The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (47 page)

“Shut up,” Marvin said.

His rosy plan didn’t look so good now. He was sore, and he was also uneasy. The girls were gone. With the guards and all he probably figured they hadn’t left the grounds but without the girls he wouldn’t get the money from Houston.

“I’d take it on the lam,” I repeated. Then I added, as an afterthought, “This place is filthy with telephones.”

He jumped. Then he jerked erect. “Dozen, you and Palo get busy and hunt those babes! Don’t stop until you find ’em. You, too, Dyer.”

Dyer didn’t move. “Look who’s giving orders,” he said. “I’m stayin’. This guy on the floor makes sense. I like to listen.”

Candy Chuck looked up, and if I had been Dyer, I wouldn’t have felt good.

“All right,” Candy Chuck said, “stay.”

Candy Chuck Marvin was big time. You couldn’t dodge that. He had been the brain behind many big jobs, and he had stayed in the clear a long time. Also, he had friends. Whit Dyer was merely a guy with a gat, a guy who would and could kill. And he was only about half smart. When Candy Chuck softened up, I knew that Dyer didn’t have long to live.

Candy Chuck Marvin had been a big operator around Chicago, St. Paul, and New York. He had connections. Back in the days when I was slinging leather, I’d seen a lot of him. From all I knew, I figured I was the only guy who ever failed to play ball with him and got away alive. He’d ordered me to throw a fight, and I hadn’t done it. Then again, I hadn’t been easy to find in those days.

Marvin got up and walked over to the fireplace. There was a little kindling there, and he arranged it on the andirons. Then he calmly broke up a chair and added it to the fuel. He lit a crumpled newspaper and stuck it under the wood. Then he picked up the poker and laid it in the fire. When he put the poker there, he looked at me and grinned.

Me, I was sweating. Not because it was hot, but because I was wondering how I’d take it. You may read about people being tortured, but you never know how you’ll react to getting your feet burned until it happens.

T
HE FIRE WAS
really heating things up when suddenly, I heard the door close, the sound of footsteps, and there was Hiesel, the runt lawyer. He looked at me, then at Marvin.

“Who’s this, Chuck?” he said.

“A nosy guy named Morgan. He got the girls out an’ hid ’em someplace.” He grinned. “I’m going to warm his feet until he talks.”

Hiesel’s smooth, polished face tightened. He looked down at me.

“This is the man they have the call out for, Chuck. A police call out for him. You’d better get rid of him.”

My eyes went to Hiesel. Get rid of me? Just like that? Brother, I said to myself, if I get out of this I’m going to come around and ask you about that!

“And Chuck—Tarrant Houston’s gone to work getting those bonds sold. He’s working fast, too. He’s afraid for the girls.”

“He should be,” Marvin answered and smiled. “We’ll take care of the girls as soon as he shows with the money. And him, too.”

He licked his lips. “That older girl, Eleanor. I’d like to talk with her, in private, before anything is done.”

Candy Chuck Marvin looked up. He laughed coarsely. “Talk? I see what you mean. I’d like a private talk with her myself.”

That poker was hot by now. Candy Chuck pulled it out of the fire and Ford Hiesel’s face turned slightly pale. He left the room and Candy Chuck laughed, and began untying my shoe.

“I wouldn’t do that,” I said. “I haven’t changed my socks since I started chasing you guys.”

“Smart guy, huh?”

Candy Chuck’s eyes were gleaming. He started to pull off my shoes when a calm, low voice interrupted.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

We both looked around. Eleanor Harley, her face a bit drawn, but as beautiful as that first day I’d seen her in the bar, was standing in the doorway. Candy Chuck lunged to his feet.

“Come here!” he demanded. But she turned suddenly and ducked out of sight. He ran after her.

It was my chance, and I took it. Kicking my tied feet around, I got the ropes that bound my ankles across the red-hot poker, then struggled to a sitting position and began working at my hands. The knots weren’t a good job, and lying there on the floor, I had managed to get them a bit looser.

That clothesline burned nicely, and I could hear Candy Chuck Marvin banging around in a room nearby when the first rope came apart.

I kicked and squirmed, getting the other ropes loose, then managed to struggle to my feet.

Forcing my wrists as low as I could get them, I backed my hips through the circle of my arms. Then falling on my back, I got my hands in front of me by pulling my knees against my chest and shoving my feet down through my arms. Then I went to work on the knots with my teeth.

Then I heard somebody coming and looked around to see Blubber Puss. He opened his mouth to yell and I dove at him, driving my head for his stomach. He no more than had his mouth open before I hit him head down and with everything I had behind it.

He went back through the door with an
oof,
hitting the floor hard. Still fighting those ropes, I kept moving. They came loose as I was rounding into the passage to the back of the house, but suddenly I got an idea and my gun, out. I raced for the library again.

Grabbing up a couple of carpets, I stuffed them onto the fire. They caught hold and began to burn. Then I took another carpet and, spilling a pitcher of water they’d had for mixing drinks over it, I put it on the fire. All that smoke would make people very, very curious.

Somewhere out in the back regions of the house, I heard a girl scream. I wheeled around, and saw Whit Dyer looking at me. He had a gun in his hands and you could see the killing lust in his eyes.

My gun was ready, and I’ve had lots of practice with it. Dyer jerked his up and I let go from where mine was, just squeezing the shot off. The sound of that .380 and his .45 made a concussion like a charge of dynamite in that closed-in room.

I heard his bullet hit the wall behind me and saw a queer look in his face. Then, looking at the spot over his belt buckle, I squeezed off the rest of the magazine. He grabbed his middle like he’d been eating green apples and went over on the carpet, and I went out the door and into the hall.

Somewhere outside, there was a crash and then a sound of shots. I didn’t know what it meant, but I was heading toward that scream I’d heard.

Candy Chuck Marvin had caught Eleanor in the kitchen. She was fighting, but there wasn’t much fight left in her. I grabbed Candy Chuck by the scruff of the neck and jerked him back. His gun was lying on the table and I caught it up and heaved it out the window, right through the glass.

Then I tossed my empty gun on the floor under the range. There was a wicked gleam in Candy Chuck’s eyes. He was panting and staring at me. He was bigger than me by twenty pounds and he’d been raised in a rough school.

He lunged, throwing a wallop that would have ripped my jaw off. But I slipped it and smashed one into his wind that jerked his mouth open. I hooked my left into his wind and he backed off. I followed him, stabbing a left into his mouth. He didn’t have blubber lips but they bled.

I hooked a short, sharp left to the eye, and smashed him back against the sink. He grabbed a pitcher and lunged for me, but I went under it and knocked it out of his hand.

Eleanor Harley was standing there, her dress torn, her eyes wide, staring at us. Then the door opened and Mooney stepped in, two cops right behind him, and Tarrant Houston following them.

Mooney took in the scene with one swift look. Then he leaned nonchalantly against the drain board.

“Don’t mind me,” he said. “Go right ahead.”

Candy Chuck Marvin caught me with a right that knocked me into the range. I weaved under a left and hooked both hands short and hard to the body, then I shoved him away and jabbed a left to his face. Again, and then again. Three more times I hit him with the left, keeping his head bobbing like a cork in a millstream, and then I pulled the trigger on my Sunday punch. It went right down the groove for home plate and exploded on his chin. His knees turned to rubber, then melted under him and he went down.

Me, I staggered back against the drain board and stood there, panting like a dowager at a Gregory Peck movie.

Mooney looked Candy Chuck Marvin over with professional interest, then glanced at me approvingly.

“Nice job,” he said. “I couldn’t do as good with a set of knucks and a razor. Is he who I think he is?”

“Yeah,” I said, “Candy Chuck Marvin, and this time you’ve got enough on him to hang him.”

Ford Hiesel shoved into the room. “Got them, did you?” he said. “Good work!”

Then he saw me, and his face turned sick. He started to back away and you could see the rat in him hunting a way out.

“This guy,” I said, “advised Candy Chuck to get rid of me, and told him it would be a good idea to get rid of the girls and Houston—to make a clean sweep!”

Eleanor lifted her head. “I heard him say it!” she put in. “We hid in the closet behind the mirror in the hall.”

Ford Hiesel started to protest, but there had been enough talk. I shoved him against the drain board, and when I was between him and the rest of the room, I whipped my right up into his solar plexus. The wind went out of him like a pricked balloon and he began gasping for breath. I turned back to the others, gestured at him.

“Asthma,” I said. “Bad, too.”

“What about the diamonds?” Mooney asked suddenly. “Why didn’t they fence them?”

Eleanor turned toward the detective.

“They talked about it,” she said. “But the only man who would have handled the diamonds here was picked up by the police, and Marvin was hoping he could arrange things, meanwhile, to keep them for himself.”

Then I told her about the pin, and she came over to me as Mooney commented, “I know about that. A clerk named Davis, at the jewelry store, got in touch with me when they checked and found out the pin belonged to Eleanor Harley. That and the smoke tipped us off to this place.”

She was looking up at me with those eyes, almost too beautiful to believe.

“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done,” she said.

“Sure you can,” I said, grinning. “Let’s go down to the Casino and talk to a couple of bartenders while we have some drinks. Then, I can tell you all about it.”

Ain’t I the cad, though?

With Death in His Corner

T
he ghost of a mustache haunted his upper lip, and soft blond hair rolled back from a high white brow in a delicately artificial wave. He walked toward me with a quick, pleased smile. “A table, sir? Right this way.”

There was a small half-circle bar at one end of the place and a square of dance floor about the size of two army blankets.

On a dais about two feet above the dance floor a lackadaisical orchestra played desultory music. Three women and two men sat at the bar and several of the tables were occupied. From the way the three women turned their heads to look, I knew all were hoping for a pickup. I wasn’t.

A popeyed waiter in a too-tight tux bustled over, polishing a small tray suggestively. Ordering a bourbon and soda, I asked, “Do you know Rocky Garzo?”

The question stopped him, and he turned his head as if he were afraid of what he would see.

“I don’t know him,” he said hastily. “I never heard of the guy.”

He was gone toward the bar before I could ask anything further, but he knew something was wrong. One look at his face had been enough. The man was scared.

He must have tipped a sign to the tall headwaiter, because when he returned with my drink, the blond guy was with him.

“You were asking for someone?” There was a slight edge to his voice, and the welcome sign was gone from his eyes. “What was the name again?”

“Garzo,” I said, “Rocky Garzo. He used to be a fighter.”

“I don’t believe I know him,” he replied. “I don’t meet many fighters.”

“Possibly not, but it is odd you haven’t met him. He used to work here.”

“Here?” His voice shrilled a little, then steadied down. “You’re mistaken, I believe. He did not work here.”

“Apparently, you and Social Security don’t agree,” I commented. “They assured me he worked here, at least until a day or so ago.”

He did not like that, and he did not like me. “Well”—his tone showed his impatience—“I can’t keep up with all the help. I hope you find him.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I will.”

He could not get away fast enough, seeming to wish as much distance between us as possible. All Rocky’s letter had said was that he was in trouble and needed help, and Rocky was not one to ask for help unless he needed it desperately.

It began to look as if my hunch was right. I am not one to be irritated by small things, but I was beginning to get annoyed. All I wanted was to know where Rocky was and what was wrong, if anything.

Rocky Garzo was a boy who had been around. A quiet Italian from the wrong side of the tracks, but a simple-hearted, friendly sort who could really fight. He wanted no trouble with anyone and, except as a youngster, never had a fight in his life he didn’t get paid for. I’ve heard men call him everything they could think of, and he would just walk away. But when the chips were down, Rocky could really throw them.

Each of us had acted as second to the other, had been in the others’ corner many times.

Then fleshpots got him, and the selective service system got me. He was a kid who never had anything until he got into big money in the fight game, and he liked the good food, flashy women, and clothes. His money just sort of dribbled away, and the easy life softened him up. Then the boys began to tag him with the hard ones. It was Jimmy Hartman who wound him up with the flashiest right hand on the Coast.

He quit then. He went to waiting on tables. He was a fast-moving, deft-handed man with an easy smile. He quit drinking, and the result was he was doing all right until something went wrong here at the Crystal Palace.

There was a pretty girl sitting at the table next to mine. She was with a bald-headed guy who was well along in his cups. She was young and shaped to be annoyed, if you get what I mean. Beyond that, I hadn’t noticed too much about her.

All of a sudden, she was talking to me. She was talking without turning her head. “You’d better take it out of here,” she said. “These boys play rough, even for you, Kip Morgan!”

“What’s the catch?” I didn’t turn my head, either. “Can’t a guy even ask for his friends?”

“Not that one. He’s hotter than a firecracker, and I don’t mean with the law. Meet me at the Silver Plate in a half hour or so and I’ll ditch this dope and tell you about it.”

This place was not getting me anywhere. The waiter was pointedly ignoring my empty glass, and in such places as this they usually take it out of your hand before you can put it down. I took a gander at Algy or whatever his name was and saw him talking with a hefty lad at the door. This character had bouncer written all over him and looked like a moment of fun. I hadn’t bounced a bouncer in some time.

As I passed them, I grinned at Algy. “I’ll be back,” I said.

This was the cue the bouncer needed. He walked over, menace in his every move. “You’ve been here too long an’ too much.” He made his voice ugly. “Get out an’ stay out!”

“Well, I’ll be swiped by a truck!” I said. “Pete Farber!”

“Huh?” He blinked at me. “Who are you, huh?”

“Why, Pete! You mean you don’t remember? Of course, our acquaintance was brief, and you couldn’t see very well through all that blood. Naturally, you didn’t see me later because I was home in bed before they brought you out of it.”

“Huh?” Then awareness came, and his eyes hardened but grew wary also. He did have a memory, after all. “Kip Morgan!” he said. “Sure, it’s Kip Morgan.”

“Right, and if you’ll recall, Rocky Garzo and I teamed up in the old days. He was going down, and I was coming up, but we were pals. Well, I’m a man who remembers his friends, and I’m getting curious about this stalling I am getting.”

“Play it smart,” Farber said, “and get out while you’re all in one piece. This is too big for you. Also”—he moved closer—“I got no reason to like you. I’d as soon bust you as not.”

That made me smile. “Pete, what makes you think you could do something now you couldn’t do six years ago? If you want a repeat on that job at the Olympic, just start something.”

Pete Farber’s next remark stopped me cold.

“You beat me,” he said, “but you dropped a duke to Ben Altman. Well, you just forget Garzo, because Altman’s still a winner.”

When I got outside that one puzzled me. What was the connection between Ben Altman, formerly a top-ranking light heavyweight, and Garzo?

Then I began to remember a few things I’d forgotten. There had been some shakeups in the mobs, and Altman, a boy from the old Albina section of Portland, had suddenly emerged on top. He was now a big wheel.

So Rocky didn’t work here anymore. I climbed into a cab and gave the cabbie the address of Rocky’s rooming house. He turned his head for a second look. “Chum,” he said. “I’d not go down there dressed like you are. That’s a rough neighborhood.”

“Let’s roll, Ajax. Anybody who shakes me down is entitled to what he gets.”

T
HE ROOMING HOUSE
was a decrepit frame building of two rickety stories. The number showed above a doorway that opened on a dark, dank-looking stairway. The place smelled of ancient meals, sweaty clothing, and the dampness of age. Hesitating a moment, I struck a match to see the steps, then felt my way up to the second floor of this termite heaven.

At the top of the stairs, a door stood partly open, and I had the feeling of somebody watching.

“I’m looking for Rocky Garzo,” I said.

“Don’t know him.” It was a woman’s husky voice.

“Used to be a fighter,” I explained. “A flat nose and a tin ear.”

“Oh, him. End of the hall. He came in about an hour ago.”

My second match had flickered out, so I struck another and went down the hall, my footsteps echoing in the emptiness. The walls were discolored by dampness and ancient stains, no doubt left by the first settler.

A door at the end of the hall stared blankly back at me. My fist lifted, and my knuckles rapped softly. Suddenly, I had that strange and lonely feeling of one who raps on the door of an empty house. My hand dropped to the knob, and the door protested faintly as I pushed it open. A slight grayness from a dusty, long-unwashed window showed a figure on the bed.

“Rocky?” I spoke softly, but when there was no reply, I reached for the light switch. The light flashed on, and I blinked. I needed no second look to know that Rocky Garzo had heard his last bell, and from the look of the room he had gone out fighting.

He was lying on his right cheek and stomach and there was a knife in his back, buried to the hilt. It was low down on the left side and seemed to have an upward inclination.

The bedding was mussed, and a chair was tipped on its side. A broken cup lay on the floor. Stepping over the cup I picked up his hand. It wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold, either.

His knuckles were skinned.

“Anything wrong, mister?” It was the woman from down the hall. She was behind me in the light of the door, a faded blonde who had lost the battle with graying hair. Her face was puffed from too much drinking, and only her eyes held the memory of what her beauty must have been.

She was sober now, and she clutched a faded negligee about her.

“Yeah,” I said, and something of my feelings must have been in my voice, for quick sympathy showed in her eyes. “He’s dead. He’s been killed.”

She neither gasped nor cried out. She was beyond that. Murder was not new to her, nor death of any kind. “It’s too bad,” she spoke softly. “He was a good guy.”

My eyes swept the room, and I could feel that old hard anger coming up inside me. There had to have been two men. No man fighting with Rocky ever got behind him. He must have been slugging one when the other stepped in from the hall with the shiv.

“You’d better leave, mister. No use to get mixed up in this.”

“No, I’m not getting out. Maybe he wasn’t in the chips. Maybe he wasn’t strictly class, but he was my friend.”

She was uneasy. “You’d better go. This is too big for you.”

“You know something about this?”

“I don’t know anything. I never know anything.”

“Look”—I kept my voice gentle—“You’re regular. I saw it in your eyes; you’re the McCoy.” I waved a hand at Rock. “He was one of the good ones. It isn’t right for him to go out this way.”

She shook her head. “I’m not talking.”

“All right. You call the cops. I’ll look around.”

She went away, and I heard her dialing the phone. I looked down at Rocky. He was a good Italian boy, that one. He came from the wrong side of the tracks, but he never let it start him down the wrong street. He could throw a wicked right hand. And he liked his spaghetti.

“All right, pal,” I said quietly, “I’m still in your corner.”

Without touching anything, I looked around, taking in the scene. One hood must have circled to get Rock’s back to the door where the other one was waiting.

When you knew about fights, in and out of the ring, and when you knew about killings, it wasn’t hard to picture. Rocky had come in, taken off his shirt, and the door opened. He turned, and the guy circled away from him. Rocky had moved in, slugging. Then the shiv in the back.

But those knuckles.

“You put your mark on him. I’ll be looking for a hood with a busted face. The left side for sure, maybe the right, too.”

The woman came back to the room and stood in the door. “I’ve been trying to place you. You used to work out at the Main Street Gym. Rocky talked about you. He figured Kip Morgan was the greatest guy on earth.”

She looked down, twisting her fingers. Her hands once had been beautiful.

“Listen,” she pleaded. “I’ve had so much trouble. I just can’t take any more. I’m scared now, scared to death. Don’t tell anybody, not even the police, but there were two of them. Both were well dressed. One was tall with broad shoulders; the other was heavy, much heavier than you.”

The siren sounded, then whined away and died at the foot of the steps. Detective Lieutenant Mooney was the first one into the room. “Hi,” he said, then looked again. “You, is it? Who’s dead?”

“Rocky Garzo. He was a fighter.”

“I know he was a fighter. I get out nights myself. Who did it? You?”

“He was my friend. I came out from New York to see him.”

They started to give the room the business, and they knew their job, so I just stepped into the hall and kept out of the way. What little I had I gave to Mooney while they were shaking the place down.

“If you want me,” I said, “I’ll be at the Plaza.”

“Go ahead, but don’t leave town.”

A glance at my watch told me it was only forty minutes since I’d left the Crystal Palace, and I was ten minutes late for my date. The cab took ten more getting me there, but the babe was patient. She was sitting over coffee and three cigarette stubs.

“They called them coffin nails when I was a kid,” I told her.

She had a pretty smile. “I thought you had decided not to come. That man I was with was harder to shake than the seven-year itch.”

“If you can help me,” I said, “it would mean a lot. Garzo was my pal.”

“Sure, I know. I’m Mildred Casey, remember? I lived down the block from Rock’s old man. You two used to fix my bike.”

That made me look again. Blue eyes, the ghosts of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and shabby clothes. An effort to be lively with nothing much to be lively or happy about, but great courage. She still had that, a fine sort of pride. There was hurt in her eyes where her heart showed.