Хал Эллсон - Masters of Noir - Volume 3

Then her mouth came back to mine.

It was late, but I tried the Club Trippa anyway. There was a bar in front and a cocktail lounge in the rear. It was done in maroon and silver and had a glow that was warmer than a bachelor-girl on vacation. The bar was crowded three deep and the inside room was jumping. The bartender winked and waved and said, “Hi.”

“Nick around? Or Johnny Hays?”

“Don’t know myself, Mr. Chambers. Try Upstairs.”

Upstairs, up a maroon-carpeted flight of stairs, was the floor show, the band, the dance floor, and the heavy spenders. Upstairs, too, were a couple of choice back rooms, one of which was Nick Darrow’s office, if a studio fitted out like a sultan’s reception room can be termed “office.” The merry-makers were engaged in watching a stripper called Bonnie Laurie so I strolled along the periphery of dimness and opened the office door without knocking.

Nick Darrow wasn’t there.

But Johnny Hays was.

He unfurled off a couch, black-eyed and contemptuous, and lounged toward me.

“Still looking for trouble, my dear shamus?”

“Where’s Nickie?”

“None of your business. Any message?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take it.”

I gave it to him. High, hard and handsome with a lot of shoulder behind it. It splattered blood from his mouth and sat him down with his toes pointed at the ceiling. I didn’t wait for him to get up. I went downstairs and had a Scotch highball and my palms were wet with expectancy. But nothing happened. Johnny Hays didn’t show, nor did Nickie Darrow. Johnny was still sitting there, or he didn’t want to come down, or he’d gone down the back exit and was out front waiting. I paid and went out. Nobody was there. I walked along a couple of quiet streets but nobody sprang at me. So I gave it up and went back to the lights. I had ham and eggs in a cafeteria, with coffee, ketchup, and well-buttered English muffins. Then I went home.

I showered, dried down, slipped into a pair of shorts. I bought myself a Scotch and chased it with more Scotch and I was ready to wrap this day up and put it to bed. I thought about Florence Reed and felt a little sorry for her, as sorry as you can feel for a dame with a hundred million bucks, and then I thought about Aunt Ethel and I got a belt out of that. So... my door-buzzer buzzed.

In the middle of the night, the door-buzzer buzzes.

Each to his own. Poets sleep in the daytime. Tramps work at night. Charwomen come home at dawn. Editors read in bed. Actors awake at the crack of noon. Atom experts ponder through the night. Doctors are always on call. And a private richard... there is no reason why business should not be buzzing the door-buzzer in the dead of night. Private richard. He has about as much privacy as a parakeet in a kindergarten.

I opened the door to darkness. Somebody’d switched off the corridor lights. When lights are out that should be on, you drop, you learn that early when you’re in my business. But I didn’t drop in time. Blazes of light punctuated the blackness, and when I dropped, it wasn’t because I wanted to drop, it was because I was knocked down by the force of the bullets. I heard the pound of feet in the corridor, but right then I wasn’t interested. I felt blood on my naked body, and I heard the labor of my breathing. My one interest was reaching the phone. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t make it. So I crawled, and I lifted the receiver, and dialed o, and heard my whisper: “Operator... hospital... hospital... emergency...”

I was under sedatives for a day, while they probed for bullets, and then I was sitting up in the hospital bed, ready to go, but they told me five days, five days before they’d let me out of there, and then I got a caller, amiable but worried-looking, Detective-lieutenant Louis Parker, Homicide, good cop and good friend.

“Hi, Detective,” he said. “I hear you’re coming around real good.”

“Hi, Lieutenant. What brings you?”

“Well, when a friend is sick...”

“What else brings you?”

“That Abner Reed shindig. I hear tell you were an innocent bystander... in a cemetery. You well enough to chat?”

“I’m well enough to get the hell out of here. Did they return that bird?”

“Yah.” He sighed and sat down. Detective-lieutenant Louis Parker, squat, thick, ruddy and black-haired, stump of an unlit cigar in his mouth. “And none the worse for his experience. Got hit in the throat a couple of times, a little damage to the windpipe. Had to do the questions and answers by writing, but it’s a condition that figures to clear up quick enough.”

“Has it broken in the newspapers?”

“Nope. Not a word. We’re trying to work it through before it gets any publicity. Now, let’s hear your story.”

I gave him the story without frill or furbelow. When I was finished he said, “Any ideas?”

“About what?”

“About what makes you a shooting-gallery target?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a couple of ideas, but I’d rather not talk about them.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re personal, and I’d like to give them some personal attention, as soon as they let me out of here.”

“Okay, Peter Pan, if that’s the way you want it.” The cigar rolled around in his mouth and stopped. “What about the snatch? Want to discuss that?”

“Love to.”

“Any ideas on that?”

“Not a one. You, Lieutenant?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s a good basis for discussion. Okay, what have you got on it?”

“Nothing more than you have. The guy showed up at his house about seven o’clock yesterday morning, period. Tired, a little banged up, and his throat on the blink. Had a doctor in, who couldn’t find anything really wrong. Cold compresses and rest, that’s the treatment.”

“Get his story?”

“Got it the best possible way. Complete statement in writing, then questions and answers in writing. Sum total... nothing.”

“Well, let’s hear, anyway.”

“Went out of his house for a paper. Got jumped in the dark and figured it for a mugging. But then he was slugged, and when he came to, he was in a car, bound and gagged and under a blanket. Also blindfolded. There was a stop, where he was put on the phone to that Uncle Harry; then he was riding again. Then there was another stop, where they roughed him up a little; then the call in the morning to the wife for the ransom dough, where you were suggested as go-between, and he transmitted that suggestion to the wife. You know what happened in between. Then, yesterday morning, about six o’clock, he had another car ride. He was dropped out near the bridge on First Avenue and a Hundred and Twenty-fifth, and the car roared off. He wandered around a little dazed until he got a cab, and went home. That’s his story, sum and total.”

“License plate of the car?”

“Couldn’t get it. It was still dark, and they had their lights out. Nice, huh? A lot to work on.”

“Yeah.”

Silence. Of the heavy type. The kind of silence you can only get in a hospital room. Then he said, “Can I smoke?”

“Sure you can smoke.”

He lit up. “Well...?”

“What about the background of the guy himself? Abner Reed. What kind of a guy?”

“Nice enough young fella. Tall, rangy, young, good-looking. Used to be a dancing instructor. That’s how he met the lady with the bucks. She came for lessons and she fell for the teacher.”

“How they get along?”

“Swell, from what they tell me.”

“How long married?”

“Going on seven months.”

“She been liberal with him?”

“Liberal as can be expected. Rich, but plenty tightwad, that one.”