Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

‘Hell, that’s the gambling boat. The Cruise to Nowhere, they call the act, because it don’t go no place. Yes, sir, that’s the good ship Montecito. How about a nice warm doggie?’

I put a quarter on his counter. ‘Have one yourself,’ I said softly.

I had no gun. I went on back to the hotel to get my spare.

The dying Diana Saint had said ‘Monty’.

Perhaps she just hadn’t lived long enough to say ‘Montecito’.

I was tailed from the hotel, but not very far. Of course the clean little city didn’t have enough crime for the dicks to be very good shadows...

It was a long ride for forty cents. The water taxi, an old speedboat without trimmings, slid through the anchored yachts and rounded the breakwater. The swell hit us. All the company I had besides the tough-looking citizen at the wheel was two spooning couples who began to peck at each other’s faces as soon as the darkness folded down.

The portholes of the Montecito got large and the taxi swept out in a wide turn, tipped to an angle of forty-five degrees, and careened neatly to the side of a brightly-lit stage.

A sloe-eyed boy in a tight blue mess jacket and a gangster mouth handed the girls out, swept their escorts with a keen glance, sent them on up. The look he gave me told me something about him. The way he bumped into my gun holster told me more.

‘Nix,’ he said softly. ‘Nix.’

He jerked his chin at the taxi man. The taxi man dropped a short noose over a bitt, turned his wheel a little and climbed on the stage. He got behind me.

‘Nix,’ the one in the mess jacket purred. ‘No gats on this boat, mister. Sorry.’

‘Part of my clothes,’ I told him. ‘I’m a private dick. I’ll check it.’

The taxi man hooked a wrist through my right arm. I shrugged.

‘Back in the boat,’ the taxi man growled behind me. ‘I owe you forty cents, mister. Come on.’

I got back into the boat.

Mess jacket’s sleek, silent smile was the last thing I saw as the taxi cast off and hit the swell on the way back. I hated to leave that smile.

The way back seemed longer. I didn’t speak to the taxi man and he didn’t speak to me. As I got out on to the float at the pier he sneered at my back, ‘Some other night when we ain’t so busy, shamus.’

Half a dozen customers waiting to go out stared at me. I went past them, past the door of the waiting-room on the float, towards the steps at the landward end.

A big red-headed roughneck in dirty sneakers and tarry pants and a tom blue jersey straightened from the railing and bumped into me casually. I stopped, got set. He said softly, ‘’Smatter, dick? No soap on the hell ship?’

‘Do I have to tell you?’

‘I’m a guy that can listen.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Just call me Red.’

‘Out of the way, Red. I’m busy.’

He smiled sadly, touched my left side. ‘The gat’s kind of bulgy under the light suit,’ he said. ‘Want to get on board? It can be done, if you got a reason.’

‘How much is the reason?’ I asked him.

‘Fifty bucks. Ten more if you bleed in my boat.’

I started away. ‘Twenty-five,’ he said quickly. ‘Maybe you come back with friends, huh?’

I went four steps away from him before I half turned, said, ‘Sold,’ and went on.

At the foot of the bright amusement pier there was a flaring Tango Parlour, jammed full even at that still early hour. I went into it, leaned against a wall.

A large blueness took form beside me and I smelled tar. A soft, deep, sad voice said, ‘Need help out there?’

‘I’m looking for a girl, but I’ll look alone. What’s your racket?’ I didn’t look at him.

‘A dollar here, a dollar there. I like to eat. I was on the cops but they bounced me.’

I liked his telling me that. ‘You must have been levelling,’ I said, and watched the house player slip his card across with his thumb over the wrong number, watched the counter man get his own thumb in the same spot and hold the card up.

I could feel Red’s grin. ‘I see you been around our little city.’

I got my wallet out and slipped a twenty and a five from it, passed them over in a wad. They went into a tarry pocket.

Red said, ‘Thanks,’ softly and walked away. I gave him a small start and went after him. He was easy to follow by his size, even in a crowd.

We went past the yacht harbour and the second amusement pier and beyond that the lights got fewer and the crowd thinned to nothing. A short black pier stuck out into the water with boats moored all along it.

He stopped almost at the end of it, at the head of a wooden ladder.

‘I’ll bring her down to here,’ he said.

‘Listen,’ I said urgently. ‘I have to phone a man. I forgot.’

‘Can do. Come on.’

He led the way farther along the pier, knelt, rattled keys on a chain, and opened a padlock. He lifted a small trap and took a phone out, listened to it.

‘Still working,’ he said with a grin in his voice. ‘Must belong to some crooks. Don’t forget to snap the lock back on.’

He slipped away silently into the darkness. I listened to water slapping the piles of the pier, the occasional whir of a seagull in the gloom. Then far off a motor roared and kept on roaring.

I dialled a number, asked for Chief Fulwider. He had gone home. I dialled another number, got a woman, asked her for the Chief, said I was headquarters.

I waited again. Then I heard the fat Chief’s voice. It sounded full of baked potato.

‘Yeah? Can’t a guy even eat? Who is it?’

‘Me, Chief. Saint is on the Montecito. Too bad that’s over your line.’

He began to yell like a wild man. I hung up in his face, put the phone back in its zinc-lined cubbyhole and snapped the padlock. I went down the ladder to Red.

There were no floodlights on the seaward side of the ship.

Red cut his motor to half of nothing and curved in under the overhang of the stem, sidled up to the greasy plates as coyly as a clubman in a hotel lobby.

Double iron doors loomed high over us, forward a little from the slimy links of a chain cable. The speedboat scuffed the Montecito’s ancient plates and the sea-water slapped loosely at the bottom of the speedboat under our feet. The shadow of the big ex-cop rose over me. A coiled rope flicked against the dark, caught on something, and fell back into the boat. Red pulled it tight, made a turn around something on the engine cowling.

I took the wheel and held the nose of the speedboat against the slippery hull, and Red reached for an iron ladder flat to the side of the ship, hauled himself up into the darkness.

After a while something creaked up above and feeble yellow light trickled out into the foggy air. The outline of a heavy door showed, and Red’s crouched head against the light.

I went up the ladder after him. It was hard work. It landed me panting in a sour, littered hold full of cases and barrels. Rats skittered out of sight in the dark corners. The big man put his lips to my ear: ‘From here we got an easy way to the boiler-room catwalk. From the boiler-room I’ll show you a ventilator with no grating in it. Goes to the boat deck. Then it’s all yours. Will you come back fast?’

‘I ought to make a good splash from the boat deck.’ I fished more bills out of my wallet, pushed them at him. ‘Here.’

He shook his red head.

‘Uh-huh. That’s for the trip back.’

‘I’m buying it now,’ I said. ‘Even if I don’t use it. Take the dough before I bust out crying.’

‘Well... thanks, pal. You’re a right guy.’

We went among the cases and barrels. The yellow light came from a passage beyond, and we went along the passage to a narrow iron door. That led to the catwalk. We sneaked along it, down an oily steel ladder, heard the slow hiss of oil-burners and went among mountains of iron towards the sound.