“Pipe down. You’ll wake the wife. She’s sick. If I gotta come out there—”
“Good night, Mr. Greb,” I said.
I went back down the walk in the soft, foggy moonlight. When I got across to the far side of the dark parked car I said: “It’s a two-man job. Some tough guy is in there. I think it’s the man I heard called Big Chin over the phone in L.A.”
“Geez. The guy that killed Matson, huh?” De Spain came over to my side of the car and stuck his head out and spat clear oven a fireplug that must have been eight feet away. I didn’t say anything.
De Spain said: “If this guy you call Big Chin is Moss Lorenz, I’ll know him. We might get in. On maybe we walk ourselves into some hot lead.”
“Just like the coppers do on the radio,” I said.
“You scared?”
“Me?” I said. “Sure I’m scared. The car’s in the garage, so either he’s got Greb in there and is trying to make up his mind what to do with him—”
“If it’s Moss Lorenz, he don’t have a mind,” De Spain growled. “That guy is screwy except in two places—behind a gun and behind the wheel of a car.”
“And behind a piece of lead pipe,” I said. “What I was saying was, Greb might be out without his can and this Big Chin—”
De Spain bent over to look at the clock on the dash. “My guess would be he’s skipped. He’d be home by now. He’s got a tip to scram out of some trouble.”
“Will you go in there or won’t you?” I snapped. “Who would tip him?”
“Whoever fixed him in the fist place, if he was fixed.” De Spain clicked the door open and slid out of the car, stood looking oven it across the street. He opened his coat and loosened the gun in his shoulder clip. “Maybe I could kid him,” he said. “Keep your hands showing and empty. It’s our best chance.”
We went back across the street and up the walk, up on the porch. De Spain leaned on the bell.
The voice came growling at us again from the half-open window, behind the frayed dank green shade.
“Yeah?”
“Hello, Moss,” De Spain said.
“Huh?”
“This is Al De Spain, Moss. I’m in on the play.”
Silence—a long, murderous silence. Then the thick, hoarse voice said: “Who’s that with you?”
“A pal from L.A. He’s okay.” More silence, then, “What’s the angle?”
“You alone in there?”
“Except for a dame. She can’t hear you.”
“Where’s Greb?”
“Yeah—where is he? What’s the angle, copper? Snap it up!”
De Spain spoke as calmly as though he had been at home in an armchair, beside the radio. “We’re workin’ for the same guy, Moss.”
“Haw, haw,” Big Chin said.
“Matson’s been found dead in L.A., and those city dicks have already connected him with the Austrian dame. We gotta step fast. The big shot’s up north alibiing himself, but what does that do for us?”
The voice said, “Aw, baloney,” but there was a note of doubt in it.
“It looks like a stink,” De Spain said. “Come on, open up. You can see we don’t have anything to hold on you.”
“By the time I got around to the door you would have,” Big Chin said.
“You ain’t that yellow,” De Spain sneered.
The shade rustled at the window as if a hand had let go of it and the sash moved up into place. My hand started up.
De Spain growled: “Don’t be a sap. This guy is our case. We want him all in one piece.”
Faint steps sounded inside the house. A lock turned in the front door and it opened and a figure stood there, shadowed, a big Colt in his hand. Big Chin was a good name for him. His big, broad jaw stuck out from his face like a cowcatcher. He was a bigger man than De Spain—a good deal bigger.
“Snap it up,” he said, and started to move back.
De Spain, his hands hanging loose and empty, palms turned out, took a quiet step forward on his left foot and kicked Big Chin in the groin—just like that—without the slightest hesitation, and against a gun.
Big Chin was still fighting—inside himself—when we got our guns out. His right hand was fighting to press the trigger and hold the gun up. His sense of pain was fighting down everything else but the desire to double up and yell. That internal struggle of his wasted a split second and he had neither shot nor yelled when we slammed him. De Spain hit him on the head and I hit him on the right wrist. I wanted to hit his chin—it fascinated me—but his wrist was nearest the gun. The gun dropped and Big Chin dropped, almost as suddenly, then plunged forward against us. We caught and held him and his breath blew hot and rank in our faces, then his knees went to pieces and we fell into the hallway on top of him.
De Spain grunted and struggled to his feet and shut the door. Then he rolled the big, groaning, half-conscious man over and dragged his hands behind him and snapped cuffs on his wrists.
We went down the hall. There was a dim light in the room to the left, from a small table lamp with a newspaper over it. De Spain lifted the paper off and we looked at the woman on the bed. At least he hadn’t murdered her. She lay in sleazy pajamas with her eyes wide open and staring and half mad with fear. Mouth, wrists, ankles and knees were taped and the ends of thick wads of cotton stuck out of her ears. A vague bubbling sound came from behind the slab of two-inch adhesive that plastered her mouth shut. De Spain bent the lampshade a little. Her face was mottled. She had bleached hair, dark at the roots, and a thin, scraped look about the bones of her face.
De Spain said: “I’m a police officer. Are you Mrs. Greb?”
The woman jerked and stared at him agonizingly. I pulled the cotton out of her ears and said: “Try again.”
“Are you Mrs. Greb?”
She nodded.
De Spain took hold of the tape at the side of her mouth. Her eyes winced and he jerked it hard and capped a hand down oven her mouth at once. He stood there, bending over, the tape in his left hand—a big, dark, dead-pan copper who didn’t seem to have any more nerves than a cement mixer.
“Promise not to scream?” he said.
The woman forced a nod and he took his hand away. “Where’s Greb?” he asked.
He pulled the rest of the tape off her.
She swallowed and took hold of her forehead with her red-nailed hand and shook her head. “I don’t know. He hasn’t been home.”
“What talk was there when the gorilla came in?”
“There wasn’t any,” she said dully, “The bell rang and I opened the door and he walked in and grabbed mc. Then the big brute tied me up and asked me where my husband was and I said I didn’t know and he slapped my face a few times, but after a while he seemed to believe me. He asked me why my husband didn’t have the car and I said he always walked to work and never took the car. Then he just sat in the corner and didn’t move or speak. He didn’t even smoke.”
“Did he use the telephone?” De Spain asked.
“No.”
“You ever seen him before?”
“No.”
“Get dressed,” De Spain said. “You gotta find some friends you can go to for the rest of the night.”
She stared at him and sat up slowly on the bed and rumpled her hair. Then her mouth opened and De Spain clapped his hand over it again, hard.
“Hold it,” he said sharply. “Nothing’s happened to him that we know of. But I guess you wouldn’t be too damn surprised if it did.”
The woman pushed his hand away and stood up off the bed and walked around it to a bureau and took out a pint of whisky. She unscrewed the top and drank from the bottle. “Yeah,” she said in a strong, coarse voice. “What would you do, if you had to soap a bunch of doctors for every nickel you made and there was damn few nickels to be made at that?” She took another drink.
De Spain said: “I might switch blood samples.”
The woman stared at him blankly. He looked at me and shrugged. “Maybe it’s happy powder
,” he said. “Maybe he peddles a little of that. It must be damn little, to go by how he lives.” He looked around the room contemptuously. “Get dressed, lady.”
We went out of the room and shut the door. De Spain bent down oven Big Chin, lying on his back and half on his side on the floor. The big man groaned steadily with his mouth open, neither completely out nor fully aware of what was going on around him. De Spain, still bending down in the dim light he’d put on in the hall, looked at the piece of adhesive in the palm of his hand and laughed suddenly. He slammed the tape hard over Big Chin’s mouth.
“Think we can make him walk?” he asked. “I’d hate like hell to have to carry him.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just the swamper on this route. Walk to where?”
“Up in the hills where it’s quiet and the birds sing,” De Spain said grimly.
I sat on the running board of the car with the big bell-shaped flashlight hanging down between my knees. The light wasn’t too good, but it seemed to be good enough for what De Spain was doing to Big Chin. A roofed reservoir was just above us and the ground sloped away from that into a deep canyon. There were two hilltop houses about half a mile away, both dark, with a glisten of moonlight on their stucco walls. It was cold up there in the hills, but the air was clean and the stars were like pieces of polished chromium. The light haze over Bay City seemed to be fan off, as if in another county, but it was only a fast ten-minute drive.
De Spain had his coat off. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up and his wrists and his big hairless arms looked enormous in the faint hard light. His coat lay on the ground between him and Big Chin. His gun holster lay on the coat, with the gun in the holster, and the butt towards Big Chin. The coat was a little to one side so that between De Spain and Big Chin there was a small space of scuffed moonlit gravel. The gun was to Big Chin’s right and to De Spain’s left
After a long silence thick with breathing De Spain said: “Try again.” He spoke casually, as if he were talking to a man playing a pinball game.
Big Chin’s face was a mass of blood. I couldn’t see it as red, but I had put the flash on it a time or two and I knew it was there. His hands were free and what the kick in the groin had done to him was long ago, on the far side of oceans of pain. He made a croaking noise and turned his left hip suddenly against De Spain and went down on his right knee and lunged for the gun.
De Spain kicked him in the face.
Big Chin rolled back on the gravel and clawed at his face with both hands and a wailing sound came through his fingers. De Spain stepped over and kicked him on the ankle. Big Chin howled. De Spain stepped back to his original position beyond the coat and the holstered gun. Big Chin rolled a little and came up on his knees and shook his head. Big dank drops fell from his face to the gravelly ground. He got up to his feet slowly and stayed hunched over a little.
De Spain said: “Come on up. You’re a tough guy. You got Vance Conried behind you and he’s got the syndicate behind him. You maybe got Chief Anders behind you. I’m a lousy flatfoot with a ticket to nowhere in my pants. Come up. Let’s put on a show.”
Big Chin shot out in a diving lunge for the gun. His hand touched the butt but only slewed it around. De Spain came down hard on the hand with his heel and screwed his heel. Big Chin yelled. De Spain jumped back and said wearily: “You ain’t overmatched, are you, sweetheart?”
I said thickly: “For God’s sake, why don’t you let him talk?”
“He don’t want to talk,” De Spain said. “He ain’t the talking kind. He’s a tough guy.”
“Well, let’s shoot the poor devil then.”
“Not a chance. I’m not that kind of cop. Hey, Moss, this guy thinks I’m just one of those sadistic cops that has to smack a head with a piece of lead pipe every so often to keep from getting nervous indigestion. You ain’t going to let him think that, are you? This is a square fight. You got me shaded twenty pounds and look where the gun is.”
Big Chin mumbled: “Suppose I got it. Your pal would blast me.”
“Not a chance. Come on, big boy. Just once more. You got a lot of stuff left.”
Big Chin got up on his feet again. He got up so slowly that he seemed like a man climbing up a wall. He swayed and wiped blood off his face with his hand. My head ached. I felt sick at my stomach.
Big Chin swung his right foot very suddenly. It looked like something for a fraction of a second, then De Spain picked the foot out of the air and stepped back, pulled on it. He held the leg taut and the big bruiser swayed on his other foot trying to hold his balance.
De Spain said conversationally: “That was okay when I did it because you had plenty of gun in your mitt and I didn’t have any gun and you didn’t figure on me taking a chance like that. Now you see how wrong the play is in this spot.”
He twisted the foot quickly, with both hands. Big Chin’s body seemed to leap into the air and dive sideways, and his shoulder and face smashed into the ground, but De Spain held on to the foot. He kept on turning it. Big Chin began to thresh around on the ground and make harsh animal sounds, half stifled in the gravel. De Spain gave the foot a sudden hard wrench. Big Chin screamed like a dozen sheets tearing.
De Spain lunged forward and stepped on the ankle of Big Chin’s other foot. He put his weight against the foot he held in his hands and spread Big Chin’s legs. Big Chin tried to gasp and yell at the same time and made a sound something like a very large and very old dog barking.
De Spain said: “Guys get paid money for what I’m doing. Not nickels—real dough. I oughta look into it.”
Big Chin yelled: “Lemme up! I’ll talk! I’ll talk!”
De Spain spread the legs some more. He did something to the foot and Big Chin suddenly went limp. It was like a sea lion fainting. It staggered De Spain and he reeled to one side as the leg smacked the ground. Then he reached a handkerchief out of his pocket and slowly mopped his face and hands.
“Soft,” he said. “Too much beer. The guy looked healthy. Maybe it’s always having his fanny under a wheel.”
“And his hand under a gun,” I said.
“That’s an idea,” De Spain said. “We don’t want to lose him his self-respect.”
He stepped oven and kicked Big Chin in the ribs. After the third kick there was a grunt and a glistening where the blankness of Big Chin’s eyelids had been.
“Get up,” De Spain said. “I ain’t goin’ to hurt you no more.”
Big Chin got up. It took him a whole minute to get up. His mouth—what was left of it—was strained wide open. It made me think of another man’s mouth and I stopped having pity for him. He pawed the air with his hands, looking for something to lean against.
De Spain said: “My pal here says you’re soft without a gun in your hand. I wouldn’t want a strong guy like you to be soft. Help yourself to my gat.” He kicked the holster lightly so that it slid off the coat and close to Big Chin’s foot. Big Chin bowed his shoulders to look down at it. He couldn’t bend his neck any more.
“I’ll talk,” he grunted.
“Nobody asked you to talk. I asked you to get that gun in your hand. Don’t make me cave you in again to make you do it. See—the gun in your hand.”
Big Chin staggered down to his knees and his hand folded slowly over the butt of the gun. De Spain watched without moving a muscle.
“Attaboy. Now you got a gun. Now you’re tough again. Now you can bump off some more women. Pull it outa the clip.”
Very slowly, with what seemed to be enormous effort, Big Chin drew the gun out of the holster and knelt there with it dangling down between his legs.
“What, ain’t you going to bump anybody off?” De Spain taunted him.
Big Chin dropped the gun out of his hand and sobbed.
“Hey, you!” De Spain banked. “Put that gun back where you got it, I want that gun clean, like I always keep it myself.”
Big Chin’s hand fumbled for the gun and got hold of it and slowly pushed it home in the leather sheath. The e
ffort took all his remaining strength. He fell flat on his face oven the holster.
De Spain lifted him by an arm and rolled him over on his back and picked the holster up off the ground. He rubbed the butt of the gun with his hand and strapped the holster around his chest. Then he picked up his coat and put it on.
“Now we’ll let him spill his guts,” he said. “I don’t believe in makin’ a guy talk when he don’t want to talk. Got a cigarette?”
I reached a pack out of my pocket with my left hand and shook a cigarette loose and held the pack out. I clicked the big flash on and held it on the projecting cigarette and on his big fingers as they came forward to take it.
“I don’t need that,” he said. He fumbled for a match and struck it and drew smoke slowly into his lungs. I doused the flash again. De Spain looked down the hill towards the sea and the curve of the shore and the lighted piers. “Kind of nice up here,” he added.
“Cold,” I said. “Even in summer. I could use a drink.”
“Me too,” De Spain said. “Only I can’t work on the stuff.”
Eight—Needle-Pusher
De Spain stopped the car in front of the Physicians and Surgeons Building and looked up at a lighted window on the sixth floor. The building was designed in a series of radiating wings so that all the offices had an outside exposure.
“Good grief,” De Spain said. “He’s up there right now. That guy don’t never sleep at all, I guess. Take a look at that heap down the line.”
I got up and walked down in front of the dark drugstore that flanked the lobby entrance of the building on one side. There was a long black sedan parked diagonally and correctly in one of the ruled spaces, as though it had been high noon instead of almost three in the morning. The sedan had a doctor’s emblem beside the front license plate, the staff of Hippocrates and the serpents twisted around it. I put my flash into the car and read part of the name on the license holder and snapped the light off again. I went back to De Spain.
“Check,” I said. “How did you know that was his window and what would he be doing here at this time of night?”
“Loading up his little needles,” he said. “I’ve watched the guy some is how I know.”