Dan Marlowe: Shake a Crooked Town

“I wish I'd had a camera to get the expression on your tomato puss when you came up for air,” Johnny said. He rolled up on an elbow and looked at the chair. “Like the time they cornered us in the cave outside Florence. You were the same ripe shade of kelly green when you found twenty cases of dynamite and realized the assorted loose lead they'd wafted at us had chipped a few splinters off the boxes.”

Lieutenant Dameron grunted and took a long pull at his drink. “Reminds me, I had a card from Jimmy Rogers,” he said when he put down his glass. “Before he left on vacation he told me the only reason he was still around was that you'd stepped in and taken a slug intended for him.”

“Then he told you a damn lie. Jimmy doesn't need me to hold his end up an' you know it.” Johnny leveled a finger at the chair. “You know that this guy out here thought it was me, don't you, Joe?”

“Thought it was you?” Dameron's eyes narrowed. “Why do you say that?”

Johnny bounded from the bed and went to the armchair. He placed his sleeve alongside Dameron's. The material was different but the color was a match. “He thought it was me,” Johnny repeated. “That was my boy from up the street back to finish the job. He didn't see your face till your hat fell off. From the back we're a size except your most recent forty pounds is lard. I keep tellin' you but you don't listen: someone's afraid of what Thompson might have told me.”

“Can you identify him?”

“With no face? The rest of him fits.”

“I can't see it, Johnny. What'll you bet his prints make him an inside worker?”

“A hotel thief who jumps a man right out in the open? Why did he go for you, Joe?”

Dameron hesitated. “I tell you I don't believe it,” he said finally. “You're-”

“Joe.” The lieutenant fell silent at the stark monosyllable. Johnny stared down at him. “You don't believe it, or you won't believe it? I already told you I talked to Toby Lowell today. Did you? Did you get another call beside the one that sent you over here? Are you holdin' the lid on something?”

“You know me better than that. Where murder is concerned I keep the lid on for nobody.”

“Nobody?” Johnny asked him softly. “Nobody, Joe?”

The lieutenant surged to his feet impatiently. “Nobody. You're trying to make an Everest out of an anthill.” He put down his glass and started for the door. “There'll be an inquest on this, but it will only be a formality. You'll have to keep yourself available, though. I'll let you know when it comes up.” He walked rapidly from the room, closing the door.

Standing in the room's center Johnny pounded a knuckled fist into the opposite palm in disgust. So he had to keep himself available, did he? The hell he did. The next time someone made a move from the darkness, or the rear, Johnny Killain was not going to be a sitting duck.

He went to the closet and changed clothes hurriedly. He counted his money and shook his head disparagingly. If he just hadn't left that damn envelope lying out in the open he'd have been in good shape. He needed a fresh bankroll.

He put out the light and left the room.

Johnny went directly to the switchboard in the lobby. He looked at his watch as he approached it. Sally Fontaine's face lighted up when she saw him but Johnny hurried to get in the first word. “Do me something, ma. It's only an hour to daylight. Cut out of here an' shoot over to the apartment. An' listen. I've got a bag in the cloakroom. Tan, with no ticket on it. Take it with you. If anyone asks you when I leave here what this conversation was about steer him into left field. Anyone, y'hear? I'll see you at the apartment in thirty minutes.”

“But Johnny, I'll have to get someone to relieve-”

“Get Marty,” he cut her off. “He's finished his transcript by this time. An' hustle it up, ma. Tell 'em you got the gallopin' wobblies an' got to get home.” He walked away from her before she could protest again.

Out on the street he turned west as he had a few hours before. Quite a bit had taken place in those few hours. He walked lightly, out toward the curb. He watched the doorways. He watched his reflection in the windows across the street. No one stepped suddenly from a doorway. No one came up on him from behind. His eyes raked the street. Since the advent of Carl Thompson that afternoon someone was taking a sudden and unhealthy interest in Johnny Killain.

At Eighth Avenue he turned right and in the middle of the block saw the green-neoned outline of the crude boulder advertising Mickey Tallant's Rollin' Stone Tavern. The sky was streaked with gray and Johnny realized that the temperature had dropped considerably. New York in October wasn't going to stay warm. He wondered if he had a coat at Sally's apartment.

At the tavern, he pushed inside through a heavy plate-glass door and advanced on a red-faced Irishman behind the horseshoe bar. Mickey Tallant was a beefy man with short, thick arms and big-knuckled sledgehammers attached to the ends of them. He had no hair at all, a ravaged kewpie-doll face, and a cauliflower ear. A damp white towel encircled his ample girth. At sight of Johnny he reached behind him on the back bar for a bottle and then caught himself. “Even for you I'm not blowin' my ticket, man. Whyn't you get around before closin'? I'm just about to put up the shutters.” His voice was a surprising tenor.

“I don't want a drink, Mick. You got any money?” The Irishman lifted his apron to get at his hip pocket. “Money,” Johnny said with emphasis.

“Oh. Okay.” The tavern owner turned and started to waddle up the duckboards to a door at the end of the bar marked OFFICE.

“An' Mick, where can I get a coat?”

Mickey Tallant halted in his tracks. “For Christ's sake, did your room burn up? You got more clothes 'n the Salvation Army.”

“I don't want to go back to the room.” Although he'd seen no sign of a watcher, Johnny reflected.

The Irishman nodded wisely. “Money, an' a coat. You're runnin'. From the cops? You belted one, maybe?”

Johnny shook his head. “I got a look at a hole card in a fresh game, Mick.”

“No kiddin'?” The tavern owner looked eager. “I could stick my old lady behind the mahogany here an' go with you. Could be you'll need someone knows how to throw a punch, man.”

“Then I'd rather have your old lady.”

“Is that so?” Mickey Tallant began indignantly, and foundered on Johnny's grin. “What are you up to? Are you bein' followed?”

“If I am it's a good job. How about that coat?”

“You haven't got a prayer. Coat sizes to include a twenty an' a half inch neck an' a fifty inch chest don't grow on trees.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I've got a leather jacket out in back you could probably get into, though.”

Johnny looked at the beer barrel upper body of the man behind the bar. “Fetch it out with the geld, Mick.”

“Sure.” The Irishman was back in two minutes and handed Johnny an expensive-looking black leather jacket studded with silver trimmings.

Johnny looked at the gaudy ensemble. “You in your second childhood? Where's the motorcycle goes with this thing?”

“I just happen to like it,” Mickey Tallant said placidly. “Don't you let nothin' happen to it. I paid a hundred forty fish for that jacket.”

“Then you're out of your damn mind.” Johnny tried it on. It was a little short in the waist but the shoulders were all right. And it was fleece-lined and warm. He removed it and put his suit jacket back on. “Okay. You sold me. Where's the lettuce?”

“In the jacket. I stuck it in an envelope.”

“Today I'm allergic to envelopes all of a sudden.” Johnny removed the envelope from the jacket and the money from the envelope and spread a sheaf of bills on the bar. “What the hell?” he said as he saw tens, twenties, and hundreds. “How much is here?”