We had nearly finished the trip before we were bothered.
The action started in a block of one-story houses of the shack type, down in the southern end of the city.
A man put his head out of a door, put his fingers in his mouth, and whistled shrilly.
Somebody in the car behind us shot him down.
At the next corner we ran through a volley of pistol bullets.
Reno turned around to tell me:
“If they pop the bag, we’ll all of us hit the moon. Get it open. We got to work fast when we get there.”
I had the fasteners unsnapped by the time we came to rest at the curb in front of a dark three-story brick building.
Men crawled all over me, opening the valise, helping themselves to the contents, bombs made of short sections of two-inch pipe, packed in sawdust in the bag. Bullets bit chunks out of the car’s curtains.
Reno reached back for one of the bombs, hopped out to the sidewalk, paid no attention to a streak of blood that suddenly appeared in the middle of his left cheek, and heaved his piece of stuffed pipe at the brick building’s door.
A sheet of flame was followed by deafening noise. Hunks of things pelted us while we tried to keep from being knocked over by the concussion. Then there was no door to keep anybody out of the red brick building.
A man ran forward, swung his arm, let a pipeful of hell go through the doorway. The shutters came off the downstairs windows, fire and glass flying behind them.
The car that had followed us was stationary up the street, trading shots with the neighborhood. The car that had gone ahead of us had turned into a side street. Pistol shots from behind the red brick building, between the explosions of our cargo, told us that our advance car was covering the back door.
O’Marra, out in the middle of the street, bent far over, tossed a bomb to the brick building’s roof. It didn’t explode. O’Marra put one foot high in the air, clawed at his throat, and fell solidly backward.
Another of our party went down under the slugs that were cutting at us from a wooden building next to the brick one.
Reno cursed stolidly and said:
“Burn them out, Fat.”
Fat spit on a bomb, ran around the back of our car, and swung his arm.
We picked ourselves up off the sidewalk, dodged flying things, and saw that the frame house was all out of whack, with flames climbing its torn edges.
“Any left?” Reno asked as we looked around, enjoying the novelty of not being shot at.
“Here’s the last one,” Fat said, holding out a bomb.
Fire was dancing inside the upper windows of the brick house. Reno looked at it, took the bomb from Fat, and said:
“Back off. They’ll be coming out.”
We moved away from the front of the house.
A voice indoors yelled:
“Reno!”
Reno slipped into the shadow of our car before he called back:
“Well?”
“We’re done,” a heavy voice shouted. “We’re coming out. Don’t shoot.”
Reno asked, “Who’s we’re?”
“Well?”
“This is Pete,” the heavy voice said. “There’s four left of us.”
“You come first,” Reno ordered, “with your mitts on the top of your head. The others come out one at a time, same way, after you. And half a minute apart is close enough. Come on.”
We waited a moment, and then Pete the Finn appeared in the dynamited doorway, his hands holding the top of his bald head. In the glare from the burning next-door house we could see that his face was cut, his clothes almost all torn off.
Stepping over wreckage, the bootlegger came slowly down the steps to the sidewalk.
Reno called him a lousy fish-eater and shot him four times in face and body.
Pete went down. A man behind me laughed.
Reno hurled the remaining bomb through the doorway.
We scrambled into our car. Reno took the wheel. The engine was dead. Bullets had got to it.
Reno worked the horn while the rest of us piled out.
The machine that had stopped at the corner came for us. Waiting for it, I looked up and down the street that was bright with the glow of two burning buildings. There were a few faces at windows, but whoever besides us was in the street had taken to cover. Not far away, firebells sounded.
The other machine slowed up for us to climb aboard. It was already full. We packed it in layers, with the overflow hanging on the running boards.
We bumped over dead Hank O’Marra’s legs and headed for home. We covered one block of the distance with safety if not comfort. After that we had neither.
A limousine turned into the street ahead of us, came half a block toward us, put its side to us, and stopped. Out of the side, gun-fire.
Another car came around the limousine and charged us. Out of it, gun-fire.
We did our best, but we were too damned amalgamated for good fighting. You can’t shoot straight holding a man in your lap, another hanging on your shoulder, while a third does his shooting from an inch behind your ear.
Our other car—the one that had been around at the building’s rear—came up and gave us a hand. But by then two more had joined the opposition. Apparently Thaler’s mob’s attack on the jail was over, one way or the other, and Pete’s army, sent to help there, had returned in time to spoil our get-away. It was a sweet mess.
I leaned over a burning gun and yelled in Reno’s ear:
“This is the bunk. Let’s us extras get out and do our wrangling from the street.”
He thought that a good idea, and gave orders:
“Pile out some of you hombres, and take them from the pavements.”
I was the first man out, with my eye on a dark alley entrance.
Fat followed me to it. In my shelter, I turned on him and growled:
“Don’t pile up on me. Pick your own hole. There’s a cellar-way that looks good.”
He agreeably trotted off toward it, and was shot down at his third step.
I explored my alley. It was only twenty feet long, and ended against a high board fence with a locked gate.
A garbage can helped me over the gate into a brick-paved yard. The side fence of that yard let me into another, and from that I got into another, where a fox terrier raised hell at me.
I kicked the pooch out of the way, made the opposite fence, untangled myself from a clothes line, crossed two more yards, got yelled at from a window, had a bottle thrown at me, and dropped into a cobblestoned back street.
The shooting was behind me, but not far enough. I did all I could to remedy that. I must have walked as many streets as I did in my dreams the night Dinah was killed.
My watch said it was three-thirty a.m. when I looked at it on Elihu Willsson’s front steps.
26
BLACKMAIL
I had to push my client’s doorbell a lot before I got any play on it.
Finally the door was opened by the tall sunburned chauffeur. He was dressed in undershirt and pants, and had a billiard cue in one fist.
“What do you want?” he demanded, and then, when he got another look at me: “It’s you, is it? Well, what do you want?”
“I want to see Mr. Willsson.”
“At four in the morning? Go on with you,” and he started to close the door.
I put a foot against it. He looked from my foot to my face, hefted the billiard cue, and asked:
“You after getting your kneecap cracked?”
“I’m not playing,” I insisted. “I’ve got to see the old man. Tell him.”
“I don’t have to tell him. He told me no later than this afternoon that if you come around he didn’t want to see you.”
“Yeah?” I took the four love letters out of my pocket, picked out the first and least idiotic of them, held it out to the chauffeur, and said: “Give him that and tell him I’m sitting on the steps with the rest of them. Tell him I’ll sit here five minutes and then carry the rest of the
m to Tommy Robins of the Consolidated Press.”
The chauffeur scowled at the letter, said, “To hell with Tommy Robins and his blind aunt!” took the letter, and closed the door.
Four minutes later he opened the door again and said:
“Inside, you.”
I followed him upstairs to old Elihu’s bedroom.
My client sat up in bed with his love letter crushed in one round pink fist, its envelope in the other.
His short white hair bristled. His round eyes were as much red as blue. The parallel lines of his mouth and chin almost touched. He was in a lovely humor.
As soon as he saw me he shouted:
“So after all your brave talking you had to come back to the old pirate to have your neck saved, did you?”
I said I didn’t anything of the sort. I said if he was going to talk like a sap he ought to lower his voice so that people in Los Angeles wouldn’t learn what a sap he was.
The old boy let his voice out another notch, bellowing:
“Because you’ve stolen a letter or two that don’t belong to you, you needn’t think you—”
I put fingers in my ears. They didn’t shut out the noise, but they insulted him into cutting the bellowing short.
I took the fingers out and said:
“Send the flunkey away so we can talk. You won’t need him. I’m not going to hurt you.”
He said, “Get out,” to the chauffeur.
The chauffeur, looking at me without fondness, left us, closing the door.
Old Elihu gave me the rush act, demanding that I surrender the rest of the letters immediately, wanting to know loudly and profanely where I had got them, what I was doing with them, threatening me with this, that, and the other, but mostly just cursing me.
I didn’t surrender the letters. I said:
“I took them from the man you hired to recover them. A tough break for you that he had to kill the girl.”
Enough red went out of the old man’s face to leave it normally pink. He worked his lips over his teeth, screwed up his eyes at me, and said:
“Is that the way you’re going to play it?”
His voice came comparatively quiet from his chest. He had settled down to fight.
I pulled a chair over beside the bed, sat down, put as much amusement as I could in a grin, and said:
“That’s one way.”
He watched me, working his lips, saying nothing. I said:
“You’re the damndest client I ever had. What do you do? You hire me to clean town, change your mind, run out on me, work against me until I begin to look like a winner, then get on the fence, and now when you think I’m licked again, you don’t even want to let me in the house. Lucky for me I happened to run across those letters.”
He said: “Blackmail.”
I laughed and said:
“Listen who’s naming it. All right, call it that.” I tapped the edge of the bed with a forefinger. “I’m not licked, old top. I’ve won. You came crying to me that some naughty men had taken your little city away from you. Pete the Finn, Lew Yard, Whisper Thaler, and Noonan. Where are they now?
“Yard died Tuesday morning, Noonan the same night, Whisper Wednesday morning, and the Finn a little while ago. I’m giving your city back to you whether you want it or not. If that’s blackmail, O.K. Now here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to get hold of your mayor, I suppose the lousy village has got one, and you and he are going to phone the governor—Keep still until I get through.
“You’re going to tell the governor that your city police have got out of hand, what with bootleggers sworn in as officers, and so on. You’re going to ask him for help—the national guard would be best. I don’t know how various ruckuses around town have come out, but I do know the big boys—the ones you were afraid of—are dead. The ones that had too much on you for you to stand up to them. There are plenty of busy young men working like hell right now, trying to get into the dead men’s shoes. The more, the better. They’ll make it easier for the white-collar soldiers to take hold while everything is disorganized. And none of the substitutes are likely to have enough on you to do much damage.
“You’re going to have the mayor, or the governor, whichever it comes under, suspend the whole Personville police department, and let the mail-order troops handle things till you can organize another. I’m told that the mayor and the governor are both pieces of your property. They’ll do what you tell them. And that’s what you’re going to tell them. It can be done, and it’s got to be done.
“Then you’ll have your city back, all nice and clean and ready to go to the dogs again. If you don’t do it, I’m going to turn these love letters of yours over to the newspaper buzzards, and I don’t mean your Herald crew—the press associations. I got the letters from Dawn. You’ll have a lot of fun proving that you didn’t hire him to recover them, and that he didn’t kill the girl doing it. But the fun you’ll have is nothing to the fun people will have reading these letters. They’re hot. I haven’t laughed so much over anything since the hogs ate my kid brother.”
I stopped talking.
The old man was shaking, but there was no fear in his shaking. His face was purple again. He opened his mouth and roared:
“Publish them and be damned!”
I took them out of my pocket, dropped them on his bed, got up from my chair, put on my hat, and said:
“I’d give my right leg to be able to believe that the girl was killed by somebody you sent to get the letters. By God, I’d like to top off the job by sending you to the gallows!”
He didn’t touch the letters. He said:
“You told me the truth about Thaler and Pete?”
“Yeah. But what difference does it make? You’ll only be pushed around by somebody else.”
He threw the bedclothes aside and swung his stocky pajamaed legs and pink feet over the edge of the bed.
“Have you got the guts,” he barked, “to take the job I offered you once before—chief of police?”
“No. I lost my guts out fighting your fights while you were hiding in bed and thinking up new ways of disowning me. Find another wet nurse.”
He glared at me. Then shrewd wrinkles came around his eyes.
He nodded his old head and said:
“You’re afraid to take the job. So you did kill the girl?”
I left him as I had left him the last time, saying, “Go to hell!” and walking out.
The chauffeur, still toting his billiard cue, still regarding me without fondness, met me on the ground floor and took me to the door, looking as if he hoped I would start something. I didn’t. He slammed the door after me.
The street was gray with the beginning of daylight.
Up the street a black coupé stood under some trees. I couldn’t see if anyone was in it. I played safe by walking in the opposite direction. The coupé moved after me.
There is nothing in running down streets with automobiles in pursuit. I stopped, facing this one. It came on. I took my hand away from my side when I saw Mickey Linehan’s red face through the windshield.
He swung the door open for me to get in.
“I thought you might come up here,” he said as I sat beside him, “but I was a second or two too late. I saw you go in, but was too far away to catch you.”
“How’d you make out with the police?” I asked. “Better keep driving while we talk.”
“I didn’t know anything, couldn’t guess anything, didn’t have any idea of what you were working on, just happened to hit town and meet you. Old friends—that line. They were still trying when the riot broke. They had me in one of the little offices across from the assembly room. When the circus cut loose I back-windowed them.”
“How’d the circus wind up?” I asked.
“The coppers shot hell out of them. They got the tip-off half an hour ahead of time, and had the whole neighborhood packed with specials. Seems it was a juicy row while it lasted—no duck soup for the coppers at that. Whisper’s m
ob, I hear.”
“Yeah. Reno and Pete the Finn tangled tonight. Hear anything about it?”
“Only that they’d had it.”
“Reno killed Pete and ran into an ambush on the getaway. I don’t know what happened after that. Seen Dick?”
“I went up to his hotel and was told he’d checked out to catch the evening train.”
“I sent him back home,” I explained. “He seemed to think I’d killed Dinah Brand. He was getting on my nerves with it.”
“Well?”
“You mean, did I kill her? I don’t know, Mickey. I’m trying to find out. Want to keep riding with me, or want to follow Dick back to the Coast?”
Mickey said:
“Don’t get so cocky over one lousy murder that maybe didn’t happen. But what the hell? You know you didn’t lift her dough and pretties.”
“Neither did the killer. They were still there after eight that morning, when I left. Dan Rolff was in and out between then and nine. He wouldn’t have taken them. The—I’ve got it! The coppers that found the body—Shepp and Vanaman—got there at nine-thirty. Besides the jewelry and money, some letters old Willsson had written the girl were—must have been—taken. I found them later in Dawn’s pocket. The two dicks disappeared just about then. See it?
“When Shepp and Vanaman found the girl dead they looted the joint before they turned in the alarm. Old Willsson being a millionaire, his letters looked good to them, so they took them along with the other valuables, and turned them—the letters—over to the shyster to peddle back to Elihu. But Dawn was killed before he could do anything on that end. I took the letters. Shepp and Vanaman, whether they did or didn’t know that the letters were not found in the dead man’s possession, got cold feet. They were afraid the letters would be traced to them. They had the money and jewelry. They lit out.”
“Sounds fair enough,” Mickey agreed, “but it don’t seem to put any fingers on any murderers.”
“It clears the way some. We’ll try to clear it some more. See if you can find Porter Street and an old warehouse called Redman. The way I got it, Rolff killed Whisper there, walked up to him and stabbed him with the ice pick he had found in the girl. If he did it that way, then Whisper hadn’t killed her. Or he would have been expecting something of the sort, and wouldn’t have let the lunger get that close to him. I’d like to look at their remains and check up.”