The Essential Noir Bundle, page 12
We wound up at a gate topped by a shabby electric sign that had said Cedar Hill Inn before it lost its globes. The roadhouse, twenty feet behind the gate, was a squat wooden building painted a moldy green and chiefly surrounded by rubbish. Front door and windows were closed, blank.
We followed Noonan out of the car. The machine that had been trailing us came into sight around a bend in the road, slid to rest beside ours, and unloaded its cargo of men and weapons.
Noonan ordered this and that.
A trio of coppers went around each side of the building. Three others, including a machine-gunner, remained by the gate. The rest of us walked through tin cans, bottles, and ancient newspaper to the front of the house.
The gray-mustached detective who had sat beside me in the car carried a red ax. We stepped up on the porch.
Noise and fire came out under a window sill.
The gray-mustached detective fell down, hiding the ax under his corpse.
The rest of us ran away.
I ran with Noonan. We hid in the ditch on the Inn side of the road. It was deep enough, and banked high enough, to let us stand almost erect without being targets.
The chief was excited.
“What luck!” he said happily. “He’s here, by God, he’s here!”
“That shot came from under the sill,” I said. “Not a bad trick.”
“We’ll spoil it, though,” he said cheerfully. “We’ll sieve the dump. Duffy ought to be pulling up on the other road by now, and Terry Shane won’t be many minutes behind him. Hey, Donner!” he called to a man who was peeping around a boulder. “Swing around back and tell Duffy and Shane to start closing in as soon as they come, letting fly with all they got. Where’s Kimble?”
The peeper jerked a thumb toward a tree beyond him. We could see only the upper part of it from our ditch.
“Tell him to set up his mill and start grinding,” Noonan ordered. “Low, across the front, ought to do it like cutting cheese.”
The peeper disappeared.
Noonan went up and down the ditch, risking his noodle over the top now and then for a look around, once in a while calling or gesturing to his men.
He came back, sat on his heels beside me, gave me a cigar, and lit one for himself.
“It’ll do,” he said complacently. “Whisper won’t have a chance. He’s done.”
The machine-gun by the tree fired, haltingly, experimentally, eight or ten shots. Noonan grinned and let a smoke ring float out of his mouth. The machine-gun settled down to business, grinding out metal like the busy little death factory it was. Noonan blew another smoke ring and said:
“That’s exactly what’ll do it.”
I agreed that it ought to. We leaned against the clay bank and smoked while, farther away, another machine-gun got going, and then a third. Irregularly, rifles, pistols, shot-guns joined in. Noonan nodded approvingly and said:
“Five minutes of that will let him know there’s a hell.”
When the five minutes were up I suggested a look at the remains. I gave him a boost up the bank and scrambled up after him.
The roadhouse was as bleak and empty-looking as before, but more battered. No shots came from it. Plenty were going into it.
“What do you think?” Noonan asked.
“If there’s a cellar there might be a mouse alive in it.”
“Well, we could finish him afterwards.”
He took a whistle out of his pocket and made a lot of noise. He waved his fat arms, and the gun-fire began dwindling. We had to wait for the word to go all the way around.
Then we crashed the door.
The first floor was ankle-deep with booze that was still gurgling from bullet holes in the stacked-up cases and barrels that filled most of the house.
Dizzy with the fumes of spilled hooch, we waded around until we had found four dead bodies and no live ones. The four were swarthy foreign-looking men in laborers’ clothes. Two of them were practically shot to pieces.
Noonan said:
“Leave them here and get out.”
His voice was cheerful, but in a flashlight’s glow his eyes showed white-ringed with fear.
We went out gladly, though I did hesitate long enough to pocket an unbroken bottle labeled Dewar.
A khaki-dressed copper was tumbling off a motorcycle at the gate. He yelled at us:
“The First National’s been stuck up.”
Noonan cursed savagely, bawled:
“He’s foxed us, damn him! Back to town, everybody.”
Everybody except us who had ridden with the chief beat it for the machines. Two of them took the dead detective with them.
Noonan looked at me out of his eye-corners and said:
“This is a tough one, no fooling.”
I said, “Well,” shrugged, and sauntered over to his car, where the driver was sitting at the wheel. I stood with my back to the house, talking to Pat. I don’t remember what we talked about. Presently Noonan and the other sleuths joined us.
Only a little flame showed through the open roadhouse door before we passed out of sight around the bend in the road.
CHAPTER 16: EXIT JERRY
There was a mob around the First National Bank. We pushed through it to the door, where we found sour-faced McGraw.
“Was six of them, masked,” he reported to the chief as we went inside. “They hit it about two-thirty. Five of them got away clean with the jack. The watchman here dropped one of them, Jerry Hooper. He’s over on the bench, cold. We got the roads blocked, and I wired around, if it ain’t too late. Last seen of them was when they made the turn into King Street, in a black Lincoln.”
We went over to look at the dead Jerry, lying on one of the lobby benches with a brown robe over him. The bullet had gone under his left shoulder blade.
The bank watchman, a harmless looking old duffer, pushed up his chest and told us about it:
“There wasn’t no chance to do nothing at first. They were in ’fore anybody knew anything. And maybe they didn’t work fast. Right down the line, scooping it up. No chance to do anything then. But I says to myself. ‘All righty, young fellows, you’ve got it all your own way now, but wait till you try to leave.’
“And I was as good as my word, you bet you. I runs right to the door after them and cut loose with the old firearm. I got that fellow just as he was stepping into the car. I bet you I’d of got more of them if I’d of had more cartridges, because it’s kind of hard shooting down like that, standing in the—”
Noonan stopped the monologue by patting the old duffer’s back till his lungs were empty, telling him, “That certainly is fine. That certainly is fine.”
McGraw pulled the robe up over the dead man again and growled:
“Nobody can identify anybody. But with Jerry on it, it’s a cinch it was Whisper’s caper.”
The chief nodded happily and said:
“I’ll leave it in your hands, Mac. Going to poke around here, or going back to the Hall with me?” he asked me.
“Neither. I’ve got a date, and I want to get into dry shoes.”
Dinah Brand’s little Marmon was standing in front of the hotel. I didn’t see her. I went up to my room, leaving the door unlocked. I had got my hat and coat off when she came in without knocking.
“My God, you keep a boozy smelling room,” she said.
“It’s my shoes. Noonan took me wading in rum.”
She crossed to the window, opened it, sat on the sill, and asked:
“What was that for?”
“He thought he was going to find your Max out in a dump called Cedar Hill Inn. So we went out there, shot the joint silly, murdered some dagoes, spilled gallons of liquor, and left the place burning.”
“Cedar Hill Inn? I though it had been closed up for a year or more.”
“It looked it, but it was somebody’s warehouse.”
“But you didn’t find Max there?” she asked.
“While we were there he seems to have been knocking over Elihu’s First National Bank.”
“I saw that,” she said. “I had just come out of Bengren’s, the store two doors away. I had just got in my car when I saw a big boy backing out of the bank, carrying a sack and a gun, with a black handkerchief over his face.”
“Was Max with them?”
“No, he wouldn’t be. He’d send Jerry and the boys. That’s what he has them for. Jerry was there. I knew him as soon as he got out of the car, in spite of the black handkerchief. They all had black ones. Four of them came out of the bank, running down to the car at the curb. Jerry and another fellow were in the car. When the four came across the sidewalk, Jerry jumped out and went to meet them. That’s when the shooting started and Jerry dropped. The others jumped in the bus and lit out. How about that dough you owe me?”
I counted out ten twenty-dollar bills and a dime. She left the window to come for them.
“That’s for pulling Dan off, so you could cop Max,” she said when she had stowed the money away in her bag. “Now how about what I was to get for showing you where you could turn up the dope on his killing Tim Noonan?”
“You’ll have to wait till he’s indicted. How do I know the dope’s any good?”
She frowned and asked:
“What do you do with all the money you don’t spend?” Her face brightened. “You know where Max is now?”
“No.”
“What’s it worth to know?”
“Nothing.”
“I’ll tell you for a hundred bucks.”
“I wouldn’t want to take advantage of you that way.”
“I’ll tell you for fifty bucks.”
I shook my head.
“Twenty-five.”
“I don’t want him,” I said. “I don’t care where he is. Why don’t you peddle the news to Noonan?”
“Yes, and try to collect. Do you only perfume yourself with booze, or is there any for drinking purposes?”
“Here’s a bottle of so-called Dewar that I picked up at Cedar Hill this afternoon. There’s a bottle of King George in my bag. What’s your choice?”
She voted for King George. We had a drink apiece, straight, and I said:
“Sit down and play with it while I change clothes.”
When I came out of the bathroom twenty-five minutes later she was sitting at the secretary, smoking a cigarette and studying a memoranda book that had been in a side pocket of my gladstone bag.
“I guess theses are the expenses you’ve charged up on other cases,” she said without looking up. “I’m damned if I can see why you can’t be more liberal with me. Look, here’s a six-hundred-dollar item marked Inf. That’s information you bought from somebody, isn’t it? And here’s a hundred and fifty below it—Top—whatever that is. And here’s another day when you spent nearly a thousand dollars.”
“They must be telephone numbers,” I said, taking the book from her. “Where were you raised? Fanning my baggage!”
“I was raised in a convent,” she told me. “I won the good behavior prize every year I was there. I thought little girls who put extra spoons of sugar in their chocolate went to hell for gluttony. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as profanity until I was eighteen. The first time I heard any I damned near fainted.” She spit on the rug in front of her, tilted her chair back, put her crossed feet on my bed, and asked: “What do you think of that?”
I pushed her feet off the bed and said:
“I was raised in a water-front saloon. Keep your saliva off my floor or I’ll toss you out on your neck.”
“Let’s have another drink first. Listen, what’ll you give me for the inside story of how the boys didn’t lose anything building the City Hall—the story that was in the papers I sold Donald Willsson?”
“That doesn’t click with me. Try another.”
“How about why the first Mrs. Lew Yard was sent to the insane asylum?”
“No.”
“King, our sheriff, eight thousand dollars in debt four years ago, now the owner of as nice a collection of downtown business blocks as you’d want to see. I can’t give you all of it, but I can show you where to get it.”
“Keep trying,” I encouraged her.
“No. You don’t want to buy anything. You’re just hoping you’ll pick up something for nothing. This isn’t bad Scotch. Where’d you get it?”
“Brought it from San Francisco with me.”
“What’s the idea of not wanting any of this information I’m offering? Think you can get it cheaper?”
“Information of that kind’s not much good to me now. I’ve got to move quick. I need dynamite—something to blow them apart.”
She laughed and jumped up, her big eyes sparkling.
“I’ve got one of Lew Yard’s cards. Suppose we sent the bottle of Dewar you copped to Pete with the card. Wouldn’t he take it as a declaration of war? If Cedar Hill was a liquor cache, it was Pete’s. Wouldn’t the bottle and Lew’s card make him think Noonan had knocked the place over under orders?”
I considered it and said:
“Too crude. It wouldn’t fool him. Besides, I’d just as leave have Pete and Lew both against the chief at this stage.”
She pouted and said:
“You think you know everything. You’re just hard to get along with. Take me out tonight? I’ve got a new outfit that’ll knock them cockeyed.”
“Yeah.”
“Come up for me around eight.”
She patted my cheek with a warm hand, said “Ta-ta,” and went out as the telephone bell began jingling.
“My chinch and Dick’s are together at your client’s joint,” Mickey Linehan reported over the wire. “Mine’s been generally busier than a hustler with two bunks, though I don’t know what the score is yet. Anything new?”
I said there wasn’t and went into conference with myself across the bed, trying to guess what would come of Noonan’s attack on Cedar Hill Inn and Whisper’s on the First National Bank. I would have given something for the ability to hear what was being said up at old Elihu’s house by him, Pete the Finn, and Lew Yard. But I hadn’t that ability, and I was never much good at guessing, so after half an hour I stopped tormenting my brain and took a nap.
It was nearly seven o’clock when I came out of the nap. I washed, dressed, loaded my pockets with a gun and a pint flask of Scotch, and went up to Dinah’s.
CHAPTER 17: RENO
She took me into her living room, backed away from me, revolved, and asked me how I liked the new dress. I said I liked it. She explained that the color was rose beige and that the dinguses on the side were something or other, winding up:
“And you really think I look good in it?”
“You always look good,” I said. “Lew Yard and Pete the Finn went calling on old Elihu this afternoon.”
She made a face at me and said:
“You don’t give a damn about my dress. What did they do there?”
“A pow-wow, I suppose.”
She looked at me through her lashes and asked:
“Don’t you really know where Max is?”
Then I did. There was no use admitting I hadn’t known all along. I said:
“At Willsson’s, probably, but I haven’t been interested enough to make sure.”
“That’s goofy of you. He’s got reasons for not liking you and me. Take mama’s advice and nail him quick, if you like living and like having mama live too.”
I laughed and said:
“You don’t know the worst of it. Max didn’t kill Noonan’s brother. Tim didn’t say Max. He tried to say MacSwain, and died before he could finish.”
She grabbed my shoulders and tried to shake my hundred and ninety pounds. She was almost strong enough to do it.
“God damn you!” Her breath was hot in my face. Her face was white as her teeth. Rouge stood out sharply like red labels pasted on her mouth and cheeks. “If you’ve framed him and made me frame him, you’ve got to kill him—now.”
I don’t like being manhandled, even by young women who look like something out of mythology when they’re steamed up. I took her hands off my shoulders, and said:
“Stop bellyaching. You’re still alive.”
“Yes, still. But I know Max better than you do. I know how much chance anybody that frames him has got of staying alive long. It would be bad enough if we had got him right, but—”
“Don’t make so much fuss over it. I’ve framed my millions and nothing’s happened to me. Get your hat and coat and we’ll feed. You’ll feel better then.”
“You’re crazy if you think I’m going out. Not with that—”
“Stop it, sister. If he’s that dangerous he’s just as likely to get you here as anywhere. So what difference does it make?”
“It makes a—You know what you’re going to do? You’re going to stay here until Max is put out of the way. It’s your fault and you’ve got to look out for me. I haven’t even got Dan. He’s in the hospital.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got work to do. You’re all burnt up over nothing. Max has probably forgotten all about you by now. Get your hat and coat. I’m starving.”
She put her face close to mine again, and her eyes looked as if they had found something horrible in mine.
“Oh, you’re rotten!” she said. “You don’t give a damn what happens to me. You’re using me as you use the others—that dynamite you wanted. I trusted you.”
“You’re dynamite, all right, but the rest of it’s kind of foolish. You look a lot better when you’re happy. Your features are heavy. Anger makes them downright brutal. I’m starving, sister.”
“You’ll eat here,” she said. “You’re not going to get me out after dark.”
She meant it. She swapped the rose beige dress for an apron, and took inventory of the ice box. There were potatoes, lettuce, canned soup and half a fruit cake. I went out and got a couple of steaks, rolls, asparagus, and tomatoes.
When I came back she was mixing gin, vermouth and orange bitters in a quart shaker, not leaving a lot a space for them to move around in.
