The Ace of Spades - Dell Shannon (9 page)

He kept thinking about that short— goddamned crazy
thing, it didn't matter. He'd felt nervous with the Caddy, and when
she stalled out there, that day, it'd been kind of like an excuse he
was waiting for. That short he'd picked up— you could've fixed her
up a little, a real nice piece to handle— you knew where you were
with her. Always liked a hand choke, and these new things, you never—
She didn't ride so good maybe, but—

He'd like to've kept her.

The damn hot short—

It was a hot feeling in his chest, the little panic.
Hadn't told Denny, hadn't told anybody how he'd lost that little bit.
God, like a kid couldn't be trusted out with a dime— Him!

It must've been in the car. All he could figure: he
hadn't had a hole in his pocket, and he'd looked good. Damn fool to
carry it loose. Must've come out in that car, somehow.

Well, all right, so it could be fixed up. O.K. No
call to get in a sweat about it. It was just damn lucky he knew how
to find the car, on account— damn it, the kind of short he was used
to— he'd had a kind of crazy idea of keeping it, all on the
up-and-up, so's not to mess around with new plates. Denny said you'd
pay the hell of a lot for safe plates now. Thought about making up
some story, about seeing it parked, wanting it just for
transportation like they said— after the guy had it back, go and
offer him a hundred bucks for it. So he'd remembered the name on the
registration. Funny name for a guy.

Just a little piddling job. Ten to one the thing down
in the seat somewhere, nobody knowing it was there. Just had to look
up the address, that he didn't remember, find the garage, get in
easy— tonight— and go over the car. Why the hell all this sweat
about it? Nothing to it. And nobody'd ever know he'd done such a damn
fool thing.

All right, he thought vaguely, angrily.

Go look up the address, public phone someplace, now.
And maybe have a little drink on the way. O.K.

They nicked you six bits for Scotch mostly now. Hell
of a thing. Except joints where it was baptized stuff, or made under
the counter and like to send you to the General.

And that was another thing. This deal better go
through pretty damn quick. Nice of Denny to have a little stake for
him, coming out— pull off that job special, celebrate his getting
out— but it hadn't been so much as he'd figured, Denny said,
account half of it turning out to be this crazy stuff no fence'd look
at.

All the more reason, get as much as they could.

He walked out of the park slowly and started down
Sixth Street toward Main. He felt more at home down on Main. As much
as he did anywhere.

If just things— ordinary things— didn't look so
different.

He was forty-three years old this year, and he'd
spent almost twenty-two of them behind bars.

What the hell, thought Driscoll, and drank out of the
bottle, shuddered. He had never consciously admitted to himself that
he didn't really like the taste of whiskey. It was just one of the
things you did, any kind of a fellow at all.

The whiskey settled sickly in his stomach and he
groaned involuntarily, slumped down on the hotel bed. Damn hot
weather. Damn miserly company wouldn't allow enough expenses for a
decent hotel, air-conditioned. Damn Howard, supercilious-suspicious—
Not quite up to par lately, Driscoll, and— er— complaints about
your offensive manner— I'm afraid—

Hell with Howard. With his record, let Howard fire
him-always find another job. Damn old-fashioned company was all,
obsolete ideas bout things. You had to keep up a front, play it
smart. People took you at face value. So all right, maybe he had been
pouring it down kind of heavy, my God, everybody did— any fellow
who was any kind of fellow— Set your brain working better, gave
you bright ideas sometimes-and besides—

Damn cops. That Mex, sneering at him— so damn
polite, looking down his nose— looked like a damn gigolo. That
suit, Italian silk: and the cuff links the real thing too— money—
a cop: sure, sure, so they said, rare exception these days find a
crooked cop!— higher standards, higher quality of men— Probably
just as many as there always were, anybody could be bought—

Dirty Mex cop, looking down his nose. Damned if he'd
tell him anything. Sure, hell of a lot easier, ask for help on it—
their records— fellow who handled the case— way you were
supposed to do it. But he could handle it alone, and make Howard sit
up and take notice- Say to Howard, damn regular cops no help at all,
didn't bother with 'em—

Something going on, all right. Something fishy. That
foreign skirt, snotty bitch the way she looked at him, she owned the
stuff, or would when the estate was transferred, she had an interest—
racket, sure, shouldn't be hard to get evidence on it, that stuff.

Crack it but good, and say to Howard (act real tough,
people took you for what you looked like), say, There, boy, who's not
doing so hot these days, who's slipping, hah?

He sat up unsteadily and
reached for the bottle again. Say to Howard—

* * *

"Ekaterina Nikolayevna Rosleva," said the
old woman softly, "speak the truth to me now."

The girl knew she was in earnest, by the formal
address— the old-country form. Anything to do with the old ways and
ideas she hated, reminder of how people looked down on her for the
foreign name— she'd been born here, she was a citizen, wasn't
she?— it wasn't fair. She hated living with the old woman, her slow
old-fashioned ways, her endless stories about old days and people all
dead now: she resented having to share the money she earned, for this
hole-in-the-corner place and food and all it took to live, two
people. If it wasn't for the old woman, she could escape.

"Ekaterina— "

"All right, all right, I heard you!" she
said, ladling out soup carelessly into the bowls on the table. "What
you think I haven't told you?"

"There is something in your mind, I know."

"So there's something in my mind. Usually is.
Work I got to do tomorrow, clothes I got to mend, bills I got to
pay." She sat down opposite and picked up her spoon.

"You forget, we ask the blessing first."

Escape— how she'd planned it! She resented the old
woman, but one did not leave relatives to public charity, it was a
duty. Secretly and often she thought of the old woman dying— then
she would be free. She'd go right away from this place, didn't matter
where so long as it was a long way off; she'd just leave everything,
and start to be somebody else. Somebody new. Not Katya Roslev, but
Katharine Ross, good American name, and a better job too, in a
high-class shop where ladies came, to watch and listen to for how
they acted. All her money her own.

"Somehow I do not feel it is a good thing in
your mind," said the old woman. "You should be thinking of
Stevan. Praying for his soul."

"I am thinking of Stevan," said Katya
submissively. It was no lie: she was. For perhaps the first time with
any real feeling— gratitude. Catch her marrying a Stevan Domokous!
He had been the old woman's idea: old— fashioned. These days!—
1iving it up all like they did in the old country a hundred years
back, thousand years back— the bishop and all— a good steady
hard-working young man of good family, if all alone in this country.
Bah! And to him that's how it had been too— way a man took a wife—
picked for her dowry and family and character— not interested in
her, he'd been, in herself. And a slow one, anyway: a plodder.
Honest: too honest.

She'd have found some way out of that before spring,
that was sure. Katharine Ross, secure in another life, was going to
marry somebody with another nice American name and a better job than
a clerk's, and that was for sure too. It was a pity Stevan had to
die, but at least it did get her rid of him; she was sorry for him,
but there it was, it had happened. And maybe it was good luck for her
another way, an exciting way too. Escape.

Money, always money, there had to be. Oh, he had been
a slow one!

That night, when he'd said about Mr. Skyros talking:
she'd said to him, after, when they were on the way to the movies,
maybe if he let Mr. Skyros think he heard more, knew all about it,
he'd get some pay to promise not to tell. He'd been shocked— or
scared, she thought contemptuously— he said, not honest: anything
bad the police ought to know!

Well, she wasn't one to split hairs like that. If
there was some easy money to be had, she'd take any chance at it. And
she'd take care to be smarter than Stevan too— protect herself. She
could say she'd written it all out, what he'd told her— about the
money— and the writing was— it was in the bank, in one of those
boxes rich people kept, where nobody could get at it but her—
they'd never dare harm her then.

She'd been a fool to come out with it to that
policeman, but she hadn't thought about it clear then— seen the
chance it offered. Money. It might be a lot of money. Could she ask
for a thousand dollars? Even five thousand? Escape: because that
would be the duty money, to leave behind for the old woman— the old
woman off her mind then— she could manage on the little she'd saved
from her salary— go away with a clear conscience then, the old
woman provided for— and start her new life, a long way off.

"You are very silent, Katya," said the old
woman.

"I am thinking of Stevan, as you say I should,"
said the girl, and held back a smile.
 

EIGHT

The two letters from Athens proved to be from casual
friends, apparently; there was nothing in them of any significance—
references to other friends, to politics, to a church festival of
some kind, the weather, questions about Domokous' new life in
America.

Nothing else interesting turned up from the more
complete examination of the body, or from Dr. Erwin's patient
scrutiny of the clothes.

"I suppose I'm a fool to say it," said
Hackett, "because a lot of times when I say you're barking up a
tree with no cat in it, all of a sudden something shows up to prove
your crystal ball gave you the right message. And don't complain
about mixed metaphors, I'm just a plain cop. But I think it's a dead
end. Everything doesn't always dovetail so nice and neat as a
detective story, you know."

"Unfortunately, no," said Mendoza. "Ragged
edges. No hunch, Arturo— or not much of one. Just— " he
swiveled around and looked thoughtfully out the window of his office,
"just the little funny feeling you get, on discard and draw—
better hold onto this worthless-looking low card, next time round it
might be worth something .... Damn. I wish I had four times as many
men as I had, to keep an eye on everybody. What it comes down to, I
don't know much of anything about it at all, I just have the definite
conviction there's something to know. I'm not really justified in
keeping so many men on it, but— Damn." He got up abruptly.
"I'll be up in Callaghan's office if anybody wants me."

And that was on Thursday morning; he missed Alison's
call by five minutes.

He found Callaghan in a temper. Having gone to some
trouble to secure enough evidence to charge a certain pusher,
Callaghan had wasted yesterday in court only to hear the bench
dismiss it as inadmissible by the letter of the law. "So, my God
in heaven, there's got to be law— but what the hell do they expect
of us when they tie one hand behind our backs and give us a toy cap
pistol and say, Now, boys, you go out and protect the public from the
big bad men! Jesus and Mary, next thing they'll be saying to us,
Boys, it isn't legal evidence unless you collect it on the northeast
corner of a one-way street during an eclipse of the moon! They— "

"Very annoying," agreed Mendoza, sitting
down in the desk chair to be out of Callaghan's way as he paced.
Callaghan was even bigger than Hackett, which was saying something,
and it was not a large office.

"You can talk!" said Callaghan bitterly.
"All you got to think about is dead people! Who was there, who
wanted them dead? Clear as day— evidence all according to the book!
Nobody says to you— "

"Oh, we run into it too, occasionally. Now calm
down and talk to me about Bratti."

"I don't want even to think about Bratti,"
said Callaghan. "I'm goin' to quit the force and take up some
nice peaceful occupation like farming. Why should I knock myself out
protecting the public? They don't give a damn about me. They call me
an officious cop, persecutin' innocent bystanders— "

"You'll wear out the carpet, Patrick."

"And I'll tell you something else! One thing
like this— and the good God knows it's not the first or the last—
and every single pro in this town, he has a good laugh at the cops,
and he gets twice as cocky as he was before, because he knows damn
well we can beat our brains out and never get him inside— "

“
You'll give yourself ulcers. Bratti."

"Get out of my chair," said Callaghan, and
flung himself into it and drove a hand through his carrot-red hair.

"What about Bratti?"

"He'll be in competition with some others in
business on his level. Middlemen, who run strings of pushers."

"Oh, all very businesslike these days. Sure.
Same position, almost exactly, as the fellow who owns a lot of slum
tenements. Fellow who says, hell, you always get some people who like
to live like that, why should go to the expense of cleaning up the
place, make it a little fancier for 'em? In six months it's just as
bad. I don't cut my profits for any such damn foolishness. But he
doesn't live there himself, oh, no, he's got a nice clean new house
out in Bel-Air. He hires an agent to collect the rent so he needn't
mingle with the hoi polloi and listen to complaints. If you get me.
Gimme a cigarette, I'm out .... There's Bratti. And in this burg,
call it about a dozen like him. Sure, 'way up at the top there's a
hook— up with the syndicate— with the real big boys, and we know
where they are these days. Sitting happy as clams in some country
where they can't be extradited— even if, God help us, we had any
admissible evidence to charge 'em with— "