The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (70 page)

The man laughed. “Don’t be silly! We’re staying together, especially now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, I wouldn’t dare let you go now. We’ll either get along or you will get what Charlie got.” There was a bump as of a chair knocked over, then a shout.
“Stay away from that door!”

Ragan was moving fast. He swung into the hall and gripped the knob, but it was locked. There was a crash inside, and in a sudden fury of fear for the girl inside, Ragan threw himself against the door. The lock broke, and he stumbled inside.

Lieutenant Wells Ryerson threw the girl from him and grabbed for his gun. Ragan was moving too fast. He slapped the gun aside and hooked a wicked right to the chin, then a left. Ryerson fell back, his gun going off as he fell. He scrambled to his feet, lifting his gun.

Sam Blythe fired in the same instant, and the bullet slammed Ryerson against the wall. The gun dribbled from Ryerson’s fingers, and he slid to the floor.

His eyes opened, and for a moment they were sharp, clear, and intelligent. “I told you,” he said hoarsely, “to close this one up fast.”

His voice faded, and then he struggled for breath. “It looked so…easy! The file, those ex-cons on the loose. I could make a record…the money, too.”

Mark Stigler shook his head. “Ryerson! Who would have believed it?” He glanced at Ragan. “What tipped you off?”

“It had to be somebody with access to the files, and who could be out between three and five
A.M
. It couldn’t be you, Mark, because you’re at home with your family every chance you get and your wife would know. Sam, here, likes his sleep too much.

“What really tipped me off was this.” Ragan picked up a paper match split into a cross. “It was a nervous habit he had when thinking. Many of us do similar things.

“Matches like that were found on the Smiley and Miller jobs and in the alley near Ambler’s office.”

“Did Lew know his brother liked Luretta?”

“I doubt it.”

“What about Ambler?”

“I think he knew, and somehow he discovered it was Ryerson who cracked his safe. He must have called him. Ryerson did not dare return the call, for then there might be somebody else who knew his secret.”

When the body had been taken away, Stigler looked over at Ragan. “Coming with us, Joe? Or are you staying?”

“Neither. We’re going to drive over to see Ruth Smiley. I want that to be the first thing we do—turn Jack Smiley loose so he can go back to his family.”

Later, in the car, Luretta said, “She’ll be so happy! It must be wonderful to make somebody that happy!”

“That’s something,” Joe Ragan said, “that we ought to talk about.”

The Unexpected Corpse

S
omehow I had always known that if she got in a bad spot, she would call on me, just as I knew that I would never turn her down. Maybe it was because I had encouraged her in the old days when being an actress was only a dream she’d had.

Well, it was a dream that had matured and developed until she was there, rising to greater heights with every picture, with every play. It was never news to me when she scored a success. Somehow, there had never been any doubt in my mind.

When my phone rang, I’d just come in. A few of the boys and I had been getting around to some nightspots, and when I came in and tossed my raincoat over a chair, the telephone was ringing its heart out.

It was Ruth. It had been six months since I’d seen her, and I hadn’t even known she knew my number; it wasn’t in the book.

“Can you come over, Jim? I’m in trouble! Awful trouble!”

Sometimes she tended to dramatize things, but there was something in her voice that warned me she wasn’t kidding.

“Sure,” I told her. “Just relax. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Light rain was falling and it was quiet outside. A few late searchlights probed the empty sky, and my tires sang on the pavement. I took backstreets because for all I knew, the cops might be having another shakedown of cars, and I didn’t want to be stopped. Not that it would mean anything, I wasn’t carrying a gun even though I had a permit, but I wanted to avoid delay.

She opened the door quickly when I knocked. The idea that it might be someone else never seemed to enter her head. She was wearing an evening gown, but she looked so much like a frightened little girl that it seemed like old times again.

“What’s the trouble?” I asked her.

“There’s a…there’s a dead man in there!” She indicated the door to what I surmised was the bedroom.

“A
dead
man?” Of all the things it might have been, this was one I’d never imagined. I put her aside and went in, careful to avoid touching anything.

The guy was lying on the bed, one leg and one arm dangling over the side. He was dead all right, deader than a mackerel.

My guess would have put him at fifty years old. He might have been a few years younger. He was slim, dapper, and wore a closely clipped gray mustache. His eyes were wide open and blue. There was an amethyst ring on his left hand. Carefully, I felt his pockets. His billfold was still full of money. I didn’t count how much, after I saw it was plenty. The label of his suit said that his name was Lawrence Craine.

The name rang a bell somewhere, but I couldn’t place it. Spotting a little blood on his shoulder, I saw he had been stabbed behind the collarbone. In such a stab, most of the blood flows into the lungs. That must have been the case, for there was very little blood. At a rough guess, the guy was five-ten or -eleven. He must have weighed a hundred sixty or thereabouts.

Ruth, I still called her that although she was known professionally as Sue Shannon, was sitting as I’d left her, white as death and her eyes big enough and dark enough to drown in.

“Well, tell me about it,” I suggested. “Tell me how well you knew him, what he was to you, and what he was doing here.”

She had always listened to me. I suspected she had been in love with me once. I know I had with her. However, it was more than that, for we were friends, we understood each other. She tried to answer my questions now, and though her voice shook a little, I could see she was trying to keep herself from getting hysterical.

“His name is Larry Craine. I don’t know what he does except that he seems to have a good deal of money. I’ve met him several times out on the Strip or at the homes of friends. He seemed to know everyone.

“He had found out something about me, something I didn’t want anyone to know. He was going to tell, if I didn’t pay him. It would have made a very bad story and it was the sort that people would tell around. It would have ruined me.

“I didn’t think he would do it, so I told him no. He laughed at me, and gave me until tonight to pay him. I don’t know how he got here or how he got in. I went out at eight o’clock with Roger Gentry, but we quarreled and he disappeared. After a while, Davis and Nita Claren drove me home. Then I found him.”

“You haven’t called the police?”

“The police?” Her eyes were wide and frightened. “Do I have to? I thought that you could hush it up.”

“Listen, honey,” I said dryly, “this man is
dead
! And he’s been
murdered.
The police always seem to be interested in such cases.”

“But not here! The body I mean, couldn’t you take it someplace else? In stories they do those things.”

“I know. But it wouldn’t work.” I picked up the phone and when I got Homicide, I asked for Reardon, praying he would be in. He was.

“Reardon? Got one for you, and a very touchy case. In the apartment of a friend of mine.” I explained briefly, and she stood at my elbow, waiting.

When I hung up, I turned around. “Kid,” I warned her, “you’re going to have a bad time, so take it standing. The body is here, and if they find out about this blackmail, they’ve got a motive.”

W
HEN THE SQUAD CAR
pulled into the drive, I was standing there with my arms around her and she was crying. Over her shoulder, I was looking at the wall and thinking, and not about her. I was thinking about this guy Craine. I couldn’t make myself think Ruth had done it.

However, there was a chance, even if a slim one. Ruthie, well, she was an impractical girl, and always seemed somewhat vague. But underneath was a will that would move mountains. It wasn’t on the surface, but it was there.

Also, she knew a man could be killed in just that way. She knew it because I remembered telling her once when we were talking about some detective stories we’d both read.

Reardon came in and with him were Doc Spates, the medical examiner, a detective named Nick Tanner, a police photographer, and a couple of tired harness bulls.

Sue, I decided to stick to calling her Sue as everyone else would, gave him the story, looking at him out of those big, wistful eyes. Those eyes worked on nearly everyone. Apparently, they hadn’t worked on Larry Craine. I doubted if they would work on Reardon who, when it comes to murder, is a pretty cold-blooded fish.

He rolled his cigar in his cheek and listened; he also looked carefully around the room. Reardon was a good man. He would know plenty about this girl before he got through looking the place over.

When she finished, he looked at me. “Where do you figure in this, Jim? What would she be needing with a private eye?”

“That wasn’t it. We knew each other back in Wisconsin long before she ever came out here. Whenever she got in trouble, she always called me.”

“Whenever…”

He looked at me sadly, letting the implication hang. I didn’t tell him any more but I knew he would find out eventually. Reardon was thorough. Slow, painstaking, but thorough.

Doc Spates came in, closing up his bag. “Dead about two hours. That’s pretty rough, of course. Whoever did it knew what he was doing. One straight, hard thrust. No stabbing around. No other cuts or bruises.”

Reardon nodded, chewing his cigar. “Could a woman do it?”

Spates fussed with his bag. “Why not? It doesn’t take much strength.”

Sue’s face was stiff and white and her fingers tightened on my arm. Suddenly I was scared. What sort of a fool’s chance I was building my hopes on I don’t know, but all of a sudden they went out of me like air from a pricked balloon, and there I stood. Right then I knew I was going to have to get busy, and I was going to have to work fast.

Just then Tanner came in. He looked at me and his eyes were questioning. He was holding up an ice pick.

“Doc,” he said as Spates reached the door. “Could this have done it?”

“Could be.” Spates shrugged. “Something long, thin, and narrow. Have to examine it further before I can tell exactly. Any blood on it?”

“A little,” Tanner said. “Close against the handle. But it’s been washed!”

Reardon was elaborately casual when he turned around. “You do this?” he asked her.

She shook her head. Twice she tried to speak before she could get it out. “No, I wouldn’t. . couldn’t…kill anyone!”

To look at her the idea seemed preposterous. Reardon was half convinced, but I, knowing her as I did, knew that deep inside she had something that was hard and ready.

“Listen,” I said, “let me call Davis Claren and have him come over and pick up Sue. She’ll be at his place when you want her.”

He looked at me thoughtfully, then nodded. After I’d phoned and come back into the room, I saw he had slumped down on the divan and was sitting there, chewing that unlighted cigar. Sue was sitting in a chair staring at him, white and still. I could see she was near the breaking point and was barely holding herself together.

Only after she had gone off with her friends did he look up at me. “How about you? You do it?”

“Me?” I demanded. “Why would I kill the guy? I never knew him!”

“You knew her,” he stated flatly. “She looks like she has a lot of trust in you. Maybe she called on you for help. Maybe she called on you
before
the guy was dead instead of after.”

“Bosh.” That was the only answer I had to that one.

When he finally let me go, I beat it down to my car. It was after four in the morning, and there was little I could do. It felt cold and lonely in my apartment. I stripped off my clothes and tumbled into bed.

T
HE TELEPHONE JOLTED
me out of it. It was Taggart. I should have known it would be him. He was Sue’s boss and, as executives went in Hollywood, he was all right. That meant he was basically honest but he wouldn’t ever get caught making a statement that couldn’t be interpreted at least three different ways. And if the winds of studio politics changed, he’d cut Sue loose like a sail in a storm.

“Sue tells me she called you,” he barked. “Well, what have you got?”

“Nothing yet,” I told him. “Give me time.”

“There isn’t any time. The D.A. thinks she did it. He’s all hopped up against the Industry, anyway. I’m sending a man over to your office at eight with a thousand dollars. Consider that a retainer!”
Bang;
he hung up the phone.

It was a quarter to eight. I rolled out of bed, into the shower, into my clothes, and through a session with an electric razor so fast that it seemed like one continuous movement. And then, when I was putting the razor away, the name of Larry Craine clicked in my mind.

A week ago, or probably two, I’d been standing in front of a hotel on Vine Street talking to Joe. Joe was a cab starter who knew everybody around. With us was standing a man, a stranger to me, some mug from back East. He spoke up suddenly, and nodded across toward the Derby.

“I’ll be damned, that’s Larry Craine!” said the man. “What’s
he
doing out here?”

“I think he lives here,” Joe said.

“He didn’t when I knew him!” The fellow growled.

With the thousand dollars in my pocket, I started hunting for Joe. I’d never known his last name, but I got it pretty quick when I looked at a cabbie over a five-dollar bill. It was Joe McCready and he lived out in Burbank.

There were other things to do first, and I did a lot of them on a pay phone. Meanwhile, I was thinking, and when I finally got to Joe, he hesitated only a minute, then shrugged.

“You’re a pal of mine,” he said, “or I’d say nothing. This lug who spotted Larry Craine follows the horses. I think he makes book, but I wouldn’t know about that. He doesn’t do any business around the corner.”

“What do you know about Larry Craine?”

“Nothing. Doesn’t drink very much, gets around a lot, and seems to know a lot of people. Mostly, he hangs around on the edge of things, spends pretty free when there’s a crowd around, but tips like he never carried anything but nickels.”

Joe looked up at me. “You watch yourself. This guy we were talkin’ to, his name is Pete Ravallo. He plays around with some pretty fast company.”

He did have Craine’s address. I think Joe McCready knew half the addresses and telephone numbers in that part of town. He never talked much, but he listened a lot, and he never forgot anything. My detective agency couldn’t have done the business it did without elevator boys, cab starters, newsboys, porters, and bellhops.

That was how I got into Craine’s apartment. I went around there and saw Paddy. Paddy had been a doorman in that apartment house for five years. We used to talk about the fights and football games, sitting on the stoop, just the two of us.

“The police have been there,” Paddy advised, “but they didn’t stay long. I can get y’ in, but remember, if y’ get caught, it’s on your own y’ are!”

This Craine had done all right by himself. I could see that the minute I looked around. I took a quick gander at the desk, but not with any confidence. The cops would have headed for the desk right away, and Reardon was a smart fellow. So was Tanner, for that matter. I headed for the clothes closet.

He must have had twenty-five suits and half that many sport coats, all a bit loud for my taste. I started at one end and began going through them, not missing a pocket. Also, as I went along, I checked the labels. He had three suits from New Orleans. They were all pretty shabby and showed much wear. They were stuck back in a corner of the closet out of the way.

The others were all comparatively new, and all made in Hollywood or Beverly Hills. At first that didn’t make much of an impression, but it hit me suddenly as I was going through the fourteenth suit, or about there. Larry Craine had been short of money in New Orleans but he had been very flush in Hollywood. What happened to put his hands on a lot of money, and fast?

When I hit the last suit in line, I had netted just three ticket stubs and twenty-one cents in money. The last suit was the payoff. When I opened the coat, I saw right away that I’d jumped to a false conclusion. Here was one suit, bought ready-made, in Dallas.

In the inside coat pocket, I found an airline envelope, and in it, the receipt for one passenger from Dallas to Los Angeles via American Airlines. Also, there was a stub, the sort of thing given to you after a street photographer takes your picture. If you want the snapped picture, you can get it and more of them if you wish, if you want to pay a modest sum of money. Craine hadn’t been interested.