Shake a Crooked Town (13 page)

“Somebody was insane,” Jim Daddario said bleakly. “And here I was trying to hold the lid down on a volcano like this. Jigger told me he—” his eyes went to the floor “—had done it because he had your—” the eyes returned to Johnny “—thousand. I was ready to turn him in if worse came to worst.” His still partly unbelieving gaze returned to Richard Lowell. “By God, I remember now I tried to call you up here from the New York hotel suite and nobody knew where you were.” He shook his head. “I never dreamed he’d go down there himself as a result of his brother’s call.”

“That’s only half of it.” Johnny moved a cautious step nearer to Jim Daddario. “He had company when he went. Jack Riley.”

Dark blood rushed into Daddario’s face. “Riley? My own man? Doublecrossing me?”

“Not right that minute. He was still your man. I imagine he went along to keep an eye on things, not knowing what else to do. But he knew where Lowell had been, and when he found out what happened to Thompson he thought he saw a chance to move up to Number One. With Lowell in his pocket, if he could dump you he figured he’d inherit the payoff here. Lowell and he didn’t know what Thompson had told me, so Riley hired himself some local talent in a hurry to take care of me an’ then he hustled Lowell out of town before he could be seen by any of your crowd.”

Johnny leveled a finger at the furious-looking politician. “But they’d been seen together by Micheline Thompson, before her husband was killed. Riley didn’t know it an’ Lowell “didn’t tell him till they got back up here. They both wanted me to find her. Riley so that he could hold her as a witness over the mayor’s head.” He changed the direction of the pointing finger. “What would you have done if I’d found her for you, Lowell?”

“I’d have—I’d have convinced her she’d been in error in thinking she’d seen me,” Richard Lowell said faintly.

“The same way you convinced Thompson?” Daddario broke in. “Goddammit, what a mess! All I wanted was to keep the lid on the situation here and now you’ve—” He paused in disgust, thinking hard, then made a gesture of finality. “You’re done, Dick. I can’t save you. Nobody could. I don’t know if I can save myself.”

“You’ll save me,” Dick Lowell said irritably. “You’ll do it or I’ll swear you engineered the whole thing. This is my town and I’m not leaving it to you or any other jackal, understand?” His voice had risen childishly and cracked at the last word.

Johnny could see the hardening of Daddario’s features and the almost imperceptible swing of his gun hand. “Lowell, I’ve had enough of your vanity. When it’s compounded with murder—”

A thunderous knocking at the locked door interrupted him, a prolonged furious drumming on the wood. “Open up in there!” a bull-elephant voice blared.

Johnny had been estimating the distance between himself and Jim Daddario’s gun hand. At the sudden outbreak of sound Richard Lowell started violently. He backed away tugging at a jacket pocket. “You’re not selling me out!” he screamed. “You sent Rudy out to get someone to help you! I’ll show
you
—” His right hand emerged with the largest revolver Johnny had ever seen. Johnny went floorward as the wild-eyed man pulled the trigger five times, the large-caliber gun in the inexperienced hand jerking Lowell’s arm up convulsively at each shot. In the enclosed space the.45 sounded like a miniature cannon.

The wooden door went down with a tired screech of metal hinges as Jim Daddario doubled over with his arms wrapped around himself. Richard Lowell took one ashen-faced look at the broken down door and raised the revolver to his head and pulled the trigger. He was on his back on the floor before Jim Daddario finally lost his equilibrium and plunged forward on his face.

Johnny edged cautiously to his feet as a tall, skeleton-thin man in civilian clothes pushed through the uniformed men in the doorway. The tall man knelt swiftly beside Richard Lowell, feeling for a pulse. Almost at once he eased the wrist he had taken down to the floor again. “Dick,” he said gently, his sharp, homely features tight with concern. “Dick, you poor fool. It wasn’t worth it.”

Johnny approached, but remained silent while the kneeling man struggled for self-possession. He spoke finally into the quiet. “Sorry, Toby. I thought I had it under control.” Toby Lowell looked up and nodded, his lined face tired. “How’d you get here?” Johnny asked.

The young lady tracked me down at Lowell House.” Johnny looked and saw Micheline Thompson in the rear of the uniformed group. From its center Jack Riley’s beefy figure emerged and strode up to join them. “From what she said, reinforcements seemed in order. I stopped for them.”

“We’ll take care of everything here, sir,” Chief Riley said quickly. He didn’t look at Johnny. He turned and started to beckon to the doorway.

“Just a goddamn minute.” Johnny caught the arm and spun the bulky-bodied chief about. His hand closed on the chief’s gold badge and he ripped it from Riley’s chest. It came free with half a yard of uniform attached. Johnny stripped off the cloth, centered the badge in his hands, and bore down. As they had in the hotel room that other day his hands crept down between his knees. They came up with the badge in two jagged pieces. Johnny slapped one of them into Jack Riley’s nerveless hand. “There’s your thirty pieces of silver, Jack.” He turned to Toby Lowell. “He’s resignin’.” He swung around to the red-faced chief. “Tell him, Riley.”

“I’m—resigning.” Jack Riley spoke with difficulty.

“You’ll have to put the pieces together again around here, Toby,” Johnny told him. “The merry-go-round broke down. In the cleanup you’ll run across the name Burger. Don’t bear down too hard.”

Toby Lowell nodded. “I’ll have to take some leave.” He spoke as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. “Obviously, I should have done it before. Will you be around for a few days?”

“I’ve got to get back to New York,” Johnny began, and turned as a small, warm hand slipped into his. He looked down at Micheline Thompson’s dark hair and the shadows beneath her luminous eyes. “Well, maybe for a few days,” he amended. “Till I get the stitches out.”

“How can I ever thank you, Johnny?” she asked quietly. “If you hadn’t thrown that stone—”

“Ash tray,” he corrected her. He transferred from his own hand to hers the remaining half of Jack Riley’s torn badge. “You can tell your grandchildren about it some day.”

He glanced once more about the room illuminated only by the single droplight at the gambling table. He looked at the canvas-covered roulette wheels, at the bodies on the floor, at the white-flaked bits of fluorescent tubing underfoot. He turned and caught Micheline Thompson’s eye.

Arm-in-arm he walked with her out to the street.

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Text Copyright © 1961 by Dan Marlowe

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Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-4226-0
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4226-8

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