De Ruse said: “Better—but still not all of it, Zapparty.”
Zapparty shrugged quickly, slightly opened his eyes against the flash, almost grinned.
“What the hell do you want? Jam on both sides?”
De Ruse said: “I want a finger put on the bird that had me grabbed…Let it go. I’ll do it myself.”
He took his foot off the running board and snapped his butt away into the darkness. He slammed the car door shut, got in the front. Nicky put the flash away and slid around under the wheel, started the engine.
De Ruse said: “Somewhere where I can phone for a cab, Nicky. Then you take this riding for another hour and then call Francy. I’ll have a word for you there.”
The blond man shook his head slowly from side to side. “You’re a good pal, Johnny, and I like you. But this has gone far enough this way. I’m taking it down to Headquarters. Don’t forget I’ve got a private-dick license under my old shirts at home.”
De Ruse said: “Give mc an hour, Nicky. Just an hour.”
The car slid down the hill and crossed the Sunland Highway, started down another hill towards Montrose. After a while Nicky said: “Check.”
11
It was twelve minutes past one by the stamping clock on the end of the desk in the lobby of the Casa de Oro. The lobby was antique Spanish, with black and red Indian rugs, nail-studded chairs with leather cushions and leather tassels on the corners of the cushions; the gray-green olivewood doors were fitted with clumsy wrought-iron strap hinges.
A thin, dapper clerk with a waxed blond mustache and a blond pompadour leaned on the desk and looked at the clock and yawned, tapping his teeth with the backs of his bright fingernails.
The door opened from the street and De Ruse came in. He took off his hat and shook it, put it on again and yanked the brim down. His eyes looked slowly around the deserted lobby and he went to the desk, slapped a gloved palm on it.
“What’s the number of the Hugo Candless bungalow?” he asked.
The clerk looked annoyed. He glanced at the clock, at De Ruse’s face, back at the clock. He smiled superciliously, spoke a slight accent.
“Twelve C. Do you wish to be announced—at this hour?”
De Ruse said: “No.”
He turned away from the desk and went towards a large door with a diamond of glass in it. It looked like the door of a very high-class privy.
As he put his hand out to the door a bell rang sharply behind him.
De Ruse looked back over his shoulder, turned and went back to the desk. The clerk took his hand away from the bell, rather quickly.
His voice was cold, sarcastic, insolent, saying: “It’s not that kind of apartment house, if you please.”
Two patches above De Ruse’s cheekbones got a dusky red. He leaned across the counter and took hold of the braided lapel of the clerk’s jacket, pulled the man’s chest against the edge of the desk.
“What was that crack, nance?”
The clerk paled but managed to bang his bell again with a flailing hand.
A pudgy man in a baggy suit and a seal-brown toupee came around the corner of the desk, put out a plump finger and said: “Hey.”
De Ruse let the clerk go. He looked expressionlessly at cigar ash on the front of the pudgy man’s coat.
The pudgy man said: “I’m the house man. You gotta see me if you want to get tough.”
De Ruse said: “You speak my language. Come over in the corner.”
They went over in the corner and sat down beside a palm. The pudgy man yawned amiably and lifted the edge of his toupee and scratched under it.
“I’m Kuvalick,” he said. “Times I could bop that Swiss myself. What’s the beef?”
De Ruse said: “Are you a guy that can stay clammed?”
“No. I like to talk. It’s all the fun I get around this dude ranch.” Kuvalick got half of a cigar out of a pocket and burned his nose lighting it.
De Ruse said: “This is one time you stay clammed.”
He reached inside his coat, got his wallet out, took out two tens. He rolled them around his forefinger, then slipped them off in a tube and tucked the tube into the outside pocket of the pudgy man’s coat.
Kuvalick blinked, but didn’t say anything.
De Ruse said: “There’s a man in the Candless apartment named George Dial. His car’s outside, and that’s where he would be. I want to see him and I don’t want to send a name in. You can take me in and stay with me.”
The pudgy man said cautiously: “It’s kind of late. Maybe he’s in bed.”
“If he is, he’s in the wrong bed,” De Ruse said. “He ought to get up.”
The pudgy man stood up. “I don’t like what I’m thinkin’, but I like your tens,” he said. “I’ll go in and see if they’re up. You stay put.”
De Ruse nodded. Kuvalick went along the wall and slipped through a door in the corner. The clumsy square butt of a hip holster showed under the back of his coat as he walked. The clerk looked after him, then looked contemptuously towards De Ruse and got out a nail file.
Ten minutes went by, fifteen. Kuvalick didn’t come back. De Ruse stood up suddenly, scowled and marched towards the door in the corner, The clerk at the desk stiffened, and his eyes went to the telephone on the desk, but he didn’t touch it.
De Ruse went through the door and found himself under a roofed gallery. Rain dripped softly off the slanting tiles of the roof. He went along a patio the middle of which was an oblong pool framed in a mosaic of gaily colored tiles. At the end of that, other patios branched off. There was a window light at the far end of the one to the left. He went towards it, at a venture, and when he came close to it made out the number 12C on the door.
He went up two flat steps and punched a bell that rang in the distance. Nothing happened. In a little while he rang again, then tried the door. It was locked. Somewhere inside he thought he heard a faint muffled thumping sound.
He stood in the rain a moment, then went around the corner of the bungalow, down a narrow, very wet passage to the back. He tried the service door; locked also. De Ruse swore, took his gun out from under his arm, held his hat against the glass panel of the service door and smashed the pane with the butt of the gun. Glass fell tinkling lightly inside.
He put the gun away, straightened his hat on his head and reached in through the broken pane to unlock the door.
The kitchen was large and bright with black and yellow tiling, looked as if it was used mostly for mixing drinks. Two bottles of Haig and Haig, a bottle of Hennessy, three or four kinds of fancy cordial bottles stood on the tiled drainboard. A short hall with a closed door led to the living room. There was a grand piano in the corner with a lamp lit beside it. Another lamp on a low table with drinks and glasses. A wood fire was dying on the hearth.
The thumping noise got louder.
De Ruse went across the living room and through a door framed in a valance into another hallway, thence into a beautifully paneled bedroom. The thumping noise came from a closet. De Ruse opened the door of the closet and saw a man.
He was sitting on the floor with his back in a forest of dresses on hangers. A towel was tied around his face. Another held his ankles together. His wrists were tied behind him. He was a very bald man, as bald as the croupier at the Club Egypt.
De Ruse stared down at him harshly, then suddenly grinned, bent and cut him loose.
The man spit a washcloth out of his mouth, swore hoarsely and dived into the clothes at the back of the closet. He came up with something furry clutched in his hand, straightened it out, and put it on his hairless head.
That made him Kuvalick, the house dick.
He got up still swearing and backed away from De Ruse, with a stiff alert grin on his fat face. His right hand shot to his hip holster.
De Ruse spread his hands, said: “Tell it,” and sat down in a small chintz-covered slipper chair.
Kuvalick stared at him quietly for a moment, then took his hand away from his gun.
&n
bsp; “There’s lights,” he said, “So I push the buzzer. A tall dark guy opens. I seen him around here a lot. That’s Dial. I say to him there’s a guy outside in the lobby wants to see him hush-hush, won’t give a name.”
“That made you a sap,” De Ruse commented dryly.
“Not yet, but soon,” Kuvalick grinned, and spit a shred of cloth out of his mouth. “I describe you. That makes me a sap. He smiled kind of funny and asks me to come in a minute. I go in past him and he shuts the door and sticks a gun in my kidney. He says: ‘Did you say he wore all dark clothes?’ I say: ‘Yes. And what’s that gat for?’ He says: ‘Does he have gray eyes and sort of crinkly black hair and is he hard around the teeth?’ I say: ‘Yes, you bastard and what’s the gat for?’
“He says: ‘For this,’ and lets me have it on the back of the head. I go down, groggy, but not out. Then the Candless broad comes out from a doorway and they tie me up and shove me in the closet and that’s that. I hear them fussin’ around for a little while and then I hear silence. That’s all until you ring the bell.”
De Ruse smiled lazily, pleasantly. His whole body was lax in the chair. His manner had become indolent and unhurried.
“They faded,” he said softly. “They got tipped off. I don’t think that was very bright.”
Kuvalick said: “I’m an old Wells Fargo dick and I can stand a shock. What they been up to?”
“What kind of woman is Mrs. Candless?”
“Dark, a looker, Sex hungry, as the fellow says. Kind of worn and tight. They get a new chauffeur every three months. There’s a couple guys in the Casa she likes too. I guess there’s this gigolo that bopped me.”
De Ruse looked at his watch, nodded, leaned forward to get up. “I guess it’s about time for some law. Got any friends downtown you’d like to give a snatch story to?”
A voice said: “Not quite yet.”
George Dial came quickly into the room from the hallway and stood quietly inside it with a long, thin, silenced automatic in his hand. His eyes were bright and mad, but his lemon-colored finger was very steady on the trigger of the small gun.
“We didn’t fade,” he said. “We weren’t quite ready. But it might not have been a bad idea—for you two.”
Kuvalick’s pudgy hand swept for his hip holster.
The small automatic with the black tube on it made two flat dull sounds.
A puff of dust jumped from the front of Kuvalick’s coat. His hands jerked sharply away from the sides and his small eyes snapped very wide open, like seeds bursting from a pod. He fell heavily on his side against the wall, lay quite still on his left side, with his eyes half open and his back against the wall. His toupee was tipped over rakishly.
De Ruse looked at him swiftly, looked back at Dial. No emotion showed in his face, not even excitement.
He said: “You’re a crazy fool, Dial. That kills your last chance. You could have bluffed it out. But that’s not your only mistake.”
Dial said ‘calmly: “No. I see that now. I shouldn’t have sent the boys after you. I did that just for the hell of it. That comes of not being a professional.”
De Ruse nodded slightly, looked at Dial almost with friendliness. “Just for the fun of it—who tipped you off the game had gone smash?”
“Francy—and she took her damn time about it,” Dial said savagely. “I’m leaving, so I won’t be able to thank her for a while.”
“Not ever,” De Ruse said. “You won’t get out of the state. You won’t ever touch a nickel of the big boy’s money. Not you or your sidekicks or your woman. The cops are getting the story—right now.”
Dial said: “We’ll get clear. We have enough to tour on, Johnny. So long.”
Dial’s face tightened and his hand jerked up, with the gun in it. De Ruse half closed his eyes, braced himself for the shock. The little gun didn’t go off. There was a rustle behind Dial and a tall dark woman in a gray fur coat slid into the room. A small hat was balanced on dark hair knotted on the nape of her neck. She was pretty, in a thin, haggard sort of way. The lip rouge on her mouth was as black as soot; there was no color in her cheeks.
She had a cool lazy voice that didn’t match with her taut expression. “Who is Francy?” she asked coldly.
De Ruse opened his eyes wide and his body got stiff in the chair and his right hand began to slide up towards his chest.
“Francy is my girl friend,” he said. “Mister Dial has been trying to get her away from mc. But that’s all right. He’s a handsome lad and ought to be able to pick his spots.”
The tall woman’s face suddenly became dark and wild and furious. She grabbed fiercely at Dial’s arm, the one that held the gun.’
De Ruse snatched for his shoulder holster, got his .38 loose. But it wasn’t his gun that went off. It wasn’t the silenced automatic in Dial’s hand. It was a huge frontier Colt with an eight-inch barrel and a boom like an exploding bomb. It went off from the floor, from beside Kuvalick’s right hip, where Kuvalick’s plump hand held it.
It went off just once. Dial was thrown back against the wall as if by a giant hand. His head crashed against the wall and instantly his darkly handsome face was a mask of blood.
He fell laxly down the wall and the little automatic with the black tube on it fell in front of him. The dark woman dived for it, down on her hands and knees in front of Dial’s sprawled body.
She got it, began to bring it up. Her face was convulsed, her lips were drawn back over thin wolfish teeth that shimmered.
Kuvalick’s voice said: “I’m a tough guy. I used to be a Wells Fargo dick.”
His great cannon slammed again. A shrill scream was torn from the woman’s lips. Her body was flung against Dial’s. Her eyes opened and shut, opened and shut. Her face got white and vacant.
“Shoulder shot. She’s okay,” Kuvalick said, and got up on his feet. He jerked open his coat and patted his chest.
“Bullet-proof vest,” he said proudly. “But I thought I’d better lie quiet for a while or he’d popped me in the face.”
12
Francine Ley yawned and stretched out a long green pajamaclad leg and looked at a slim green slipper on her bare foot. She yawned again, got up and walked nervously across the room to the kidney-shaped desk. She poured a drink, drank it quickly, with a sharp nervous shudder. Her face was drawn and tired, her eyes hollow; there were dark smudges under her eyes.
She looked at the tiny watch on her wrist. It was almost four o’clock in the morning. Still with her wrist up she whirled at a sound, put her back to the desk and began to breathe very quickly, pantingly.
De Ruse came in through the red curtains. He stopped and looked at her without expression, then slowly took off his hat and overcoat and dropped them on a chair. He took off his suit coat and his tan shoulder harness and walked over to the drinks.
He sniffed at a glass, filled it a third full of whiskey, put it down in a gulp.
“So you had to tip the louse off,” he said somberly, looking down into the empty glass he held.
Francine Ley said: “Yes. I had to phone him. What happened?”
“You had to phone the louse,” De Ruse said in exactly the same tone. “You knew damn well he was mixed up in it. You’d rather he got loose, even if he cooled me off doing it.”
“You’re all right, Johnny?” She asked softly, tiredly.
De Ruse didn’t speak, didn’t look at her. He put the glass down slowly and poured some more whiskey into it, added charged water, looked around for some ice. Not finding any he began to sip the drink with his eyes on the white top of the desk.
Francine Ley said: “There isn’t a guy in the world that doesn’t rate a start on you, Johnny. It wouldn’t do him any good, but he’d have to have it, if I knew him.”
De Ruse said slowly: “That’s swell. Only I’m not quite that good. I’d be a stiff right now except for a comic hotel dick that wears a Buntline Special and a bullet-proof vest to work.”
After a little while Francine Ley said: “Do
you want me to blow?”
De Ruse looked at her quickly, looked away again. He put his glass down and walked away from the desk. Over his shoulder he said: “Not so long as you keep on telling me the truth.”
He sat down in a deep chair and leaned his elbows on the arms of it, cupped his face in his hands. Francine Ley watched him for a moment, then went over and sat on an arm of the chair. She pulled his head back gently until it was against the back of the chair. She began to stroke his forehead.
De Ruse closed his eyes. His body became loose and relaxed. His voice began to sound sleepy.
“You saved my life over at the Club Egypt maybe. I guess that gave you the right to let handsome have a shot at me.”
Francine Ley stroked his head, without speaking.
“Handsome is dead,” De Ruse went on. “The peeper shot his face off.”
Francine Ley’s hand stopped. In a moment it began again, stroking his head.
“The Candless frau was in on it. Seems she’s a hot number. She wanted Hugo’s dough, and she wanted all the men in the world except Hugo. Thank heaven she didn’t get bumped. She talked plenty. So did Zapparty.”
“Yes, honey,” Francine Ley said quietly.
De Ruse yawned. “Candless is dead. He was dead before we started. They never wanted him anything else but dead. Parisi didn’t care one way or the other, as long as he got paid.”
Francine Ley said: “Yes, honey.”
“Tell you the rest in the morning,” De Ruse said thickly. “I guess Nicky and I arc all square with the law…Let’s go to Reno, get married…I’m sick of this tomcat life…Get me ‘nother drink, baby.”
Francine Ley didn’t move except to draw her fingers softly and soothingly across his forehead and back over his temples. De Ruse moved lower in the chair. His head rolled to one side.
“Yes, honey.”
“Don’t call mc honey,” De Ruse said thickly. “Just call me pigeon.”
When he was quite asleep she got off the arm of the chair and went and sat down near him. She sat very still and watched him, her face cupped in her long delicate hands with the cherry-colored nails.