Red Harvest (8 page)

“Where is the gun?” I asked.

“In Harper’s cage,” the boy said.

I scowled at the cashier and asked him:

“Will you get it?”

He went out as if he were glad to go.

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” the youngster said. “I don’t think I meant to.”

I nodded encouragingly, trying to look solemnly sympathetic.

“I don’t think I meant to kill him,” he repeated, “though I took the gun with me. You were right about my being cuckoo over Dinah—then. It was worse some days than others. The day Willsson brought the check in was one of the bad ones. All I could think about was that I had lost her because I had no more money, and he was taking five thousand dollars to her. It was the check. Can you understand that? I had known that she and Thaler were—you know. If I had learned that Willsson and she were too,
without seeing the check, I wouldn’t have done anything. I’m sure of it. It was seeing the check—and knowing I’d lost her because my money was gone.

“I watched her house that night and saw him go in. I was afraid of what I might do, because it was one of the bad days, and I had the gun in my pocket. Honestly I didn’t want to do anything. I was afraid. I couldn’t think of anything but the check, and why I had lost her. I knew Willsson’s wife was jealous. Everybody knew that. I thought if I called her up and told her—I don’t know exactly what I thought, but I went to a store around the corner and phoned her. Then I phoned Thaler. I wanted them there. If I could have thought of anyone else who had anything to do with either Dinah or Willsson I’d have called them too.

“Then I went back and watched Dinah’s house again. Mrs. Willsson came, and then Thaler, and both of them stayed there, watching the house. I was glad of that. With them there I wasn’t so afraid of what I might do. After a while Willsson came out and walked down the street. I looked up at Mrs. Willsson’s car and at the doorway where I knew Thaler was. Neither of them did anything, and Willsson was walking away. I knew then why I had wanted them there. I had hoped they would do something—and I wouldn’t have to. But they didn’t, and he was walking away. If one of them had gone over and said something to him, or even followed him, I wouldn’t have done anything.

“But they didn’t. I remember taking the gun out of my pocket. Everything was blurred in front of my eyes, like I was crying. Maybe I was. I don’t remember shooting—I mean I don’t remember deliberately aiming and pulling the trigger—but I can remember the sound the shots made, and that I knew the noise was coming from the gun in my hand. I don’t remember how Willsson looked, if he fell before I turned and ran up the alley, or not. When I got home I cleaned and reloaded the pistol, and put it back in the paying teller’s cage the next morning.”

On the way down to the City Hall with the boy and the gun I apologized for the village cut-up stuff I had put in the early part of the shake-down, explaining:

“I had to get under your skin, and that was the best way I knew. The way you’d talked about the girl showed me you were too good an actor to be broken down by straight hammering.”

He winced, and said slowly:

“That wasn’t acting, altogether. When I was in danger, facing the gallows, she didn’t—didn’t seem so important to me. I couldn’t—I can’t now—quite understand—fully—why I did what I did. Do you know what I mean? That somehow makes the whole thing—and me—cheap. I mean, the whole thing from the beginning.”

I couldn’t find anything to say except something meaningless, like:

“Things happen that way.”

In the chiefs office we found one of the men who had been on the storming party the night before—a red-faced official named Biddle. He goggled at me with curious gray eyes, but asked no questions about the King Street doings.

Biddle called in a young lawyer named Dart from the prosecuting attorney’s office. Albury was repeating his story to Biddle, Dart and a stenographer, when the chief of police, looking as if he had just crawled out of bed, arrived.

“Well, it certainly is fine to see you,” Noonan said, pumping my hand up and down while patting my back. “By God! You had a narrow one last night—the rats! I was dead sure they’d got you till we kicked in the doors and found the joint empty. Tell me how those son-of-a-guns got out of there.”

“A couple of your men let them out the back door, took them through the house in back, and sent them away in a department car. They took me along so I couldn’t tip you off.”

“A couple of my men did that?” he asked, with no appearance of surprise. “Well, well! What kind of looking men were they?”

I described them.

“Shore and Riordan,” he said. “I might of known it. Now what’s all this?” nodding his fat face at Albury.

I told him briefly while the boy went on dictating his statement.

The chief chuckled and said:

“Well, well, I did Whisper an injustice. I’ll have to hunt him up and square myself. So you landed the boy? That certainly is fine. Congratulations and thanks.” He shook my hand again. “You’ll not be leaving our city now, will you?”

“Not just yet.”

“That’s fine,” he assured me.

I went out for breakfast-and-lunch. Then I treated myself to a shave and hair-cut, sent a telegram to the Agency asking to have Dick Foley and Mickey Linehan shipped to Personville, stopped in my room for a change of clothes, and set out for my client’s house.

Old Elihu was wrapped in blankets in an armchair at a sunny window. He gave me a stubby hand and thanked me for catching his son’s murderer.

I made some more or less appropriate reply. I didn’t ask him how he had got the news.

“The check I gave you last night,” he said, “is only fair pay for the work you have done.”

“Your son’s check more than covered that.”

“Then call mine a bonus.”

“The Continental’s got rules against taking bonuses or rewards,” I said.

His face began to redden.

“Well, damn it—”

“You haven’t forgotten that your check was to cover the cost of investigating crime and corruption in Personville, have you?” I asked.

“That was nonsense,” he snorted. “We were excited last night. That’s called off.”

“Not with me.”

He threw a lot of profanity around. Then:

“It’s my money and I won’t have it wasted on a lot of damn-foolery. If you won’t take it for what you’ve done, give it back to me.”

“Stop yelling at me,” I said. “I’ll give you nothing except a good job of city-cleaning. That’s what you bargained for, and that’s what you’re going to get. You know now that your son was killed by young Albury, and not by your playmates. They know now that Thaler wasn’t helping you double-cross them. With your son dead, you’ve been able to promise them that the newspapers won’t dig up any more dirt. All’s lovely and peaceful again.

“I told you I expected something like that. That’s why I sewed you up. And you are sewed up. The check has been certified, so you can’t stop payment. The letter of authority may not be as good as a contract, but you’ll have to go into court to prove that it isn’t. If you want that much of that kind of publicity, go ahead. I’ll see that you get plenty.

“Your fat chief of police tried to assassinate me last night. I don’t like that. I’m just mean enough to want to ruin him for it. Now I’m going to have my fun. I’ve got ten thousand dollars of your money to play with. I’m going to use it opening Poisonville up from Adam’s apple to ankles. I’ll see that you get my reports as regularly as possible. I hope you enjoy them.”

And I went out of the house with his curses sizzling around my head.

I spent most of the afternoon writing my three days’ reports on the Donald Willsson operation. Then I sat around, burned Fatimas, and thought about the Elihu Willsson operation until dinner time.

I went down to the hotel dining room and had just decided in favor of pounded rump steak with mushrooms when I heard myself being paged.

The boy took me to one of the lobby booths. Dinah Brand’s lazy voice came out of the receiver:

“Max wants to see you. Can you drop in tonight?”

“Your place?”

“Yes.”

I promised to drop in and returned to the dining room and my meal. When I had finished eating I went up to my room, fifth floor front. I unlocked the door and went in, snapping on the light.

A bullet kissed a hole in the door-frame close to my noodle.

More bullets made more holes in door, door-frame and wall,
but by that time I had carried my noodle into a safe corner, one out of line with the window.

Across the street, I knew, was a four-story office building with a roof a little above the level of my window. The roof would be dark. My light was on. There was no percentage in trying to peep out under those conditions.

I looked around for something to chuck at the light globe, found a Gideon Bible, and chucked it. The bulb popped apart, giving me darkness.

The shooting had stopped.

I crept to the window, kneeling with an eye to one of its lower corners. The roof across the street was dark and too high for me to see beyond its rim. Ten minutes of this one-eyed spying got me nothing except a kink in my neck.

I went to the phone and asked the girl to send the house copper up.

He was a portly, white-mustached man with the round undeveloped forehead of a child. He wore a too-small hat on the back of his head to show the forehead. His name was Keever. He got too excited over the shooting.

The hotel manager came in, a plump man with carefully controlled face, voice and manner. He didn’t get excited at all. He took the this-is-unheard-of-but-not-really-serious-of-course attitude of a street fakir whose mechanical dingus flops during a demonstration.

We risked light, getting a new globe, and added up the bullet-holes. There were ten of them.

Policemen came, went, and returned to report no luck in picking up whatever trail there might have been. Noonan called up. He talked to the sergeant in charge of the police detail, and then to me.

“I just this minute heard about the shooting,” he said. “Now who do you reckon would be after you like that?”

“I couldn’t guess,” I lied.

“None of them touched you?”

“No.”

“Well, that certainly is fine,” he said heartily. “And we’ll nail that baby, whoever he was, you can bet your life on that. Would you like me to leave a couple of the boys with you, just to see nothing else happens?”

“No, thanks.”

“You can have them if you want them,” he insisted.

“No, thanks.”

He made me promise to call on him the first chance I got, told me the Personville police department was at my disposal, gave me to understand that if anything happened to me his whole life would be ruined, and I finally got rid of him.

The police went away. I had my stuff moved into another room, one into which bullets couldn’t be so easily funneled. Then I changed my clothes and set out for Hurricane Street, to keep my date with the whispering gambler.

Dinah Brand opened the door for me. Her big ripe mouth was rouged evenly this evening, but her brown hair still needed trimming, was parted haphazardly, and there were spots down the front of her orange silk dress.

“So you’re still alive,” she said. “I suppose nothing can be done about it. Come on in.”

We went into her cluttered-up living room. Dan Rolff and Max Thaler were playing pinochle there. Rolff nodded to me. Thaler got up to shake hands.

His hoarse whispering voice said:

“I hear you’ve declared war on Poisonville.”

“Don’t blame me. I’ve got a client who wants the place ventilated.”

“Wanted, not wants,” he corrected me as we sat down. “Why don’t you chuck it?”

I made a speech:

“No. I don’t like the way Poisonville has treated me. I’ve got my chance now, and I’m going to even up. I take it you’re back
in the club again, all brothers together, let bygones be bygones. You want to be let alone. There was a time when I wanted to be let alone. If I had been, maybe now I’d be riding back to San Francisco. But I wasn’t. Especially I wasn’t let alone by that fat Noonan. He’s had two tries at my scalp in two days. That’s plenty. Now it’s my turn to run him ragged, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Poisonville is ripe for the harvest. It’s a job I like, and I’m going to do it.”