The Paul Cain Omnibus (54 page)

Sheedy didn’t say anything.

Kells looked at the door to the cabaret. He said: “Tell Taylor Lonny’s back here.”

Sheedy said: “I’m under one indictment here, Mister Kells. If there’s any trouble and it gets loud, I’ll lose my license.”

“It won’t get loud.”

The door to the cabaret opened and a very light-colored Negro with straight blue-black hair came into the hallway. There was a white man behind him, and the white man took a stubby revolver out of his coat pocket.

The Negro said: “Sorry, Vince.”

Sheedy put his hands up.

Kells clicked a button-switch on the wall with his elbow, but the lights in the hallway stayed on.

The white man stayed at the end of the hallway, about ten feet away from them. He was short, with a broad bland childlike face. He held the revolver close to his stomach, pointed indiscriminately at Kells and Sheedy.

Taylor came up to them, felt Kells for a gun.

Sheedy started to speak, and then the room door opened and Gilroy stood outlined against darkness.

He asked: “Wha’s the mattah with the lights?”

Taylor turned his head, jerked an automatic out of his belt, swung it towards Gilroy. Kells slammed his open left hand down hard on Taylor’s arm and then he got his other arm around Taylor’s neck and hugged him back close to the wall so that Taylor was between him and the short white man.

The white man turned and disappeared through the door to the cabaret, Sheedy after him. Then Borg came out past Gilroy and clubbed his gun, tapped Taylor back of the ear. Taylor went limp and Kells let him slide down awkwardly to the floor.

Gilroy said: “Well, for goodness’ sake!”

They turned off Whittier Boulevard and drove a long way along a well-paved road. The road ran between fields; there were a few dark houses, and occasionally a light at an intersection.

Kells sat on the left side of the tonneau and Borg sat on the right side and Taylor was between them. Gilroy and Faber were in front. Gilroy had insisted on coming. Beery had gone home.

Kells said: “Where’s Rose?”

Taylor made a resigned gesture with one hand. “I tell you, Mister Kells—I don’ know,” he said. “If I knew—”

Borg swung his fist around hard into Taylor’s face. Borg grunted with the effort and there was the sharp slight sound of his arm moving swiftly and then the soft spat as his big hand crushed Taylor’s face.

Taylor whimpered and put his arms up over his face. He tried to slide farther down in the seat, and Borg put his arm around his shoulders and held him erect.

“Where’s Rose?” Kells pursued relentlessly.

“I don’t know, Mister Kells…. I swear to God I don’t know….” Taylor spoke into the cloth of his coat sleeve; the words were broken, sounded far away.

Borg pulled Taylor’s arms down from his face very gently, held his two hands in his lap with one of his hands, and swung his fist again.

Taylor struggled and freed one of his hands and put it over his bloody face. “I tell you I got orders that was supposed to come from Rose,” he panted—“but they was over the phone…. I don’t know where they was from….”

They rode in silence for a little while, except for the sound of Taylor’s sobbing breath. Then they turned into a dirt road, darker, winding.

Kells said: “Where’s Rose?”

Taylor sobbed, mumbled unintelligibly.

Gilroy turned around and looked at Taylor with hurt, soft animal eyes. Then he looked at Kells, and Kells nodded. There was a little light from a covered globe on the dashboard. Gilroy kept looking at Kells until he nodded again and then Gilroy tapped Faber’s arm, and the car stopped, the headlights were switched off.

Kells took the big automatic out of a shoulder holster. He opened the door and put one foot out on the running board, and then spoke over his shoulder to Borg: “Bring him out here. We don’t want to mess up the car.”

Taylor screamed and Borg clapped his hand over his mouth—then Taylor was suddenly silent, limp. His eyes were wide and white and his lips moved.

Borg said, “Come on—come on,” and then he saw that Taylor couldn’t move and he put his arms around him and half shoved, half lifted him out of the door of the car. Taylor couldn’t straighten his legs. He put one foot on the running board and his knees gave way and he fell down in the road.

Gilroy got out on the other side. He said: “Ah’m goin’ to walk up the road a piece.” His voice trembled. He went into the darkness.

Taylor was moaning, threshing around in the dust.

Kells squatted beside him. Then he straightened up and spoke to Faber: “Pull up about thirty feet.” Faber looked surprised. He let the clutch in and the car moved forward a little ways. Kells squatted beside Taylor in the darkness again, waited. He held the automatic in his two hands, between his legs. The dim red glow of the taillight was around them.

Taylor rolled over on his back and tried to sit up. Kells helped him, held one hand on his shoulder. Taylor’s eyes were bulging; he looked blindly at the redness of the taillight, blindly at Kells—then he said very evenly, quietly: “He’s in Pedro—the Keystone Hotel….” Fear had worn itself out, had taken his strength and left him, curiously, entirely calm. He no longer trembled, and his voice was even, low. Only his eyes were wide, staring.

Kells called to Borg and they helped Taylor back to the car. They picked up Gilroy a little way ahead. He stared questioningly at Taylor, Kells.

Kells said: “He’s all right.”

They headed back towards town.

The night clerk of the Keystone in San Pedro remembered the gentlemen: the dark, good-looking Mister Gorman and the small and Latin Mister Ribera. They had checked in early yesterday morning, without baggage. They had made several long-distance calls to Los Angeles during the day, sent several wires. They had left about seven-thirty in the evening; no forwarding address.

It was a quarter after one. Kells checked his watch with the clock in the lobby, thanked the clerk and went out to the car. He got in and sat beside Borg, grunted: “No luck.”

They had taken Gilroy home—Faber had stayed with him.

Borg asked: “Where to?”

Kells sat a little while silently staring at nothing. He finally said: “Drive down towards Long Beach.”

Borg started the car and they went down the dark street slowly. The fog was very thick; street lights were vague yellow blobs in the darkness.

Kells had an idea, tapped Borg’s knee suddenly. “Have you ever been out to Rainey’s boat?”

Borg hadn’t. “I ain’t much of a gambler,” he said. “I went out to the
Joanna D.
once, before it burned up—with a broad.”

“Do you remember how to get to the P & O wharf?”

Borg said he thought so. They turned into the main highway south. After about a half hour, they turned off into what turned out to be a blind street. They tried the next one and had just about decided they were wrong again when Borg saw the big white P & O on the warehouse that ran out on the wharf. They parked the car and walked out to the waiting room.

Kells asked the man in the office if the big red-faced man who ran one of the launches to the
Eaglet
was around.

The man looked at his watch. “You mean Bernie, I guess,” he said. “He oughta be on his way back with a load of players.”

They sat down and waited.

Bernie laughed. He said: “You ain’t as wet as you were the last time I saw you.”

Kells shook his head. They walked together to the end of the wharf.

Kells asked: “You know Jack Rose when you see him?”

“Sure.”

“When did you see him last?”

Bernie tipped his cap back, scratched his nose. “Night before last,” he said, “when you and him went out to the
Joanna.
”

“If you were wanted for murder in LA and wanted to get out of the country for a while, how would you do it?” Kells asked.

“God! I don’t know.” Bernie spat into the black water alongside the wharf. “I suppose I’d make a pass at Mexico.”

“If you were going by car you wouldn’t be coming through Pedro.”

“No.”

“But if you were going by boat? ….”

Bernie said: “Hell, if I was going by boat I wouldn’t go all the way to Mexico. I’d go out and dig in on China Point.”

Kells sat down on a pile. “I’ve heard of it,” he said. “What’s it all about?”

“That’s God’s country.” Bernie grinned, stared through sheets of mist at the lights of the bay. “That’s the rum runners’ paradise. All the boys in the racket along the Coast hang out there. They come in from the mother ships—and the tender crews…. I’ll bet there’s a million dollars’ worth of stuff on the’island. They steal it from each other to keep themselves entertained….”

“How long since you were there?”

“Couple years—but I hear about it. They got a swell knock-down drag-out café there now—the Red Barn.”

Kells said: “It isn’t outside Federal jurisdiction.”

“No. A cutter goes out and circles the island every month or so. But they pay off plenty—nobody ever bothers ’em.”

“That’s very interesting,” Kells stood up. “How would Rose get out there?”

Bernie shook his head. “A dozen ways. He’d probably get one of the boys who used to run players to the
Joanna
to take him out. It’s a two-hour trip in a fast boat.”

They walked back towards the waiting room.

Kells said: “It’s an awfully long chance. Do you suppose you could get a line on it from any of your friends?”

“I don’t think so. I know a couple fellas who worked for Rose and Haardt, but with Rose wanted, they wouldn’t open up.”

Bernie took out a knife and a plug of tobacco, whittled himself a fresh chew.

Kells said: “Try.”

“Okay.”

They went into the waiting room and Bernie went into the telephone booth.

Borg had found a funny paper. He looked up at Kells and said, “I’ll bet the guys that get up these things make a pile of jack—huh?”

Kells said they probably did.

Borg sighed. “I always wanted to be a cartoonist,” he said.

Bernie came out of the booth in a little while. “There’s a man named Carver got a string of U Drive pleasure boats down at Long Beach,” he said. “He says a couple men and a woman hired one about eight-thirty and ain’t come back yet. One of ’em sounds like Rose. The other one was a little guy; and the woman he don’t know about—she was bundled up.”

Kells smiled as if he meant it, said: “Come on.”

“We wouldn’t get out there till daylight in my boat. Maybe I can borrow the
Comet
—I’ll go see.”

Bernie went out and came back in a few minutes, shaking his head.

“He wants fifty dollars till ten in the morning,” he said. “That’s too damn much.”

Kells took a sheaf of bills out of his pocket, peeled off two.

“Give him whatever he wants out of this,” he said. “And does he want a deposit?”

“No.” Bernie started for the door. “He keeps my boat for security.”

Kells and Borg followed him out, across the wharf, across a rickety foot bridge and down to a wide float.

Bernie gave the man who was waiting there one of the bills, said: “I’ll pick up the change when I come back.”

The man asked: “Don’t you want me to come along?”

Bernie glanced at Kells. Kells said: “Thanks—no. We’ll get along.”

The
Comet
was a trim thirty-foot craft; mahogany and steel and glistening brass. She looked very fast.

Bernie switched on the running lights and started the engine. The man cast off the lines; Bernie spun the wheel over and they swung in a wide curve away from the float and out through the narrows to the cut that led to the outer bay.

The fog was broken to long trailing shreds, but thick. The swell was long, fairly easy.

Bernie snapped on the binnacle light. “I hope I ain’t forgotten the course,” he said. “I think it’ll clear up when we get out a ways—but I’m usually wrong about fog.”

Borg said, “That’s dandy,” with dripping sarcasm.

Kells went down into the little cabin, lay down on one of the bunks. He watched red and green and yellow buoy lights slide swiftly by the portholes. After a while they rounded the breakwater and there weren’t any more lights to watch.

Kells was awakened by Bernie whispering: “We made it in an hour and fifty minutes.” Then Bernie went outside.

It was very dark. Borg was lying in the other bunk, groaning faintly.

Kells said: “What the hell’s the matter?”

Borg didn’t answer.

“You aren’t sick!” Kells was emphatically incredulous.

It was quiet for a minute and then Borg said slowly: “Who’s the best judge of that—me or you?”

Kells got up and went outside. Bernie had doused the running lights; there was a thin glow from the binnacle—and darkness. The fog felt like a wet sheet.

Bernie said: “There’s a big cruiser tied up on the other side of the wharf. I coasted by close—I don’t think there’s anybody aboard.”

“Any other boats?”

“I couldn’t see any.” Bernie switched off the binnacle light. “There’s another little cove on the other side of the island, but nobody uses it.”

Kells said: “We’re not tied up, are we?”

“Sure.”

Kells looked at Bernie admiringly. “You’re a wonder. It didn’t even wake me up.”

Bernie chuckled. “You’re damn right I’m a wonder.”

They climbed up on the wharf, crossed quietly. The cruiser was big, luxurious, evidently deserted—Bernie couldn’t make out the name. Except for a few rowboats and the
Comet
, it was the only boat at the wharf.

Kells said: “Well—I guess I’m wrong again.”

They walked up the wharf, and Bernie found a path and they walked along the bottom of a shallow gully, up to the left across a kind of ridge.

The fog was so heavy they didn’t see the light until they were about twenty feet from it. Then they went forward silently and a big ramshackle shed took form in the gray darkness. The light came from a square window on the second floor.

Bernie said: “This used to be a cattle shelter—they’ve built onto it. I guess it’s the place they call the Red Barn.”

They found a door and Kells knocked twice. There was no answer so he turned the knob, pushed the door open.