Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

Around a corner we looked at a short, dirty Italian in a purple silk shirt who sat in a wired-together office chair, under a naked bulb, and read the paper with the aid of steel-rimmed spectacles and a black forefinger.

Red said gently, ‘Hi, Shorty. How’s all the little bambinos?’

The Italian opened his mouth and Red hit him. We put him down on the floor and tore his purple shirt into shreds for ties and a gag.

‘You ain’t supposed to hit a guy with glasses on,’ Red said. ‘But the idea is you make a hell of a racket goin’ up a ventilator — to a guy down here. Upstairs they won’t hear nothing.’

I said that was the way I would like it, and we left the Italian bound up on the floor and found the ventilator that had no grating in it. I shook hands with Red, said I hoped to see him again, and started up the ladder inside the ventilator.

It was cold and black and the foggy air rushed down it and the way up seemed a long way. After three minutes that felt like an hour I reached the top and poked my head out cautiously.

I listened, but didn’t hear any police-boat sirens. I got out of the ventilator, lowered myself to the deck.

Whispering came from a necking couple huddled under a boat. They didn’t pay any attention to me. I went along the deck past the closed doors of three or four cabins. There was a little light behind the shutters of two of them. I listened, didn’t hear anything but the merry-making of the customers down below on the main deck.

I dropped into a dark shadow, took a lungful of air and let it out in a howl — the snarling howl of a grey timber wolf, lonely and hungry and far from home, and mean enough for seven kinds of trouble.

The deep-toned woof-woofing of a police dog answered me.

I straightened and unshipped my gun and ran towards the barking. The noise came from a cabin on the other side of the deck.

I put an ear to the door, listened to a man’s voice soothing the dog. The dog stopped barking and growled once or twice, then was silent. A key turned in the door I was touching.

I dropped away from it, down on one knee. The door opened a foot and a sleek head came forward past its edge. Light from a hooded deck lamp made a shine on the black hair.

I stood up and slammed the head with my gun barrel. The man fell softly out of the doorway into my arms. I dragged him back into the cabin, pushed him down on a made-up berth.

I shut the door again, locked it. A small, wide-eyed girl crouched on the other berth.

I said, ‘Hullo, Miss Snare. I’ve had a lot of trouble finding you. Want to go home?’

Farmer Saint rolled over and sat up, holding his head. Then he was very still, staring at me with his sharp black eyes. His mouth had a strained smile, almost good-humoured.

I ranged the cabin with a glance, didn’t see where the dog was, but saw an inner door behind which he could be. I looked at the girl again.

She was not much to look at, like most of the people that make most of the trouble. She was crouched on the berth with her knees drawn up and hair falling over one eye. She wore a knitted dress and golf socks and sports shoes with wide tongues that fell down over the instep. Her knees were bare and bony under the hem of the dress. She looked like a schoolgirl.

I went over Saint for a gun, didn’t find one. He grinned at me.

The girl lifted her hand and threw her hair back. She looked at me as if I was a couple of blocks away. Then her breath caught and she began to cry.

‘We’re married,’ Saint said softly. ‘She thinks you’re set to blow holes in me. That was a smart trick with the wolf howl.’

I didn’t say anything. I listened. No noises outside.

‘How’d you know where to come?’ Saint asked.

‘Diana told me — before she died,’ I said brutally.

His eyes looked hurt.

‘I don’t believe it, shamus.’

‘You ran out and left her in the ditch. What would you expect?’

‘I figured the cops wouldn’t bump a woman and I could make some kind of a deal on the outside. Who got her?’

‘One of Fulwider’s cops. You got him.’

His head jerked back and a wild look came over his face, then went away. He smiled sideways at the weeping girl.

‘Hullo, sugar. I’ll get you clear.’ He looked back at me. ‘Suppose I come in without a scrap. Is there a way for her to get loose?’

‘You got her into it,’ I said. ‘You can’t get her out. That’s part of the pay-off.’

He nodded slowly, looked down at the floor between his feet. The girl stopped crying long enough to mop at her cheeks, then started in again.

‘Fulwider know I’m here?’ Saint asked me slowly.

‘Yeah.’

He shrugged. ‘That’s OK from your end. Sure. Only I’ll never get to talk, if Fulwider pinches me. If I could get to talk to a DA I could maybe convince him she’s not hep to my stuff.’

‘You could have thought of that, too,’ I said heavily. ‘You didn’t have to go back to Sundstrand’s and cut loose with your stutter-gun.’ He threw his head back and laughed. ‘No? Suppose you paid a guy ten grand for protection and he crossed you up by grabbing your wife and sticking her in a crooked dope hospital and telling you to run along far away and be good, or the tide would wash her up on the beach? What would you do — smile, or trot over with some heavy iron to talk to the guy?’

‘She wasn’t there then,’ I said. ‘You were just kill-screwy. And if you hadn’t hung on to that dog until he killed a man, the protection wouldn’t have been scared into selling you out.’

‘I like dogs,’ Saint said quietly. ‘I’m a nice guy when I’m not workin’, but I can get shoved around just so much.’

I listened. Still no noises on deck outside.

‘Listen,’ I said quickly. ‘If you want to play ball with me, I’ve got a boat at the back door and I’ll try to get the girl home before they want her. What happens to you is past me.’

The girl said suddenly, in a shrill, little-girl voice, ‘I don’t want to go home! I won’t go home!’

‘A year from now you’ll thank me,’ I snapped at her.

‘He’s right, sugar,’ Saint said. ‘Better beat it with him.’

‘I won’t,’ the girl shrilled angrily. ‘I just won’t. That’s all.’

Out of the silence on the deck something hard slammed the outside of the door. A grim voice shouted, ‘Open up! It’s the law!’

I backed swiftly to the door, keeping my eyes on Saint. I spoke back over my shoulder.

‘Fulwider there?’

‘Yeah,’ the Chief’s fat voice growled.

‘Listen, Chief. Saint’s in here and he’s ready to surrender. There’s a girl here with him, the one I told you about. So come in easy, will you?’

‘Right,’ the Chief said. ‘Open the door.’

I twisted the key, jumped across the cabin and put my back against the inner partition, beside the door behind which the dog was moving around now, growling a little.

The outer door whipped open. Two men I hadn’t seen before charged in with drawn guns. The fat Chief was behind them. Briefly, before he shut the door, I caught a glimpse of ship’s uniforms.

The two dicks jumped on Saint, slammed him around, put cuffs on him. Then they stepped back beside the Chief. Saint grinned at them, with blood trickling down his lower lip.

Fulwider looked at me reprovingly and moved a cigar around in his mouth. Nobody seemed to take any interest in the girl.

One of the dicks said roughly, ‘Put the heater away, shamus.’

‘Try and make me,’ I told him.

He started forward, but the Chief waved him back. The other dick watched Saint, looked at nothing else.

‘How’d you find him then?’ Fulwider wanted to know.

‘Not by taking his money to hide him out,’ I said.