Robert Bloch - Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 1. September 1956

The thing to do was to find Mac — find him, and warn him. He was somewhere in Los Angeles. Somewhere! Somewhere in a city that sprawled over an area of more than four hundred square miles.

Gladden was stepping off the curb as the traffic light went red. He drew back, waited. When the light changed, people straggled past him, but he did not move. Weariness again hung upon him like leaden weights. His mind refused to work, retreated as an animal retreats, bruised and sullen, after vainly flinging itself against the barriers of a trap. All he could do was stand there.

Then, without apparent mental effort, it came to him. Schwab’s Drug Store! Schwab’s had always been Mac’s hangout. He’d be certain to show up there. Somebody there would know where he could be found.

Gladden took a long, deep breath, and exhaled slowly. He was a long way from Schwab’s, but he began walking in that direction...

Nothing had changed. The magazine racks up in front, the glass showcases, crowded together, leaving narrow aisles that led to the phone booths in the rear. One of them occupied now by a girl. There were two waitresses behind the lunch counter. Gladden sat down, and the larger girl, wearing a white uniform that fitted her all too tightly, came toward him and flipped a menu in front of him.

Gladden shook his head. “I just dropped in to look for a friend of mine — Lyle MacComber. Has he been around recently?”

“I guess I don’t know him.”

“A trumpet player. He’s on television. A tall, blond, good-looking guy. He hangs out here.”

“If he does, I ain’t specially noticed him.” She called to the other waitress. “Marge, you know anybody who comes in here by the name — of...?”

“MacComber,” Gladden said, “Everybody calls him Mac.”

“Never heard of him.”

So all this had been useless, a waste of time. He thought, I can’t just sit here. I have to do something. But all the energy seemed to have drained out of him. He remained in his seat, his shoulders hunched, his elbows resting on the counter. His gaze traveled to the reflection of a clock in the back-counter mirror. The image was backward — it had to be figured out. It was ten minutes of eight. At nine o’clock, in just seventy minutes, Mac would be dead.

Gladden went tense, his stomach tightening as if a hand had reached inside and squeezed it like a wet sponge. He’d never find Mac in time. There wasn’t a chance. He slid off the stool, stood indecisively. The girl, emerging from the phone booth, set up a train of thought. In the old days, Mac had gone with a girl named Rita Logan. In spite of his lies, his two-timing, the condescending way he treated her, she was crazy about him. Rita might know where he was.

As Gladden moved to the phone booth, his legs seemed no longer to belong to his body. They threatened to give way and collapse him on the floor. He grasped the edge of the booth door, pulled himself inside. A dog-eared phone book hung there, and he began fumbling through the pages. He found the name — Logan, Rita — The same old address.

He deposited a dime and dialed the number. At the other end of the line, the telephone thrummed with that peculiar intonation from which you, somehow, are aware it’s ringing in a deserted house, an empty room. She wasn’t at home. She wasn’t there. A dozen rings brought no answer.

Then, there was a sharp click, followed by a woman’s voice. “Yeah?”

For an interval, Gladden could find no reply, and the voice said sharply, “Hello!”

“I’m calling Miss Logan. Is she there?”

“This is Rita Logan. Who’r you?” The words were slurred and halting. The woman was obviously drunk.

“I’m a friend of Lyle MacComber, from out of town. I wonder if you could tell me where he lives now, or give me his phone number.”

“Watcha callin’ me for? You got gall, botherin’ me.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know who else to call. Mac’s often mentioned you, and I thought—”

“Oh, he has, huh? Well, that don’t give you no right to call me up when I’m busy. I got friends here.”

“Look, I’m only asking you if you can tell me how to locate Mac.”

“Sure, I can tell yuh. Sure, I can — if I wanta. But I don’ wanta. I ain’t no information bureau for every bum that comes to town.” She began abusing him, screaming at him, overriding him when he attempted to speak. He felt sweat trickling down his face. He hung on, he had to hang on. There was so little time left.

Then, abruptly, the voice ceased. All at once, there was no sound, no dial tone — nothing. Gladden kept saying, “Hello — hello — hello!” Frantically! — louder each time, until he was shouting. Finally he stopped. Still holding the phone, he slouched against the wall of the booth, and rested.

A man’s voice over the instrument jerked him to wakefulness. “Hello! Who is this? What’s it all about?”

Gladden straightened, and tried to make his own voice sound polite and respectful. “I’m sorry if I caused any trouble. I’m a friend of Lyle MacComber. I thought maybe Miss Logan could tell me how to get in touch with him.”

“MacComber’s band is playing at the Rancho on the Sunset Strip. Now lay off, will ya?”

Gladden hung up. The Sunset Strip began just outside of Schwab’s. The Rancho could be only blocks away. He left the booth and walked out of the drug store into the soft inflowing dusk.

On the plaster facade of the building had been painted in script the words, the rancho. Underneath, in smaller letters, Mac MacComber and His Vegas Vagabonds. Gladden opened the synthetically weathered door, went inside, stopped. The front area was a bar. There was not much of a crowd. A young couple sat at one of the small tables. A group of three men stood at the bar in muted conversation with the barman. A brick wall with an archway separated the bar from the restaurant beyond. On the restaurant side of the wall, someone was noodling softly on a piano. A big man with black lacquer hair, wearing a sloppy Tuxedo, appeared from somewhere.

“Yes, sir.” His voice was smooth and oily. “Table for one?”

“No table,” Gladden said, “I want to see one of the guys in the band.”

“Oh? Well, we haven’t a band.”

“I mean the Vegas Vagabonds.”

“They closed here last Sunday. So you’ll probably have to go all the way to Las Vegas.”

“There’s somebody playing back there.”

The big man smiled sarcastically. “That happens to be a piano.” He put a hand on Gladden’s shoulder. “No band — that’s all, chum.”

Gladden drew away. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take a look.”

The big man grasped him by the shoulder again, spun him around. “I said that’s all!”

Something quite apart from Gladden took over. It was as if he were standing aside, watching himself, watching his back and shoulders stiffen, the fingers of his right hand tighten together. This was not happening to Johnny Gladden, but to someone else. Then he felt pain across his knuckles. The big man reeled backward, crashing against one of the tables.

The young couple, sitting nearby, stood up swiftly. The girl made a little sound in her throat. One of the men from the bar strode across the room. He held a police badge cupped in his palm. He took Gladden’s arm and said, “All right, tough guy, I guess you and me’ll take a ride to the jail house.”

Gladden knew now that, from the start, all this had been foreordained. He saw, with startling clarity, that he had never really had a chance. He had been moving, not of his own free will but according to the subtle design of malevolent fate, fate that had permitted Mac to beat him again. Mac was safe in Nevada — Johnny Gladden was on his way back to prison.