He looked at the high blank wall of a storage warehouse, across an alley. There were scattered windows in it, high up, none of them lighted. Delaguerra pulled his head down again, said quietly, under his breath: “Silenced rifle, maybe. And very sweet shooting.”
His hand went forward again, diffidently, took the little roll of bills from Joey Chill’s shirt. He went back along the wall to the door, still crouched, reached up and got the key from the door, opened it, straightened and stepped through quickly, locked the door from the outside.
He went along a dirty corridor and down four flights of steps to a narrow lobby. The lobby was empty, There was a desk and a bell on it, no one behind it. Delaguerra stood behind the plate-glass street door and looked across the street at a frame rooming house where a couple of old men rocked on the porch, smoking. They looked very peaceful. He watched them for a couple of minutes.
He went out, searched both sides of the block quickly with sharp glances, walked along beside parked cars to the next corner. Two blocks over he picked up a cab and rode back to Stoll’s Billiard Parlors on Newton Street.
Lights were lit all over the poolroom now. Balls clicked and spun, players weaved in and out of a thick haze of cigarette smoke. Delaguerra looked around, then went to where a chubby-faced man sat on a high stool beside a cash register.
“You Stoll?”
The chubby-faced man nodded.
“Where did Max Chill get to?”
“Long gone, brother. They only played a hundred up. Home, I guess.”
“Where’s home?”
The chubby-faced man gave him a swift, flickering glance that passed like a finger of light.
“I wouldn’t know.”
Delaguerra lifted a hand to the pocket where he carried his badge. He dropped it again—tried not to drop it too quickly. The chubby-faced man grinned.
“Flattie, eh? Okey, he lives at the Mansfield, three blocks west on Grand.”
10
Cefarino Toribo, the good-looking Filipino in the well-cut tan suit, gathered two dimes and three pennies off the counter in the telegraph office, smiled at the bored Monde who was waiting on him.
“That goes out right away, Sugar?”
She glanced at the message icily. “Hotel Mansfield? Be there in twenty minutes—and save the sugar.”
“Okey, Sugar.”
Toribo dawdled elegantly out of the office. The blonde spiked the message with a jab, said over her shoulder: “Guy must be nuts. Sending a wire to a hotel three blocks away.”
Ceferino Toribo strolled along Spring Street, trailing smoke over his neat shoulder from a chocolate-colored cigarette. At Fourth he turned west, went three blocks more, turned into the side entrance of the Mansfield, by the barbershop. He went up some marble steps to a mezzanine, along the back of a writing room and up carpeted steps to the third floor. He passed the elevators and swaggered down a long corridor to the end, looking at the numbers on doors.
He came back halfway to the elevators, sat down in an open space where there was a pair of windows on the court, a glass-topped table and chairs. He lit a fresh cigarette from his stub, leaned back and listened to the elevators.
He leaned forward sharply whenever one stopped at that floor, listening for steps. The steps came in something over ten minutes. He stood up and went to the corner of the wall where the widened-out space began. He took a long thin gun out from under his right arm, transferred it to his right hand, held it down against the wall beside his leg.
A squat, pockmarked Filipino in bellhop’s uniform came along the corridor, carrying a small tray. Toribo made a hissing noise, lifted the gun. The squat Filipino whirled. His mouth opened and his eyes bulged at the gun.
Toribo said, “What room, punk?”
The squat Filipino smiled very nervously, placatingly. He came close, showed Toribo a yellow envelope on his tray. The figures 338 were penciled on the window of the envelope.
“Put it down,” Toribo said calmly.
The squat Filipino put the telegram on the table. He kept his eyes on the gun.
“Beat it,” Toribo said. “You put it under the door, see?”
The squat Filipino ducked his round black head, smiled nervously again, and went away very quickly towards the elevators.
Toribo put the gun in his jacket pocket, took out a folded white paper. He opened it very carefully, shook glistening white powder from it on to the hollow place formed between his left thumb and forefinger when he spread his hand. He sniffed the powder sharply up his nose, took out a flame-colored silk handkerchief and wiped his nose.
He stood still for a little while. His eyes got the dullness of slate and the skin on his brown face seemed to tighten over his high cheekbones. He breathed audibly between his teeth.
He picked the yellow envelope up and went along the corridor to the end, stopped in front of the last door, knocked.
A voice called out. He put his lips close to the door, spoke in a high-pitched, very deferential voice.
“Mail for you, sir.”
Bedsprings creaked. Steps came across the floor inside. A key turned and the door opened. Toribo had his thin gun out again by this time. As the door opened he stepped swiftly into the opening, sidewise, with a graceful sway of his hips. He put the muzzle of the thin gun against Max Chill’s abdomen.
“Back up!” he snarled, and his voice now had the metallic twang of a plucked banjo string.
Max Chill backed away from the gun. He backed across the room to the bed, sat down on the bed when his legs struck the side of it. Springs creaked and a newspaper rustled. Max Chill’s pale face under the neatly parted brown hair had no expression at all.
Toribo shut the door softly, snapped the lock. When the door latch snapped, Max Chill’s face suddenly became a sick face. His lips began to shake, kept on shaking.
Toribo said mockingly, in his twangy voice: “You talk to the cops, huh? Adios.”
The thin gun jumped in his hand, kept on jumping. A little pale smoke lisped from the muzzle. The noise the gun made was no louder than a hammer striking a nail or knuckles rapping sharply on wood. It made that noise seven times.
Max Chill lay down on the bed very slowly. His feet stayed on the floor. His eyes went blank, and his lips parted and a pinkish froth seethed on them. Blood showed in several places on the front of his loose shirt. He lay quite still on his back and looked at the ceiling with his feet touching the floor and the pink froth bubbling on his blue lips.
Toribo moved the gun to his left hand and put it away under his arm. He sidled over to the bed and stood beside it, looking down at Max Chill. After a while the pink froth stopped bubbling and Max Chill’s face became the quiet, empty face of a dead man.
Toribo went back to the door, opened it, started to back out, his eyes still on the bed. There was a stir of movement behind him.
He started to whirl, snatching a hand up. Something looped at his head. The floor tilted queerly before his eyes, rushed up at his face. He didn’t know when it struck his face.
Delaguerra kicked the Filipino’s legs into the room, out of the way of the door. He shut the door, locked it, walked stiffly over to the bed, swinging a thonged sap at his side. He stood beside the bed for quite a long time. At last he said under his breath: “They clean up. Yeah—they clean up.”
He went back to the Filipino, rolled him over and went through his pockets. There was a well-lined wallet without any identification, a gold lighter set with gannets, a gold cigarette case, keys, a gold pencil and knife, the flame-colored handkerchief, loose money, two guns and spare clips for them, and five bindles of heroin powder in the ticket pocket of the tan jacket.
He left it thrown around on the floor, stood up. The Filipino breathed heavily, with his eyes shut, a muscle twitching in one cheek. Delaguerra took a coil of thin wire out of his pocket and wired the brown man’s wrists behind him. He dragged him over to the bed, sat him up against the leg, looped a strand of the wire around his neck and around t
he bed post. He tied the flame-colored handkerchief to the looped wire.
He went into the bathroom and got a glass of water and threw it into the Filipino’s face as hard as he could throw it.
Toribo jerked, gagged sharply as the wire caught his neck. His eyes jumped open. He opened his mouth to yell.
Delaguerra jerked the wire taut against the brown throat. The yell was cut off as though by a switch. There was a strained anguished gurgle. Toribo’s mouth drooled.
Delaguerra let the wire go slack again and put his head down close to the Filipino’s head. He spoke to him gently, with a dry, very deadly gentleness.
“You want to talk to me, spig. Maybe not right away, maybe not even soon. But after a while you want to talk to me.”
The Filipino’s eyes rolled yellowly. He spat. Then his lips came together, tight.
Delaguerra smiled a faint, grim smile. “Tough boy,” he said softly. He jerked the handkerchief back, held it tight and hard, biting into the brown throat above the adam’s apple.
The Filipino’s legs began to jump on the floor. His body moved in sudden lunges. The brown of his face became a thick congested purple. His eyes bulged, shot with blood.
Delaguerra let the wire go loose again.
The Filipino gasped air into his lungs. His head sagged, then jerked back against the bedpost. He shook with a chill.
“Si…I talk,” he breathed.
11
When the bell rang Ironhead Toomey very carefully put a black ten down on a red jack. Then he licked his lips and put all the cards down and looked around towards the front door of the bungalow, through the dining-room arch. He stood up slowly, a big brute of a man with loose gray hair and a big nose.
In the living room beyond the arch a thin blonde girl was lying on a davenport, reading a magazine under a lamp with a torn red shade. She was pretty, but too pale, and her thin, high-arched eyebrows gave her face a startled look. She put the magazine down and swung her feet to the floor and looked at Ironhead Toomey with sharp, sudden fear in her eyes.
Toomey jerked his thumb silently. The girl stood up and went very quickly through the arch and through a swing door into the kitchen. She shut the swing door slowly, so that it made no noise.
The bell rang again, longer. Toomey shoved his white-socked feet into carpet slippers, hung a pair of glasses on his big nose, took a revolver off a chair beside him. He picked a crumpled newspaper off the floor and arranged it loosely in front of the gun, which he held in his left hand. He strolled unhurriedly to the front door.
He was yawning as he opened it, peering with sleepy eyes through the glasses at the tall man who stood on the porch.
“Okey,” he said wearily. “Talk it up.”
Delaguerra said: “I’m a police officer. I want to see Stella La Motte.”
Ironhead Toomey put an arm like a Yule log across the door frame and leaned solidly against it. His expression remained bored.
“Wrong dump, copper. No broads here.”
Delaguerra said: “I’ll come in and look.”
Toomey said cheerfully: “You will—like hell.”
Delaguerra jerked a gun out of his pocket very smoothly and swiftly, smashed it at Toomey’s left wrist. The newspaper and the big revolver fell down on the floor of the porch. Toomey’s face got a less bored expression.
“Old gag,” Delaguerra snapped. “Let’s go in.”
Toomey shook his left wrist, took his other arm off the door frame and swung hard at Delaguerra’s jaw. Delaguerra moved his head about four inches. He frowned, made a disapproving noise with his tongue and lips.
Toomey dived at him. Delaguerra sidestepped and chopped the gun at a big gray head. Toomey landed on his stomach, half in the house and half out on the porch. He grunted, planted his hands firmly and started to get up again, as if nothing had hit him.
Delaguerra kicked Toomey’s gun out of the way. A swing door inside the house made a light sound. Toomey was up on one knee and one hand as Delaguerra looked towards the noise. He took a swing at Delaguerra’s stomach, hit him. Delaguerra grunted and hit Toomey on the head again, hard. Toomey shook his head, growled: “Sappin’ me is a waste of time, ho.”
He dived sidewise, got hold of Delaguerra’s leg, jerked the leg off the floor. Delaguerra sat down on the boards of the porch, jammed in the doorway. His head hit the side of the doorway, dazed him.
The thin blonde rushed through the arch with a small automatic in her hand. She pointed it at Delaguerra, said furiously: “Reach, damn you!”
Delaguerra shook his head, started to say something, then caught his breath as Toomey twisted his foot. Toomey set his teeth hard and twisted the foot as if he was all alone in the world with it and it was his foot and he could do what he liked with it.
Delaguerra’s head jerked back again and his face got white. His mouth twisted into a harsh grimace of pain. He heaved up, grabbed Toomey’s hair with his left hand, dragged the big head up and over until his chin came up, straining. Delaguerra smashed the barrel of his Colt on the skin.
Toomey became limp, an inert mass, fell across his legs and pinned him to the floor. Delaguerra couldn’t move. He was propped on the floor on his right hand, trying to keep from being pushed flat by Toomey’s weight. He couldn’t get his right hand with the gun in it off the floor. The blonde was closer to him now, wild-eyed, white-faced with rage.
Delaguerra said in a spent voice: “Don’t be a fool, Stella. Joey—”
The blonde’s face was unnatural. Her eyes were unnatural, with small pupils, a queer flat glitter in them.
“Cops!” she almost screamed. “Cops! God, how I hate cops!”
The gun in her hand crashed. The echoes of it filled the room, went out of the open front door, died against the highboard fence across the street.
A sharp blow like the blow of a club hit the left side of Delaguerra’s head. Pain filled his head. Light flared—blinding white light that filled the world. Then it was dark. He fell soundlessly, into bottomless darkness.
12
Light came back as a red fog in front of his eyes. Hard, bitter pain racked the side of his head, his whole face, ground in his teeth. His tongue was hot and thick when he tried to move it. He tried to move his hands. They were far away from him, not his hands at all.
Then he opened his eyes and the red fog went away and he was looking at a face. It was a big face, very close to him, a huge face. It was fat and had sleek blue jowls and there was a cigar with a bright band in a grinning, thick-lipped mouth. The face chuckled. Delaguerra closed his eyes again and the pain washed over him, submerged him. He passed out.
Seconds, or years, passed. He was looking at the face again. He heard a thick voice.
“Well, he’s with us again. A pretty tough lad at that.”
The face came closer, the end of the cigar glowed cherry-red. Then he was coughing rackingly, gagging on smoke. The side of his head seemed to burst open. He felt fresh blood slide down his cheekbone, tickling the skin, then slide over stiff dried blood that had already caked on his face.
“That fixes him up swell,” the thick voice said.
Another voice with a touch of brogue to it said something gentle and obscene. The big face whirled towards the sound, snarling.
Delaguerra came wide awake then. He saw the room clearly, saw the four people in it. The big face was the face of Big John Masters.
The thin blonde girl was hunched on one end of the davenport, staring at the floor with a doped expression, her arms stiff at her sides, her hands out of sight in the cushions.
Dave Aage had his long lank body propped against a wall beside a curtained window. His wedge-shaped face looked bored. Commissioner Drew was on the other end of the davenport, under the frayed lamp. The light made silver in his hair. His blue eyes were very bright, very intent.
There was a shiny gun in Big John Masters’ hand. Delaguerra blinked at it, started to get up. A hard hand jerked at his chest, jarred him back. A wave of nausea went
over him. The thick voice said harshly: “Hold it, pussyfoot. You’ve had your fun. This is our party.”
Delaguerra licked his lips, said: “Give me a drink of water.”
Dave Aage stood away from the wall and went through the dining-room arch. He came back with a glass, held it to Delaguerra’s mouth. Delaguerra drank.
Masters said: “We like your guts, copper. But you don’t use them right. It seems you’re a guy that can’t take a hint. That’s too bad. That makes you through. Get me?”
The blonde turned her head and looked at Delaguerra with heavy eyes, looked away again. Aage went back to his wall. Drew began to stroke the side of his face with quick nervous fingers, as if Delaguerra’s bloody head made his own face hurt. Delaguerra said slowly: “Killing me will just hang you a little higher, Masters. A sucker on the big time is still a sucker. You’ve had two men killed already for no reason at all. You don’t even know what you’re trying to cover.”
The big man swore harshly, jerked the shiny gun up, then lowered it slowly, with a heavy leer. Aage said indolently: “Take it easy, John. Let him speak his piece.”
Delaguerra said in the same slow, careless voice: “The lady over there is the sister of the two men you’ve had killed. She told them her story, about framing Imlay, who got the pictures, how they got to Donegan Marr. Your little Filipino hood has done some singing. I get the general idea all right. You couldn’t be sure Imlay would kill Marr. Maybe Marr would get Imlay. It would work out all right either way. Only, if Imlay did kill Marr, the case had to be broken fast. That’s where you slipped. You started to cover up before you really knew what happened.”
Masters said harshly: “Crummy, copper, crummy. You’re wasting my time.”
The blonde turned her head towards Delaguerra, towards Masters’ back. There was hard green hate in her eyes now. Delaguerra shrugged very slightly, went on: “It was routine stuff for you to put killers on the Chill brothers. It was routine stuff to get me off the investigation, get me framed, and suspended because you figured I was on Marr’s payroll. But it wasn’t routine when you couldn’t find Imlay—and that crowded you.”