Paul Cain - The Paul Cain Omnibus

“The whole take, from now on.”

“What for?”

“Showing three or four times a week... Restoring confidence.”

Kells was watching him steadily. “Whose confidence, in what?”

“Aw, nuts. Let’s stop this goddamned foolishness and do some business.” Rose sat down, found a paper of matches and lighted his limp cigarette. “You’re supposed to be a good friend of Rainey’s. Whether you are or not is none of my business. The point is that everyone thinks you are, and if you show on the boat once in a while, it will look like everything is under control, like Rainey and I have made a deal; see?”

Kells nodded. He said: “Why don’t you make a deal?”

“I’ve been trying to reach Rainey for a week.” Rose tugged at the lobe of his ear. “Hell! This coast is big enough for all of us; but he won’t see it. He’s sore. He thinks everybody’s trying to frame him.”

“Everybody probably is.” Kells put one hand on the table and leaned over to smile down at Rose. “Now I’ll tell you one, Jakie. You’d like to have me on the Joanna because I look like the highest-powered protection at this end of the country. You’d like to carry that eighteen-carat killer reputation of mine around with you, so you could wave it and scare all the bad little boys away.”

Rose said: “All right, all right.”

The phone on the table buzzed. Rose picked up the receiver, said “Yes” three times into the mouthpiece, then “All right, dear,” hung up.

Kells went on: “Listen, Jakie. I don’t want any part of it. I always got along pretty well by myself, and I’ll keep on getting along pretty well by myself. Anyway, I wouldn’t show in a deal with Doc Haardt if he was sleeping with the mayor. I hate his guts, and I’d pine away if I didn’t think he hated mine.”

Rose made a meaningless gesture.

Kells had straightened up. He was examining the nail of his left index finger. “I came out here five months ago with two grand and I’ve given it a pretty good ride. I’ve got a nice little joint at the Lancaster, with a built-in bar; and a pretty fair harem, and I’ve got several thousand friends in the bank. It’s a lot more fun guessing the name of a pony than guessing what the name of the next stranger I’m supposed to have shot will be. I’m having a lot of fun. I don’t want any part of anything. ”

Rose stood up. “Okay.”

Kells said: “So long, Jakie.” He turned and went through the door, out through the large room, through the cigar store to the street. He walked up to Seventh and got into a cab. When they passed the big clock on the Dyas corner it was twenty minutes past three.

The desk clerk gave Kells several letters, and a message: Mr. Dave Perry called at 2:35, and again at 3:25. Asked that you call him or come to his home as soon as possible. Important.

Kells went to his room and put in a call to Perry. He mixed a drink and read the letters while a telephone operator called him twice to say the line was busy. When she called again, he said: “Let it go,” went down and got into another cab. He told the driver: “Corner of Cherokee and Hollywood Boulevard.”

Perry lived in a kind of penthouse on top of the Richard Apartments. Kells climbed the narrow stair to the roof, knocked at the tin-sheathed fire door. He knocked again, then turned the knob, pushed the door open.

The room filled with a roar. Kells dropped on one knee, just inside, slammed the door shut. A strip of sunlight came in through two tall windows and yellowed the rug. Doc Haardt was lying on his back, half in, half out of the strip of sun. There was a round, bluish mark on one side of his throat, and as Kells watched it grew larger, red.

Ruth Perry sat on a low couch against one wall and looked at Haardt’s body.

A door slammed some place in back.

Kells got up, turned the key in the door through which he had entered. He crossed quickly, stood above the body.

Haardt had been a big, loose-jowled Dutchman, with a mouthful of gold. His dead face looked like he was about to say: “Well... I’ll tell you...” A small automatic lay on the floor near his feet.

Ruth Perry stood up and started to scream. Kells put one hand on the back of her neck, the other over her mouth. She took a step forward, put her arms around his body. She looked up at him, and he took his hand away from her mouth.

“Darling! I thought he was going to get you.” She was half crying. “He was here an hour. He made Dave call you...”

Kells patted her cheek. “Who, baby?”

“I don’t know.” She was coming around. She spoke rapidly. “A nance. A little guy with glasses.”

Kells inclined his head toward Haardt’s body. He said “What about Doc?”

“He came up about two-thirty... said he had to see you and didn’t want to go to the hotel. Dave called you and left word. Then about an hour ago that little son of a bitch walked in and told us all to sit down on the floor...”

Someone pounded heavily on the door.

Kells and Ruth Perry tiptoed across to a small, curtained archway that led to the dining room. Just inside the archway Dave Perry lay on his stomach.

Ruth Perry said: “The little guy slugged Dave when he made a pass for the phone, after he called you. He came to a while ago, and the little guy let him have it again. What a boy!”

Someone pounded on the door again and the sound of loud voices came through faintly.

Kells said: “I’m a cinch for this one if they find me here. That’s what the plant was for.” He nodded towards the door. “Can they get around to the kitchen?”

“Not unless they go down, and come up the fire escape. That’s the way our boyfriend went.”

“I’ll go the other way.” Kells went swiftly to Haardt’s body, knelt and picked up the automatic. “I’ll take this along to make your story good. Stick to it, except the calls to me, and the reason Doc was here.”

Ruth Perry nodded. Her eyes were bright with excitement.

Kells said: “I’ll see what I can get on the pansy, and try to talk a little sense to the telephone girl at the hotel, and the cab driver that hauled me here.”

The pounding on the door was almost continuous. Someone put a heavy shoulder to it, and the hinges creaked.

Kells started toward the bedroom, then turned and came back. Ruth Perry tilted her mouth up to him and he kissed her. “Don’t let this lug husband of yours talk,” he said, “and maybe you’d better go into a swoon to your alibi not answering the door. Let ’em bust it in.”

“My God, Gerry! I’m too excited to faint.”

“Papa knows best, baby.” He brought one arm up stiffly, swiftly from his side; the palm down, the fist loosely clinched. His knuckles smacked sharply against her chin. He caught her body in his arms, went into the living room and laid her gently on the floor. Then he took out his handkerchief, carefully wiped the little automatic, and put it on the floor midway between Haardt, Perry and Ruth Perry.

He went into the bedroom and into the adjoining bathroom. He raised the window and squeezed through to a narrow ledge. He was screened from the street by part of the building next door, and from the alley by a tree that spread over the backyard of the apartment house. A few feet along the ledge, he felt with his foot for a steel rung, found it, swung down to the next, across a short space to the sill of an open corridor window of the next door building.

He walked down the corridor, down several flights of stairs and out a rear door of the building. Down a kind of alley, he went through a wooden gate into a bungalow court and through to Whitley and walked north.

Cullen’s house was on the northeastern slope of Whitley Heights, a little way off Cahuenga. He answered the fourth ring, stood in the doorway blinking at Kells. “Well, stranger. Long time no see.”