The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  My own watch said it was a quarter to ten. “How do you mean, late?”

  “I mean the busy spell has about peaked for this night. These boys are out and rolling at five in the morning. But if you’re desperate, Lucky, I’ll make an announcement over the P.A. system. Maybe one of the girls’ll feel up to it. You can go for a short time in one of the guest rooms beyond the casino for probably ten or fifteen dollars. You negotiate the final price with the girl. Or an overnighter in one of the cabins goes for twenty-five. Or if you’re staying in the barn, the bunk runs you five dollars and anything else you negotiate with the girl.”

  “What’s the barn?”

  “That two-story building across the way.”

  “The one that looks like a barracks?”

  “That’s it. It’s semiprivate. No real rooms, but there are partitions. Little bunk stalls, sort of. It’s where most of the boys bunk down. Actually, if you’re staying there you can sometimes get a pretty good bargain from the girl. That’s because they usually can do some additional freelancing over there after you fall asleep.”

  “Do you play?”

  “Me? Shucks no, not anymore, Lucky. I’m an old horse of twenty-six. You want a younger filly.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “No? You’re sure a different one, I’ll say that. Anyhow, now that I’m a bartender, I don’t have to. That’s because I’m usually tired enough at the end of my shift I just want to go home and stand at ease. I got a little place down river about a quarter mile. I can just sit outside and watch the old Grey ripple past under the moonlight and think about life and things. It’s real peaceful.”

  She had picked up a dish towel and was shining glasses and putting them onto the back bar.

  “Of course,” she said, with a dimpled smile, “I am not exactly a virgin, if you know what I mean, Lucky.”

  “Pete.”

  “I’m sorry. Pete. Anyhow, I think man and woman ought to be able to enjoy each other’s company. Which isn’t the same as taking money for it.”

  “I should say not,” I agreed, with my chin on one hand.

  “So anyhow, since I’m currently between boyfriends, I have been known to invite a fella down after work for a couple laughs and things. That’s when I’m not too tired. But I’m pretty tired tonight.” She stopped rubbing the glass raw. “Sure you wouldn’t rather spend time with one of the kids out there?”

  “I’m sure. The girls I go with have to have more than just a pretty face. I like them grown up enough to be able to talk to them.”

  She resumed rubbing the glass with something between a beam and a blush. “Well, hey there. I guess you’ve been around some, huh, Pete?”

  “I’ve been around.”

  “Well, if you’re still around here tomorrow, I’ll only be working a half shift. I’m off at six. Probably won’t feel so tired and all then. If you’re still around.”

  “I’ll see. My plans are a little indefinite.”

  From where I sat it looked as if the stripper in the next room had gotten down to her birthday suit. She was engaged in an act of copulation with the side curtain. Despite that, the crowd was thinning out. Andy, on the stool next to mine, was near the unconscious point. His chin was slumped on his chest. He started to snore. It snapped him back awake and he left his beer and struggled over to the front door and out into the night.

  “Where does the boss hang out?” I asked Harmony.

  “Ma? She’s got a place on the roof.”

  “A mutual friend asked me to stop by and say hello. That’s really why I stopped in.”

  “I’ll ring her for you.” Harmony got on the house phone, and in a moment handed me the receiver across the bar. The woman’s voice on the other end was no-nonsense, the way some businesswomen get. I told her quietly my name and that Armando wanted me to talk to her. She seemed dubious, but agreed to see me for a minute, and Harmony gave me directions back through the casino, down a hallway and up two flights of stairs.

  A door at the top opened on to the gravel roof of the building. Nearby was a penthouse structure enclosed in glass with the drapes pulled shut. I knocked and was told to enter. I stepped into a carpeted office. Doors led off to other rooms. Ma herself got up from behind a large desk and came around to offer her hand. She was a tall, handsome woman in her forties with long black hair trailing down her back. She was dressed in some kind of Spanish gaucho outfit, all in black. Riding trousers, blouse, even a flat black hat with red dingleberries hanging from its brim. On the wall behind her desk was a long, coiled whip. She noticed my noticing.

  “It’s the costume I wear when I go down to close up the place,” she said. “I snap the whip a lot and come on tough. Goose the fellows with the crop, sting some of the girls on the fanny. Everyone has a good time, but I get the boys bedded down that way so they’ll get a good night’s sleep.”

  “That’s decent of you.”

  “Decent to myself is what it is. You can see what sort of operation it is. If any of the boys were to leave here in the morning still half drunk and wiped out their rig, how long do you think I’d stay in business?”

  “You have a point.”

  “Sit down, Bragg.” She went back to her desk. “So you’re from Frisco. How’s Armando?”

  “Keeping busy. How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”

  “Couple of years. That’s when he left. How’s the little girl?”

  “Beverly Jean, you mean. She’s fine. Growing up old for her age. By the time she’s sixteen she’ll be charting Armando’s life for him.”

  It brought a smile to Ma’s face. “That’s good. Just what the old pecker needs. How about the gorilla, Moon? He still with Armando?”

  “No. He didn’t care for San Francisco and moved on.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me. He was a rowdy even for these parts.”

  “Is this place all yours now?” I asked, glancing around at the flamingo prints on the wall. “Or does Armando still have a piece of it?”

  Small hoods went down over her eyes. “I didn’t quite understand, Bragg. What is your connection with Armando? You a friend? Hired help, or what?”

  “A combination of hired help and what. I’m a private investigator. Armando hired me to find out some things.”

  “What things?”

  “This and that. I know you’re probably thinking I should have found out if Armando still has a piece of the place from him. As it turned out I left town under fast circumstances. We both decided it was important for me to get down here. If you want to check me out, phone Armando in San Francisco. You can even use my credit card for the call.” I took out my wallet and she came over to the chair I was sitting in.

  “Never mind the credit card. Let’s see your license.”

  I showed her the photostat. She grunted and went back around to sit at the desk. “So things aren’t so swell with Armando after all.”

  “He has his problems, same as everyone,” I told her. “So what is it with the club here? Is Armando out altogether?”

  “For all intents and purposes. We have an unwritten agreement. I still owe him a few thousand for the price we agreed on. He gets money every month.”

  “What if he should fall over dead tomorrow, what happens to his remaining interest?”

  “I pay the balance into a trust fund for Beverly Jean.”

  “Just on the basis of a verbal promise?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The two of you must have been pretty good friends.”

  “Good business associates would be more like it. Bear in mind, Bragg, Armando with all his sound business sense couldn’t have set up and run an outfit like this by himself. It needs the woman’s touch. At least it needed more of a one than Armando had. So what I didn’t have in capital to invest I made up for with time and energy far beyond what salary I drew.”

  “That does sound consistent with Armando’s way of doing things. How many other operations like this are there
around here?”

  “This is the only truck stop.”

  “That’s not what I meant. What sort of place is the Sky Lodge in town?”

  “You’d have to ask there. I got my hands full running this place.”

  “Who owns the Sky Lodge?”

  She hesitated a moment. “A man named Carl Slide.”

  “Is he local, or outsider?”

  “He’s from the area. Son of a prospector who never found much.”

  “How did he and Armando get along?”

  Ma made a little face. She spread both hands atop her desk and got to her feet. “Mr. Bragg, I believe I’ll give you a raincheck on any more questions. I believe I will call San Francisco and talk with Armando. Only first I have to go downstairs and close up. And with one thing and another, it’ll be my bedtime when I finish talking to Armando, so why don’t you just come back tomorrow. Say around noon, if you need to know anything more.”

  “I can understand your reluctance, Ma. But I’m not here on a whimsical matter. I charge too much money for that. It’s serious. There’s murder in the air and events are moving swiftly. It’s why I’m here. There might not be time for you to go close up, tuck in your girls, turn off the chandeliers and count the money or whatever you do, then call Armando, then sign off for eight or nine hours before I can talk to you again.”

  We stared at each other for a while.

  “All right, I’ll call Armando now. You can wait downstairs. Depending on what he tells me, maybe we can talk again after I close up.”

  “Appreciate it,” I told her. I got up and crossed to the door. “But just in case one of us slips on a banana peel between now and then, was there bad blood between Armando and anyone in town at the time he left?”

  “There are always people who can’t get along with certain other people. But I don’t think he had any troubles that would linger this long after.”

  “Of all the people you’ve ever known here, Ma, which one did Armando least get along with?”

  “I guess anyone could tell you that. It would have been Carl Slide’s brother, Burt. But that was long ago.”

  “Burt still around?”

  “No.”

  “Would Carl be apt to carry a grudge over what happened between his brother and Armando?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “How do you and Carl Slide get along?”

  “We hardly ever see each other,” she said, picking up the phone. “Now you get along. I’ll see if we talk later.”

  EIGHT

  It wasn’t 10:30 yet, but downstairs looked like three in the morning most other places. A couple of diehards stood tugging at the slot machines, but the casino was closing down. Three drunks were arguing over their card game at a corner table and six or seven truckers were slumped along the bar assuring themselves of a night’s sleep and a morning’s headache. Harmony was giving last call. I went over and ordered another Early Times. She looked happy to see a sober face.

  “How’s it going, Luck…” She squinted. Her brain whizzed. Her ears wiggled.

  “Pete!”

  “Nice going, Harmony. You keep that up and we might have some big times ahead.”

  “Ah, go on with you.”

  She wrinkled her nose like a rabbit. She might have been single-minded as a brick pile, but she was cute. And I wouldn’t have half minded spending some time with her. I overtipped her again and wandered into the casino, taking a stool at an empty blackjack table in one corner. There was a side to my nature I’d still never been able to come to grips with. It concerned girls. My relationships ran in streaks. Feast or famine. It was as if it didn’t really matter so long as I kept my head down and went about my business. My glands didn’t pump and stew the way they had when I was back in high school. On the other hand it wasn’t as if they’d packed up and left town, either. About all it took was one episode, like with Bobbie the night before, and school started up once more. I didn’t particularly like things that way, but that’s how they were.

  The card players settled their differences and left. I heard Harmony and the other girls singing goodnight to the boys leaving the barroom. The whole feel of the place changed, from friendly party tension and hilarity to the stale quiet of a big house after the guests have left. All dirty glasses and full ashtrays. I had to wonder why Ma didn’t charge prices a little more realistic. She could pay off Armando and a couple of months later retire to the French Riviera, if she were of a mind to.

  Occasional workers scurried through the casino. The girls out in the bar were cleaning up and talking in tired, low voices. Occasionally they’d call out to remind somebody it was closing time. Some guys just didn’t like to admit the end to another evening.

  I heard the loud bang of the front door and the mood of the place changed again. There was crashing and yelling. I could see a portion of the backbar mirror and got a glimpse of several guys who didn’t look to be truck drivers. They did look as if they meant business.

  Harmony screamed, “It’s the Mafia!”

  Somebody threw a bar stool into the mirror, shattering it. Harmony was on the house phone, but from the way she was punching buttons I could tell it wasn’t working. There was the metal crash of slot machines being tipped over. It sounded as if people were using sledge hammers on them. Maybe it was the town cops, but I doubted it. There were some screams and slapping sounds. Ma hired mostly female help. It was a handicap in this sort of situation, whatever the situation was. A couple of guys in cooks’ checked pants and white tops came bustling out from the kitchen and ran into the bar. A few seconds later they came bustling backward through the room again with fear on their faces. A couple of mugs who looked like Moon’s younger brothers followed them at a quickstep, with drawn guns and wooden staves.

  “Yeah, show us the kitchen, sweetheart,” one of them said. It wasn’t the town cops. It looked more like labor-organizing days back in Seattle.

  I had a gun in a shoulder holster, but I was exactly one guy. I tipped over my drink, staining the green felt table top with bourbon and ice, then slumped over on my arms like a lot of guys I’d had to contend with at 2 A.M. closing time in Sausalito.

  The hoods were ranging all through the place now. Somebody had spent a little while figuring out how to bust up the place most efficiently. In all, there must have been a dozen men in the party. I could hear them smashing the machines and bar stock in the next room, amid periodic screams from the girls. Once I heard a drunken voice raised in protest. It was followed by the thwack of fists or knuckles. It choked off the protest. I wondered if my passed out act would work or if I should find a table to climb under. They were moving through the casino. A couple of guys trotted through and I could hear them clumping up the back stairs. The fellows in the casino were busting up the gambling tables. Some attacked with axes. Others sloshed buckets of red and yellow paint onto things. One of the wrecking crews was working in my direction. I feigned a snore. They obliterated the tables on either side of me and the big dice table in front of me.

  “What about him?” a voice asked.

  Somebody else laughed. “Leave him the way he is. When the poor son-of-a-bitch wakes up and looks around he’ll swear off drinking.”

  They roared at the swell idea and went off to wreak destruction elsewhere. I could feel dampening patches under my arms, and shifted my head slightly to peek over one sleeve. The two guys who had gone upstairs came back into the casino with Ma Leary. She must have resisted. One of them was dabbing a handkerchief to his bloody lip. Ma Leary had a red patch on her left cheekbone. They’d handcuffed her hands behind her. The other fellow escorting her was a rangy gent with a mottled face and pale complexion. He seemed to be running things. He called into the barroom.

  “Lou, bring those people in here.”

  A short, stocky fellow in a dark suit herded in a dozen of Ma’s staff and six or eight drunken truckers. One of Ma’s people was an older fellow in a green eyeshade I’d seen directing the casino operations earlier. Th
e rest were girls, the waitresses and bartenders and table operators. Some of the girls had their tops torn. One had been stripped altogether. Harmony looked all right, except she was missing a shoe, and as with the others, she’d been thoroughly terrorized. They seemed especially fearful of a young, soft-faced guy in a gray suit and wearing an old fedora that he might have picked up at a rummage sale. He had a little smile on his face. Every once in a while he’d reach out and pinch one of the girls someplace where it would hurt.

  The tall guy with the mottled face ordered Lou to keep an eye on the hostages while they finished their work. “And see that Kenny keeps his hands off them,” he ordered, referring to the boy in the gray suit. Mottle-face and his buddy went back upstairs while the others fanned out to finish their destruction of the casino, bar and kitchen.

  The one called Kenny nudged his partner Lou and pointed up at the stage with a broad smile.

  “Who plays piano?” he demanded. When nobody answered he hauled off and punched his fist into the mouth of the girl nearest him. It slammed her across a chair and onto the floor. Harmony made a little yelp and dropped down beside the girl to put her arms around her.

  “I asked who plays the piano?” Kenny said again.

  “I can play the piano,” the guy in the eyeshade said.

  Kenny shoved him toward the piano and told him to play. The fellow sat and played something.

  “For Chrissake take it easy,” Lou cautioned his partner.

  “Ah, screw, I’m just having a little fun. I figure you ought to have a little fun, or why take the job?” He ordered several of the girls up onto the stage and told them to dance. They danced.

  Mottle-face and his partner came back. The scene startled the apparent leader. “What the hell is this?” he demanded. “Cut the music, Pops. Lou, Kenny, let’s go.” He went over to Ma Leary.

  “Maybe you ought to close down this operation,” he said simply. “All of it.” He turned and headed back out to the front with most of the others following.