The Essential Noir Bundle, page 10
“Damn the rock,” Noonan barked. “And stop bleeding on my rug.”
MacSwain hunted in his pocket for a dirty handkerchief, mopped his nose and mouth with it, and jabbered on:
“That’s the way it was, chief. Everything else was like I said at the time, only I didn’t say anything about hearing him say Max done it. I know I hadn’t ought to—”
“Shut up,” Noonan said, and pressed one of the buttons on his desk.
A uniformed copper came in. The chief jerked a thumb at MacSwain and said:
“Take this baby down cellar and let the wrecking crew work on him before you lock him up.”
MacSwain started a desperate plea, “Aw, chief!” but the copper took him away before he could get any farther.
Noonan stuck a cigar at me, tapped the document with another and asked:
“Where’s this broad?”
“In the City Hospital, dying. You’ll have the ’cuter get a stiff out of her? That one’s not so good legally—I framed it for effect. Another thing—I hear that Peak Murry and Whisper aren’t playmates any more. Wasn’t Murry one of his alibis?”
The chief said, “He was,” picked up one of his phones, said, “McGraw,” and then: “Get hold of Peak Murry and ask him to drop in. And have Tony Agosti picked up for that knife-throwing.”
He put the phone down, stood up, made a lot of cigar smoke, and said through it:
“I haven’t always been on the up-and-up with you.”
I thought that was putting it mildly, but I didn’t say anything while he went on:
“You know your way around. You know what these jobs are. There’s this one and that one that’s got to be listened to. Just because a man’s chief of police doesn’t mean he’s chief. Maybe you’re a lot of trouble to somebody that can be a lot of trouble to me. Don’t make any difference if I think you’re a right guy. I got to play with them that play with me. See what I mean?”
I wagged my head to show I did.
“That’s the way it was,” he said. “But no more. This is something else, a new deal. When the old woman kicked off Tim was just a lad. She said to me, ‘Take care of him, John,’ and I promised I would. And then Whisper murders him on account of that tramp.” He reached down and took my hand. “See what I’m getting at? That’s a year and a half ago, and you give me my first chance to hang it on him. I’m telling you there’s no man in Personville that’s got a voice big enough to talk you down. Not after today.”
That pleased me and I said so. We purred at each other until a lanky man with any extremely up-turned nose in the middle of a round and freckled face was ushered in. It was Peak Murry.
“We were just wondering about the time when Tim died,” the chief said when Murry had been given a chair and a cigar, “where Whisper was. You were out to the Lake that night, weren’t you?”
“Yep,” Murry said and the end of his nose got sharper.
“With Whisper?”
“I wasn’t with him all the time.”
“Were you with him at the time of the shooting?”
“Nope.”
The chief’s greenish eyes got smaller and brighter. He asked softly:
“You know where he was?”
“Nope.”
The chief sighed in a thoroughly satisfied way and leaned back in his chair.
“Damn it, Peak,” he said, “you told us before that you were with him at the bar.”
“Yep, I did,” the lanky man admitted. “But that don’t mean nothing except that he asked me to and I didn’t mind helping out a friend.”
“Meaning you don’t mind standing a perjury rap?”
“Don’t kid me.” Murry spit vigorously at the cuspidor. “I didn’t say nothing in no court rooms.”
“How about Jerry and George Kelly and O’Brien?” the chief asked. “Did they say they were with him just because he asked them to?”
“O’Brien did. I don’t know nothing about the others. I was going out of the bar when I run into Whisper, Jerry and Kelly, and went back to have a shot with them. Kelly told me Tim had been knocked off. Then Whisper says, ‘It never hurts anybody to have an alibi. We were here all the time, weren’t we?’ and he looks at O’Brien, who’s behind the bar. O’Brien says, ‘Sure you was,’ and when Whisper looks at me I say the same thing. But I don’t know no reasons why I’ve got to cover him up nowadays.”
“And Kelly said Tim had been knocked off? Didn’t say he had been found dead?”
“ ‘Knocked off’ was the words he used.”
The chief said:
“Thanks, Peak. You oughtn’t to have done like you did, but what’s done is done. How are the kids?”
Murry said they were doing fine, only the baby wasn’t as fat as he’d like to have him. Noonan phoned the prosecuting attorney’s office and had Dart and a stenographer take Peak’s story before he left.
Noonan, Dart and the stenographer set out for the City Hospital to get a complete statement from Myrtle Jennison. I didn’t go along. I decided I needed sleep, told the chief I would see him later, and returned to the hotel.
CHAPTER 13: –$200.10–
I had my vest unbuttoned when the telephone bell rang.
It was Dinah Brand, complaining that she had been trying to get me since ten o’clock.
“Have you done anything on what I told you?” she asked.
“I’ve been looking it over. It seems pretty good. I think maybe I’ll crack it this afternoon.”
“Don’t. Hold it till I see you. Can you come up now?”
I looked at the vacant white bed and said, “Yes,” without much enthusiasm.
Another tub of cold water did me so little good that I almost fell asleep in it.
Dan Rolff let me in when I rang the girl’s bell. He looked and acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened the night before. Dinah Brand came into the hall to help me off with my overcoat. She had on a tan woolen dress with a two-inch rip in one shoulder seam.
She took me into the living room. She sat on the chesterfield beside me and said:
“I’m going to ask you to do something for me. You like me enough, don’t you?”
I admitted that. She counted the knuckles of my left hand with a warm forefinger and explained:
“I want you to not do anything more about what I told you last night. Now wait a minute. Wait till I get through. Dan was right. I oughtn’t sell Max out like that. It would be utterly filthy. Besides, it’s Noonan you chiefly want, isn’t it? Well, if you’ll be a nice darling and lay off Max this time, I’ll give you enough on Noonan to nail him forever. You’d like that better, wouldn’t you? And you like me too much to want to take advantage of me by using information I gave you when I was mad at what Max had said, don’t you?”
“What is the dirt on Noonan?” I asked.
She kneaded my biceps and murmured: “You promise?”
“Not yet.”
She pouted at me and said:
“I’m off Max for life, on the level. You’ve got no right to make me turn rat.”
“What about Noonan?”
“Promise first.”
“No.”
She dug fingers into my arm and asked sharply:
“You’ve already gone to Noonan?”
“Yeah.”
She let go my arm, frowned, shrugged, and said gloomily:
“Well, how can I help it?”
I stood up and a voice said:
“Sit down.”
It was a hoarse whispering voice—Thaler’s.
I turned to see him standing in the dining room doorway, a big gun in one of his little hands. A red-faced man with a scarred cheek stood behind him.
The other doorway—opening to the hall—filled as I sat down. The loose-mouthed chinless man I had heard Whisper call Jerry came a step through it. He had a couple of guns. The more angular one of the blond kids who had been in the King Street joint looked over his shoulder.
Dinah Brand got up from the chesterfield, put her back to Thaler, and addressed me. Her voice was husky with rage.
“This is none of my doing. He came here by himself, said he was sorry for what he had said, and showed me how we could make a lot of coin by turning Noonan up for you. The whole thing was a plant, but I fell for it. Honest to Christ! He was to wait upstairs while I put it to you. I didn’t know anything about the others. I didn’t—”
Jerry’s casual voice drawled:
“If I shoot a pin from under her, she’ll sure sit down, and maybe shut up. O.K.?”
I couldn’t see Whisper. The girl was between us. He said:
“Not now. Where’s Dan?”
The angular blond youngster said:
“Up on the bathroom floor. I had to sap him.”
Dinah Brand turned around to face Thaler. Stocking seams made s’s up the ample backs of her legs. She said:
“Max Thaler, you’re a lousy little—”
He whispered, very deliberately:
“Shut up and get out of the way.”
She surprised me by doing both, and she kept quiet while he spoke to me:
“So you and Noonan are trying to paste his brother’s death on me?”
“It doesn’t need pasting. It’s a natural.”
He curved his thin lips at me and said:
“You’re as crooked as he is.”
I said:
“You know better. I played your side when he tried to frame you. This time he’s got you copped to rights.”
Dinah Brand flared up again, waving her arms in the center of the room, storming:
“Get out of here, the whole lot of you. Why should I give a goddamn about your troubles? Get out.”
The blond kid who had sapped Rolff squeezed past Jerry and came grinning into the room. He caught one of the girl’s flourished arms and bent it behind her.
She twisted toward him, socked him in the belly with her other fist. It was a very respectable wallop—man-size. It broke his grip on her arm, sent him back a couple of steps.
The kid gulped a wide mouthful of air, whisked a blackjack from his hip, and stepped in again. His grin was gone.
Jerry laughed what little chin he had out of sight.
Thaler whispered harshly: “Lay off!”
The kid didn’t hear him. He was snarling at the girl.
She watched him with a face hard as a silver dollar. She was standing with most of her weight on her left foot. I guessed blondy was going to stop a kick when he closed in.
The kid feinted a grab with his empty left hand, started the blackjack at her face.
Thaler whispered, “Lay off,” again, and fired.
The bullet smacked blondy under the right eye, spun him around, and dropped him backwards into Dinah Brand’s arms.
This looked like the time, if there was to be any.
In the excitement I had got my hand to my hip. Now I yanked the gun out and snapped a cap at Thaler, trying for his shoulder.
That was wrong. If I had tried for a bull’s-eye I would have winged him. Chinless Jerry hadn’t laughed himself blind. He beat me to the shot. His shot burnt my wrist, throwing me off the target. But, missing Thaler, my slug crumpled the red-faced man behind him.
Not knowing how badly my wrist was nicked, I switched the gun to my left hand.
Jerry had another try at me. The girl spoiled it by heaving the corpse at him. The dead yellow head banged into his knees. I jumped for him while he was off-balance.
The jump took me out of the path of Thaler’s bullet. It also tumbled me and Jerry out into the hall, all tangled up together.
Jerry wasn’t tough to handle, but I had to work quick. There was Thaler behind me. I socked Jerry twice, kicked him, butted him at least once, and was hunting for a place to bite when he went limp under me. I poked him again where his chin should have been—just to make sure he wasn’t faking—and went away on hands and knees, down the hall a bit, out of line with the door.
I sat on my heels against the wall, held my gun level at Thaler’s part of the premises, and waited. I couldn’t hear anything for the moment except blood singing in my head.
Dinah Brand stepped out of the door I had tumbled through, looked at Jerry, then at me. She smiled with her tongue between her teeth, beckoned with a jerk of her head, and returned to the living room. I followed her cautiously.
Whisper stood in the center of the floor. His hands were empty and so was his face. Except for his vicious little mouth he looked like something displaying suits in a clothing store window.
Dan Rolff stood behind him, with a gun-muzzle tilted to the little gambler’s left kidney. Rolff’s face was mostly blood. The blond kid—now dead on the floor between Rolff and me—had sapped him plenty.
I grinned at Thaler and said. “Well, this is nice,” before I saw that Rolff had another gun, centered on my chubby middle. That wasn’t so nice. But my gun was reasonably level in my hand. I didn’t have much worse than an even break.
Rolff said:
“Put down your pistol.”
I looked at Dinah, looked puzzled, I suppose. She shrugged and told me:
“It seems to be Dan’s party.”
“Yeah? Somebody ought to tell him I don’t like to play this way.”
Rolff repeated: “Put down your pistol.”
I said disagreeably:
“I’m damned if I will. I’ve shed twenty pounds trying to nab this bird, and I can spare twenty more for the same purpose.”
Rolff said:
“I’m not interested in what is between you two, and I have no intention of giving either of you—”
Dinah Brand had wandered across the room. When she was behind Rolff, I interrupted his speech by telling her:
“If you upset him now you’re sure of making two friends—Noonan and me. You can’t trust Thaler any more, so there’s no use helping him.”
She laughed and said:
“Talk money, darling.”
“Dinah!” Rolff protested. He was caught. She was behind him and she was strong enough to handle him. It wasn’t likely that he would shoot her, and it wasn’t likely that anything else would keep her from doing whatever she decided to do.
“A hundred dollars,” I bid.
“My God!” she exclaimed, “I’ve actually got a cash offer out of you. But not enough.”
“Two hundred.”
“You’re getting reckless. But I still can’t hear you.”
“Try,” I said. “It’s worth that to me not to have to shoot Rolff’s gun out of his hand, but no more than that.”
“You got a good start. Don’t weaken. One more bid, anyway.”
“Two hundred dollars and ten cents and that’s all.”
“You big bum,” she said, “I won’t do it.”
“Suit yourself.” I made a face at Thaler and cautioned him: “When what happens happens be damned sure you keep still.”
Dinah cried:
“Wait! Are you really going to start something?”
“I’m going to take Thaler out with me, regardless.”
“Two hundred and a dime?”
“Yeah.”
“Dinah,” Rolff called without turning his face from me, “you won’t—”
But she laughed, came close to his back, and wound her strong arms around him, pulling his arms down, pinning them to his sides.
I shoved Thaler out of the way with my right arm, and kept my gun on him while I yanked Rolff’s weapons out of his hands. Dinah turned the lunger loose.
He took two steps toward the dining room door, said wearily, “There is no—” and collapsed on the floor.
Dinah ran to him. I pushed Thaler through the hall door, past the still sleeping Jerry, and to the alcove beneath the front stairs, where I had seen a phone.
I called Noonan, told him I had Thaler, and where.
“Mother of God!” he said. “Don’t kill him till I get there.”
CHAPTER 14: MAX
The news of Whisper’s capture spread quickly. When Noonan, the coppers he had brought along, and I took the gambler and the now conscious Jerry into the City Hall there were at least a hundred people standing around watching us.
All of them didn’t look pleased. Noonan’s coppers—a shabby lot at best—moved around with whitish strained faces. But Noonan was the most triumphant guy west of the Mississippi. Even the bad luck he had trying to third-degree Whisper couldn’t spoil his happiness.
Whisper stood up under all they could give him. He would talk to his lawyer, he said, and to nobody else, and he stuck to it. And, as much as Noonan hated the gambler, here was a prisoner he didn’t give the works, didn’t turn over to the wrecking crew. Whisper had killed the chief’s brother, and the chief hated his guts, but Whisper was still too much somebody in Poisonville to be roughed around.
Noonan finally got tired of playing with his prisoner, and sent him up—the prison was on the City Hall’s top floor—to be stowed away. I lit another of the chief’s cigars and read the detailed statement he had got from the woman in the hospital. There was nothing in it that I hadn’t learned from Dinah and MacSwain.
The chief wanted me to come out to his house for dinner, but I lied out of it, pretending that my wrist—now in a bandage—was bothering me. It was really little more than a burn.
While we were talking about it, a pair of plain-clothes men brought in the red-faced bird who had stopped the slug I had missed Whisper with. It had broken a rib for him, and he had taken a back-door sneak while the rest of us were busy. Noonan’s men had picked him up in a doctor’s office. The chief failed to get any information out of him, and sent him off to the hospital.
I got up and prepared to leave, saying:
“The Brand girl gave me the tip-off on this. That’s why I asked you to keep her and Rolff out of it.”
The chief took hold of my left hand for the fifth or sixth time in the past couple of hours.
“If you want her taken care of, that’s enough for me,” he assured me. “But if she had a hand in turning that bastard up, you can tell her for me that any time she wants anything, all she’s got to do is name it.”
I said I’d tell her that, and went over to my hotel, thinking about that neat white bed. But it was nearly eight o’clock, and my stomach needed attention. I went into the hotel dining room and had that fixed up.
