The Duchess of Skid Row (11 page)

I said, “Waiting for his funeral. He just shot himself—with my help.”

Arch didn’t say anything. He didn’t look particularly happy either.

I let it ride there. I was beginning to feel sick from more than my wound. If Arch was telling the truth and Minto wasn’t Combine, my theory was as dead as Minto. And without that theory, I had no place to go.

Maybe Stephanie had been telling the truth when she said she worked only for Hoxey.

Then I saw the other angle. The beautifully clear, simple angle I had overlooked. And I had overlooked it because I was supposed to. I had fallen into the same trap Johnny Itsuko had.

I said, “Arch, how do you get into the old Chinese-built tunnels from here? Through your basement?”

He looked at me as if I was crazy. And that look gave me the answer I needed. I said, “Hang tough. You might make it yet.”

I opened the door and backed into the hall. I didn’t wait to find out if he was coming after me. I staggered out to the alley. I turned toward Third Avenue.

I could hear a siren wailing somewhere in the near distance. Maslin to the rescue, I thought. Only not to my rescue. I had some fast moving to do. If he got me now, the evidence I needed would be gone before I could talk my way clear.

I went into Nick Calumet’s. I followed the same pattern I had at Arch’s. I hiked up the hall to the office. I pushed the door open and walked in. Only this office was empty.

I went back to the hall and into the movie section at the end. Figures were scuttling around in the gloom as the siren’s wail penetrated into the big room. Most of Calumet’s customers were the kind who preferred not to be around when the cops came.

I went to the change window. I said through the grill, “Where’s Nick?”

The wizened character pushed his money drawer shut. He looked at my muddy face and then at my gun. He said squeakily, “He said he was going out. About a half hour ago. He didn’t tell me where.”

“Then you tell me how I get into the basement.”

He stared at me from rheumy eyes. “What basement. There ain’t none in this rat trap.”

The siren sound was closer. I left the old man and burrowed back into the darkness. I didn’t think he was lying; I just thought he didn’t know what he was talking about.

Because there had to be a basement entrance somewhere in this room. I had chased Hoxey in here and he had disappeared. I remembered him running for the last aisle. I walked that way.

I stepped into the dark corner made by two machines. I felt the wall. I found a joint, but I couldn’t tell if it was a seam between wall boards or the kind of crack made by a tight-fitting door.

I rapped on the wall with my gun butt. I got a hollow sound. I wasn’t surprised. Between the early Chinese proprietors of this place and Joe Rome, quick escape hatches were a necessity. The siren wail rose and then stopped abruptly. Maslin had arrived.

I picked up three splinters running my hands over that wall. I got nowhere until I reached behind the first machine. Then I found the nailhead I wanted and the wall wasn’t a wall at all. It was a sliding door. It was just the thing Joe Rome’s old customers and maybe Calumet’s new ones would have thrilled over.

Only Joe Rome’s customers would have been slipping through the dark hole in front of me to reach one of the back rooms where a girl waited. And if I was right, Calumet’s customers would find a wire service set-up instead of a woman.

I wasn’t right. I went through the hole, holding up a match. I was in a corridor with doors opening off it. I tried the first door on my right. I looked into a cubbyhole, still complete with cot, washstand—and dust. The place hadn’t been touched since Joe Rome had gone out of business.

I tried the other rooms and got the same result. I began to think Arch had been right after all. I was out of my head. From the appearance of this place, Calumet didn’t even know it existed. He wouldn’t have let so much space go to waste.

I hit the jackpot in the last room at the end of the hall. The door was different from the others, of new wood and unpainted. The room was about the size of a double closet. It was all new construction, unfinished, and with a flight of stairs going down into darkness. I found a light switch at the head of the stairs. I snapped on the light and started down them.

They made a sharp bend, heading west. They went down below the level of Arch’s basement. And they stopped at a doorframe that was too recently built to have had the door hung on it. I stepped through the doorframe. I hiked down a short tunnel with fresh shoring holding away the dirt walls and ceiling.

I stepped into a cross tunnel. But this one wasn’t new. It was old, very old. The walls and ceiling were made of worn, waterstained wood. The floor was worn from the scuffling of many slippered feet. I began to feel better. I had been right. I was in the old Chinese tunnel.

It went into gloom to my right and a short distance to a doorway to the left. I hefted the gun in my hand. I started left.

I stopped. Heavy footsteps were coming from somewhere, making the walls and floor vibrate. I couldn’t place the direction by the echo. I didn’t wait around to work on the problem. I headed left for the door.

It had an old-fashioned lift latch instead of a knob. I put my hand on the latch. The dim overhead light went out. The darkness came down like a club. The footsteps echoing through the place were closer, heavier.

I lifted the latch and gave the door a push. At the same time I dropped flat on my belly. Three shots came blasting out of the darkness. Bullets whined where I had been standing. I answered with a single shot. Silence answered me.

I started to my knees. Three more shots came, hard and sharp. I dropped back to my face. There was no feel of lead whistling over my head. There was only the echo of the shots blending with the running feet. I fired once more into the darkness of the room.

The same silence came back at me. I tried another shot. The gun in my hand clicked emptily. Two shots, I thought, I had only two shots. And I realized I must have grabbed Minto’s gun instead of my own when I started for Arch’s.

I looked into the darkness and wondered where I went from here.

T
HE FOOTSTEPS
came too close for comfort. I rolled to one side and up against the tunnel wall. A match flared, lighting up Arch’s red, sweating face.

I yelled, “Put that light out, you fool. Do you want to get shot?”

He found me. He said wildly, “Teddy’s gone. She isn’t at her place. Her cellar door was open. It led me into this place. Where is she, McKeon?”

I said, “I’ll bet the pint of blood I have left that she’s in that room. But I won’t make book that she’s still alive.”

It was a crazy thing to say to a man like Arch. He dropped his light and ran straight into the darkness.

I got to my knees and waited for the shots to come. Nothing happened. I heard Arch blundering around shouting for Teddy. Then he must have found a switch. The tunnel light came on. Lamps in the room lit up, blinding me.

When I could see again, I looked through the doorway at Stephanie Bartlett.

She was sitting in the middle of the floor. A gun was in her hand. It pointed nowhere. Her eyes were open. They pointed nowhere too. Three round holes made dark, ugly dots in the middle of her blouse. I thought that it was a bitter kind of justice for my bullets to have hit that part of her body she loved the most.

I got to my feet and walked into the room. I stopped and looked down at her. She had been in a tussle. Her coat buttons were torn off. There were scratches on her left cheek and a long, vicious gouge along her upper left arm.

I said, “Teddy put up quite a battle.”

Arch didn’t answer me. He wasn’t in the room. I looked around, puzzled. The room was very fancy. The panelling was knotty pine. Horse race prints decorated the walls. Soft couches and chairs were in position to rest the weary gambler while he waited for race results to be posted on the big blackboard across the room. In front of the blackboard were tables to hold the teletype machines. They apparently hadn’t yet been installed.

I spotted a half-open door. It came all the way open, revealing the white porcelain of plumbing. Then Arch appeared. He was earring Teddy Jenner. Her head hung back. Blood ran from a cut over her temple and into her hair.

He laid her on a couch. I put my hand on her wrist. I didn’t think he would appreciate my feeling for her heartbeat.

I said, “She’ll come around. She’s healthy as a horse.”

He made childish love noises and knelt down. He began wiping her face with his handkerchief. “How did she get here?” he asked me.

I said, “Stephanie brought her—not without an argument. My guess is that when Stephanie missed killing me on the river road, she headed back this way to clean up the mess and get ready to run. She knew I’d come back here. And she must have figured Teddy could put the finger on her too; that Hoxey might have told Teddy more than he should have. So she grabbed Teddy and brought her here and settled down to wait for me.”

I glanced at Stephanie again. “I’m glad I couldn’t see what I was shooting at,” I said.

A rough voice said behind me, “You really go for the slaughter, don’t you McKeon. Is this your Combine friend?”

I turned slowly. I looked into Captain Ritter’s red face. And I looked into the muzzle of his police revolver.

Maslin was coming right behind him. I said, “Put that gun away, Captain. You’ve lost the hand. You haven’t got a prayer of tying me to the Combine.”

Ritter stepped into the room. He said, “I’ve got the evidence all right. And this about nails it down.”

I said, “If you have any evidence, Captain, you faked it. Because the Combine isn’t operating within a thousand miles of here.”

• • •

I looked wearily at Maslin, at the DA, at Ritter, Arch and Teddy Jenner. We were all in the DA’s office. It was four o’clock in the morning. My wound was patched and most of the grime was washed off me. I had two shots of the DA’s best bourbon inside me and a cup of coffee in my hand. But I still didn’t feel very sharp.

I said for the fifth time, “That’s the way it is. The Combine isn’t operating here at all. Spreading that rumor and the one about me was Stephanie’s idea. She knew Minto in L.A. He got in some kind of trouble and came up here to cool off. He looked her up. Then she got her idea. She hired Hoxey to help. He bugged the dictating equipment so she could keep herself posted on what happened in this office. She figured she had to get rid of me to make her plan work, so she started the rumors. I was wrong to blame Calumet. He didn’t know what was going on. But he knew something was, and he wanted no part of it. That’s why he took off and hid out tonight.”

Ritter sneered. He said, “If she did any of this, it was because you sweet-talked her into it, McKeon.”

He died hard, I thought. I said, “Produce your evidence, Captain, or shut up.”

“I’ll produce it at your hearing.”

The DA said in a flat voice, “There won’t be any hearing as long as I hold this office, Ritter.”

Maslin said quietly, surprisingly, “I’ll support that.”

Ritter glared around at us. Then he got angrily to his feet. He pulled a tape from his pocket. He said, “All right, damn it. Listen to this. It’s Itsuko’s last report.”

The room was silent as the DA took the tape and put it on his machine. I glanced around. Arch was sitting beside Teddy who was stretched out on the DA’s couch. Her eyes were bright, restless, but her face was still pale. She still looked as if she was partially in shock.

The machine warmed up. Suddenly Johnny Itsuko’s crisp voice leaped out at us. “Report from Number 7 concerning Combine operation. Problem; to check out rumor that Jeff McKeon involved. Procedure; to determine the truth of this in investigating several possible principals as local contacts for the Combine.”

Here followed a series of statements on Calumet, Arch, Hoxey, and Teddy Jenner. Johnny had originally linked them with me when he discovered Griselda owned the properties they leased. In a few words, he agreed Nick Calumet had told the truth when he claimed to have won his money on the horses. He cleared Arch as quickly. He had not yet been able to check out Teddy’s claim to inheriting the money she had used to remodel the Blue Beagle.

“I can prove it!” she said. Her voice was feeble.

The DA waved her to silence. Johnny’s voice said: “As for the charges against McKeon, there is no doubt that—” A loud high frequency squawk stabbed its way through my eardrums and into my brain. The squawk lasted perhaps thirty seconds. It stopped. There was no more of Johnny’s voice. The report was over.

Ritter said smugly, “He was interrupted right there. But you can fill in for yourself.”

Nobody said anything. I got up and went into the other office. I took the tape off Stephanie’s machine and brought it back. I handed it to the DA.

I said, “Sir, put this on and run it through. I was listening to it when Stephanie started sapping me. She erased it.”

He put it on the machine. He ran it through to the point where it gave out with the same high frequency squawk Ritter’s tape had emitted.

He said, “Well?”

I said, “Sir, if you back these tapes up to a certain point and then hit the erase button, they make that squawk at that particular point. You know that.”

I looked at Ritter. I said, “Kay Itsuko told me that Johnny sat out in his car the other night and
finished
his report. So he wasn’t interrupted, Captain. And since that time nobody but you and Kay have had their hands on the tape. She didn’t have access to a machine, so she couldn’t have erased it back to the point where that squawk came. No one could have but you.”

Ritter just looked at me. I said, “I can fill in the rest of Johnny’s last sentence—the part you didn’t want to hear because it didn’t agree with what you wanted to believe. It probably went like this, Captain: ‘As for the charges against McKeon, there is no doubt that they were made in an effort to frame him and thus discredit the District Attorney’s office.’ ”

Ritter didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. His face did all the talking that was necessary. He turned and lumbered from the room.

Maslin said sadly, “In most ways, he’s a damn good police officer.”

“I think,” the DA said, “he needs a change of scene. To a desk job in Records, let’s say.” He picked up his coffee. “And that about winds it up.”

I was watching Arch and Teddy. He was staring at her like an adolescent kid. She looked better. There was color in her cheeks and her eyes weren’t so bright with shock. She put out a hand and touched him.

I said, dully, “No, sir, it isn’t all wound up. I didn’t finish what I was saying about Stephanie.”

“Is it important, McKeon?”

I said, “I don’t like loose ends. The way I saw it, Stephanie was the brains behind this whole set-up. And she had Johnny and Hoxey killed by Pooly to protect herself from exposure.”

“It’s logical,” Maslin said.

I said, “To a point. Only I remember how Minto acted the night Stephanie pulled him off me. He was scared she would shoot him. He wasn’t acting, either. And then there’s the way Stephanie beat on me. Soap in a towel can kill a man. And if she had been behind the deal, she would have killed me. But she didn’t. Because she wasn’t a killer. All she wanted was to get away from me and go tell her boss the whole deal had blown up.”

The DA said, “You aren’t making much sense, Jeff. You’re killing your own theory.”

I said, “I will make sense, sir. You see, when I found Stephanie dead in that room, she had three bullet holes in her. But I only took two shots into the room because I only had two shells in my gun.”

Silence. I took a deep breath. “Six shots came from the room, but only three of the bullets were aimed at me. The others were the ones that went into Stephanie.”

I stood up and set down my coffee cup. “After shooting Stephanie, Teddy went into the bathroom and cracked her own head open on the edge of the washbowl. Then she waited for Arch and me to come and find her.”

Teddy rolled away from Arch and got to her feet. Arch put out a hand to calm her. He glared at me.

She said, “That’s insane! Why do you hate me so much? Can’t you ever forget that one mistake I made?”

“You made a lot of them, Teddy. The first was tying in with Minto in California. The second was getting the idea I credited to Stephanie. It wasn’t Stephanie Minto contacted when he came up here. It was you. And so you got the bright idea. You pulled Stephanie in on it, promising her Hollywood at her stupid feet if she played along.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said.

“Hardly. Figure it out. Where would Stephanie get the money to build that room, equip it, dig a new tunnel, hire someone like Hoxey? Sorry, Teddy. There’s no case against her. There’s a perfect case against you.”

Arch stepped in front of her and started for me. I said, “I thought Stephanie drove the car that tried to run me down. But it was Teddy. Because Stephanie was already in the room, waiting for Teddy to dispose of her. When Stephanie beat me up and ran, she went to Teddy—not to warn her but to demand an explanation. I think for the first time Stephanie realized that Minto was part of your organization, Teddy, and that you were the actual murderer.”

I took another breath. “Stack Stephanie alongside yourself. Which of you is big enough to beat a man to death? Which of you knew Hoxey well enough to figure out he was holding back stuff that could put a noose around your neck? Or knew him well enough to know that he was weak, that if I put on enough pressure he would crack? You, baby.”

Arch yelled, “It’s a damn lie, McKeon. Lieutenant, listen to me. McKeon hates Teddy. She told me so. You can see that. Damn it….”

He charged me like an express train. Maslin surged to his feet and got between us. Arch rammed into Maslin, The three of us went down together.

I heard a shout from Maslin. I rolled out from under the pile and got to my knees. Teddy Jenner was backing toward the door. She had Maslin’s gun in her hand. I stopped moving.

She said, “Someday I’ll come back to look at your grave, McKeon.”

She swung the gun toward me. I was a kneeling target. I had never felt more helpless in my life.

The door behind her swung open. Ritter stalked into the room. He had his gun out, and he didn’t wait to ask questions. He shot her twice before she could pull the trigger.

I watched her fall to the floor.

• • •

Ritter said almost apologetically, “I got to thinking it over and I came back to explain. I didn’t erase that tape on purpose. But after I did, I realized that I had. It fit in too well with what I’d heard … As I came back to tell you that, I heard that woman talking.”

I said fervently, “Captain, I’m willing to call it a truce. I’ll even buy you a drink.”

Before Ritter could answer, the phone rang. The DA picked it up. He listened a moment and then frowned at his clock. It read 5:10
A.M
. He said, “For you, Jeff.”

I took the phone. Griselda said in my ear, “Where have you been, lover? I couldn’t find you at home or at Stephanie’s or at my place. And Griselda is hungry and lonesome.”

I said, “Where are you?”

“I’m home,” she said, “I got in by jet a little while ago.”

I said, “Just stay there.”

I hung up. I said, “I’ll make an official report tomorrow. Right now, I’m tired.”