Red Wind (8 page)

II

MALLORY came out from under the canopy with his soft hat under his arm. The doorman looked at him inquiringly. He shook his head and walked a little way down the curving sidewalk that bordered the semicircular private driveway. He stood at the edge of the curbing, in the darkness, thinking hard. After a little while an Isotta-Fraschini went by him slowly.

It was an open phaeton, huge even for the calculated swank of Hollywood. It glittered like a Ziegfield chorus as it passed the entrance lights, then it was all dull gray and silver. A liveried chauffeur sat behind the wheel as stiff as a poker, with a peaked cap cocked rakishly over one eye. Rhonda Farr sat in the back seat, under the half-deck, with the rigid stillness of a wax figure.

The car slid soundlessly down the driveway, passed between a
couple
of squat stone pillars and was lost among the lights of the boulevard. Mallory put on his hat absently.

Something stirred in the darkness behind him, between tall Italian cypresses. He swung around, looked at faint light on a gun barrel.

The man who held the gun was very big and broad. He had a shapeless felt hat on the back of his head, and an indistinct overcoat hung away from his stomach. Dim light from a high-up, narrow window outlined bushy eyebrows, a hooked nose. There was another man behind him.

He said: “This is a gun, buddy. It goes boom-boom, and guys fall down. Want to try it?”

Mallory looked at him emptily, and said: “Grow up, flattie! What’s the act?”

The big man laughed. His laughter had a dull sound, like the sea breaking on rocks in a fog. He said with heavy sarcasm:

“Bright boy has us spotted, Jim. One of us must look like a cop.” He eyed Mallory, and added: “Saw you pull a rod on a little guy inside. Was that nice?”

Mallory tossed his cigarette away, watched it arc through the darkness. He said carefully:

“Would twenty bucks make you see it some other way?”

“Not tonight, mister.
Most any other night, but not tonight.”

“A C note?”

“Not even that, mister.”

“That,” Mallory said gravely, “must be damn’ tough.”

The big man laughed again, came a little closer. The man behind him lurched out of the shadows and planted a soft fattish hand on Mallory’s shoulder. Mallory slid sidewise, without moving his feet. The hand fell off. He said:

“Keep your paws off me, gumshoe!”

The other man made a snarling sound. Something swished through the air. Something hit Mallory very hard behind his left ear. He went to his knees. He kneeled swaying for a moment, shaking his head violently. His eyes cleared. He could see the lozenge design in the sidewalk. He got to his feet again rather slowly.

He looked at the man who had blackjacked him and cursed him in a thick dull voice, with a concentration of ferocity that set the man back on his heels with his slack mouth working like melting rubber.

The big man said: “Damn your soul, Jim! What in hell’d you do that for?”

The man called Jim put his soft fat hand to his mouth and gnawed at it. He shuffled the blackjack into the side pocket of his coat.

“Forget it!” he said. “Let’s take the — and get on with it. I need a drink.”

He plunged down the walk. Mallory turned slowly, followed him with his eyes, rubbing the side of his head. The big man moved his gun in a business-like way and said:

“Walk, buddy.
We’re takin’ a little ride in the moonlight.”

Mallory walked. The big man fell in beside him. The man called Jim fell in on the other side. He hit himself hard in the pit of the stomach, said:

“I need a drink, Mac. I’ve got the jumps.”

The big man said peacefully: “Who don’t, you poor egg?”

They came to a touring car that was double-parked near the squat pillars at the edge of the boulevard. The man who had hit Mallory got in behind the wheel. The big man prodded Mallory into the back seat and got in beside him. He held his gun across his big thigh, tilted his hat a little further back, and got out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He lit one carefully, with his left hand.

The car went out into the sea of lights, rolled east a short way, then turned south down the long slope. The lights of the city were an endless glittering sheet. Neon signs glowed and flashed. The languid ray of a searchlight prodded about among high faint clouds.

“It’s like this,” the big man said, blowing smoke from his wide nostrils. “We got you spotted. You were tryin’ to peddle some phony letters to the Farr twist.”

Mallory laughed shortly, mirthlessly. He said: “You flatties give me an ache.”

The big man appeared to think it over, staring in front of him. Passing electroliers threw quick waves of light across his broad face. After a while he said:

“You’re the guy all right. We got to know these things in our business.”

Mallory’s eyes narrowed in the darkness. His lips smiled. He said: “What business, copper?”

The big man opened his mouth wide, shut it with a click. He said:

“Maybe you better talk, bright boy. Now would be a hell of a good time. Jim and
me
ain’t tough to get on with, but we got friends who ain’t so dainty.”

Mallory said: “What would I talk about, Lieutenant?”

The big man shook with silent laughter, made no answer. The car went past the oil well that stands in the middle of La Cienega Boulevard, then turned off on to a quiet street fringed with palm trees. It stopped half way down the block, in front of an empty lot. Jim cut the motor and the lights. Then he got a flat bottle out of the door-pocket and held it to his mouth, sighed deeply, passed the bottle over his shoulder.

The big man took a drink, waved the bottle, said:

“We got to wait here for a friend. Let’s talk. My name’s Macdonald—detective bureau. You
was
tryin’ to shake the Fair girl down. Then her protection stepped in front of her. You bopped him. That was nice routine and we liked it. But we didn’t like the other part.”

Jim reached back for the whiskey bottle, took another drink,
sniffed
at the neck, said: “This liquor is lousy.”

Macdonald went on: “We
was
stashed out for you. But we don’t figure your play out in the open like that. It
don’t
listen.”

Mallory leaned an arm on the side of the car, and looked out and up at the calm, blue, star-spattered sky. He said:

“You know too much, copper. And you didn’t get your dope from Miss Farr. No screen star would go to the police on a matter of blackmail.”

Macdonald jerked his big head around. His eyes gleamed faintly in the dark interior of the car.

“We didn’t say how we got our dope, bright boy. So you
was
tryin’ to shake her down, huh?”

Mallory said gravely: “Miss Farr is an old friend of mine. Somebody is trying to blackmail her, but not me. I just have a hunch.”

Macdonald said swiftly: “What the wop pull a gun on you for?”

“He didn’t like me,” Mallory said in a bored voice. “I was mean to him.”

Macdonald said: “Horse-feathers!” He rumbled angrily. The man in the front seat said: “Smack him in the kisser, Mac. Make the — like it!”

Mallory stretched his arms downward, twisting his shoulders like a man cramped from sitting. He felt the bulge of his Luger under his left arm. He said slowly, wearily:

“You said I was trying to peddle some phony letters. What makes you think the letters would be phony?”

Macdonald said softly: “Maybe we know where the right ones are.”

Mallory drawled: “That’s what I thought, copper,” and laughed.

Macdonald moved suddenly, jerked his balled fist up, hit him in the face, but not very hard. Mallory laughed again,
then
he touched the bruised place behind his ear with careful fingers.

“That went home, didn’t it?” he said.

Macdonald swore dully. “Maybe you’re just a bit too damn’ smart, bright boy. I guess we’ll find out after a while.”

He fell silent. The man in the front seat took off his hat and scratched at a mat of gray hair. Staccato horn blasts came from the boulevard a half block away. Headlights streamed past the end of the street.
After a time a pair of them swung around in a wide curve, speared white beams along below the palm trees.
A dark bulk drifted down the half block, slid to the curb in front of the touring car. The lights went off.

A man got out and walked back. Macdonald said: “Hi, Slippy. How’d it go?”

The man was a tall thin figure with a shadowy face under a pulled-down cap. He lisped a little when he spoke. He said:

“Nothin’ to it.
Nobody got mad.”

“Okey,” Macdonald grunted. “Ditch the hot one and drive this heap.”

Jim got into the back of the touring car and sat on Mallory’s left, digging a hard elbow into him. The lanky man slid under the wheel, started the motor, and drove back to La Cienega, then south to Wilshire, then west again. He drove fast and roughly.

They went casually through a red light, passed a big movie palace with most of its lights out and its glass cashier’s cage empty; then through Beverly Hills, over interurban tracks. The exhaust got louder on a long hill with high, banks paralleling the road. Macdonald spoke suddenly:

“Hell, Jim, I forgot to frisk this baby. Hold the gun a minute.”

He leaned in front of Mallory, close to him, blowing whiskey breath in his face. A big hand went over his pockets, down inside his coat around the hips, up under his left arm. It stopped there a moment, against the Luger in the shoulder-holster. It went on to the other side, went away altogether.

“Okey, Jim. No gun on bright boy.”

A sharp light of wonder winked into being deep in Mallory’s brain. His eyebrows drew together. His mouth felt dry.

“Mind if I light up a cigarette?” he asked, after a pause.

Macdonald said with mock politeness: “Now why would we mind a little thing like that, sweetheart?”

III

THE apartment house stood on a hill above Westward Village, and was new and rather cheap-looking. Macdonald and Mallory and Jim got out in front of it, and the touring car went on around the corner, disappeared.

The three men went through a quiet lobby past a switchboard where no one sat at the moment, up to the seventh floor in the automatic elevator. They went along a corridor, stopped before a door. Macdonald took a loose key out of his pocket, unlocked the door. They went in.

It was a very new room, very bright, very foul with cigarette smoke. The furniture was upholstered in loud
colors,
the carpet was a mess of fat green and yellow lozenges. There was a mantel with bottles on it.

Two men sat at an octagonal table with tall glasses at their elbows. One had red hair, very dark eyebrows, and a dead white face with deep-set dark eyes. The other one had a ludicrous big bulbous nose, no eyebrows at all, hair the color of the inside of a sardine can. This one put some cards down slowly and came across the room with a wide smile. He had a loose, good-natured mouth, an amiable expression.

“Have any trouble, Mac?” he said.

Macdonald rubbed his chin, shook his head sourly. He looked at the man with the nose as if he hated him. The man with the nose went on smiling. He said:

“Frisk him?”

Macdonald twisted his mouth to a thick sneer and stalked across the room to the mantel and the bottles. He said in a nasty tone:

“Bright boy don’t pack a gun. He works with his head. He’s smart.”

He re-crossed the room suddenly and smacked the back of his rough hand across Mallory’s mouth. Mallory smiled thinly, did not stir. He stood in front of a big bile-colored davenport spotted with angry-looking red squares. His hands hung down at his sides, and cigarette smoke drifted up from between his fingers to join the haze that already blanketed the rough, arched ceiling.

“Keep your pants on, Mac,” the man with the nose said. “You’ve done your act. You and Jim check out now. Oil the wheels and check out.”

Macdonald snarled: “Who you givin’ orders to big shot? I’m stickin’ around till this chiseler gets what’s coming to him, Costello.”

The man called Costello shrugged his shoulders briefly. The red-haired man at the table turned a little in his chair and looked at Mallory with the impersonal air of a collector studying an impaled beetle. Then he took a cigarette out of a neat black case and lit it carefully with
a gold
lighter.

Macdonald went back to the mantel, poured some whiskey out of a square bottle into a glass, and drank it raw. He leaned, scowling, with his back to the mantel.

Costello stood in front of Mallory, cracking the joints of long, bony fingers.

He said: “Where do you come from?”

Mallory looked at him dreamily and put his cigarette in his mouth. “McNeil’s Island,” he said with vague amusement.

“How long since?”

“Ten days.”

“What were you in for?”

“Forgery.”
Mallory gave the information in a soft, pleased voice.

“Been here before?”

Mallory said: “I was born here. Didn’t you know?”

Costello’s voice was gentle, almost soothing. “No-o, I didn’t know that,” he said. “What did you come for—ten days ago?”

Macdonald heaved across the room again, swinging his thick arms. He slapped Mallory across the mouth a second time, leaning past Costello’s shoulder to do it. A red mark showed on Mallory’s face. He shook his head back and forth. Dull fire was in his eyes.

“Jeeze, Costello, this crumb ain’t from McNeil. He’s ribbin’ you.” His voice blared. “Bright boy’s just a cheap chiseler from Brooklyn or K. C.—one of those hot towns where the cops are all cripples.”

Costello put a hand up and pushed gently at Macdonald’s shoulder. He said: “You’re not needed in this, Mac,” in a flat, toneless voice.

Macdonald balled his fist angrily. Then he laughed, lunged forward and ground his heel on Mallory’s foot. Mallory said:
“ —
damn!” and sat down hard on the davenport.

The air in the room was drained of oxygen. Windows were in one wall only, and heavy net curtains hung straight and still across them. Mallory got out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead, patted his lips.

Costello said: “You and Jim check out, Mac,” in the same flat voice.

Macdonald lowered his head, stared at him steadily through a fringe of eyebrow. His face was shiny with sweat. He had not taken his shabby, rumpled overcoat off. Costello didn’t even turn his head. After a moment Macdonald barged back to the mantel, elbowed the gray-haired cop out of the way and grabbed at the square bottle of Scotch.

“Call the boss, Costello,” he blared over his shoulder. “You ain’t got the brains for this deal. For — sake
do
something besides talk!” He turned a little towards Jim, thumped him on the back,
said
sneeringly: “Did you want just one more drink, copper?”

“What did you come here for?” Costello asked Mallory again.

“Looking for a connection.”
Mallory stared up at him lazily. The fire had died out of his eyes.

“Funny way you went about it, boy.”

Mallory shrugged. “I thought if I made a play I might get in touch with the right people.”

“Maybe you made the wrong kind of play,” Costello said quietly. He closed his eyes and rubbed his nose with a thumbnail. “These things are hard to figure sometimes.”

Macdonald’s harsh voice boomed across the close room. “Bright boy don’t make mistakes, mister. Not with his brains.”

Costello opened his eyes and glanced back over his shoulder at the red-haired man. The red-haired man swiveled loosely in his chair. His right hand lay along his leg, slack, half closed. Costello turned the other way, looked straight at Macdonald.

“Move out!” he snapped coldly. “Move out now. You’re drunk, and I’m not arguing with you.”

Macdonald ground his shoulders against the mantel and put his hands in the side pockets of his suit coat. His hat hung formless and crumpled on the back of his big, square head. Jim, the gray-haired cop, moved a little away from him, stared at him strainedly, his mouth working.

“Call the boss, Costello!” Macdonald shouted. “You ain’t givin’ me orders. I don’t like you well enough to take ’em.”

Costello hesitated,
then
moved across to the telephone. His eyes stared at a spot high up on the wall. He lifted the instrument off the prongs and dialed with his back to Macdonald. Then he leaned against the wall, smiling thinly at Mallory over the cup.
Waiting.

“Hello… yes… Costello. Everything’s oke except Mac’s loaded. He’s pretty hostile… won’t move out. Don’t know yet… some out-of-town boy.
Okey.”

Macdonald made a motion, said: “Hold it…”

Costello smiled and put the phone aside without haste. Macdonald’s eyes gleamed at him with a greenish fire. He spit on the carpet, in the corner between a chair and the wall. He said:

“That’s lousy.
Lousy.
You can’t dial Montrose from here.” Costello moved his hands vaguely. The red-haired man got to his feet. He moved away from the table and stood laxly, tilting his head back so that the smoke from his cigarette
rose
clear of his eyes.

Macdonald rocked angrily on his heels. His jawbone was a hard white line against his flushed face. His eyes had a deep, hard glitter.

“I guess we’ll play it this way,” he stated. He took his hands out of his pockets in a casual manner, and his blued service revolver moved in a tight, businesslike arc.

Costello looked at the red-haired man and said: “Take him, Andy.”

The red-haired man stiffened, spit his cigarette straight out from between his pale lips, flashed a hand up like lightning.

Mallory said: “Not fast enough. Look at this one.”

He had moved so quickly and so little that he had not seemed to move at all. He leaned forward a little on the davenport. The long black Luger lined itself evenly on the red-haired man’s belly.

The red-haired man’s hand came down slowly from his lapel, empty. The room was very quiet. Costello looked once at Macdonald with infinite disgust,
then
he put his hands out in front of him, palms up, and looked down at them with a blank smile.

Macdonald spoke slowly, bitterly. “The kidnapping is one too many for me, Costello. I don’t want any part of it. I’m takin’ a powder from this toy mob. I took a chance that bright boy might side me.”

Mallory stood up and moved sidewise towards the red-haired man.
When he had gone about half the distance the gray-haired cop, Jim, let out a strangled sort of yell and jumped for Macdonald, clawing at his pocket.
Macdonald looked at him with quick surprise. He put his big left hand out and grabbed both lapels of Jim’s overcoat tight together, high up. Jim flailed at him with both
fists,
hit him in the face twice. Macdonald drew his lips back over his teeth. Calling to Mallory, “Watch those birds,” he very calmly laid his gun down on the mantel, reached down into the pocket of Jim’s coat and took out the woven leather blackjack. He said:

“You’re a louse, Jim. You always were a louse.”

He said it rather thoughtfully, without rancor. Then he swung the blackjack and hit the gray-haired man on the side of the head. The gray-haired man sagged slowly to his knees. He clawed freely at the skirts of Macdonald’s coat. Macdonald stooped over and hit him again with the blackjack, in the same place, very hard.

Jim crumpled down sidewise and lay on the floor with his hat off and his mouth open. Macdonald swung the blackjack slowly from side to side. A drop of sweat ran down the side of his nose.

Costello said: “Rough boy, ain’t you, Mac?” He said it dully, absently, as though he had very little interest in what went on.

Mallory went on towards the red-haired man. When he was behind him he said:

“Put the hands way up, wiper.”

When the red-haired man had done this, Mallory put his free hand over his shoulder, down inside his coat. He jerked a gun loose from a shoulder-holster and dropped it on the floor behind him. He felt the other side, patted pockets. He stepped back and circled to Costello. Costello had no gun.

Mallory went to the other side of Macdonald, stood where everyone in the room was in front of him. He said:

“Who’s kidnaped?”

Macdonald picked up his gun and glass of whiskey. “The Fair girl,” he said. “They got her on her way home, I guess. It was planned when they knew from the wop bodyguard about the date at the
Bolivar.
I don’t know where they took her.”

Mallory planted his feet wide apart and wrinkled his nose. He held his Luger easily, with a slack wrist. He said:

“What does your little act mean?”

Macdonald said grimly: “Tell me about yours. I gave you a break.”

Mallory nodded, said: “Sure—for your own reasons… I was hired to look for some letters that belong to Rhonda Farr.” He looked at Costello. Costello showed no emotion.

Macdonald said: “Okey by me. I thought it was some kind of a plant. That’s why I took the chance. Me, I want an out from this connection, that’s all.” He waved his hand around to take in the room and everything in it.

Mallory picked up a glass, looked into it to see if it was clean, then poured a little Scotch into it and drank it in sips, rolling his tongue around in his mouth.

“Let’s talk about the kidnapping,” he said. “Who was
Costello phoning to?”

“Atkinson.
Big Hollywood lawyer.
Front for the boys. He’s the Farr girl’s lawyer, too. Nice guy, Atkinson.
A louse.”

“He in on the kidnaping?”

Macdonald laughed and said: “Sure.”

Mallory shrugged, said: “It seems like a dumb trick—for him.”

He went past Macdonald, along the wall to where Costello stood. He stuck the muzzle of the Luger against Costello’s chin, pushed his head back against the rough plaster.

“Costello’s a nice old boy,” he said thoughtfully. “He wouldn’t kidnap a girl. Would you, Costello? A little quiet extortion maybe, but nothing rough. That right, Costello?”

Costello’s eyes went blank. He swallowed. He said between his teeth: “Can it. You’re not funny.”

Mallory said: “It gets funnier as it goes on. But perhaps you don’t know it all.”

He lifted the Luger and drew the muzzle down the side of Costello’s big nose, hard. It left a white mark that turned to a red weal. Costello looked a little worried.

Macdonald finished pushing a nearly full bottle of Scotch into his overcoat pocket, and said:

“Let me work on the
— !”

Mallory shook his head gravely from side to side, looking at Costello.

“Too noisy.
You know how these places are built. Atkinson is the boy to see. Always see the head man—if you can get to him.”

Jim opened his eyes, flapped his hands on the floor, tried to get up. Macdonald lifted a large foot and planted it carelessly in the gray-haired man’s face. Jim lay down again. His face was a muddy gray color.

Mallory glanced at the red-haired man and went over to the telephone stand. He lifted the instrument down and dialed a number awkwardly, with his left hand.

He said: “I’m calling the man who hired me… He has a big fast car… We’ll put these boys in soak for a while.”