The Peddler

Other Fawcett Gold Medal Books by Richard S. Prather

ALWAYS LEAVE ‘EM DYING

BODIES IN BEDLAM

CASE OF THE VANISHING BEAUTY

THE COCKEYED CORPSE

DAGGER OF FLESH

DANCE WITH THE DEAD

DARLING, IT’S DEATH

DIG THAT CRAZY GRAVE

DOUBLE IN TROUBLE (with Stephen Marlowe)

EVERYBODY HAD A GUN

FIND THIS WOMAN

HAVE GAT—WILL TRAVEL

JOKER IN THE DECK

KILL THE CLOWN

LIE DOWN. KILLER

OVER HER DEAR BODY

PATTERN FOR PANIC (specially revised)

THE SCRAMBLED YEGGS (formerly: PATTERN FOR MURDER)

SHELL SCOTT’S SEVEN SLAUGHTERS

SLAB HAPPY

STRIP FOR MURDER

TAKE A MURDER, DARLING

THREE’S A SHROUD

TOO MANY CROOKS (formerly: RIDE A HIGH HORSE)

THE WAILING FRAIL

WAY OF A WANTON

Original Fawcett Geld Medal Anthology edited by Richard S. Prather THE COMFORTABLE COFFIN

A FAWCETT GOLD MEDAL BOOK

FAWCETT PUBLICATIONS, INC., GREENWICH, CONN. MEMBER OP AMERICAN BOOK PUBLISHERS COUNCIL, INC.

ALL CHARACTERS IN THIS BOOK ARE FICTIONAL AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

COPYRIGHT 1952 BY RICHARD S. PRATHER

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS THEREOF.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Tony saw the girl as she hurried out of The Green Room on Sutter Street, turned and started walking away from him. Something about her stirred memory in his brain and he walked slowly after her, watching the black skirt swirl above her rounded calves, the slow, liquid ripple of her hips. She stopped suddenly and lit a cigarette, half turned toward him, and in the light from one of the street lamps he saw the small young face, the plump red lips and straight dark eyebrows. Now he remembered: Maria. Maria Casino.

He’d practically grown up with her here in Frisco, back on Howard Street. He grinned, remembering that first time when he was thirteen and she was fourteen, he and Joe and Whitey Kovacs had taken Maria into Kovacs’ house when his folks were gone. That was six years ago; he hadn’t even seen her for almost three years. He looked her up and down from his dark, too-narrow eyes. She sure as hell hadn’t been built then like she was now. He started walking toward her.

She was still standing about ten feet beyond the entrance of The Green Room, puffing on her cigarette. Tony was looking at her as he passed the entrance, so he didn’t see the big guy weave out the door until the guy staggered into him. Tony jerked his head around and looked at the drunk, irritated, then turned and started to walk on. The guy grabbed Tony’s arm.

“Hey,” he slurred, “watch where you’re goin’.”

Maria turned and started to walk on down toward Powell. Tony glanced at the drunk. He was about six feet tall, heavy, with a flushed red face. His breath stank of beer and whiskey.

“Let go my arm,” Tony said quietly. “You’re drunk. Beat it.”

The guy didn’t let go. He said nastily, “Goddamn punk. Watch where yer goin’. Goin’ round knocking people down. Bastard sonofabitch, watch—”

Tony, at nineteen, was five feet ten inches tall, with much of his weight in strong well-muscled arms and legs and heavy shoulders. He slammed his open right hand against the drunk’s chest, bunched coat and white shirt and stringy tie in his fist, and easily yanked the bigger man close to him. He didn’t say anything, but his too-narrow eyes narrowed even more and his lips pressed together in a thin, hard line. Anger jumped in his stomach; he felt like putting the slug on the bastard and rubbing his red face into the sidewalk until it was really red.

His thoughts showed in his face, in his lips and eyes and the thick bulge of muscle along his heavy jaw. After a moment he spoke softly, savagely, to the other man. The drunk’s mouth sagged open and he said, not belligerent now, “Look, forget it, fella. Let’s forget it. Look, leggo.”

Tony slowly uncurled his fingers, dropped his arm to his side. The drunk moved around him, keeping his eyes on Tony’s face, then hurried down the sidewalk.

Tony looked down toward Powell and saw Maria walking slowly, not yet at the cross street. He hurried after her and caught up with her at the corner. He put a hand on her arm. She stopped and turned toward him, a half smile ready on her lips.

“Hi, baby,” Tony said. “Where the hell you been?”

“Tony!” The half smile broadened and she put her hand over his. “Tony Romero. Where’d you come from?”

She was really sharp. Her dark brown hair was cut short and fluffed about her pale face, large brown eyes almost black against the white skin. Her lips were plump and red, and her small, even white teeth gleamed as she smiled up at him.

He said, “Just spotted you coming out of The Green Room. Damn, it’s good to see you. You look like a million.”

“Gee, Tony,” she said, “where you been, I ain’t seen you for ages.”

“Knockin’ around. I don’t live home no more; I got outa that trap a couple years back. Never see none of the old gang no more. What you doin’ now, Maria?”

She dragged on her cigarette and tossed it into the gutter. “Oh, a little of this, little of that. I ain’t home no more, neither.”

Tony glanced at his cheap wristwatch. It was after one in the morning. Sunday morning now. He said, “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink. You got time, haven’t you?”

She laughed. “I got all night, Tony.”

“Good deal.” He took her arm and started walking back up Sutter the way they’d come. “I got nothin’ to do.” He grinned. “Do it with me.”

“Love to, Tony.” She hung onto his arm, chattering about old times as he steered her back toward The Green Room, the nearest bar.

When they reached the entrance, she looked up and then stopped on the sidewalk. “Oh. I didn’t know we were goin’ here. Let’s go someplace else.”

“What’s wrong with here? They got dark booths.” He laughed.

“No … I'll tell you later. I don’t like the place.”

“Ah, come on, baby. One drink so I can catch up on where you been.” He pulled her by the arm and she resisted at first, then went along with him. “We’ll hit another spot after, if we got time,” he said. She went inside with him, frowning.

The Green Room was a small place. A bar with several stools in front of it stretched along the right wall, then there was a row of booths with tables on their left, and more booths against the wall. About a dozen people, mostly men, were drinking.

After drinks had been ordered, Maria was quiet for a few seconds, then she said, “Well, what do you think, Tony?”

“About what?”

“Me being … on the hustle.”

“You’re a nice kid, Maria.”

“Tell me the truth, Tony. You known me quite a while. Does it, well, does it make any difference to you?”

Tony squinted at her and thought about it. He considered it seriously, wondering if it did make a difference. He thought back to the times he and other kids had been with her in the empty Kovacs house and other places. And she hadn’t been the only one by a long shot. So Maria was getting paid for it now, that was about the only difference.

Tony had been to the houses three or four times, but not for a couple of years. It wasn’t that he saw anything wrong with it, but he didn’t like paying for pretended passion; when he had a woman, he wanted her with him because she wanted it that way too.

“Well?”

“Huh? Oh, hell, I dunno, Maria, I don’t see it makes no difference. You look the same’s you always did—only you’re about ten times prettier.” Tony thought, looking at her, that she was damned pretty. She looked almost virginal. Her body was a woman’s body, though, well-curved and soft-looking. He thought of all the men that must have kissed and caressed that body, lusted over it, slobbered on her plump lips. It didn’t do anything to him—except maybe make him a little disgusted with men.

They stopped talking while the waiter served the drinks. Then she leaned forward on her elbows, smiling at him. “Tony. Tony, you’re a swell guy, you know it? You’re sure not gonna take nothin’ from nobody, are you? You were always that way. I used to think you were great, remember? I always liked you.”

He laughed. “You used to tell me you were goofy for me, baby.”

“Uh huh.” She looked at him for several seconds. “Maybe I never got over it.”

“Yeah, you got over it, kid. Don’t give me no song and dance.”

They decided to go somewhere else. They finished their drinks, then walked out onto Sutter Street again. It was a cold night, the air crisp and bracing, without fog, and Maria looped her arm in Tony’s as they walked to Powell and turned right toward Market Street.

Tony wondered where they’d go. He had about twenty bucks in his pocket, and no job. He’d have to work up another deal pretty soon—unless that longshot came in at Bay Meadows Monday. He had five bucks on Red Dancer to win the third. Money, he thought, the goddamn money. When was it going to happen? That question was part of Tony: When was it going to happen, when was he going to get the break?

It was something that he hung onto, waited for, the break that would get him started, put him in the big dough. It had been part of him for a long time. Tony had grown up in San Francisco pretty much as thousands of others had. He had been the “accidental” child of an Italian mother and father who rarely had enough money to feed themselves and the four other kids before Tony came, and Tony had the further common misfortune of not being wanted. He came very close to not being born at all. For a long time, as he grew up, he didn’t realize that he was poor; when he did, the need for money started growing inside him. He’d quit school in the sixth grade, and in the years since then there’d been a few “deals” and a few odd jobs. Since he’d left home he’d been a laborer for a few months in a warehouse, heavy work that made him strong and also gave him and his best friend, Joe Arrigo, a chance to swipe stuff they later got rid of through a fence; he was a runner for a small bookie for a while, then he worked a few months as a bellhop in the St. Francis Hotel. He stayed there until he got too bored with it, but he had liked being around the people he thought of as having “class,” the pink-skinned, well-groomed men with their fat cigars and their slim women, the slim women with sparkling wrists and fingers, and sparkling eyes. Those months at the St. Francis, naturally, only made him want money more.

The years had made him hard, tough, not only in body but in mind. He was cynical, contemptuous of the weak— perhaps because he, himself, was strong. He admired all those men who had, one way or another, amassed fortunes of money or of power. The way they got it wasn’t important; the fact that they had it was. Tony’s attitude toward life was woven of his belief that there were only two kinds of men: the few strong ones he thought of as at “the top,” and the r^st, the weak, on the bottom; and a guy had nobody but himself to blame if he stayed on the bottom. Tony had no intention of staying there.

Tony pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered Maria one, then they stopped while he lit them both. He said, “What you want to do, Maria? Have another drink, or could you stand some chow?”

“Well, I’m a little hungry,” she said.

He grinned at her. “Been workin’ hard, huh?”

“Pretty hard. This is Saturday night.”

“Little hungry myself. There’s a place down on O’Farrell just off Market puts out the best minestrone in the world. O.K.?”

“Let’s go.”

She squeezed his arm and they walked the few blocks to the Italian Restaurant. On the way they talked casually, and she told Tony she wasn’t just out walking the streets; she was in one of the houses, a big place out on Fillmore.

Inside the restaurant, over huge bowls of thick, steaming minestrone, with crisp bread sticks and sliced French bread and red wine, Tony asked her, “How long you been ia this racket, baby?”