The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (48 page)

“I remember,” I said. She had been a knobby-kneed kid with stars for eyes. “How could I forget? It was your glamour that got me.”

She laughed, and it was a pretty sound. “Don’t be silly, Kip. My knees were always skinned, and my bike was always busted.”

Her eyes went from my face to the clothes I was wearing. “You’ve done well, and I’m glad.” If I do say so, they were good. I’d always liked good clothes, liked the nice things that money could buy. Often they hadn’t been easy to have because I also liked being on the level. Two of the boys I’d grown up with had ended in the chair, and another was doing time for a payroll job.

“Kid”—I leaned toward her—“tell me about Rocky. You’ve got to think of everything, and after you’ve told me, forget about it unless you talk to the police.”

Her face went dead white, but she took it standing. In the world where we’d grown up, you didn’t have to draw the pictures.

“Rock worked at the Crystal Palace only three weeks. He was a good waiter, but after his first week, something was bothering him. He talked to me sometimes, and I could see he had something on his mind. Then, one night, he quit and never even came back for his money.”

“What happened that night?”

“Nothing, really. After a rather quiet evening, some people came in and sat at one of Rock’s tables. Horace, he’s the blond boy, made quite a fuss over them, but nothing happened that I could see. Then, all of a sudden, Rock went by me, stripping off his apron. He must have gone out the back way.”

“Do you know who they were?”

Milly hesitated, concentrating. “There were four in the party, two men and two women. All were well dressed, and the men were flashing big rolls of bills. One of the men was larger than you. He wore a dark suit. A blond girl was with him, very beautiful.”

“The big guy? Was he blond, too? With a broken nose?”

She nodded, remembering his eyes. “Yes, yes! He looked like he might have been a fighter once.”

For a moment, I considered that. “Have you ever heard of Benny Altman?”

Her face changed as if somebody had slapped her. “So that was Ben Altman!” She sat very quiet, her coffee growing cold in front of her. “He knew a friend of mine once, a girl named Cory Ryan.” She thought for a minute, then added, “The other man was shorter and darker.”

She reverted to the former topic. “If you want to know anything about Ben Altman, ask Cory Ryan. He treated her terribly.”

“Where is she now?”

“She went to San Francisco about two—maybe it was three weeks ago. I had a wire from her from there.”

“Thanks. I’m leaving now, Milly, and the less you’re seen with me the better. I’m in this up to my ears.”

“Be careful, Kip. He was always bragging to Cory about what he could do and how much he could get away with.”

We parted after exchanging phone numbers, and then I caught a cab and returned to the Plaza. Some of my friends were around, but I wasn’t listening to the usual talk. The story would break the next day about Garzo’s murder, but in the meantime I had much to do.

The one thing I had to begin with was Rock himself. He had always been strictly on the level. I knew that from years of knowing him, but the police would not have that advantage. At the Crystal Palace, he must have stumbled into something that was very much out of line. The arrival of Ben Altman must have proved something he only suspected. I might be wrong about that, but Altman seemed to have triggered something in Garzo’s thinking.

During the war and the years that followed, I had seen little of my old friends on the Coast, so I knew little about the activities of Garzo, Altman or any of the others.

“What are you so quiet about?” Harry asked. Harry was the bartender, and he had been behind bars in that part of town for nearly forty years. There was very little he didn’t know, but very little he would talk about unless he knew you well, and that meant no more than four or five people in town.

“Remember Rocky Garzo? He was killed tonight. I used to work out with the guy.”

“Isn’t he the brother of that kid that was shot about a year ago?” Harry asked. “You know? Danny Garzo? He was shot by the police in some sort of a mix-up. Somebody said he was on the weed.”

On weed…the reefer racket…Ben Altman…things were beginning to fall into place. I left my drink on the bar. I wasn’t much of a drinker, anyway, and I had some calls to make.

Bill would be at the
News
office. As expected, it was on the tip of his tongue. “Danny Garzo? Eighteen years old, supposedly hopped up on weed and knifed some guy in a bar and then tried to shoot it out with the police. He was Garzo’s brother.”

“What do you know about Ben Altman? I hear he’s a big man in the rackets now?”

“Brother”—I could fairly see the seriousness in his face—“if you want to live to be an old man, forget it. That’s hot! Very, very hot!”

“Then keep your eyes and ears open, because I am going to walk right down the middle of it. Incidentally, if your boys haven’t got it already, Rocky Garzo was murdered. They just found the body.”

Rocky’s brother, high on marijuana, got himself killed when, according to the report, he had gone off his head and started cutting people. Marijuana was more likely to make you stupid than crazy, but the effect was too often assumed to be like methamphetamines. It made me wonder what drugs he’d actually been taking…if any at all.

Rocky Garzo had loved his brother. I remembered the kid only as somebody who played ball in the streets, a dark-eyed, good-looking youngster. Evidently, Rocky had started out looking for the source of the drugs. His looking took him to the Crystal Palace, and then Altman comes in, recognizes Garzo, and has a hunch why he’s there. Maybe more than a hunch. Maybe he had come there to check on something, a tip, maybe, that Garzo was asking questions or showing too much interest. Garzo leaves at once, and a short time later he is dead.

Maybe that was right and maybe wrong. If I could actually tie it to Altman, I’d have something. If I had the right hunch, I had another hunch that Mooney wouldn’t be far behind me. It was a job for the law, and I believe in letting the law handle such things. However, if I could come up with some leads because of the people I knew—well, it might help.

For two days I sat tight and nothing happened; then I ran into Mooney. He was drinking coffee in a little spot where I occasionally dropped in.

“What’s happened with Garzo?” I asked him.

His expression wasn’t kind. “I’m on another case.”

“You’ve dropped it?”

“We never drop them.”

“I think he had something on Ben Altman. I believe Rocky was playing detective because of what happened to Danny.”

“Who are you? Sherlock Holmes? We thought of that. It was obvious, but Altman has an alibi, and so have his boys. The worst of it is, they are good alibis, and he has good lawyers. Before you arrest a man like that, you’ve got to have a case, not just suspicion. It looks like Altman; it could have been Altman. We’d like it if it was Altman, but it’s a dead end.”

“So you dropped it.”

Mooney studied me over his coffee cup. “Look, Kip. I know you, see? I know you from that Harley case. You have a way of barging into things that could get you killed. I like you, so don’t mess with this one. And don’t worry about Ben Altman. We’ll keep after him.”

They would keep after him, and eventually they would get him. Crooks sometimes win battles, but they never win the war. However, I had to be back in New York, and I did not have the time to waste, and the old Rock had been a friend. I like to finish them quick, like Pete Farber.

How about Pete Farber? Did he have an alibi? Or what about Candy Pants, the blond headwaiter?

Then I remembered Corabelle Ryan, Milly’s friend, who had known Altman. How much did she know?

One of the greatest instruments in the world is the telephone. It may cause a lot of gray hairs in the hands of an elderly lady with nothing else to do; still, it can save a lot of legwork.

A few minutes on the telephone netted me this. Cory was still, apparently, in San Francisco. Milly had not heard from her again. No, she had no address except that Milly had said she would be at the Fairmont for a few days.

The Fairmont had no such party registered. Nor had anybody by that name been registered there. The mail desk did have a letter for her, but it had been picked up. The man picking it up had a note of authorization. She remembered him well—a short, dark man.

“Cory,” I muttered as I came out of the booth, “I am afraid you did know something. I am afraid you knew too much.”

W
HEN IT WAS DARK
, I changed into a navy blue gabardine suit and a blue and gray striped tie; then I took a cab to the Crystal Palace. I knew exactly what I was getting into, and it was trouble, nothing but trouble.

Horace was nowhere in sight when I went in, nor was Pete Farber. I got a seat in a prominent position, ordered a bourbon and soda, and began to study the terrain. If all went as expected before the evening was over, they would try to bounce me out of there.

The door from the office opened, and Horace emerged, talking to Farber. They both saw me at the same moment. As they saw me, the door opened, and two men walked in. Between them was Milly.

That did not strike me at first, but the next thing did. They did not stop at the hatcheck counter.

Now no nightclub, respectable or otherwise, is going to let two men and a woman go back without checking something without at least an attempt. The girl just looked at them and said nothing.

Then I got a look at Milly’s face. If ever I saw a girl who was scared to death, it was Milly Casey. They started past me, headed for the office, and I knew Milly was in trouble.

Behind me, I heard a grunt of realization and knew Pete Farber was coming for me. The moment needed some fast work. Just as the two men came abreast of my table, I got up quickly.

“Why, hello! Don’t I know you?” I smiled at her. “You’re the girl I met at the Derby. Why don’t you all sit down and let me buy drinks?”

“We’re busy! No time for a drink, bud, so roll your hoop.”

Pete’s arm slid around my neck from behind, which I had been expecting. Pete was never very smart that way. With my left hand, I reached up and grabbed his hand, my fingers in his palm, my thumb on the back, and with my right hand I reached back and grabbed Pete’s elbow. It was a rapid, much-rehearsed move, and as I got my grip, I dropped quickly to one knee and whipped Pete over my shoulder.

He had been coming in, and I used his impetus. He went flying and hit the table in front of me with a crash; the table collapsed like a sick accordion and with about the same sound. Being on my knees, I grabbed the legs of the nearest man with Milly and jerked hard. His head hit the table when he fell, and I was up fast to see Milly break away and the other man clawing for a gun.

It was a bad move, leaving him as open as a Memphis crap game, and I threw my right down the groove with everything on it but my shoelaces. When a man grabs suddenly at his hip, his face automatically comes forward. His did, and brother, it was beautiful!

His face came forward as if it had a date with my fist, and you could have heard the smack clear into the street. His feet went from under him as if they’d been jerked from behind. He went down to all fours. Naturally, I didn’t kick him. In police reports that might not look good, so when bent over him, my knee sort of banged into his temple. It was what might have been termed a fortuitous accident.

I’d been told Garzo had gone out the back door, so there had to be one. Grabbing Milly, I started for it. Blond Horace was somewhere behind me, and he was screaming. My last glimpse of the room was one I’d not soon forget. It was the face of a big Irishman, built like a lumberjack, who was staring down at those three hoodlums with an expression of such admiration at the havoc I’d wrought that it was the finest compliment a fighting man could receive.

The kitchen clattered and banged behind us, then the door.

We raced down the alley. We reached the street, slowing down, but just as we reached it, a car swung in and stopped us cold.

It was a shock to them and to us, but I’ll hand it to Ben Altman. He thought fast, and there was no arguing with the gun in his mitt. “Get in,” he said. “You’re leaving too soon.”

“Thanks,” I told him. “Do you mind if we skip this one? We’ve got a date, and we’re late.”

“I do mind,” he said. He was taking it big, like in the movies. “We can’t have our guests leaving so early. Especially when I came clear across town to see the lady.”

Milly had a grip on my fingers, and that grip tightened spasmodically when he spoke. She had heard about him from Cory, but that gun was steady. Had it been aimed at me, I’d have taken a chance.

Footsteps came up the alley behind me, and then a gun was jammed into my back so hard it peeled hide. “Get moving!” It was Pete Farber.

Milly was beside me as they walked us back to the club. She was tense and scared, but game. Just why they wanted her, I did not know. Maybe they believed she knew something, being a friend of Corabelle’s.

Back in the office at the Crystal Palace, the two hoods I’d worked over came in. Rather, one walked in, the other was half carried.

So there we were: Ben Altman, his three stooges, Milly and myself.

Now Benny was a lad who could scrap a little himself, and he and I had an old score to settle. He got a decision over me in the ring once although I’d had him on the floor three times in the first four rounds. He had a wicked left, and I think on any other night I could have beaten him. On the night that counted, I did not do well enough after that fast start, and it always griped me because Ben Altman was a fighter I had never liked.

“Looks like you banged the boys around a little,” Ben said. “But they’ll have their innings before this night is over.”

“What’s the matter, Ben? Do you have to hire your fighting done now?”

He did not like that, and he walked over to me, staring at me out of those white blue eyes. “I could take you any day in the week and twice on Sunday, so why bother now?”