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

I had a good deal of information now, facts which satisfied me but wouldn’t last two seconds in court, even though one fact led to another and another right up to the valid conclusion. Naturally the boy I wanted was Cannon. But I had to tie him up so tight he’d never wriggle out. And I had to do it my way, do it myself, and do it fast. And for several reasons.

If I didn’t, I was probably through as a private investigator, at least in L.A. I’ve mentioned that a detective wouldn’t last six months without his informants and stools. The guys in and around the rackets would know by now that Joe had tipped me, and that Joe had been given the canary treatment. I knew that right now in the “underworld” of Los Angeles, the word was spreading, the rumble was going from bar to backroom to poker game to horse parlor: “They got Scott’s canary.” And the unspoken question would be, what was I going to do about it.

One of the things demanded of the guy tipped, is that he protect or cover for the tipster; canaries stop singing when it isn’t profitable. If I sat still, most of my tips and leaks would slow and eventually stop. I could have told the cops what I thought and let them pick up Cannon and his chums, question them, and with nothing solid against them let them go — whereupon Cannon would sit back and laugh at me, and so would the rest of the hoods and hooligans. No, I had to get him myself, and get him good.

There was more reason, too. I looked at the newspapers on my desk. Only one of them had the story headlined, but all of them had something about it on the front page. The stories merely said I was being questioned — I’d still been in the can when the reporters got the word — but they all had my name spelled correctly. Too many people would automatically figure me for the hit and run, even though my friends would know better. Most newspaper readers never see the “alleged” and “authoritative source” and “suspicion of.” They take the conjectures as facts and you’re hung on the newspaper’s banner. I was. A year from now a lot of people hearing the name Shell Scott would say, “Yeah, he run over that little guy.”

My office phone rang and I grabbed it, feeling like biting off the mouthpiece. It was Jules Osborne.

“Mr. Scott? What’s happened? Have you seen the papers? Diane phoned me last night, she was drunk, it was terrible. And I don't know what — this is—”

“Don’t get giddy. And yeah, I’ve seen the papers. What the hell do you want?”

“Why, I...” he sputtered a little. “Naturally I was concerned. I...”

“Look, Mr. Osborne. I’ve had a trying night. I know what I’m doing, and I’m getting close to what you want. Just relax for a while and read the papers.”

I listened to him chatter for a bit, then I said, “No, I didn’t mention you to the cops — I won’t. Nobody knows a thing. And I won’t put a word on paper, no reports or anything.”

“But Diane — she’s all upset. What—”

“I’ll talk to Diane. I’ll chew her ear off. She won’t bother you. Goodbye.” I hung up. I just didn’t feel easy going.

And I was pooped. I’d had only about an hour and a half of sleep — not including the two short periods at the Zephyr Room and behind the wheel of my Cad, which didn’t count. My jaw hurt, my right eye was damn near closed, and I was wandering around in broad daylight in that stupid tuxedo. My Cad was being gone over by the lab boys and I wouldn’t get it back till this afternoon, so I left the office, flagged a cab, and told the driver to take me out to Hollywood and the Spartan Apartment Hotel.

Diane’s house wasn’t out of the way, so I had the driver wait while I went to her door and rang. It took her so long to get to the door and open it that I’d almost decided she wasn’t home. But finally dragging feet came unsteadily through the front room, the door opened, and a strand of red hair and one bloodshot blue eye peered out at me. There were no glad cries this morning.

“Oh,” she said. “You.”

“Me. I dropped by to tell you I’m sorry about last night.”

“ You're sorry!”

“Samson pick you up?”

“That old man?”

“He’s not so old.”

“That's what you think.”

What I thought was that Samson, a happily married man who never looked at another woman unless she was about to be booked, must have had one hell of a time with this little tomato. But I said, “And I wanted to ask you to lay off Osborne. Every time you yak at him he yaks at me and I’ve got no time for yakking. I’ll get your pretties back.”

“Oh, foo,” she said, then told me without humor what I could do with her pretties. She wasn’t very gay this morning, either. I left.

After a shower and change to a gabardine suit, complete with gun and holster, I phoned Lois at her apartment. No answer. I went back into downtown L.A., into the back rooms again, the smelly bars, and the horse parlors. I hit hotels and rooming houses, and I spent six hours and four hundred dollars, and sometimes I was a little brutal, but I was in a hurry. I got what I was after. Like the dope from Slip Kelly, for one thing.

I found Slip shooting pool in a dump on the wrong side of Main Street. I took him back into the men’s room, shut the door and leaned against it.

“Slip, I guess you heard about Joe.”

“Joe Raspberry?”

“Come off it. You know what Joe.”

He licked his lips. “Yeah. It... was in the papers.”

“Sure. So now you tell me every goddamn thing you know about Cannon and Tinkle and Artie Payne.”

“Huh? I don’t know nothin’—”

I didn’t lay a hand on him, but I said, “Shut up, I know you do. You practically grew up with Tinkle and you did a bit at Quentin with Artie. Listen steady, Slip. Big Foster’s back in town. He knows I puked on him at the trial, but he doesn’t know who belched to me. He’d sure like to know.”

It didn’t take him long to figure that one out. He frowned and said, “You couldn’t do nothin’ like that.”

“I could, Slip. And I would. The squeeze is on. I’m in a spot, man. I’m a little mad about Joe, too. And nobody would ever know I finked on you except you and me. And Foster. And then just me and Foster.”

He told me what I wanted to know.

Dazzy Brown was a knocked-out, easy going colored boy who played trumpet so sweet it made Harry James sound like a man with a kazoo, and Dazzy inhaled marijuana smoke as if it were oxygen. He’d been in stir for stealing eight saxophones and a trombone, so he knew what stir was like, and I sidled up to him at a West-side bar, threw a friendly arm around his shoulders, planted my chops three inches from his and said softly, “Listen, Cat, I just learned you grow that gage in dower pots, so come along with me, boy, you’re going to the house of many slammers where they don’t play no blues,” and it was remarkable the way he cooperated.

Then there was Hooko Carter, the long-nosed grifter with a heroin habit, who had never given me the time of day before this, but who was going to give me all twenty-four hours very soon now. I got him out of bed in his rooming house, and he didn’t have anything to say either. At first. So I told him:

“Hooko, you’re my pal, I want you to know that. You’re also Artie Payne’s pal; and there’s a rumble you and Cannon used to be closer than Siamese twins. Something else I know: it costs you forty skins a day for reindeer dust, and you need that steady supply. You get it from Beetle, but you don’t know where he gets it. I do, but I don’t have enough on the guy to put him away — just enough so he wouldn’t like antagonizing me. He’d be glad to do me a favor. What’s it like when you can’t get your dynamite, pal?”