Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

‘Not bad,’ I told him. ‘As I remember the woman phoned for some law herself. But I could be mistaken. The rest of it ties in with me being sapped on the floor and not knowing anything about it.’

Galbraith gave me a nasty look. The Chief looked at his thumb.

‘When I came to,’ I said, ‘I was in a private dope cure. Run by a man named Sundstrand. I was shot so full of dope myself I could have been Rockefeller’s pet dime trying to spin myself.’

‘That Sundstrand,’ Galbraith said heavily. ‘That guy’s been a flea in our pants for a long time. Should we go out and push him in the face, Chief?’

The Chief looked at the whisky bottle. He said carefully, ‘There’s a grand each on this Saint and his sister. If we gather them in, how do we cut it?’

‘You cut me out,’ I said. ‘I’m on a straight salary and expenses.’

Galbraith grinned. He teetered on his heels, grinning with thick amiability.

‘Okydoke. We picked up your car. We’ll use that to go in — just you and me.’

‘Maybe you ought to have more help, Gal,’ the Chief said doubtfully.

‘Uh-uh. Just me and him’s plenty. He’s a tough baby, or he wouldn’t be walkin’ around.’

‘Well, all right,’ the Chief said brightly. ‘And we’ll just have a little drink on it.’

But he was still rattled. He forgot the cardamom seeds.

It was a cheerful spot by daylight. Tea-rose begonias made a solid mass under the front windows and pansies were a round carpet about the base of an acacia. A scarlet climbing rose covered a trellis to one side of the house, and a bronze-green humming-bird was prodding delicately in a mass of sweet peas that grew up the garage wall.

It looked like the home of a well-fixed elderly couple who had come to the ocean to get as much sun as possible in their old age.

Galbraith spat on my running-board and shook his pipe out and tickled the gate open, stamped up the path and flattened his thumb against a neat copper bell.

We waited. A grille opened in the door and a long sallow face looked out at us under a starched nurse’s cap.

‘Open up. It’s the law,’ the big cop growled.

A chain rattled and a bolt slid back. The door opened. The nurse was a six-footer with long arms and big hands, an ideal torturer’s assistant. Something happened to her face and I saw she was smiling.

‘Why, it’s Mister Galbraith,’ she chirped, in a voice that was high-pitched and throaty at the same time. ‘Did you want to see Doctor?’

‘Yeah, and sudden,’ Galbraith growled, pushing past her.

The door of the office was shut. Galbraith kicked it open, with me at his heels and the big nurse chirping at mine.

Doctor Sundstrand, the total abstainer, was having a morning bracer out of a fresh whisky bottle. His bony mask of a face seemed to have a lot of lines in it that hadn’t been there the night before.

He took his hand off the bottle hurriedly and gave us his frozen fish smile. He said fussily, ‘What’s this? What’s this? I thought I gave orders—’

‘Aw, pull your belly in,’ Galbraith said, and yanked a chair near the desk. ‘Dangle, sister.’

The nurse chirped something more and went back through the door. The door was shut. Doctor Sundstrand worked his eyes up and down my face and looked unhappy.

Galbraith put both his elbows on the desk and took hold of his bulging jowls with his fists. He stared fixedly, venomously, at the squirming doctor. After what seemed a very long time he said, almost softly, ‘Where’s Farmer Saint?’

The doctor’s eyes popped wide. His greenish eyes began to look bilious.

‘Don’t stall!’ Galbraith roared. ‘We know all about your private hospital racket, the crook hideout you’re runnin’, the dope and women on the side. You made one slip too many when you hung a snatch on this shamus from the big town. Come on, where is Saint? And where’s that girl?’

I remembered, quite casually, that I had not said anything about Isobel Snare in front of Galbraith — if that was the girl he meant.

Doctor Sundstrand’s hand flopped about on his desk. Sheer astonishment seemed to be adding a final touch of paralysis to his uneasiness.

‘Where are they?’ Galbraith yelled again.

The door opened and the big nurse fussed in again. ‘Now, Mister Galbraith, the patients. Please remember the patients, Mister Galbraith.’

‘Go climb up your thumb,’ Galbraith told her, over his shoulder.

She hovered by the door. Sundstrand found his voice at last. It was a mere wisp of a voice. It said wearily, ‘As if you didn’t know.’

Then his darting hand swept into his smock, and out again, with a gun glistening in it. Galbraith threw himself sideways, clean out of the chair. The doctor shot at him twice, missed twice. My hand touched a gun, but didn’t draw it. Galbraith laughed on the floor and his big right hand snatched at his armpit, came up with a Luger. It looked like my Luger. It went off, just once.

Nothing changed in the doctor’s long face. I didn’t see where the bullet hit him. His head came down and hit the desk and his gun made a thud on the floor. He lay with his face on the desk, motionless.

Galbraith pointed his gun at me, and got up off the floor. I looked at the gun again. I was sure it was my gun.

‘That’s a swell way to get information,’ I said aimlessly. ‘I suppose this whole scene was framed just to put the chill on Doc.’

‘He shot first, didn’t he?’

‘Yeah,’ I said thinly. ‘He shot first.’

The nurse was sidling along the wall towards me. No sound had come from her since Sundstrand pulled his act. She was almost at my side. Suddenly, much too late, I saw the flash of knuckles on her good right hand, and hair on the back of the hand.

I dodged, but not enough. A crunching blow seemed to split my head wide open. I brought up against the wall, my knees full of water. Galbraith leered at me.

‘Not so very smart,’ I said. ‘You’re still holding my Luger. That sort of spoils the plant, doesn’t it?’

‘I see you get the idea, shamus.’

The chirpy-voiced nurse said, in a blank pause, ‘Jeeze, the guy’s got a jaw like an elephant’s foot. Damn’ if I didn’t split a knuck on him. Should I try one more swing?’

‘What for? He didn’t go for his gat, and he’s too tough for you, baby. Lead is his meat.’

I said, ‘You ought to shave baby twice a day on this job.’

The nurse grinned, pushed the starched cap and the stringy blonde wig askew on a bullet head. She — or more properly he — reached a gun from under the nurse’s white uniform.

Galbraith said, ‘It was self-defence, see? You tangled with the doctor, but he shot first. Be nice and me and Dune will try to remember it that way.’

I rubbed my jaw with my left hand. ‘Listen, Sarge. I can take a joke as well as the next fellow. You sapped me in that house on Carolina Street and didn’t tell about it. Neither did I. I figured you had reasons and you’d let me in on them at the right time. Maybe I can guess what the reasons are. I think you know where Saint is, or can find out. Saint knows where the Snare girl is because he had her dog. Let’s put a little more into this deal, something for both of us.’

‘We’ve got ours, sap. I promised the doctor I’d bring you back and let him play with you. I put Dune in here in the nurse’s rig to handle you for him. But he was the one we really wanted to handle.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘What do I get out of it?’

‘Maybe a little more living.’

I said, ‘Yeah. Don’t think I’m kidding you — but look at that little window in the wall behind you.’

Galbraith didn’t move, didn’t take his eyes off me. A thick sneer curved his lips.