Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 6, June, 1953

Back in ’45 you couldn’t pick up a sports page without seeing his name and face. He’d been in college then, the basketball star of the States, center on the Indians, national high-scorer. Too big for any of the services, he’d made a name for himself on the courts. Maybe you remember his name: Tommy Matson, and they called him Cannonball Matson. Since then the nickname had been shortened to Cannon. In ’46 he’d turned pro, finally been kicked out of the game because of excessive roughness, near brutality — and because he’d been questioned by the San Francisco D.A. about some fixed games; questioned and let go. After that he’d drifted. His name didn’t hit the sports pages any more, but I remembered he’d been picked up for battery, released, then did a bit for second-degree burglary, a daylight job on which he hadn’t carried a gun. The last I heard he’d been arrested in San Francisco, this time for first-degree burglary, a night job, but again he’d been without a gun. Cannon had been sent to San Quentin for that one. I’d brushed against him a few times on cases of mine, but I’d never been on his tail. He knew me, though, and didn’t like me; I’d helped put a couple of his friends away.

I could feel my throat tighten up. The guy wasn’t ten feet tall, he was a long six-feet-nine and a lumpy three hundred pounds, but Joe’s story wasn’t so crazy any more. This was the boy Joe had seen in here yesterday. I turned around with my back to the dice table and said, “Hello, Cannon. I heard you fell from ’Frisco. Didn’t know you were down this way.”

“Now you know.” He looked past me to Lois. “This chump bothering you, honey?”

“He’s not bothering me, Cannon.”

“I figure he is.”

I butted in. “I think the lady knows more about it than you do, Cannon. And you know my name. It’s not chump.”

The cowboy said, “It’s Pally. Ain’t that right, Pally?”

I looked at him. “You got a short memory, friend. Next time I’ll put a hinge in your elbow.” Actually, right at that moment, I didn’t feel too happy about all this. Another guy had come inside with Cannon and was standing by him. He was a little short guy about six feet tall, slim, bald, about forty-five. There was a scar, probably a knife scar, on his forehead just where his hairline should have been. That made four guys lined up against me, counting Cannon as two.

“Move along, Scott,” Cannon said.

“I’m busy.” I turned my back on him and said to Lois, “Guess we were interrupted. And I was just about to ask you something.”

She was frowning, biting her lower lip. “I know,” she said.

From behind me Cannon said softly, “I want you should blow, Scott, and keep going, and don’t come back.”

I felt a hand yank on my arm. As it spun me around I saw that it was the cowboy pulling at me and I made a mistake and concentrated on him. He got hold of my coat sleeves with both hands just as I started to chop at his face with the edge of my palm and maybe cave his face in for him, but I was concentrating on the wrong guy.

I heard Cannon grunt on my left, and I saw the big fist swooping down at my head, and I rolled with the punch just a fraction of a second too late. I was rolling when he hit me, and I damn near rolled over the dice table into Lois’ lap, and a gray film dropped down over my eyes. My muscles were suddenly like jelly and when I felt Cannon’s big hand bunch up my coat and pull me toward him I was having a hard enough time keeping my legs straight under me, much less getting a fist up to his chin. I fought to clear my head as I heard Cannon say huskily, “I said blow, and stay the hell gone,” and then I saw the dim blur of his fist looming up in front of me again, and just as I rolled my head to the side my head finally cleared. Everything got very clear and very black.

I was in a booth. It seemed pretty sure that I was in a booth, but I didn’t yet know where the booth was. I had just got my face up off the table and slowly I remembered what had happened. I wiggled my jaw, and pain cleared fog from my brain. I looked around. Lois was walking from the bar toward me, and because my eyes hadn’t yet focused properly it was as though there were two of Lois walking at me, and the way just one of her navigated this was almost more than man could bear. But when she reached the table she was back to one, and it was one shot glass she put in front of me.

“Brandy,” she said.

“Thanks.” I drank it, waited half a minute, then started to stand up. “Where is that... that... that...”

I was coming out of the booth when she put a hand on my chest and said, “Sit down. I admire your stupidity, but they’ve left. Hadn’t you better relax for a while?”

“I’ve been relaxed for a long while.” I sat down and as she slid into the seat opposite me I said, “What’s going on out there now?”

“Nothing. All the customers left too.”

“They show remarkable good sense.”

“Cannon and Tinkle and Artie looked through your clothes and wallet, then put everything back and left.”

“That’s great.” I thought a minute. “Tinkle?” I asked her. “Tinkle Miller?” It had to be; there wouldn’t be another hoodlum with the same monicker.

“Uh-huh, the cowboy. And Artie Payne. And you’re Shell Scott. A detective.”

I looked across the table at her. “True. Is that bad?”

“I didn’t say that. But it made me... wonder.”

“Yeah. I suppose it would.” I didn’t add anything to that; I wasn’t going to con the gal; she could take her chances or leave them. I said, “I didn’t know you’d chosen Cannon.”

“I didn’t. He chose me. He’s... after me, you might say. But he hasn’t got me yet.”

“I imagine he’d put on quite a campaign. He’d have to. You know, flowers, candy, pretty baubles, things like that.”

“Things like that. He ordered me to stay away from you.”

“I had you picked as a gal to ask, not to order.”

“I am.”

“Well, I’m asking.”

“What and when?”

“Dinner. Tonight.”

“Maybe.” She glanced toward the door. “Couple customers,” she said. “I have to get back to the table.” She left. Naturally I watched her walk away.

I ordered and slowly drank a last water-high while I added some bits and pieces. Tinkle Miller. A hood who’d been lucky with convictions, but had been charged with half the book, mostly suspicion of burglary. A Jack-of-all-trades hoodlum, he’d been a dishwasher, bank clerk and burglar, labor goon and locksmith, soda jerk and short-con man, strikebreaker, and, of course, a cowboy. I filed the one important point in my aching head and added some more. Yesterday Joe had stumbled in here in an alcoholic haze, seen Cannon bestowing a pretty bauble on Lois. I wondered about Lois. Today Tinkle Miller had seen a similar pretty bauble among those on my typed list, called Cannon and Artie Payne, and Cannon had proceeded to knock me silly. It looked pretty good. I got up.

On my way out I stopped at the dice table. Lois was alone there and I said, “Well?”

She nibbled on the inside of her lip. “Where we going?”

“Grove O.K.?”

“Cocoanut Grove?”

“Uh-huh. Then the Strip, Ciro’s, Mocambo, maybe catch Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers.”

“Your face is already swollen. Won’t you mind?”

“I’ll put ice packs on it.”

“I’m supposed to work.”

“Get a headache. Then we’ll be even.”

“All right.”

“You got a long slinky dress you feel like trying out?”

She smiled. “Umm-hmmm. Long... and low.”

“Wonderful.” I grinned at her. “What color?”

She looked up at the ceiling, then slanted her eyes down at me, lips curving into an amused smile, slightly wicked. “Rum and coke.”