Stories (2011) (98 page)

VII

Happy's wasn't closed but preparations were being made. All the outside lights
were off, even the neon, curlicue beer, wine and stripper signs. The inside
lights were on. That meant the crowd had cleared or was clearing rapidly.
Honkytonkers don't honkytonk under the glare of lights. It cramps the style.

The last couple in the place was coming out as Slater went
in. James the bartender was wiping off tables, pushing chairs around. Slater
didn't see any other employees. It seemed they had all gone home. James looked
up.

"Closing, Mr. Private Eye," James sneered.

Slater got out a cigarette and lit it, slowly. Said,
"Do I denote a touch of sarcasm in your voice?"

James shrugged, balled up the rage and started back for the
bar, scooping up a couple of empty beer mugs as he went. He eased around behind
the bar, plumped down the beer mugs.

"I said, I'm closing."

"So you did," Slater said and he walked over to a
stool, sat down across the bar from James.

"Shall I call the cops?"

"That won't be necessary. I've already taken care of
that. They ought to be here at any moment." For emphasis, Slater glanced
at the clock on the wall. "I think you and I have the time we need,
however."

"Time for what?"

"Chit-chat. Wouldn't want to draw us up a couple of
beers, would you?"

James didn't move.

"You know," Slater continued, "I really had
my doubts about who murdered Krim." Slater looked at James for a reaction.
He looked bored.

James put both hands on the bar top with the rag stretched
out nicely between them. "Say your little piece if it'll make you feel
better-then, get out!"

Slater put his cigarette out on the bar top and watched
James frown.

"You see," Slater said, "I thought Martinez
was the man at all times. I mean he was right for it, and with your telling me
how you saw him lead Krim into the Lincoln... well, that was good, James, real
good.

"But no, it wasn't Martinez. The persons responsible
for that were a couple of cops. I met them personally. You knew I would, I'm
sure of that. Actually, you're kind of surprised to see me, aren't you?"
James didn't look surprised. Slater continued.

"The only bad thing is the cops slipped. I got away
with their descriptions, the car's description and their license number. They
didn't try to keep that stuff concealed. Why would they? With me dead, it
wouldn't matter.

"Now, I don't know it for positive, but when I called
the police, which was right before I came here, I left that license number with
them. I'm sure when they run it down, it'll belong to a plain-clothes, GulfCity
cop that looks like a gorilla. I'm sure, too, that discovery will lead to the
identification of his egghead friend.

"You see, James, they have to be cops-the same cops
this place passes the payoff money to. That's why there wasn't any
investigation in this area. Those two were the officers in charge. Slick,
James, real slick."

"And why am I hearing all this?"

Slater ignored him. "Oh yeah, they have to be cops. How
else would they know Yank was hiring himself a private detective. He asked
around at the GulfCity and the Pasadena stations, that's how. I'll even narrow
it down a little more. They were GulfCity cops. I know that because, when I
left the GulfCity station tonight and started home, these two goons show up and
try to do me in."

"Like I said, Slater. Why am I hearing all this?"

"What I'm getting at is the murder of Jason Krim."

"Can't pin that on me. I was right here all the
time."

"Oh, I believe you were here. Like I said, the cops did
it." Slater glared into the bartender's eyes. "But I think you paid
them to lean on the old man."

James flipped the rag from under his hands and draped it
over the edge of the bar, got a cigarette out and lit it with a disposable
lighter. He put the cigarette pack and the lighter back in his pocket. Slater
thought maybe his hands were shaking just a little.

James said, "Atso?"

"Uh-huh, atso."

James took some puffs on his weed, smiled around it.
"You're not sticking me with no bum rap."

"I figured maybe you didn't mean for them to kill
him," Slater admitted. "Just teach him a lesson. Too bad. Those guys
like their work. Maybe the old warhorse put up a bigger fight than they
expected. He was old, but no pushover."

"If you're trying to scare me to death," James
said, "you're doing a lousy job." He moved down the bar toward the
spot where his hand had disappeared during his and Slater's first
heart-to-heart talk.

Slater eased his.38 out of his pocket and laid it on the
bar, kept his hand on top of it.

Slater said, "My memory's better than that. Both hands
on deck."

James put his hands where Slater could see them, opened and
closed them. He tried to maintain his confident air, but there was sweat on his
upper lip and the sarcastic smile was a little crooked now.

"May I have a drink," he asked.

"Sure. Why not-but do be careful. I'm very
excitable."

James turned to the counter slowly, picked up a shot glass
and a bottle, poured himself a healthy one, went back to his station at the
bar.

"Remember the hands," Slater advised.

"And just why should I go to all this trouble?"
James asked, then tossed off half the drink.

It would be nice if it were really complex, some kind of
boxing-world scandal, drugs, that sort of thing. It's a lot older and less
complicated, however. Jealousy, or, maybe more directly, rejection. You
couldn't stand that Leona turned you down for an older man, and a black one at
that."

"You can't prove a damn thing."

"Now I'll grant you that a lot of this is guesswork,
but when the cops start looking, I bet they find a lot of juicy material to
work with. Not that they'll need it. Those two-bit cops will probably sing to
high heaven. You'll be in the song, James."

James turned his shot glass around and around in his hand.
His eyes were hooded, his lips drawn.

Slater went on, "Here's how I got it figured. Jason
comes in and makes a hit with Leona. Too bad for James-boy. He's not quite the
romancer he thought and, worse yet, in your mind, it's a turndown for an
inferior. What a blow to the ego!

"Now let's take two crooked cops who like the long
green and, since they don't mind stretching the rules to get it, and, since
you're onto their little racket here, maybe you have a little talk with them.

"Maybe you tell them that if they'll lean on the old
man, you'll see that they get a few extra bucks. You know Jason's routine, so,
you point him out and they wait for him to leave. You might even be hoping that
Leona will be with him, most likely would be since he doesn't drive.

"Anyway, damned if things don't work out better than
expected. You even get your fall guy. Martinez comes in, gives Jason a hard
time and stomps out mad in plain sight of everybody. Your cop friends are
posted nearby and they spot him leaving, know who he is.

"That's when they catch that he's driving the Lincoln,
and that little piece of information is good for later. That makes a nice believable
touch when you tell me you saw Martinez loading the old man in the back seat.

"Okay, Jason goes out and decides to take a walk. Why
not? He hasn't got a car and he hasn't called a taxi. He wants to walk off his
anger. His favorite meditating place is nearby. Okay, he walks down into the
boonies and the cops couldn't have planned it better themselves, so they follow
him down to the pier, and zap! The old man's out for the full count.

"That's the mess-up. It's unlikely that Martinez would
have enough time to beat it around back and clobber Krim just in time for you
to take out the garbage. But I'll give you that possibility.

"What I won't give you is the coincidence that the spot
Anibal chooses to dump the body is Krim's one special spot. I suppose you could
have lied about the Lincoln, and he could have still followed Krim and done him
in, but in that case the cops wouldn't be on my tail.

"Too many things, James. Far too many. You were
reluctant to talk to me, worried about the cops. Then I learned this place has
a couple of cops on the payroll and two guys start following me around. Well,
it just started to add up.

"You know, James, maybe if you'd kept those cops off me
the three of you might have gotten away with it."

"Might yet," James snapped and there was a blur of
glass and whisky whirling in Slater's face. The detective ducked left, caught
sight of James' hand snaking out from beneath the bar. There was a revolver in
it.

Slater's move carried him down and behind the bar just as
the shot slammed into the wood and sent splinters into his face.

The worse part about it was Slater had left his.38 on the
bar top. In the movies, he would have leapt up, grabbed it at a roll and shot
the culprit between the eyes. This wasn't the movies. Slater had made a
frightened, stupid move and that was all there was to it.

James palmed himself over the bar top and pointed the
revolver at Slater's head. His smile was as chill as the arctic wind.
"Goodbye, Mr. Private Eye." He cocked back the hammer.

The room was a cannon roar.

VIII

James threw up his left hand like a man tossing confetti to the wind. The
revolver flew up and into the bottles behind the bar. The sound of tinkling
glass seemed every bit as loud as an avalanche. James' feet went out from under
him and he fell against the bar and began to slide languidly to the floor. A
red stream blew high and wide from his shoulder and seemed to come down in
slow, mesmerized droplets. In the doorway, gun in hand, stood Homicide dick
Randle Burney. Two blue suits came in behind him. He walked over to Slater,
putting the gun away. He picked a yellow handkerchief that was supposed to be
white from his pocket and wiped his perspiring forehead with it. His hand was
shaking ever so slightly.

"You know, Slater," he said. "You're a lot of
trouble."

Slater let himself breathe, got up and went over to the bar
for his.38. "I seem to have misplaced this in a moment of crisis," he
said in a voice calmer than he felt.

Burney turned to the blue suits who were hovering over
James. One of them said, "Nice shooting. Put the shoulder out of
commission."

"Swell," Burney lied. "I was aiming for his
head."

The blue suit smiled at him. "No notch this time. This
one will live. I'll radio an ambulance."

Burney turned back to Slater, who had gone around behind the
bar and poured himself a stiff one. "What was the idea of calling and
telling us to meet you here pronto?" That was crazy, Slater. Why?"

"I don't know for sure. I had to talk it out, get some
kind of result. I just had a few clues and a lot of hunches."

"Uh-huh, and if we'd been one second later we'd have
been picking you off the floor with a vacuum cleaner."

"The license number I left with you. Was it what I
thought?"

"Halfway here we got the radio message. It's the number
belonging to a GulfCity cop, just like you thought. We've already got feelers
out for him and whoever his partner is. It shouldn't be hard, considering they
aren't expecting us to know."

Slater nodded, went over to look at James. He was mercifully
unconscious and breathing heavily. The blue suit had stopped the flow of blood
with simple first aid. "I think it hit the bone and went out the back of
his arm," the cop said.

"It's up to the ambulance now," Burney said.
"I've got my car outside. I think we better go down to the station,
Slater."

"Fine," the detective said. "But first I need
to return a stolen car."

By the time Slater had finished with the cops and talked
with Yank it was almost daybreak. He went home and sat in the dying dark, drank
a beer, smoked a cigarette and thought about poor old Jason and the sweet
stripper named Leona Blue who loved him.

He kept rolling the napkin with her phone number on it
around and around between his fingers, wishing that when he finally got up the
nerve to keep his promise, there would be something comforting he could say.

He picked up the phone and dialed.

I was recovering from some knife wounds, and was mostly
healed up and hoping I wasn’t gonna come up on anything that might get me all
het up and cause me to tear open my cuts. I was chewin’ on some jerky, riding a
pretty good horse on the plains of Texas, when I seen something in the
distance. I pulled my mount up and got out my long glasses and took me a look.

There was a colored fella like myself lying out there under
a horse, had one leg jammed under it, and the horse was deader than a rock. The
colored fella was wearing a big sombrero and a red shirt and he wasn’t movin’.
I figured he was dead like the horse, cause there was some buzzards circlin’,
and one lit down near the man and the horse and had the manner of a miner
waiting for someone to ring the dinner bell. There was a little black cloud
above the fella I took to be flies that was excited about soon crawling up the
old boy’s nose holes.

I rode on over there, and when I got near, the colored fella
rolled on his side and showed me the business end of an old Sharp’s fifty
rifle, the hole in the barrel looked to me to be as big as a mining tunnel.

“Hold up,” I said, “I ain’t got nothin’ agin ya.”

“Yeah,” he said in a voice dry as the day, “but there’s them
that do.” He rolled over on his side again and lay the rifle across his chest.
He said, “You give me any cause, I’ll blow your head off.”

I got down off my horse and led it over to where the fella
and his dead cayuse lay. I said, “So, just restin’?”