Green Ice

by Raoul Whitfield

  3

  At eleven-thirty I rode down in the elevator, spotted Donelly reading a paper in the lobby, stayed in the elevator, and went down to the basement. I got out a side entrance and walked out of my way three blocks before I reached the Post-Dispatch building. Donelly wasn’t in sight when I went up. Phil Dobe had gone out—I found him drinking coffee in a restaurant next door. He was alone. I sat down across from him and gave him all the late news.

  “Donelly got ’em,” he said. “What a guy you are—telling him your hotel.”

  I ordered some coffee and argued that point.

  “I’m after more than the small stuff. My play is to hold open house, in a way. If Donelly went through my stuff and had brains enough to dig into the shaving cream, why didn’t he take me in? He had something on me.”

  The city editor grunted. “He’s giving you rope,” he said. “He thought maybe you wouldn’t check up and see what had happened.”

  “Why didn’t he do a neat job—and fix the soft stuff the way it had been before?” I asked.

  Dobe smiled. “You rushed him—by coming in,” he said. “He didn’t figure you’d come along so soon.”

  I shook my head. “He was lying on the bed—he looked real cozy,” I replied. “Maybe he didn’t do the job.”

  The city editor swore softly. “Who did?” he asked. I shrugged. “You knew where the green stuff was,” I told him.

  He straightened, stared at me, swore again. I grinned at him.

  “Just because that’s stolen goods—don’t grab for it, Phil,” I warned. “I’ll turn you up—”

  He chuckled, poured coffee from his cup to the saucer, and drank it noisily. The waiter, brought mine and I got rid of some of it.

  Dobe said: “Donelly figured you were working this funeral. What’s your guess?”

  I groaned. “I don’t like it,” I said. “I’d like to stay away. But that won’t help. I’ve got a hunch there’ll be others there who’d like to stay away. This doesn’t look like one of those processions where it’s any fun going for the ride.”

  Phil smiled faintly. “Did Steiner have a woman?” he asked. “Really?”

  I shrugged. “Most men do have,” I said. “You think someone’s trying to draw her in?”

  He shrugged. “If he had a woman and she loved him enough—she’d take a chance on a lot of things to be there when they toss in the dirt.”

  I nodded. “It looks like something should break—along the line,” I said. “Donelly is all wrong when he figures I’m running the job. But maybe he’s not so far off on the reason. That oval-faced kid said that Christenson went out to arrange for the funeral. She was getting hurt when she said it. I don’t think she lied. Donelly seemed to know that name—Christenson. I told him I registered at the Waldron that way. It was the truth, but it sort of hit him. Whoever is bossing the processional—he figures on people being there. People he wants around. It looks tough.”

  “It looks like news,” Dobe muttered.

  I smiled grimly. “I was a good guy, Phil—but don’t lay it on too thick. I’ll scribble some lines and mail ’em to you tomorrow morning. They may make things simpler.”

  The city editor looked at me sharply.

  “If you feel that way—stay off,” he said. “If you go for the ride—take my gun along.”

  I told him I’d think that over. I said I’d go along. I told him I couldn’t get the oval-faced girl off my mind. She was pretty nice.

  He whistled softly. “What was her name?” he asked. “Jeanette Ramone?”

  “That wasn’t it,” I replied. “Maybe Mary Smith or Nellie Jones. What the hell does a name matter? She was just roped in, I’d swear to that.”

  Phil grunted. “It’s a bad time to get soft—and mix with a woman,” he warned.

  I nodded. “That’s the way it usually happens,” I said. “At a bad time.”

  “She’s a crook—whether you like her or not,” Phil said. “Don’t slop over.”

  I finished my coffee. “A lot of women are crooks,” I said. “All of them haven’t the guts to get it out of their systems—and go right.”

  Phil regarded me suspiciously. “A crook’s a crook,” he said. “Don’t waste sympathy.”

  I nodded. “Every case is individual,” I said. “News is news—but you don’t use all of it.”

  He swore at me. “For Christ’s sake—don’t get technical,” he muttered. “Start theorizing—and you’ll get lead in your lungs while you’re thinking up nice words.”

  “Just the same,” I said, “I’d like to know how she squirmed loose from that mess. My hunch is that Christenson’s a bad guy to fool along with. She made a mistake. He doesn’t act like a man who likes mistakes.”

  Phil frowned down at his empty saucer. Then he grinned.

  “I’ve got a gun and a bottle of pretty fair Scotch at the flat,” he said. “The gun’s real—and you can have it all. The Scotch has only been cut twice—and you rate half of it.”

  I shoved back my chair. “I rate it all,” I told him, “but half will be just about right. Let’s move.”

  4

  It was cloudy, smoky, and cold—the next morning at ten. I got up with a slight headache and six hours of something that might have been loosely termed sleep behind me. I had a hot shower with a cold rubdown and dressed slowly. I looked over the service Colt that Dobe had given me. The idea of packing the rod was good—and bad. I thought it over—and decided to pack it.

  When I went outside, with the Colt pretty bulky in my right overcoat pocket, Donelly was standing near the elevator smoking a cigar. He grinned at me.

  “You get up late,” he said.

  “I got in late,” I told him.

  He nodded. “About four,” he said. “I waited up.” I pressed the button. Donelly looked pretty bad around the eyes.

  “Nice day for a funeral,” he observed.

  I nodded. “I’m not going along,” I told him. “I’ll send flowers.”

  He narrowed his eyes on mine. The elevator door opened and we got inside and dropped. We got off, went into the lobby.

  “Going out of town?” Donelly asked.

  “Got a toothache—going to look up a dentist,” I said. “Want to come along?”

  He shook his head, smiled at me, and drifted toward the leather lobby chairs. I went outside, lighted a cigarette and watched a young fellow in a dark coat come out and yawn. I headed toward Smithfield Street, and after three blocks went into a cigar store. The young fellow in the dark coat strolled past; he didn’t look inside the cigar store.

  I went out, walked back toward the hotel, turned off, went into the nearest drugstore, and had a fizz to help my head. When I came out the fellow in the dark coat was across the street looking in the window of a florist shop.

  I went up to the corner and bought an afternoon paper, just out. There were a couple of sticks on the Steiner funeral. They were written with considerable irony. Flowers were piling up at the funeral parlor. They were from well-known gangsters in Chicago and points east, according to the cards. A lot of the names were obviously fictional, the reporter felt. The news item ended up by giving the time and starting place of the procession, and stating that the police were still working on clues, and soon hoped to grab Steiner’s killer.

  I read the paper standing near the corner, went into a phone booth, and called the Schenley. A desk clerk informed me that the Ramone apartment had been vacated at nine—and that no forwarding address had been left. I called the Waldron and had Mike Donelly paged. He came to the phone.

  “When that young chap in the dark coat comes back and tells you that I lost him somewhere around the William Penn, don’t bawl him out,” I told Donelly. “You know how it is.”

  He chuckled. “It’s just fun, Ourney,” he said. “And say, if you’re riding along, after you get the tooth fixed, you’d better lose that rod somewhere.”

  I hung up. Donelly was no fool—the tighter things got, the more convinced I was of
that fact.

  But I kept the service Colt. The fellow in the dark coat followed me along to the William Penn. I didn’t go in. I went around the corner, snagged a cab that was cruising, and told the driver to make time getting to the Point. The chap in the dark coat was left flat-footed. There wasn’t a cab in sight. He just stood on the corner and watched me go. We were held up by traffic a block away, and he started to trot along in the direction of the cab. We got going, and the last I saw of him he was standing on the curb trying to hail cabs that didn’t have the vacant sign showing. Seven blocks away I stopped the driver, told him I’d changed my mind, paid up, crossed the street, and went into a picture house.

  It was eleven-forty. The picture was something about two women and a man, and the dialogue was just rasping enough to keep me from thinking. One of the women looked something like Virgie Beers. In the end she was shot accidentally by the man she loved. She took a long time dying and I walked out. I wasn’t very hungry, but I went into a lunch place and had ham and eggs. It was a few minutes after one.

  16

  FUNERAL

  I caught the two-fifteen train for Duquesne, tried to read a paper on the way out—and got off at the station at three o’clock.

  The town looked as dirty as ever—mill smoke was blowing back toward the crest of the slope beyond the river. I spent thirty minutes moving around the hunky section of town and asking dumb questions about the Widow Gunsten. The answers weren’t worth much. Some of the men had forgotten her—several had never heard of her. One mill worker grinned and said he didn’t blame the chief of police.

  I found that Monkerson was the big burial gent in the hunky part of town. He had a frame building on a corner, down near a section of the steel plant walls from which a lot of pounding sound was drifting. His place was ore-dust-stained and had faded flowers in an urn at each side of the entrance.

  I went inside and didn’t breathe too deeply. There was a heavy odor of some sort of disinfectant. The reception room was small—and there were other rooms beyond. Except for the pounding from the plant the place was very quiet.

  After a short time there were footfalls. A fat, short, prosperous-looking individual appeared from the rear. He smiled at me. He had blond hair and blue, shining eyes. He wasn’t even slightly cadaverous in appearance. His eyes questioned me.

  “I should like to rent a car—not a hearse,” I told him. “One of your funeral cars. One with curtains. Dark color, of course. I’ll want it for about three hours, with a driver. I should like the driver to be middle-aged. I’ll pay fifty dollars for the use of the car and should like the matter to rest between us.”

  His shining eyes narrowed a little. He smiled and his face became almost cherub-like.

  “You go where with the car?” he asked directly.

  I smiled. “To the Furnaceville Cemetery,” I said. “Herbert Steiner, an old pal of mine, is being buried. I want to be there—but I don’t want to join the procession until it gets close to his final resting place. I will instruct the driver.”

  He nodded. “Fifty dollars—” he questioned slowly.

  I got out the money, handed him two twenties and a ten. I told him where the hearse was starting from and asked him how long it would take to reach the cemetery gate. He said he thought about an hour and fifteen minutes. He said it would take my driver about twenty-five minutes to get me to the same spot. That meant we’d have to leave at about four, to be safe. I looked at my watch—it showed three-thirty-five.

  I told him I’d go out and dig up some cigarettes, and he smiled and said the car would be outside when I got back. I went out, walked two blocks, and got my pills. I asked the heavily mustached store proprietor if the police were making any headway on the Butman and Widow Gunsten murders. He grinned, showing bad teeth, and shook his head.

  “What for dey do dat?” he asked me back. “Him an’ she—dey bot’ bad.”

  I nodded, lighted a pill, and went out. I walked back toward the funeral parlor of Mr. Monkerson slowly. Five stones—worth fifty grand apiece. That was all right. Emeralds could be worth that much and still not be marked jewels. They’d be large stones, beautifully colored, very transparent. They’d have to be perfectly cut—emerald cut. Something like a coffin.

  I thought of Carrie Donner, stopped at a dirty lunch place, and got a phone. I called the Pittsburgh morgue and was told that the body was being held for relatives who were coming on from New York. Outside, I headed for the funeral parlor. When I got there, a dark sedan with curtains down was at the curb. A tall man with gray hair and eyes stood near the rear door. He smiled at me.

  “This my bus?” I asked.

  He said that he guessed it was, if I was going to the Furnaceville Cemetery. I told him I was going there—and that I’d tell him where to stop when we got out near the main gate. He smiled cheerfully and opened the door.

  I got inside—the door shut. It was dark. As I reached for a curtain, there was pressure against my right side. Gun-muzzle pressure. I heard someone breathe sharply.

  “Sit down, Mal—sit down.” It was a voice I knew. “We’re both going to the same place.”

  I sat down. The car started, getting through the gear speeds smoothly. I looked toward Virgie Beers. In the faint light of the car’s interior she seemed pale, worn. Her eyes looked very bad. They were puffed. She kept the gun muzzle against the material of my coat. The car was climbing a hill.

  “I was inside when you came in,” she said. “Heard you talking to Bright-eyes. I tripled your fifty, and he let me ride along. He went for a walk and I got inside first.”

  I nodded. “You look like hell, Virgie,” I said.

  She smiled. “I feel worse than hell,” she returned. “But not so hot.”

  I relaxed. “Take the rod off,” I suggested. “It isn’t right to act that way on such a sad occasion.”

  Her body stiffened. I saw her face twist. I was sorry, and I told her so. She took the gun muzzle away from my side, pulled up the curtain on her side about two inches. It made things a little brighter.

  “I was over at the hospital—when he went out, Virgie,” I said. “It wasn’t so hard. He used your name twice—the last words he used.”

  She was crying a little. The car kept climbing the hill behind the steel plant. I was silent for a few minutes. Virgie was quieter now. She started to swear.

  “The dirty, rotten crooks!” she breathed. “The bastards! If I had half a chance to get—”

  She went on, and I didn’t stop her. She used nasty words, and she put a lot of feeling behind them.

  After she got through I said: “Carrie got him, you know. She was trying for me.”

  She nodded. She laughed bitterly.

  “You don’t know what it’s all about,” she said. “You just blundered along.”

  I nodded. “You tell me,” I said.

  She swore at me. “The hell you don’t know what it’s about!” she snapped. “And when this party’s over I’ll know—and you won’t give a damn. You won’t be alive enough.”

  I didn’t like the way she said her lines. It sounded like the real thing. I turned my head a little and looked down toward her left side. She leaned forward and swore at me.

  “Keep your head up, stoolie!” she snapped. “I’m not on a bed this time—and I’ll shoot you right to hell!”

  I turned my head away. The funeral car had stopped climbing and was running along on the level, in high. The road was fairly smooth.

  I said slowly: “I wasn’t in on Carrie Donner’s murder, Virgie. I was tagging along—but I got there too late.”

  She made a sucking sound with her lips. They looked white.

  “Don’t whine, Ourney,” she said. “You’re getting yours, along with the others. To hell with the green ice! I’m getting square!”

  I started to reach for another cigarette, but she told me to take my hands away from my coat pocket. She got the rod Phil had given me, stuck it somewhere on her side of the car. She was getting work
ed up. I had a hunch she was hopped for this ride. It looked nasty.

  “Ratted it, you did!” she muttered. “Got to Wirt Donner in the Big House, told him you were going to go after the big guys, show the little ones what suckers they were. Told him you needed help. And Wirt was fed up with the way he’d been kicked around, framed. He fell for it. All the time you were working with ‘Tip’ Christenson and that slimy moll of his!”

  I sat back and kept quiet. It was coming straight now, and I knew it. Virgie was putting on this show—and she was pretty sure of things. She was hopped up enough to brag. I was to go out—and she just didn’t care about keeping anything quiet.

  “They let Malendez get away from them, down in South America. They sent Cherulli a code wire—and Angel got working. He used Babe Mullens for the pretty stuff. Then he figured that Tip and that egg-faced brat were too far away to count. He didn’t know they were steaming in close. So he finished off Malendez and got the stuff. He didn’t know that you were coming out, and wise to the deal.”

  I swore at her. “You’re crazy!” I said. “How could I be wise—in stir?”

  She laughed harshly. The funeral car was speeding now. The tires made a shrill whirring sound over a good road.

  “How does any crook get wise to what goes on outside?” she asked. “You knew, all right. You knew that Angel was hogging things. He wasn’t going to split. And Herb was outside ahead of you—he knew, too. He got close to Dot Ellis, and she lied just enough. Garren stuck with Angel, even though you were working on him. He figured that Dot was going to double-cross Angel, after he’d passed her the green stuff. He got her—but the job was done. He got the little stuff—she’d shoved you the money stones.”

  I leaned forward and looked at her. I tried to keep my voice steady.

  “Like hell she had,” I said.

  She was getting excited. “Herb gave your pal Donner the stomach dose,” she said. “Why not—wasn’t he a dirty rat? Wasn’t he working with you? You got the goods on Ben Garren—and called that bull Donelly in to shoot him down. Smooth, Ourney—Jeez, but you worked nice!”