Off the Mangrove Coast (Ss) (2000)

by L'amour, Louis

  “Nothing yet,” I told him. “Give me time.”

  “There isn’t any time. The D. A. thinks she did it. He’s all hopped up against the Industry, anyway. I’m sending a man over to your office at eight with a thousand dollars. Consider that a retainer!” Bang; he hung up the phone.

  It was a quarter to eight. I rolled out of bed, into the shower, into my clothes, and through a session with an electric razor so fast that it seemed like one continuous movement. And then, when I was putting the razor away, the name of Larry Craine clicked in my mind.

  A week ago, or probably two, I’d been standing in front of a hotel on Vine Street talking to Joe. Joe was a cab starter who knew everybody around. With us was standing a man, a stranger to me, some mug from back East. He spoke up suddenly, and nodded across toward the Derby.

  “I’ll be damned, that’s Larry Craine!” said the man. “What’s he doing out here?”

  “I think he lives here,” Joe said.

  “He didn’t when I knew him!” The fellow growled.

  With the thousand dollars in my pocket, I started hunting for Joe. I’d never known his last name, but I got it pretty quick when I looked at a cabbie over a five-dollar bill. It was Joe McCready and he lived out in Burbank.

  There were other things to do first, and I did a lot of them on a pay phone. Meanwhile, I was thinking, and when I finally got to Joe, he hesitated only a minute, then shrugged.

  “You’re a pal of mine,” he said, “or I’d say nothing. This lug who spotted Larry Craine follows the horses. I think he makes book, but I wouldn’t know about that. He doesn’t do any business around the corner.”

  “What do you know about Larry Craine?”

  “Nothing. Doesn’t drink very much, gets around a lot, and seems to know a lot of people. Mostly, he hangs around on the edge of things, spends pretty free when there’s a crowd around, but tips like he never carried anything but nickels.”

  Joe looked up at me. “You watch yourself. This guy we were talkin’ to, his name is Pete Ravallo. He plays around with some pretty fast company.”

  He did have Craine’s address. I think Joe McCready knew half the addresses and telephone numbers in that part of town. He never talked much, but he listened a lot, and he never forgot anything. My detective agency couldn’t have done the business it did without elevator boys, cab starters, newsboys, porters, and bellhops.

  That was how I got into Craine’s apartment. I went around there and saw Paddy. Paddy had been a doorman in that apartment house for five years. We used to talk about the fights and football games, sitting on the stoop, just the two of us.

  “The police have been there,” Paddy advised, “but they didn’t stay long. I can get y’ in, but remember, if y’ get caught, it’s on your own y’ are!”

  This Craine had done all right by himself. I could see that the minute I looked around. I took a quick gander at the desk, but not with any confidence. The cops would have headed for the desk right away, and Reardon was a smart fellow. So was Tanner, for that matter. I headed for the clothes closet.

  He must have had twenty-five suits and half that many sport coats, all a bit loud for my taste. I started at one end and began going through them, not missing a pocket. Also, as I went along, I checked the labels. He had three suits from New Orleans. They were all pretty shabby and showed much wear. They were stuck back in a corner of the closet out of the way.

  The others were all comparatively new, and all made in Hollywood or Beverly Hills. At first that didn’t make much of an impression, but it hit me suddenly as I was going through the fourteenth suit, or about there. Larry Craine had been short of money in New Orleans but he had been very flush in Hollywood. What happened to put his hands on a lot of money, and fast?

  When I hit the last suit in line, I had netted just three ticket stubs and twenty-one cents in money. The last suit was the payoff. When I opened the coat, I saw right away that I’d jumped to a false conclusion. Here was one suit, bought ready-made, in Dallas.

  In the inside coat pocket, I found an airline envelope, and in it, the receipt for one passenger from Dallas to Los Angeles via American Airlines. Also, there was a stub, the * sort of thing given to you after a street photographer takes your picture. If you want the snapped picture, you can get it and more of them if you wish, if you want to pay a modest sum of money. Craine hadn’t been interested.

  Pocketing the two articles, I slipped out the back way and let Paddy know I was gone. He looked relieved when he saw me off.

  “Nick Tanner just went up,” he said.

  “Thanks, Paddy,” I told him.

  I walked around in front and saw Reardon standing by the squad car. Putting my hands in my pockets, I strolled up to him.

  “Hi,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  His eyes were shrewd as he studied me. “Not so good for Miss Shannon,” he said carefully. “That ice pick did the job, all right. Doc Spates will swear to it. We found blood close up against the handle where it wasn’t washed carefully. It’s the same type as his blood.

  “Also,” he added, “we checked on her. She left that party she was at with Gentry and the Clarens early, about three hours before it was over, which would make it along about ten-thirty. She was gone for all of thirty to forty-five minutes. In other words, she had time to leave the party, go home, kill this guy, and get back to the party.”

  “You don’t believe that!” I exclaimed.

  He shrugged and took a cigar from his pocket. “It isn’t what I believe, it’s what the district attorney can make the jury believe. Something you want to think about.” He looked up at me from under his eyebrows as he bit off the end of the cigar. “The D. A. is ambitious. A big Hollywood murder trial would give him lots of publicity. The only thing that would make him happier would be a basement full of communists!”

  “Yeah.” I could see it all right, I could see him riding right to the governor’s chair on a deal like that. Or into the Senate. “One thing, Reardon. If she had done it, wouldn’t she have had the Clarens come in with her to help her find the body? That would be the smart stunt. And she’s actress enough to carry it off.”

  “I know.” He struck a match and lit the cigar, then grinned sardonically at me. “But she’s actress enough to fool you, too!”

  Was she? I wasn’t so sure. I’d known her a long time. Maybe you never really know anyone. And murder is something that comes much too easily sometimes.

  “Reardon,” I said, “don’t pinch Sue. Hold off on it until I can work on it.”

  He shrugged. “I can’t. The D. A.“s already convinced. He wants an arrest. We haven’t another lead of any kind. We shook his apartment down, we made inquiries all over town. We don’t have another suspect.”

  “We’ve been buddies a long time,” I pleaded. “Give her forty-eight hours. Taggart’s retained me on this case, and I think I’ve got something.”

  “Taggart has, eh?” He looked at me thoughtfully. “Don’t give me a runaround, now. The district attorney thinks he has a line on it himself. It seems Craine’s done * some talking around town. He thinks he’s got a motive, though he’s not saying what it is yet.”

  “Two days?”

  “All right. But then we’re going ahead with what we’ve got. I’ll give you until … let’s see, this is Monday … you’ve got until Wednesday morning.”

  Sue was waiting for me when I got there. She was a beautiful woman, even as tight and strained as she was.

  “Is it true? Are they going to arrest me?”

  “I hope not.” I sat down abruptly. “I’d let them arrest me if I could.”

  “No, you won’t.” I looked up and her eyes were sharp and hard. “You came into this because I asked you, and I won’t have that happen.”

  It was the first time I’d seen her show her anger, although I knew she had it. It surprised me, and I sat back and looked at her and I guess my surprise must have shown because she said, defensively, “Don’t you talk that way. That�
�s going too far!”

  “Well you’ve got to help me. Just what did Craine want from you?”

  “Money.” She shrugged. “He told me he wanted ten percent of all I made from now on. He said he had been broke for the last time, that now that he had money he was always going to have money no matter what it cost.”

  “Did you talk to him many times?”

  “Three times. He had some letters. There was nothing bad in them, but the way he read them made them sound pretty bad. It wasn’t only that. He knew some stories that I don’t want told, about my uncle.”

  I knew all about that, and could understand.

  “But that wasn’t all. He told me I had to give him information about other people out here. About Mr. Taggart, for instance, and some of the others. He was very pleased with himself. He obviously was sure he had a very good plan worked out.”

  “Does Taggart know about this?”

  “No one does. You’re the only one I’ve told. The only one I will tell.”

  “Did Craine ever hint about how he got this money he had?”

  “Well, not exactly. He told me I needn’t think I could evade the issue because he was desperate. He told me there wasn’t anything he would hesitate to do. He said once, I’ve already gone as far as I can go, so you know what to expect if you try to double-cross me.” “

  When she left, I offered the best reassurances I could dig out of a mind that was running pretty low on hope. Reardon was careful, and if he couldn’t find anything on Larry Craine, there was small chance I could. My only angle was one that had been stirring in the back of my mind all the time.

  Where did Larry Craine get his money? He had been living in Hollywood for several months. He lived well and spent a good bit. That meant that wherever he had come into money, it had been plenty.

  To cover all the bases I sent off a wire to an agency in New Orleans.

  My next move was a shot in the dark. There was only one person I knew of who had known Craine before he came to Hollywood. I was going to see Pete Ravallo.

  He was in a hotel on Ivar, and it didn’t take me but two hours and twenty dollars to find him. I rapped on the door to his room, and he opened it a crack. His eyes studied me, and I could see he vaguely remembered my face.

  “What’d you want?” he demanded. He was a big guy, and his voice was harsh. “Conversation,” I said.

  He sized me up a minute, then let the door open and I walked in. He waved me to a seat and poured himself a drink. There was a gun in a shoulder holster hanging over a chair back. He didn’t offer me a drink, and he didn’t look very pleased.

  “All right,” he said. “Spill it!”

  “I’m a private shamus and I’m investigating the murder of Lawrence Craine.”

  You could have dropped a feather. His eyes were small and dark and as he looked at me they got still smaller and still darker.

  “So you come to me?” he demanded.

  I shrugged. “One night down on the street, I heard you say something about knowing him in New Orleans. Maybe you could give me a line on the guy.”

  He studied me. Somehow, I felt sure, there was a tie-up, a tie-up that went a lot further than a casual meeting. Ravallo had been too pleased at seeing Craine. Pleased, and almost triumphant.

  “I don’t know anything about the guy,” he said. “Only that he used to be around the tracks down there. I knew him by sight like I knew fifty others. He used to put down a bet once in a while.”

  “Seen him since he’s been here?” I asked carefully. Ravallo’s face tightened and his eyes got mean. “Listen,” he said. “Don’t try to pin that job on me, see? You get to nosing in my business and you’ll wind up wearing a concrete block on your feet! I don’t like cops. I like private coppers a lot less, and I like you still less than that! So get up and get out!”

  “Okay.” I got up. “You’d better tell me what you can, because otherwise I’m going back to New Orleans … and Dallas!”

  “Wait a minute,” he said. He went over behind me to the phone and spun the dial.

  “Come on over here,” he said into the phone. “I’ve got a problem.”

  The hair on the back of my neck suddenly felt prickly and I turned in time to see the sap descending. I threw up an arm, catching him above the elbow. I grabbed his wrist and jerked him forward into the back of the chair, then I lunged forward, hit the carpet with my knees, and, turning, stood up.

  Pete Ravallo threw the chair out of his way and came toward me; his voice was cold. “I told you, and now I’m going to show you!” He cocked his arm and swung again.

  It was a bad thing for him to do. I hit his arm with my open palm and at the same time I knocked his arm over, I slugged him in the stomach with my left.

  He doubled up, and I smacked him again, but the big lug could take it, and he charged me, head down. I sidestepped quickly, tripped over a suitcase, and hit the floor all in one piece. The next thing I knew I got the wind booted out of me and before I could get my hands up, he slugged me five or six times and I was helpless.

  He slammed me back against the wall with one hand and then swung the blackjack. He brought it down over my skull, and as everything faded out, I heard him snarling: “Now get lost, or I’ll kill you!”

  When I came out of it, I was lying in a linen closet off the hall. I struggled to my feet and swayed drunkenly, trying to get my head clear and get moving. I got out in the hall and straightened my clothes. My face felt stiff and sore, and when I put my hand up to my head, I found blood was caked in my hair and on the side of my face. Then I cleaned myself up as best I could and got out.

  It was after eleven, and there was a plane leaving for Oklahoma City at about twelve-thirty. When it took off, I was on it. And the next morning, Tuesday morning, I was standing, quite a bit worse for wear, in front of the Dallas Morning News.

  When a crook comes into a lot of money, it usually makes headlines. What I had learned so far was ample assurance that what had happened had happened near here. I went to the files of the paper and got busy.

  It took me some time, but when I had covered almost two months, I found what I was looking for. It was not a big item, and was well down on an inside page. If I had not been covering it with care, I would never have found the piece at all.

  *

  MURDERED MAN BELIEVED GANG VICTIM

  Police today announced they had identified the body of the murdered man found in a ditch several miles south of the city. He proved to be Giuseppe Ra-val lo a notorious racketeer from Newark, NJ. Ravallo, who did two terms in the New Jersey State Prison for larceny and assault with a deadly weapon, was re-; ported to have come here recently from New Orleans where he had been implicated in a race-fixing plot.

  Ravallo was said to have come to town as the advance man for eastern racketeers determined to move into the area. He was reported, by several local officials whom he approached, to be carrying a considerable amount of money. No money was found on the body. Ravallo had been shot three times in the back and once in the head by a .38-caliber pistol.

  So there it was. Just like that, and no wonder Pete Ravallo had wanted to keep me out of the case!

  The photo coupon was still in my pocket. At the photographers shop it took me only a few minutes to get. it. When I had the picture, I took one look and headed for the airport.

  In Los Angeles there was a few minutes’ wait to claim my luggage, and then I turned toward a cab. I turned, but that was all. A man had moved up beside me. He was small and pasty-faced, and his eyes were wide and strange. There was nothing small about the feel of the cannon he put in my ribs.

  “Come on!” he said. “That car over there!” There are times for bravery. There are also times when bravery is a kind of insanity. Tonight, within limits, I was perfectly sane. I walked along to the car and saw the thick neck of a mug behind the wheel, and then I was getting in and looking at Pete Ravallo. There were a lot of people I would rather have seen.

  “I can’t place the
face,” I said brightly, “but the breath smells familiar!”

  “Be smart!” Ravallo said. “Go ahead and be smart while you got the chance!”

  The car was rolling, and Pasty Face was still nudging me with the artillery.

  “Listen, chum!” I suggested. “Move the gun. I’m not going anyplace!”

  Pasty Face chuckled. “Oh, yes, you are! You got some things to learn.”

  We drove on, and eventually wound around in the hills along a road I finally decided was Mulholland Drive. It was a nice place to dispose of a body. I’d probably wind up as part of a real estate plot and be subdivided. In fact, I had a pretty good idea the subdividing was planned for right quick.

  When the car pulled in at the edge of the dark road, I knew this was it.

  “Get out!”

  Ravallo let Pasty Face unload first, and then he put his foot in my back and shoved.

  Maybe Pasty Face was supposed to trip me. Maybe Ravallo didn’t realize we were so close to the canyon, but that shove with his foot was all I needed. I took it, ducked the guy with the gun, and plunged off into the darkness.

  It wasn’t a sheer drop. It was a steep slide off into the dark, brush-filled depths of a canyon whose sides were scattered with boulders. I must have run all of twenty feet in gigantic steps before I lost balance and sprawled, headfirst into the brush.

  Behind me a shot rang out, and then I heard Ravallo swear.

  “After him, you idiots! Get him!”

  Kicking my feet over, I fell on the downhill side of the bush and flame stabbed the night behind me, but I wasn’t waiting. This was no time to stand on ceremony and I was not going to take a chance on their missing me in the darkness of that narrow canyon. I rolled over, scrambled to my feet, and lunged downhill.

  Then I tripped over something and sprawled headlong.. A flashlight stabbed the darkness. That was a different story, and I lay still, feeling for what I’d tripped over. It was a thick branch wedged between the sprawling roots of some brush. Carefully, I worked it loose.

  Somebody was coming nearer. I lay quiet, waiting and balancing my club. Then I saw him, and he must have moved quietly for he was within two feet of my head!