Everybody Had A Gun (8 page)

The coin hit with only a tiny thump on the carpeted floor, but I didn't have to wonder if the guy heard it. He let out a little grunt of surprise and whirled away from me toward the sound. He'd hardly stopped moving when I jumped forward, took one more big step, and jammed the muzzle of my gun into his back.

He went "Uh!" and I hissed at him, "Not a sound, friend! Not a damned sound."

He froze and I whispered, "Iris. Make it snappy." As soon as I said it I wished I hadn't used her name, but it was too late to worry about it. I couldn't hear her footsteps, but I knew she'd be coming up behind me as the guy in front of me started to crane his neck around.

I'd stepped back and pulled the gun away from him as soon as I was sure he knew what the score was. When a gun's touching a man he always knows just where it is—and knowing where it is, if the guy knows what he's doing, gives him a fifty-fifty chance of batting it aside before you can pull the trigger.

But he wasn't trying anything. He just twisted his head around far enough to see what was going on. I was curious myself about who he was. He had absurdly tiny black eyes in a thin, flat face I'd seen before, but I couldn't remember where I'd seen it. He remembered me from somewhere, though.

"Scott," he said softly. "So you're one of Sader's guns now, huh?"

Iris touched my shoulder from behind and I was so jumpy I almost squeezed the trigger. I've stoned the hammer and sear of my gun till it's got an easy one-pound pull, and I almost squeezed a bullet through the guy. But I held back and told him, "Turn around."

He turned obediently away from me and I lifted the revolver, slipped my finger outside the trigger guard, and slammed the gun against the base of his skull.

He didn't make a sound on the way down. It was the only way I could think of to keep him quiet for a while, and I'd tried to sap him as gently as possible. He wasn't going to like me when and if we met again, though. There's really no such thing as a gentle sap.

Iris and I got into the elevator and I snapped at her,

"Work this damned thing."

We had a long trip ahead of us and it might possibly last for eternity. She jammed a long red fingernail at a button on the wall and the door started closing like a snail with a hangover. As it crept shut a dim flash of light on the left caught my eye and I looked toward the drapes we'd come through. Light was behind them now; somebody'd found some switches. And just before the door finally eased shut, light flooded the interior of the club.

The door was shut; we were inside the elevator; but nothing seemed to be happening. There wasn't any point in whispering now so I asked Iris, "This thing moving?"

She nodded and her voice was twisted in her throat when she answered, "It's slow."

That was a neat understatement if I've ever heard one.

Iris was still wearing the half sweater and the dark blue slacks. She still had the happy tilts and the proper curves, and at close range like this it was something to see and remember. But I couldn't concentrate as much as I'd have liked to; there was still plenty I wanted to know. We'd be in here for another fifty seconds or so, and if I was going to die when we went over the top, I wanted to know what the hell I was dying for.

"Baby," I said, glaring at her, "start talking. Rough in the high points and give me the details when that's out. And fast!"

She took a deep breath and spoke, oddly, in the calmest voice she'd used so far. "Sader killed Lobo."

I remembered that. "What's that got to do with you? And with me?"

"I found out about it and—"

"How? Never mind—go on."

"And Sader found out I knew. He was going to kill me; I know he was. He almost said so, said I was dead! I—Shell, I. . ."

"Damn it, go on. Whatever it is, it's done."

"I learned of the murder last night. When I came here for my check this morning, Sader guessed—found out—that I knew about it. He threatened me, and I was scared to death. You do understand, Shell?"

I must have looked ready to yank her arms off, because she blurted the last part out in a breath: "I told him I'd seen you and told you everything I knew. That you knew about the murder, too. That you'd help me. You'd know, if anything happened to me, who did it and why."

I stared at her. "Me? Why me?"

"I saw you talking to Marty at a table here one night two or three months ago and asked him who you were and he told me. I knew you were a detective. And then you've been so much in the news, in the papers lately—about that Hollywood blackmail thing. Well, you popped into my head."

I felt like popping her head. Popping it good.

I said weakly, "Did it have to be me?"

She said violently, almost ready to burst into tears, "No, it didn't have to! I was scared, and—well, it's done"

There wasn't time for more conversation. The elevator had stopped and the door started sliding open. I grabbed the revolver tight in my slippery little hand and shoved Iris behind my back. Why, I don't know. I should have held the bird-brain in front of me.

Nobody was in front of the elevator door. The boys downstairs might not have found the guy I'd sapped yet, but probably they had. And they either knew of the exit Sader had used, or they didn't. I'd soon know.

I stuck my head into the alley. That was safe enough. Bullets wouldn't hurt it. Not my head.

The alley was empty. The black Plymouth still stood in front of the door, but nobody was in it. And there was no sign of Sader. So far, so good, but I wondered how long our luck could last. I stepped toward the car. With a little more luck. . .But we weren't getting that much. The keys weren't in the car and I sure wasn't going to fiddle around crossing ignition wires now.

Iris edged out the door behind me. "Wait here a second," I told her. Then I sprinted to my left down toward Clark's Cafeteria. A few feet from the end of the alley I stopped and slid forward slowly till I could peek out onto the street. In front of the cafeteria was another black car, a long Cadillac, and inside it was a man I didn't know and another one I did.

The guy I knew was in back: Collier Breed himself. I didn't see him right at first, but on the sidewalk next to the car I saw his trademark, so to speak. Two partly smoked cigars smoldered on the sidewalk, and I knew Breed was probably puffing nervously on another that would shortly follow the first two out the window. At a buck a crack, that can get expensive, but it was his one extravagance; nobody loved money more than Breed. He was sitting in the back seat, puffing away industriously, and I could barely make out his florid face behind the clouds of smoke. And that explained where the rest of the boys downstairs had come from.

I saw it all in one quick look, slid back into the alley and ran back to Iris. I grabbed her arm and hustled her away from Clark's and pell-mell down the alley. There weren't any explosions and no roofs caved in, and we made it clear to the alley's end at Sixth Street. I hauled Iris around to the left and we kept going. It was a little hard to believe that couple of minutes before we'd been creeping though the darkness of the Pit, and now we were breathing the cool air of Sixth Street, a part of the pedestrian traffic.

At Olive Street I looped Iris' arm through mine, turned left, and started walking rapidly back toward Seventh. She gave me a startled glance, but I said, "Keep talking. Give me the rest of it—all of it."

She kept up a stream of words as we reached Seventh and crossed the street. To the left, second door from the corner, was a pawnshop. And that's where I was headed.

We hit the pawnshop. And went inside, and every time Iris started to question me I shut her up and kept her spilling the dope I was interested in. I wanted to know everything she did before this deal went any further.

While she talked I looked around the pawnshop for what I wanted. The little white-haired owner bustled up to me trying to crack his knuckles. I dug a five-dollar bill out of my wallet and handed it to him, then picked a pair of high-powered binoculars from underneath a sliding glass counter.

I want to use these for a minute," I told him. "You'll get them back."

He sputtered a little, but I turned away from him, slipped the leather strap over my shoulder, and walked to the window in front of the store. By edging to the left of the window I could look back to my right and see the alley and Clark's Cafeteria and the black Cadillac parked in front of it.

The little white-haired guy came up behind me and Iris, trying to sell us the store. Possibly I shouldn't have been so free with that five-dollar bill. I waved him away. "Look," I said. "We want a little privacy, O.K.? Just got engaged."

He gave me a wide-eyed look, but faded away from us. Iris had finished telling me most of what had happened the night before and was looking at me like a pup expecting a whipping. I thought about what she'd told me while I turned the binoculars on Breed's car and focused them.

Boiled down, it appeared she'd been a little late getting out of the club Sunday night—or rather, this Monday morning—after the club closed. Mia had left about ten minutes before, and Iris had just finished removing her make-up and was ready to leave, herself. Then she'd heard loud voices from inside Sader's office, like the beginnings of one hell of an argument, and though she couldn't make out many of the words, she'd heard the name Lobo repeated a few times. That meant nothing to her because she'd never heard of any Lobo. She'd stood listening for a little while with woman's natural curiosity, but she'd begun to feel uneasy about eavesdropping, even unintentionally, she said. Then, when the argument was waxing pretty furious, all of a sudden everything stopped. No more yelling, no more noise, no nothing. Just quiet. It had frightened her and she beat it out of the club. Once outside, she realized that in her nervousness and haste she'd left her bag down in her dressing room, and her pay check was in her bag. She'd stood at the juncture of the alley and Seventh Street for a minute or two, trying to make up her mind whether or not she should go back down into the Pit and get the purse.

Then things had got a little more complicated. A car, with its lights out, turned into the alley from Sixth Street and stopped in front of the elevator door. Right after that two men came out of the elevator half carrying another man. That was as far as she'd taken it.

I made sure the pawnshop owner wasn't near enough to listen, and said, "This guy, Iris. He was dead?"

"I don't know. That is, I didn't then. I thought maybe it was just a drunk, but I knew there hadn't been any customers when I left. Anyway, it scared me. It was dark in the alley and the men were so quiet. I was frightened, even if I wasn't sure what was going on. I left right then and caught a cab home—I had a little money in the house for the fare."

"O.K. What about Sader? What's the rest?"

She was twisting her fingers together nervously now.

She said, "This morning, in the daytime and everything, I thought I'd been silly, imagining a lot of crazy things—and I wanted my check. I knew the club was closed, but I called there and Marty answered. I told him what I wanted and he said to come on down. Well," she swallowed, "I got the bag and stopped in Sader's office to say hello and thank him
.
He was reading the morning papers when I came in, and I could see the big headlines. 'Lobo Murdered' was all I needed to see. All of a sudden what I'd heard and seen the night before made sense. I remembered the argument, and the name Lobo, and the men carrying—" She shuddered. "I guess I looked scared to death and I must have been staring or pointing at the newspaper. I'm a little confused about it now, but I suppose I blurted out something to Sader."

She stopped talking for a moment and sighed deeply. Then she took a breath and went on, "Sader jumped out of his chair and grabbed me by the arm. Look." She showed me the soft flesh of her inner arm where Sader must have grabbed her. Four purple bruises discolored the white skin.

She said, "He twisted my arm and growled at me and I don't remember exactly, but I must have accused him of killing that man. I did later, anyway. But right then he—he was furious, and that's when he told me I was dead or something like that. I was scared and—well, you know now. I told him I'd already been to see you. First he started to make a phone call with the phone on his desk. Then he looked at me and shoved me into the next room and locked the door—there's a door behind the drapes we went through
into the club, but that was already locked from the night before. Sader must have unlocked it after he found me gone. Anyway, I got away and tried to phone you; then went to your office."

"You did go up the food lift, then? The dumb-waiter?"

"Yes. Luckily there wasn't anybody in the kitchen right then."

"Uh-huh. You didn't hear any shots last night?"

"No."

I thought about that and said, "When the argument suddenly stopped, somebody must have slugged Lobo. Looks like that's what happened. Then Sader called for help and he and his boys hauled Lobo to a ditch and finished it. Probably when Mia went up in the elevator, Sader's little light flashed on. He must have thought that emptied the club."

Iris didn't say anything. There really wasn't much more to say. It all made sense now; most of it, at least. Sader, with a brand-new murder on his hands and two people able to finger him for it, must have figured he'd have to get rid of Iris and me before we could spill what we knew to the police—and even if we got to spill, killing us, even afterward, would effectively keep us from testifying in court. Iris would be tops on his kill list because anything I had would be hearsay evidence and wouldn't stand up by itself in court, where Iris had eyewitness info, which, even if not of the actual murder, was still the most damning circumstantial evidence. But if Iris were killed, I'd know who'd done the job. So good sense said, as long as Iris was safely locked up, get Scott first. At least that was probably what Sader had been thinking at the time. And still was thinking, undoubtedly. Well, I thought sadly, now he was right about me.

There was another angle, too. Lobo had been one of Collier Breed's prize boys, which probably explained, at least in part, what Breed and his pals were doing outside here now. But it might also explain why Sader hadn't been willing to let go of me and Iris till I'd mentioned that Breed's boys had arrived. Even if Sader thought he was relatively safe from the police, he must have known Breed would smell the fishy odor surrounding Lobo's death. Marty might have dreamed up a good story with which to satisfy Breed—but if either Iris or I should get to Breed before we were good and dead, no story Sader might tell Breed would hold much water. So he not only had to keep both of us from the cops, but perhaps even more important to him would be keeping us from Breed. That must have been why, down in his office, he'd been willing to let us go out his little corner exit while he stayed to talk with Breed or his goons. Then when it hadn't appeared I was leaving fast enough to suit him—with that elevator on its way down—he'd taken a chance on a slug in the back rather than meet Breed's men, unarmed and without protection, and while Iris and I were in the same room. Even if he figured he could talk his way around Breed, he sure couldn't do it while Iris and I were in the same room blatting our brains out. Things would have blown sky high and it wouldn't have been pleasant for Sader. So he'd walked out. What difference does it make whether the slug's in the back of your head or the front, as long as you're going to get it anyway?