Shuffling through his own mail, he found what he wanted. It was an advertisement of the type mailed to Boxholder or Occupant. He withdrew the advertising matter to make sure his own name was not on it. Then he carefully removed the address with ink eradicator and substituted the number she had given him.
Her true name would probably be not unlike Gertrude Ellis, which was obviously assumed. The first name was Gracie, and it was a fairly safe bet the last would begin with an E. Unless, as sometimes happened, she used the name of a husband or some friend.
Considering the situation, he had another idea. Eddie’s Bar and Sixth Street were not far apart. Hence, she must live somewhere in that vicinity.
* * *
HE RETURNED TO Eddie’s that night, and the bartender greeted him briefly. They exchanged a few comments, and then Fordyce asked, “Many babes come in here?”
“Yeah, now and again. Most of ’em are bags. Once in a while, something good shows up.”
He went away to attend to the wants of another customer, and Arthur Fordyce waited, stalling over his drink, listening. He heard nothing.
It was much later, when he had finished his third drink, and was turning to look around, that he bumped into someone. She was about to sit down, and he collided with her outstretched arm.
“Oh, I’m sorry! Pardon me.”
“That’s all right.” She was a straight-haired brunette with rather thin lips and cool eyes. But she was pretty, damned pretty. Her clothes were not like those Alice wore, but she did have a style of her own.
She ordered a drink, and he ignored her. After a minute, she got up and went to the ladies’ room. The bartender strolled over. “Speaking of babes,” he said, “there’s a cute one. Should be about ready, too. She’s fresh out of boyfriends.”
“Her? How come? She’s really built.”
The bartender shrugged. “Runs with some fast company sometimes. Her boyfriend tried to make a quick buck with a gun and got killed. Chafey. Maybe you read about it.”
“Chafey?” Fordyce looked puzzled, although inside he was jumping. “Don’t recall the name.” He hesitated. “Introduce me?”
“You don’t need it. Just buy her a drink.” Then the bartender grinned. “But if you go home with her, take your own bottle and pour the drinks yourself. And don’t pass out.”
“You mean she’d roll me?”
“I didn’t say that, chum. I didn’t say anything. But you look like a good guy. Just take care of yourself. After all,” he added, “a guy can have a good time without making a sucker of himself.”
The girl returned then and sat down on her stool. He waited out her drink, and as she was finishing it, he turned. “How about having one with me? I feel I owe it to you after bumping you like that.”
She smiled quickly. “Oh, that’s all right! Yes, I’ll drink with you.”
Her name was Gracie Turk. She had been divorced several years ago. They talked about dance bands, movies, swimming. She liked to drink, she admitted, but usually did her drinking at home.
“I’d like that,” he said. “Why don’t we pick up a bottle and go there?”
She hesitated, then smiled. “All right, let’s go.”
Fordyce glanced back as he went out. The bartender grinned and made a circle of his thumb and forefinger.
Not tonight, Fordyce told himself. Whatever happens, not tonight. He will remember this. They got the bottle and went to her apartment. It was small, cheaply furnished with pretensions toward elegance. Bored, he still managed to seem interested and mixed the drinks himself. He let her see that he had money on him and suddenly, recalled that he was expecting a business call at night.
“From back East, you know,” he said by way of explanation.
He left, but with a date for the following evening. An hour later, he called back and canceled the date. His call had come, he said, and he would be out of town.
He made his plans with utmost care. He drove out of town and deliberately wound along dusty roads for several hours, letting his car gather dust. In town, at the same time, he carefully chose a spot at which to dispose of the body.
At eight, he drove around and parked his car near the entrance to the alley behind the girl’s apartment. There was a light in the window, so he went into the front entrance, hoping desperately that he would meet no one. Luck was with him, and he reached her door safely. It was around a corner in a corridor off the main hall. At the end was a door to the back stairs.
He tapped lightly and then heard the sound of heels. The door was opened, and Gracie Turk stepped back in surprise.
“Al!” That was the name he had given her. “I thought you were out of town?”
“Missed my train, and I just had a wild idea you might not have gone out.”
“Come in!” She stepped back. “I was just fixing something to eat. Want a sandwich? Or a drink?”
He closed the door behind him and looked at her shoulders and the back of her head. That coldness was in the pit of his stomach again. His mouth felt dry, and the palms of his hands were wet. He kept wiping them off, as if they were already—He shook himself and accepted the drink she had fixed for him.
She smiled quickly, but her eyes seemed cold. “Well, drink up! There’s more where that came from! I’ll go get things ready, and then we’ll eat. We’ll just stay home tonight.”
She had good legs, and the seams in her stockings were straight. He was cold. Maybe the drink would fix him up. He drank half of it at a gulp. It was lousy whisky, lousy—The words of the bartender at Eddie’s came back to him. “Take your own bottle,” he had said, “and pour your own drinks.” He stared at the glass, put it down suddenly.
Suppose it was doped? He had had only half of it. What would that much do to him? He might not pass out, but would he be able to carry out his plans if—
He sat down abruptly. She would be coming in soon. He glanced hastily around, then took the drink and reaching back under the divan, poured it, little by little, over the thick carpet. When she came back into the room, he was sitting there holding his empty glass. “Lousy whisky,” he commented. “Let me get some for you.”
She smiled, but her eyes were still cold and calculating. She seemed to be measuring him as she took the glass from his hand. “I’ll just fill this up again. Why don’t you lie down?”
“All right,” he said, and suddenly made up his mind. He would not wait. It would be now. She might—
If he passed out, she would open his billfold, and in his billfold was his identification! He started to get up, but the room seemed to spin. He sat down, suddenly filled with panic. He was going; he—He got his hand into his pocket, fumbled for the identification card. He got it out of the window in the billfold and shoved it down in another pocket. The money wasn’t much, only—
He had been hearing voices, a girl’s and a man’s for some time. The girl was speaking now. “I don’t care where you drop him. Just take him out of here. The fool didn’t have half the money he had the other night! Not half! All this trouble for a lousy forty bucks! Why, I’d bet he had—What’s the matter?”
“Hey!” The man’s voice was hoarse. “Do you know who this is?”
“Who it is? What does it matter?”
Fordyce lay very still. Slowly but surely he was recovering his senses. He could hear the man move back.
“I don’t want this, Gracie. Take back your sawbuck. This is hot! I want no part of him! None at all!”
“What’s the matter?” She was coming forward. “What have you got there?”
“Don’t kid me!” His voice was hoarse with anger. “I’m getting out of here! Just you try to ring me in on your dirty work!”
“Johnny, have you gone nuts? What’s the matter?” Her voice was strident.
“You mean you don’t know who this is? This is Fordyce, the guy who knocked off Bill Chafey.”
There was dead silence while she absorbed that. Fordyce heard a crackle of paper. That letter—it had been in his pocke
t. It must have fallen out.
“Fordyce.” She sounded stunned. “He must have found out where I was! How the—” Her voice died away.
“I’m getting out of here. I want no part of killing a guy.”
“Don’t be a fool!” She was angry. “I didn’t know who the sap was. I met him at Eddie’s. He flashed a roll, and I just figured it was an easy take. How did he locate me?”
“What gives, Gracie?” The man’s voice was prying. “What’s behind this?”
“Ah, I just was going to take the sap for plenty, that’s all. Now what happens?” She stopped talking, then started again. “Bill saw him grab a wallet some guy dropped. This guy didn’t return it, so Bill shook him for half of it. He figured on more, and this guy wouldn’t stand for it.”
“So you moved in?”
“Why not? He didn’t know who I was or where I was. What I can’t figure is how he found out. The guy must be psychic.”
Arthur Fordyce kept his eyes closed and listened. While he listened, his mind was working. He was a fool. An insane fool. How could he ever have conceived the idea of murder? He knew now he could never have done it, never. It wasn’t in him to kill or even to plan so coldbloodedly. He would have backed down at the last moment. He would have called it off. Suddenly, all he wanted was to get out, to get away without trouble. Should he lie still and wait to find out what would happen? Or should he get up and try to bluff it out?
“What are you going to do now?”
* * *
GRACIE TURK DID not reply. Minutes ticked by, and then the man turned toward the door. “I’m getting out of here,” he said. “I don’t want any part of this. I’d go for dumping the guy if he was just drunk, but I want no part of murder.”
“Who’s talking about murder?” Gracie’s voice was shrill. “Get out if you’re yellow.”
Fordyce opened one eye a crack. Gracie was facing the other way, not looking directly at him. He put his hands on the floor, rolled over, and got to his feet. The man sprang back, falling over a chair, and Gracie turned quickly, her face drawn and vicious.
Fordyce felt his head spin, but he stood there, looking at them. Gracie Turk stared, swore viciously.
“Give him his ten,” Fordyce told her, “out of the money you took from me.”
“I will like—”
“Give it to him. He won’t go for a killing, and you don’t dare start anything now because he’d be a witness. For that matter, he would be a witness against me, too.”
“That’s right,” the man said hastily. “It was the same Latin-looking man he had seen in Eddie’s. “Give me the sawbuck and I’ll get out of here—but fast.”
Gracie’s eyes flared, her lips curled. “What do you think you’re pulling, anyway? How’d you find me? Who told you?”
Fordyce forced himself to smile. “What’s difficult about finding you? You’re not very clever, Gracie.” Suddenly, he saw his way clear and said with more emphasis, “Not at all clever.”
The idea was so simple that it might work. He was no murderer, nor was he a thief. He had only been a fool. Now if he could assume the nerve and the indifference it would take, he could get safely out of this.
“Look, Gracie,” he said quietly, “like Chafey, you walked into this by accident. He misunderstood what he saw and passed it on to you, and neither of you had any idea but making a fast buck.
“Bill”—and he knew it sounded improbable “—stepped into a trap baited for another guy. You know as well as I do that Bill was never very smart. He was neither as smart nor as lucky as you. You’re going to get out of this without tripping.”
“What are you talking about?” Gracie was both angry and puzzled. Something had gone wrong from the start. That was Bill for you. And now the easy money was glimmering. This guy hinted that Bill had blundered into something, which was just like him.
“The wallet I picked up”—Fordyce made his voice sound impatient “—was dropped by agreement. We were trying to convince a man who was watching that I was taking a payoff.” The story was flimsy, but Gracie would accept a story of double-dealing quicker than any other. “Bill saw it, and I paid off to keep him from crabbing a big deal.”
“I don’t believe it!” Her voice was defiant, yet there was uncertainty in her eyes. “Was murdering Bill part of the game?”
He shrugged it off. “Look Gracie. You knew Bill. He was a big, good-looking guy who couldn’t see anything but the way he was going. He thought he had me where the hair was short when he stopped me outside my garage. Once away from that track, I was clean, so he had no hold over me at all. My deal had gone through. We had words, and when he started for me, I hit him. He fell, and his neck hit the bumper. He was a victim of his own foolishness and greed.”
“That’s what you say.”
“Why kill him? He could be annoying, but he could prove nothing, and nobody would have believed him. Nor,” he added, “would they believe you.”
He picked up his hat. “Give this man the ten spot for his trouble. You keep the rest and charge it up to experience. That’s what I’ll do.”
The night air was cool on his face when he reached the street. He hesitated, breathing deep, and then walked to his car.
At the Charlton party, one week later, he was filling Alice’s glass at the punch bowl when George Linton clapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, Art!” It was the first time, he thought suddenly, that anybody had called him Art. “I got my money back! Remember the money I lost at the track? Fourteen hundred dollars! It came back in the mail, no note, nothing. What do you think of that?”
“You were lucky.” Fordyce grinned at him. “We’re all lucky at times.”
“Believe me,” Linton confided, “if I’d found that fourteen hundred bucks, I’d never have returned it! I’d just have shoved it in my pocket and forgotten about it.”
“That,” Art Fordyce said sincerely, “is what you think!”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
* * *
DEAD MAN’S TRAIL
Dead man’s trail involves the first case of a private detective character I featured in a number of stories (of which three are represented in this collection)—a character I enjoyed creating very much.
wa is an ex-prizefighter struggling to make a new career for himself as a private operator. He’s had a lot of contacts with the types generally referred to as the “underworld” throughout his boxing days. He knew how to cope with such people, and so the transition to private detective work was a relatively natural one for him. He also had experience working on waterfronts and on circus roughnecking gangs.
I fought professionally myself for a while and although the part of boxing I was associated with was usually on the level, there was no shortage of disreputable characters congregating around the fight game. There were a lot of them around who were involved in gambling. Some came around selling all kinds of odd merchandise they picked up or had stolen to sell to others who were always eager to strike a bargain. Also, since many of the gymnasiums in the towns, like the Main Street Gym in Los Angeles, were in rather run-down sections, you came into contact with your share of such people. You knew them. They kind of took it for granted that you were one of them, even though you weren’t. You would find that sometimes they talked freely about their activities. I knew quite a few of these less than honorable citizens at one time or another.
DEAD MAN’S TRAIL
* * *
KIP MORGAN SAT unhappily over a bourbon and soda in a bar on Sixth Street. How did you find a man who did not want to be found when all you knew about him was that he was thirty-six years old and played a saxophone?
Especially when some charred remains, tagged with this man’s name, had been buried in New Jersey? All you had to go on was a woman’s hunch.
Not quite all. The lady with the hunch was willing to back her belief with fifty dollars a day for expenses and five thousand if the man was found.
Kipling Morgan had set himself up as a private detective and
this was his first case. Five thousand dollars would buy a lot of ham and eggs, and at the moment, the expense money was important.
“No use to be sentimental about this,” he told himself. “This babe has the dough, and she wants you to look. So all right, you’re looking. What is there to fuss about?”
He was conscientious; that was his trouble. He did not want to spend her money without giving something in return. Moreover, he was ambitious. He wanted very much to succeed with his first case, particularly such a case as this. He could use some headlines.
Kip Morgan ordered another drink and thought about it. He took his battered black hat off his head and ran his fingers through his dark hair. He stared at the glass and swore. He picked up the glass, sipped the drink, and muttered to himself.
Five days before, sitting in the cubbyhole he called an office, the door opened, and a mink coat walked in with a blonde inside. She was in her late twenties, had a model’s walk, and a figure made to wear clothes, but one that would look pretty good without them.
“You are Kip Morgan?”
He pulled his feet off the desk and stood up. He was a lean, hard-muscled six feet and over who had been until that moment debating as to whether he should skip lunch and enjoy a good dinner or just save the money.
“Yes,” he said, “what can I do for you?”
“Do you have any cases you are working on now?” Her eyes were gray, direct, sincere. They were also beautiful.
“Well, ah—” He hesitated, and his face flushed, and that made him angry with himself. What could he tell her? That he was broke and she was the first client to walk into his office? It would scarcely inspire confidence.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, the shadow of a smile on her lips, “I am quite aware you have no other cases. I made inquiries and was told you were the youngest, newest, and least occupied private detective in town.”
Collection 1983 - The Hills Of Homicide (v5.0) Page 7