Carmady said slowly: “I think you’ve got to have help. Whether you like it or not. That man in the photo frame on the desk there—I think I know who he is. And I don’t think he’s dead.”
The girl turned. Her face now was as white as paper. Her eyes strained at his eyes. She breathed thickly, harshly. After what seemed a long time she said: “I’m caught. Caught. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
Carmady lifted a hand and drew his fingers slowly down her cheek, down the angle of her tight jaw. His eyes held a hard brown glitter, his lips a smile. It was cunning, almost a dishonest smile.
He said: “I’m wrong, angel. I don’t know him at all. Good night.”
He went back across the room, through the little hallway, opened the door. When the door opened the girl clutched at the curtain and rubbed her face against it slowly.
Carmady didn’t shut the door. He stood quite still halfway through it, looking at two men who stood there with guns.
They stood close to the door, as if they had been about to knock. One was thick, dark, saturnine. The other one was an albino with sharp red eyes, a narrow head that showed shining snow-white hair under a rain-spattered dark hat. He had the thin sharp teeth and the drawn-back grin of a rat.
Carmady started to close the door behind him. The albino said: “Hold it, rube. The door, I mean. We’re goin’ in.”
The other man slid forward and pressed his left hand up and down Carmady’s body carefully. He stepped away, said: “No gat, but a swell flask under his arm.”
The albino gestured with his gun. “Back up, rube. We want the broad, too.”
Carmady said tonelessly: “It doesn’t take a gun, Critz. I know you and I know your boss. If he wants to see me, I’ll be glad to talk to him.”
He turned and went back into the room with the two gunmen behind him.
Jean Adrian hadn’t moved. She stood by the window still, the curtain against her cheek, her eyes closed, as if she hadn’t heard the voices at the door at all.
Then she heard them come in and her eyes snapped open. She turned slowly, stared past Carmady at the two gunmen. The albino walked to the middle of the room, looked around it without speaking, went on into the bedroom and bathroom. Doors opened and shut. He came back in quiet catlike feet, pulled his overcoat open and pushed his hat back on his head.
“Get dressed, sister. We have to go for a ride in the rain. Okey?”
The girl stared at Carmady now. He shrugged, smiled a little, spread his hands.
“That’s how it is, angel. Might as well fall in line.”
The lines of her face got thin and contemptuous. She said slowly: “You—You———.” Her voice trailed off into a sibilant, meaningless mutter. She went across the room stiffly and out of it into the bedroom.
The albino slipped a cigarette between his sharp lips, chuckled with a wet, gurgling sound, as if his mouth was full of saliva.
“She don’t seem to like you, rube.”
Carmady frowned. He walked slowly to the writing desk, leaned his hips against it, stared at the floor.
“She thinks I sold her out,” he said dully.
“Maybe you did, rube,” the albino drawled.
Carmady said: “Better watch her. She’s neat with a gun.”
His hands, reaching casually behind him on the desk, tapped the top of it lightly, then without apparent change of movement folded the leather photo frame down on its side and edged it under the blotter.
8
There was a padded arm rest in the middle of the rear seat of the car, and Carmady leaned an elbow on it, cupped his chin in his hand, stared through the half-misted windows at the rain. It was thick white spray in the headlights, and the noise of it on the top of the car was like drum fire very far off.
Jean Adrian sat on the other side of the arm rest, in the corner. She wore a black hat and a gray coat with tufts of silky hair on it, longer than caracul and not so curly. She didn’t look at Carmady or speak to him.
The albino sat on the right of the thick dark man, who drove. They went through silent streets, past blurred houses, blurred trees, the blurred shine of street lights. There were neon signs behind the thick curtains of mist. There was no sky.
Then they climbed and a feeble arc light strung over an intersection threw light on a signpost, and Carmady read the name “Court Street.”
He said softly: “This is woptown, Critz. The big guy can’t be so dough-heavy as he used to be.”
Lights flickered from the albino’s eyes as he glanced back. “You should know, rube.”
The car slowed in front of a big frame house with a trellised porch, walls finished in round shingles, blind, lightless windows. Across the street, a stencil sign on a brick building built sheer to the pavement said: “Paolo Perrugini Funeral Parlors.”
The car swung out to make a wide turn into a gravel driveway. Lights splashed into an open garage. They went in, slid to a stop beside a big shiny undertaker’s ambulance.
The albino snapped: “All out!”
Carmady said: “I see our next trip is all arranged for.”
“Funny guy,” the albino snarled. “A wise monkey.”
“Uh-uh. I just have nice scaffold manners,” Carmady drawled.
The dark man cut the motor and snapped on a big flash, then cut the lights, got out of the car. He shot the beam of the flash up a narrow flight of wooden steps in the corner. The albino said: “Up you go, rube. Push the girl ahead of you. I’m behind with my rod.”
Jean Adrian got out of the car past Carmady, without looking at him. She went up the steps stiffly, and the three men made a procession behind her.
There was a door at the top. The girl opened it and hard white light came out at them. They went into a bare attic with exposed studding, a square window in front and rear, shut tight, the glass painted black. A bright bulb hung on a drop cord over a kitchen table and a big man sat at the table with a saucer of cigarette butts at his elbow. Two of them still smoked.
A thin loose-lipped man sat on a bed with a Luger beside his left hand. There was a worn carpet on the floor, a few sticks of furniture, a half-opened clapboard door in the corner through which a toilet seat showed, and one end of a big old-fashioned bathtub standing up from the floor on iron legs.
The man at the kitchen table was large but not handsome. He had carroty hair and eyebrows a shade darker, a square aggressive face, a strong jaw. His thick lips held his cigarette brutally. His clothes looked as if they had cost a great deal of money and had been slept in.
He glanced carelessly at Jean Adrian, said around the cigarette: “Park the body, sister. Hi, Carmady. Gimme that rod, Lefty, and you boys drop down below again.”
The girl went quietly across the attic and sat down in a straight wooden chair. The man on the bed stood up, put the Luger at the big man’s elbow on the kitchen table. The three gunmen went down the stairs, leaving the door open.
The big man touched the Luger, stared at Carmady, said sarcastically: “I’m Doll Conant. Maybe you remember me.”
Carmady stood loosely by the kitchen table, with his legs spread wide, his hands in his overcoat pockets, his head tilted back. His half-closed eyes were sleepy, very cold.
He said: “Yeah. I helped my dad hang the only rap on you that ever stuck.”
“It didn’t stick, mugg. Not with the Court of Appeals.”
“Maybe this one will,” Carmady said carelessly. “Kidnapping is apt to be a sticky rap in this state.”
Conant grinned without opening his lips. His expression was grimly good-humored. He said: “Let’s not barber. We got business to do and you know better than that last crack. Sit down—or rather take a look at Exhibit One first. In the bathtub, behind you. Yeah, take a look at that. Then we can get down to tacks.”
Carmady turned, went across to the clapboard door, pushed through it. There was a bulb sticking out of the wall, with a key switch. He snapped it on, bent over the tub.
For a moment his
body was quite rigid and his breath was held rigidly. Then he let it out very slowly, and reached his left hand back and pushed the door almost shut. He bent farther over the big iron tub.
It was long enough for a man to stretch out in, and a man was stretched out in it, on his back. He was fully dressed even to a hat, although his head didn’t look as if he had put it on himself. He had thick, gray-brown curly hair. There was blood on his face and there was a gouged, red-rimmed hole at the inner corner of his left eye.
He was Shenvair and he was long since dead.
Carmady sucked in his breath and straightened slowly, then suddenly bent forward still further until he could see into the space between the tub and the wall. Something blue and metallic glistened down there in the dust. A blue steel gun. A gun like Shenvair’s gun.
Carmady glanced back quickly. The not quite shut door showed him a part of the attic, the top of the stairs, one of Doll Conant’s feet square and placid on the carpet, under the kitchen table. He reached his arm out slowly down behind the tub, gathered the gun up. The four exposed chambers had steel-jacketed bullets in them.
Carmady opened his coat, slipped the gun down inside the waistband of his trousers, tightened his belt, and buttoned his coat again. He went out of the bathroom, shut the clapboard door carefully.
Doll Conant gestured at a chair across the table from him: “Sit down.”
Carmady glanced at Jean Adrian. She was staring at him with a kind of rigid curiosity, her eyes dark and colorless in a stone-white face under the black hat.
He gestured at her, smiled faintly. “It’s Mister Shenvair, angel. He met with an accident. He’s—dead.”
The girl stared at him without any expression at all. Then she shuddered once, violently. She stared at him again, made no sound of any kind.
Carmady sat down in the chair across the table from Conant.
Conant eyed him, added a smoking stub to the collection in the white saucer, lit a fresh cigarette, streaking the match the whole length of the kitchen table.
He puffed, said casually: “Yeah, he’s dead. You shot him.”
Carmady shook his head very slightly, smiled. “No.”
“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 19
12. 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 tipoff, 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, leaned back, looking calmly at the blue gun in Carmady’s hand.