Tell It To The Birds (9 page)

Hogan gave her a quick vicious glance.

"Okay, baby," he said. "We'll see about this."

He shoved his foot down on the gas pedal and the car surged forward.

Neither of them spoke until they reached the Barlowe house. Meg got out of the car and opened the double gates.

Hogan drove the car into the garage. He joined Meg as she unlocked the front door. They walked side by side into the dark house and into the sitting-room.

When Meg had lowered the blinds, she turned on the lights.

Hogan stood over the fire, his big hands thrust into his pockets while he watched Meg get a bottle of whisky and glasses from the cupboard.

Hogan was above middle- height with the wide muscular shoulders of a boxer. He wore his wavy, dark hair cut short.

He was handsome in a brutish way. During his professional fighting career his nose had been flattened. There were scar tissues along the ridge of his eyebrows, but this added to rather than detracted from his animal glamour.

"Listen, doll," he said, "you've got to do better than this." He took the glass half full of whisky Meg handed to him. "I've got to have this money by the end of the month! You've got to talk this guy into doing his stuff by then or you and me will fall out."

Meg sat on the settee. She was pale and her eyes were anxious.

"It's no use, Jerry," she said. "You don't know him the way I do. He scares me." She shivered. "I can't handle him. I wish I hadn't listened to you! I wish..."

"Aw, shut up!" Hogan snarled. "You do what I tell you or I'll give you something to remember me by!" Meg looked at him.

"That policeman who was shot at the Caltex hold-up ... Anson did it."

Hogan stiffened.

"Anson? You're lying, you rotten little..."

"He did it!" Meg exclaimed, jumping to her feet and backing away as Hogan, his hands now out of hfs pockets began to move threateningly towards her. "He killed him with Phil's gun!"

Hogan paused, then he rubbed his jaw with a sweating hand.

"So that's how he raised the money!" he said startled. "Joe and me wondered how he had got it. Well! what do you know ... a cop killer!"

"It didn't mean a thing to him!" Meg exclaimed. "He's dangerous, Jerry. I'm warning you! Those eyes of his! He scares me. I wish you hadn't picked on him."

"I picked on the right guy," Hogan said. He finished the whisky and set down the glass. "It was your idea to get Barlowe insured, wasn't it? How else could we have worked it without having some punk in the insurance racket to fix it? Well, Anson's fixed it, hasn't he. He had to: I saw to that. With the money owing to Sam Bernstein and me to put pressure on him, he was a natural." He sat down beside her. "Get me another drink. Phew! A cop killer!" As Meg came back with another glass half full of neat whisky, he asked, "Has he still got the gun?"

"No. He brought it back the next day. I've been trying to get you for days but you're never in."

Hogan made an impatient movement.

"If I'd known he was that tough, I'd been more careful how I handled him... a cop killer!" He drank some of the whisky and blew out his cheeks. "Well, what are we going to do? I must have the money by the end of the month. This is a chance in a lifetime. Joe told me this morning he couldn't wait. There's another punk waiting to put up the money, but Joe wants me to be his partner. It's cheap at the price ... twenty-five grand and Joe won't ask questions."

"It's no good, Jerry. You'll have to wait."

Hogan stared into the fire for a long moment while Meg watched him anxiously.

"What's wrong with me knocking Phil off?" he asked suddenly. "He's insured now ... that was the tricky part. I could fix him and then we'd have the dough without having to wait for this junk Anson to make up his mind."

"No!" Megs voice went shrill. "I won't let you! You must keep clear of this, Jerry! You must have a cast iron alibi, same as me! That's the whole trick in my plan to keep us both in the clear and let Anson take the blame if anything goes wrong. You must keep out of this!"

"Well, we've got to do something!" Hogan snarled, suddenly angry again. "Stir yourself. I can't wait five months!"

"I'll think of something," Meg said desperately.

Hogan got to his feet.

"You'd better or I'll look elsewhere for the dough." He caught hold of her by the arms and shook her. "Listen, I'm getting sick of this! This was your great idea! Okay! ... make it work or you and me will part company! We've parted company before. You've got nothing another woman can't give me! Hear me! If we part this time ... we part for good*!"

"I'll fix it!" Meg said desperately. "Honestly, Jerry ... I'll fix it!"

"You'd better!" He started towards the door, paused and glared at her. "And fix it fast!"

"You're not leaving, Jerry?" She looked pleadingly at him. "I haven't seen you for so long. He won't be back tonight..."

Hogan's battered face twisted into a contemptuous sneer.

"You imagine you've got something to keep me here?" he asked. "I've things to do. You fix Anson!"

She came to him, but he shoved her roughly away.

"Keep your paws off me! You use your head instead of your body for a change! I want the dough by the end of the month ... or you and me are through for good!"

He left the house, slamming the front door.

Meg stood motionless. It was not until the sound of his car had died away that she moved stiffly to the settee. She sat down. A convulsive sob shook her, but she quickly controlled herself. She picked up the bottle of whisky and poured herself a stiff shot. She had thought she had lost Hogan before, but he had come back. This time she could lose him for good if she didn't do something. The thought of losing him made her feel sick and weak. She drank the whisky and with a sudden desperate gesture, she threw the glass into the fire.

It was when the whisky began to move through her body relaxing her, that Meg thought back to the time when she had first met Jerry Hogan. It seemed a long time to her, but it was only three years .... much had happened to her during these three years.

Then she had been a waitress in a small Hollywood restaurant. Hogan had come in with a short, fat elderly man named Benny Hirsch who she learned later was Hogan's fight manager.

Hogan had just lost his Californian light-heavy weight title. He had been knocked out with a sucker punch in the first two minutes of the first round. Apart from an aching jaw, he was unscarred. Meg had no idea who he was. She had come to the table, her order pad in her hand and had looked indifferently at the two men.

Hogan had been in a vicious, frightened mood. His career, long threatened by his sexual excesses and his heavy drinking, had now blown up in his face. He could see Hirsch was no longer interested to him. There were plenty of young keen fighters who could keep Hirsch in the money without him having to bother with a beat-up, womanizer like Hogan, and Hogan knew it.

"A coffee," Hirsch said without looking at Hogan.

Hogan stared at him.

"A coffee? What the hell? Aren't you hungry? I want a steak."

Hirsch shifted around and looked him over, dislike and contempt on his fat face.

"Yeah ... you sure need a steak," he said bitterly. "I don't even need a coffee. The sight of you makes me sick to my stomach. Steak! Some fighter! You do your best fighting in bed with a bottle." He got to his feet. "I don't know why I even came here with you. You're through, Hogan. As far as I am concerned, you're yesterday's smell of boiled cabbage!"

Startled and shocked, Meg watched Hirsch walk out of the restaurant. She then looked at Hogan who sat limply in his chair, sweat beads on his face, and at that moment, seeing him in defeat, she was stupid enough to fall in love with him.

When the restaurant closed, Hogan went with her to her small bedroom above an unsuccessful dry-cleaning establishment. His fierce, brutal, selfish love making was something Meg had never experienced. That first sordid act of so-called love chained her to this man, excusing his viciousness, his cowardice, his cheating and his drinking.

Early the following morning, Hogan came awake and looked at Meg, sleeping at his side. Here, he told himself was a meal ticket. He knew he was through with fighting. He had to live somehow, and this dish, with her looks, could at least keep him in food, drink and cigarettes.

It took him a few days to convince Meg that if she really wanted to have him as her lover, she would have to give up her job as a waitress and start hustling. Hogan made it easy for her. He went round to a couple of pimps who controlled a certain, profitable beat and told them his girl was moving in. They regarded him thoughtfully, remembered that he was an ex-light-heavy weight, and decided it would be wise to offer no opposition.

For the next year, Meg worked the streets, giving her earmings willingly to Hogan who used the money either for backing horses or to finance himself in all-night poker games he and his fellow pimps arranged.

Then Meg began to realize the poker game was a blind. While she was working, Hogan was chasing other girls. The money she made he now was spending on any woman he happened to run into during the night hours Meg tramped her beat.

One night, returning drunk, with lipstick on his shirt, Hogan told her that they were parting company. Meg listened to his drunken slurring contempt, with fear clutching at her heart.

Life without Hogan, no matter how he behaved, was unthinkable to her.

"You're chick-feed," Hogan had sneered. "I'm going to look for a girl who can earn big money ... not a run-down street floosie like you. You and me are through !"

The following afternoon, Meg was in the ladies' room of a smart hotel. She was about to go up to the fourth floor where a middle-aged business man was impatiently waiting for her. By one of the toilet basins she saw an expensive lizard-skin bag. She stared at it, hesitated, then moving quickly, she opened it. The bag was stuffed with fifty-dollar bills. For a long moment she stared at the money, then grabbing the bills, she transferred them to her own handbag. Her one thought was that with this money, Hogan would remain with her.

As she moved to the door, the door opened. A woman and the hotel detective came in.

Hogan wasn't at the trial. Meg went away for three months, and when she came out, Hogan had vanished. She had no money, no protection and the police pestered her.

Finally, in desperation, she left Los Angeles and headed for San Francisco. Her money ran out when she got as far as Pru Town on a Greyhound bus. She managed to rent a small room on the top floor of an office block. It was her bad luck to strike the worst winter for the past fifty years. The newspapers made headlines about the frost, snow and cold.

She had no pimp to protect her and she had no regular beat. It was when she was ill, frozen and defeated not caring what happened to her, using her last few dollars on cheap whisky, that she met Phil Barlowe.

She would always remember that moment when he came furtively out of the darkness. She was standing under a street lamp, wet snow falling on her, her feet frozen, aware that the cold had turned her face into a stiff white mask.

Barlowe, wearing a black, slouch hat and a dark topcoat, had paused and they looked at each other.

"Are you looking for a naughty girl?" Meg asked, her lips so stiff with the cold she had trouble in speaking.

"How naughty?"

The pale brown eyes scared her. The thin, ill-tempered face warned her this man could be a sadist, but she was beyond caring. She had to have money. If this mean looking creature had money, then she would take a chance with him.

They had gone together to her room. Barlowe had sat on one of the chairs making no attempt to take off his topcoat.

Meg had sat listlessly on the bed, shivering.

"Come on, honey," she said impatiently, "don't just sit there."

"I only want to talk to you," Barlowe said. "I've got no one I can talk to."

She was so used to nuts, perverts and queers, that she wasn't surprised.

"Look, honey," she said. "It'll cost you either way. Let's have your present."

He fumblingly produced his wallet and gave her three ten dollar bills. Meg, who had been working for practically nothing, couldn't believe her eyes.

The room was heated by a small paraffin stove. It was enough only to keep out the frost. Cold, shivering, and feeling she was now running a temperature, Meg pulled the blankets over her and settled down in the bed, fully dressed.

She half listened to Barlowe talking. She vaguely gathered his mother had just died and he was lonely. He talked on and on and on. She had an idea he told her he had money, a cottage and a lovely garden. She gathered sleepily that he had a good job in some store. Warmth at last began to steal over her and she fell asleep.

She woke the next morning to find the stove out, the window covered with white frost and her head aching wildly.

Barlowe had gone. She sat up in panic and opened her handbag, but the thirty dollars was still there. She remained in bed, too ill to move, and at one time she thought she might be dying.

Sometime during the evening, as the shadows lengthened and the cold sordid little room began to dissolve into darkness, she heard a tapping on the door.

By then she was too ill to bother. She became aware vaguely that Barlowe was standing over her, his bitter distressed face close to hers. She tried to say something ... to tell him to go away, but the effort was too much for her. She grimaced and closed her eyes, sinking into a feverish, frightening oblivion.

Later, she was vaguely aware of being carried down the narrow stairs in a kind of hammock ... the stairs being so narrow and difficult a stretcher was impossible. She found herself in a hospital bed and she was in the quiet ward for ten days. Each day Barlowe came and sat by her side. He just stared at her and said nothing. She was so ill and weak she accepted him ... a nut ... but she was grateful for what he had done for her. During these ten days she constantly thought of Jerry Hogan, wondering where he was, who he was sleeping with, how he was making money enough to live.