Shake a Crooked Town (6 page)

“No.” Johnny could see the mayor’s disappointment in the blunt negative.

Disappointment was followed by renewed suspicion. “Then who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I’m tryin’ to retrieve a bankroll heisted from me.”

Richard Lowell sat down behind a wide oak desk. His expression was puzzled. “Isn’t that a matter for the police? I mean, why come to me?”

“You’re Toby’s brother. The corn hasn’t stopped poppin’ since I talked to Thompson. Somebody—”

“You talked to Carl Thompson?” The mayor had moved forward on the edge of his chair. “When?”

“Yesterday afternoon at my place.”

“Your—?” Richard Lowell slapped his forehead dramatically with an open palm. “Of course,” he exclaimed. “You’re Killain. Toby called me about you. I didn’t make the connection because he didn’t say you were coming.”

“He didn’t know it. After Thompson was killed—”

“How did it happen?” the mayor broke in eagerly. “I’ve had no details at all.”

“Knifed,” Johnny told him. “An’ twice last night someone tried to add me to the score.”

“You? Why?”

“Because Thompson talked to me?” Johnny asked his own question.

“I see,” Lowell said slowly. “Yes, I do see.”

“Why’d Toby call you?” Johnny asked casually.

“About Thompson, of course.” The mayor looked defensive. He folded his hands in his lap. “I suppose Carl damned me to you up, down, and sideways?”

“He never even mentioned your name,” Johnny said truthfully.

“Then he had a damn sight more forbearance than I’d have had in his place,” Lowell said grimly. “I’m the man who fired him. Under pressure,” he added hastily.

“An’ Toby didn’t like it?”

Richard Lowell smiled bleakly. “My brother has an unrealistic approach at times to the problems of municipal government in a city like Jefferson.”

“What’s your problem?”

“It’s a long story.” Lowell ran a hand nervously through his hair. He couldn’t have been more than fifty, Johnny thought, but the hair was snow white. “First I’d rather go into why you’re here.”

“I’m here because I’m a thousand dollar loser to the action in New York an’ because somebody tried twice to scrag me. It didn’t look to me like I was goin’ to get any answers I wanted at that end of the line.” He moved onto the offensive. “Why are you standin’ me off here, now? What are you afraid of?” He rose to his feet. “Tell your police department they’ll need more’n a wagon to bring me in the next time they take the notion.”

“It’s not my police department!”

“You sprung me from down there,” Johnny pointed out.

“A quid pro quo. Jack Riley—”

“It was your police department when Thompson was chief?” Johnny pressed him when Lowell hesitated. The mayor nodded reluctantly.

“Who submarined him?”

“I think you’d better come out to the house tonight,” Lowell decided. “I don’t like to talk here. I’m never sure—” His hand again made the sweeping gesture through his hair.

“You mean you think your own office could be bugged?”

“I’ve invited you to my home,” Lowell said stiffly.

“I’ve accepted,” Johnny said promptly. “Late, though. Say around ten. I’m havin’ dinner at eight. With Jessamyn Burger.” Richard Lowell’s mouth opened but no sound came forth. Johnny smiled at him. “Give my regards to Toby when you call him to report I hit the deck here.”

“I’m not—who said—” The mayor groped for a reply.

“See you at ten,” Johnny said. “And for Christ’s sake try to make a little more sense than you’re makin’ now, will you?”

He closed the door to the private office from the outside. The brunette secretary again looked up from her typing. Johnny walked over to her desk and looked down at her. “I hear your boss is shackin’ up with an unmarried female,” he said solemnly. “Is it you?”

Her mouth curved humorously. “No, it’s not.”

“Shame on him, then. Would it do me any good to put my name on the list?”

“I’m afraid not.” She raised her hand from the typewriter keys to show him an engagement ring. She was smiling openly.

“That’s the toughest decision I dropped today,” he told her. “Ten thousand thousand good wishes.”

Her eyes followed him all the way to the door.

Back at Mrs. Peterson’s his key let him into the front hallway and he started for the stairs. “Well! Whom have we here?” a fresh young voice inquired from behind him.

Johnny turned. A chubby teenager with schoolbooks under her arm was examining him from the living-room doorway. She had flaming red hair done up in a pony tail, a pert face, and a mouth heavily lipsticked in the latest version of a femme fatale. “I’m the new roomer,” Johnny said.

“Val just
never
tells me these things,” the girl announced dramatically. “I’m Jingle Peterson.” She put down the books and moved out into the hall to get a better look at him. All her movements were exaggerated. She eyed the silver-studded jacket with frank approval. “Cool, man. That skin’s really got the beat.” She ran a hand lightly over the jacket, her head tilted up to watch his face, her expression saucy.

“Pleased to meet you, Jingle,” Johnny acknowledged. “I’m Johnny. Who’s Val?”

“Val?” Her thinly plucked eyebrows rose. “My sainted mama. Mrs. Valerie Peterson. We won’t have any trouble with
her.”
She tapped a finger lightly on his chest. “Pleased to meet
you
, Johnny. Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”

“What the hell would you do if I did?” he asked in amusement.

“Why,
drink
it, of course!” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “What
else
does one do with a drink?”

“How old are you, Jingle?”

“Don’t you agree that chronological age has nothing at all to do with one’s maturity?” she asked rapidly in the manner of a well-rehearsed lesson.

“Fourteen?”

“Mercy! Do I look like a
child?”

“Fifteen an’ a half?”

She pouted at him. “I think you’re horrid. I’m
ages
older than that. If you can’t
see—”

“Must’ve been sixteen last week,” he decided aloud. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the vote of confidence, Jingle, but don’t you think you deserve somethin’ better’n an old crock like me?”

“You’re not all
that
old,” she announced firmly. “You have an interesting face. Sort of grim. I think we’re going to be
very
good friends.” Her face lighted up suddenly. “Are you any good at algebra?”

“I’m the world’s worst.”

“Oh, well,” she sighed. “You can’t have
everything.”
She sailed grandly back into the living room and picked up her books. The eyelashes fluttered at him from the doorway. “See you later, large man. It’s been the most.”

“It sure has,” Johnny agreed. “Hey! Can you press a suit?”

“One dollar per each, satisfaction guaranteed or your money back,” she said briskly.

“Hot up your iron. I’ll bring it right down.” At the top of the stairs he encountered Mrs. Peterson, her dust mop exchanged for a broom. From her position it was obvious she had heard every word from the hallway below.

“Thanks for the way you handled that,” she said to Johnny when he went to pass by.

“You don’t want to get mad at the kid. She’s just testin’ her wings.”

“Her generation defeats me,” Valerie Peterson said darkly. Her hands opened and closed on the broom handle. “We thought about the same things when we were her age, God knows, but it’s their credo to proclaim it. I walk a tightrope trying to decide what’s talk and what isn’t.” Her eyes went down the stairs broodingly. “I guess I’ll have to give up this business before long. Right now she’s still afraid of my hairbrush but when the day comes that she isn’t—” She shrugged. “Well. This floor is off limits to her, incidentally. Our bedroom is downstairs.” Johnny nodded. “There was a man here asking questions about you just after you went out.”

“He say who he was?” Johnny asked quickly.

“He didn’t have to say. I was born and raised in this town. His name is Kratz. He has a used-car lot on the edge of town. He’s also mixed up in local politics.”

“What did he ask you, Mrs. Peterson?”

“Just who you were. He seemed surprised when I told him.” Maybe it had been a break at that, using his own name, Johnny reflected. Kratz had been trying to pick up the alias. With him using his own name it might slow them down a little wondering about his backing. They’d picked him up so fast there sure as hell wasn’t anything the matter with their liaison.

Valerie Peterson was watching his face. “I want no trouble here,” she warned him. “I know this Kratz. You mind what I say.” She walked away from him, down the stairs.

In his room Johnny took down his suit from the closet and headed for the kitchen and Jingle.

J
ESSAMYN BURGER WAS
both an attractive and comfortable dinner companion, Johnny decided. She had appeared in a conservative woolen suit firmly attached to a not-so-conservative figure. She had held up her end of the conversation, had laughed at his jokes, and had gradually turned serious when he described—still in a humorous vein—his encounter with Savino on the library steps and his reception at police headquarters. If she had heard the story before she was a good enough actress to disguise it.

“I think that you were luckier than you know,” she said quietly when he finished. “You’re a stranger in this town. You have no idea of the situation here.”

“There was one thing that bothered me,” Johnny admitted.
“I
’d been in town an hour when Savino tied into me at the library. I couldn’t figure how he got to me so fast. I think I know. He wasn’t tailin’ me. He was watchin’ you, an’ recognized me when I walked in.”

Her eyes widened. “Watching
me?
That’s the most ridiculous idea I ever—”

“What’s so ridiculous about it? You and Daddario were friends. You were in. Now you’re out. They might be havin’ second thoughts about what you learned about their business.”

“I learned nothing about their business, except what’s hearsay in the town anyway.” She said it firmly. “Jim and I were friends for years but we never discussed his political affairs on any but the most platitudinous level.” Her eyes were steady on Johnny’s. “We’re still friends. I’m positive Jim would never do anything to hurt me or implicate me in any way.”

“Not while things were goin’ his way,” Johnny argued. “Right now he’s a little shook up. I think he’s busy shorin’ up the timbers on his political cabin. You might know more than you think.” Jessamyn Burger shook her head decisively and Johnny changed the subject. “Speakin’ of hearsay in the town, I understand Dick Lowell has got himself an unofficial first lady.”

Her smile was unwilling. “For the length of time you’ve been in Jefferson you’ve certainly improved each shining hour. I don’t think that situation is quite the way you’d appraise it from surface appearances, though. The woman’s husband left her ten years ago but he’s a dog-in-the-manger type who won’t give her a divorce. She can’t get it without him dragging her name and Dick’s through every paper in the state. He’s threatened to do it. Dick can’t have that, so the status quo remains. It’s a sordid but not unusual situation.”

So it wasn’t Micheline Thompson with whom Dick Lowell was playing house, Johnny mused. He was surprised at the relief he felt at the news. If she had been involved it would almost have clinched her role in the Manhattan suite. Thinking of her recalled something else. He had called the number listed for Carl Thompson in the phone book before he had left Mrs. Peterson’s to meet Jessamyn, and had raised no one. He pushed back his chair and signaled the waiter for his check. “Excuse me a moment,” he said to Jessamyn. He placed a bill beside his plate.

He walked out to the men’s room and stepped into a phone booth just outside the door. He dialed the Carl Thompson number again and listened with a gathering frown as the phone rang and rang. He hung up and emerged from the booth thoughtfully. He wondered where Micheline Thompson was spending her time.

Back at the table he smiled down at Jessamyn Burger. “See you home, lady?”

“Oh, don’t bother. It’s out a little way. I’m—”

“Bother? I
want
to bother.” Her color bloomed at his inspection. “We’ll take a cab out an’ I’ll walk back. I need the exercise.”

“Well—” He gave her no chance to argue. On the sidewalk he took her arm while the restaurant doorman flagged down a taxi. “The address is 546 Circle Drive,” she said as one pulled in to the curb. Johnny gave the driver the address and settled down beside her. It was a quiet ride.

“I’m sorry I can’t invite you in for a drink,” she said when the cab pulled into a curving street lined with apartment buildings. “As far as their librarian’s morals are concerned, Jefferson is a small town.”

“I’ll just walk you to the door,” Johnny said as the taxi stopped before a building shabbier than its neighbors. “I’d like to do this again when you can work me into your schedule.”

“I have no schedule,” she said before she thought. She smiled self-consciously. “I really should build myself up to you better than that, shouldn’t I?” He took her arm again up the broad cement walk. At the door she turned. “Thank you. I enjoyed it.”

He opened the door. “I’ll give you a ring,” he suggested. He stood on the step holding the door. “Is there any—” Over her shoulder as Jessamyn moved inside Johnny saw a shadow that materialized into Jigger Kratz and Tommy Savino standing there, waiting. Without even thinking about it Johnny stepped inside and closed the door.

At the expression on his face Jessamyn turned quickly. “Jigger!” she exclaimed in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

The big man stood with his hands jammed comfortably into his pockets, a cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth. “Jim wants you should call him, Jessie,” he said. His lips seemed not to move at all.

“If Jim wants to talk to me he knows my telephone number!” she replied spiritedly.

“It’d be a good idea if you called him, Jessie,” Kratz said patiently. He rocked slightly on his heels, perfectly relaxed. Beside him Savino was taut as a bowstring, Johnny thought. “Take care of it, will you? Goodnight.”

“Goodnight?” she echoed, surprised. “What—” She looked from the two men to Johnny and back again. Johnny had moved casually a few feet from the door at his back, out into the small lobby with its polished floor. “Now look, Jigger—”

Savino’s leash snapped. “Get inside!” he barked at her. He looked at Johnny with a dark, triumphant sneer. He circled to Johnny’s left with the short, graceful steps of a dancer.

“Jigger!” the girl cried out. “Stop him!”

The big man smiled. Savino rushed Johnny, throwing a long right-hand punch. Johnny blocked it easily. In close, the slender man darted the forked fingers of his left hand at Johnny’s eyes. Johnny caught the fingers and bent them back steadily upon the wrist. Savino went to his knees with a strangled sound.

“Give me a reason I shouldn’t break ‘em, wise guy,” Johnny growled down at the ashen face. He moved to put Savino between himself and Kratz who had made no move at all. Savino scrambled on his knees turning with Johnny, his eyes bulging as he tried to relieve the pressure on his fingers. His free hand came up and clawed at Johnny’s hand. Johnny put a foot in Savino’s stomach and thrust explosively, letting go of the fingers. Savino skidded on his knees across the lobby floor and crashed into Kratz’s shins with a force that would have driven the average man backward. The big man never even missed a puff on his cigarette. “Try your luck?” Johnny invited him.

With no change of expression Kratz reached down and hooked thick fingers in Savino’s coat collar. He hauled him to his feet. “He was told not to do that,” he rumbled to Johnny. “That’s the only reason you’re gettin’ away with it.” He turned to the white-faced librarian. “You call Jim, Jessie.” He steered the reeling Savino through the door and was gone.

Jessamyn Burger drew a long breath as Johnny looked down at his right hand. Blood welled up on the back of it. “You’re hurt!” she said sharply.

“Just a scratch,” Johnny told her. He reached in his pocket for a handkerchief.

“You come inside and wash that out,” she ordered him. “That man’s fingernails could give you hydrophobia.”

“But you said—”

“I don’t care what I said.” High heels click-clacking, she led the way up three steps and along a dimly lighted aisle past a self-service elvator. At a door marked 2-A she stopped and removed a key from her handbag.

The drab exterior of the building and the small, cluttered lobby had left Johnny unprepared for the room into which she led him. Solid cherry paneling covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Vividly scarlet linoleum on the floor was partially covered by a huge oval rug braided in a concentric black-and-white pattern. An austere white brick chimney centered the farther wall. Below it the fireplace was an old-fashioned Franklin stove extending outward on a raised white brick hearth. Bronze andirons in front of it and bronze knobs and medallions on the stove itself relieved its jet black severity. At the side a bronze-hooped, cherrywood bucket contained white birch logs. A low cherrywood table to the left held an ivory lamp and a bowl of flowers, and to the right a high cherrywood buffet held a matching lamp and a trailing green fern. Halfway to the ceiling on the white bricks of the chimney a golden rooster crowed silently.

“I like this,” Johnny approved. He realized that every fiber of wood visible in the room was cherry.

“Thank you. I designed it myself.” She glanced around as though trying to see it critically with his eyes. “
And
paid for it myself. My well-meaning knowledgeable friends tell me it has no particular distinction or artistic merit, but I like it. I like nice things.” She returned her key to her handbag. “You can wash up behind that door on the right.”

Beyond the bathroom Johnny had a quick glimpse of a bedroom in frilly pinks and whites. He ran the cold water and stuck his hand under it. He heard the sound of her heels on the tile beside him and turned to look. “Duck your head,” she commanded, and opened the medicine closet door when he complied. She took down a bottle of Mercurochrome and a box of Band-aids. “You have the
biggest
hand,” she said in surprise, working on it. Her voice trailed off.

Back out in the cherrywood living room he raised the question that had been on his mind. “Those two seem to think you’re still on the home team the way they boss you around,” he said. He watched her face while appearing to smooth down the Band-aid on the back of his hand.

“I was kicked off the home team so long ago the bruises have nearly healed.” She said it with no real emphasis but it sounded sincere to his critical ear. “You’ll have to watch yourself with Savino,” she continued.

“He’s dropped a couple decisions today. He may go back into trainin’.”

She shook her head emphatically. “Not Savino. If he can’t do it from in front he’ll do it from behind.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “You’re very strong, aren’t you?”

“As strong as Kratz?”

Her eyes darkened. “No one is as strong as Kratz.”

“He the boy who did the job on Thompson?”

Her face closed up. “I’m sure I have no idea.”

He’d touched the wrong button that time, Johnny decided. He waved the bandaged hand at her. “Thanks, Jessie. For everything. I’ll give you a ring.”

Her features opened up again at his use of her name. “I—I’d like that.”

“Just keep the line clear,” he told her cheerfully, and departed.

He walked back to town, detouring out into the street each time a corner building ran right out to the sidewalk. He saw no sign of Savino, or of Kratz, either.

• • •

Johnny sat in Richard Lowell’s library as the white-maned mayor pushed a low, wheeled table alongside his chair. The table contained a brandy decanter, two pony glasses, and a cigar humidor. Lowell splashed brandy into each of the glasses and nudged one in Johnny’s direction. He picked up his own and drained it at a gulp, set down his glass and refilled it. He selected a cigar from the humidor and carried brandy and cigar to the unlighted fireplace. “Help yourself to a cigar,” he said as an afterthought. His back was to the room. He flung the crumpled cellophane from his cigar at the set logs in the fireplace with exaggerated force. To Johnny he looked as nervous as a cat on hot bricks.

Johnny chose a cigar and glanced around the tremendous room whose walls were book-lined two-thirds of the way to a ceiling he estimated at eighteen feet. The fireplace was large enough to roast an ox. “Who pays the heatin’ bills here?” he asked. “The city?”

Richard Lowell’s expression was concentrated as he rotated the tip of his cigar carefully in the flame of a silver lighter. “This is the Lowell House,” he said when he had the cigar going to his satisfaction. His manner indicated that that should be all the explanation necessary.

“The Richard Lowell House?”

The mayor made an impatient gesture with his cigar. “The Lowell House,” he repeated. “Built by my people shortly after 1800. There’ve been Lowells in Jefferson ever since. There’ve been Lowells in city, state, and federal government ever since.” He looked moodily around the huge room. “This place is an anachronism now. I let my housekeeper go. I live in three rooms and I take my meals out. I have no family.” He shook his head. “Lately I’ve begun to understand the problems of dynasties when the succession peters out. Toby never married at all. After me, I don’t know what becomes of the Lowell House.”

“But the Lowells run Jefferson?”

Lowell’s smile was bitter. “I can take you to places in town where you can get an argument on the point. Oh, they used to, all right.” He took down his pony glass from the mantel where he had placed it while he lit his cigar.

“Thompson was your man. You’re bein’ moved in on since he was dragged out of the saddle?”

“Very succinctly put, my friend. I am indeed being moved in on.”

“But you’re still the mayor.”

“The voting public still retains an affection for the name Lowell. As for the mayor’s rights, powers, and perquisites, they’re being whittled away every day.”

“By Daddario?”

“Jim would like to be mayor.” Richard Lowell shrugged. “Ten years ago I’d have called it impossible.”

“Riley is Daddario’s man?”

“He is, although he was approved by the city council, which is a nine-man board. The vote was five to nothing with four abstentions. It was an extremely slapdash affair. I had no candidate to put up against Riley. It was railroaded through.”

“If you still control four council votes you can’t be in such bad shape,” Johnny said.

“I controlled six at the beginning of this term,” Lowell said wryly. “Jim apparently is a better salesman than I am.” He drained off the balance of his brandy. “How was your dinner?”

“Fine an’ dandy, until I ran into Kratz an’ Savino afterward.” The mayor looked at him silently. “Savino threw another shoe. Kratz refereed. I don’t think we settled much.”