The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (29 page)

“She needn’t be,” Darby said quietly. “I want this boy and bad!”

“He’s good,” Dan told him, “he’s three times the man Delano was. He knocked out Ratner. He stopped Augie Gordon, too. He’s probably the best middleweight on the coast.”

“All right, so he’s good. Maybe I’m better.”

Dan grinned. “Maybe you are,” he said. “Maybe you are, at that!”

B
EANO
B
ROWN HAD LIVED
in a cheap rooming house near Central Avenue. Darby knew where it was, and he had a hunch. Beano had always been secretive about his personal affairs, but he had told Darby one thing. He kept a diary.

The night before the fight, Darby borrowed Dan’s car for a drive. He didn’t say why, but he knew where he wanted to go.

It was a shabby frame addition built on the rear of an old red brick building. He had been there once many months ago. A man named Chigger Gamble had lived there with Beano. Chigger was a fry cook in a restaurant on Pico. He was a big, very fat Negro who was always perspiring profusely. If there was a diary, Chigger would know.

Darby parked the car two blocks away near an alley and walked along the dimly lighted street toward the side door of the building. If Beano had been murdered, Darby McGraw was going to see that somebody paid the price of that murder.

In his young life, Darby had learned the virtue of loyalty. Beano had given it to him, and if he was right, and if Smoke was right, Beano had died trying to protect him. In warning Renke away from him, Beano had possibly betrayed the fact that he knew the story behind the death of Villa Lopez. If that theory was correct, and Darby could think of no reason to doubt it, and if Renke had bet a lot of money and Villa had refused to go in the tank, Renke would not hesitate to dope him. Either the dope had killed him or left him so weakened that Bland’s punches had finished him off.

Mugsy might have handled the dope in the corner, and somehow Beano had guessed it. Now Beano had died, and Darby meant to get the evidence if there was any.

The street was dark and the narrow sidewalk was rough and uneven. It ran along a high board fence for a ways. Behind the fence he could see the rooming house. There was a little dry grass growing between the sidewalk and the fence. Darby glanced right and left, then grabbed the top of the fence and pulled himself over. He was guessing that if Renke and Fats had not already found Beano’s place, they would be hunting it. They might even be watching it.

The back door opened under his hand and he stepped into a dank, ill-smelling hallway. Beano and Chigger had lived on the second floor. He went up the back stairs and walked along the dimly lit hall to the door of number twelve.

He tapped lightly, but there was no response. He tapped again. After waiting for a moment, he dropped his hand to the knob and opened the door. He stepped quickly inside, then switched on a fountain-pen type flashlight.

The small circle of light fell on the dead, staring eyes of Chigger Gamble!

Quickly, Darby McGraw turned and felt for the light switch. The lights snapped on.

The room was a shambles of strewn clothing. Darby touched Chigger’s shoulder. The man was still warm. Darby felt for his pulse. It was still, dead. He started to turn for the door to get help when he remembered the diary.

Yet, when he glanced around the room, he despaired of finding it here. Every conceivable place seemed to have been searched. A trunk marked with Beano’s name stood open, and in the bottom of it was an open cigar box. Just such a place as the diary might have been kept. Darby switched off the light and went out the door.

A shadowy figure flitted from another doorway nearby and started down the hall on swift feet. “Hold it!” Darby called. “Wait a minute!”

But the man didn’t wait, charging down the stairs as fast as he could run, with Darby right after him. They wheeled at the landing and the man went out the same door Darby had come in.

The fighter lunged after him and was just in time to see the man throwing himself over the fence. Darby took the fence with a lunge and went after him. He could see a car parked in the shadows near a trestle. He lunged toward the man as he fought to get the door unlocked.

It was Griggs, and the man grabbed wildly at his hip. Darby dropped one hand to Griggs’s right wrist and slugged him in the stomach with the other. He slugged him three times, short, wicked blows, then twisted the right hand away and jerked out the gun, hurling it far out over the tracks. Then he smashed Griggs’s nose with a left and clipped him with a chopping right to the head.

The big man went down, and Darby bent over him.

In his pocket was a flat, thick book. On the flyleaf it said,
BEANO BROWN
, 1949.

Darby turned and walked swiftly back to Dan’s car. He was almost there when he saw the other car parked behind it. Suddenly he wished he had kept the gun.

But when the door of the second car opened, a girl stepped out and ran toward him. It was Mary.

“Oh, Darby!” she cried. “Are you all right?”

“Sure. Sure, I’m all right,” he said. “How’d you get here?”

“I followed you,” she said, “but I didn’t see you leave the car and didn’t see which house you went into. Then I saw the man come over the fence, but I couldn’t tell who was after him. I waited.”

“Let’s go,” he said, “we’d better get out of here fast.”

They stopped in an all-night restaurant. “I got it,” he said. “Beano Brown’s diary. If he knew anything about the Lopez fight, it’ll be in here.”

The waiter stopped by their table, putting down two glasses of water. He was thin and dark. He looked at Darby, then at the book in his hand.

“What do you want, Mary?” McGraw asked.

“Coffee,” she said. “Just coffee.”

He opened the diary and started glancing down the pages while Mary looked over his shoulder. Suddenly, she squeezed his arm.

“Darby, that waiter’s on the telephone!” she whispered excitedly. “I think he’s talking about us!”

Darby looked up hastily. “Why should he? What does he know? Unless…unless Renke owns this joint. No, that’s too much of a coincidence to figure we’ve hit one of Renke’s places by accident.”

“Not one of
his
places, Darby, but Renke’s boss of the numbers racket here. All these places handle the slips. All of them have contact with Art Renke. And he pays off for favors.”

“Finish your coffee,” Darby said. “We’ll save the diary.”

They started to get up, and the thin, dark man came around the counter very fast. “Want some more coffee? Sure, have some…on the house.”

“No,” Mary said, “not now.”

“Come on” the waiter said, smiling, “it’s a cold night.”

“The lady said no,” Darby told him sharply, then turned to Mary. “Let’s get out of here!”

They got into their cars and started them fast, but not fast enough. Just as Mary started to swing her car out from the curb, an old coupe with a bright metallic paint job wheeled around the corner and angled across in front of it. Two men got out and started toward her.

V

Darby left his car door hanging and started back, slipping on a pair of skintight gloves. Both men were small and swarthy, and both were dressed in flashy clothes. They looked at the girl and then at him. One of them had a gun.

“You gotta book,
señor?
You give it to me, yes?”

“No,” Darby said.

“You better,” the man replied harshly. “Hurry up quick now, or I’ll shoot!”

The fighter hesitated, his jaw set stubbornly. This time there was Mary to think of. “If we give it to you, do we both go?”

“Si. Yes, of course. You give it up and you go.”

Without a word, Darby handed over the diary. The two men turned instantly and got in their own car.

“Well,” Mary said, “that’s that. We had it and now we don’t have it. Fats and Renke are just as much in the clear as ever.”

D
ARBY WAS LED
through the crowd toward the ring. The place was packed and smoke hung in the air around the suspended lights. Coming through the stands, Darby and his second skirted a group of men and ran face-to-face with Fats Lakey. Fats grinned evilly; sweat ran down his neck. He wagged his finger. “Next fight, country boy…next time you fight you’re gonna make me some money.” He laughed and dodged back into the crowd. Darby knew what that meant. They would try to make him take a dive. His jaw tightened.

Darby tried to clear his mind. That was in the future, maybe. Tonight was what he had to worry about now.

Benny Barros was shorter than Darby McGraw by three inches. He was almost that much wider. He was certainly more than three inches thicker through the chest.

He was a puncher and built like one. Portuguese, and flat-faced, with a thick, heavy chest and powerful arms. He came into the ring wearing red silk trunks, and he didn’t smile. He never smiled. When they came together in the center of the ring, he kept his eyes on the canvas, and then he walked back to his corner and they slipped off his robe, revealing the dark brown and powerful muscles of his torso. He looked then, with his flat, rattlesnake’s eyes, at Darby McGraw. Just one look, and then the bell sounded.

Barros came out fast. He came out with his gloves cocked for hooking, and he moved right straight in. Darby’s left was a streak that stabbed empty air over Benny’s shoulder. Benny’s right glove smashed into McGraw’s midsection and Darby turned away, hooking a left to the head.

Both men were fast. Darby felt the sharpness of Barros’s punches and knew he was in for a rough evening. He jabbed, then hooked a solid blow to the head, and Benny blinked. His face seemed to turn a shade darker and his lips flattened over his mouthpiece.

Between rounds Dan Faherty worked over Darby. “Renke’s here,” he said. “So is Fats.”

“I know. I wish I had that diary, though,” Darby said. “We’d have them both in jail before the night is over.”

The bell sounded for the second round. Barros feinted and threw a high right that caught Darby on the chin. Darby took a quick step back and sat down. The crowd came to its feet with a roar and Darby shook his head, fighting his way to one knee. The suddenness of it startled him and he was badly shaken.

He got up at seven and saw Barros coming in fast, but Darby stabbed a left into Benny’s mouth that started a trickle of blood. However, the punch failed to stop him. He got to Darby with both hands, blasting a right to the head and then digging a left into his midsection just above the belt band on his trunks. Darby jabbed a left and clipped Barros with a solid right to the head.

Darby stepped away and circled warily, then, as Barros moved in, he stabbed a left to the face and hooked sharply with the same left. Barros ducked under it, slamming away at his body with both hands. Barros’s body was glistening with sweat and his flat, hard face was taut and brutal under the bright glare of the light. A thin trickle of blood still came from the flat-lipped mouth, and Barros slipped another left and got home a right to Darby’s stomach that jerked a gasp from him.

But Darby stepped in, punching with both hands, and suddenly Benny’s eyes blazed with fury and triumph. Nobody had ever slugged with Benny Barros and walked away under his own power. The two lunged together and, toe-to-toe, began to slug it out. Darby spread his feet and walked in, throwing them with both hands, his heart burning with the fury of the battle, his mind firing on the smashing power of his fists.

He dropped a right to Benny’s jaw that staggered the shorter man and made him blink, then he took a wicked left to the head that brought a hot, smoky taste into his mouth, and the sweat poured down over his body. The bell clanged, and clanged again and again before they got them apart.

Benny trotted back to his corner and stood there, refusing to sit down while he drew in great gulps of air. The crowd was still roaring when the bell for the third round sounded and both men rushed out, coming together in mid-ring with a crash of blows. Darby stabbed a wicked left to the head that started the blood from Benny’s eye, and Barros ducked, weaved, and bobbed, hooking with both hands. Benny moved in with a right that jolted Darby to his heels. McGraw backed away, shaken, and Benny lunged after him, punching away with both hands.

Darby crumpled under the attack and hit the canvas, but then rolled over and came up without a count, and as Barros charged in for the kill, Darby straightened and drilled a right down the groove that put the Portuguese back on his heels. Lunging after him, Darby swung a wide left that connected and dropped Barros.

Barros took a count of four, then came up and bored in, landing a left to the body and stopping a left with his chin. The bell sounded and both men ran back to their corners. The crowd was a dull roar of sound, and Darby was so alive and burning with the fierce love of combat that he could scarcely sit down. He glanced out over the crowd once and saw two thin, dark men sitting behind Renke, and one of them was leaning over, speaking to him.

Then, as the bell rang, he realized one of the men was the man who had taken the diary. He knew he was lagging, and he lunged to his feet and sidestepped out of the corner to beat Barros’s rush, but Benny was after him, hooking with both hands. Darby felt blood starting again from the cut over the eye that Faherty had repaired between rounds, and he backed up, putting up a hand as though to wipe it away. Instantly, Barros leaped in, and that left hand Darby had lifted dropped suddenly in a chopping blow that laid Benny’s brow open just over the right eye. Barros staggered, then, with an almost animal-like growl of fury, he lunged in close and one of his hooks stabbed Darby in the vitals like a knife.

He stabbed with a left that missed, then hit Darby with a wicked right hook, and Darby felt as if he had been slugged behind the knees with a ball bat. He went down with lights exploding in his brain like the splitting of atoms somewhere over the crowd. And then he was coming up from the canvas, feeling the bite of resin in his nostrils.

The dull roar that was like the sound of a far-off sea was the crowd, and he lunged to his feet and saw the brown, brutal shadow of Barros looming near. He struck out with a blind instinct and felt his fist hit something solid. Moving in, he hit by feel, and felt his left sink deep into Barros’s tough, elastic body. He swung three times at the air before the referee grabbed him and shoved him toward a corner so that he could begin the count.