The Ace of Spades - Dell Shannon (22 page)

Oh, God, the name repeated over and over, anybody to
hear— Not I being a fool, Mr. Skyros knew why. But aside from
everything else, it would scarcely be pleasant to have dealings with
one who was nominally an underling and actually held— you could
say— the whip hand. And all because of Domokous! If Mr. Skyros had
dreamed of all the trouble that young man would eventually cause—

Of course, there was another factor. Angie worth his
weight in gold right now, but these users, they sometimes went down
fast. Who knew, Angie might not last long .... The sweat broke out on
Mr. Skyros' forehead as he realized he had been actually thinking—
hoping— planning— perhaps—

Good God above, had not Domokous been enough?

He patted Angelo's thin shoulder paternally. "Now
you don't want to go talking that way," he said. "Sure,
sure, you're the one take over for Pretty, soon as I get the supply,
get started up again, isn't it? You don't need worry, Angelo. I tell
you, I know how it is with you, my friend, I sympathize, and I'll
make it a special point— a special favor— get in touch, and get
some stuff just for you. I don't know if I can manage it tonight or
tomorrow, but I'll try my best, my friend. You see, you got to
remember, we all got schedules, like any business! My man, he won't
be around a little while, he just fixed me up with this stuff they
took out of the Elite. It's awkward, you see that, isn't it?"

"Well, that's your business, Mr. Skyros,"
said Angie, and his dreamy eyes moved past Mr. Skyros' shoulder to
gaze vaguely out the ground-glass window. "I appreciate it, you
do that. Sure. We don't none of us want no trouble .... I'm in a room
over the Golden Club on San Pedro, you just ask for me there, you
want see me. Or maybe I call you— tonight? About nine o'clock, I
call and see if you got any. A couple decks for me, Mr. Skyros— and
ten— twelve to sell, see, I like to have a little ready cash."

"Oh, now, I don't know about that much,"
said Mr. Skyros. "And you know, Angelo, Pretty, he always keeps
it a strict cash basis, like they say— "

"Sure," said Angie. "Sure, Mr. Skyros.
Fifty a throw, that the deal? Sure. I bring you the cash, say five
hundred for ten decks. Never mind how much I cut it, how much I get,"
and he smiled his sleepy smile again. "Standard deal, Mr.
Skyros. You go 'n' have a look round for it."

“
I do my best,"
said Mr. Skyros earnestly, "just for you, my friend. This is
awkward for everybody, isn't it, we all got to put up with
inconvenience sometimes. But I do my best for you." He got out
of there in a hurry, brushing past another man in the door, mopping
his brow.  The expedient thing— yes, very true, one must make
do as one could, in some situations. It could all be straightened out
later. Not very much later, but when things had settled down a
little. After this deal with the Bouvardier woman went through. An
ace of spades .... He was not a superstitious man, but he felt
perhaps there was a little something in that, indeed. He rather
wished he had never got into the business, and still— scarcely to
be resisted, a nice little profit with not much work involved, easy
money . . .

* * *

Katya Roslev, who would be Katharine Ross so very
soon now, rang up her first sale of the day and counted back the
change. She did not notice that the customer seized her purchase and
turned away without a smile or a word of thanks. Usually she marked
the few who did thank you, you didn't get that kind much in a place
like this: and she played a little game with herself, seeing how
downright rude she could act to the others, before they'd take
offense, threaten to call the manager. Funny how seldom they did:
used to it, probably. The kind who came into a cheap store like this!
Grab, snatch, I saw that first! and, Here, I'll take this, I was
before her, you wait on me now or I don't bother with it, see! This
kind of place . . .

She'd be through here, just no time at all— leave
this kind of thing 'way behind. Off at noon, and she'd never come
back. Never have to. Money— a lot of money, enough. She'd be smart
about it, get him to give it to her in little bills so's nobody would
suspect— maybe couldn't get it until Monday account of that, the
banks— But that wasn't really long to wait. Not when she'd waited
so long already.

No need say anything at all to the old woman. She had
it all planned out, how she'd do. She'd say she didn't feel good on
Sunday, couldn't go to church— there'd be a little argument, but
she could be stubborn— and when the old woman had gone, quick pack
the things she'd need to take, all but the dress she'd wear Monday,
and take the bag down to that place in the station where you could
put things in a locker overnight, for a dime. Then on Monday morning—
or it might have to be Tuesday— get up and leave just the usual
time, and last thing, put the money in an envelope under the old
woman's purse there in the drawer. She wouldn't be going to get that
for an hour or so after Katya had left, go do the daily shopping. No
need leave a note with it, either-or maybe just something like, Don't
worry about me, I'm going away to make a better life.

A better life. Escape. It wasn't as if she wanted
much. She didn't mind working hard, not as if she figured to do
anything wrong to live easy and soft— all she wanted was a chance,
where she wasn't marked as what she was. To be Katharine Ross, and
work in a nicer shop somewhere, at a little more money so she could
have prettier clothes, and learn ladies' manners and all like that,
and get to know different people than up to now, not just the ones
like her here, with foreign-sounding names, the ones went to the same
church and— Different place, different job, different people,
she'd be all different too. Prettier, she'd do her hair another way;
smarter, and wear different kinds of clothes— she'd be Katharine
Ross, just what that sounded like.

"You've give me the wrong change," said the
customer sharply.

"Think I can't count?"

Katya made up the amount in indifferent silence. She
was listening to other voices, out of the future. Some of those
vaguely-imagined new, different people. Oh, Katharine's awfully nice,
and pretty too, like Katharine— Let's ask Katharine to go with us,
she's always lots of fun— Katharine—

Soon, very soon now . . .
 

SIXTEEN

Mendoza didn't wake until nearly nine-thirty. It was
going to be another hot day; already the thermometer stood close to
ninety. Alison was still sound asleep; he made fresh coffee and
searched through all the desk drawers for more cigarettes before
thinking of her handbag, and found a crumpled stray cigarette at its
bottom, which tasted peculiarly of face powder. He left a note
propped on the desk asking her to call him sometime today, and drove
home.

After he'd got out fresh liver for Bast, he paused to
look at her crouched daintily over her dish. Surely she was just a
trifle fatter around the middle? He seemed to remember reading
somewhere that Abyssinians had large litters, and suffered a
dismaying vision of the apartment overrun with a dozen kittens. "
¿Y
qué sigue despues?
— what then?" he
asked her severely. "A lot of people are so peculiar that they
don't like cats, it's not the easiest thing in the world to find good
homes for kittens— and, damn it, you know very well if I have them
around long, impossible to give them away! And I suppose now that
you've finally grown up, if a little late, you'd go on producing
kittens every six months or so. Yes, well, it's a pity to spoil your
girlish figure— which all those kittens would do anyway— but I
think when you've raised these we'll just have the vet fix it so
there won't be any more .... I 'wonder if the Carters would take one
.... And it's no good looking at me like that," as she wound
affectionately around his ankles. "
Todo
tiene sus limites
— a limit to everything,
¿comprende?
We will
not keep more than one, and there'll be no more!"

'
He had a bath and shaved. He looked up the number
and called Miss Champion, the receptionist— bookkeeper at Alison's
school, and told her to go round to the apartment in an hour or so;
explained. Miss Champion twittered: she'd put up a notice and go
right round, what a terrible thing, and— what?— oh, yes, she'd
take some cigarettes with her. Mendoza looked in the book again and
called a locksmith, told him to go and install a new lock, but not
before eleven o'clock. Then he folded his tie to take with him and
drove downtown.

He found Hackett already there, reading a report.
"You've got an excuse," said Hackett, taking the tie from
him, "but I'll bet you've never checked in so late since you
made rank. Hold your head up, I can't get at it with— No, I know
it's not as pretty a job as you'd do, but I didn't join the force to
learn how to be a valet. This is from Callaghan. I don't know how
much it'll say to you— , it doesn't say much to me."

Mendoza sat down and took the page. It was a copy of
an official card from Records, and it sketched in the person and
salient points of career of one Francis Joseph Donovan. Five-ten,
one-seventy, hair black, eyes gray, complexion medium, Caucasian,
male. One short stretch in reformatory as a minor, for car theft: one
three-year term seven years later for burglary: picked up several
times for questioning on various occasions thereafter, but no more
charges or sentences after he'd got out from serving that one eight
years ago. Suspected rather recently of having turned pusher,
considering known associates. Callaghan had appended some notes to
the terse concluding sentence of the record. A little over three
months ago, Frank Donovan had been pointed out to a traffic
patrolman, by a high school boy, as the man who had approached him
and made some pitch the boy thought was leading up to offering
marijuana or some other dope. There'd been lectures at school about
these guys, he said, and a movie-and this one acted kind of like
that. So the patrolman had gone up to ask some questions, and not
being satisfied with the answers had searched Donovan and come across
a handful of reefers; thereupon Donovan had tried to run, the
patrolman had gone after him, shouted warning, fired once over his
head and once at his legs— but it was hard to take careful aim when
you were running, and he'd got him through the spine. Donovan had
died that night in the General.

"Mmh, yes," said Mendoza. "And I don't
like that kind of careless business as a rule— it gets in the
papers, the public talks about trigger-happy cops— but once in a
while it saves everybody a lot of trouble. This kind, a year inside
for unlawful possession, what is it? They can't be cured." He
turned the page over and read a further notation in Callaghan's big
scrawl. I think this is the Frank those two meant. He left a widow,
Mrs. Amy Donovan, address you know on Daggett. She works at a joint
on Main, the Golden Club, singing with a cheap combo. No record.
"Well, well. Don't tell me we're beginning to straighten all
this out. At least place some of the people, even the ones on the
outside edge of the business. Like the house that Jack built.
Prettyman who knows Skyros who knows Lydia."

"I don't know Lydia. Suppose you bring me up to
date."

Mendoza obliged. "The only way I can figure it
is that this part of it goes back to the theft of Alison's car.
Somebody dropped this thing in it"— he brought it out, looked
at it, passed it over— "and is anxious to have it back. So
anxious he's made several elaborate attempts for it. Which reminds
me," and he reached for the phone, called down to Prints, and
asked if they had anything on that sap or the letter he'd sent in.
Nothing but a confused mess on the sap; a variety of prints on the
letter. As was only to be expected, damn it. He called the lab and
asked if anything had turned up on that lock. Marks inside, little
fresh scratches, where the thin arms of the stiff-wire tools from any
complete burglar's kit had groped for the right combination of
pressures. "There you are. An experienced man. Not, of course,
Lydia— somebody else. Which fits in, in a way, you know, because
Lydia apparently thought Alison was— mmh— somebody else than she
is. Caray, what a series of little accidents! Yes, I think Lydia had
a ride in that car while the thief had it, and noticed the
registration slip, and leaped to the conclusion that the car belonged
to the thief's girl-friend. I can see that happening, can't you? And
she also tells us that the thief is an Irishman. Donovan is an Irish
name."

"You aren't supposing," said Hackett, "that
Frank Donovan got up out of his grave, where he'd been peacefully
decomposing for a couple of months, and stole Miss Weir's car out of
the park?"

"
No hay tal
.
But the Irish are a prolific race," said Mendoza. "And just
what has that got to do with Stevan Domokous? So, we can say for
maybe ninety percent sure that Skyros is a middleman dope-runner, on
Bratti's level, and a rival of Bratti's— that Domokous somehow
found out about it, couldn't be bought off, and had to be killed. And
on the principle of killing two birds with one stone, Skyros told us
a nice little tale about Domokous mentioning Bratti, hoping to tie
Bratti up to it. That I see. But who and what is Lydia? I thought I'd
had an inspiration yesterday, I had a little vision of Skyros being
more important than a middleman, importing the stuff himself,
cunningly stashed away in the hollow insides of his foreign
bric-a-brac— say inside this nymph and that dolphin, you know. But
on second thoughts, I realized that the customs boys surely must know
about that old dodge, it'd never do."