The Paul Cain Omnibus (41 page)

A few drops of rain pattered on the sill. He whistled once more, crossed back to the slate, and added:

Salade de Concombres, Ambergris

et Choux Jaune

Jambon à la Prague

Sous la Cendre Teak

Fraises Réve de Bébé Blaque

Péche Attila

Bavaroise Gertrude

He was thoughtful again, crossed to the smallest of the refrigerators, and gently removed the eleven perfect daisies which would serve as an epergne. Opening the refrigerator, he thought of Vincent. It would not do to leave that brash youth too long in the Crucifreeze. Perhaps another half hour of chilled meditation upon his sins would suffice, then Etienne would free him, pay him handsomely for the Tasting Machine, and send him packing. It was well for Vincent—he smiled wryly—that he was not a vindictive man.

There was a bowl of caviar in the small refrigerator, the luminous, absinthe-greenish kind. It had been flown from Baku the previous day. It occurred to Etienne that it might be as well to test the Machine once more before his guests arrived. He took the bowl into the dining room and placed it on the table; almost immediately the Machine began to hum, whirr softly, ever so softly. The spoon arm slowly unfolded, reached out and—snup!—engulfed a great mouthful, snatched it to the aperture, popped it in. The filament began to glow, and then, sibilantly, sensually, unmistakably, the Machine chortled with pleasure.

Etienne heaved a great and beatific snortle. It worked, and perfectly. He carried the bowl back into the kitchen and put it in the small refrigerator. The Machine’s voice followed him for a moment with thin whines of anguish. That was as well, he decided. Let it be ravenous for the feast to come.

He listened then. He could hear Bubu in the cellar—clink and stumble, rumble, plink—as he chose wines to accompany dinner; he could hear the rain outside, a tenuous shuffle of thunder, Gertrude wetly baying at the sky; he could hear the distant surf of tires on Park Avenue.

And then he heard another sound—a slam, a click, a closed door. He wondered for a little while where it came from, then abruptly dropped his spoon and closed a pot, hurried to the Salle. The door was closed, locked.

He pounded on it lightly, then more heavily, then hard. A horrid sweat grew suddenly upon his flesh.

“Mercedes!” he shouted. “Are you there?”

There was no answer and no sound. He smiled a pea-green smile and tried to pull himself together. His nerves… . Obviously an errant breeze had sprung. He need simply find the key… . and… .

The key, the only key, was inside, and this was a heavy, practically impregnable door. Ah, well, a locksmith… .

“Bubu,” he called, but Bubu was in the cellar, and thunder quenched his voice. Thinking of keys, how could he have thought that Mercedes could be here? He himself had locked her door.

But wait! If she had traced the keys, and Vincent had made duplicates, then she, too, might… .

From beyond the door there came—or did he only imagine it?—a faint, far hum, a tremulous, low-pitched moan of—what was it like, anticipation?

Etienne whirled, rushed up the stairs. Mercedes’ door was open. He shouted for her, shrieked her name. A crash of thunder worried away to silence. Dashing back down the stairs he fell, described a spinning parabola, and landed on his head. There was darkness… .

He must have been unconscious for a full minute, perhaps more. When he sat up and ruefully rubbed his skull, it seemed that it was spring. Birds were singing, and a gentle fountain somewhere gently played. Then he knew it was the rain, a roaring cloudburst. And over it there was a great, expanding sigh of ecstasy that shook the house.

Etienne remembered then, and clawed his way along the corridor, weakly beat upon the door, and sobbed, “Mercedes!” And she answered him.

“Etienne!” she cried, and her sweet, tinkling voice was strained and harsh, like coarse silk tearing. “Etienne—I lied! I—”

And then her words were drowned in such a cataclysmic rhapsody of rapturous squeals and groans and slobbering slurr-ups of delight as to stun the ear and stop the heart. “Vincent!” she screamed at last, above this storm of gustatory joy, “Vincent, my love!”

And then her voice was stilled.

Bubu stood, his arms full of dusty bottles, staring down at his master in ajar-jawed astonishment. The rain had slacked, and in the garden Gertrude aped a nightingale, split the satin of her throat with melancholy song. And now the sounds beyond the door subsided slowly to a kind of satiated coda, a roundelay of little grunts and chucklings.

Etienne stumbled to his feet and stared unseeingly at Bubu. Then a little, very little life illumed his eyes.

“Fetch me the ax,” he said.

Mercedes’ robe was neatly folded on a chair, her spun-glass slippers glittered together on the floor. The Tasting Machine was silent, somnolent, its filament glowing with a blinding white-hot fever. Etienne took it gently into his arms and carried it to the cellar, held it poised for a moment above an open hundred-gallon cask of Thracian wine, then let it go. It came up thrice, and at the last time Etienne fancied—was it his overwrought imagination?—that it called out wispily for help, then choked and strangled, sank, and was entirely gone.

Back in the kitchen he opened an ironwood cabinet and removed a case of thin, brilliantly glistening knives, fell to sharpening them. Bubu was polishing glasses; Gertrude flew in through the open window, perched above the range, and preened her wet, bedraggled feathers.

“Pieces of eight,” she squawked. “Pieces of eight!”

The cuckoo clock on the floor above distantly caroled.

Etienne wondered, was it eight or nine? Or did it matter? He went to the slate, gazed at it reflectively for a little time, then slowly erased
Hamburger 61st Street
and scrawled in its place:
Brochettes de Foie Vincent
.

The front doorbell chimed.

“Please answer it,” he said to Bubu. “Sir Osbert Fawning and the Dowager Lady Swathe are often early.”

A swift story of gambling, big-time politics and sudden death in Los Angeles and Hollywood, the new WILD WEST!

K
ells walked north on Spring. At Fifth he turned west, walked two blocks, turned into a small cigar store. He nodded to the squat bald man behind the counter and went through the ground-glass paneled door into a large and bare back room.

The man sitting at a wide desk stood up, said: “Hello” heartily, went to another door and opened it. He said: “Walk right in.”

Kells went into a small room, partitioned off from the other by ground-glass paneled walls. He sat down on a worn davenport against one wall, leaned back, folded his hands over his stomach, and looked at Jack Rose.

Rose sat behind a small round green-covered table, his elbows on the table, his long chin propped upon one hand. He was a dark, almost too handsome young man who had started life as Jakie Rosencrancz, of Brooklyn and Queens. He said: “Did you ever hear the story about the three bears?”

Kells nodded. He sat regarding Rose gravely, and nodded his head slowly up and down.

Rose was smiling. “I thought you’d have heard that one.” He moved the fingers of one hand down to his ear and pulled violently at the lobe. “Now you tell one. Tell me the one about why you’ve got such a load on
Kiosque
in the fourth race.”

Kells smiled faintly, dreamily. He said: “You don’t think I’d have an inside that you’d overlooked, do you, Jakie?” He got up, stretched extravagantly and walked across the room to inspect a large map of Los Angeles County on the far wall.

Rose didn’t change his position. He sat staring vacantly at the davenport. “I can throw it to Bolero.”

Kells strolled back, stood beside the table. He looked at a small watch on the inside of his left wrist. He said: “You might get a wire to the track, Jakie, but you couldn’t reach your eastern connections in time.” He smiled with gentle irony. “Anyway, you’ve got the smartest book on the coast—the smartest book west of the Mississippi, by God! You wouldn’t want to take any chances with that big Beverly Hills clientele, would you?”

Kells turned and walked back to the davenport, sank wearily down, and again folded his hands over his stomach. “What’s it all about, Jakie? I pick two juicy winners in a row, and you squawk. What the hell do you care how many I pick? The Syndicate’s out, not you.”

He slid sideways on the davenport until his head reached the armrest. He pulled one long leg up to plant his foot on the seat, sprawled the other across the floor. He intently regarded a noisily spinning electric fan on a shelf in one corner. “You didn’t get me out in this heat to talk about horses.”

Rose wore a lightweight black felt hat. He pushed it back over his high bronzed forehead, took a cigarette out of a thin case on the table and lighted it. He said: “I’m going to reopen the Joanna D. Doc Haardt and I are going to run it together—his boat, my bankroll.”

Kells said: “Uh-huh.” He stared steadily at the electric fan, without movement, or change of expression.

Rose cleared his throat, went on: “The Joanna used to be the only gambling barge on the Coast, but Rainey moved in with the Eaglet, and then Max Hesse promoted a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot yacht and took the play away from both of them.” Rose paused to remove a fleck of cigarette paper from his lower lip. “About three months ago, Rainey and Doc got together and chased Hesse. According to the story, one of the players left a box of candy on the
Monte Carlo
—that’s Hesse’s boat—and along about two in the morning it exploded. No one was hurt much, but it threw an awful scare into the customers, and something was said about it being a bigger and better box next time, so Hesse took a powder up the coast. But maybe you’ve heard all this before….”

Kells looked at the fan, smiled slowly. He said: “Well, I heard it a little differently.”

“You
would
.” Rose mashed his cigarette out, went on: “Everything was okay for a couple weeks. The Joanna and Rainey’s boat were anchored about four miles apart and their launches were running to the same wharf, but they both had men at the gangways frisking everyone who went aboard, and that wasn’t so good for business. Then somebody got past the protection on the Joanna and left another ticker. It damn near blew her in two; they beached, finally got into dry-dock.”

Kells said: “Uh-huh.”

“Tonight she goes out.” Rose took another cigarette from the thin case and rolled it gently between his hand and the green baize of the table.

Kells said: “What am I supposed to do about it, Jakie?”

Rose pulled the loose tobacco out of one end of the cigarette, licked the paper. “Have you got a match?”

Kells shook his head slowly.

Rose said: “Tell Rainey to lay off.”

Kells laughed—a long, high-pitched, sarcastic laugh. “Ask him to lay off.”

“Run your own errands, Jakie.” Kells swung up to sit, facing Rose. “For a young fella that’s supposed to be bright,” he said, “you have some pretty dumb ideas.”

“You’re a friend of Rainey’s.”

“Sure.” Kells nodded elaborately. “Sure, I’m everybody’s friend. I’m the guy they write the pal songs about.” He stood up. “Is that all, Jakie?”

Rose said: “Come on out to the Joanna tonight.”

Kells grinned. “Cut it out. You know damn well I’d never buck a house. I’m not a gambler, anyway; I’m a playboy. Stop by the hotel sometime and look at the string.”

“I mean come out and look the layout over.” Rose stood up and smiled carefully. “I’ve put in five new wheels and—”

“I’ve seen a wheel,” Kells said. “Make mine strawberry.” He turned, started toward the door.

Rose said: “I’ll give you a five-percent cut.”

Kells stopped, turned slowly and came back to the table. “Cut on what?”

“The whole take, from now on.”

“What for?”

“Showing three or four times a week…. Restoring confidence.”

Kells was watching him steadily. “Whose confidence, in what?”

“Aw, nuts. Let’s stop this goddamned foolishness and do some business.” Rose sat down, found a paper of matches and lighted his limp cigarette. “You’re supposed to be a good friend of Rainey’s. Whether you are or not is none of my business. The point is that everyone thinks you are, and if you show on the boat once in a while, it will look like everything is under control, like Rainey and I have made a deal; see?”

Kells nodded. He said: “Why
don’t
you make a deal?”

“I’ve been trying to reach Rainey for a week.” Rose tugged at the lobe of his ear. “Hell! This coast is big enough for all of us; but he won’t see it. He’s sore. He thinks everybody’s trying to frame him.”

“Everybody probably is.” Kells put one hand on the table and leaned over to smile down at Rose. “Now I’ll tell you one, Jakie. You’d like to have me on the Joanna because I look like the highest-powered protection at this end of the country. You’d like to carry that eighteen-carat killer reputation of mine around with you, so you could wave it and scare all the bad little boys away.”

Rose said: “All right, all right.”

The phone on the table buzzed. Rose picked up the receiver, said “Yes” three times into the mouthpiece, then “All right, dear,” hung up.

Kells went on: “Listen, Jakie. I don’t want any part of it. I always got along pretty well by myself, and I’ll keep on getting along pretty well by myself. Anyway, I wouldn’t show in a deal with Doc Haardt if he was sleeping with the mayor. I hate his guts, and I’d pine away if I didn’t think he hated mine.”

Rose made a meaningless gesture.

Kells had straightened up. He was examining the nail of his left index finger. “I came out here five months ago with two grand and I’ve given it a pretty good ride. I’ve got a nice little joint at the Lancaster, with a built-in bar; and a pretty fair harem, and I’ve got several thousand friends in the bank. It’s a lot more fun guessing the name of a pony than guessing what the name of the next stranger I’m supposed to have shot will be. I’m having a lot of fun. I don’t want any part of
anything.
”

Rose stood up. “Okay.”

Kells said: “So long, Jakie.” He turned and went through the door, out through the large room, through the cigar store to the street. He walked up to Seventh and got into a cab. When they passed the big clock on the Dyas corner it was twenty minutes past three.

The desk clerk gave Kells several letters, and a message:
Mr. Dave Perry called at 2:35, and again at 3:25. Asked that you call him or come to his home as soon as possible. Important.

Kells went to his room and put in a call to Perry. He mixed a drink and read the letters while a telephone operator called him twice to say the line was busy. When she called again, he said: “Let it go,” went down and got into another cab. He told the driver: “Corner of Cherokee and Hollywood Boulevard.”

Perry lived in a kind of penthouse on top of the Richard Apartments. Kells climbed the narrow stair to the roof, knocked at the tin-sheathed fire door. He knocked again, then turned the knob, pushed the door open.

The room filled with a roar. Kells dropped on one knee, just inside, slammed the door shut. A strip of sunlight came in through two tall windows and yellowed the rug. Doc Haardt was lying on his back, half in, half out of the strip of sun. There was a round, bluish mark on one side of his throat, and as Kells watched it grew larger, red.

Ruth Perry sat on a low couch against one wall and looked at Haardt’s body.

A door slammed some place in back.

Kells got up, turned the key in the door through which he had entered. He crossed quickly, stood above the body.

Haardt had been a big, loose-jowled Dutchman, with a mouthful of gold. His dead face looked like he was about to say: “Well…I’ll tell you….” A small automatic lay on the floor near his feet.

Ruth Perry stood up and started to scream. Kells put one hand on the back of her neck, the other over her mouth. She took a step forward, put her arms around his body. She looked up at him, and he took his hand away from her mouth.

“Darling! I thought he was going to get you.” She was half crying. “He was here an hour. He made Dave call you….”

Kells patted her cheek. “Who, baby?”

“I don’t know.” She was coming around. She spoke rapidly. “A nance. A little guy with glasses.”

Kells inclined his head toward Haardt’s body. He said “What about Doc?”

“He came up about two-thirty…said he had to see you and didn’t want to go to the hotel. Dave called you and left word. Then about an hour ago that little son of a bitch walked in and told us all to sit down on the floor….”

Someone pounded heavily on the door.

Kells and Ruth Perry tiptoed across to a small, curtained archway that led to the dining room. Just inside the archway Dave Perry lay on his stomach.

Ruth Perry said: “The little guy slugged Dave when he made a pass for the phone, after he called you. He came to a while ago, and the little guy let him have it again. What a boy!”

Someone pounded on the door again and the sound of loud voices came through faintly.

Kells said: “I’m a cinch for this one if they find me here. That’s what the plant was for.” He nodded towards the door. “Can they get around to the kitchen?”

“Not unless they go down, and come up the fire escape. That’s the way our boyfriend went.”

“I’ll go the other way.” Kells went swiftly to Haardt’s body, knelt and picked up the automatic. “I’ll take this along to make your story good. Stick to it, except the calls to me, and the reason Doc was here.”

Ruth Perry nodded. Her eyes were bright with excitement.

Kells said: “I’ll see what I can get on the pansy, and try to talk a little sense to the telephone girl at the hotel, and the cab driver that hauled me here.”

The pounding on the door was almost continuous. Someone put a heavy shoulder to it, and the hinges creaked.

Kells started toward the bedroom, then turned and came back. Ruth Perry tilted her mouth up to him and he kissed her. “Don’t let this lug husband of yours talk,” he said, “and maybe you’d better go into a swoon to your alibi not answering the door. Let ’em bust it in.”

“My God, Gerry! I’m too excited to faint.”

“Papa knows best, baby.” He brought one arm up stiffly, swiftly from his side; the palm down, the fist loosely clinched. His knuckles smacked sharply against her chin. He caught her body in his arms, went into the living room and laid her gently on the floor. Then he took out his handkerchief, carefully wiped the little automatic, and put it on the floor midway between Haardt, Perry and Ruth Perry.

He went into the bedroom and into the adjoining bathroom. He raised the window and squeezed through to a narrow ledge. He was screened from the street by part of the building next door, and from the alley by a tree that spread over the backyard of the apartment house. A few feet along the ledge, he felt with his foot for a steel rung, found it, swung down to the next, across a short space to the sill of an open corridor window of the next door building.

He walked down the corridor, down several flights of stairs and out a rear door of the building. Down a kind of alley, he went through a wooden gate into a bungalow court and through to Whitley and walked north.

Cullen’s house was on the northeastern slope of Whitley Heights, a little way off Cahuenga. He answered the fourth ring, stood in the doorway blinking at Kells. “Well, stranger. Long time no see.”

Cullen was a heavily built man of about forty-five. He had a round, pale face, a blue chin and blue-black hair. He was naked except for a pair of yellow silk pajama trousers; a full-rigged ship was elaborately tattooed across his wide chest.

Kells said: “H’are ya, Willie?” went past Cullen into the room. He sat down in a deep leather chair, took off his panama hat, and ran his fingers through red, faintly graying hair.

Cullen went into the kitchen and came back with tall glasses, a bowl of ice, and a squat bottle.

Kells said: “Well, Willie—”

Cullen held up his hand. “Wait. Don’t tell me. Make me guess.” He closed his eyes, went through the motions of communing with himself. He opened his eyes, sat down and poured two drinks. “You’re in another jam,” he said.