Red Harvest (14 page)

I backed into an alley entrance and slid my gun loose. The
car came abreast. An arc-light brightened two faces in the front of the car. The driver’s meant nothing to me. The upper part of the other’s was hidden by a pulled-down hat. The lower part was Whisper’s.

Across the street was the entrance to another block of my alley, lighted at the far end. Between the light and me, somebody moved just as Whisper’s car roared past. The somebody had dodged from behind one shadow that might have been an ash-can to another.

What made me forget Whisper was that the somebody’s legs had a bowed look.

A load of coppers buzzed past, throwing lead at the first car.

I skipped across the street, into the section of alley that held a man who might have bowed legs.

If he was my man, it was a fair bet he wasn’t armed. I played it that way, moving straight up the slimy middle of the alley, looking into shadows with eyes, ears and nose.

Three-quarters of a block of this, and a shadow broke away from another shadow—a man going pell-mell away from me.

“Stop!” I bawled, pounding my feet after him. “Stop, or I’ll plug you, MacSwain.”

He ran half a dozen strides farther and stopped, turning.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, as if it made any difference who took him back to the hoosegow.

“Yeah,” I confessed. “What are all you people doing wandering around loose?”

“I don’t know nothing about it. Somebody dynamited the floor out of the can. I dropped through the hole with the rest of them. There was some mugs standing off the bulls. I made the back-trotters with one bunch. Then we split, and I was figuring on cutting over and making the hills. I didn’t have nothing to do with it. I just went along when she blew open.”

“Whisper was pinched this evening,” I told him.

“Hell! Then that’s it. Noonan had ought to know he’d never keep that guy screwed up—not in this burg.”

We were standing still in the alley where MacSwain had stopped running.

“You know what he was pinched for?” I asked.

“Uh-huh, for killing Tim.”

“You know who killed Tim?”

“Huh? Sure, he did.”

“You did.”

“Huh? What’s the matter? You simple?”

“There’s a gun in my left hand,” I warned him.

“But look here—didn’t he tell the broad that Whisper done it? What’s the matter with you?”

“He didn’t say
Whisper.
I’ve heard women call Thaler
Max,
but I’ve never heard a man here call him anything but
Whisper.
Tim didn’t say
Max.
He said
MacS
—the first part of
MacSwain
—and died before he could finish it. Don’t forget about the gun.”

“What would I have killed him for? He was after Whisper’s—”

“I haven’t got around to that yet,” I admitted, “but let’s see: You and your wife had busted up. Tim was a ladies’ man, wasn’t he? Maybe there’s something there. I’ll have to look it up. What started me thinking about you was that you never tried to get any more money out of the girl.”

“Cut it out,” he begged. “You know there ain’t any sense to it. What would I have hung around afterwards for? I’d have been out getting an alibi, like Whisper.”

“Why? You were a dick then. Close by was the spot for you—to see that everything went right—handle it yourself.”

“You know damned well it don’t hang together, don’t make sense. Cut it out, for God’s sake.”

“I don’t mind how goofy it is,” I said. “It’s something to put to Noonan when we get back. He’s likely all broken up over Whisper’s crush-out. This will take his mind off it.”

MacSwain got down on his knees in the muddy alley and cried:

“Oh, Christ, no! He’d croak me with his hands.”

“Get up and stop yelling,” I growled. “Now will you give it to me straight?”

He whined: “He’d croak me with his hands.”

“Suit yourself. If you won’t talk, I will, to Noonan. If you’ll come through to me, I’ll do what I can for you.”

“What can you do?” he asked hopelessly, and started sniveling again. “How do I know you’ll try to do anything?”

I risked a little truth on him:

“You said you had a hunch what I’m up to here in Poisonville. Then you ought to know that it’s my play to keep Noonan and Whisper split. Letting Noonan think Whisper killed Tim will keep them split. But if you don’t want to play with me, come on, we’ll play with Noonan.”

“You mean you won’t tell him?” he asked eagerly. “You promise?”

“I promise you nothing,” I said. “Why should I? I’ve got you with your pants down. Talk to me or Noonan. And make up your mind quick. I’m not going to stand here all night.”

He made up his mind to talk to me.

“I don’t know how much you know, but it was like you said, my wife fell for Tim. That’s what put me on the tramp. You can ask anybody if I wasn’t a good guy before that. I was this way: what she wanted I wanted her to have. Mostly what she wanted was tough on me. But I couldn’t be any other way. We’d have been a damned sight better off if I could. So I let her move out and put in divorce papers, so she could marry him, thinking he meant to.

“Pretty soon I begin to hear he’s chasing this Myrtle Jennison. I couldn’t go that. I’d given him his chance with Helen, fair and square. Now he was giving her the air for this Myrtle. I wasn’t going to stand for that. Helen wasn’t no hanky-panky. It was accidental, though, running into him at the Lake that night. When I saw him go down to them summer houses I went after him. That looked like a good quiet place to have it out.

“I guess we’d both had a little something to drink. Anyway,
we had it hot and heavy. When it got too hot for him, he pulled the gun. He was yellow. I grabbed it, and in the tussle it went off. I swear to God I didn’t shoot him except like that. It went off while the both of us had our hands on it. I beat it back in some bushes. But when I got in the bushes I could hear him moaning and talking. There was people coming—a girl running down from the hotel, that Myrtle Jennison.

“I wanted to go back and hear what Tim was saying, so I’d know where I stood, but I was leary of being the first one there. So I had to wait till the girl got to him, listening all the time to his squawking, but too far away to make it out. When she got to him, I ran over and got there just as he died trying to say my name.

“I didn’t think about that being Whisper’s name till she propositioned me with the suicide letter, the two hundred, and the rock. I’d just been stalling around, pretending to get the job lined up—being on the force then—and trying to find out where I stood. Then she makes the play and I know I’m sitting pretty. And that’s the way it went till you started digging it up again.”

He slopped his feet up and down in the mud and added:

“Next week my wife got killed—an accident. Uh-huh, an accident. She drove the Ford square in front of No. 6 where it comes down the long grade from Tanner and stopped it there.”

“Is Mock Lake in this county?” I asked.

“No, Boulder County.”

“That’s out of Noonan’s territory. Suppose I take you over there and hand you to the sheriff?”

“No. He’s Senator Keefer’s son-in-law—Tom Cook. I might as well be here. Noonan could get to me through Keefer.”

“If it happened the way you say, you’ve got at least an even chance of beating the rap in court.”

“They won’t give me a chance. I’d have stood it if there’d been a chance in the world of getting an even break—but not with them.”

“We’re going back to the Hall,” I said. “Keep your mouth shut.”

Noonan was waddling up and down the floor, cursing the half a dozen bulls who stood around wishing they were somewhere else.

“Here’s something I found roaming around,” I said, pushing MacSwain forward.

Noonan knocked the ex-detective down, kicked him, and told one of the coppers to take him away.

Somebody called Noonan on the phone. I slipped out without saying, “Good-night,” and walked back to the hotel.

Off to the north some guns popped.

A group of three men passed me, shifty-eyed, walking pigeon-toed.

A little farther along, another man moved all the way over to the curb to give me plenty of room to pass. I didn’t know him and didn’t suppose he knew me.

A lone shot sounded not far away.

As I reached the hotel, a battered black touring car went down the street, hitting fifty at least, crammed to the curtains with men.

I grinned after it. Poinsonville was beginning to boil out under the lid, and I felt so much like a native that even the memory of my very un-nice part in the boiling didn’t keep me from getting twelve solid end-to-end hours of sleep.

Mickey Linehan used the telephone to wake me a little after noon.

“We’re here,” he told me. “Where’s the reception committee?”

“Probably stopped to get a rope. Check your bags and come up to the hotel. Room 537. Don’t advertise your visit.”

I was dressed when they arrived.

Mickey Linehan was a big slob with sagging shoulders and a shapeless body that seemed to be coming apart at all its joints. His ears stood out like red wings, and his round red face usually wore the meaningless smirk of a half-wit. He looked like a comedian and was.

Dick Foley was a boy-sized Canadian with a sharp irritable face. He wore high heels to increase his height, perfumed his handkerchiefs and saved all the words he could.

They were both good operatives.

“What did the Old Man tell you about the job?” I asked when we had settled into seats. The Old Man was the manager of the Continental’s San Francisco branch. He was also known as Pontius Pilate, because he smiled pleasantly when he sent us out
to be crucified on suicidal jobs. He was a gentle, polite, elderly person with no more warmth in him than a hangman’s rope. The Agency wits said he could spit icicles in July.

“He didn’t seem to know much what it was all about,” Mickey said, “except that you had wired for help. He said he hadn’t got any reports from you for a couple of days.”

“The chances are he’ll wait a couple more. Know anything about this Personville?”

Dick shook his head. Mickey said:

“Only that I’ve heard parties call it Poisonville like they meant it.”

I told them what I knew and what I had done. The telephone bell interrupted my tale in the last quarter.

Dinah Brand’s lazy voice:

“Hello! How’s the wrist?”

“Only a burn. What do you think of the crush-out?”

“It’s not my fault,” she said. “I did my part. If Noonan couldn’t hold him, that’s just too bad. I’m coming downtown to buy a hat this afternoon. I thought I’d drop in and see you for a couple of minutes if you’re going to be there.”

“What time?”

“Oh, around three.”

“Right, I’ll expect you, and I’ll have that two hundred and a dime I owe you.”

“Do,” she said. “That’s what I’m coming in for. Ta-ta.”

I went back to my seat and my story.

When I had finished, Mickey Linehan whistled and said:

“No wonder you’re scared to send in any reports. The Old Man wouldn’t do much if he knew what you’ve been up to, would he?”

“If it works out the way I want it to, I won’t have to report all the distressing details,” I said. “It’s right enough for the Agency to have rules and regulations, but when you’re out on a job you’ve got to do it the best way you can. And anybody that brings any ethics to Poisonville is going to get them all rusty. A report is no
place for the dirty details, anyway, and I don’t want you birds to send any writing back to San Francisco without letting me see it first.”

“What kind of crimes have you got for us to pull?” Mickey asked.

“I want you to take Pete the Finn. Dick will take Lew Yard. You’ll have to play it the way I’ve been playing—do what you can when you can. I’ve an idea that the pair of them will try to make Noonan let Whisper alone. I don’t know what he’ll do. He’s shifty as hell and he does want to even up his brother’s killing.”

“After I take this Finnish gent,” Mickey said, “what do I do with him? I don’t want to brag about how dumb I am, but this job is plain as astronomy to me. I understand everything about it except what you have done and why, and what you’re trying to do and how.”

“You can start off by shadowing him. I’ve got to have a wedge that can be put between Pete and Yard, Yard and Noonan, Pete and Noonan, Pete and Thaler, or Yard and Thaler. If we can smash things up enough—break the combination—they’ll have their knives in each other’s backs, doing our work for us. The break between Thaler and Noonan is a starter. But it’ll sag on us if we don’t help it along.

“I could buy more dope on the whole lot from Dinah Brand. But there’s no use taking anybody into court, no matter what you’ve got on them. They own the courts, and, besides, the courts are too slow for us now. I’ve got myself tangled up in something and as soon as the Old Man smells it—and San Francisco isn’t far enough away to fool his nose—he’s going to be sitting on the wire, asking for explanations. I’ve got to have results to hide the details under. So evidence won’t do. What we’ve got to have is dynamite.”

“What about our respected client, Mr. Elihu Willsson?” Mickey asked. “What are you planning to do with or to him?”