Mallory put his cigarette in his mouth and clasped his hands together behind his head. He puffed smoke and talked through it at the wall above Mardonne’s head.
“He crossed everybody up and then he crossed himself. He played too many parts and got his lines mixed. He was gun-drunk. When he got a rod in his hand he had to shoot somebody. Somebody shot back.”
Mardonne went on rocking, said: “Maybe you could make it a little more definite.”
“Sure…I could tell you a story…about a girl who wrote some letters once. She thought she was in love. They were reckless letters, the sort a girl would write who had more guts than was good for her. Time passed, and somehow the letters got on the blackmail market. Some workers started to shake the girl down. Not a high stake, nothing that would have bothered her, but it seems she liked to do things the hard way. Landrey thought he would help her out. He had a plan and the plan needed a man who could wear a tux, keep a spoon out of a coffee-cup, and wasn’t known in this town. He got me. I run a small agency in Chicago.”
Mardonne swiveled towards the open windows and stared out at the tops of some trees. “Private dick, huh?” he grunted impassively. “From Chicago.”
Mallory nodded, looked at him briefly, looked back at the same spot on the wall. “And supposed to be on the level, Mardonne. You wouldn’t think it from some of the company I’ve been keeping lately.”
Mardonne made a quick impatient gesture, said nothing.
Mallory went on: “Well, I gave the job a tumble, which was my first and worst mistake. I was making a little headway when the shakedown turned into a kidnapping. Not so good. I got in touch with Landrey and he decided to show with me. We found the girl without a lot of trouble. We took her home. We still had to get the letters. While I was trying to pry them loose from the guy I thought had them one of the bad boys got in the back way and wanted to play with his gun. Landrey made a swell entrance, struck a pose and shot it out with the hood, toe to toe. He stopped some lead. It was pretty, if you like that sort of thing, but it left me in a spot. So perhaps I’m prejudiced. I had to lam out and collect my ideas.”
Mardonne’s dull brown eyes showed a passing flicker of emotion. “The girl’s story might be interesting, too,” he said coolly.
Mallory blew a pale cloud of smoke. “She was doped and doesn’t know anything. She wouldn’t talk, if she did. And I don’t know her name.”
“I do,” Mardonne said. “Landrey’s driver also talked to me. So I won’t have to bother you about that.”
Mallory talked on, placidly. “That’s the tale from the outside, without notes. The notes make it funnier—and a hell of a lot dirtier. The girl didn’t ask Landrey for help, but he knew about the shakedown. He’d once had the letters, because they were written to him. His scheme to get on their trail was for me to make a wrong pass at the girl myself, make her think I had the letters, talk her into a meeting at a night-club where we could be watched by the people who were working on her. She’d come, because she had that kind of guts. She’d be watched, because there would be an inside—maid, chauffeur or something. The boys would want to know about me. They’d pick me up, and if I didn’t get conked out of hand, I might learn who was who in the racket. Sweet set-up, don’t you think so?”
Mardonne said coldly: “A bit loose in places…Go on talking.”
“When the decoy worked I knew it was fixed. I stayed with it, because for the time being I had to. After a while there was another sour play, unrehearsed this time. A big flattie who was taking graft money from the gang got cold feet and threw the boys for a loss. He didn’t mind a little extortion, but a snatch was going off the deep end on a dark night. The break made things easier for me, and it didn’t hurt Landrey any, because the flattie wasn’t in on the clever stuff. The hood who got Landrey wasn’t either, I guess. That one was just sore, thought he was being chiseled out of his cut.”
Mardonne flipped his brown hands up and down on the chair arms, like a purchasing agent getting restless under a sales talk. “Were you supposed to figure things out this way?” he asked with a sneer.
“I used my head, Mardonne. Not soon enough, but I used it. Maybe I wasn’t hired to think, but that wasn’t explained to me, either. If I got wise, it was Landrey’s hard luck. He’d have to figure an out to that one. If I didn’t, I was the nearest thing to an honest stranger he could afford to have around.”
Mardonne said smoothly: “Landrey had plenty of dough. He had some brains. Not a lot, but some. He wouldn’t go for a cheap shake like that.”
Mallory laughed harshly: “It wasn’t so cheap to him, Mardonne. He wanted the girl. She’d got away from him, out of his class. He couldn’t pull himself up, but he could pull her down. The letters were not enough to bring her into line. Add a kidnapping and a fake rescue by an old flame turned racketeer, and you have a story no rag could be made to soft-pedal. If it was spilled, it would blast her right out of her job. You guess the price for not spilling it, Mardonne.”
Mardonne said: “Uh-huh,” and kept on looking out of the window.
Mallory said: “But all that’s on the cuff, now. I was hired to get some letters, and I got them—out of Landrey’s pocket when he was bumped. I’d like to get paid for my time.”
Mardonne turned in his chair and put his hands flat on the top of the desk. “Pass them over,” he said. “I’ll see what they’re worth to me.”
Mallory’s eyes got sharp and bitter. “The trouble with you heels is that you can’t figure anybody to be on the up and up…The letters are withdrawn from circulation. They passed around too much and they wore out.”
“It’s a sweet thought,” Mardonne sneered. “For somebody else. Landrey was my partner, and I thought a lot of him…So you give the letters away, and I pay you dough for letting Landrey get gunned. I ought to write that one in my diary. My hunch is you’ve been paid plenty already—by Miss Rhonda Farr.”
Mallory said, sarcastically: “I figured it would look like that to you. Maybe you’d like the story better this way…The girl got tired of having Landrey trail her around. She faked some letters and put them where her smart lawyer could lift them, pass them along to a man who was running a strong-arm squad the lawyer used in his business sometimes. The girl wrote to Landrey for help and he got me. The girl got to me with a better bid. She hired me to put Landrey on the spot. I played along with him until I got him under the gun of a wiper that was pretending to make a pass at me. The wiper let him have it, and I shot the wiper with Landrey’s gun, to make it look good. Then I had a drink and went home to get some sleep.”
Mardonne leaned over and pressed a buzzer on the side of his desk. He said: “I like that one a lot better. I’m wondering if I could make it stick.”
“You could try,” Mallory said lazily. “I don’t guess it would be the first lead quarter you’ve tried to pass.”
9
The room door came open and the blond boy strolled in. His lips were spread in a pleased grin and his tongue came out between them. He had an automatic in his hand.
Mardonne said: “I’m not busy anymore, Henry.”
The blond boy shut the door. Mallory stood up and backed slowly towards the wall. He said grimly:
“Now for the funny stuff, eh?”
Mardonne put brown fingers up and pinched the fat part of his chin. He said curtly:
“There won’t be any shooting here. Nice people come to this house. Maybe you didn’t spot Landrey, but I don’t want you around. You’re in my way.”
Mallory kept on backing until he had his shoulders against the wall. The blond boy frowned, took a step towards him. Mallory said:
“Stay right where you are, Henry. I need room to think. You might get a slug into me, but you wouldn’t stop my gun from talking a little. The noise wouldn’t bother me at all.”
Mardonne bent over his desk, looking sideways. The blond boy slowed up. His tongue still peeped out between his lips. Mardonne said:
“I’ve got some C n
otes in the desk here. I’m giving Henry ten of them. He’ll go to your hotel with you. He’ll even help you pack. When you get on the train East he’ll pass you the dough. If you come back after that, it will be a new deal—from a cold deck.” He put his hand down slowly and opened the desk drawer.
Mallory kept his eyes on the blond boy. “Henry might make a change in the continuity,” he said pleasantly. “Henry looks kind of unstable to me.”
Mardonne stood up, brought his hand from the drawer. He dropped a packet of notes on top of the desk. He said:
“I don’t think so. Henry usually does what he is told.”
Mallory grinned tightly. “Perhaps that’s what I’m afraid of,” he said. His grin got tighter still, and crookeder. His teeth glittered between his pale lips. “You said you thought a lot of Landrey, Mardonne. That’s hooey. You don’t care a thin dime about Landrey, now he’s dead. You probably stepped right into his half of the joint, and nobody around to ask questions. It’s like that in the rackets. You want me out because you think you can still peddle your dirt—in the right place—for more than this small-time joint would net in a year. But you can’t peddle it, Mardonne. The market’s closed. Nobody’s going to pay you a plugged nickel either to spill it or not to spill it.”
Mardonne cleared his throat softly. He was standing in the same position, leaning forward a little over the desk, both hands on top of it, and the packet of notes between his hands. He licked his lips, said:
“All right, master mind. Why not?”
Mallory made a quick but expressive gesture with his right thumb.
“I’m the sucker in this deal. You’re the smart guy. I told you a straight story the first time and my hunch says Landrey wasn’t in that sweet frame alone. You were in it up to your fat neck!…But you aced yourself backwards when you let Landrey pack those letters around with him. The girl can talk now. Not a whole lot, but enough to get backing from an outfit that isn’t going to scrap a million-dollar reputation because some cheap gambler wants to get smart…If your money says different, you’re going to get a jolt that’ll have you picking your eye-teeth out of your socks. You’re going to see the sweetest cover-up even Hollywood ever fixed.”
He paused, flashed a quick glance at the blond boy. “Something else, Mardonne. When you figure on gun play get yourself a loogan that knows what it’s all about. The gay caballero here forgot to thumb back his safety.”
Mardonne stood frozen. The blond boy’s eyes flinched down to his gun for a split second of time. Mallory jumped fast along the wall, and his Luger snapped into his hand. The blond boy’s face tensed, his gun crashed. Then the Luger cracked, and a slug went into the wall beside the blond boy’s gay felt hat. Henry faded down gracefully, squeezed lead again. The shot knocked Mallory back against the wall. His left arm went dead.
His lips writhed angrily. He steadied himself; the Luger talked twice, very rapidly.
The blond boy’s gun arm jerked up and the gun sailed against the wall high up. His eyes widened, his mouth came open in a yell of pain. Then he whirled, wrenched the door open and pitched straight out on the landing with a crash.
Light from the room streamed after him. Somebody shouted somewhere. A door banged. Mallory looked at Mardonne, saying evenly:
“Got me in the arm!——I could have killed the bastard four times!”
Mardonne’s hand came up from the desk with a blued revolver in it. A bullet splashed into the floor at Mallory’s feet. Mardonne lurched drunkenly, threw the gun away like something red hot. His hands groped high in the air. He looked scared stiff.
Mallory said:” Get in front of me, big shot! I’m moving out of here.”
Mardonne came out from behind the desk. He moved jerkily, like a marionette. His eyes were as dead as stale oysters. Saliva drooled down his chin.
Something loomed in the doorway. Mallory heaved sideways, firing blindly at the door. But the sound of the Luger was overborne by the terrific flat booming of a shotgun. Searing flame stabbed down Mallory’s right side. Mardonne got the rest of the load.
He plunged to the floor on his face, dead before he landed.
A sawed-off shotgun dumped itself in through the open door. A thick-bellied man in shirtsleeves eased himself down in the door-frame, clutching and rolling as he fell. A strangled sob came out of his mouth, and blood spread on the pleated front of a dress shirt.
Sudden noise flared out down below. Shouting, running feet, a shrilling off-key laugh, a high sound that might have been a shriek. Cars started outside, tires screeched on the driveway. The customers were getting away. A pane of glass went out somewhere. There was a loose clatter of running feet on a pavement.
Across the lighted patch of landing nothing moved. The blond boy groaned softly, out there on the floor, behind the dead man in the doorway.
Mallory plowed across the room, sank into the chair at the end of the desk. He wiped sweat from his eyes with the heel of his gun hand. He leaned his ribs against the desk, panting, watching the door.
His left arm was throbbing now, and his right leg felt like the plagues of Egypt. Blood ran down his sleeve inside, down on his hand, off the tips of two fingers.
After a while he looked away from the door, at the packet of notes lying on the desk under the lamp. Reaching across he pushed them into the open drawer with the muzzle of the Luger. Grinning with pain he leaned far enough over to pull the drawer shut. Then he opened and closed his eyes quickly, several times, squeezing them tight together, then snapping them open wide. That cleared his head a little. He drew the telephone towards him.
There was silence below stairs now. Mallory put the Luger down, lifted the phone off the prongs and put it down beside the Luger.
He said out loud: “Too bad, baby…Maybe I played it wrong after all…Maybe the louse hadn’t the guts to hurt you at that…well…there’s got to be talking done now”
As he began to dial, the wail of a siren got louder.
10
The uniformed officer behind the typewriter desk talked into a dictaphone, then looked at Mallory and jerked his thumb towards a glass-paneled door that said: “Captain of Detectives. Private.”
Mallory got up stiffly from a hard chair and went across the room, leaned against the wall to open the glass-paneled door, went on in.
The room he went into was paved with dirty brown linoleum, furnished with the peculiar sordid hideousness only municipalities can achieve. Cathcart, the captain of detectives, sat in the middle of it alone, between a littered roll-top desk that was not less than twenty years old and a flat oak table large enough to play ping-pong on.
Cathcart was a big shabby Irishman with a sweaty face and a loose-lipped grin. His white mustache was stained in the middle by nicotine. His hands had a lot of warts on them.
Mallory went towards him slowly, leaning on a heavy cane with a rubber tip. His right leg felt large and hot. His left arm was in a sling made from a black silk scarf. He was freshly shaved. His face was pale and his eyes were as dark as slate.
He sat down across the table from the captain of detectives, put his cane on the table, tapped a cigarette and lit it. Then he said casually:
“What’s the verdict, chief ?”
Cathcart grinned. “How you feel, kid? You look kinda pulled down.”
“Not bad. A bit stiff.”
Cathcart nodded, cleared his throat, fumbled unnecessarily with some papers that were in front of him. He said:
“You’re clear. It’s a lulu, but you’re clear. Chicago gives you a clean sheet—damn clean. Your Luger got Mike Corliss, a two-time loser. I’m keepin’ the Luger for a souvenir. Okay?”
Mallory nodded. “Okay. I’m getting me a .25 with copper slugs. A sharpshooter’s gun. No shock effect, but it goes better with evening clothes.”
Cathcart looked at him closely for a minute, then went on: “Mike’s prints are on the shotgun. The shotgun got Mardonne. Nobody’s cryin’ about that much. The blond kid ain’t hurt bad. That aut
omatic we found on the floor had his prints and that will take care of him for a while.”
Mallory rubbed his chin wearily. “How about the others?”
The captain raised tangled eyebrows, and his eyes looked absent. He said: “I don’t know of nothin’ to connect you there. Do you?”
“Not a thing,” Mallory said apologetically. “I was just wondering.”
The captain said firmly: “Don’t wonder. And don’t get to guessin’, if anybody should ask you…Take that Baldwin Hills thing. The way we figure it Macdonald got killed in the line of duty, takin’ with him a dope-peddler named Slippy Morgan. We have a tag out for Slippy’s wife, but I don’t guess we’ll make her. Mac wasn’t on the narcotic detail, but it was his night off and he was a great guy to gum-shoe around on his night off. Mac loved his work.”
Mallory smiled faintly, said politely: “Is that so?”
“Yeah,” the captain said. “In the other one it seems this Landrey, a known gambler—he was Mardonne’s partner too—that’s kind of a funny coincidence—went down to Westwood to collect dough from a guy called Costello that ran a book on the Eastern tracks. Jim Ralston, one of our boys, went with him. Hadn’t ought to, but he knew Landrey pretty well. There was a little trouble about the money. Jim got beaned with a blackjack and Landrey and some little hood fogged each other. There was another guy there we don’t trace. We got Costello, but he won’t talk, and we don’t like to beat up an old guy. He’s got a rap comin’ on account of the blackjack. He’ll plead, I guess.”
Mallory slumped down in his chair until the back of his neck rested on top of it. He blew smoke straight up towards the stained ceiling. He said:
“How about night before last? Or was that the time the roulette wheel backfired and the trick cigar blew a hole in the garage floor?”
The captain of detectives rubbed both his moist cheeks briskly, then hauled out a very large handkerchief and snorted into it.