“Where’s Beulah?” the big man asked in his deep, soft voice that went with his big white face and his depthless black eyes.
The Negro didn’t quite laugh. “No Beulah, brother. No hooch, no gals, jes’ the scram, brother. Jes’ the scram.”
“Kind of take your goddam mitt off me,” the big man said.
The bouncer made a mistake, too. He hit him. I saw his shoulder drop, his body swing behind the punch. It was a good clean punch. The big man didn’t even try to block it.
He shook his head and took hold of the bouncer by the throat. He was quick for his size. The bouncer tried to knee him. The big man turned him and bent him, took hold of the back of his belt. That broke. So the big man just put his huge hand flat against the bouncer’s spine and threw him, clear across the narrow room. The bouncer hit the wall on the far side with a crash that must have been heard in Denver. Then he slid softly down the wall and lay there, motionless.
“Yeah,” the big man said. “Let’s you and me nibble one.”
We went over to the bar. The barman swabbed the bar hurriedly. The customers, by ones and twos and threes, drifted out, silent across the bare floor, silent down the dim uncarpeted stairs. Their departing feet scarcely rustled.
“Whisky sour,” the big man said.
We had whisky sours.
“You know where Beulah is?” the big man asked the barman impassively, licking his whisky sour down the side of the thick glass.
“Beulah, you says?” the barman whined. “I ain’t seen her roun’ heah lately. Not right lately, no suh.”
“How long you been here?”
‘Bout a yeah, Ah reckon. ‘Bout a yeah. Yes suh. ‘Bout—”
“How long’s this coop been a dinge box?”
“Says which?”
The big man made a fist down at his side, about the size of a bucket.
“Five years anyway,” I put in. “This fellow wouldn’t know anything about a white girl named Beulah.”
The big man looked at me as if I had just hatched out. His whisky sour didn’t seem to improve his temper.
“Who the hell asked you to stick your face in?”
I smiled. I made it a big, friendly smile. “I’m the fellow came in here with you. Remember?”
He grinned back, a flat, white grin. “Whisky sour,” he told the barman. “Get them fleas outa your pants. Service.”
The barman scuttled around, hating us with the whites of his eyes.
The place was empty now, except for the two of us and the barman, and the bouncer over against the far wall.
The bouncer groaned and stirred. He rolled over and began to crawl softly along the baseboard, like a fly with one wing. The big man paid no attention to him.
“There ain’t nothing left of the joint,” he complained. “They was a stage and a band and cute little rooms where you could have fun. Beulah did some warbling. A redhead. Awful cute. We was to of been married when they hung the frame on me.”
We had two more whisky sours before us now. “What frame?” I asked.
“Where you figure I been them eight years I told you about?”
“In somebody’s Stony Lonesome,” I said.
“Right.” He prodded his chest with a thumb like a baseball bat. “Steve Skalla. The Great Bend job in Kansas. Just me. Forty grand. They caught up with me right here. I was what that—hey!”
The bouncer had made a door at the back and fallen through it. A lock clicked.
“Where’s that door lead to?” the big man demanded.
“Tha—tha’s Mistah Montgom’ry’s office, suh. He’s the boss. He’s got his office back—”
“He might know,” the big man said. He wiped his mouth on the Irish flag handkerchief and arranged it carefully back in his pocket. “He better not crack wise neither. Two more whisky sours.”
He crossed the room to the door behind the crap table. The lock gave him a little argument for a moment, then a piece of the panel dropped off and he went through, shut the door after him.
It was very silent in Shamey’s now. I looked at the barman.
“This guy’s tough,” I said quickly. “And he’s liable to go mean. You can see the idea. He’s looking for an old sweetie who used to work here when it was a place for whites. Got any artillery back there?”
“I thought you was with him,” the barman said suspiciously.
“Couldn’t help myself. He dragged me up. I didn’t feel like being thrown over any houses.”
“Shuah. Ah got me a shotgun,” the barman said, still suspicious.
He began to stoop behind the bar, then stayed in that position rolling his eyes.
There was a dull flat sound at the back of the place, behind the shut door. It might have been a slammed door. It might have been a gun. Just the one sound. No other followed it.
The barman and I waited too long, wondering what the sound was. Not liking to think what it could be.
The door at the back opened and the big man came through quickly, with a Colt army .45 automatic looking like a toy in his hand.
He looked the room over with one swift glance. His grin was taut. He looked like the man who could take forty grand single-handed from the Great Bend Bank.
He came over to us in swift, almost soundless steps, for all his size.
“Rise up, nigger!”
The barman came up slowly, gray; his hands empty, high.
The big man felt me over, stepped away from us.
“Mr. Montgomery didn’t know where Beulah was either,” he said softly. “He tried to tell me—with this.” He waggled the gun. “So long, punks. Don’t forget your rubbers.”
He was gone, down the stairs, very quickly, very quietly.
I jumped around the bar and took the sawed-off shotgun that lay there, on the shelf. Not to use on Steve Skalla. That was not my job. So the barman wouldn’t use it on me. I went back across the room and through that door.
The bouncer lay on the floor of a hall with a knife in his hand. He was unconscious. I took the knife out of his hand and stepped over him through a door marked Office.
Mr. Montgomery was in there, behind a small scarred desk, close to a partly boarded-up window. Just folded, like a handkerchief or a hinge.
A drawer was open at his right hand. The gun would have come from there. There was a smear of oil on the paper that lined it.
Not a smart idea, but he would never have a smarter one—not now.
Nothing happened while I waited for the police.
When they came both the barman and the bouncer were gone. I had locked myself in with Mr. Montgomery and the shotgun. Just in case.
Hiney got it. A lean-jawed, complaining, overslow detective lieutenant, with long yellow hands that he held on his knees while he talked to me in his cubicle at Headquarters. His shirt was darned under the points of his old-fashioned stiff collar. He looked poor and sour and honest.
This was an hour or so later. They knew all about Steve Skalla then, from their own records. They even had a ten-year-old photo that made him look as eyebrowless as a French roll. All they didn’t know was where he was.
“Six foot six and a half,” Hiney said. “Two hundred sixty-four pounds. A guy that size can’t get far, not in them fancy duds. He couldn’t buy anything else in a hurry. Whyn’t you take him?”
I handed the photo back and laughed.
Hiney pointed one of his long yellow fingers at me bitterly. “Carmady, a tough shamus, huh? Six feet of man, and a jaw you could break rocks on. Whyn’t you take him?”
“I’m getting a little gray at the temples,” I said. “And I didn’t have a gun. He had. I wasn’t on a gun-toting job over there. Skalla just picked me up. I’m kind of cute sometimes.”
Hiney glared at me.
“All right,” I said. “Why argue? I’ve seen the guy. He could wear an elephant in his vest pocket. And I didn’t know he’d killed anybody. You’ll get him all right.”
“Yeah,” Hiney said. “Easy. But I just
don’t like to waste my time on these shine killings. No pix. No space. Not even three lines in the want-ad section. Heck, they was five smokes— five, mind you—carved Harlem sunsets all over each other over on East Eight-four one time. All dead. Cold meat. And the——newshawks wouldn’t even go out there.”
“Pick him up nice,” I said. “Or he’ll knock off a brace of prowlies for you. Then you’ll get space.”
“And I wouldn’t have the case then neither,” Hiney jeered. “Well, the hell with him. I got him on the air. Ain’t nothing else to do but just sit.”
“Try the girl,” I said. “Beulah. Skalla will. That’s what he’s after. That’s what started it all. Try her.”
“You try her,” Hiney said. “I ain’t been in a joy house in twenty years.”
“I suppose I’d be right at home in one. How much will you pay?”
“Jeeze, guy, coppers don’t hire private dicks. What with?” He rolled a cigarette out of a can of tobacco. It burned down one side like a forest fire. A man yelled angrily into a telephone in the next cubbyhole. Hiney made another cigarette with more care and licked it and lighted it. He clasped his bony hands on his bony knees again.
“Think of your publicity,” I said. “I bet you twenty-five I find Beulah before you put Skalla under glass.”
He thought it over. He seemed almost to count his bank balance on his cigarette puffs.
“Ten is top,” he said. “And she’s all mine—private.”
I stared at him.
“I don’t work for that kind of money,” I said. “But if I can do it in one day—and you let me alone—I’ll do it for nothing. Just to show you why you’ve been a lieutenant for twenty years.”
He didn’t like that crack much better than I liked his about the joy house. But we shook hands on it.
I got my old Chrysler roadster out of the official parking lot and drove back towards the Central Avenue district.
Shamey’s was closed up, of course. An obvious plainclothes man sat in a car in front of it, reading a paper with one eye. I didn’t know why. Nobody there knew anything about Skalla.
I parked around the corner and went into the diagonal lobby of a Negro hotel called the Hotel Sans Souci. Two rows of hard, empty chairs stared at each other across a strip of fiber carpet. Behind a desk a bald-headed man had his eyes shut and his hands clasped on the desk top. He dozed. He wore an ascot tie that had been tied about 1880, and the green stone in his stickpin was not quite as large as a trash barrel. His large, loose chin folded down on it gently, and his brown hands were soft, peaceful, and clean.
A metal embossed sign at his elbow said: This Hotel Is Under the Protection of the International Consolidated Agencies, Inc.
When he opened one eye I pointed to the sign and said: “H.P.D. Man checking up. Any trouble here?”
H.P.D. Means Hotel Protective Department, which is the part of a large agency that looks after check bouncers and people who move out by the back stairs, leaving second-hand suitcases full of bricks.
“Trouble, brother,” he said, in a high, sonorous voice, “is something we is fresh out of.” He lowered the voice four or five notches and added, “We don’t take no checks.”
I leaned on the counter across from his folded hands and started to spin a quarter on the bare, scarred wood.
“Heard what happened over at Shamey’s this morning?”
“Brother, I forgit.” Both his eyes were open now and he was watching the blur of light made by the spinning quarter.
“The boss got bumped off,” I said. “Montgomery. Got his neck broken.”
“May the Lawd receive his soul, brother.” The voice went down again. “Cop?”
“Private—on a confidential lay. And I know a man who can keep one that way when I see one.”
He looked me over, closed his eyes again. I kept spinning the quarter. He couldn’t resist looking at it.
“Who done it?” he asked softly. “Who fixed Sam?”
“A tough guy out of the jailhouse got sore because it wasn’t a white joint. It used to be. Remember?”
He didn’t say anything. The coin fell over with a light whirr and lay still.
“Call your play,” I said. “I’ll read you a chapter of the Bible or buy you a drink. Either one.”
“Brother,” he said sonorously, “I kinda like to read my Bible in the seclusion of my family.” Then he added swiftly, in his business voice, “Come around to this side of the desk.”
I went around there and pulled a pint of bonded bourbon off my hip and handed it to him in the shelter of the desk. He poured two small glasses, quickly, sniffed his with a smooth, expert manner, and tucked it away.
“What you want to know?” he asked. “Ain’t a crack in the pavement I don’t know. Mebbe I ain’t tellin’ though. This liquor’s been in the right company.”
“Who ran Shamey’s before it was a colored place?”
He stared at me, surprised. “The name of that pore sinner was Shamey, brother.”
I groaned. “What have I been using for brains?”
“He’s daid, brother, gathered to the Lawd. Died in nineteen and twenty-nine. A wood alcohol case, brother. And him in the business.” He raised his voice to the sonorous level. “The same year the rich folks lost their goods and chattels, brother.” The voice went down again. “I didn’t lose me a nickel.”
“I’ll bet you didn’t. Pour some more. He leave any folks— anybody that’s still around?”
He poured another small drink, corked the bottle firmly. “Two is all—before lunch,” he said. “I thank you, brother. Yo’ method of approach is soothin’ to a man’s dignity.” He cleared his throat. “Had a wife,” he said. “Try the phone book.”
He wouldn’t take the bottle. I put it back on my hip. He shook hands with me, folded his on the desk once more and closed his eyes.
The incident, for him, was over.
There was only one Shamey in the phone book. Violet Lu Shamey, 1644 West Fifty-fourth Place. I spent a nickel in a booth.
After a long time a dopey voice said, “Uh-huh. Wh-what is it?”
“Are you the Mrs. Shamey whose husband once ran a place on Central Avenue—a place of entertainment?”
“Wha—what? My goodness sakes alive! My husband’s been gone these seven years. Who did you say you was?”
“Detective Carmady. I’ll be right out. It’s important.”
“Wh-who did you say—”
It was a thick, heavy, clogged voice.
It was a dirty brown house with a dirty brown lawn in front of it. There was a large bare patch around a tough-looking palm tree, On the porch stood one lonely rocker.
The afternoon breeze made the unpruned shoots of last year’s poinsettias tap-tap against the front wall. A line of stiff, yellowish, half-washed clothes jittered on a rusty wire in the side yard.
I drove on a little way and parked my roadster across the street, and walked back.
The bell didn’t work, so I knocked. A woman opened the door blowing her nose. A long yellow face with weedy hair growing down the sides of it. Her body was shapeless in a flannel bathrobe long past all color and design. It was just something around her. Her toes were large and obvious in a pair of broken man’s slippers.
I said, “Mrs. Shamey?”
“You the—?”
“Yeah. I just called you.”
She gestured me in wearily. “I ain’t had time to get cleaned up yet,” she whined.
We sat down in a couple of dingy mission rockers and looked at each other across a living room in which everything was junk except a small new radio droning away behind its dimly lighted panel.
“All the company I got,” she said. Then she tittered. “Bert ain’t done nothing, has he? I don’t get cops calling on me much.”
“Bert?”
“Bert Shamey, mister. My husband.”
She tittered again and flopped her feet up and down. In her titter was a loose alcoholic overtone. It seemed I was n
ot to get away from it that day.
“A joke, mister,” she said. “He’s dead. I hope to Christ there’s enough cheap blondes where he is. He never got enough of them here.”
“I was thinking more about a redhead,” I said.
“I guess he’d use one of those too.” Her eyes, it seemed to me, were not so loose now. “I don’t call to mind. Any special one?”
“Yeah. A girl named Beulah. I don’t know her last name. She worked at the Club on Central. I’m trying to trace her for her folks. It’s a colored place now and, of course, the people there never heard of her.”
“I never went there,” the woman yelled, with unexpected violence. “I wouldn’t know.”
“An entertainer,” I said. “A singer. No chance you’d know her, eh?”
She blew her nose again, on one of the dirtiest handkerchiefs I ever saw. “I got a cold.”
“You know what’s good for it,” I said.
She gave me a swift, raking glance. “I’m fresh out of that.”
“I’m not.”
“Gawd,” she said. “You’re no cop. No cop ever bought a drink.”
I brought out my pint of bourbon and balanced it on my knee. It was almost full still. The clerk at the Hotel Sans Souci was no reservoir. The woman’s seaweed-colored eyes jumped at the bottle. Her tongue coiled around her lips.
“Man, that’s liquor,” she sighed. “I don’t care who you are. Hold it careful, mister.”
She heaved up and waddled out of the room and came back with two thick, smeared glasses.
“No fixin’s,” she said. “Just what you brought.” She held the glasses out.
I poured her a slug that would have made me float over a wall. A smaller one for me. She put hers down like an aspirin tablet and looked at the bottle. I poured her another. She took that over to her chair. Her eyes had turned two shades browner.
“This stuff dies painless with me,” she said. “It never knows what hit it. What was we talkin’ about?”
“A red-haired girl named Beulah. Used to work at the joint. Remember better now?”
“Yeah.” She used her second drink. I went over and stood the bottle on the table beside her. She used some out of that.