The Paul Cain Omnibus (13 page)

Then, when Healey came down to my room, Raines had gone down and planted across the street in case Healey tried to powder.

Raines hadn’t been there five minutes before Mrs Healey and a man rolled up in the blue Chrysler. Raines recognized Mrs Healey because she’d spotted Healey with Miss Mackay and Raines in a cabaret in Chicago once and crowned Miss Mackay with a beer bottle. It seems Mrs Healey was a nice quiet girl.

They parked in front of the hotel and the man went in a minute, probably to buy a cigar and get a peek at the register. Then he came out and talked to Mrs Healey a little while and went back in the little alleyway that led to the side door. He was only there a minute; he probably found out that it was practical to go into the hotel that way and came back and told her.

Along about that time in Raines’ yarn I woke up to the fact that he was referring to the man who was with Mrs Healey as “this guy.” I opened my eyes and looked at him and he was looking at Gard.

Gard had stayed in the car while Mrs Healey went back through the alleyway and into the hotel. After a couple minutes he got nervous and got out and walked up the street a little ways, and Raines went across the street and went upstairs to find out what it was all about. That must have been about the time I was checking out.

Gard must have been coming back down the other side of the street and he saw me come out and finagle with his car and get into mine, and he stayed away until hell started popping upstairs and I went into the hotel.

Raines stopped a minute. I got up and went over and rolled Gard over on his back. He groaned and opened his eyes and blinked up at me and then he sat up slowly and leaned against the wall.

Raines said Mrs Healey must have tried Healey’s door and then waited till Healey came up the front stairway after he left me, and she ducked around a corner and watched Healey go into Mackay’s room. By that time Raines was at the top of the back stairway and he watched Mrs Healey take a gun out of her bag and go down and listen at Miss Mackay’s door. When Healey opened the door after whittling Mackay, she backed him into the room and closed the door. Raines said she probably told him a few pertinent truths about himself and relieved him of what was left of the hundred and fifty and then opened him up with the .38.

It was a swell spot for her, with the Mackay gal there with a knife in her heart. Raines said he figured she’d intended to rub Healey from the start, before he could divorce her—Healey had said she’d sworn to kill him, before he left Chicago. A nice quiet girl—Mrs Healey. A lady.

She’d dodged Raines on the stairs and he’d chased her down to the car, but by that time Gard was back in the car with the engine running and they’d shoved off fast. Then Raines had come back up with the sheriff and his gang to look things over. That’s where I’d seen him.

He’d taken the midnight train for LA and it had taken him all day Tuesday to locate Mrs Healey. He’d been putting the screws on her and Gard for a split of the important money and Gard had gone into a wrestling number with him just before I arrived.

By the time Raines had got all that out of his system Gard was sitting up straight with his mouth open and his hands moving around fast and that dumb, thoughtful look on his face as if he wanted to say something. When Raines stopped to breathe, Gard said that the lady had talked him into driving her up to Caliente because she said she was too nervous to wait for Healey in LA—she said she had to see Healey and try to make their scrap up right away, or she’d have a nervous breakdown or something and Gard—the big chump—fell for it.

He said he was the most surprised man in the world when the shooting started, and that when she came galloping down and they scrammed for LA she’d told him that she’d walked in on Mackay ventilating Healey, just like the sheriff said, and that Mackay had shot at her as she ran away. Gard had fallen for that, too. She had the poor sap hypnotized.

Gard knew I’d been up at Caliente, of course—he’d seen me; so when I walked into his place in the morning he’d figured I had some kind of slant on what it was all about and he’d taken me over to her place so they could put on their “comfort her in her bereavement” turn for my benefit. Then, Tuesday night, when I’d walked in on the shakedown and knocked Raines out, Gard, who had had a load of what Raines had to say to Mrs Healey and who half believed it, calculated that his best play was to take the air with her. He was too much mixed up in it to beat an accessory rap anyway, so he’d sapped me with a bookend and they’d tied Raines, who was coming to, and he’d helped her pack her things. They were going to light out for New Zealand or some quiet place like that; only she’d sneaked up behind him and smacked him down at the last minute. A lovely lady.

We all stopped talking about that time—Raines and Gard and me—and looked at one another.

Gard laughed. He squinted at me and said: “You looked silly when I clipped you with the bookend!”

Raines said: “You didn’t look particularly intelligent when our girl-friend let you have it.”

Gard snickered on the wrong side of his face and got up and went out into the kitchen for a drink of water. He found a bottle out there—almost a full fifth of White Horse. He brought it in, I untied Raines and we all had a snort.

I was thinking about what suckers we’d been. I’d popped Raines and Gard had popped me and Mrs Healey had popped Gard—all of us. One, two, three. Tinker to Evers to Chance—only more so.

I think we were all pretty washed up with La Belle Healey. It was a cinch Gard wouldn’t want any more of her. I don’t know about Raines, but I know I didn’t.

We finished the bottle and Raines snooped around and found a full one and we did a little business with that.

I didn’t find out I had a concussion till next morning. I was a week and two days in the hospital at twenty dollars a day, and the doctor nicked me two-fifty. He’ll get the rest of it when he catches me.

The whole Healey play, what with one thing and another, cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a grand. I got a lame skull and about two-bits’ worth of fun out of it. I pass.

C
oleman said: “Eight ball in the corner.”

There was soft click of ball against ball and then sharper click as the black ball dropped into the pocket Coleman had called.

Coleman put his cue in the rack. He rolled down the sleeves of his vividly striped silk shirt and put on his coat and a pearl gray velour hat. He went to the pale fat man who slouched against a neighboring table and took two crisp hundred dollar notes from the fat man’s outstretched hand, glanced at the slim, pimpled youth who had been his opponent, smiled thinly, said: “So long,” went to the door, out into the street.

There was sudden roar from a black, curtained roadster on the other side of the street; the sudden ragged roar of four or five shots close together, a white pulsing finger of flame in the dusk, and Coleman sank to his knees. He swayed backwards once, fell forward onto his face hard; his gray hat rolled slowly across the sidewalk. The roadster was moving, had disappeared before Coleman was entirely still. It became very quiet in the street.

Mazie Decker curved her orange mouth to its best “Customer” smile. She took the little green ticket that the dark-haired boy held out to her and tore off one corner and dropped the rest into the slot. He took her tightly in his arms and as the violins melted to sound and the lights dimmed they swung out across the crowded floor.

Her head was tilted back, her bright mouth near the blue smoothness of his jaw.

She whispered: “Gee—I didn’t think you was coming.”

He twisted his head down a little, smiled at her.

She spoke again without looking at him: “I waited till one o’clock for you last night.” She hesitated a moment then went on rapidly: “Gee—I act like I’d known you for years, an’ it’s only two days. What a sap I turned out to be!” She giggled mirthlessly.

He didn’t answer.

The music swelled to brassy crescendo, stopped. They stood with a hundred other couples and applauded mechanically.

She said: “Gee—I love a waltz! Don’t you?”

He nodded briefly and as the orchestra bellowed to a moaning foxtrot he took her again in his arms and they circled towards the far end of the floor.

“Let’s get out of here, kid.” He smiled, his mouth a thin line against the whiteness of his skin, his large eyes half closed.

She said: “All right—only let’s try to get out without the manager seeing me. I’m supposed to work till eleven.”

They parted at one of the little turnstiles; he got his hat and coat from the checkroom, went downstairs and got his car from a parking station across the street.

When she came down he had double-parked near the entrance. He honked his horn and held the door open for her as she trotted breathlessly out and climbed in beside him. Her eyes were very bright and she laughed a little hysterically.

“The manager saw me,” she said. “But I said I was sick—an’ it worked.” She snuggled up close to him as he swung the car into Sixth Street. “Gee—what a swell car!”

He grunted affirmatively and they went out Sixth a block or so in silence.

As they turned north on Figueroa she said: “What’ve you got the side curtains on for? It’s such a beautiful night.”

He offered her a cigarette and lighted one for himself and leaned back comfortably in the seat.

He said: “I think it’s going to rain.”

It was very dark at the side of the road. A great pepper tree screened the roadster from whatever light there was in the sky.

Mazie Decker spoke softly: “Angelo. Angelo—that’s a beautiful name. It sounds like angel.”

The dark youth’s face was hard in the narrow glow of the dashlight. He had taken off his hat and his shiny black hair looked like a metal skullcap. He stroked the heel of his hand back over one ear, over the oily blackness and then he took his hand down and wriggled it under his coat. His other arm was around the girl.

He took his hand out of the darkness of his coat and there was brief flash of bright metal; the girl said: “My God!” slowly and put her hands up to her breast… .

He leaned in front of her and pressed the door open and as her body sank into itself he pushed her gently and her body slanted, toppled through the door, fell softly on the leaves beside the road. Her sharp breath and a far quavering “Ah!” were blotted out as he pressed the starter and the motor roared; he swung the door closed and put on his hat carefully, shifted gears and let the clutch in slowly.

As he came out of the darkness of the dirt road on to the highway he thrust one hand through a slit in the side curtain, took it in and leaned forward over the wheel.

It was raining, a little.

R.F. Winfield stretched one long leg out and planted his foot on a nearby leather chair. The blonde woman got up and walked unsteadily to the phonograph. This latter looked like a grand­father clock, had cost well into four figures, would probably have collapsed at the appellation “phonograph”—but it was.

The blonde woman snapped the little tin brake; she lifted the record, stared empty-eyed at the other side.

She said: “’s Minnie th’ Moocher. Wanna hear it?”

Mr Winfield said: “Uh-huh.” He tilted an ice-and-amber filled glass to his mouth, drained it. He stood up and gathered his very blue dressing gown about his lean shanks. He lifted his head and walked through a short corridor to the bathroom, opened the door, entered.

Water splashed noisily in the big blue porcelain tub. He braced himself with one hand on the shower tap, turned off the water, slipped out of the dressing gown and into the tub.

The blonde woman’s voice clanged like cold metal through the partially open door.

“Took ’er down to Chinatown; showed ’er how to kick the gong aroun’.”

Mr Winfield reached up into the pocket of the dressing gown, fished out a cigarette, matches. He lighted the cigarette, leaned back in the water, sighed. His face was a long tan oblong of contentment. He flexed his jaw, then mechanically put up one hand and removed an upper plate, put the little semicircle of shining teeth on the basin beside the tub, ran his tongue over thick, sharply etched lips, sighed again. The warm water was soft, caressing; he was very comfortable.

He heard the buzzer and he heard the blonde woman stagger along the corridor past the bathroom to the outer door of the apartment. He listened but could hear no word of anything said there; only the sound of the door opening and closing, and silence broken faintly by the phonograph’s “Hi-de-ho-oh, Minnie.”

Then the bathroom door swung slowly open and a man stood outlined against the darkness of the corridor. He was bareheaded and the electric light was reflected in a thin line across his hair, shone dully on the moist pallor of his skin. He wore a tightly belted raincoat and his hands were thrust deep into his pockets.

Winfield sat up straight in the tub, spoke tentatively “Hello!” He said “hello” with an incredulous rising inflection, blinked incredulously upward. The cigarette dangled loosely from one corner of his mouth.

The man leaned against the frame of the door and took a short thick automatic out of his coat pocket and held it steadily, waist high.

Winfield put his hands on the sides of the tub and started to get up.

The automatic barked twice.

Winfield half stood, with one hand and one leg braced against the side of the tub for perhaps five seconds. His eyes were wide, blank. Then he sank down slowly, his head fell back against the smooth blue porcelain, slid slowly under the water. The cigarette still hung in the corner of his clenched mouth and as his head went under the water it hissed briefly, was gone.

The man in the doorway turned, disappeared.

The water reddened. Faintly, the phonograph lisped: “Hi-de-ho… .”

Doolin grinned up at the waiter. “An’ see the eggs are four minutes, an’ don’t put any cream in my coffee.”

The waiter bobbed his head sullenly and disappeared through swinging doors.

Doolin unfolded his paper and turned to the comic page. He read it carefully, chuckling audibly, from top to bottom. Then he spread pages two and three across the counter and began at the top of page two. Halfway across he read the headline: Winfield, Motion Picture Executive, Slain by Sweetheart: Story continued from page one.

He turned to the front page and stared at a two-column cut of Winfield, read the accompanying account, turned back to page two and finished it. There was another cut of Winfield, and a woman. The caption under the woman’s picture read: “Elma O’Shea Darmond, well-known screen actress and friend of Winfield, who was found unconscious in his apartment with the automatic in her hand.”

Doolin yawned and shoved the paper aside to make room for the eggs and toast and coffee that the sour-faced waiter carried. He devoured the eggs and had half finished his coffee before he saw something that interested him on page three. He put his cup down, leaned over the paper, read: “Man Shot in Glendale Mystery. H.J. (Jake) Coleman, alleged gambler, was shot and killed as he came out of the Lyric Billiard Parlors in Glendale yesterday evening. The shots were fired from a mysterious black roadster which the police are attempting to trace.”

Doolin read the rest of the story, finished his coffee. He sat several minutes staring expressionlessly at his reflection in the mirror behind the counter, got up, paid his check and went out into the bright morning.

He walked briskly down Hill Street to First, over First, to the Los Angeles Bulletin Building. He was whistling as the elevator carried him up.

In the back files of the Bulletin he found what he was looking for, a front-page spread in the Home Edition of December 10th:

massacre in nightclub

Screen-stars Duck for Cover as

Machine-guns Belch Death

Early this morning The Hotspot, famous cabaret near Culver City, was the scene of the bloodiest battle the local gang war has afforded to date. Two men who police believe to be Frank Riccio and Edward (Whitey) Conroy of the Purple Gang in Detroit were instantly killed when a private room in the club was invaded by four men with submachine guns. A third man, a companion of Riccio and Conroy, was seriously wounded and is not expected to live.

Doolin skimmed down the column, read:

R.F. Winfield, prominent motion picture executive, who was one of the party in the private room, said that he could not identify any of the killers. He said it all happened too quickly to be sure of any of them, and explained his presence in the company of the notorious gangsters as the result of his desire for firsthand information about the underworld in connection with a picture of that type which he is supervising. The names of others in the party are being withheld… .

Under a subhead Doolin read:

H.J. Coleman and his companion, Miss Mazie Decker, were in the corridor leading to the private room when the killers entered. Miss Decker said she could positively identify two of them. Coleman, who is nearsighted, was equally positive that he could not… .

An hour and a half later, Doolin left the Bulletin Building. He had gone carefully through the December file, and up to the middle of January. He had called into service the City Directory, Telephone Book, Dun & Bradstreet, and the telephone, and he had wheedled all the inside dope he could out of a police reporter whom he knew casually.

He stood on the wide stone steps and looked at the sheet of paper on which he had scrawled notes. It read:

People in private room and corridor who might be able to identify killers of Riccio and Conroy:

Winfield. Dead.

Coleman. Dead.

Martha Grainger. Actress. In show, in NY

Betty Crane. Hustler. Died of pneumonia January 4th.

Isabel Dolly. Hustler and extra girl. Was paralyzed drunk during shooting, probably not important. Can’t locate.

Mazie Decker. Taxi-dancer. Works at Dreamland on Sixth and Hill. Failed to identify killers from rogues gallery photographs.

Nelson Halloran. Man-about-town. Money. Friend of Winfield’s. Lives at Fontenoy, same apartment house as Winfield.

Doolin folded and creased the sheet of paper. He wound it abstractedly around his forefinger and walked down the steps, across the sidewalk to a cab. He got into the cab and sat down and leaned back.

The driver slid the glass, asked: “Where to?”

Doolin stared at him blankly, then laughed. He said: “Wait a minute,” spread the sheet of paper across his knee. He took a stub of pencil out of his pocket and slowly, thoughtfully, drew a line through the first five names; that left Mazie Decker and Nelson Halloran.

Doolin leaned forward and spoke to the driver: “Is that Dreamland joint at Sixth an’ Hill open in the afternoon?”

The driver thought a moment, shook his head.

Doolin said: “All right, then—Fontenoy Apartment—on Whitley in Hollywood.”

Nelson Halloran looked like Death. His white face was extremely long, narrow; his sharp chin tapered upward in unbroken lines to high sharp cheekbones, great deep-sunken eyes, continued to a high, almost degenerately narrow, forehead. His mouth was wide, thin, dark against the whiteness of his skin. His hair was the color of water. He was six-feet-three inches tall, weighed a hundred and eighty.

He half lay in a deeply upholstered chair in the living room of his apartment and watched a round spot of sunlight move across the wall. The shades were drawn and the apartment was in semidarkness. It was a chaos of modern furniture, books, magazines, papers, bottles; there were several good but badly hung reproductions on the pale walls.

Halloran occasionally lifted one long white hand languidly to his mouth, inhaled smoke deeply and blew it upward into the ray of sunlight.

When the phone buzzed he shuddered involuntarily, leaned sidewise and took it up from a low table.

He listened a moment, said: “Send him up.” His voice was very low. There was softness in it; and there was coldness and something very faraway.

He moved slightly in the chair so that one hand was near his side, in the folds of his dressing gown. There was a Luger there in the darkness of the chair. He was facing the door.