the same place and could also prove it. He'd left the Cherbourg and met Bev and Condi at the coffee joint.

  Mickey was also a pimp. That didn't shake me nearly as much as finding out about Condi. The little system player had always seemed a hair too rubbish to be true. I wasn't surprised to find out he had a girl in Welles, the lumber port thirty-five miles north where Dan and I had stopped for coffee on the way back from Portland.

  There was nothing on the tape about Ford Messner. Nothing on Gina Donetti. And not a word about Horace Gilbertson and his two cold hoods.

  "That's all, huh?"

  French looked up from examining the thinning sole of one shoe. "That's all. Except I called Mrs. Donetti—" he glanced at me, then away—"to check on her and the guy from Portland, that Gilbertson. She didn't know about him although I've got information that he's headquartered at the lake. But she had a solid alibi. Or so it seemed."

  "She need one?"

  "Everybody needs one." French studied his closed fist for a moment, then he rose abruptly and walked to the window. He stood there with both hands in his hip pockets. "And I'm a sonofabitch if everyone hasn't got one."

  The phone rattled on the desk. French turned, scooped, cuddled the instrument against his face.

  "French. Yeah, send her in when I buzz."

  He dropped the phone onto the cradle
, looked at me. His eyes were bleak and unfriendly again. "Fran," he said.

  "The tape told me one thing, Lieutenant. You want to hear it?"

  He chewed his lip a moment, then shook himself all over. He got out his book, settled on the edge of the desk again.

  "Yeah, slicker. I want to hear it. Shoot."

  "I know what Donetti said when he died."

  Cline choked, dropped a reel of tape. French leaned forward. "You mean you know who the murderer is?"

  "No. I didn't say that. Only that I know what he said now. It was the tape. Hearing about the pimps around here. I never thought about it—never knew there was so much organized prostitution, for that matter. But that's what he said when he died."

  "What are you talking about, Berlin? You said you heard the guy mention a name. Johnny Ronns or Blounce, you said. Or something like that."

  "Johnny Ronce," I said.

  French looked at me blankly. Cline cursed petulantly and flicked off the recorder.

  "That means something, I guess. But I'm dumb, slicker. Lay it out for me."

  "Rhyming slang. Limey rhyming slang, only it isn't only Limey now. We picked it up from them. But the English used it first and best. Pimp is ponce. They rhyme it Johnny Ronce—for ponce—which is pimp."

  French scratched his head with the eraser end of the yellow pencil. "Ponce," he said, the idea growing in his eyes. "Could be. And ponce. All right, Johnny Ronce. Instead of the word pimp or fish, or fish and shrimp like we do it in this country."

  "That's the bit," I said. "Johnny Ronce. An Englishman would say it like that."

  "Did you know Donetti was a naturalized Englishman?" French asked.

  "No. But I remembered there'd been something about the way he talked, some little flavor that I couldn't identify that night on the highway. The first night I got here. Anyway, I heard Donetti say something like that. Johnny Ronce. And when I heard the pimp, pimp, pimp tonight, it clicked." My cigarette had burned down to my fingers. I looked around for an ashtray, finally dropped it on the floor. "The use of the slang is widespread. Especially in the circles I travel. Hustlers and dealers, bartenders and fringe people. But it's a little different from the English variety even though that's where it came from originally."