Nothing to Lose But My Life (5 page)

I felt sorry for her. Sorry as hell. And I was being a heel. But to play the game the way I had it planned, I would have to be a heel more than once. I said, “I have to go now, Enid. We can get together again later.”

“Lowry!” It was a long, drawn-out wail. A kid’s wail.

I took a backward step. She came up off the bed with a quick twist. She stood for a moment and then, a startled expression on her face, half sat, nalf fell back down.

“Get me a drink, Lowry.” She pointed to the bedside stand. A half-empty pint stood there. Now I knew where she had got the extra liquor. She had been nipping when she came in to change her clothes.

Nerving herself? I felt sorrier for her, but I left it there. I said, “Sure,” and handed her the bottle. “I’ll see you at the club tomorrow night, Enid.”

She tilted the bottle and drained it in two long swallows. Even with high-grade liquor that was quite a feat. She just sat there for a moment, breathing hard. I took another backward step.

“You bastard!” I ducked. The bottle went over my shoulder and bounced butt first against the door frame. It fell unbroken to the carpet. Enid began to cry.

I went out fast, feeling rotten. Getting my hat and coat from the austerely furnished spare bedroom, I left. It was a good hike down the hill to where I could get a cab and I half expected Enid and her Cad to appear before I made it. But I saw no one, no car, nothing. It was late, after three
A.M.
, and Puerto Bello was pretty well bedded down for the night.

The walk in the now chill air cleared my head a little. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered about Enid Proctor. I still wasn’t sure she had told me the truth. I wasn’t sure that someone hadn’t put her up to the whole affair. I didn’t want to believe it because in lots of ways I liked her.

Then I began to worry. I really didn’t know how tight she was. I might have taken too big a chance with her. If she was too angry with me, then I’d thrown away the best opportunity. I could have of getting to. Nikke from the inside.

I was still working it over in my mind when I walked toward my cottage. Legal work had developed in me the ability to concentrate deeply at almost any place and at any time. It was a valuable habit as a rule. Tonight it nearly caused me to get taken apart.

I opened the door and stepped into the room. Before I could find the light switch, someone kicked the door shut and a fist that felt like a ham landed on the side of my head. I went to my knees just in time to take a foot in the side. It was one of those things. Ordinarily two such brutal blows coming one after the other would have put me out, or at least left me softened—a prime target. As it was, the kick in the ribs was of such intensity that it cleared the fuzziness from my head.

When another kick came, I was ready for it. I rolled, reached, and found myself with a fistful of heel. I pulled. For a moment I thought the ceiling had come down on me. But it was too soft for plaster and carved wooden beams. It was a nice softness, the kind I could sink my fist into. I slammed twice into a soft middle, heard a gagging grunt and felt a sudden lessening of weight. I got out from under and made it to my feet. My head hurt and my ribs hurt but I was too busy to do much about them.

I was thinking that my playmate might decide to use something besides fist and feet on me.

The room was dark with the shades pulled, but enough light seeped around them and under the door so that now, with my eyes growing accustomed to the dimness, I could see as well as my attacker. I could see well enough to know that he was coming up onto his hands and knees and that at the same time, he was reaching for something. I didn’t wait to find out if it was a gun or a handkerchief. It was my turn to use a foot. I found his chin with the toe of my shoe. I put everything I had into that kick, not giving a damn whether or not I took his head off.

One was enough. He stayed on his knees for a moment, his head snapped back and up, and then he slid like a sack of loose grain face forward and lay still. I went to the light switch and snapped it on.

It was Perly and that surprised me a little. A man Perly’s size should have done better. But then he was too spindly-legged for heavy work and, I thought, not really temperamentally suited for it. I rolled him over and took a closer look. My kick had been too good; his lower face was a mess. His jaw was twisted sideways and some of his teeth were missing.

I made a quick search and came up with a gun and a clasp knife of the kind Emmett carried. I also found five hundred dollars in nice, clean twenty-dollar bills in a money clip and a wallet with fifty or so in it. I took the gun and the knife and left the money.

It had been a quiet fight. Apparently we had disturbed no one. I went to the phone, sitting on the bed to use it. The pains in my ribs and head were making themselves noticed now, and it hurt to lift my right arm and dial.

I called Nikke, using his unlisted home number. After a dozen rings, someone answered. I said, “I’d like to speak to Nikke.”

The voice that answered was filled with British accent. “I’m sorry, sir. He has retired.”

I deepened my Texas drawl. “I suggest you wake him, friend. Tell him it’s Lowry at this end.”

A voice cut in so quickly that I knew Nikke must have been listening in on an extension. “What do you want?”

“Your little friend is here,” I said. “I want you to come and pick him up. He’s cluttering my room.”

Nikke’s smoothness had not deserted him. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mal.”

“Lowry is the name,” I. said curtly. “Let’s keep it that way. I’m calling about Perly. He just got through trying to kick in my ribs. He needs a doctor. Do you come and get him or do I call the cops and tell them your boy came after me because I won some money at your place?”

It was no idle threat. Although the city police had no jurisdiction over Nikke, he had always preferred to keep them happy if only because of the adverse publicity they could let loose against him if they chose.

“Wait a minute, Mal—Lowry. I didn’t send Perly over there.”

“That’s beside the point, isn’t it? He’s your boy; you play with him.”

Silence. Then: “All right. Give me thirty minutes.”

“Twenty,” I said just to be disagreeable. “And come with your hands empty. I have his little toy.” It was a forty-five and big enough to blow a hole through two of Nikke. The phone went down.

I thought about getting undressed, decided against it, and killed the time by working up my shirt, going into the bathroom, and taking a look at my ribs. They were extremely sore to the touch but they didn’t feel broken. I hoped not; I had far too much to do to sit around nursing broken ribs.

While I looked, I did some thinking. Then I got mad. I had at least five minutes yet before Nikke arrived and I used it by going to the phone and calling Enid. She wasn’t in the book but I had had sense enough to pick her number from her phone while I was there. It took only two rings to get her. She sounded as if she had been doing a little more heavy drinking; her voice was strongly slurred.

I said, “Lowry here.”

She was good and tight. I had to wait until she stopped crying before I could say any more. Then I said, “What gave you the idea you could get even by sending that goon here to beat me up?”

Some of the slur left her voice. “What goon?”

“Perly. Do you usually hire people to kick in other people’s ribs just because you feel frustrated?”

She sounded anything but angry despite the way I was handling her. “Lowry!” she wailed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Nikke had said the same thing. I was apalled at such universal ignorance. I said coldly, “Perly’s here. He’s lying on my rug. He was waiting for me when I came in. He met me with a fist and a foot. Nikke said he had nothing to do with it. That leaves you.”

“I didn’t. I swear—honest, Lowry. Are you all right?”

The last sounded like genuine concern. “I’m alive,” I admitted.

“Believe me …” she began, but I cut her off by hanging up. I was getting nowhere with the conversation and I could hear footsteps outside the door.

There was a soft knock. I went over and snapped off the latch and then stepped to one side and well back, the forty-five in my hand. “Come on in.”

The door opened. Nikke entered, two men following him. I recognized them both from the old days. They were Nikke’s floormen and as different from Jake and his kind at the club on the highway as Nikke himself had once been from the usual Syndicate crook. And this pair differed in other ways, too. Not only did they wear their tuxedos as if they knew how, but they were smooth-faced, clean, quite healthy looking. And they had always had something for Nikke that money couldn’t buy—genuine loyalty.

The taller one was named Travis—he owned the British voice I had got on the telephone. I remembered the other as Kirsch, a man Nikke had picked up on his flight from Europe years ago. They were nice guys, well educated, interesting talkers—and they were Nikke’s men until the Big Day. They looked at me and the gun I held and neither of them seemed to care for what they saw.

I said, “Hello, boys. This is it.” I wasn’t addressing Nikke.

Nikke glanced down at Perly and the expression on his face said that he would as soon drop the goon in the harbor as take him to a doctor.

“All right,” he said wearily, “take him away. And be careful. This place is touchy.”

“Don’t vorry,” Kirsch said. He still had a bit of an accent, something Nikke had got rid of before I ever knew him. That was all he or Travis did say. They collected the body and, almost gently, lugged it through the door and out of sight. I could hear their footsteps at first and I knew they were turning toward the beach and would leave the motel grounds by that route. When they were outside, Nikke shut the door and then turned to me, his hands spread open and empty. He had a wry smile on his face.

It was hard to hate the guy face to face. Up until he had framed me, we had been the best of friends. Now I remembered back to the long nights with the chessboard and the phonograph and the bottles of ale before the fireplace.

He had changed a lot. He looked older, with gray in his thinning hair, with a somberness in his large, liquid eyes. He was quite a tall man but his delicate bone structure and the kind of thinness that went with it gave him the appearance of no more than middle height. His face was a little too round and his mouth a little too full for him to be handsome but he had a charm that made up for it—at least as far as a lot of women were concerned.

“I didn’t do this.”

That made it unanimous. Everyone in Puerto Bello seemed overflowing with innocence. I said, “You didn’t sic Enid Proctor on to me and you didn’t sic Perly on to me. What did you do?”

“
I
sent a man here to give you some money.” He glanced at the chair and I nodded for him to sit on it. I used the edge of the bed. I still held the forty-five but in my left hand. My right had a numbed feeling about it.

“Five hundred maybe?” I suggested. “In nice pretty twenties?”

“That’s right.”

“Perly’s still carrying it,” I said. “What was the idea?”

“I thought maybe you could use it,” Nikke said. “I don’t know what shape you’re in.”

“I came back here to take care of you and Hoop,” I told him. “You know that. I wouldn’t do it without some money behind me.”

“The five hundred was just a little hint for you to go somewhere else,” Nikke said. His eyes were sad. “Don’t be a fool, Mal. You can’t buck the setup. You’ll just end in the harbor.”

“The name is Lowry,” I said. “And since when did you dump men in the harbor, Nikke?”

He spread his hands. “Since when did I send goons to beat up my friends—or anyone else?”

“You never used to,” I admitted, “but then there was a time when I wouldn’t believe you capable of framing a friend, either. It happened.”

“You still think that,” Nikke said softly. He sounded sad. “I tried to tell you once.”

“It isn’t what you tried to tell me,” I said. “It’s what happened that I go by.”

Nikke said, “I didn’t send Perly here. I sent my own man with the money. Perly is the man
they
use when they want a roughing up job handled. He must have waylaid my man and taken the money.”

“I’m sure of it,” I said nastily. I was interested in the way he separated himself from “they.” What was it Enid had said? “… so he won’t get his conscience dirty?” Aptly put, I thought.

Nikke said, “I wanted you to go. I still want you to go—for your own sake. But I wouldn’t try to scare you out by having you beat up.”

“You’re breaking my heart,” I told him.

He reached into his pocket. I let him. I had the forty-five ready. But it was only his wallet that he brought out. If Nikke had ever carried a gun, I didn’t know about it. He said, “Here’s a thousand, Mal—Lowry.”

“I have all the thousand I need,” I said. I looked squarely at him. “Don’t try to soft-soap me, Nikke. I’m not broke. I’m not scared. I came here for a reason. I won’t leave until that reason is satisfied.”

“My blood?” The wry smile came again.

“In one way or another,” I told him.

“And Hoop’s?”

“He owes me fifty thousand dollars. He owes me my wife’s life— both of you owe me that. But I’ll take the fifty thousand and see him in hell. That’ll have to be payment enough from him.”

“You’ve become bitter,” Nikke said.

“How have you liked the last five years?”

He met my eyes. “No more than you,” he said. He got up, putting away his wallet. “Think it over. I’ve never been any way but square with you. I personally.” He stopped, one hand on the doorknob. “I’ll have to fight you for a while yet. To keep you out of my hair—and out of the harbor. But maybe things will break soon so I won’t have to fight you. If that happens, I’ll let you know and then you can come in and finish what you came for.” He paused. “If you still want to.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t think of anything to say. His speech made no sense. No sense at all. I just watched him go out.

It had been a nice, peaceful day, a first-class homecoming. I shut the door after Nikke and rubbed my sore head and wondered whether to take a bath and go to sleep or just go to sleep. I had myself stripped to the waist, every move making my side hurt worse as it stiffened, when the decision was made for me. There was a soft rap on the door.