“Skip the baby eyes, feller. You shot him. Perrugini, the wop undertaker across the street, owns this place, rents it out now and then to a right boy for a quick dust. Incidentally, he’s a friend of mine, does me a lot of good among the other wops. He rented it to Shenvair. Didn’t know him, but Shenvair got a right ticket into him. Perrugini heard shooting over here tonight, took a look out of his window, saw a guy make it to a car. He saw the license number of the car. Your car.”
Carmady shook his head again. “But I didn’t shoot him, Conant.”
“Try and prove it… The wop ran over and found Shenvair halfway up the stairs, dead. He dragged him up and stuck him in the bathtub. Some crazy idea about the blood, I suppose. Then he went through him, found a police card, a private-dick license, and that scared him. He got me on the phone and when I got the name, I came steaming.”
Conant stopped talking, eyed Carmady steadily. Carmady said very softly: “You hear about the shooting at Cyrano’s tonight?”
Conant nodded.
Carmady went on: “I was there, with a kid friend of mine from the hotel. Just before the shooting this Shenvair threw a punch at me. The kid followed Shenvair here and they shot each other. Shenvair was drunk and scared and I’ll bet he shot first. I didn’t even know the kid had a gun. Shenvair shot him through the stomach. He got home, died there. He left me a note. I have the note.”
After a moment Conant said: “You killed Shenvair, or hired that boy to do it. Here’s why. He tried to copper his bet on your blackmail racket. He sold out to Courtway.”
Carmady looked startled. He snapped his head around to look at Jean Adrian. She was leaning forward staring at him with color in her cheeks, a shine in her eyes. She said very softly: “I’m sorry—angel. I had you wrong.”
Carmady smiled a little, turned back to Conant. He said: “She thought I was the one that sold out. Who’s Courtway? Your bird dog, the state senator?”
Conant’s face turned a little white. He laid his cigarette down very carefully in the saucer, leaned across the table and hit Carmady in the mouth with his fist. Carmady went over backwards in the rickety chair. His head struck the floor.
Jean Adrian stood up quietly and her teeth made a sharp clicking sound. Then she didn’t move.
Carmady rolled over on his side and got up and set the chair upright. He got a handkerchief out, patted his mouth, looked at the handkerchief.
Steps clattered on the stairs and the albino poked his narrow head into the room, poked a gun still farther in.
“Need any help, boss?”
Without looking at him, Conant said: “Get out—and shut that door—and stay out!”
The door was shut. The albino’s steps died down the stairs.
Carmady put his left hand on the back of the chair and moved it slowly back and forth. His right hand still held the handkerchief. His lips were getting puffed and darkish. His eyes looked at the Luger by Conant’s elbow.
Conant picked up his cigarette and put it in his mouth. He said: “Maybe you think I’m going to neck this blackmail racket. I’m not, brother. I’m going to kill it—so it’ll stay killed. You’re going to spill your guts. I have three boys downstairs who need exercise. Get busy and talk.”
Carmady said: “Yeah—but your three boys are downstairs.” He slipped the handkerchief inside his coat. His hand came out with the blued gun in it. He said: “Take that Luger by the barrel and push it across the table so I can reach it.”
Conant didn’t move. His eyes narrowed to slits. His hard mouth jerked the cigarette in it once. He didn’t touch the Luger. After a moment he said: “Guess you know what will happen to you now.”
Carmady shook his head slightly. He said: “Maybe I’m not particular about that. If it does happen, you won’t know anything about it.”
Conant stared at him, didn’t move. He stared at him for quite a long time, stared at the blue gun. “Where did you get it? Didn’t the heels frisk you?”
Carmady said: “They did. This is Shenvair’s gun. Your wop friend must have kicked it behind the bathtub. Careless.”
Conant reached two thick fingers forward and turned the Luger around and pushed it to the far edge of the table. He nodded and said tonelessly: “I lose this hand. I ought to have thought of that. That makes me do the talking.”
Jean Adrian came quickly across the room and stood at the end of the table. Carmady reached forward across the chair and took the Luger in his left hand and slipped it down into his overcoat pocket, kept his hand on it. He rested the hand holding the blue gun on the top of the chair.
Jean Adrian said: “Who is this man?”
“Doll Conant, a local bigtimer. Senator John Myerson Courtway is his pipe line into the state senate. And Senator Courtway, angel, is the man in your photo frame on your desk. The man you said was your father, that you said was dead.”
The girl said very quietly: “He is my father. I knew he wasn’t dead. I’m blackmailing him—for a hundred grand. Shenvair and Targo and I. He never married my mother, so I’m illegitimate. But I’m still his child. I have rights and he won’t recognize them. He treated my mother abominably, left her without a nickel. He had detectives watch me for years. Shenvair was one of them. He recognized my photos when I came here and met Targo. He remembered. He went up to San Francisco and got a copy of my birth certificate. I have it here.”
She fumbled at her bag, felt around in it, opened a small zipper pocket in the lining. Her hand came out with a folded paper. She tossed it on the table.
Conant stared at her, reached a hand for the paper, spread it out and studied it. He said slowly: “This doesn’t prove anything.”
Carmady took his left hand out of his pocket and reached for the paper. Conant pushed it towards him.
It was a certified copy of a birth certificate, dated originally in 1912. It recorded the birth of a girl child, Adriana Gianni Myerson, to John and Antonina Gianni Myerson. Carmady dropped the paper again.
He said: “Adriana Gianni—Jean Adrian. Was that the tip-off, Conant?”
Conant shook his head. “Shenvair got cold feet. He tipped Courtway. He was scared. That’s why he had this hideout lined up. I thought that was why he got killed. Targo couldn’t have done it, because Targo’s still in the can. Maybe I had you wrong, Carmady.”
Carmady stared at him woodenly, didn’t say anything. Jean Adrian said: “It’s my fault. I’m the one that’s to blame. It was pretty rotten. I see that now. I want to see him and tell him I’m sorry and that he’ll never hear from me again. I want to make him promise he won’t do anything to Duke Targo. May I?”
Carmady said: “You can do anything you want to, angel. I have two guns that say so. But why did you wait so long? And why didn’t you go at him through the courts? You’re in show business. The publicity would have made you—even if he beat you out.”
The girl bit her lip, said in a low voice: “My mother never really knew who he was, never knew his last name even. He was John Myerson to her. I didn’t know until I came here and happened to see a picture in the local paper. He had changed, but I knew the face. And of course the first part of his name—”
Conant said sneeringly: “You didn’t go at him openly because you knew damn well you weren’t his kid. That your mother just wished you on to him like any cheap broad who sees herself out of a swell meal ticket. Courtway says he can prove it, and that he’s going to prove it and put you where you belong. And believe me, sister, he’s just the stiff-necked kind of sap who would kill himself in public life raking up a twenty-year-old scandal to do that little thing.”
The big man spit his cigarette stub out viciously, added: “It cost me money to put him where he is and I aim to keep him there. That’s why I’m in it. No dice, sister. I’m putting the pressure on. You’re going to take a lot of air and keep on taking it. As for your two-gun friend—maybe he didn’t know, but he knows now and that ties him up in the same package.”
Conant banged on the table top, lea
ned back, looking calmly at the blue gun in Carmady’s hand.
Carmady stared into the big man’s eyes, said very softly: “That hood at Cyrano’s tonight—he wasn’t your idea of putting on the pressure by any chance, Conant, was he?”
Conant grinned harshly, shook his head. The door at the top of the stairs opened a little, silently. Carmady didn’t see it. He was staring at Conant. Jean Adrian saw it.
Her eyes widened and she stepped back with a startled exclamation, that jerked Carmady’s eyes to her.
The albino stepped softly through the door with a gun leveled.
His red eyes glistened, his mouth was drawn wide in a snarling grin. He said: “The door’s kind of thin, boss. I listened. Okey?… Shed the heater, rube, or I blow you both in half.”
Carmady turned slightly and opened his right hand and let the blue gun bounce on the thin carpet. He shrugged, spread his hands out wide, didn’t look at Jean Adrian.
The albino stepped clear of the door, came slowly forward and put his gun against Carmady’s back.
Conant stood up, came around the table, took the Luger out of Carmady’s coat pocket and hefted it. Without a word or change of expression he slammed it against the side of Carmady’s jaw.
Carmady sagged drunkenly, then went down on the floor on his side.
Jean Adrian screamed, clawed at Conant. He threw her off, changed the gun to his left hand and slapped the side of her face with a hard palm.
“Pipe down, sister. You’ve had all your fun.”
The albino went to the head of the stairs and called down it. The two other gunmen came up into the room, stood grinning.
Carmady didn’t move on the floor. After a little while Conant lit another cigarette and rattled a knuckle on the table top beside the birth certificate. He said gruffly: “She wants to see the old man. Okey, she can see him. We’ll all go see him. There’s still something in this that stinks.” He raised his eyes, looked at the stocky man. “You and Lefty go downtown and spring Targo, get him out to the Senator’s place as soon as you can. Step on it.”
The two hoods went back down the stairs.
Conant looked down at Carmady, kicked him in the ribs lightly, kept on kicking them until Carmady opened his eyes and stirred.
IX
The car waited at the top of a hill, before a pair of tall wrought-iron gates, inside which there was a lodge. A door of the lodge stood open and yellow light framed a big man in an overcoat and pulled-down hat. He came forward slowly into the rain, his hands down in his pockets.
The rain slithered about his feet and the albino leaned against the uprights of the gate, clicking his teeth. The big man said: “What yuh want? I can see yuh.”
“Shake it up, rube. Mister Conant wants to call on your boss.”
The man inside spat into the wet darkness. “So what? Know what time it is?”
Conant opened the car door suddenly and went over to the gates. The rain made noise between the car and the voices.
Carmady turned his head slowly and patted Jean Adrian’s hand. She pushed his hand away from her quickly.
Her voice said softly: “You fool—oh, you fool!”
Carmady sighed. “I’m having a swell time, angel. A swell time.”
The man inside the gates took out keys on a long chain, unlocked the gates and pushed them back until they clicked on the chocks. Conant and the albino came back to the car.
Conant stood in the rain with a heel hooked on the running board. Carmady took his big flask out of his pocket, felt it over to see if it was dented, then unscrewed the top. He held it out towards the girl, said: “Have a little bottle courage.”
She didn’t answer him, didn’t move. He drank from the flask, put it away, looked past Conant’s broad back at acres of dripping trees, a cluster of lighted windows that seemed to hang in the sky.
A car came up the hill stabbing the wet dark with its headlights, pulled behind the sedan and stopped. Conant went over to it, put his head into it and said something. The car backed, turned into the driveway, and its lights splashed on retaining walls, disappeared, reappeared at the top of the drive as a hard white oval against a stone porte-cochère.
Conant got into the sedan and the albino swung it into the driveway after the other car. At the top, in a cement parking circle ringed with cypresses, they all got out.
At the top of steps a big door was open and a man in a bathrobe stood in it. Targo, between two men who leaned hard against him, was halfway up the steps. He was bareheaded and without an overcoat. His big body in the white coat looked enormous between the two gunmen.
The rest of the party went up the steps and into the house and followed the bathrobed butler down a hall lined with portraits of somebody’s ancestors, through a still oval foyer to another hall and into a paneled study with soft lights and heavy drapes and deep leather chairs.
A man stood behind a big dark desk that was set in an alcove made by low, outjutting bookcases. He was enormously tall and thin. His white hair was so thick and fine that no single hair was visible in it. He had a small straight bitter mouth, black eyes without depth in a white lined face. He stooped a little and a blue corduroy bathrobe faced with satin was wrapped around his almost freakish thinness.
The butler shut the door and Conant opened it again and jerked his chin at the two men who had come in with Targo. They went out. The albino stepped behind Targo and pushed him down into a chair. Targo looked dazed, stupid. There was a smear of dirt on one side of his face and his eyes had a drugged look.
The girl went over to him quickly, said: “Oh, Duke—are you all right, Duke?”
Targo blinked at her, half-grinned. “So you had to rat, huh? Skip it. I’m fine.” His voice had an unnatural sound.
Jean Adrian went away from him and sat down and hunched herself together as if she was cold.
The tall man stared coldly at everyone in the room in turn, then said lifelessly: “Are these the blackmailers—and was it necessary to bring them here in the middle of the night?”
Conant shook himself out of his coat, threw it on the floor behind a lamp. He lit a fresh cigarette and stood spread-legged in the middle of the room, a big, rough, rugged man very sure of himself. He said: “The girl wanted to see you and tell you she was sorry and wants to play ball. The guy in the ice-cream coat is Targo, the fighter. He got himself in a shooting scrape at a night spot and acted so wild downtown they fed him sleep tablets to quiet him. The other guy is Carmady, old Marcus Carmady’s boy. I don’t figure him yet.”
Carmady said dryly: “I’m a private detective, Senator. I’m here in the interests of my client, Miss Adrian.” He laughed:
The girl looked at him suddenly, then looked at the floor.
Conant said gruffly. “Shenvair, the one you know about, got himself bumped off. Not by us. That’s still to straighten out.”
The tall man nodded coldly. He sat down at his desk and picked up a white quill pen, tickled one ear with it.
“And what is your idea of the way to handle this matter, Conant?” he asked thinly.
Conant shrugged. “I’m a rough boy, but I’d handle this one legal. Talk to the D.A., toss them in a coop on suspicion of extortion. Cook up a story for the papers, then give it time to cool. Then dump these birds across the state line and tell them not to come back—or else.”
Senator Courtway moved the quill around to his other ear. “They could attack me again, from a distance,” he said icily. “I’m in favor of a showdown, put them where they belong.”
“You can’t try them, Courtway. It would kill you politically.”
“I’m tired of public life, Conant. I’ll be glad to retire.” The tall thin man curved his mouth into a faint smile.
“The hell you are,” Conant growled. He jerked his head around, snapped: “Come here, sister.”
Jean Adrian stood up, came slowly across the room, stood in front of the desk.
“Make her?” Conant snarled.
Courtway stare
d at the girl’s set face for a long time, without a trace of expression. He put his quill down on the desk, opened a drawer and took out a photograph. He looked from the photo to the girl, back to the photo, said tonelessly: “This was taken a number of years ago, but there’s a very strong resemblance. I don’t think I’d hesitate to say it’s the same face.”
He put the photo down on the desk and with the same unhurried motion took an automatic out of the drawer and put it down on the desk beside the photo.
Conant stared at the gun. His mouth twisted. He said thickly: “You won’t need that, Senator. Listen, your showdown idea is all wrong. I’ll get detailed confessions from these people and we’ll hold them. If they ever act up again, it’ll be time enough then to crack down with the big one.”
Carmady smiled a little and walked across the carpet until he was near the end of the desk. He said: “I’d like to see that photograph” and leaned over suddenly and took it.
Courtway’s thin hand dropped to the gun, then relaxed. He leaned back in his chair and stared at Carmady.
Carmady stared at the photograph, lowered it, said softly to Jean Adrian: “Go sit down.”
She turned and went back to her chair, dropped into it wearily.
Carmady said: “I like your showdown idea, Senator. It’s clean and straightforward and a wholesome change in policy from Mr. Conant. But it won’t work.” He snicked a fingernail at the photo. “This has a superficial resemblance, no more. I don’t think it’s the same girl at all myself. Her ears are differently shaped and lower on her head. Her eyes are closer together than Miss Adrian’s eyes, the line of her jaw is longer. Those things don’t change. So what have you got? An extortion letter. Maybe, but you can’t tie it to anyone or you’d have done it already. The girl’s name. Just coincidence. What else?”
Conant’s face was granite hard, his mouth bitter. His voice shook a little saying: “And how about that certificate the gal took out of her purse, wise guy?”
Carmady smiled faintly, rubbed the side of his jaw with his fingertips. “I thought you got that from Shenvair?” he said slyly. “And Shenvair is dead.”
Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories Page 22