Killer Take All

by Philip Race

  "Where, Johnny?"

  I took Fran's slim wrists, set her aside. "I don't know. Just get him and tell him and that's all you can do. May damn well be all anyone can do."

  Fran moved against me then and for one time-stopped moment we were closer than we'd ever been. She kissed my mouth, but it was hard and it stayed that way. She stepped back.

  "All right, Johnny. Do what you have to do. But I'm going along. Dan can call George French."

  "No," I said. "You can't." But she had already gone to find Gurion.

  I walked rapidly out into the swirling mist of the early morning. The road was wet; the cars were covered with moisture, windows speckled with fog. I heard Fran running behind me.

  "Go home," I told her, pushed her to the little car. She didn't resist. But her chin jutted. She climbed into her car, rolled down the window.

  "This is just like the first time," I said. "Remember?"

  "I remember. Johnny, take me with you."

  "No."

  "Then I'll follow," she said, and began rolling up the glass.

  "Wait. All right. We'll go in your car. But you'd better know this. If we find what I expect, there may be trouble."

  Her eyes closed; hands tightened on the wheel. Then she nodded, opened her eyes and they were clear violet and soft as purple down.

  "All right. Let's go."

  I got in, swung to face her on the seat while she got the engine started. She glanced at me, face carefully controlled. "Where to?"

  "Across the street. The motel. Stop in front of Condi's place. You know which one it is?"

  "Yes." She whipped the coupe out of the lot backwards, stopped it and sent it screaming over the fog-wet road to the motel driveway. "What for, Johnny? What are you stopping here for?"

  "I need a gun," I said.

  Chapter 15

  Condi gave me a gun. A Luger in fine shape, loaded deadly—eight in the clip and one in the chamber. He wanted to come along. But I left him there in the two-room cabin, polishing his collection, and drove through the road-hugging fog to Coley's Club.

  I hit the place like an assault wave. Fran swooped into the drive and I hit the clay running. By the time I got to the back door I was moving like a scatback in the clear. The door slammed off its hinges, banged against the wall.

  I stood there, gun in hand. There wasn't a sound. This was the office where O'Rourke had made his threatening pitch. I saw the leather couch in the gloom; Parisi's blood probably still stained it. But there was nobody home.

  The hall door was open. I went through, stuck my head in every door, investigated every room. Nobody. The bar was dark and empty; the fireplace was cold and had no fire laid in it. I grabbed a bottle off the bar and hotfooted it back to the car.

  Fran's eyes were enormous in the darkness of the front seat. She started the engine as I slid in beside her. "Nothing, Johnny?"

  "Not a damn thing." I leaned back against the seat. The motor idled, puffing clouds of vapor into the fog. Fran sat quietly, waiting for me to tell her where to go. "I don't know," I said finally.

  Then, "Downtown, Police headquarters. I want to talk to French."

  I twisted on the seat, watched Fran as she drove. She did it efficiently, only now and then sparing a glance from the road for me. She was beautiful. And not cold. Different from the women I'd known and therefore hard for me to understand. But not cold. I must have been walking through life with my head down. Sometimes you can't see for looking.

  "Fran," I said.

  "Yes?" She turned, flicked a small smile, then paid attention once more to the road. "What is it, Johnny?"

  "You know what I'm doing? You got any idea what it means that I'm knocking myself out like this?"

  She nodded. "I know. You told me about the rule. Mind your own business, tend to your own hustle. Never rank the other man's play." Her tongue ran over red lips. She smiled sadly. "I know, all right. And I know what it means now that you've found out you're capable of feeling for someone other than Johnny Berlin."

  "Maybe." I sucked my cigarette, threw the end out the windwing into the rushing morning air. "But I'm breaking a lifetime rule. And it comes hard, Fran. But that kid. That kid..."

  "I know, darling. I know."

  She slowed to a stop in front of the police station. I slid across the seat, put my arms around her. My head nudged hers around and I looked into those wonderful eyes, inches from mine.

  I said, "Say it again."

  Her arms crept slowly from between us, slid around me. "Darling," she said and closed her eyes. "Darling, darling..." Her lips opened and I touched them almost fearfully. It was a clumsy kiss, moist and inexperienced. But it shook us both because of the promise, the hint of wild sweetness to come.

  "This isn't the time," I whispered. "But it won't be long."

  "Yes, Johnny." She buried her head on my shoulder, moved it from side to side. "Oh, I was wrong, darling. I want you. And I'll take you any way you say. Any way at all. That's the way it was meant to be."

  "No," I said. "Your rules are the right ones. I never played by them before, but I'm game. I love you, Fran."

  She started to cry. Her body softened under my hands and I knew I had to send her home or ruin the cleanest thing that had ever happened to me.

  "Go home and go to sleep now. I'll call you when I can."

  I put a hand on the beautiful blonde hair, rumpled it tenderly. Her eyes came up, filled with tears. She smiled, sniffled.

  "Yes, Johnny."

  I kissed her quickly, climbed out into the strengthening light.

  "One of these days I'll get some sleep," I said. Her face stuck out of the window on the driver's side when I'd walked around. She stretched out a hand. "Johnny, be careful. Please?"

  I shifted the gun down between my belt and my belly. The grimness settled again, chasing elation.

  "Yeah, sure." I held her hand, rubbed the back of it with my thumb. "Good night, Fran. Or should it be good morning?"

  She pulled me, grabbed my tie and touched my lips briefly with hers. Warm velvet and a cool promise.

  "There'll be a thousand good mornings," she breathed.

  French wasn't there. The rookie cop I'd come to know during the Donetti mess was on duty. He gave me coffee, but no information.

  "All I know," he said, "is the lieutenant tore out of here after a phone call from your boss."

  "Dan called then. Where'd he go? How many men did he take?"

  The kid shrugged wide blue shoulders. "Dunno, Johnny. I didn't see him go. I know he said something about a boat Messner owns."

  I walked down Third Street to Main and the Kenyon Hotel corner. My eyes ached. It would have been simple to walk into the lobby, ride up in the creaky elevator and fall into my bed and forget everything. Everything but what I'd found with Fran. It would be nice to savor that, roll it around on my mind. What did I owe Carla Teacher? Maybe nothing. Maybe more than I could repay with a simple act of revenge. And that's what I pursued now. Revenge. Raw and green and as senseless as the greed that had started the whole vicious mess.

  It seemed I spent half my life watching McKaneville awaken. Traffic was picking up. Mill workers on the way to Wood Town. I admitted to myself that I wasn't going to help anyone running around in the dark. What did I think I could do for Sheila with no idea where she was? French was on the job. He'd check the known places.

  There were several things I could do, still stumbling. See Paul Carter. He was still eligible. Find Messner. That I'd like to do, but I didn't know where to start. Or could I act sensible and leave it to the police?

  "Where the hell you been, man? You sure are a hard fella to find."

  I stopped. I'd walked into the lobby, started across toward the elevator. Mickey System rose up out of one of the high-backed chairs, confronted me.

  "Here I am," I said. "What do you want?"

  "You look beat." He folded the paper he'd been reading, threw it behind him to the chair. "Let's get some coffee. I got something to tell
you."

  We went to the Sweet Shop next door. In a booth, with fumes rising from cups of hot, fresh coffee, Mickey smiled wearily across the linoleum-topped table.

  "You got bags under your eyes, man," he said. "Smoke?"

  I took a cigarette, held a light for the little hustler. He sucked a mouthful of smoke, held it, looked at me.

  "I'm beginning to wish I'd leveled with you in the beginning," he said.

  "What do you mean, Mickey?" I flipped the match, stirred some of the heat from my coffee absently. "If you've got something to tell me, get to it. I'm tired and I'm evil."

  "I can see that. What happened?"

  I sighed. "I got a call from Sheila. She was in trouble. I took off like a big-assed bird to save the mortgage and wound up riding around wondering what the hell I thought I was doing. So it don't feel good. Mostly because she really might be in trouble."

  Mickey studied me through the smoke. He lifted his cup. "She is," he said, and sipped.

  "She is? You sound like you know something. Let's have it."

  He nodded. "I got a whisper through my old lady, Toni. You don't know her, but you will pretty soon. She works in a joint in Welles. Marti Thayer's."

  I expected him to be apologetic or something about the fact that his wife was a hustler. But he wasn't. Then I thought how silly it was that a man who had fractured most of the moral laws should draw lines, and split hairs and judge others.

  "Why are you telling me now?"

  He dropped his smoking butt into the saucer, watched it sizzle in the spilled coffee. "I dunno. Why are you messing in the thing?"

  "I got run off the road, remember?"

  "Yeah. Well, maybe it's the way that kid got it. I'm a hustler and pimp, maybe, but that's too much, you know?" He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "Anyway, what's the difference? I don't want the syndicate. I'd have to leave. And I like this country.

  "I know where Sheila is," Mickey said. "Maybe she can help you. I called Toni, like I do regular, and when she told me the redhead was there, I tried to find you."

  "You mean she's at this—what was the name of that place?"

  "Marti Thayer's. It's the old Commercial Hotel in Welles. Toni says Mops Parisi brought the broad and had her locked up in a room. And that's all I know, man."

  "It might be plenty, Mickey. I got to get out there. I don't know what I'll do, but I got to talk to that girl."

  He reached in a side pocket, got a small ring of keys. They hit the table, slid to my hand.

  "Take my car. It's the new Buick right around back. Black one. Say hello to Toni for me. And Johnny..."

  I'd gotten up, started to struggle into my coat. "Yes?"

  "Remember Toni, will you, if a hassle starts?"

  I thought of the gun nestling against my belly. And of two bodies already cold and nothing to lose for whoever had made them that way.

  "I will, Mick. Thanks. You're a good man."

  "I'm outa my skull," he said. "But lotsa luck."

  The Buick was new and it would go. I poured it over the road much too fast until I realized that nothing would be gained by killing myself. Plus the fact that it had been hours since Sheila's call. If anything was going to happen to her it would have been accomplished by now. I slowed, fiddled with the radio knob, got some early-morning music, settled more comfortably into the seat. Welles was thirty-some miles.

  The road was snaky and the morning was becoming clear and sunny. Spots of dampness showed where the sun hadn't reached, filtered as it was through foliage. I rolled the window partway down, let the air blow into my face. Keep me awake. When I got to Welles I'd have something else to do. Try to stay alive.

  Halfway there I stopped at a roadside diner, went inside and called the Devil's Play Spot. Gilbertson wasn't there. Or if he was, I couldn't get him. I got a sleepy Gina and listened patiently to an astonishing vocabulary of cuss words before I could get a word in.

  “Okay,” I said, when she paused for breath. “I’m sorry I told you that. I was messed up. That kid's death threw me a little. And I had to go to the club."

  "You could have been more subtle, darling." Her voice grew husky, now that her anger was gone. "After all, it isn't as if we weren't... friends."

  "I'm not sure we were ever friends. But let that go. Listen, I want you to do something for me and it might be damned important, so don't goof."

  "Of course, Johnny. What is it?"

  "Get hold of Gilbertson. Tell him I found the girl."

  "Found the girl? Found what girl? Johnny, are you still messing in that thing?" Her voice climbed. "Haven't I told you to mind your own business before you get hurt?"

  "Hey, look, I'm not asking you."

  The line buzzed. Then she said, "All right. What's the message?"

  "That's better. Tell good old Horace I may need him and his Commandos. I'm on my way right now to a—well, a joint in Welles. Marti Thayer's. Got that?"

  "Of course, it's a notorious bawdy house. What—"

  "Bawdy house. That's the word. Tell him to get there quick unless I call and tell him not to. Okay?"

  "Johnny, listen. You're going to get hurt. You're messing where you have no business. Now—"

  "Will you do it or won't you?"

  "All right!" she blazed. "But I hope you get your pretty head caved in! Go on. Go to your whore house. Maybe you'll get some ideas."

  I put my mouth close to the mouthpiece, made a kissing sound with my lips.

  "None you wouldn't recognize, baby."

  I stood outside and let the sun hit my face for a minute. It felt good. For a little while I forgot the mounting tensions, the half-warped surges inside me. I thought about Gina. She was a bomb. And no doubt she would be very loving if I should take Gilbertson's offer to manage the resort. Right then I wondered if I hadn't been hasty in turning down the deal.

  Chapter 16

  The Buick got me to Welles in a matter of minutes and I found the hotel that housed the Thayer nautchery. It wasn't Polly Adler's. An orange crate with windows, two stories high, with a bare, wood stairway reaching up from the alley to a tiny porch perched against the building's rear. Steep and rickety with one handrail. I parked the Buick down the alley and walked back. The stairway looked like the ladder to a high wire. I went up, noticing a yellow Cadillac parked across from the steps.

  A colored maid gave me a light hassle, but I pushed in, stood for a minute in the early morning gloom. I was in a long corridor spaced with doors on either side. There was a single bulb halfway down and a window at the far end, about a mile and a half away.

  The maid said, "Sir, Miz Thayer ain't doin' no receivin' this—"

  "She's receiving. Shut the door and disappear."

  Dark tunnel with doors. I didn't feel good about this at all. My hand found the Luger, loosened it in my belt. Radio music was loud from somewhere. Fans of light hit the worn carpeting from under several doors. The girls, I guessed. A heavy odor hung in the air. Sweet, but a little too sweet. Like a dissolute debutante breathing alcohol through a fog of Chanel Number Five.

  The single bulb was in front of the kitchen and that's where I went. The door was open. One blowzy woman drinking coffee under a window; music from a chrome radio, much too loud now that I was near it. The kitchen was bright, like an advertisement.

  "What the hell do you want, mac?"

  I said nothing, stepped in and looked around.

  She raised her voice over the radio. "You hear me, Elmer? We're closed."

  This, I thought, is the fabulous Marti Thayer. Years ago, maybe. Not now. Too many hard years. A pudgy bottle-blonde with sagging breasts pushing at a cerise wrapper and hard eyes in a doll's face. Her voice had some of the quality of a saw ripping hardwood.

  "You don't know me, Marti," I said. "But I know you. And I know you got a redhead named Sheila here somewhere. I want to see her. That's all. Then I go. No trouble, no scuffle, no noise."

  I had to say it loud. Damn radio. Her eyes held mine for a moment, then s
lid away over my shoulder. A small chill chased over me. What the hell was this?

  I stepped away from the door, looked around again. Still just a kitchen. The corridor was empty, too. Back to the woman, the feeling growing in me. "It's nine o'clock," I said.

  "So what do you want from me? An endorsement? We got nobody named Sheila, never had nobody by that name. Now get out before you get hurt."

  "Little early for you to be up, isn't it?"

  She glowered at me, grabbed a bottle from the table and poured a healthy slug into her coffee. Something was sure as hell wrong. No whorehouse in the world opens at nine in the morning. Marti Thayer was not only up, she was agitated. She gulped a shot of the coffee royale, whirled.

  "Didn't you hear me, creep? Get the hell out."

  "Very good," I said. "You almost make me believe you don't know me, have no idea why I'm here. Well, cut the crap. I want Sheila and I'll see her if I have to break down every door in the joint."

  The woman lifted her doll face; the eyes were venomous. She opened her mouth and screamed, "Frank!"

  I slapped her. She slammed her cup down, breaking the saucer. Her eyes were like flat metal discs.

  "Oh, you're paid for, you are," she said. "You're dead, Berlin. Now you get your head changed."

  "You said my name."

  "All right!" she blazed. "So I know who you are. Sure I know who you are. Mops Parisi came here with his belly cut and his arm slashed a week ago. I know you're messing in something that's too big for you."

  "Tell me about Sheila," I said.

  But she didn't get a chance to tell me about anything. I heard a step, tried to turn, reaching for the Luger. All I got was a flash impression of a husky figure in a black leather jacket and then I was pushing up the floor from where his clubbed gun had put me. My head spun. I reached for a chrome chair leg, jerked at the thing and it whirled around me, hit the kid at the knees.

  He stumbled back and I saw a confused young face, knobby with rage. He had a handful of blue automatic. The snout lifted as he stumbled back. There wasn't time to do anything but push. I pushed. I pushed like hell.