I left a little after eleven, returning to the hotel without anything happening.
9
A BLACK KNIFE
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 p
ay 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.
They were introduced, went to the center of the ring for the usual instructions, returned to their corners, shed bathrobes, stretched on the ropes, the gong rang, and the scrap was on.
Cooper was a clumsy bum. He had a pair of wide swings that might have hurt when they landed, but anybody with two feet could have kept away from them. Bush had class—nimble legs, a smooth fast left hand, and a right that got away quick. It would have been murder to put Cooper in the ring with the slim boy if he had been trying. But he wasn’t. That is, he wasn’t trying to win. He was trying not to, and had his hands full doing it.
Cooper waddled flat-footed around the ring, throwing his wide swings at everything from the lights to the corner posts. His system was simply to turn them loose and let them take their chances. Bush moved in and out, putting a glove on the ruddy boy whenever he wanted to, but not putting anything in the glove.
The customers were booing before the first round was over. The second round was just as sour. I didn’t feel so good. Bush didn’t seem to have been much influenced by our little conversation. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dinah Brand trying to catch my attention. She looked hot. I took care not to have my attention caught.
The room-mate act in the ring was continued in the third round to the tune of yelled Throw-em-outs, Why-don’t-you-kiss-hims and Make-em-fights from the seats. The pugs’ waltz brought them around to the corner nearest me just as the booing broke off for a moment.
I made a megaphone of my hands and bawled:
“Back to Philly, Al.”
Bush’s back was to me. He wrestled Cooper around, shoving him into the ropes, so he—Bush—faced my way.
From somewhere far back in another part of the house another yelling voice came:
“Back to Philly, Al.”
MacSwain, I supposed.
A drunk off to one side lifted his puffy face and bawled the same thing, laughing as if it were a swell joke. Others took up the cry for no reason at all except that it seemed to disturb Bush.
His eyes jerked from side to side under the black bar of his eyebrows.
One of Cooper’s wild mitts clouted the slim boy on the side of the jaw.
Ike Bush piled down at the referee’s feet.
The referee counted five in two seconds, but the gong cut him off.
I looked over at Dinah Brand and laughed. There wasn’t anything else to do. She looked at me and didn’t laugh. Her face was sick as Dan Rolff’s, but angrier.
Bush’s handlers dragged him into his corner and rubbed him up, not working very hard at it. He opened his eyes and watched his feet. The gong was tapped.
Kid Cooper paddled out hitching up his trunks. Bush waited until the bum was in the center of the ring, and then came to him, fast.
Bush’s left glove went down, out—practically out of sight in Cooper’s belly. Cooper said, “Ugh,” and backed away, folding up.
Bush straightened him with a right-hand poke in the mouth, and sank the left again. Cooper said, “Ugh,” again and had trouble with his knees.
Bush cuffed him once on each side of the head, cocked his right, carefully pushed Cooper’s face into position with a long left, and threw his right hand straight from under his jaw to Cooper’s.
Everybody in the house felt the punch.
Cooper hit the floor, bounced, and settled there. It took the referee half a minute to count ten seconds. It would have been just the same if he had taken half an hour. Kid Cooper was out.
When the referee had finally stalled through the count, he raised Bush’s hand. Neither of them looked happy.
A high twinkle of light caught my eye. A short silvery streak slanted down from one of the small balconies.
A woman screamed.
The silvery streak ended its flashing slant in the ring, with a sound that was partly a thud, partly a snap.
Ike Bush took his arm out of the referee’s hand and pitched down on top of Kid Cooper. A black knife-handle stuck out of the nape of Bush’s neck.
10
CRIME WANTED—
MALE OR FEMALE
Half an hour later, when I left the building, Dinah Brand was sitting at the wheel of a pale blue little Marmon, talking to Max Thaler, who stood in the road.
The girl’s square chin was tilted up. Her big red mouth was brutal around the words it shaped, and the lines crossing its ends were deep, hard.
The gambler looked as unpleasant as she. His pretty face was yellow and tough as oak. When he talked his lips were paper-thin.
It seemed to be a nice family party. I wouldn’t have joined it if the girl hadn’t seen me and call
ed:
“My God, I thought you were never coming.”
I went over to the car. Thaler looked across the hood at me with no friendliness at all.
“Last night I advised you to go back to Frisco.” His whisper was harsher than anybody’s shout could have been. “Now I’m telling you.”
“Thanks just the same,” I said as I got in beside the girl.
While she was stirring the engine up he said to her:
“This isn’t the first time you’ve sold me out. It’s the last.”
She put the car in motion, turned her head back over her shoulder, and sang to him:
“To hell, my love, with you!”
We rode into town rapidly.
“Is Bush dead?” she asked as she twisted the car into Broadway.
“Decidedly. When they turned him over the point of the knife was sticking out in front.”
“He ought to have known better than to double-cross them. Let’s get something to eat. I’m almost eleven hundred ahead on the night’s doings, so if the boy friend doesn’t like it, it’s just too bad. How’d you come out?”
“Didn’t bet. So your Max doesn’t like it?”
“Didn’t bet?” she cried. “What kind of an ass are you? Whoever heard of anybody not betting when they had a thing like that sewed up?”
“I wasn’t sure it was sewed up. So Max didn’t like the way things turned out?”
“You guessed it. He dropped plenty. And then he gets sore with me because I had sense enough to switch over and get in on the win.” She stopped the car violently in front of a Chinese restaurant. “The hell with him, the little tin-horn runt!”
Her eyes were shiny because they were wet. She jabbed a handkerchief into them as we got out of the car.
“My God, I’m hungry,” she said, dragging me across the sidewalk. “Will you buy me a ton of chow mein?”
She didn’t eat a ton of it, but she did pretty well, putting away a piled-up dish of her own and half of mine. Then we got back into the Marmon and rode out to her house.