Ride the Pink Horse (9 page)

“I didn’t tell you to wake me up at the crack of dawn,” the Sen said out of thin lips. “I expected you to wait until a civilized hour.” He started over to Sailor and the right hand tightened in the right-hand pocket. Not too tight, just ready in case. “Give me a cigarette,” the Sen said.

“Sure.” Sailor passed the pack, kept his hand out to get it back. Wouldn’t be the first time the Sen forgot to return a fresh pack of cigarettes. When he was young and wide-eyed and thought the Sen was really the sharpest guy that ever strayed off the North Shore reservation, he’d thought that was class. A guy that couldn’t be bothered with such trifles. Yeah, that’s what he’d thought. He hadn’t known how chinchy the Sen was then.

He kept his right hand firm and his eyes steady on the Sen until he got the deck back. He let the Sen find his own matches. The Sen lit up, his hand shaky, and took a lungful. Then the Sen asked him, cold now but the jitters were under it. “Just what do you want?”

Sailor laughed. The Sen wasn’t doing so well when he couldn’t think of anything better than that. Sailor could afford to laugh at him. He laughed, “You know what I want, Sen. I told you last night what I wanted.” He drew in slow and easy on his cigarette. “My dough,” he said not laughing.

“You got paid off,” the Sen said.

“I got the down payment.” Sailor dragged on the smoke, taking his time. “I got five hundred. The price was fifteen hundred. Remember?”

The Sen said through his teeth, “A thousand dollars. It’s a holdup.” He scowled and paced. Sailor waited until the Sen stopped wearing out the rug, stepped across the room and looked down his long snout. “If I give you a check for the thousand, will you get out of town today?”

Sailor leaned back comfortable. He was easy as if he was rocking in Tio Vivo’s gondola. He said, “No.” He waited until the Sen bristled like a porcupine, waited until the Sen opened his mouth, then he spoke before the Sen could. He sounded good-natured. “The price has gone up.”He’d struck sparks with that. He’d known he would. He felt like a million dollars when the Sen’s mouth dropped open. “Are you crazy?”

“Not me.” Sailor’s lips twisted. “Maybe I was once but not any more.” He punched it. “I want five grand.”

“You won’t get it,” the Sen snapped.

“I think I will,” Sailor said. He squeezed out the butt in the sombrero ash tray. He looked the Sen over carefully and he repeated with quiet emphasis, “Yes, I think I will.”

The Sen didn’t say anything. There were too many words in his mouth and he didn’t know which to use first He was too livid to think fast and straight, maybe he had too many things on his mind or too many memories. He couldn’t lay the words out precise and nasty the way he’d have done if he were in the driver’s seat

Sailor continued punching. “I’ll get it. And it won’t be a check. It’ll be cash. Five thousand cash.” He looked under his eyes at the Sen. “Seen McIntyre yet?”

The Sen’s lips were bloodless, like the lips of a toothless old man. “It’s blackmail,” he said. There was a spark came into his eye, a nasty spark. “There’s laws against blackmail.”

“There’s laws against murder,” Sailor said evenly.

The Sen had the shakes putting out his cigarette, sitting down on the edge of the unmade bed. “What does McIntyre want? What’s he doing here?”

Sailor watched him for a minute before he answered. “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t talked to him”—the added word was a hot rivet—”yet.”

“You were with him at Keen’s Bar last night”

He hadn’t known the Sen had seen him and McIntyre there. The Sen had been way across the murky red room, the Sen had been with a classy party and the silver-gold girl, the Sen had been drinking too much. But the Sen hadn’t been too far gone to spot Sailor with McIntyre.

Sailor said, “Yeah, we had a drink together.”

The Sen’s mouth curled. “I didn’t know you and McIntyre were such friends.”

“Sure.” Sailor lit another cigarette. The match he struck on his heel made a sharp crack in the silence. “Sure. Known him since I was a kid. One of my oldest friends.”

The Sen’s adder tongue spit out licked his dry lips. “What did he have to offer?”

“Nothing,” Sailor said. “Nothing at all.”

The Sen was forced to press it. Because he didn’t know what McIntyre knew or hunched, because he didn’t know what Sailor had told the copper. He wasn’t really scared as yet because he didn’t know what Sailor knew. He didn’t have the faintest idea what Sailor knew. Sailor was saving it, hoarding it up for the final punch. The knockout.

But the Sen was uneasy; seeing McIntyre and Sailor together was enough to make him uneasy. He’d have been uneasy enough seeing them together in Chicago. Here in this foreign town it was like whisperings among strangers. The Sen asked, “What did he have to say?” When Sailor didn’t answer, the Sen insisted. His voice cracked like dry plaster. “What did he talk about?”

Sailor didn’t want to mention her. She didn’t belong in this dirty business. But he had the Sen on the skids and he’d use everything to keep him sliding down. “He was telling me about the people in your party,” he began. He forced the name out. “About Iris Towers.”

The Sen’s face went purple. Almost purple. “What right does he have gabbing about her?” He was hoarse with rage.

“Coppers are funny,” Sailor said. He sounded like he thought there was a laugh in it. “They think they got a right to be nosy about anybody.” He threw it away. “Especially McIntyre.”

The thin lips began to weave, to spew whey-like obscenities about the copper. When they stopped for breath, Sailor agreed, “Sure.” He yawned. “But you can’t argue with the guy in the driver’s seat.”

That stopped the Sen. It was his own statement, the one he used to hold the boys in line. You can’t argue with the guy in the driver’s seat. Not if you want to live.

“It’s politics,” the Sen said. He began to dance up and down the rug again, his skinny hairy legs sticking out one end of his satin bathrobe, his scrawny neck and weasel face out of the other end. “It’s nothing but dirty politics. Because I supported Lennie.” He took one of his own cigarettes off the bed table. That calculating look was in his eyes. “I’d like to find out just why McIntyre is here. Who sent him.”

Sailor knew what the Sen meant. He’d like Sailor to find out. Another job. All work and try to get your pay out of the chiseling Sen. Sailor smiled. “I got a pretty good idea why he’s here.”

The Sen took it up quick. “Why?” His suspicions of Sailor and McIntyre drinking together were sticking out all over him.

Sailor said slowly, soberly, “I think he’s looking for the man who murdered your wife.”

The color went out of the Sen. It oozed away until he was grayer than the grayness on the old lady’s face when she used to come home in the gray tired morning. He came out of it quick enough but the color didn’t return, not for a long time. He said, “Jerky Spizzoni killed her.”

Sailor’s heart was pounding. The Sen couldn’t know it, on the face of things he was calm and cool as a cucumber. “Jerky’s gun killed her,” he smiled.

“What are you trying to do?” The Sen’s lips lifted nastily. “You know what happened. You testified—”

Sailor broke in, “It looked good on paper.”

The Sen’s voice faded out. “What do you mean?”

“There was a little hitch,” Sailor said. He went at it just as calmly as if there weren’t trumpets blowing inside him. He wished Ziggy were here to see the Sen. He wished he’d let Ziggy come along. Only he couldn’t. Because even Ziggy didn’t know what he knew. He must have had an idea even then that this was going to turn into something good. For him. Hidden down under layers of subconscious it must have been there waiting for something to knock it loose. Something like having to sleep on the ground in a one-horse foreign town.

Ziggy was going to get a boot out of this scene when they met up in Mexico. Ziggy always got a boot out of Sailor’s imitations of the Sen; this one would top them all. It would be even better if the Sen hadn’t put in his upper bridge to open the door for the package. Well, he could play the scene as if the Sen didn’t have his top teeth in. It would be funnier that way.

“There was a little hitch,” he said. “Oh, the boys sprang Jerky that night. Just like you fixed it. And Jerky got it in the back later that night. Just like you fixed it.” His lips were thin as the Sen’s. “Sure, I know Jerky wasn’t worth anything to us any more. He’d gone stir-crazy all right. He’d have sold us out for nose drops.”

“What went wrong?” the Sen asked through his teeth.

“You couldn’t guess,” Sailor said good-naturedly.

“I have no intention of guessing,” the Sen gritted. “What—went —wrong?”

“Engine trouble,” Sailor said.

The Sen was speechless with fury.

“Happened right after they got away. They were starting back to Chi with Jerky and—engine trouble. Lucky thing though. There was a farmhouse pretty near. So the fellows didn’t have to stand out in the rain—remember how it was raining that night?—while they fixed the car. The farmer let them run it in the barn—”

“Why didn’t they phone in?”

“The yokel didn’t have a phone.”

“They could have—”

Sailor interrupted again. “It looked swell on paper. But there were a couple of hours’ delay. Too bad you didn’t know. In those hours, you called the cops about Mrs. Douglass being killed.”

The Sen stood very still. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

“The fellows were afraid to tell you.” Sailor mock sighed. “They were afraid you might get mad at them.”

“Why didn’t you or Ziggy tell me?”

“I’m telling you,” Sailor said.

He was actually shaking, his skinny little legs couldn’t hold still. “Why wait till now? Why didn’t I know before I left Chicago? If I’d known—”

“You skipped out too fast,” Sailor said reprovingly. “And you didn’t leave a forwarding address. Ziggy thought you were in Canada fishing.”

“You found me.” He was ice cold.

“Yeah,” Sailor said. “I found you.”

He got dancing mad again. Wiggling back and forth on the rug. “How did you know where I was?”

Sailor laughed. “That’s a funny thing. I read it in the
Trib.”

The Sen didn’t believe him.

“I did,” Sailor nodded confirmation. “On the society page. That society reporter must have somebody out here that feeds her the news.” He quoted,
“The popular young Senator Willis Douglass . . .”
He shut up without being told. Laughing soundlessly.

The Sen was thinking. Thinking hard. “Does Mac know about this hitch?”

“May be,” Sailor said. “Ziggy and I didn’t know about it ourselves till last week,” he admitted. “The boys didn’t intend to mention it. But the yokel saw a picture of Jerky in some horror mag and came to town.” He snickered. “He was going to tell the guys about the crook who’d been in their car.”

“You mean he went to the boys, not the police?”

Sailor grinned. “Humpty was sharp that night at the barn. Told the old boy if he ever came to Chi to drop by bis hash house and he’d give him a free spread. Saved himself a tip that way.” He sobered. “Good thing he’s close with his dough. The yokel was set to go to the cops but Humpty stalled him. Then he and Lew came running to Ziggy.”

“What’s Ziggy doing about it?” the Sen asked quick.

“Nothing.” He smiled at the Sen’s open mouth. “He told the fellows to give the yokel a yarn about their finding out and helping the coppers land Jerky. He gave them enough dough to show the guy the town with trimmings. Wear him out and send him home.” The Sen’s mouth hadn’t closed. Sailor said coldly, “Ziggy warned the fellows not to let anything happen to the yokel. He didn’t want the case blown wide open by another—accident. He told them to take as good care of the guy as if he were a two-year-old kid.” He let the Sen soak that in before finishing up. “Ziggy’s blown town.”

All the Sen said was, “Ziggy’s smart.” The phone couldn’t have had neater timing. It rang just as the Sen was getting back a little confidence. He picked it up and his, “Hello,” was normal.

It was the girl. The silvery Iris Towers. The Sen’s voice went into its act, the rich sweet tones rang in it. “Yes, this is Willis. Yes, I was awake.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and hunched his back to Sailor. “I’m sorry you waited. I’ve been delayed on a little business matter. . . . No, I won’t be much longer. I’ll meet you in the Placita in twenty minutes.” His voice was intimate. “Order me a Daiquiri and save my special chair. . . . Goodbye.” He hung up and took a moment to compose his face before turning back to Sailor. He started in just as if there’d been no interruption; and as if he hadn’t been craven most of the past hour and a half. He even kept his organ pipes turned on for Sailor. He said, “I don’t blame you for wanting to get over the border until this blows over. I take it you’re heading for Mexico?” He nodded his head briskly not waiting for an answer. “I’ll get the thousand for you. I don’t know how, exactly, since you refuse my check. You know I don’t carry that kind of money on me. The banks aren’t open on Sunday. If you can wait until tomorrow—”

“The banks aren’t open on Labor Day,” Sailor said. Then shut up, giving the Sen all the rope he wanted.

“That’s right, tomorrow is Labor Day,” the Sen recalled. “Well, I’ll get the thousand for you some way. Come back this afternoon, about five, and I’ll have it for you. I have to dress now. I haven’t had breakfast.”

“Neither have I,” Sailor said. He didn’t budge. He sat there looking over at the Sen. He said, “I told you the price had gone up. It’s five thousand now.”

The Sen scowled. “You won’t get it.” His mouth snapped. “You’d better take the thousand and get over the border while you can. You’re in no position to dicker.”

Sailor spoke softly. “Yes, I am.”

The Sen looked at him, trying to read what he meant, sure that it wasn’t what the Sen alone knew; wondering if Sailor had sold out to McIntyre, sure that he wouldn’t dare; boring into Sailor’s impassive face and getting no answer. He rattled Sailor’s words in his brain and couldn’t get an answer without asking for it “Now what?” he demanded.

Sailor said, “I didn’t kill your wife.”

It was the moment he’d been moving up to and the moment was worth the feints and thrusts of delay. The Sen stood frozen where he was. He looked really old, shriveled and old. He was in that moment one with the aged violinist of Tio Vivo. There was only a mechanical shell left.