Richard Deming: Gallows in My Garden

No sooner had the will been read than Fausta closed the casino and converted El Patio into a restaurant-night club. It was a smart move, for not only was the legitimate business less precarious, but it made as much in the long run by charging outrageous prices, and Fausta was an extremely rich woman at twenty-seven.

I think I must like my women weak and helpless, for the change was more than I could take. More or less by mutual consent we stopped mentioning marriage, but though we rarely saw each other any more, we were still good friends, and I have never been able to generate for any other woman the same feeling I once had for Fausta.

After Grace Lawson departed, I took a cold shower, had lunch at the corner drugstore, then returned to my flat and phoned Fausta at El Patio.

“Manny!” her husky voice said. “Why do you never phone unless I send you a customer? You do not like Fausta’s kisses any more?”

“I love ’em like candy,” I said. “What’s the dope on this Lawson girl?”

“She is a nice girl and her boy Arnold is very nice, too. You take good care of her, you hear? And keep it strictly business. She is much too young for an old man like you.”

“Don’t you ever think of anything but the passes I make at other women?” I asked.

“Of course not,” Fausta said. “You stop making passes and I will stop thinking about it.”

“All right. What you know about the kid?”

“Only that she and her Arnold have dinner here now and then. Also someone is trying to kill her, but I do not know who.”

“You’re not much help,” I said, “but thanks for the business. See you later, Fausta.”

“Wait, Manny! When will you come to see me?”

“One of these nights.”

“You said that a month ago,” she complained. “You come tonight.”

“Sorry. Going to the Lawsons’ for the week-end.”

“Then you come Monday.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll give you a ring.”

By the time I finished packing my smallest grip, it was only two o’clock and I had nothing to do until Grace Lawson returned at six. For the next three hours I skimmed over my copy of Hamlet in preparation for my role as an English student, on the theory that most people remembered little aside from Hamlet of the classics they were exposed to in school. Then the doorbell rang.

My caller was a tall, heavy-boned man who looked like an English lord. He stood so straight he nearly leaned backward, and held his head back even farther, so that condescending eyes peered down his nose as though through invisible bifocals. He was dressed in white gabardine, white shoes, and a sailor straw hat, and hands thrust deeply into his coat pockets pulled the cloth tightly across an ominous bulge under his arm.

When he spoke, the English-lord effect was destroyed by a pure midwestern accent.

“You Manville Moon?” he asked.

I admitted I was and stepped aside to let him enter.

“You can call me Tom Jones because that’s not my name,” he said, and drew wide lips back in a humorless grin to expose horse-sized teeth.

Without offering his hand he placed his straw hat on the mantel and appropriated the most comfortable chair in the room.

I said, “Excuse me a minute,” went into the bedroom, removed the P-38 and shoulder holster I had packed in my grip, and arranged them where they would be more readily accessible.

When I rejoined the man who was not Tom Jones, he asked without preamble, “Could you use five thousand dollars, Moon?”

“Who couldn’t?” I said.

“Good. A plane leaves for Mexico City in an hour. You get a month’s vacation with all expenses paid, plus five thousand bucks. Better start packing.”

“What do I do to earn it?”

“Nothing.” He exposed his horsy teeth again. “It’s a new radio give-away program. Only instead of asking you questions, we just ask you not to ask us questions.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I couldn’t afford the income tax on five thousand dollars.”

“Did I say five?” he asked. “I meant ten.”

“You could mean a million and I wouldn’t bite.”

“Then let me put it another way,” he said agreeably. “You get ten thousand and a free vacation, or nothing and a free funeral. Catch on, Moon?”

“Sure. You’re new in town, aren’t you?”

He gave me his humorless grin. “About a week.”

“Then you don’t know about my double standard. You see, I divide everybody in the world into two classes — people and mugs. People include everyone who makes the legitimate economy of this country function the way it does — bankers, carpenters, scrubwomen; everyone who works for a living. Mugs are the parasites, the guys who prey on what I call ‘people.’ Some of them are undernourished pickpockets and some head vast illegal enterprises that bring in millions, but it makes no difference how important the mug is, or how much social position he has. A mug is a mug.”

My guest’s expression had changed from puzzlement to boredom, so I cut my sermon short. “People I let call me ‘Moon,’ or ‘Manny,’ or just ‘Hey, you,’ if they want. But mugs I like to call me ‘Mr. Moon.’ ” I added apologetically, “I always explain the first time, because otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.”

His bored expression disappeared to be replaced by a flared-nostril lord-of-the-manor expression. He surged to his feet, jerked his big, white-knuckled hands from his pockets and towered over my chair.

“Get on your feet, Moon,” he said curtly.

When I was twenty I decided to become heavyweight champion of the world. I only got as far as three professional bouts against tankers in the light-heavy class, all of which I won on knockouts, before the boxing commission barred me from the ring for reasons which make another story. And more mature consideration has decided me the barring did not prevent me from becoming champ, but only prevented me from becoming punchy. Nevertheless I was what the trade calls a “steady fighter,” and I still have most of my co-ordination.

I got on my feet and let him have a left hook he didn’t even see. He spun like a top and crouched over with his rear to me. Then I employed my aluminum foot to boot him head first into the sofa.

From the sofa he rolled to the floor, glared at me groggily, and shot one hand at his armpit. I let him look at the muzzle of my P-38.

My reaction to the hall door opening behind me was not as quick, however. Instead of turning, I merely glanced over my shoulder. A round-headed, bowlegged little man nearly as wide as he was high pushed the door closed behind him and leaned his back against it.

He, too, was dressed all in white, except for a contrasting black automatic gripped in one hairy hand.

“Take it easy, bub,” he said. “Set your heater down real gentle.”

Stooping, I laid my gun on the carpet at my feet. I straightened at the same time my first guest came erect. He took two steps toward me, wound up his right arm, and let a roundhouse sizzle at my head.

My knees bent, pulling my head down a foot, and the tall man’s fist whistled over my hair, the momentum carrying him clear around and causing him to stumble to one knee.

“Cut that!” the squat man said sharply. “Want all the neighbors in here?”

The English lord struggled to his feet again and glowered at me savagely. Then he regained his sense of proportion along with his horsy grin. Drawing a hammerless revolver from beneath his arm, he wagged it at me friendlily.

“Mr. Moon prefers the funeral to the vacation,” he told his partner. “We have to call him ‘mister,’ he says, because we aren’t his social equals.”

The squat man ran flat eyes over me as though choosing the best spot for a bullet. “In here, or do we take him for a ride?” he asked. “Guess we could muffle it in a towel or something, couldn’t we?”