The Golden Horseshoe and Other Stories (14 page)

When the bulk of the reports were in, O'Gar and I sneaked away from the others—especially away from the newspaper men, who were all over the place by now—and locked ourselves in the library.

“Night before last, huh? Wednesday night?” O'Gar grunted when we were comfortable in a couple of leather chairs, burning tobacco.

I nodded. The report of the doctor who had examined the bodies, the presence of the two newspapers in the vestibule, and the fact that neither neighbor, grocer nor butcher had seen any of them since Wednesday, combined to make Wednesday night—or early Thursday morning—the correct date.

“I'd say the killer cracked the back door,” O'Gar went on, staring at the ceiling through smoke, “picked up the carving knife in the kitchen, and went upstairs. Maybe he went straight to Mrs. Ashcraft's room—maybe not. But after a bit he went in there. The torn sleeve and the scratches on her face mean that there was a tussle. The Filipino and the maid heard the noise—heard her scream maybe—and rushed to her room to find out what was the matter. The maid most likely got there just as the killer was coming out—and got hers. I guess the Filipino saw him then and ran. The killer caught him at the head of the back stairs—and finished him. Then he went down to the kitchen, washed his hands, dropped the knife, and blew.”

“So far, so good,” I agreed; “but I notice you skip lightly over the question of who he was and why he killed.”

He pushed his hat back and scratched his bullet head.

“Don't crowd me,” he rumbled; “I'll get around to that. There seem to be just three guesses to take your pick from. We know that nobody else lived in the house outside of the three that were killed. So the killer was either a maniac who did the job for the fun of it, a burglar who was discovered and ran wild, or somebody who had a reason for bumping off Mrs. Ashcraft, and then had to kill the two servants when they discovered him.

“Taking the knife from the kitchen would make the burglar guess look like a bum one. And, besides, we're pretty sure nothing was stolen. A good prowler would bring his own weapon with him if he wanted one. But the hell of it is that there are a lot of bum prowlers in the world—half-wits who would be likely to pick up a knife in the kitchen, go to pieces when the house woke up, slash everybody in sight, and then beat it without turning anything over.

“So it could have been a prowler; but my personal guess is that the job was done by somebody who wanted to wipe out Mrs. Ashcraft.”

“Not so bad,” I applauded. “Now listen to this: Mrs. Ashcraft has a husband in Tijuana, a mild sort of hop-head who is mixed up with a bunch of thugs. She was trying to persuade him to come back to her. He has a girl down there who is young, goofy over him, and a bad actor—one tough youngster. He was planning to run out on the girl and come back home.”

“So-o-o?” O'Gar said softly.

“But,” I continued, “I was with both him and the girl, in Tijuana, night before last—when this killing was done.”

“So-o?”

A knock on the door interrupted our talk. It was a policeman to tell me that I was wanted on the phone. I went down to the first floor, and Vance Richmond's voice came over the wire.

“What is it? Miss Henry delivered your message, but she couldn't give me any details.”

I told him the whole thing.

“I'll leave for the city tonight,” he said when I had finished. “You go ahead and do whatever you want. You're to have a free hand.”

“Right,” I replied. “I'll probably be out of town when you get back. You can reach me through the Agency if you want to get in touch with me. I'm going to wire Ashcraft to come up—in your name.”

After Richmond had hung up, I called the city jail and asked the captain if John Ryan, alias Fred Rooney, alias Jamocha, was still there.

“No. Federal officers left for Leavenworth with him and two other prisoners yesterday morning.”

Up in the library again, I told O'Gar hurriedly:

“I'm catching the evening train south, betting my marbles that the job was made in Tijuana. I'm wiring Ashcraft to come up. I want to get him away from the Mexican town for a day or two, and if he's up here you can keep an eye on him. I'll give you a description of him, and you can pick him up at Vance Richmond's office. He'll probably connect there first thing.”

Half an hour of the little time I had left I spent writing and sending three telegrams. The first was to Ashcraft.

Edward Bohannon,
Golden Horseshoe Cafe,
Tijuana, Mexico.

Mrs. Ashcraft is dead. Can you come immediately?

VANCE RICHMOND.

The other two were in code. One went to the Continental Detective Agency's Kansas City branch, asking that an operative be sent to Leavenworth to question Jamocha. The other requested the Los Angeles branch to have a man meet me in San Diego the next day.

Then I dashed out to my rooms for a bagful of clean clothes, and went to sleep riding south again.

VI

San Diego was gay and packed when I got off the train early the next afternoon—filled with the crowd that the first Saturday of the racing season across the border had drawn. Movie folk from Los Angeles, farmers from the Imperial Valley, sailors from the Pacific Fleet, gamblers, tourists, grifters, and even regular people, from everywhere. I lunched, registered and left my bag at a hotel, and went up to the U. S. Grant Hotel to pick up the Los Angeles operative I had wired for.

I found him in the lobby—a freckle-faced youngster of twenty-two or so, whose bright gray eyes were busy just now with a racing program, which he held in a hand that had a finger bandaged with adhesive tape. I passed him and stopped at the cigar stand, where I bought a package of cigarettes and straightened out an imaginary dent in my hat. Then I went out to the street again. The bandaged finger and the business with the hat were our introductions. Somebody invented those tricks back before the Civil War, but they still worked smoothly, so their antiquity was no reason for discarding them.

I strolled up Fourth Street, getting away from Broadway—San Diego's main stem—and the operative caught up with me. His name was Gorman, and he turned out to be a pretty good lad. I gave him the lay.

“You're to go down to Tijuana and take a plant on the Golden Horseshoe Café. There's a little chunk of a girl hustling drinks in there—short curly brown hair; brown eyes; round face; rather large red mouth; square shoulders. You can't miss her; she's a nice-looking kid of about eighteen, called Kewpie. She's the target for your eye. Keep away from her. Don't try to rope her. I'll give you an hour's start. Then I'm coming down to talk to her. I want to know what she does right after I leave, and what she does for the next few days. You can get in touch with me at the”—I gave him the name of my hotel and my room number—“each night. Don't give me a tumble anywhere else. I'll most likely be in and out of the Golden Horseshoe often.”

We parted, and I went down to the plaza and sat on a bench under the palms for an hour. Then I went up to the corner and fought for a seat on a Tijuana stage.

Fifteen or more miles of dusty riding—packed five in a seat meant for three—a momentary halt at the Immigration Station on the line, and I was climbing out of the stage at the entrance to the race track. The ponies had been running for some time, but the turnstiles were still spinning a steady stream of customers into the track. I turned my back on the gate and went over to the row of jitneys in front of the Monte Carlo—the big wooden casino—got into one, and was driven over to the Old Town.

The Old Town had a deserted look. Nearly everybody was over watching the dogs do their stuff. Gorman's freckled face showed over a drink of mescal when I entered the Golden Horseshoe. I hoped he had a good constitution. He needed one if he was going to do his sleuthing on a distilled cactus diet.

The welcome I got from the Horseshoers was just like a homecoming. Even the bartender with the plastered-down curls gave me a grin.

“Where's Kewpie?” I asked.

“Brother-in-lawing, Ed?” a big Swede girl leered at me. “I'll see if I can find her for you.”

Kewpie came through the back door just then.

“Hello, Painless!” She climbed all over me, hugging me, rubbing her face against mine, and the Lord knows what all. “Down for another swell souse?”

“No,” I said, leading her back toward the stalls. “Business this time. Where's Ed?”

“Up north. His wife kicked off and he's gone to collect the remains.”

“That makes you sorry?”

She showed her big white teeth in a boy's smile of pure happiness.

“You bet! It's tough on me that papa has come into a lot of sugar.”

I looked at her out of the corner of my eyes—a glance that was supposed to be wise.

“And you think Ed's going to bring the jack back to you?”

Her eyes snapped darkly at me.

“What's eating you?” she demanded.

I smiled knowingly.

“One of two things is going to happen,” I predicted. “Ed's going to ditch you—he was figuring on that, anyway—or he's going to need every brownie he can scrape up to keep his neck from being—”

“You God-damned liar!”

Her right shoulder was to me, touching my left. Her left hand flashed down under her short skirt. I pushed her shoulder forward, twisting her body sharply away from me. The knife her left hand had whipped up from her leg jabbed deep into the underside of the table. A thick-bladed knife, I noticed, balanced for accurate throwing.

She kicked backward, driving one of her sharp heels into my ankle. I slid my left arm around behind her and pinned her elbow to her side just as she freed the knife from the table.

“What th' hell's all 'is?”

I looked up.

Across the table a man stood glaring at me—legs apart, fists on hips. He was a big man, and ugly. A tall, raw-boned man with wide shoulders, out of which a long, skinny yellow neck rose to support a little round head. His eyes were black shoe-buttons stuck close together at the top of a little mashed nose. His mouth looked as if it had been torn in his face, and it was stretched in a snarl now, baring a double row of crooked brown teeth.

“Where d' yuh get 'at stuff?” this lovely person roared at me.

He was too tough to reason with.

“If you're a waiter,” I told him, “bring me a bottle of beer and something for the kid. If you're not a waiter—sneak.”

He leaned over the table and I gathered my feet in. It looked like I was going to need them to move around on.

“I'll bring yuh a—”

The girl wriggled out of my hands and shut him up.

“Mine's liquor,” she said sharply.

He snarled, looked from one of us to the other, showed me his dirty teeth again, and wandered away.

“Who's your friend?”

“You'll do well to lay off him,” she advised me, not answering my question.

Then she slid her knife back in its hiding place under her skirt and twisted around to face me.

“Now what's all this about Ed being in trouble?”

“You read about the killing in the papers?”

“Yes.”

“You oughtn't need a map, then,” I said. “Ed's only out is to put the job on you. But I doubt if he can get away with that. If he can't, he's nailed.”

“You're crazy!” she exclaimed. “You weren't too drunk to know that both of us were here with you when the killing was done.”

“I'm not crazy enough to think that proves anything,” I corrected her. “But I am crazy enough to expect to go back to San Francisco wearing the killer on my wrist.”

She laughed at me. I laughed back and stood up.

“See you some more,” I said as I strolled toward the door.

I returned to San Diego and sent a wire to Los Angeles, asking for another operative. Then I got something to eat and spent the evening lying across the bed in my hotel room smoking and scheming and waiting for Gorman.

It was late when he arrived, and he smelled of mescal from San Diego to St. Louis and back, but his head seemed level enough.

“Looked like I was going to have to shoot you loose from the place for a moment,” he grinned. “Between the twist flashing the pick and the big guy loosening a sap in his pocket, it looked like action was coming.”

“You let me alone,” I ordered. “Your job is to see what goes on, and that's all. If I get carved, you can mention it in your report, but that's your limit. What did you turn up?”

“After you blew, the girl and the big guy put their noodles together. They seemed kind of agitated—all agog, you might say. He slid out, so I dropped the girl and slid along behind him. He came to town and got a wire off. I couldn't crowd him close enough to see who it was to. Then he went back to the joint. Things were normal when I knocked off.”

“Who is the big guy? Did you learn?”

“He's no sweet dream, from what I hear. ‘Gooseneck' Flinn is the name on his calling cards. He's bouncer and general utility man for the joint. I saw him in action against a couple of gobs, and he's nobody's meat—as pretty a double throw-out as I've ever seen.”

So this Gooseneck party was the Golden Horseshoe's clean-up man, and he hadn't been in sight during my three-day spree? I couldn't possibly have been so drunk that I'd forget his ugliness. And it had been on one of those three days that Mrs. Ashcraft and her servants had been killed.

“I wired your office for another op,” I told Gorman. “He's to connect with you. Turn the girl over to him, and you camp on Gooseneck's trail. I think we're going to hang three killings on him, so watch your step. I'll be in to stir things up a little more tomorrow; but remember, no matter what happens, everybody plays his own game. Don't ball things up trying to help me.”

“Aye, aye, Cap,” and he went off to get some sleep.

The next afternoon I spent at the race track, fooling around with the bangtails while I waited for night. The track was jammed with the usual Sunday crowd. I ran into any number of old acquaintances, some of them on my side of the game, some on the other, and some neutral. One of the second lot was “Trick-hat” Schultz. At our last meeting—a copper was leading him out of a Philadelphia court room toward a fifteen-year bit—he had promised to open me up from my eyebrows to my ankles the next time he saw me. He greeted me this afternoon with an eight-inch smile, bought me a shot of what they sell for gin under the grandstand, and gave me a tip on a horse named Beeswax. I'm not foolish enough to play anybody's tips, so I didn't play this one. Beeswax ran so far ahead of the others that it looked like he and his competitors were in separate races, and he paid twenty-something to one. So Trick-hat had his revenge after all.