Creeping Siamese and Other Stories (8 page)

No gentlemanly poisoning here—these boys had been mowed down with a .30-30 rifle fitted with a clumsy but effective home-made silencer. The rifle lay on the kitchen table. A door connected the kitchen with the dining-room. Directly opposite that door, double doors—wide open—opened into the room in which the dead thieves lay. They were all close to the front wall, lying as if they had been lined up against the wall to be knocked off.

The gray-papered wall was spattered with blood, punctured with holes where a couple of bullets had gone all the way through. Jack Counihan's young eyes picked out a stain on the paper that wasn't accidental. It was close to the floor, beside the Shivering Kid, and the Kid's right hand was stained with blood. He had written on the wall before he died—with fingers dipped in his own and Toots Salda's blood. The letters in the words showed breaks and gaps where his fingers had run dry, and the letters were crooked and straggly, because he must have written them in the dark.

By filling in the gaps, allowing for the kinks, and guessing where there weren't any indications to guide us, we got two words:
Big Flora
.

“They don't mean anything to me,” Duff said, “but it's a name and most of the names we have belong to dead men now, so it's time we were adding to our list.”

“What do you make of it?” asked bullet-headed O'Gar, detective-sergeant in the Homicide Detail, looking at the bodies. “Their pals got the drop on them, lined them against the wall, and the sharpshooter in the kitchen shot 'em down—bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing?”

“It reads that way,” the rest of us agreed.

“Ten of 'em came here from Fillmore Street,” I said. “Six stayed here. Four went to another house—where part of 'em are now cutting down the other part. All that's necessary is to trail the corpses from house to house until there's only one man left—and he's bound to play it through by croaking himself, leaving the loot to be recovered in the original packages. I hope you folks don't have to stay up all night to find the remains of that last thug. Come on, Jack, let's go home for some sleep.”

VII

It was exactly 5 a.m. when I separated the sheets and crawled into my bed. I was asleep before the last draw of smoke from my good-night Fatima was out of my lungs. The telephone woke me at 5:15.

Fiske was talking: “Mickey Linehan just phoned that your Red O'Leary came home to roost half an hour ago.”

“Have him booked,” I said, and was asleep again by 5:17.

With the help of the alarm clock I rolled out of bed at nine, breakfasted, and went down to the detective bureau to see how the police had made out with the red-head. Not so good.

“He's got us stopped,” the captain told me. “He's got alibis for the time of the looting and for last night's doings. And we can't even vag the son-of-a-gun. He's got means of support. He's salesman for Humperdickel's Universal Encyclopædiac Dictionary of Useful and Valuable Knowledge, or something like it. He started peddling these pamphlets the day before the knock-over, and at the time it was happening he was ringing doorbells and asking folks to buy his durned books. Anyway, he's got three witnesses that say so. Last night, he was in a hotel from eleven to four-thirty this morning, playing cards, and he's got witnesses. We didn't find a durned thing on him or in his room.”

I borrowed the captain's phone to call Jack Counihan's house.

“Could you identify any of the men you saw in the cars last night?” I asked when he had been stirred out of bed.

“No. It was dark and they moved too fast. I could barely make sure of my chap.”

“Can't, huh?” the captain said. “Well, I can hold him twenty-four hours without laying charges, and I'll do that, but I'll have to spring him then unless you can dig up something.”

“Suppose you turn him loose now,” I suggested after thinking through my cigarette for a few minutes. “He's got himself all alibied up, so there's no reason why he should hide out on us. We'll let him alone all day—give him time to make sure he isn't being tailed—and then we'll get behind him tonight and stay behind him. Any dope on Big Flora?”

“No. That kid that was killed in Green Street was Bernie Bernheimer, alias the Motsa Kid. I guess he was a dip—he ran with dips—but he wasn't very—”

The buzz of the phone interrupted him. He said, “Hello, yes,” and “Just a minute,” into the instrument, and slid it across the desk to me.

A feminine voice: “This is Grace Cardigan. I called your Agency and they told me where to get you. I've got to see you. Can you meet me now?”

“Where are you?”

“In the telephone station on Powell Street.”

“I'll be there in fifteen minutes,” I said.

Calling the Agency, I got hold of Dick Foley and asked him to meet me at Ellis and Market right away. Then I gave the captain back his phone, said “See you later,” and went uptown to keep my dates.

Dick Foley was on his corner when I got there. He was a swarthy little Canadian who stood nearly five feet in his high-heeled shoes, weighed a hundred pounds minus, talked like a Scotchman's telegram, and could have shadowed a drop of salt water from the Golden Gate to Hongkong without ever losing sight of it.

“You know Angel Grace Cardigan?” I asked him.

He saved a word by shaking his head, no.

“I'm going to meet her in the telephone station. When I'm through, stay behind her. She's smart, and she'll be looking for you, so it won't be duck soup, but do what you can.”

Dick's mouth went down at the corners and one of his rare long-winded streaks hit him.

“Harder they look, easier they are,” he said.

He trailed along behind me while I went up to the station. Angel Grace was standing in the doorway. Her face was more sullen than I had ever seen it, and therefore less beautiful—except her green eyes, which held too much fire for sullenness. A rolled newspaper was in one of her hands. She neither spoke, smiled nor nodded.

“We'll go to Charley's, where we can talk,” I said, guiding her down past Dick Foley.

Not a murmur did I get out of her until we were seated cross-table in the restaurant booth, and the waiter had gone off with our orders. Then she spread the newspaper out on the table with shaking hands.

“Is this on the level?” she demanded.

I looked at the story her shaking finger tapped—an account of the Fillmore and Army Street findings, but a cagey account. A glance showed that no names had been given, that the police had censored the story quite a bit. While I pretended to read I wondered whether it would be to my advantage to tell the girl the story was a fake. But I couldn't see any clear profit in that, so I saved my soul a lie.

“Practically straight,” I admitted.

“You were there?”

She had pushed the paper aside to the floor and was leaning over the table.

“With the police.”

“Was—?” Her voice broke huskily. Her white fingers wadded the tablecloth in two little bunches half-way between us. She cleared her throat. “Who was—?” was as far as she got this time.

A pause. I waited. Her eyes went down, but not before I had seen water dulling the fire in them. During the pause the waiter came in, put our food down, went away.

“You know what I want to ask,” she said presently, her voice low, choked. “Was he? Was he? For God's sake tell me!”

I weighed them—truth against lie, lie against truth. Once more truth triumphed.

“Paddy the Mex was shot—killed—in the Fillmore Street house,” I said.

The pupils of her eyes shrank to pinpoints—spread again until they almost covered the green irises. She made no sound. Her face was empty. She picked up a fork and lifted a forkful of salad to her mouth—another. Reaching across the table, I took the fork out of her hand.

“You're only spilling it on your clothes,” I growled. “You can't eat without opening your mouth to put the food in.”

She put her hands across the table, reaching for mine, trembling, holding my hand with fingers that twitched so that the nails scratched me.

“You're not lying to me?” she half sobbed, half chattered. “You're on the square! You were white to me that time in Philly! Paddy always said you were one white dick! You're not tricking me?”

“Straight up,” I assured her. “Paddy meant a lot to you?”

She nodded dully, pulling herself together, sinking back in a sort of stupor.

“The way's open to even up for him,” I suggested.

“You mean—?”

“Talk.”

She stared at me blankly for a long while, as if she was trying to get some meaning out of what I had said. I read the answer in her eyes before she put it in words.

“I wish to God I could! But I'm Paper-box-John Cardigan's daughter. It isn't in me to turn anybody up. You're on the wrong side. I can't go over. I wish I could. But there's too much Cardigan in me. I'll be hoping every minute that you nail them, and nail them dead right, but—”

“Your sentiments are noble, or words to that effect,” I sneered at her. “Who do you think you are—Joan of Arc? Would your brother Frank be in stir now if his partner, Johnny the Plumber, hadn't put the finger on him for the Great Falls bulls? Come to life, dearie! You're a thief among thieves, and those who don't double-cross get crossed. Who rubbed your Paddy the Mex out? Pals! But you mustn't slap back at 'em because it wouldn't be clubby. My God!”

My speech only thickened the sullenness in her face.

“I'm going to slap back,” she said, “but I can't, can't split. I can't, I tell you. If you were a gun, I'd— Anyway, what help I get will be on my side of the game. Let it go at that, won't you? I know how you feel about it, but—Will you tell me who besides—who else was—was found in those houses?”

“Oh, sure!” I snarled. “I'll tell you everything. I'll let you pump me dry. But you mustn't give me any hints, because it might not be in keeping with the ethics of your highly honorable profession!”

Being a woman, she ignored all this, repeating, “Who else?”

“Nothing stirring. But I will do this—I'll tell you a couple who weren't there—Big Flora and Red O'Leary.”

Her dopiness was gone. She studied my face with green eyes that were dark and savage.

“Was Bluepoint Vance?” she demanded.

“What do you guess?” I replied.

She studied my face for a moment longer and then stood up.

“Thanks for what you've told me,” she said, “and for meeting me like this. I do hope you win.”

She went out to be shadowed by Dick Foley. I ate my lunch.

VIII

At four o'clock that afternoon Jack Counihan and I brought our hired automobile to rest within sight of the front door of the Stockton Street hotel.

“He cleared himself with the police, so there's no reason why he should have moved, maybe,” I told Jack, “and I'd rather not monkey with the hotel people, not knowing them. If he doesn't show by late we'll have to go up against them then.”

We settled down to cigarettes, guesses on who'd be the next heavyweight champion and when, the possibilities of Prohibition being either abolished or practiced, where to get good gin and what to do with it, the injustice of the new Agency ruling that for purposes of expense accounts Oakland was not to be considered out of town, and similar exciting topics, which carried us from four o'clock to ten minutes past nine.

At 9:10 Red O'Leary came out of the hotel.

“God is good,” said Jack as he jumped out of the machine to do the footwork while I stirred the motor.

The fire-topped giant didn't take us far. Larrouy's front door gobbled him. By the time I had parked the car and gone into the dive, both O'Leary and Jack had found seats. Jack's table was on the edge of the dance-floor. O'Leary's was on the other side of the establishment, against the wall, near a corner. A fat blond couple were leaving the table back in that corner when I came in, so I persuaded the waiter who was guiding me to a table to make it that one.

O'Leary's face was three-quarters turned away from me. He was watching the front door, watching it with an earnestness that turned suddenly to happiness when a girl appeared there. She was the girl Angel Grace had called Nancy Regan. I have already said she was nice. Well, she was. And the cocky little blue hat that hid all her hair didn't handicap her niceness any tonight.

The red-head scrambled to his feet and pushed a waiter and a couple of customers out of his way as he went to meet her. As reward for his eagerness he got some profanity that he didn't seem to hear and a blue-eyed, white-toothed smile that was—well—nice. He brought her back to his table and put her in a chair facing me, while he sat very much facing her.

His voice was a baritone rumble out of which my snooping ears could pick no words. He seemed to be telling her a lot, and she listened as if she liked it.

“But, Reddy, dear, you shouldn't,” she said once. Her voice—I know other words, but we'll stick to this one—was nice. Outside of the music in it, it had quality. Whoever this gunman's moll was, she either had had a good start in life or had learned her stuff well. Now and then, when the orchestra came up for air, I would catch a few words, but they didn't tell me anything except that neither she nor her rowdy playmate had anything against the other.

The joint had been nearly empty when she came in. By ten o'clock it was fairly crowded, and ten o'clock is early for Larrouy's customers. I began to pay less attention to Red's girl—even if she was nice—and more to my other neighbors. It struck me that there weren't many women in sight. Checking up on that, I found damned few women in proportion to the men. Men—rat-faced men, hatchet-faced men, square-jawed men, slack-chinned men, pale men, ruddy men, dark men, bull-necked men, scrawny men, funny-looking men, tough-looking men, ordinary men—sitting two to a table, four to a table, more coming in—and damned few women.