He said: “I saw the guy. He was snowed to the hairline. And here’s your gun.”
He took it out of his pocket, held it on the flat of his hand. “I suppose that makes me think up a bedtime story,” the girl said slowly.
“Not for me. If you’re in a jam, I might help you. It all depends.”
“Depends on what?” Her voice was colder, sharper.
“On what the racket is,” he said softly. He broke the magazine from the small gun, glanced at the top cartridge. “Coppernickel, eh? You know your ammunition, angel.”
“Do you have to call me angel?”
“I don’t know your name.”
He grinned at her, then walked over to a desk in front of the windows, put the gun down on it. There was a leather photo frame on the desk, with two photos side by side. He looked at them casually at first, then his gaze tightened. A handsome dark woman and a thin blondish cold-eyed man whose high stiff collar, large knotted tie and narrow lapels dated the photo back many years. He stared at the man.
The girl was talking behind him. “I’m Jean Adrian. I do a number at Cyrano’s, in the floor show.”
Carmady still stared at the photo. “I know Benny Cyrano pretty well,” he said absently. “These your parents?”
He turned and looked at her. She lifted her head slowly. Something that might have been fear showed in her deep blue eyes.
“Yes. They’ve been dead for years,” she said dully. “Next question?”
He went quickly back to the davenport and stood in front of her. “Okey,” he said thinly. “I’m nosey. So what? This is my town. My dad used to run it. Old Marcus Carmady, the People’s Friend; this is my hotel. I own a piece of it. That snowed-up hoodlum looked like a life-taker to me. Why wouldn’t I want to help out?”
The blond girl stared at him lazily. “I still like your whiskey,” she said. “Could I—”
“Take it from the neck, angel. You get it down faster,” he grunted.
She stood up suddenly and her face got a little white. “You talk to me as if I was a crook,” she snapped. “Here it is, if you have to know. A boy friend of mine has been getting threats. He’s a fighter, and they want him to drop a fight. Now they’re trying to get at him through me. Does that satisfy you a little?”
Carmady picked his hat off a chair, took the cigarette end out of his mouth and rubbed it out in a tray. He nodded quietly, said in a changed voice: “I beg your pardon.” He started towards the door.
The giggle came when he was halfway there. The girl said behind him softly: “You have a nasty temper. And you’ve forgotten your flask.”
He went back and picked the flask up. Then he bent suddenly, put a hand under the girl’s chin and kissed her on the lips.
“To hell with you, angel. I like you,” he said softly.
He went back to the hallway and out. The girl touched her lips with one finger, rubbed it slowly back and forth. There was a shy smile on her face.
2
Tony Acosta, the bell captain, was slim and dark and slight as a girl, with small delicate hands and velvety eyes and a hard little mouth. He stood in the doorway and said: “Seventh row was the best I could get, Mister Carmady. This Deacon Werra ain’t bad and Duke Targo’s the next light heavy champ.”
Carmady said: “Come in and have a drink, Tony.” He went over to the window, stood looking out at the rain. “If they buy it for him,” he added over his shoulder.
“Well—just a short one, Mister Carmady.”
The dark boy mixed a highball carefully at a tray on an imitation Sheraton desk. He held the bottle against the light and gauged his drink carefully, tinkled ice gently with a long spoon, sipped, smiled, showing small white teeth.
“Targo’s a lu, Mister Carmady. He’s fast, clever, got a sock in both mitts, plenty guts, don’t ever take a step back.”
“He has to hold up the bums they feed him,” Carmady drawled.
“Well, they ain’t fed him no lion meat yet,” Tony said.
The rain beat against the glass. The thick drops flattened out and washed down the pane in tiny waves.
Carmady said: “He’s a bum. A bum with color and looks, but still a bum.”
Tony sighed deeply. “I wisht I was goin’. It’s my night off, too.”
Carmady turned slowly and went over to the desk, mixed a drink. Two dusky spots showed in his cheeks and his voice was tired, drawling.
“So that’s it. What’s stopping you?”
“I got a headache.”
“You’re broke again,” Carmady almost snarled.
The dark boy looked sidewise under his long lashes, said nothing.
Carmady clenched his left hand, unclenched it slowly. His eyes were sullen.
“Just ask Carmady,” he sighed. “Good old Carmady. He leaks dough. He’s soft. Just ask Carmady. Okey, Tony, take the ducat back and get a pair together.”
He reached into his pocket, held a bill out. The dark boy looked hurt.
“Jeeze, Mister Carmady, I wouldn’t have you think—”
“Skip it! What’s a fight ticket between pals? Get a couple and take your girl. To hell with this Targo.”
Tony Acosta took the bill. He watched the older man carefully for a moment. Then his voice was very softly, saying: “I’d rather go with you, Mister Carmady. Targo knocks them over, and not only in the ring. He’s got a peachy blonde right on this floor, Miss Adrian, in 914.”
Carmady stiffened. He put his glass down slowly, turned it on the top of the desk. His voice got a little hoarse.
“He’s still a bum, Tony. Okey, I’ll meet you for dinner, in front of your hotel at seven.”
“Jeeze, that’s swell, Mister Carmady.”
Tony Acosta went out softly, closed the outer door without a sound.
Carmady stood by the desk, his fingertips stroking the top of it, his eyes on the floor. He stood like that for a long time.
“Carmady, the All-American sucker,” he said grimly, out loud. “A guy that plays with the help and carries the torch for stray broads. Yeah.”
He finished his drink, looked at his wrist watch, put on his hat and the blue suede raincoat, went out. Down the corridor in front of 914 he stopped, lifted his hand to knock, then dropped it without touching the door.
He went slowly on to the elevators and rode down to the street and his car.
The Tribune office was at Fourth and Spring. Carmady parked around the corner, went in at the employees’ entrance and rode to the fourth floor in a rickety elevator operated by an old man with a dead cigar in his mouth and a rolled magazine which he held six inches from his nose while he ran the elevator.
On the fourth floor big double doors were lettered City Room. Another old man sat outside them at a small desk with a call box.
Carmady tapped on the desk, said: “Adams. Carmady calling.”
The old man made noises into the box, released a key, pointed with his chin.
Carmady went through the doors, past a horseshoe copy desk, then past a row of small desks at which typewriters were being banged. At the far end a lanky red-haired man was doing nothing with his feet on a pulled-out drawer, the back of his neck on the back of a dangerously tilted swivel chair and a big pipe in his mouth pointed straight at the ceiling.
When Carmady stood beside him he moved his eyes down without moving any other part of his body and said around the pipe: “Greetings, Carmady. How’s the idle rich?”
Carmady said: “How’s a glance at your clips on a guy named Courtway? State Senator John Myerson Courtway, to be precise.”
Adams put his feet on the floor. He raised himself erect by pulling on the edge of his desk. He brought his pipe down level, took it out of his mouth and spit into a wastebasket. He said: “That old icicle? When was he ever news? Sure.” He stood up wearily, added: “Come along, Uncle,” and started along the end of the room.
They went along another row of desks, past a fat girl in smudged make-up who was typing and laughing at what s
he was writing.
They went through a door into a big room that was mostly six-foot tiers of filing cases with an occasional alcove in which there was a small table and a chair.
Adams prowled the filing cases, jerked one out and set a folder on a table.
“Park yourself. What’s the graft?”
Carmady leaned on the table on an elbow, scuffed through a thick wad of cuttings. They were monotonous, political in nature, not front page. Senator Courtway said this and that on this and that matter of public interest, addressed this and that meeting, went or returned from this and that place. It all seemed very dull.
He looked at a few halftone cuts of a thin, white-haired man with a blank, composed face, deep set dark eyes in which there was no light or warmth. After a while he said: “Got a print I could sneeze? A real one, I mean.”
Adams sighed, stretched himself, disappeared down the line of file walls. He came back with a shiny black and white photograph, tossed it down on the table.
“You can keep it,” he said. “We got dozens. The guy lives forever. Shall I have it autographed for you?”
Carmady looked at the photo with narrow eyes, for a long time. “It’s right,” he said slowly. “Was Courtway ever married?”
“Not since I left off my diapers,” Adams growled. “Probably not ever. Say, what’n hell’s the mystery?”
Carmady smiled slowly at him. He reached his flask out, set it on the table beside the folder. Adams’ face brightened swiftly and his long arm reached.
“Then he never had a kid,” Carmady said.
Adams leered over the flask. “Well—not for publication, I guess. If I’m any judge of a mug, not at all.” He drank deeply, wiped his lips, drank again.
“And that,” Carmady said, “is very funny indeed. Have three more drinks—and forget you ever saw me.”
3
The fat man put his face close to Carmady’s face. He said with a wheeze: “You think it’s fixed, neighbor?”
“Yeah. For Werra.”
“How much says so?”
“Count your poke.”
“I got five yards that want to grow.”
“Take it,” Carmady said tonelessly, and kept on looking at the back of a corn-blond head in a ringside seat. A white wrap with white fur was below the glassily waved hair. He couldn’t see the face. He didn’t have to.
The fat man blinked his eyes and got a thick wallet carefully out of a pocket inside his vest. He held it on the edge of his knee, counted out ten fifty-dollar bills, rolled them up, edged the wallet back against his ribs.
“You’re on, sucker,” he wheezed. “Let’s see your dough.”
Carmady brought his eyes back, reached out a flat pack of new hundreds, riffled them. He slipped five from under the printed band, held them out.
“Boy, this is from home,” the fat man said. He put his face close to Carmady’s face again. “I’m Skeets O’Neal. No little powders, huh?”
Carmady smiled very slowly and pushed his money into the fat man’s hand. “You hold it, Skeets. I’m Carmady. Old Marcus Carmady’s son. I can shoot faster than you can run—and fix it afterwards.”
The fat man took a long hard breath and leaned back in his seat. Tony Acosta stared soft-eyed at the money in the fat man’s pudgy tight hand. He licked his lips and turned a small embarrassed smile on Carmady.
“Gee, that’s lost dough, Mister Carmady,” he whispered. “Unless—unless you got something inside.”
“Enough to be worth a five-yard plunge,” Carmady growled.
The buzzer sounded for the sixth.
The first five had been anybody’s fight. The big blond boy, Duke Targo, wasn’t trying. The dark one, Deacon Werra, a powerful, loose-limbed Polack with bad teeth and only two cauliflower ears, had the physique but didn’t know anything but rough clinching and a giant swing that started in the basement and never connected. He had been good enough to hold Targo off so far. The fans razzed Targo a good deal.
When the stool swung back out of the ring Targo hitched at his black and silver trunks, smiled with a small tight smile at the girl in the white wrap. He was very good-looking, without a mark on him. There was blood on his left shoulder from Werra’s nose.
The bell rang and Werra charged across the ring, slid off Targo’s shoulder, got a left hook in. Targo got more of the hook than was in it. He piled back into the ropes, bounced out, clinched.
Carmady smiled quietly in the darkness.
The referee broke them easily. Targo broke clean, Werra tried for an uppercut and missed. They sparred for a minute. There was waltz music from the gallery. Then Werra started a swing from his shoetops. Targo seemed to wait for it, to wait for it to hit him. There was a queer strained smile on his face. The girl in the white wrap stood up suddenly.
Werra’s swing grazed Targo’s jaw. It barely staggered him. Targo lashed a long right that caught Werra over the eye. A left hook smashed Werra’s jaw, then a right cross almost to the same spot.
The dark boy went down on his hands and knees, slipped slowly all the way to the floor, lay with both his gloves under him. There were catcalls as he was counted out.
The fat man struggled to his feet, grinning hugely. He said: “How you like it, pal? Still think it was a set piece?”
“It came unstuck,” Carmady said in a voice as toneless as a police radio.
The fat man said: “So long, pal. Come around lots.” He kicked Carmady’s ankle climbing over him.
Carmady sat motionless, watched the auditorium empty. The fighters and their handlers had gone down the stairs under the ring. The girl in the white wrap had disappeared in the crowd. The lights went out and the barnlike structure looked cheap, sordid.
Tony Acosta fidgeted, watching a man in striped overalls picking up papers between the seats.
Carmady stood up suddenly, said: “I’m going to talk to that bum, Tony. Wait outside in the car for me.”
He went swiftly up the slope to the lobby, through the remnants of the gallery crowd to a gray door marked “No Admittance.” He went through that and down a ramp to another door marked the same way. A special cop in faded and unbuttoned khaki stood in front of it, with a bottle of beer in one hand and a hamburger in the other.
Carmady flashed a police card and the cop lurched out of the way without looking at the card. He hiccoughed peacefully as Carmady went through the door, then along a narrow passage with numbered doors lining it. There was noise behind the doors. The fourth door on the left had a scribbled card with the name “Duke Targo” fastened to the panel by a thumbtack.
Carmady opened it into the heavy sound of a shower going, out of sight.
In a narrow and utterly bare room a man in a white sweater was sitting on the end of a rubbing table that had clothes scattered on it. Carmady recognized him as Targo’s chief second.
He said: “Where’s the Duke?”
The sweatered man jerked a thumb towards the shower noise. Then a man came around the door and lurched very close to Carmady. He was tall and had curly brown hair with hard gray color in it. He had a big drink in his hand. His face had the flat glitter of extreme drunkenness. His hair was damp, his eyes bloodshot. His lips curled and uncurled in rapid smiles without meaning. He said thickly: “Scramola, umpchay.”
Carmady shut the door calmly and leaned against it and started to get his cigarette case from his vest pocket, inside his open blue raincoat. He didn’t look at the curly-haired man at all.
The curly-haired man lunged his free right hand up suddenly, snapped it under his coat, out again. A blue steel gun shone dully against his light suit. The glass in his left hand slopped liquor.
“None of that!” he snarled.
Carmady brought the cigarette case out very slowly, showed it in his hand, opened it and put a cigarette between his lips. The blue gun was very close to him, not very steady. The hand holding the glass shook in a sort of jerky rhythm.
Carmady said loosely: “You ought to be looking for tro
uble.”
The sweatered man got off the rubbing table. Then he stood very still and looked at the gun. The curly-haired man said: “We like trouble. Frisk him, Mike.”
The sweatered man said: “I don’t want any part of it, Shenvair. For Pete’s sake, take it easy. You’re lit like a ferry boat.”
Carmady said: “It’s okey to frisk me. I’m not rodded.”
“Nix,” the sweatered man said. “This guy is the Duke’s bodyguard. Deal me out.”
The curly-haired man said: ‘Sure, I’m drunk,” and giggled.
“You’re a friend of the Duke?” the sweatered man asked.
“I’ve got some information for him,” Carmady said.
“About what?”
Carmady didn’t say anything. “Okey,” the sweatered man said. He shrugged bitterly.
“Know what, Mike?” the curly-haired man said suddenly and violently. “I think this Sonofabitch wants my job. Hell, yes.” He punched Carmady with the muzzle of the gun. “You ain’t a shamus, are you, mister?”
“Maybe,” Carmady said: “And keep your iron next to your own belly.”
The curly-haired man turned his head a little and grinned back over his shoulder.
“What d’you know about that, Mike? He’s a shamus. Sure he wants my job. Sure he does.”
“Put the heater up, you fool,” the sweatered man said disgustedly.
The curly-haired man turned a little more. “I’m his protection, ain’t I?” he complained.
Carmady knocked the gun aside almost casually, with the hand that held his cigarette case. The curly-haired man snapped his head around again. Carmady slid close to him, sank a stiff punch in his stomach, holding the gun away with his forearm. The curly-haired man gagged, sprayed liquor down the front of Carmady’s raincoat. His glass shattered on the floor. The blue gun left his hand and went over in a corner. The sweatered man went after it.
The noise of the shower had stopped unnoticed and the blond fighter came out toweling himself vigorously. He stared openmouthed at the tableau.
Carmady said: “I don’t need this any more.”
He heaved the curly-haired man away from him and laced his jaw with a hard right as he went back. The curly-haired man staggered across the room, hit the wall, slid down it and sat on the floor.