Paul Cain - The Paul Cain Omnibus

I got on the phone and got Frank Curley, first try, at the Hollywood Plaza and told him to forget about blue Buicks for a while and start keeping tabs on Axiotes. I don’t know exactly why I was so interested in him but his face kept playing pussy-in-the-corner in the back of my mind and I wanted to know more about him.

We went out to Number Two about four-thirty and I worked with the bookkeeper a couple hours. Then Harry and I had dinner at Musso-Franks and went to a picture show. We got home at eleven.

Gene Curley had left a twenty-four hour report on Mrs Bergliot at the desk. It didn’t amount to much. She hadn’t been out of the house Saturday night. Late Sunday afternoon a woman who looked like she might be her sister had picked her up in an old Chevrolet at the backdoor and they’d gone to a house on Larchmont a little ways off Melrose. There was a sign in front of the house: CORA HAVILAND: SPIRITUAL SCIENCE. They’d been there about an hour and then the woman had dropped Bergliot back at the Kiernan house. That was all.

Harry and I played a couple games of cooncan and went to bed. Monday was just

Monday except for one development that I could’ve got along just as well without. Amante called up around noon and after a lot of ap-cray about the weather and “How’s everything” and all that, he said he thought I might like to know that Myra Reid was the sole beneficiary in Raymond’s will and it amounted to about a hundred and seventy-five grand. They’d found the will and a lot of bonds and stuff in a safety deposit box he had under an assumed name.

I told Amante I was glad to hear it and thanked him and asked if Myra was still incommunicado . He said she wasn’t and he expected she’d be very happy to see me. Then he chuckled — one of the dirtiest chuckles I’ve ever heard — and hung up.

I barged downtown and up to the can to see Myra. She said she didn’t know anything about the will and, so help me God, I still believed her. Her lawyer was there — a funny little guy with a snub nose and a fringe of red hair who looked capable. I tried to cheer Myra up, which was no cinch because I didn’t know what to say. The best I could do was say I was working on it and it was pretty much in the dark but I expected something to break any minute.

There was nothing important from the Curleys on Bergliot or Axiotes when I got home. Bergliot had been to the Place on Larchmont again but that was all.

Tuesday started to be just Tuesday but it ended like the Fourth of July and Christmas, mixed.

The funeral was at one o’clock at an undertaker’s on Sunset Boulevard. There was a pretty big crowd. Barbara looked awful. I think she’d hoisted a few tall ones to get her through the afternoon — she’d always been a good two-fisted drinker — and that helped a little but she still looked like she’d been pulled through a wringer.

She wasn’t so heavy on me as I’d expected; she nodded and almost smiled. I stood pretty close to her during the services, and afterwards we talked a little in a strained self-conscious way. She said she and Maude were sailing for Honolulu Wednesday afternoon and I told her I thought it was a swell idea to get away from it all for a while. I started to tell her I hadn’t heard from Gottler yet but decided to let it lie.

On the way out of the chapel I ran into Delavan, the FBI man Amante had introduced me to. He was wearing glasses and I couldn’t place him for a minute but he grinned and stuck out his hand and piped “H’ are ya” and I said “Fancy meeting you here” or something original like that.

He looked vague and said he was just looking around and then he asked if he could buy me a drink. I called Harry and the three of us went over to the Derby.

I stalled for a while waiting for Delavan to open up but he didn’t and I finally asked: “Well — what’s it all about? You didn’t come to the funeral just to smell the flowers.”

He smiled, gargled a little of his highball and opened up: “Would it surprise you to know that I think Amante is wrong?”

I shook my head. “No. Anybody with anything above the ears ought to know he’s wrong.” But it sounded good to hear somebody say it.

He took off his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief. “Has anyone made any more passes at you since Saturday?”

“No.”

“Funny,” he said, “that they made that one attempt and then let you alone.”

I agreed that it was funny. We didn’t say any more for a little while and then Delavan leaned back and looked up at the ceiling and spoke as if he was talking to himself: “Has it occurred to you that since Repeal, gambling has become a major industry?”

I nodded. “Sure. That’s one of the reasons I’m in it.”

“A lot of men,” he went on, “were left holding the bag — men with organizations, money, power, that they didn’t have any use for any more. Some of them called it a day and took up golf or bought a string of yachts, but some of them didn’t want to call it a day. The Government had taken the big profits out of alcohol so they had to find something else with big profits...”

He put his glasses back on and sucked up some more of his drink. “The yearly turnover on slot machines alone is estimated at fifty or sixty million dollars; lotteries yield another seventy. In the last year horse racing has been legalized in eleven states and the rake-off promises to amount to all the rest put together in a year or so.”

I called the waiter and ordered another round. My ears were cocked for the point Delavan was driving at and I felt it coming.

He leaned forward and squinted through his glasses, went on: “Suppose that a big undercover organization — maybe the biggest ever — was in process of formation and that it was determined to get a stranglehold on all important gambling in every community in the country. It’d buy up the little fellows, or scare them out; it’d buy the in-betweens, or if the in-betweens were too big to buy it’d dispose of them in whatever way seemed best...”

Harry asked: “What about the biggies — men like Grant in Chicago, or McElroy?”

“Grant left for England a week ago, under pressure I think.” Delavan smiled slightly. “I don’t know about McElroy.”

He waited a minute for it to sink in and then he said slowly: “Eight top bookmakers with big six-figure plays have sold out or turned up missing in the last month. I happen to know that three of them have been murdered — two in New Orleans and one in Detroit. That’s the reason I flew down here from Frisco when I heard about Kiernan.”

I finished my first highball and got a good start on the second; I was getting into the spirit of the thing and felt like I had five or six new leases on life.

Harry barked: “Does Amante know about this?”

Delavan bobbed his head up and down. “Uh-huh. But he thinks it’s a lot of baloney.”

The three of us sat grinning at each other for a minute like three kids planning to tip over Farmer Brown’s privy on Halloween.

Then Delavan looked at his watch and said he had to get back to his hotel and we paid the check and left. Outside, while we were waiting for the boys to bring our cars from the parking station, I cracked casually:

“Ever hear of a fella named Axiotes?”

Delavan nodded and his pan was just as dead as a buckwheat cake.

I said: “Oh yeah — one other thing: Mrs Bergliot, who identified Myra Reid’s voice, is a Spiritual Scientist — hangs out at Cora Haviland’s on Larchmont.”

Delavan got into his car, chirped: “Thanks. I’ll give you a ring later on tonight or in the morning.”

We drove over to Number One and I played Hearts with Connie Hurlburt and a couple boys from San Diego for a while but my skull wasn’t in it. Delavan had me all hopped up on the new slant and I wanted action, but he hadn’t suggested anything and he certainly acted like he knew what he was doing.