Red Wind (11 page)

VIII

CIGARETTE smoke laced the air. A group of people in evening clothes stood sipping cocktails at one side of a curtained opening that led to the gambling rooms. Beyond the curtains light blazed down on one end of a roulette table. Mallory put his elbows on the bar, and the bartender left two young girls in party gowns and slid a white towel along the polished wood towards him. He said:

“What’ll it be, chief?”

Mallory said: “A small beer.”

The bartender gave it to him, smiled,
went
back to the two girls. Mallory sipped the beer, made a face, and looked into the long mirror that ran all the way behind the bar and slanted forward a little, so that it showed the floor all the way over to the far wall. A door opened in the wall and a man in dinner clothes came through. He had a wrinkled brown face and hair the color of steel wool. He met Mallory’s glance in the mirror and came across the room nodding.

He said. “I’m Mardonne.
Nice of you to come.”
He had a soft, husky voice, the voice of a fat man, but he was not fat.

Mallory said: “It’s not a social call.”

Mardonne said: “Let’s go up to my office.”

Mallory drank a little more of the beer, made another face, and pushed the glass away from him across the bar top. They went through the door, up a carpeted staircase that met another staircase halfway up. An open door shone light on the landing. They went in where the light was.

The room had been a bedroom, and no particular trouble had been taken to make it over into an office. It had gray walls, two or three prints in narrow frames. There was a big filing cabinet, a good safe, chairs. A parchment-shaded lamp stood on a walnut desk. A very blond young man sat on a corner of the desk swinging one leg over the other. He was wearing a soft hat with a gay band.

Mardonne said: “All right, Henry. I’ll be busy.”

The blond young man got off the desk, yawned, put his hand to his mouth with an affected flirt of the wrist. There was a large diamond on one of his fingers. He looked at Mallory, smiled, went slowly out of the room, closing the door.

Mardonne sat down in a blue leather swivel-chair. He lit a thin cigar and pushed a humidor across the grained top of the desk. Mallory took a chair at the end of the desk, between the door and a pair of open windows. There was another door, but the safe stood in front of it. He lit a cigarette, said:

“Landrey owed me some money.
Five grand.
Anybody here interested in paying it?”

Mardonne put his brown hands on the arms of his chair and rocked back and forth. “We haven’t come to that,” he said.

Mallory said: “Right. What have we come to?”

Mardonne narrowed his dull eyes. His voice was flat and without tone.
“To how Landrey got killed.”

Mallory put his cigarette in his mouth and clasped his hands together behind his head. He puffed smoke and talked through it at the wall above Mardonne’s head.

“He crossed everybody up and then he crossed himself. He played too many parts and got his lines mixed. He was gun-drunk. When he got a rod in his hand he had to shoot somebody. Somebody shot back.”

Mardonne went on rocking, said: “Maybe you could make it a little more definite.”

“Sure… I could tell you a story… about a girl who wrote some letters once. She thought she was in love. They were reckless
letters,
the sort a girl would write who had more guts than was good for her. Time passed, and somehow the letters got on the blackmail market. Some workers started to shake the girl down. Not a high stake, nothing that would have bothered her, but it seems she liked to do things the hard way. Landrey thought he would help her out. He had a plan, and the plan needed a man who could wear a tux, keep a spoon out of a coffee-cup, and wasn’t known in this town. He got me. I run a small agency in Chicago.”

Mardonne swiveled towards the open windows and stared out at the tops of some trees. “Private
dick
, huh?” he grunted impassively.
“From Chicago.”

Mallory nodded, looked at him briefly, looked back at the same spot on the wall.
“And supposed to be on the level, Mardonne.
You wouldn’t think it from some of the company I’ve been keeping lately.”

Mardonne made a quick impatient
gesture,
said nothing.

Mallory went on: “Well, I gave the job a tumble, which was my first and worst mistake. I was making a little headway when the shakedown turned into a kidnaping. Not so good. I got in touch with Landrey and he decided to show with me. We found the girl without a lot of trouble. We took her home. We still had to get the letters. While I was trying to pry them loose from the guy I thought had them one of the bad boys got in the back way and wanted to play with his gun. Landrey made a swell entrance, struck a pose and shot it out with the hood, toe to toe. He stopped some lead. It was
pretty,
if you like that sort of thing, but it left me in a spot. So perhaps I’m prejudiced. I had to lam out and collect my ideas.”

Mardonne’s dull brown eyes showed a passing flicker of emotion. “The girl’s story might be interesting, too,” he said coolly.

Mallory blew a pale cloud of smoke. “She was doped and doesn’t know anything. She wouldn’t talk, if she did. And I don’t know her name.”

“I do,” Mardonne said. “Landrey’s driver also talked to me. So I won’t have to bother you about that.”

Mallory talked on, placidly. “That’s the tale from the outside, without notes. The notes make it funnier—and a hell of a lot dirtier. The girl didn’t ask Landrey for help, but he knew about the shakedown. He’d once had the letters, because they were written to him. His scheme to get on their trail was for me to make a wrong pass at the girl myself, make her think
I
had the letters, talk her into a meeting at a night-club where we could be watched by the people who were working on her. She’d come, because she had that kind of guts. She’d be watched, because there would be an inside—maid, chauffeur or something. The boys would want to know about me. They’d pick me up, and if I didn’t get conked out of hand, I might learn who was who in the racket. Sweet set-up, don’t you think so?”

Mardonne said coldly: “A bit loose in places… Go on talking.”

“When the decoy worked I knew it was fixed. I stayed with it, because for the time being I had to. After a while there was another sour play, unrehearsed this time. A big flattie who was taking graft money from the gang got cold feet and threw the boys for a loss. He didn’t mind a little extortion, but a snatch was going off the deep end on a dark night. The break made things easier for me, and it didn’t hurt Landrey any, because the flattie wasn’t in on the clever stuff. The hood
who
got Landrey wasn’t either, I guess. That one was just
sore,
thought he was being chiseled out of his cut.”

Mardonne flipped his brown hands up and down on the chair arms, like a purchasing agent getting restless under a sales talk. “Were you supposed to figure things out this way?” he asked with a sneer.

“I used my head, Mardonne. Not soon enough, but I used it. Maybe I wasn’t hired to think, but that wasn’t explained to me, either. If I got wise, it was Landrey’s hard luck. He’d have to figure an out to that one. If I didn’t, I was the nearest thing to an honest stranger he could afford to have around.”

Mardonne said smoothly: “Landrey had plenty of dough. He had some brains. Not a lot, but some. He wouldn’t go for a cheap shake like that.”

Mallory laughed harshly: “It wasn’t so cheap to him, Mardonne. He wanted the girl. She’d got away from him, out of his class. He couldn’t pull himself up, but he could pull her down. The letters were not enough to bring her into line. Add a kidnaping and a fake rescue by an old flame turned racketeer, and you have a story no rag could be made to soft-pedal. If it was spilled, it would blast her right out of her job.
You
guess the price for not spilling it, Mardonne.”

Mardonne said: “Uh-huh,” and kept on looking out of the window.

Mallory said: “But all that’s on the cuff, now. I was hired to get some letters, and I got them—out of Landrey’s pocket when he was bumped. I’d like to get paid for my time.”

Mardonne turned in his chair and put his hands flat on the top of the desk. “Pass them over,” he said. “I’ll see what they’re worth to me.”

Mallory let out another harsh laugh. His eyes got sharp and bitter. He said: “The trouble with you heels is that you can’t figure anybody to be on the up and up… The letters are withdrawn from circulation, Mardonne. They passed around too much and they wore out.”

“It’s a sweet thought,” Mardonne sneered.
“For somebody else.
Landrey was my partner, and I thought a lot of him… So you give the letters away, and I pay you dough for letting Landrey get gunned. I ought to write that one in my diary. My hunch is you’ve been paid plenty already—by Miss Rhonda Farr.”

Mallory said, sarcastically: “I figured it would look like that to you. Maybe
you’d
like the story better this way… The girl got tired of having Landrey trail her around. She faked some letters and put them where her smart lawyer could lift them,
pass
them along to a man who was running a strongarm squad the lawyer used in his business sometimes. The girl wrote to Landrey for help and he got me. The girl got to me with a better bid. She hired me to put Landrey on the spot. I played along with him until I got him under the gun of a wiper that was pretending to make a pass at me. The wiper let him have it, and I shot the wiper with Landrey’s gun, to make it look good. Then I had a drink and went home to get some sleep.”

Mardonne leaned over and pressed a buzzer on the side of his desk. He said: “I like that one a lot better. I’m wondering if I could make it stick.”

“You could try,” Mallory said lazily. “I don’t guess it would be the first lead quarter you’ve tried to pass.”

IX

THE room door came open and the blond boy strolled in. His lips were spread in a pleased grin and his tongue came out between them. He had an automatic in his hand.

Mardonne said: “I’m not busy any more, Henry.”

The blond boy shut the door. Mallory stood up and backed slowly towards the wall. He said grimly:

“Now for the funny stuff, eh?”

Mardonne put brown fingers up and pinched the fat part of his chin. He said curtly:

“There won’t be any shooting here. Nice people come to this house. Maybe you didn’t spot Landrey, but I don’t want you around. You’re in my way.”

Mallory kept on backing until he had his shoulders against the wall. The blond boy frowned, took a step towards him. Mallory said:

“Stay right where you are, Henry. I need room to think. You might get a slug into me, but you wouldn’t stop my gun from talking a little. The noise wouldn’t bother me at all.”

Mardonne bent over his desk, looking sidewise. The blond boy slowed up. His tongue still peeped out between his lips. Mardonne said:

“I’ve got some C notes in the desk here. I’m giving Henry ten of them. He’ll go to your hotel with you. He’ll even help you pack. When you get on the train
East
he’ll pass you the dough. If you come back after that, it will be a new deal—from a cold deck.” He put his hand down slowly and opened the desk drawer.

Mallory kept his eyes on the blond boy. “Henry might make a change in the continuity,” he said unpleasantly. “Henry looks kind of unstable to me.”

Mardonne stood up, brought his hand from the drawer. He dropped a packet of notes on top of the desk. He said:

“I don’t think so. Henry usually does what he is told.”

Mallory grinned tightly. “Perhaps
that’s
what I’m afraid of,” he said. His grin got tighter still, and crookeder. His teeth glittered between his pale lips. “You said you thought a lot of Landrey, Mardonne. That’s hooey. You don’t care a thin dime about Landrey, now he’s dead. You probably stepped right into his half of the joint, and nobody around to ask questions. It’s like that in the rackets. You want me out because you think you can still peddle your dirt—in the right place—for more than this small time joint would net in a year. But you can’t peddle it, Mardonne. The market’s closed. Nobody’s going to pay you a plugged nickel either to spill it or not to spill it.”

Mardonne cleared his throat softly. He was standing in the same position, leaning forward a little over the desk, both hands on top of it, and the packet of notes between his hands. He licked his lips, said:

“All right, master mind.
Why not?”

Mallory made a quick but expressive gesture with his right thumb.

“I’m the sucker in this deal.
You’re
the smart guy. I told you a straight story the first time and my hunch says Landrey wasn’t in that sweet frame alone.
You
were in it up to your fat neck
!…
But you aced yourself backwards when you let Landrey pack those letters around with him. The girl can talk now. Not a whole lot, but enough to get backing from an outfit that isn’t going to scrap a million-dollar reputation because some cheap gambler wants to get smart… If your money says different, you’re going to get a jolt that’ll have you picking your eyeteeth out of your socks. You’re going to see the sweetest cover-up even Hollywood ever fixed.”

He paused, flashed a quick glance at the blond boy.
“Something else, Mardonne.
When you figure on gun play get yourself a loogan that knows what it’s all about. The gay caballero here forgot to thumb back his safety.”

Mardonne stood frozen. The blond boy’s eyes flinched down to his gun for a split second of time. Mallory jumped fast along the wall, and his Luger snapped into his hand. The blond boy’s face tensed, his gun crashed. Then the Luger cracked, and a slug went into the wall beside the blond boy’s gay felt hat. Henry faded down gracefully, squeezed lead again. The shot knocked Mallory back against the wall. His left arm went dead.

His lips writhed angrily. He steadied himself; the Luger talked twice, very rapidly.

The blond boy’s gun arm jerked up and the gun sailed against the wall high up. His eyes widened, his mouth came open in a yell of pain. Then he whirled, wrenched the door open and pitched straight out on the landing with a crash.

Light from the room streamed after him. Somebody shouted somewhere. A door banged. Mallory looked at Mardonne, saying evenly:

“Got me in the arm,
— !
I could have killed the — four times!”

Mardonne’s hand came up from the desk with a blued revolver in it. A bullet splashed into the floor at Mallory’s feet. Mardonne lurched drunkenly, threw the gun away like something red hot. His hands groped high in the air. He looked scared stiff.

Mallory said: “Get in front of me, big shot! I’m moving out of here.”

Mardonne came out from behind the desk. He moved jerkily, like a marionette. His eyes were as dead as stale oysters. Saliva drooled down his chin.

Something loomed in the doorway. Mallory heaved side-wise, firing blindly at the door. But the sound of the Luger was overborne by the terrific flat booming of a shotgun. Searing flame stabbed down Mallory’s right side. Mardonne got the rest of the load.

He plunged to the floor on his face, dead before he landed.

A sawed-off shotgun dumped itself in through the open door. A thick-bellied man in shirtsleeves eased himself down in the door-frame, clutching and rolling as he fell. A strangled sob came out of his mouth, and blood spread on the pleated front of a dress shirt.

Sudden noise flared out down below.
Shouting, running feet, a shrilling off-key laugh, a high sound that might have been a shriek.
Cars started outside, tires screeched on the driveway. The customers were getting away. A pane of glass went out somewhere. There was a loose clatter of running feet on a sidewalk.

Across the lighted patch of landing nothing moved. The blond boy groaned softly, out there on the floor, behind the dead man in the doorway.

Mallory plowed across the room, sank into the chair at the end of the desk. He wiped sweat from his eyes with the heel of his gun hand. He leaned his ribs against the desk, panting, watching the door.

His left arm was throbbing now, and his right leg felt like the plagues of Egypt. Blood ran down his sleeve inside, down on his hand, off the tips of two fingers.

After a while he looked away from the door, at the packet of notes lying on the desk under the lamp. Reaching across he pushed them into the open drawer with the muzzle of the Luger. Grinning with pain he leaned far enough over to pull the drawer shut. Then he opened and closed his eyes quickly, several times, squeezing them tight together, then snapping them open wide. That cleared his head a little. He drew the telephone towards him.

There was silence below stairs now. Mallory put the Luger down, lifted the phone off the prongs and put it down beside the Luger.

He said out loud: “Too bad, baby… Maybe I played it wrong after all… Maybe the louse hadn’t the guts to hurt you at that… well… there’s got to be talking done now.”

As he began to dial, the wail of a siren got louder coming up the long hill from Sherman…