“I was the only one,” I said, “that lay down on the floor while still healthy.”
He took hold of his right ear and worried that. “You been here three days,” he howled. “In them three days we got more crime than in three years before you come. It ain’t human. I must be having a nightmare.”
“You can’t blame me, Chief,” I grumbled. “I came down here to look for a girl. I’m still looking for her. I didn’t tell Saint and his sister to hide out in your town. When I spotted him I tipped you off, though your own cops didn’t. I didn’t shoot Doc Sundstrand before anything could be got out of him. I still haven’t any idea why the phony nurse was planted there.”
“Nor me,” Fulwider yelled. “But it’s my job that’s shot full of holes. For all the chance I got to get out of this I might as well go fishin’ right now.”
I took another drink, hiccupped cheerfully. “Don’t say that, Chief,” I pleaded. “You cleaned the town up once and you can do it again. This one was just a hot grounder that took a bad bounce.”
He took a turn around the office and tried to punch a hole in the end wall, then slammed himself back in his chair. He eyed me savagely, grabbed for the whisky bottle, then didn’t touch it—as though it might do him more good in my stomach.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” he growled. “You run on back to San Angelo and I’ll forget it was your gun croaked Sundstrand.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say to a man that’s trying to earn his living, Chief. You know how it happened to be my gun.”
His face looked gray again, for a moment. He measured me for a coffin. Then the mood passed and he smacked his desk, said heartily:
“You’re right, Carmady. I couldn’t do that, could I? You still got to find that girl, ain’t you? Okay, you run on back to the hotel and get some rest. I’ll work on it tonight and see you in the A.M.”
I took another short drink, which was all there was left in the bottle. I felt fine. I shook hands with him twice and staggered out of his office. Flash bulbs exploded all over the corridor.
I went down the City Hall steps and around the side of the building to the police garage. My blue Chrysler was home again. I dropped the drunk act and went on down the side streets to the ocean front, walked along the wide cement walk towards the two amusement piers and the Grand Hotel.
It was getting dusk now. Lights on the piers came out. Masthead lights were lit on the small yachts riding at anchor behind the yacht harbor breakwater. In a white barbecue stand a man tickled wienies with a long fork and droned: “Get hungry, folks. Nice hot doggies here. Get hungry, folks.”
I lit a cigarette and stood there looking out to sea. Very suddenly, far out, lights shone from a big ship. I watched them, but they didn’t move. I went over to the hot dog man.
“Anchored?” I asked him, pointing.
He looked around the end of his booth, wrinkled his nose with contempt.
“Hell, that’s the gambling boat. The Cruise to Nowhere, they call the act, because it don’t go no place. If Tango ain’t crooked enough, try that. Yes, sir, that’s the good ship Montecito. How about a nice warm puppy?”
I put a quarter on his counter. “Have one yourself,” I said softly. “Where do the taxis leave from.?”
I had no gun. I went on back to the hotel to get my spare.
The dying Diana Saint had said “Monty.”
Perhaps she just hadn’t lived long enough to say “Montecito.”
At the hotel I lay down and fell asleep as though I had been anaesthetized. It was eight o’clock when I woke up, and I was hungry.
I was tailed from the hotel, but not very far. Of course the clean little city didn’t have enough crime for the dicks to be very good shadows.
10
It was a long ride for forty cents. The water taxi, an old speedboat without trimmings, slid through the anchored yachts and rounded the breakwater. The swell hit us. All the company I had besides the tough-looking citizen at the wheel was two spooning couples who began to peck at each other’s faces as soon as the darkness folded down.
I stared back at the lights of the city and tried not to bear down too hard on my dinner. Scattered diamond points at first, the lights drew together and became a jeweled wristlet laid out in the show window of the night. Then they were a soft orange yellow blur above the top of the swell. The taxi smacked in the invisible waves and bounced like a surf boat. There was cold fog in the air.
The portholes of the Montecito got large and the taxi swept out in a wide turn, tipped to an angle of forty-five degrees and careened neatly to the side of a brightly lit stage. The taxi engine idled down and backfired in the fog.
A sloe-eyed boy in a tight blue mess jacket and a gangster mouth handed the girls out, swept their escorts with a keen glance, sent them on up. The look he gave me told me something about him. The way he bumped into my gun holster told me more.
“Nix,” he said softly. “Nix.”
He jerked his chin at the taxi man. The taxi man dropped a short noose over a bitt, turned his wheel a little and climbed on the stage. He got behind me.
“Nix,” the one in the mess jacket purred. “No gats on this boat, mister. Sorry.”
“Part of my clothes,” I told him. “I’m a private dick. I’ll check it.”
“Sorry, bo. No checkroom for gats. On your way.”
The taxi man hooked a wrist through my right arm. I shrugged.
“Back in the boat,” the taxi man growled behind me. “I owe you forty cents, mister. Come on.”
I got back into the boat.
“Okay,” I sputtered at Mess Jacket. “If you don’t want my money, you don’t want it. This is a hell of a way to treat a visitor. This is—”
His sleek, silent smile was the last thing I saw as the taxi cast off and hit the swell on the way back. I hated to leave that smile.
The way back seemed longer. I didn’t speak to the taxi man and he didn’t speak to me. As I got out on to the float at the pier he sneered at my back: “Some other night when we ain’t so busy, shamus.”
Half a dozen customers waiting to go out stared at me. I went past them, past the door of the waiting room on the float, towards the steps at the landward end.
A big redheaded roughneck in dirty sneakers and tarry pants and a torn blue jersey straightened from the railing and bumped into me casually.
I stopped, got set. He said softly: “’s matter, dick? No soap on the hell ship?”
“Do I have to tell you?”
“I’m a guy that can listen.”
“Who are you?”
“Just call me Red.”
“Out of the way, Red. I’m busy.”
He smiled sadly, touched my left side. “The gat’s kind of bulgy under the light suit,” he said. “Want to get on board? It can be done, if you got a reason.”
“How much is the reason?” I asked him.
“Fifty bucks. Ten more if you bleed in my boat.”
I started away. “Twenty-five out,” he said quickly. “Maybe you come back with friends, huh?”
I went four steps away from him before I half turned, said: “Sold,” and went on.
At the foot of the bright amusement pier there was a flaring Tango Parlor, jammed full even at that still early hour. I went into it, leaned against a wall and watched a couple of numbers go up on the electric indicator, watched a house player with an inside straight give the high sign under the counter with his knee.
A large blueness took form beside me and I smelled tar. A soft, deep, sad voice said: “Need help out there?”
“I’m looking for a girl, but I’ll look alone. What’s your racket?” I didn’t look at him.
“A dollar here, a dollar there. I like to eat. I was on the cops but they bounced me.”
I liked his telling me that. “You must have been leveling,” I said, and watched the house player slip his card across with his thumb over the wrong number, watched the counter man get his own thumb in the same s
pot and hold the card up.
I could feel Red’s grin. “I see you been around our little city. Here’s how it works. I got a boat with an underwater bypass. I know a loading port I can open. I take a load out for a guy once in a while. There ain’t many guys below decks. That suit you?”
I got my wallet out and slipped a twenty and a five from it, passed them over in a wad. They went into a tarry pocket.
Red said: “Thanks,” softly, and walked away. I gave him a small start and went after him. He was easy to follow by his size, even in a crowd.
We went past the yacht harbor and the second amusement pier and beyond that the lights got fewer and the crowd thinned to nothing. A short black pier stuck out into the water with boats moored all along it. My man turned out that.
He stopped almost at the end, at the head of a wooden ladder. “I’ll bring her down to here,” he said. “Got to make noise warmin’ up.”
“Listen,” I said urgently. “I have to phone a man. I forgot.”
“Can do. Come on.”
He led the way farther along the pier, knelt, rattled keys on a chain, and opened a padlock. He lifted a small trap and took a phone out, listened to it.
“Still working,” he said with a grin in his voice. “Must belong to some crooks. Don’t forget to snap the lock back on.”
He slipped away silently into the darkness. For ten minutes I listened to water slapping the piles of the pier, the occasional whirr of a seagull in the gloom. Then far off a motor roared and kept on roaring for minutes. Then the noise stopped abruptly. More minutes passed. Something thudded at the foot of the ladder and a low voice called up to me: “All set.”
I hurried back to the phone, dialed a number, asked for Chief Fulwider. He had gone home. I dialed another number, got a woman, asked her for the chief, said I was headquarters.
I waited again. Then I heard the fat chiefs voice. It sounded full of baked potato.
“Yeah? Can’t a guy even eat? Who is it?”
“Carmady, Chief. Saint is on the Montecito. Too bad that’s over your line.”
He began to yell like a wild man. I hung up in his face, put the phone back in its zinc-lined cubbyhole and snapped the padlock. I went down the ladder to Red.
His big black speedboat slid out over the oily water. There was no sound from its exhaust but a steady bubbling along the side of the shell.
The city lights again became a yellow blur low on the black water and the ports of the good ship Montecito again got large and bright and round out to sea.
11
There were no floodlights on the seaward side of the ship. Red cut his motor to half of nothing and curved in under the overhang of the stern, sidled up to the greasy plates as coyly as a clubman in a hotel lobby.
Double iron doors loomed high over us, forward a little from the slimy links of a chain cable. The speedboat scuffed the Montecito’s ancient plates and the sea water slapped loosely at the bottom of the speedboat under our feet. The shadow of the big ex-cop rose over me. A coiled rope flicked against the dark, caught on something, and fell back into the boat. Red pulled it tight, made a turn around something on the engine cowling.
He said softly: “She rides as high as a steeplechaser. We gotta climb them plates.”
I took the wheel and held the nose of the speedboat against the slippery hull, and Red reached for an iron ladder flat to the side of the ship, hauled himself up into the darkness, grunting, his big body braced at right angles, his sneakers slipping on the wet metal rungs.
After a while something creaked up above and feeble yellow light trickled out into the foggy air. The outline of a heavy door showed, and Red’s crouched head against the light.
I went up the ladder after him. It was hard work. It landed me panting in a sour, littered hold full of cases and barrels. Rats skittered out of sight in the dark corners. The big man put his lips to my ear: “From here we got an easy way to the boiler-room catwalk. They’ll have steam up in one auxiliary, for hot water and the generators. That means one guy. I’ll handle him. The crew doubles in brass upstairs. From the boiler room I’ll show you a ventilator with no grating in it. Goes to the boat deck. Then it’s all yours.”
“You must have relatives on board,” I said.
“Never no mind. A guy gets to know things when he’s on the beach. Maybe I’m close to a bunch that’s set to knock the tub over. Will you come back fast?”
“I ought to make a good splash from the boat deck,” I said. “Here.”
I fished more bills out of my wallet, pushed them at him.
He shook his red head. “Uh-uh. That’s for the trip back.”
“I’m buying it now,” I said. “Even if I don’t use it. Take the dough before I bust out crying.”
“Well—thanks, pal. You’re a right guy.”
We went among the cases and barrels. The yellow light came from a passage beyond, and we went along the passage to a narrow iron door. That led to the catwalk. We sneaked along it, down an oily steel ladder, heard the slow hiss of oil burners and went among mountains of iron towards the sound.
Around a corner we looked at a short, dirty Italian in a purple silk shirt who sat in a wired-together office chair, under a naked bulb, and read the paper with the aid of steel-rimmed spectacles and a black forefinger.
Red said gently: “Hi, Shorty. How’s all the little bambinos?” The Italian opened his mouth and reached swiftly. Red hit him. We put him down on the floor and tore his purple shirt into shreds for ties and a gag.
“You ain’t supposed to hit a guy with glasses on,” Red said. “But the idea is you make a hell of a racket goin’ up a ventilator—to a guy down here. Upstairs they won’t hear nothing.”
I said that was the way I would like it, and we left the Italian bound up on the floor and found the ventilator that had no grating in it. I shook hands with Red, said I hoped to see him again, and started up the ladder inside the ventilator.
It was cold and black and the foggy air rushed down it and the way up seemed a long way. After three minutes that felt like an hour I reached the top and poked my head out cautiously. Canvas-sheeted boats loomed near by on the boat-deck davits. There was a soft whispering in the dark between a pair of them. The heavy throb of music pulsed up from below. Overhead a masthead light, and through the thin, high layers of the mist a few bitter stars stared down.
I listened, but didn’t hear any police-boat sirens. I got out of the ventilator, lowered myself to the deck.
The whispering came from a necking couple huddled under a boat. They didn’t pay any attention to me. I went along the deck past the closed doors of three or four cabins. There was a little light behind the shutters of two of them. I listened, didn’t hear anything but the merrymaking of the customers down below on the main deck.
I dropped into a dark shadow, took a lungful of air and let it out in a howl—the snarling howl of a gray timber wolf, lonely and hungry and far from home, and mean enough for seven kinds of trouble.
The deep-toned woof-woofing of a police dog answered me. A girl squealed along the dark deck and a man’s voice said: “I thought all the shellac drinkers was dead.”
I straightened and unshipped my gun and ran towards the barking. The noise came from a cabin on the other side of the deck.
I put an ear to the door, listened to a man’s voice soothing the dog. The dog stopped barking and growled once or twice, then was silent. A key turned in the door I was touching.
I dropped away from it, down on one knee. The door opened a foot and a sleek head came forward past its edge. Light from a hooded deck lamp made a shine on the black hair.
I stood up and slammed the head with my gun barrel. The man fell softly out of the doorway into my arms. I dragged him back into the cabin, pushed him down on a made-up berth.
I shut the door again, locked it. A small, wide-eyed girl crouched on the other berth. I said: “Hello, Miss Snare. I’ve had a lot of trouble finding you. Want to go home?”
&nbs
p; Farmer Saint rolled over and sat up, holding his head. Then he was very still, staring at me with his sharp black eyes. His mouth had a strained smile, almost good-humored.
I ranged the cabin with a glance, didn’t see where the dog was, but saw an inner door behind which he could be. I looked at the girl again.
She was not much to look at, like most of the people that make most of the trouble. She was crouched on the berth with her knees drawn up and hair falling over one eye. She wore a knitted dress and golf socks and sport shoes with wide tongues that fell down over the instep. Her knees were bare and bony under the hem of the dress. She looked like a schoolgirl.
I went over Saint for a gun, didn’t find one. He grinned at me.
The girl lifted her hand and threw her hair back. She looked at me as if I was a couple of blocks away. Then her breath caught and she began to cry.
“We’re married,” Saint said softly. “She thinks you’re set to blow holes in me. That was a smart trick with the wolf howl.”
I didn’t say anything. I listened. No noises outside.
“How’d you know where to come?” Saint asked.
“Diana told me—before she died,” I said brutally.
His eyes looked hurt. “I don’t believe it, shamus.”
“You ran out and left her in the ditch. What would you expect?”
“I figured the cops wouldn’t bump a woman and I could make some kind of a deal on the outside. Who got her?”
“One of Fulwider’s cops. You got him.”
His head jerked back and a wild look came over his face, then went away. He smiled sideways at the weeping girl.
“Hello, sugar. I’ll get you clear.” He looked back at me. “Suppose I come in without a scrap. Is there a way for her to get loose?”
“What do you mean, scrap?” I sneered.
“I got plenty friends on this boat, shamus. You ain’t even started yet.”
“You got her into it,” I said. “You can’t get her out. That’s part of the pay-off.”