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Authors: Louis Trimble

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BOOK: The Duchess of Skid Row
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7

S
TEPHANIE
was where I had left her. But now she had company. Arch was at the table, throwing out a lot of charm. He turned it on me as I sat down.

“I was just telling this lady about our private dining rooms, McKeon,” he said heartily. “Maybe you’d like one for dinner.”

I said, “We might, if it isn’t bugged.”

His smile changed to a scowl. “You have real tact.”

I was still disgusted by what I’d been through at the Blue Beagle. I said, “I don’t feel tactful. I just got through watching Teddy Jenner and Hoxey try the old badger game on me.”

His scowl deepened. He got to his feet. I looked up at him. It was like looking up at a mountain. I said, “Before you try breaking me in two, take a look for yourself. The last I saw, she was getting ready to change his diapers and tuck him into bed.”

Arch’s big hands opened and closed like the jaws on a steam shovel. Then he pivoted and stalked away. My drink was still on the table. I picked it up and downed it in one gulp.

I said, “Let’s get out of here. I’m not in the mood to fight that much beef.”

Stephanie gave me a puzzled frown as I walked her toward the door. “What was that all about? I thought Mr. Archer was a very nice man.”

I said, “I didn’t know you were friends.”

“Don’t sound so nasty,” she said tartly. “I recognized him from your description and I asked him over to the table.” We went outside. “I was trying to pump him,” she added.

I said, “Did you learn anything?”

She stopped and hunched her shoulders against the cold drizzle. “I learned that he thinks he has the best chef in town. And I’m hungry.”

I said, “We’ve got too much to do to eat a fancy meal.” I steered her across the street to a hamburger place. “Take a rain check. If Arch comes out clean, I’ll buy you his best fifteen-buck dinner.”

She didn’t look particularly happy when I settled her in the front booth of the hamburger shop. I took the seat where I could see across the street.

Stephanie ordered a bowl of chili and two cheeseburgers. I didn’t feel much like eating, but I managed to push some of the chili inside myself.

I watched her wolf down the food. I said, “What else did you find out from Arch?”

“That he won the intercollegiate wrestling championship his senior year in college.”

“Great. And what did you tell him?”

She swallowed a mouthful of beans. “I didn’t do any talking. I listened.” She drank some water to wash away the heat from the chili. “He knows Griselda Cletis,” she added.

“So I heard. Does he know who you are?”

“He didn’t act like it,” she said. She went to work on the chili again. “What happened to you at the Blue Beagle? You snarled at Arch as if everything was his fault.”

“It might be at that.” I told her about the trick Hoxey and Teddy had pulled on me.

“Can they really get away with that?” Stephanie demanded. “I mean, will anyone believe people like this Hoxey even if he has the picture?”

“Teddy is too smart to pull a stupid gag like that one unless she did know she could get away with it,” I told Stephanie. “That means she must know pretty well where I stand these days. So how did she find out?”

“Your resignation was in the paper,” Stephanie said.

I said, “The story on my resignation didn’t tie me up with Johnny’s death or with any other kind of trouble.”

I shook my head. “She must have inside information. Otherwise she wouldn’t risk bucking the evidence I have on her and Hoxey.”

Stephanie finished her second cheeseburger. “Just what is this evidence you keep talking about?”

“Not long after Teddy came home from college, she met Hoxey on a local slumming party. Something about him attracted her. She moved off the hill and down here. She had a little money and she started up the Blue Beagle. But she wasn’t making enough money to satisfy Hoxey. So he cooked up an angle to make more. She was so gone on him that she did what he told her.”

I took time out to light a cigaret. I said, “He started a camera club.”

“A what?” Stephanie demanded.

“You bring your own camera and film. The guy who runs the club furnishes the models and also develops the film for you.” I explained in detail the “art” that was photographed.

Stephanie’s cheeks turned pink.

I said, “I broke up Hoxey’s little ring. I managed to confiscate some of the film. I needed a contact on Hill Street, so I made a deal with Teddy and Hoxey. They kept me posted on what went on here; I kept the evidence out of the hands of the Vice Squad.”

“It sounds like blackmail to me,” Stephanie said.

“When you fight dirt, you sometimes have to be dirty.”

I got up. “Let’s get to work.”

We went up to the corner of Third and back across the street. The weather was bad but not bad enough to keep people away from Nick Calumet’s.

Teddy had told me that after the well-heeled set left Arch’s place, they came slumming to the Blue Beagle. They also seemed to go in the opposite direction. Calumet’s penny arcade was two-thirds full, and most of the customers were obviously the well-to-do from the north hill.

I glanced through the archway that led into the big barroom. The crowd there was the kind I expected to see on Hill Street. It was the usual mixture of overdressed women and hard-faced punks. I turned back and watched men in tuxes and women in evening gowns drift through the penny arcade and into the movie section of the place. A foursome was coming out. The men were grinning and the women were trying to appear embarrassed, but without much luck.

I said, “It looks as if Nick has struck a gold mine.”

Stephanie teetered on her spike heels. “Which one is he?”

“He isn’t around. But he’ll turn up fast enough.” I nodded toward an old man behind the news stand counter. “I’ve been spotted. Nick will hear about us any minute now.”

I took her arm and steered her to the black curtain that covered the entrance to the movie section. We stepped into near darkness. The “movies” were peephole machines each with a tiny light over the front so that the customer could see where to put his money. Some of them had still shots of what the viewer could expect for his dime or his quarter. The machines stood in long rows separated by narrow, almost pitch-dark aisles. There must have been fifty of them. At least half were occupied, some by couples peering at the same machine together.

I went up to a cubbyhole with an old man behind it. I bought two dollars worth of dimes and quarters. I dumped the money into Stephanie’s coat pocket.

I said, “Let’s start at the back. It looks less crowded there.”

She followed me down the dark aisle. We came to the end of the row of machines. A cross aisle led to the left. A blank door lay straight ahead. I wondered if that was the way into Calumet’s office.

I turned Stephanie left. We passed the entrance to two other aisles. The third aisle was the last one. It had two machines tucked into the corner made by the end and side walls. The machines were set so that they formed a particularly dark area.

I said, “You’ve got a pocket full of money. Spend it any way you want. Just stay around here so I can find you again. I won’t be long.”

I left her and went off to find Nick Calumet.

I hiked back to the doorway at the end of the first aisle. I tried the knob. The door opened. I stepped into a hallway and let the door swing shut behind me. The hall was lighted with bright overheads. A shadow about ten feet from me moved under the harsh lighting as a door swung open.

Nick Calumet came into view. He was still wearing his padded sport jacket. His hair was slicked down tight and greasy. He looked my way. His eyes were as unpleasant as ever.

He said, “This is private, McKeon.”

I walked toward him. “I’m looking for Hoxey.”

“Try the other end of the block,” Calumet said.

“If he isn’t here, you’ll do. Do we talk in the hall or where it’s more private?”

Calumet’s hand twitched toward his coat as if he wanted to go for his knife. I kept moving toward him. He said, “I haven’t anything to talk to you about, McKeon.”

I took a final step and stopped within reach of him. He said, “Don’t try throwing your weight around. I read the papers. Right now, you’re nothing.”

I didn’t waste time arguing with him. I grabbed the front of his sport coat. I walked him backward, through the doorway and into the room he had come out of. He didn’t fight me. He didn’t say a word. He just took the pushing.

He was almost too docile for Nick Calumet.

We were in his office. I shoved him toward a desk. He went around it and sat down.

He said, “Where do you think this will get you, McKeon? All I have to do is call the cops. They’ll run you out fast enough.”

I laughed at him. “I’d like a framed picture of Nick Calumet calling the law.” I shook my head. “You wouldn’t. Not when you have a pair of imported goons to do your work for you.”

“Do you know what you’re talking about, McKeon?”

“I met Minto and Pooly, Nick.”

He tried to look puzzled. He was a pretty fair actor. I couldn’t be sure just where he stood. I said, “Let’s start at the beginning. Somebody in this town is trying to hang a frame on me. They set me up by spreading rumors that I was helping the Combine get back into Puget City. I wasn’t even here to defend myself. When I did come home, I got put on the hook for Johnny Itsuko’s murder.”

“What’s that got to do with me?” Calumet demanded.

“Don’t try to tell me you didn’t know you were being investigated.”

“In my business you’re always being investigated,” Calumet said. “And who in hell is Johnny Itsuko?”

“He’s the guy who found out that someone around here is fronting for the Combine. That’s why he was killed. He was going to blow the whistle.”

Calumet ran thin fingers over his jawline. He said slowly, “If I was fronting for the Combine, do you think I’d call attention to it by spreading the rumor that it was moving back into town? Use your head, McKeon.”

“You might if you wanted to get at me. I’m the one who moved them out before. Maybe you figured getting rid of me would leave you a wide open field.”

He said, “I don’t think that cute. Try somebody else. Try Arch. He’s just up from L.A.”

“Why don’t you tell me to try Hoxey or Teddy.”

Calumet was silent for a moment. Then he said, “That business with Teddy. That was a mistake, McKeon.”

I said, “Hoxey works for you. And I hear you beefing at Teddy like a cast-off boyfriend. How do you expect me to add those up?”

He pushed his chair back from the desk. “It wasn’t anything, I tell you. Sure I got sore. You would too if a big dame like that belted you one.”

“What did you go to Teddy for in the first place? She doesn’t strike me as your type.”

“I hired Hoxey to help me set this place up. It’s the first time I ever went in for anything big. And he knows all the angles. So he suggested I get neighborly with Teddy, have her steer some of those fat wallets up to my place. The way Hoxey talked, the deal was all arranged. I went to see her about it. She told me she was tired of playing with people like me. She got insulting. She acted crazy. She accused me of corrupting Hoxey!”

He laughed. “Me corrupting Hoxey Creen!”

It sounded just fantastic enough to be believable. But I wasn’t ready to buy it yet. Not from Nick Calumet.

I said, “That doesn’t explain Minto and Pooly.”

Calumet said, “Whoever they are.”

I said, “As I see it, Nick, they’re the boys the Combine sent up here to help you establish a beachhead.”

“Why would I want any part of the Combine?” he demanded. “I’ve got a good thing going here. Strictly legitimate.”

“Where did you get the money to expand?”

He smirked at me. “I played a three-horse parlay. I made a pile.”

“That could be a cover story, Nick. The Combine sets it up so you win a bundle. Only the dough is really theirs.”

He shook his head. He said, “And what kind of racket am I supposed to be setting up for them?”

“I figured that out too. The only business the Combine is interested in is fast money and a lot of it. Dope is no good in this part of the world. Neither is prostitution. All our whores are small-time, independent operators. That leaves gambling.”

He snorted. “With the joint on Dobbs Island going wide open, who’d sink anything into gambling around here?”

I said, “That’s penny ante. Besides, it takes time to go out to the Island. The Combine is after the kind of set-up where they can get a businessman’s bets without his going to much trouble. Something like a wire service.”

He said, “Help yourself, McKeon. Tear my place apart. If you find a wire service operation, I’ll go confess to killing this Itsuko. Is it a deal?”

I ignored his sarcasm. “You and the Combine aren’t dumb enough to try anything openly. I don’t even think you have the set-up in operation. You’re waiting to see me out of the way. As for confessing to killing Itsuko, you might just end up doing that anyway.”

Calumet said, “I never carried a gun in my life.”

“He wasn’t shot. He was beaten to death.”

He snorted at me. “You think you could get anyone to believe I could do a job like that on a man?”

“You could hire it done. Pooly loves to belt people around.”

“Whoever Pooly is. Have you tried Arch? He’s got the size for it.”

“What gives between you and Arch?”

Calumet said, “He thinks that having a place next door to his lowers the reputation of the neighborhood.” He grinned at that. “And if you don’t like Arch, try Teddy. She’s big enough.”

I said, “I like you and Pooly, Nick.”

He spread his hands. “Sorry I can’t help you, McKeon.” He made a show of pulling some papers forward. “Now if you’re through, let me get to work.”

“I’m not through. Itsuko’s car was blown up. His toolshed was set on fire by a bomb. A real demo expert did both jobs. Hoxey knows the trade. And Hoxey works for you.”

“Hoxey did,” Calumet said. “After that mess with Teddy, I threw him out.”

Short of trying to beat information out of Calumet, I was helpless. And I wasn’t ready to throw my weight around yet. I had the feeling that he was lying to me, but I couldn’t put my finger on just what part of his story wasn’t straight. And he bothered me. He was sounding more sure of himself all the time. He was laughing at me as if he knew he had me stymied.

BOOK: The Duchess of Skid Row
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