The Paul Cain Omnibus (29 page)

The smiling man said: “Because there’s a copper behind me with a sawed-off shotgun pointed at the middle of my back.”

There was a crash and the tinkle of falling glass; Nagel’s voice piped up suddenly from the opposite side of the basement: “Hold it, everybody… .”

There was a blinding flash. Gay saw Nagel’s head and shoulders framed in the squat window; he was holding a camera and a burnt-out flashlight bulb, grinning happily. There was a uniformed man beside him with a leveled automatic rifle.

Then everything happened at once. The blond man swung his gun towards the window and Gay aimed a blow at his jaw. The man slumped, his pistol dropping; the lights went out and the world was full of flailing arms and legs and blue flares and roar—and darkness.

He yelled, “Pamela!” and then something banged against his head and for a moment his mind seemed blank. He heard her calling him and fought his way free, staggered towards the sound of her voice. His outstretched hands touched her hair suddenly and he put his arm around her, they went together swiftly along the wall.

She whispered: “Darling!—are you hurt?”

He shook his head in the darkness and he could feel blood streaming down his forehead, into his eyes. He fell forward and the darkness closed in again.

Nagel was talking. “Johnnie wanted me to wait at Drovna’s,” he said, “an’ trace his call. I figured that was too long a chance—too many things can go wrong when you’re trying to trace calls. So I borrowed a bakery wagon—Gosh! that reminds me; the driver don’t know I borrowed it yet!—an’ followed him… .”

Gay opened his eyes. They were in a cab and he could feel Pamela’s arm around his shoulders.

Nagel’s voice went on: “I played hide an’ seek with those guys all the way to the place; I saw ‘em take Johnnie in an’ I got to a phone an’ called the strongarm squad. By the time they got there I’d located that window… .”

Gay lifted one hand slowly and touched his head, it was covered with bandages.

Pamela’s arm tightened around his shoulder. “Is it better, Johnnie?” she whispered.

He said: “Sure—I’m all right… .” He sat up groggily, turned and took her hand. “How’re you?”

“I’ve never been so happy.”

The cab drew up at the side entrance of the Shepphard. They went up.

Mulhearn was practically jumping up and down with excitement and joy. Nagel looked around, asked, “Where’s his Highness?”

Mulhearn glanced at his watch. “David should be passing Ambrose Light about now,” he said. He cleared his throat, smiled slightly. “He remembered he had a very important appointment in Paris… .”

The phone rang and Nagel answered it, turned to Gay. “Decker says Beresford’s fired and you’re back—with a raise. Well, I got to get over to the plant an’ see how my pictures are.”

He took Mulhearn’s arm on the way to the door, steered him gently out.

Pamela’s head was on Gay’s shoulder. He kissed her hair, said softly: “I’ve something awfully important to ask you, darling… .”

She held him tightly, whispered: “What, Johnnie?” He did not answer. “What is it, Johnnie?” She turned gently—and looked up at him. He was asleep. She smiled and carefully disengaged herself, got up and fixed the cushions around his bandaged head. She went into the bedroom and came back with a blanket, spread it over him and tucked him in tenderly. Then she knelt and kissed his lips and whispered: “Good night …”

T
he cab swerved crazily to the curb, stopped. The driver jumped out and crossed the sidewalk in three steps, swept into the little cigar store like a great chocolate-colored cyclone.

The squat Negro behind the counter regarded him sleepily. “Whassa mattah wif you, Lonny?” he drawled. “You got ants?” Lonny was tall, raw-boned. His eyes were shiny with excitement, his dark, good-natured face split to a wide grin.

“Ants Ah got,” he chanted, “ol’ lucky ants!” He leaned across the counter, went on in a hoarse stage whisper, “Willie, Ah jus’ had the sweetes’ dream. They was three bears runnin’ aroun’ in a circle, an’ suddenly they stopped an’ got in line an’ looked at me—an’ they all had big white fives painted on theah foahheads! Then the bigges’ one said, “Get goin’, Lonny… .”

He whipped five crumpled dollar bills out of his pocket and slapped them down on the counter, smoothed them carefully.

“An’ heah Ah is! Get them five skins down on five-five-five—an’ get all ready to pay off. Nothin’ can stop me today. Ah’m right!”

Willie Armstrong picked up the bills and dropped them into a drawer.

His store was one of the hundred or more Harlem branches of the Numbers Game where one could bet any amount from a penny to five dollars on a three-number combination determined by the odds posted on the first race at Aqueduct, and Willie was accustomed to black boys with “unbeatable” hunches. He scribbled three fives and $5.00 on a slip of paper, added a mystic hieroglyphic that meant okay and pushed it across the counter. Lonny picked it up, folded it devoutly and tucked it into his watch pocket. “Len’ me your pencil, Willie,” he said. “Ah want to figure out how rich Ah is.” Willie handed him the stub of pencil and he was lost for a minute or so in a maze of scribbled figures on the edge of a newspaper. “Hot dawg!” he finally gurgled. “Twenty-seven-fifty foah a nickel makes two thousan’ seven hunnerd an’ fifty smackers foah Lonny!” Willie bobbed his head up and down wearily. “’At’s right. All you gotta do is win.”

“Don’ worry about me winnin’.” Lonny emphasized his assurance with a long finger against Willie’s chest. “Ah know mah stuff… . Ain’t this the fifth of the month?” Willie nodded. “Ain’t this nineteen thutty-five?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Ain’t Ah layin’ five dollahs on the line?”

Willie’s woolly head jiggled up and down rhythmically.

Lonny drew himself up to his full height, boomed conclusively, “Man! Ah cain’t miss! Everythin’ is jus’ lousy wif fives!”

He waited a moment for that pronouncement to sink in, then strode majestically to the door, turned.

“Ah’ll be back aroun’ one,” he said, “wif a wheel-barra to cart away mah money.”

He grinned expansively and went out into the bright morning.

Morning business was unusually good; by twelve-thirty Lonny had made four trips, two of them “buck hauls” which in the language of cab drivers means a fare of a dollar or more.

Then, driving back up Amsterdam Avenue from downtown, he stopped for the traffic light at a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street and just before the light changed, a beefy, red-faced man came out of the corner drugstore, hurried across and climbed into the cab.

Lonny turned with a wide smile. “Yas, suh. Wheah to?” This was his fifth fare of the day; that “Ol’ Lucky Five,” he reflected.

The man snapped, “Fifty-five East Hundred an’ Fiftieth—an’ make it fast!”

Lonny’s eyes goggled. His fifth haul, and the man wanted to go to… .

The screech of horns and the man’s sharply repeated, “I said make it fast!” bumped Lonny out of his ajar-jawed amazement. The light had changed. He shifted swiftly and they rattled across the intersection, on up Amsterdam Avenue.

Lonny clicked down his meter flag in a daze; he was far too lost in stunned contemplation of this supernatural repetition of fives to notice that his passenger was scowling through the rear window, nervously fingering something that bulged under his left armpit.

After several blocks the man leaned forward suddenly. “Turn off right at the next corner,” he snapped.

Lonny was feverishly calculating the distance to the address on a Hundred and Fiftieth Street. He glanced at the meter; if he could only make it tick to fifty-five cents the cycle of fives would be complete. He nodded mechanically and turned left.

The man pounded on the glass, shouted, “Hey, you dumb mug! I said turn right!”

Lonny grinned apologetically over his shoulder, stepped on the brake. “Ah’m sorry, Mistah,” he mumbled. “Ah guess Ah didn’ heah you.”

He swung the cab around and headed east.

Twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five cents; the meter ticked on and Lonny’s heart and hopes beat with it. They had turned north again on Lenox Avenue, were approaching a Hundred and Fiftieth. He realized with a sudden sinking twinge that the meter wouldn’t make it; it seemed to have curled up and died at thirty-five, then it clicked to forty and he sighed. It would never make it.

If he could only cross a Hundred and Fiftieth, act like he’d missed it, they’d have to go on for two blocks to reach the next east-bound street. That, according to his calculations, would just about make it. He set his jaw, stepped on the gas.

The man hammered on the glass, yelled: “Hey! You passed it!”

Lonny slowed down a little and turned an elaborately innocent mask to his practically apoplectic passenger.

“Gee! Ah guess Ah did, at that,” he said.

The man shoved the door open suddenly and stepped out on the running board, swung to the street. That was something Lonny hadn’t counted on; he jammed on the brakes, twisted in his seat to call plaintively:

“Ah’m sorry, Mistah, Ah plumb missed it. Get back in an’ Ah’ll get you theah in jig-time.”

But the man was crossing the street swiftly. He glanced back and his mouth moved viciously and a sound as of distant, angry waves came faintly to Lonny’s ears.

He wailed, “You foahgot to pay me,” but another cab—a very shiny and new one—had cut in between them and he disconsolately watched the man get into it and whirl away around the corner, east on a Hundred and Fiftieth.

He knew that shiny new cab. It belonged to Clint Waller, and more than the break in his chain of fives, more than the loss of his fare, that weighed like a bitter leaden pill in Lonny’s insides. Clint Waller had crossed his path before, unpleasantly. There was the matter of an argument over a crap game after which Lonny had come to in the hospital with a slashed cheek, and there was the matter of a certain high-yellow gal… .

He savagely jerked the gear lever into reverse, backed into an alley, spun around the corner. He was too intent on catching up with Clint Waller to notice the dark green sedan that had followed from a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, stopped half a block back on Lenox while its occupants narrowly watched his passenger change cabs, then followed swiftly east.

He roared across a Hundred and Fiftieth, darting miraculously in and out of traffic, gaining rapidly. He came abreast of the green sedan. Then he saw Clint’s cab pull up and stop in front of Fifty-five, the red-faced man get out; he shoved the throttle to the floor. The sedan cut in swiftly, slowed, and as it passed there was sudden thunder, and orange flame spouting from its side; the red-faced man sank down to his knees and fell forward, smashed his face against the running board.

Lonny kicked the brake, tires shrieked as the cab shuddered to an abrupt stop.

He saw Waller start to get out, then stop and put his two hands up to his chest, slide slowly sideways and crash to the floor. He saw a knot of people gather, grow magically like bees clustering about a lump of sugar. He sat, staring dumbly at the milling crowd, the skin of his forehead creased to thin dark bars of bewilderment; as if there was something he wanted terribly to understand, something maddeningly elusive.

Willie Armstrong’s cigar store was crowded; Willie was at the phone, the daily number was due. Lonny elbowed his way to the counter. Willie mumbled into the transmitter, listened, hung up.

“Eight-three-six,” he said. He riffled the pages of a soiled paperbound book. “That’s Clint Wallah’s numbah—right on the haid. He had it foah fifteen cents; he win—let’s see—eighty-two fifty… .”

Lonny raised his head slowly, bewilderment still clouded his eyes, twisted his smooth dark face. He was silent a moment, staring unseeingly at Armstrong, then he smacked his big fist down on the counter, boomed:

“Dawg gone! That Clint Wallah’s the luckiest son-of-a-gun Ah evah seen!”

J
acobsen, the assistant director, yelled “Hold your hammers!”

The pounding at the far end of the stage stopped.

Carl Dreier raised his head, said softly, wearily: “Turn ’em over.”

I held on to the arms of my chair and waited for what I knew was going to happen.

The sound mixer called out the number, the assistant cameraman snapped his slap-stick under the microphone and moved swiftly out of the scene, Maya Sarin came through the right upstage door in the narrow hallway set and walked a little unsteadily towards the camera. Creighton, the leading man, came through the door and ran after her. He came abreast of her about ten feet from the camera and they stopped and faced each other.

He put his hands gently on her shoulders, gazed deep into her dusky, violet-shadowed eyes.

“Darling!” he whispered, his voice quivering with emotion. “Darling! You can’t leave me like this! …”

Then it happened.

She said: “Oh, yeah, I can.” Her voice was thick with alcohol. She wasn’t tight—she wasn’t even drunk—she was cock-eyed.

Creighton started to say something like “But, darling…” and then he swallowed his words and emotion and turned squarely towards Dreier, put his hands on his hips, snapped shrilly: “Mister Dreier—I refuse to try to work with a drunken woman any longer!”

Sarin turned wide glassy eyes to stare vacantly in the general direction of the camera.

“Why w’as matter?” she asked innocently, incredulously. “I don’t know what Mist’ Creighton’s talking about… .”

Then her expression changed swiftly, her eyes narrowed to ominous black-fringed slits and she swung her open hand to the side of Creighton’s jaw. If they didn’t hear that smack up on Holly­wood Boulevard they weren’t listening—it was a pip.

I thought Creighton was going to go into his swoon for a minute, then he put one hand slowly up to his spanked face and turned and walked back up the hallway, out the door.

Sarin whirled towards the camera. “… ’S a frame-up!” she screamed. “Everybodeesh trying to ace me outa thish picsher. I won’t stand—”

Dreier stood up. He was a tall heavy shouldered man with prematurely gray hair, a narrow sharply chiseled face softened by sympathetic eyes, a generous mouth. He looked very tired. He tapped one leg of the tripod with his walking stick and the cameraman snapped off the camera motor. It was silent except for the sound of Sarin’s indignant panting.

Dreier said quietly: “In view of the fact that we are five days behind schedule after eleven days on this picture, and that the company has been waiting for you, Miss Sarin, since eleven thirty this morning”—he glanced at his watch—“and it is now ten minutes after five… . And in view of the fact that we have been trying to complete this one simple scene properly for two days and have been unable to because of your condition… .”

His accent was very precise. He turned and walked away.

She was after him like a spitting, snarling she-cat; she grabbed his shoulder, swung him around, screamed: “Oh, no, you don’t—you don’t walk out on me! I’m perfectly cap’ble of doing thish shene! I—”

Drier was standing still, looking down at her; I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a startling change in a man’s face. It was like white luminous metal; his light blue eyes had darkened and his soft mouth had straightened to a thin, savage line. His fury seemed all the more deadly because it was contained, all held inside him.

His voice sliced the silence like an icy knife: “Take your hand off my shoulder.”

Sarin dropped her hand and stepped back a pace or two, slowly. Dreier turned and walked swiftly away.

News gallops in a studio. I didn’t go to my office because I knew the phone would be burning up with calls from Bachmann. I wanted to figure out what I was going to say.

I was listed on the payroll as a gagman but that wasn’t the half of it. Conciliator in Extraordinary would have been better. Bachmann was the boss of B.L.D. Pictures, and some time, way back in the sweet silent days when we turned them out in a week for eight grand, he’d conceived the fairly nutty idea that I was a natural-­born peacemaker. He’d never got over it when I’d returned to Hollywood after three or four years of trying to find out what made China go, I’d found Bachmann with a studio slightly smaller than Texas and my old job waiting for me.

I’d worked on five pictures for B.L.D. and gradually, insidiously, almost with my knowing it, Maya Sarin had become my special charge. And what a charge!—it would have taken six men and a boy to keep up adequately with her and Bachmann knew it. His faith in me was touching, not to say sublime.

Death Song
was her first picture with Dreier, and in addition to being Chinese technical expert, and a few other ill-assorted whatnots I was supposed to be Sarin’s Spiritual adviser and wetnurse. She could suck up more whiskey in less time than any half dozen longshoremen I’d known in a long experience of longshoremen. I’d done everything I could to avert the inevitable blow-off. So what!—so it’d happened.

I stalled in the Publicity Department a little while and had my shoes shined and got to Bachmann’s office gradually. Sarin was coming out as I went in. I started to say something light and laugh-provoking, and she glared at me like a wounded lioness; I moved to one side and swayed in the wind as she went past.

There was a girl waiting to see Bachmann in the outer office. She had dark red hair and dark brown eyes and a skin like thick cream.

Bachmann’s secretary got up and started for the door of his private office. She said: “Mister Bachmann wants to see you right away, Mister Nolan—”

Bachmann jerked the door open, blasted me with an icy stare, yelped: “Come in here!” The secretary looked worried. She said in a small voice: “May I see you just for a moment first, Mister Bachmann?”

Bachmann snapped “No!” repeated: “Come in here, Nolan.”

I bobbed my head at the creamy-skinned angel, said: “This lady was here first… .”

She smiled at me and murmured: “Thank you—I’m in no hurry.” The voice went with the rest of her.

Bachmann looked like he was about a half jump ahead of apoplexy. That was all right with me because when he gets that way he becomes speechless. I gave the angel my best bow and marched past him into the office. He slammed the door and started walking up and down.

In about a minute he got his voice back, shouted: “Well—what are we going to do?”

I was looking out the window. I saw Sarin come out of the downstairs door of the Administration Building and start across the lawn towards the dressing rooms. I said: “How about leaving the picture business flat and going back to cloaks and suits?”

Bachmann looked like a thug and was one of the swellest all-around men I’ve ever known. He couldn’t help it about his pan. He wasn’t paying any attention to what I said. He yelled: “You’ve got to talk to Dreier!”

I nodded.

“Dreier likes you,” he went on. “You’ve got to make him understand that the release date of
Death Song
is set. It’s sold! It’s got to be finished in three weeks at the outside!”

I nodded again. I was still looking out the window and I saw Sarin disappear into the Dressing Room Building. She looked like she was going somewhere. I said: “You can’t make pictures with a sponge for a star. We’re five days behind schedule. The call was for eleven-thirty this morning because we worked late last night with the mob. Sarin didn’t even get to the lot till four and she was paralyzed… .”

I turned to Bachmann. “I think the best thing to do is scrap everything we’ve shot—it’s lousy anyway—and start over with another girl.”

Bachmann lifted his shoulders in such a high shrug that his head almost disappeared like a scared turtle’s.

“
What
other girl! You’re talking like an idiot! You know as well as I do that Maya’s name is sold with the picture… .”

I went over and looked up at a big photograph of her on the wall, grunted: “Uh-huh.”

Bachmann’s voice kept popping behind me: “You’ve got to talk to Dreier. Maya says he doesn’t like her—that he keeps on riding her and won’t give her a chance to straighten out. She says—”

I heard the door open, Dreier’s soft voice:

“What else does she say?”

I turned around. Dreier came in and closed the door, sank into a big chair.

Bachmann went behind his desk and sat down, too.

Dreier said: “Will you please replace me, Jack? I guess I can’t take it.”

He turned from Bachmann and smiled wearily at me.

Bachmann looked like he was about to do a backflip. Then the old beaten-animal expression crept into his eyes. I knew that look; it’d take a giant of willpower to say no to him when he used it.

He said tremulously: “Carl. You wouldn’t desert me, too?”

Dreier laughed. He was silent a moment and then he said: “No, Jack—I guess I wouldn’t. Not if you’re going to cry about it.” He raised both hands resignedly and brought them down hard on his knees. “What do you want me to do?”

“Talk to Maya.” Bachmann was leaning forward, smiling eagerly. “Reason with her—”

I grinned.

Bachmann glared at me, went on to Dreier: “Make her understand you don’t dislike her—that it’s for the good of the picture—that we’ve all got to cooperate—”

One of the phones on Bachmann’s desk buzzed. He picked it up said: “Yes—what is it? … Please don’t bother me, Miss Chase—I’m busy!” He slammed up the receiver.

Dreier stood up. “All right, Jack,” he said. “I’ll try again.”

“Fine!” Bachmann turned to me. “You go with him, Pat.”

I looked at my watch. It was five-forty. I had to see a dog about a man at six-thirty; I said: “Maya’s off me—I haven’t been able to talk to her for three days. I think Carl can do better by himself.”

Dreier was smiling. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to see the rushes first—last night’s stuff. Then I’ll see what I can do with her.”

He went to the door, turned his tired smile to me. “Want to look at them with me?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t got time—I’ll look at ’em in the morning.”

Dreier nodded and went out and closed the door.

Bachmann was leaning back in his chair glaring at me with elaborate disgust. “A fine smoother-over you’re turning out to be!” he said.

“That smoother-over business is
your
idea,” I reminded him, “not mine. Me—I like a good fight—I’m the kind of a guy that starts revolutions.”

I gave him a trick grin and bowed out. The creamy angel was still sitting in the outer office. She smiled at me again and I took it and smiled back and almost smashed my kneecap against the door because I wasn’t looking where I was going.

I was still thinking about her when I got into my car, and figuring that maybe the deal with the man and the dog wasn’t so important after all.

Traffic was heavy on Melrose; I cut up Gower and got out of the worst of it but it took me nearly twenty minutes to get to the hotel.

I was getting into the bathtub when the phone rang. The switchboard girl said: “Theah’s a Mistah Hammah callin’, Mistah Nolan… .” She kind of crooned it, like: “Theah’s a cotton field a callin’, honey chile.” You could slice that Deep South accent with a dull cleaver.

“On the phone, or is he downstairs?”

“On the wiah, Mistah Nolan. He’s in the hotel but he wants to talk to you on the wiah… .”

Hammer played occasional bits in pictures and was sort of all-around handyman for Joe Ciretti. Ciretti was the Big Bad Wolf of the Coast underworld. He was also Maya Sarin’s current suitor.

I told the girl to put him on and sat down and waited for the click, said “Hello,” as disagreeably as I could.

His nasal, high-pitched voice quavered over the wire: “H’are ya, Old Timer? What’s the good word? How’s everything?”

“Everything’s been swell—up to now. I’m in a hurry—what’s on your mind?”

Hammer said: “Me and a friend of mine want to have a little talk with you.”

I said: “Not a chance—I’ve got to be out of here in ten minutes and I’m just getting into the tub. Give me a ring later.”

“Later won’t do. We want to talk to you now!” The tone of his voice had changed; all the amusement had gone out of it and it was almost plaintively serious.

Another voice rapped over the wire suddenly. It was sharp, staccato, with a slight Latin accent:

“Listen, you! Look out the window—the one on your right. Look at the window across the court!”

I twisted around in the chair and looked through my wide open window at the one the voice was shouting about. It was about twenty-five or thirty feet away, open, dark.

I started to say, “So what,” or something equally bright and then I stopped there was a thin blue rifle barrel sticking out a few inches over the lower sill and it was pointing, as nearly as I could measure the angle at that distance, at my right eye. I could see a man’s head and shoulder vaguely outlined against the darkness of the room.

The voice went on: “Now put the phone down on the table and put your hands up—high; then get up and unlock the door and go back and sit down. And don’t forget—you’re covered all the way to the door.”

I did exactly that. I wanted to see what the play was about. I unlocked the door and opened it a couple of inches and went back and sat down. I kept my hands up and watched the rifle barrel and waited.

In a couple of minutes Hammer and a thick set, swarthy guy with bright beady eyes and blue-black hair came in and closed the door.

I looked back at the window and the rifle barrel was gone. I said: “Do you gentleman mind if I put on my pants?”

Hammer was a thin, medium-sized Swede with a thick butter-yellow mustache. He grinned a little, piped: “Never mind your pants—we like you this way.” He waved his hand at blue-black hair. “This is Joe Ciretti—he wants to talk to you.”

I got up and grabbed a bathrobe off the bed, slid into it. “First,” I said, “you’d better let me in on what all this strong-arm stuff is about. I don’t like it and when I don’t like something I get in a bad mood, and when I’m in a bad mood I’m a bad talker—or listener.”

Ciretti’s eyes widened innocently on Hammer; he lifted his hands in front of him as if he was holding a watermelon, said: “Strong-arm stuff! I don’t know what Mister Nolan is talking about—do you, Gus?” His was the sharp, staccato voice of the telephone.