Red Harvest (9 page)

“While you last,” the gambler said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I was reading in the paper this morning about a fellow choking to death eating a chocolate eclair in bed.”

“That may be good,” said Dinah Brand, her big body sprawled in an arm-chair, “but it wasn’t in this morning’s paper.”

She lit a cigarette and threw the match out of sight under the chesterfield. The lunger had gathered up the cards and was shuffling them over and over, purposelessly.

Thaler frowned at me and said:

“Willsson’s willing for you to keep the ten grand. Let it go at that.”

“I’ve got a mean disposition. Attempted assassinations make me mad.”

“That won’t get you anything but a box. I’m for you. You kept Noonan from framing me. That’s why I’m telling you, forget it and go back to Frisco.”

“I’m for you,” I said. “That’s why I’m telling you, split with them. They crossed you up once. It’ll happen again. Anyway, they’re slated for the chutes. Get out while the getting’s good.”

“I’m sitting too pretty,” he said. “And I’m able to take care of myself.”

“Maybe. But you know the racket’s too good to last. You’ve had the cream of the pickings. Now it’s get-away day.”

He shook his little dark head and told me:

“I think you’re pretty good, but I’m damned if I think you’re good enough to crack this camp. It’s too tight. If I thought you
could swing it, I’d be with you. You know how I stand with Noonan. But you’ll never make it. Chuck it.”

“No. I’m in it to the last nickel of Elihu’s ten thousand.”

“I told you he was too damned pig-headed to listen to reason,” Dinah Brand said, yawning. “Isn’t there anything to drink in the dump, Dan?”

The lunger got up from the table and went out of the room.

Thaler shrugged, said:

“Have it your way. You’re supposed to know what you’re doing. Going to the fights tomorrow night?”

I said I thought I would. Dan Rolff came in with gin and trimmings. We had a couple of drinks apiece. We talked about the fights. Nothing more was said about me versus Poisonville. The gambler apparently had washed his hands of me, but he didn’t seem to hold my stubbornness against me. He even gave me what seemed to be a straight tip on the fights—telling me any bet on the main event would be good if its maker remembered that Kid Cooper would probably knock Ike Bush out in the sixth round. He seemed to know what he was talking about, and it didn’t seem to be news to the others.

I left a little after eleven, returning to the hotel without anything happening.

I woke next morning with an idea in my skull. Personville had only some forty thousand inhabitants. It shouldn’t be hard to spread news. Ten o’clock found me out spreading it.

I did my spreading in pool rooms, cigar stores, speakeasies, soft drink joints, and on street corners—wherever I found a man or two loafing. My spreading technique was something like this:

“Got a match? … Thanks…. Going to the fights tonight? … I hear Ike Bush takes a dive in the sixth…. It ought to be straight: I got it from Whisper…. Yeah, they all are.”

People like inside stuff, and anything that had Thaler’s name to it was very inside in Personville. The news spread nicely. Half the men I gave it to worked almost as hard as I did spreading it, just to show they knew what was what.

When I started out, seven to four was being offered that Ike Bush would win, and two to three that he would win by a knockout. By two o’clock none of the joints taking bets were offering anything better than even money, and by half-past three Kid Cooper was a two-to-one favorite.

I made my last stop a lunch counter, where I tossed the news
out to a waiter and a couple of customers while eating a hot beef sandwich.

When I went out I found a man waiting by the door for me. He had bowed legs and a long sharp jaw, like a hog’s. He nodded and walked down the street beside me, chewing a toothpick and squinting sidewise into my face. At the corner he said:

“I know for a fact that ain’t so.”

“What?” I asked.

“About Ike Bush flopping. I know for a fact that ain’t so.”

“Then it oughtn’t bother you any. But the wise money’s going two to one on Cooper, and he’s not that good unless Bush lets him be.”

The hog jaw spit out the mangled toothpick and snapped yellow teeth at me.

“He told me his own self that Cooper was a set-up for him, last night, and he wouldn’t do nothing like that—not to me.”

“Friend of yours?”

“Not exactly, but he knows I—Hey, listen! Did Whisper give you that, on the level?”

“On the level.”

He cursed bitterly. “And I put my last thirty-five bucks in the world on that rat on his say-so. Me, that could send him over for—” He broke off and looked down the street.

“Could send him over for what?” I asked.

“Plenty,” he said. “Nothing.”

I had a suggestion:

“If you’ve got something on him, maybe we ought to talk it over. I wouldn’t mind seeing Bush win, myself. If what you’ve got is any good, what’s the matter with putting it up to him?”

He looked at me, at the sidewalk, fumbled in his vest pocket for another toothpick, put it in his mouth, and mumbled:

“Who are you?”

I gave him a name, something like Hunter or Hunt or Huntington, and asked him his. He said his name was MacSwain, Bob MacSwain, and I could ask anybody in town if it wasn’t right.

I said I believed him and asked:

“What do you say? Will we put the squeeze to Bush?”

Little hard lights came into his eyes and died.

“No,” he gulped. “I ain’t that kind of fellow. I never—”

“You never did anything but let people gyp you. You don’t have to go up against him, MacSwain. Give me the dope, and I’ll make the play—if it’s any good.”

He thought that over, licking his lips, letting the toothpick fall down to stick on his coat front.

“You wouldn’t let on about me having any part in it?” he asked. “I belong here, and I wouldn’t stand a chance if it got out. And you won’t turn him up? You’ll just use it to make him fight?”

“Right.”

He took my hand excitedly and demanded:

“Honest to God?”

“Honest to God.”

“His real moniker is Al Kennedy. He was in on the Keystone Trust knock-over in Philly two years ago, when Scissors Haggerty’s mob croaked two messengers. Al didn’t do the killing, but he was in on the caper. He used to scrap around Philly. The rest of them got copped, but he made the sneak. That’s why he’s sticking out here in the bushes. That’s why he won’t never let them put his mug in the papers or on any cards. That’s why he’s a pork-and-beaner when he’s as good as the best. See? This Ike Bush is Al Kennedy that the Philly bulls want for the Keystone trick. See? He was in on the—”

“I see. I see,” I stopped the merry-go-round. “The next thing is to get to see him. How do we do that?”

“He flops at the Maxwell, on Union Street. I guess maybe he’d be there now, resting up for the mill.”

“Resting for what? He
doesn’t
know he’s going to fight. We’ll give it a try, though.”

“We! We! Where do you get that
we
at? You said—you swore you’d keep me covered.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I remember that now. What does he look like?”

“A black-headed kid, kind of slim, with one tin ear and eyebrows that run straight across. I don’t know if you can make him like it.”

“Leave that to me. Where’ll I find you afterwards?”

“I’ll be hanging around Murry’s. Mind you don’t tip my mitt. You promised.”

The Maxwell was one of a dozen hotels along Union Street with narrow front doors between stores, and shabby stairs leading up to second-story offices. The Maxwell’s office was simply a wide place in the hall, with a key- and mail-rack behind a wooden counter that needed paint just as badly. A brass bell and a dirty day-book register were on the counter. Nobody was there.

I had to run back eight pages before I found
Ike Bush, Salt Lake City, 214,
written in the book. The pigeon-hole that had that number was empty. I climbed more steps and knocked on a door that had it. Nothing came of that. I tried it two or three times more and then turned back to the stairs.

Somebody was coming up. I stood at the top, waiting for a look at him. There was just light enough to see by.

He was a slim muscular lad in army shirt, blue suit, gray cap. Black eyebrows made a straight line above his eyes.

I said: “Hello.”

He nodded without stopping or saying anything.

“Win tonight?” I asked.

“Hope so,” he said shortly, passing me.

I let him take four steps toward his room before I told him:

“So do I. I’d hate to have to ship you back to Philly, Al.”

He took another step, turned around very slowly, rested a shoulder against the wall, let his eyes get sleepy, and grunted:

“Huh?”

“If you were smacked down in the sixth or any other round
by a palooka like Kid Cooper, it’d make me peevish,” I said. “Don’t do it, Al.
You
don’t want to go back to Philly.”

The youngster put his chin down in his neck and came back to me. When he was within arm’s reach, he stopped, letting his left side turn a bit to the front. His hands were hanging loose. Mine were in my overcoat pockets.

He said, “Huh?” again.

I said:

“Try to remember that—if Ike Bush doesn’t turn in a win tonight, Al Kennedy will be riding east in the morning.”

He lifted his left shoulder an inch. I moved the gun around in my pocket, enough. He grumbled:

“Where do you get that stuff about me not winning?”

“Just something I heard. I didn’t think there was anything in it, except maybe a ducat back to Philly.”

“I oughta bust your jaw, you fat crook.”

“Now’s the time to do it,” I advised him. “If you win tonight you’re not likely to see me again. If you lose, you’ll see me, but your hands won’t be loose.”

I found MacSwain in Murry’s, a Broadway pool room.

“Did you get to him?” he asked.

“Yeah. It’s all fixed—if he doesn’t blow town, or say something to his backers, or just pay no attention to me, or—”

MacSwain developed a lot of nervousness.

“You better damn sight be careful,” he warned me. “They might try to put you out of the way. He—I got to see a fellow down the street,” and he deserted me.

Poisonville’s prize fighting was done in a big wooden ex-casino in what had once been an amusement park on the edge of town. When I got there at eight-thirty, most of the population seemed to be on hand, packed tight in close rows of folding chairs on the main floor, packed tighter on benches in two dinky balconies.

Smoke. Stink. Heat. Noise.

My seat was in the third row, ringside. Moving down to it,
I discovered Dan Rolff in an aisle seat not far away, with Dinah Brand beside him. She had her hair trimmed at last, and marcelled, and looked like a lot of money in a big gray fur coat.

“Get down on Cooper?” she asked after we had swapped hellos.

“No. You playing him heavy?”

“Not as heavy as I’d like. We held off, thinking the odds would get better, but they went to hell.”

“Everybody in town seems to know Bush is going to dive,” I said. “I saw a hundred put on Cooper at four to one a few minutes ago.” I leaned past Rolff and put my mouth close to where the gray fur collar hid the girl’s ear, whispering: “The dive is off. Better copper your bets while there’s time.”

Her big bloodshot eyes went wide and dark with anxiety, greed, curiosity, suspicion.

“You mean it?” she asked huskily.

“Yeah.”

She chewed her reddened lips, frowned, asked:

“Where’d you get it?”

I wouldn’t say. She chewed her mouth some more and asked:

“Is Max on?”

“I haven’t seen him. Is he here?”

“I suppose so,” she said absent-mindedly, a distant look in her eyes. Her lips moved as if she were counting to herself.

I said: “Take it or leave it, but it’s a gut.”

She leaned forward to look sharply into my eyes, clicked her teeth together, opened her bag, and dragged out a roll of bills the size of a coffee can. Part of the roll she pushed at Rolff.

“Here, Dan, get it down on Bush. You’ve got an hour anyway to look over the odds.”

Rolff took the money and went off on his errand. I took his seat. She put a hand on my forearm and said:

“Christ help you if you’ve made me drop that dough.”

I pretended the idea was ridiculous.

The preliminary bouts got going, four-round affairs between
assorted hams. I kept looking for Thaler, but couldn’t see him. The girl squirmed beside me, paying little attention to the fighting, dividing her time between asking me where I had got my information and threatening me with hell-fire and damnation if it turned out to be a bust.

The semi-final was on when Rolff came back and gave the girl a handful of tickets. She was straining her eyes over them when I left for my own seat. Without looking up she called to me:

“Wait outside for us when it’s over.”

Kid Cooper climbed into the ring while I was squeezing through to my seat. He was a ruddy straw-haired solid-built boy with a dented face and too much meat around the top of his lavender trunks. Ike Bush, alias Al Kennedy, came through the ropes in the opposite corner. His body looked better—slim, nicely ridged, snaky—but his face was pale, worried.