The Paul Cain Omnibus (34 page)

Green’s car was parked on the other side of Broadway, on Seventy-­sixth. He went into an all-night drugstore on the corner and called the
Star-Telegram
, asked for Kessler.

Kessler grunted, “Hello,” wearily, snapped out of it when he recognized Green’s voice.

“Hey, Nick! I just heard somebody took a shot at you,” he yelped. “You all right?”

“I’m okay. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.”

“That’s swell!” Kessler whooped. “Everything’s swell! I just put the
Star-Telegram
exclusive on Sallust to bed. What a story! It oughta be on the streets in an hour.”

Green said softly: “Blondie, if you want to keep your job, and keep the
Star
out of an awful jam, kill it.” Then, before Kessler could answer, he went on: “I just left Demetrios’ apartment. He’s the tall good-looking Greek that worked for Costain. Doyle and his partner are waiting for him to show, to tail him, but I’m afraid he’ll get past them and I have a very merry hunch where he’s going.”

Kessler interrupted: “But listen, Nick—”

“You listen.” Green’s tone was ominous. “Hold that story for at least an hour, and leap up to Three thirty-one West Ninetieth with some Law, fast. I’ll be outside, or if I’m not, I’ll be upstairs in Costain’s apartment. Come up, and come quick. This is going to be the payoff on everything that’s happened tonight and it’ll make your Sallust story look like a want ad.”

“But listen… .” Kessler sounded like he was about to cry.

Green snapped: “I’m depending on you. Make it fast and make it quiet. And don’t forget to bring along that fifty skins.”

He hung up the receiver and went out and got into his car, drove to Amsterdam Avenue, up Amsterdam to Eighty-ninth, turned west. He parked just off Riverside Drive on Ninetieth, about a hundred and fifty feet west of the entrance to Three thirty-one.

Then he lighted a cigarette and sat still and waited.

The man in the third-floor front room at Three thirty-two didn’t smoke any more; he simply waited, his eyes at the slit under the window shade. Occasionally he leaned back in the big chair, but for only a few seconds at a time and only after ten minutes or so of rigid, wary immobility.

At four minutes after three someone knocked at the door. He got up and opened it swiftly. Giuseppe Picelli came in; the man went back to the window.

Picelli sat down, said dully: “Got Solly. Green got away. There was ice… .”

“There was ice,” the man at the window repeated slowly. “All right, there was ice. How long were they together?”

“Green came up to Solly—Solly was in his cab. They went into the bar and I called you. Two or three minutes after I came out of the booth, they came out. I went up to them on the sidewalk… .”

“And there was ice.”

The man at the window stiffened suddenly, shaded his eyes from the dim light in the room. He peered intently through the slit for perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, then stood up and picked up his suit coat and put it on.

“Come on, Joe. We’re going places,” he said.

He took a big blue automatic out of the pocket of the tweed Chesterfield and stuck it against his stomach, under the belt, pulled the points of his vest down over it.

The two men went together out of the room and down two flights of stairs, out of the rooming house and across the street to Three thirty-one.

The elevator boy stared wide-eyed at the man who had been sitting at the window.

“Jeeze, Mister Costain,” he stuttered. “I thought—Miss Neilan has been going crazy—calling up the newspapers every few minutes… .”

Costain did not answer.

They got off at the fourth floor, went to the door of the front apartment on the right. Costain took a bunch of keys out of his pocket and unlocked it, opened it. They went in and closed the door.

June Neilan was a very pretty platinum blonde with wide blue eyes, orange lips that looked as if they had been put on to stay. She turned and stared at Costain and her creamy skin went gray.

Demetrios’ hand moved swiftly upward across his chest and then he looked at the snub-nosed revolver in Picelli’s hand, changed his mind and dropped his hands to his side, slowly.

Costain said: “Sit down.”

June Neilan walked unsteadily to the nearest chair, sat down. Demetrios stood still.

Costain went to Demetrios and reached inside his coat, jerked a .35 automatic out of a shoulder holster and handed it back to Picelli. Then he doubled up his right fist and swung hard at Demetrios’ jaw. Demetrios moved backward a little and Costain’s fist cut his cheek; two tiny drops of blood started out on the white skin just beneath the cheekbone.

Costain drew his fist back and swung again; this time his timing was better, there was a soft splat as his fist struck Demetrios’ jaw, Demetrios reeled backward against the wall. Costain went after him, cocked his right again. June Neilan said, “Please don’t, Lew,” dully. Costain’s right fist ripped into Demetrios’ throat, his left smashed his nose. Demetrios made a curious strangling sound and slid sidewise down the wall to the floor.

Costain was panting, his heavy florid face was purple. He drew his foot back and kicked Demetrios’ face, hard, again and again; it made a soft, smacking sound like someone snapping their fingers in water and Demetrios’ face darkened with glistening deep-red blood. Someone pounded on the door.

Costain did not seem to hear; he raised his foot and stamped on Demetrios’ face so hard that the bones of the nose and cheek crunched like crumpled paper. Picelli whimpered: “Boss—there’s somebody outside… .”

Costain did not turn his head; he panted: “Okay—let ’em be outside. I’m busy… .”

The pounding came on the door again.

June Neilan was staring at Costain and Demetrios blindly; she jumped up suddenly and ran to the door. Picelli was a split second too late. She turned the lock, the door swung open and Nick Green stood in the opening.

Costain turned from Demetrios and jerked the big automatic out of his belt, shot twice. June Neilan spun around as if a heavy unseen hand were on her shoulder, twisting her slight body.

Green felt the sleeve of his coat lift, tear, a hot stab of pain in the outer muscle of his left arm. He shot once from a little above the hip. Costain bent forward slowly as if in an extravagant bow; then he sank to one knee and raised his head, stared vacantly at June Neilan.

She was holding on to the edge of the door with her two hands. Her eyes went back in her head suddenly and her body folded; she fell.

Green came forward into the room.

Picelli was shivering violently and his face looked very pinched and small; his revolver fell to the floor and he raised his hands slowly.

Costain’s mouth twisted upward a little to a kind of grin, he toppled sidewise and as he struck the floor he straightened his right arm until the muzzle of the big automatic was jammed into Demetrios’ stomach.

The dark doorway was suddenly crowded with faces, men. Doyle and Kessler and two detectives from the Ninth Precinct Station came into the room. One of the detectives picked up Picelli’s and Demetrios’ guns, the other knelt beside June Neilan.

Doyle went past Green and stood looking down at Costain. Costain had emptied the big automatic into Demetrios’ stomach; he rolled over and raised his head a little, grinned up at Doyle, then at Green.

“That was a good job,” he whispered. “That was the best job I’ve ever done… .”

His head fell back. Doyle stooped over him.

“He’ll be all right, I think,” Green said slowly. “I tried to shoot him in the leg and in the shoulder… .” He turned to Kessler with a very faraway expression on his face. “I wonder why.”

The detective kneeling beside June Neilan looked up. “The gal hasn’t got a scratch,” he mumbled. “She bumped her head on the door when she fell but that’s all.”

Green said: “I guess she fainted. Costain’s a lousy shot.”

He peeled off his overcoat and his suit coat, sat down and rolled up his shirtsleeve. The wound on the arm was slight, a crease; one of the detectives wrapped a clean handkerchief around it and tied it.

Kessler was staring blankly at Costain. “I still don’t get it,” he stuttered. “How many times can you kill one guy? Who was the guy they—they found on the tracks?”

Doyle was at the phone.

Green smiled at Kessler. “That’d be Gino,” he said. “Picelli tipped Costain that Gino and Tony were running out on him with all the syndicate’s dough. Costain left the ticker at Tony’s and then caught up with Gino on the late Boston train. He probably got the bright idea that if he made it look like he’d been killed he could sneak back to a spot where he could watch the apartment, he might catch Demetrios and his girlfriend in the act.”

Doyle hung up the receiver and turned to listen.

“He’s probably been suspicious of them for a week or so,” Green went on. “That was his reason for keeping away from her until Demetrios showed. He planted his things on Gino and tossed him under the train; he wasn’t sure it’d work or how long it’d take for ’em to find what was left of Gino, so he called Picelli and told him to check on it. Picelli checked and sure enough, the report had gone out that Costain’s body had been found. Then all Costain had to do was wait for Demetrios to turn up to break the big news to the girl.”

Green rolled his shirtsleeve down and got up and put on his coat.

“Picelli shot Solly Allenberg tonight because Solly drove Costain to the corner of Bleecker and Thompson. That’s about a half block from where Maxie Sillmann lives and Maxie’s the boy who specializes in plain and fancy pineapples. Costain wanted to be sure no one got to Solly because Solly knew a little bit too much about the whole business, and he probably had Picelli watching him. My guess is that Picelli called him back and told him Solly and I were in the bar and that I’d been at Tony’s after the blast, so Costain told Picelli to let both of us have it.”

Green was looking at Picelli. Picelli nodded slightly.

Kessler had perked up amazingly; he suddenly dashed for the telephone.

Green said: “Wait a minute, Blondie. I’ve got a couple of important calls to make.”

He crossed to the telephone and sat down and called the Receiving Hospital, asked about Solly Allenberg. He waited a minute, then shook his head and whispered, “That’s too bad,” hung up the receiver and looked at Kessler. “I’ll take that fifty, now,” he said softly.

I
’m Finn; thirty-three, white, unmarried, and a professional gambler. By professional I mean up until six or seven years age I was an amateur and turned over most of the money I made—which was plenty—to the bookmakers. That got to be pretty monotonous. I finally broke the monotony by the simple expedient of becoming a bookmaker.

Late last Fall I came out to California—Los Angeles. It was my first trip but it was just like coming home because practically all my friends were here. I took a big apartment in the Strip on the edge of Hollywood—the Strip is where the speakeasys and class nightclubs used to be when there was still reason to speak easily and when you could tell the difference between a class club and a honkytonk—and listened to propositions. I had a bankroll as big as your thigh.

I finally picked the proposition that looked best and it turned out to be—to put it modestly—a pip. Fritz Kiernan and I went into partnership and inside of six weeks we had the juiciest play on the Coast. We had two spots, one in the center of Hollywood and one for ladies only in a house in Beverly Hills.

That Number Two spot was an inspiration. The Santa Anita track had just opened and all Southern California had gone nag-nutty. We got the cream in Number Two; at two o’clock of any afternoon in the week you could stand in the middle of the main room and poke your finger in the eye of anywhere from ten to two dozen picture stars, wives of stars, “cousins” of producers, and just plain rich women. If you think men are natural gamblers you ought to see a lot of gals who can afford it in a bunch. A two grand parlay was chickenfeed.

We got most of the she class play that didn’t go to the track, and after the track closed for the season about a million new horse players had been made and we had wire service to all the eastern tracks and kept on getting it. Our Number One place was holding its head up, too. The proverbially flourishing green bay tree was a stunted sapling alongside of us; we were rolling in dough.

Then one night a couple months ago—it was a Friday because I’d been to the regular Friday night fights at the American Legion Stadium—I was sitting in the Brown Derby with two or three of the boys and a waiter brought a phone over and plugged it in and piped: “Mister Kiernan wants to talk to you.”

I nodded at the girl at the switchboard, said: “Hello.”

Kiernan’s voice was a shade and a half above a whisper: “Listen, Sean… .”

He was one of the even half-dozen people who pronounce my name the way it should be pronounced: Shane.

I listened.

“I’m out at the house—my house… .”

I said: “You sound like you were in a coal mine. Stop whispering.”

There was a meaningless jumble of sound and then: “Somebody took a shot at me… .”

His voice faded away. I yelled “Fritz” but there wasn’t any answer. The phone hadn’t clicked off so I didn’t waste time trying to call him back. I was out of the Derby in nothing flat, roaring out Sunset Boulevard.

He lived to hell and gone out in Bel-Air. I took all the shortcuts I could remember and made sixteen cylinders do even better than the salesman had promised but it took the best part of half an hour.

The house was all by itself on a private road about a quarter of a mile off the main highway. I pulled up and snapped off my headlights and took the front steps in one jump. The front door was partway open. There was a big tanned athletic looking gent in a light camel’s hair coat lying on his back just inside; his eyes were wide open and one of his legs was sticking out through the doorway. There was a bullet hole in the middle of his chest, high. I’d never seen him before. I stepped over him and went across to Fritz.

He was lying near the big table in the middle of the room with one arm hooked over a chair and the other twisted under him. One of his legs was twisted under him, too. It looked like three or four heavyweights had worked him over for an hour or so; I’ve seen quite a few badly beaten up men at one time or another but never anything like that. He was very dead.

The phone was on the floor a little ways beyond his body. I picked it up and wiggled the receiver a couple times and it buzzed; I called the police station in LA—I didn’t know anybody in the Beverly Hills or Hollywood Divisions and I wasn’t in the mood for a lot of trick questions from strange coppers. I finally got a detective lieutenant named Moore, whom I’d met through Fritz, on the wire and told him about it.

Then I went over as far away from Fritz as I could and sat down and thought I was going to be sick. I’m not exactly a nance when it comes to carnage but he looked like he’d been stepped on by an elephant. I sat there trying to adjust myself to the idea of him being dead—I liked him as well as any man I’d ever known and it was no cinch—and then I heard a noise behind me and damn near dislocated my neck turning around.

It was the Norwegian woman who cooked and kept house for the Kiernans. She was wearing a white kimono with yellow and green and purple chrysanthemums on it. She looked from one body to the other and then at me and then back at Fritz. I thought her eyes were going to fall out on her cheeks.

I asked: “See anybody here tonight?”

She shook her head slowly without taking her eyes off Fritz. “No, sir—only Mister Kiernan.”

“Hear anything?”

“I heard three shots… .”

“All at once?” She turned to me. “No—there were two, and then after several minutes there was another.”

“What’d you do?”

She hesitated a moment, said slowly: “I locked my door and stayed in my room.”

“Where’s Mrs Kiernan?”

“Went to Palm Springs this morning.” She was about winded.

I said: “You’d better get dressed—the police will be here in a few minutes.”

She clucked mournfully a couple times and hurried away. I caught her in the doorway with one more question: “Did Mister Kiernan mention that he was having visitors tonight or anything like that?”

She shook her head. “No, sir—nothing at all. I cooked his dinner and he ate by himself and then came in here. I went to bed at nine o’clock.” She clucked some more and disappeared.

In about a minute I heard a car pull up and stop out in front and I got up and went out on the porch. It was pretty dark but when my eyes got used to it I saw a coupé parked down the driveway about forty feet. It didn’t look like a police car and no one got out so I stalled, waiting for whoever was in the car to play. They didn’t. I finally strolled over and stuck my puss in. Myra Reid was sitting hunched down back of the wheel, her face green-white in the glow of the dashlight.

Myra was a kind of perennial “baby star”; she never seemed to get very far in pictures and she never seemed to be hungry. I think it all began when some contest judge dubbed her “Miss Most Beautiful Legs in Minneapolis.” Minneapolis lost a fair stenographer and Hollywood got the legs. She had a “long term” contract at one of those collapsible studios on Gower Street and made enough money to have a nice address in Toluca Lake and a flash car for front so she could run up bills.

Every so often a bunch of self-appointed talent sharks would get together and vote her and a couple dozen of her pals the “most promising young actresses of the coming year.” She’d been “promising” for about five years.

With my customary flair for the unique and penetrating question, I asked: “What are you doing here?”

She stuttered something about having a date with Fritz.

Fritz wasn’t a chaser. I knew that Myra was on our books for about four grand and figured it might have something to do with that.

She was ahead of me, went on: “I wanted to talk to him about the money I owe you; I called him up after dinner and he said he’d be home all evening. Didn’t he tell you?”

I shook my head and reached in and turned the nickel cap on the dashlight so I could see her face better. She was pretty shaky.

I said: “Well—why don’t you go in?”

She managed to smile. “I was just getting out of the car when you came out on the porch. I didn’t know who it was so I waited.”

I nodded and opened the door of the car and waited for her to get out. She put one foot out on the running board, hesitated, chirped: “Fritz is all right, isn’t he? … .”

“Sure—Fritz is fine. Why?”

She laughed self-consciously. “I just wondered… .”

I said: “Fritz is dead.”

She stared at me a few seconds without saying anything. Then she put her hands up to her mouth and moaned something that sounded like “Oh my God! …”

I waited. It was a good hunch. If I’d started asking questions she’d probably have closed up like a clam but instead she went entirely screwy and started babbling about “Mel” and “her career” and “poor Fritz” and a couple dozen other things. Pieced together it went something like this:

She’d made the date with Fritz at his house because she wanted to have a heart to heart talk about paying off a little at a time, and he was always so busy at the club.

My own guess was that she’d figured she might go into her baby star routine for him and he’d break down and tear up her markers or take it out in trade, or something. Maybe not.

Anyway, she was all set to leave for Bel-Air when in walks Mel, her current chump—fiancé was her word—and says: “Where are you going, my pretty maid?”

“I’m going to Fritz Kiernan’s on business,” says she—honest lass.

“Business my eye!” says he, or words to that effect, and the battle was on.

Mel, I gathered, was a lovely boy, but given to jealous rages in which he completely blew his noodle. This had been one of his best, and after building it for about an hour he’d stamped out with the loudly proclaimed intention of wiping such scum as Fritz Kiernan off the face of the earth, or some equally lousy curtain line. It seems he’d missed the point that Myra had made the date and that it was business, and a few inconsequential details like that.

She beat him to her front door and stood there with her arms spread out, yelping “No, no—not that!” or whatever seemed appropriate and he clipped her on the button and she went bye-bye. Nice fella.

I asked her what Mel looked like and she managed to tell me, with sob effects; I knew who the husky lying in the doorway was. All of which got me exactly nowhere in trying to figure out what’d happened. It was a cinch Mel hadn’t beaten Fritz to death; no one man could’ve done that without a sledgehammer. And if Fritz shot Mel where was the gun? And how could he shoot anybody if he was dead? And what did he say, “Somebody took a shot at me,” on the phone for? Mel didn’t sound like the type to take a shot at anyone; he’d be a bare-hander. None of it made sense.

I asked Myra if Mel ever carried a gun, just to be sure, and she shook her head.

Then I tried to lay out the little I knew about it in chronological order in my mind and kept on getting nowhere, fast. The only thing I was sure of, or thought I was sure of, was that Myra was telling the truth and was in a fair way of being smack in the middle of the worst jam a gal like her can draw. She believed in her career whether anyone else did or not and a scandal like that would put her on the shelf for good, even if they didn’t stick her as an accomplice or accessory or what-have-you.

So impulsive, big-hearted Finn bleated: “Listen, Myra—the Law will be here in a minute. You duck, and duck quick. And if they tie you up with this in any way keep your mouth shut until I get in touch with you. Got it?”

She stopped sobbing long enough to bob her head up and down.

“Under any circumstances don’t crack about coming here tonight, or seeing me. And don’t try to reach Mel—he won’t be home tonight.”

She looked at me big-eyed, nodded again.

I didn’t tell her any more about Mel; she’d find out about that soon enough. I watched her out of sight and went back into the house.

The whole piece of business with Myra was the kind of thing I’d call anybody else a sap for doing. It got me into plenty of trouble but I’d probably do it again the same way. I guess everybody has to be a sucker one way or another.

The cook had put on her best bib and tucker in honor of the occasion. A couple patrolmen in a radio car got to the house a little before Moore and got difficult with her and I objected and they got difficult with me; Moore got there just in time to save one of the cops and probably me from a good sock on the nose.

Moore was pretty new on the homicide squad—I think he’d been in the narcotic division or something like that—but he had an Italian named Amante with him who was as efficient as any half-dozen dicks I’ve ever seen.

He was a short gray-haired gent with wide-set intelligent eyes and a nice smile. Inside of half an hour he’d heard all I had to say and all the cook had to say. He’d found the spot on the porch where Fritz had been standing when whoever it was took the first shot at him. He’d decided that that first shot missed and he’d found the slug buried in the side of the house near the door. The second shot had creased Fritz’s leg and smacked into the house alongside of the other and there was a thin trail of blood from the porch into the house.

That, according to Eagle Eye Amante, was when Fritz had called me. Then the “party or parties unknown” which meant Mel and somebody else according to Amante’s theory, had followed him into the house and dragged him away from the phone and proceeded to systematically beat him to death.

That being accomplished some slight difference of opinion had arisen and he or she or they had let Mel have it. And to top it Amante found the revolver, lacking three slugs, that both Fritz and Mel had been shot with under the table near Fritz’s body. They’d have to dig the lead out of the house and out of Mel before they could be sure, of course, but it looked like a cinch.

It was swell reasoning as far as it went. And when Amante found a lot of stuff on Mel that identified him as Melville Raymond, including a wire thanking him for some flowers, signed Myra, I almost broke down and told all, but her story was still with me and I believed it and Amante’s version didn’t jibe with it at all. Call it a hunch, call it anything you like; I kept my trap closed and followed Amante’s leads in my best “Marvelous, Mister Holmes” manner.