The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (52 page)

“No, ma’am,” Slabbe said. “I only asked him if he knew why his father hired a detective named Jake George.”

“I see. Did he know?”

“He said not. More likely – maybe – uh, perhaps you—”

“More likely I know?” Miss Yates provided. “No. I ran my brother-in-law’s home for him, raised his children, practically, but I was not in his confidence about any monkey business. I’ll be happy to talk with you later. Right now, we’re leaving . . . Prentice, you’re ready?” The black eyes seemed to notice Ruby Reed for the first time.

Prentice grimaced and performed the introduction. “Miss Reed. Yes, Aunt Serena, a casual acquaintance.” Prentice patted Ruby’s not-thin arm. “Excuse it, sugar. I’ll see you later.”

“By all means bring Miss Reed along,” Miss Yates said abruptly. Everyone stared. Bill Teel’s dead face threw off its paralysis to twitch protestingly.

Ruby was off her stool, chin up, sails set. “I’d love to come,” she cooed.

“Of course, my child,” Miss Yates said, black eyes gliding the length of Ruby’s statuesque figure with no more interest than a python might have in its prey. She turned and the brute in chauffeur’s livery took her arm solicitously.

Slabbe stood aside. As Ruby Reed glided past him, he whispered: “What time?”

Her lips didn’t move. “Forget it.”

Slabbe watched them leave, the little old lady in black on the arm of the hulking chauffeur, followed by Ione Nola and Bill Teel and The Drunk and The Body. He tried to dip up an appropriate rhyme or moral or parable, plodded to a phone booth.

He informed Carlin: “Ruby Reed at the Carleton Arms Hotel knows Max Lorenz, but don’t pressure her yet – I got her dated whether she likes it or not. She came to Fudge Burke’s place the first time Saturday night and picked up Prentice Nola, a drinker and gambler, who once forged a check on his pop. Doesn’t seem like anything Jake George would have been called in on, though. He’s dead, says Fudge Burke. How d’yuh like that?”

“Geez!”

“The docs find a slug in Lorenz’s thigh?”

“No. They found false teeth in his mouth, though.”

“So then it ain’t Lorenz,” Slabbe grunted morosely. “Zenith said he has natural teeth.”

“Yeah. This burned guy had a skull fracture, too, before the fire started. The fracture killed him and the fact that there was time enough for some fat to travel to the lungs shows the guy was dead before the car went over the cliff. It’s homicide.”

“And Jake George had false teeth,” Slabbe said. “And he left his office Monday with Lorenz. Lorenz dumped Jake into Bleeker’s figuring Jake would be identified as him. It adds. Lorenz told the Zenith plant in Lewisburg that he wouldn’t even see him around in a couple days. He told the used-car dealer he only wanted the jalop for a few days. He had it rigged, huh, Pat? . . . Hey, you there?”

Carlin grunted peevishly. “Yeah, I’m here. Stuck here. If I could get a civil service job, I’d leave here in three minutes.”

“I know. It just goes to show you,” Slabbe consoled.

“Show me what?”

“I dunno. Can’t think of anything symbolic. How about checking the speedometer in Lorenz’s car? We know he drove here from Lewisburg. See if the miles say he went anywhere else, huh?”

“What’s about Jake George?”

“I’m checking that right now.”

“Where can I catch you?”

“Wherever somebody burns a corpse behind ’em.”

Evening chill laced the late April sunlight and toilers who had beat the time clock a little shuttled through the streets, as Slabbe stepped out of a cab in front of a moldy but not resigned brick building called the Fairview Hotel, and ferried his gray-tropical-worsted-clad bulk across the lobby. He wore the same weight clothing all year around, without topcoat, changed every day, but was not the best customer a tailor could have in the pressing department. About June he changed his gray winter hat for a white Panama.

The lobby was as large and as full as the ace of diamonds, the pip being a youth of sixty who drew salary as desk clerk. He gave Slabbe the number of Dink Quint’s room, not ungraciously, not too hungrily and did not look too disappointed when there was no more to the transaction. Slabbe entered an automatic elevator, pressed the 5 button and braced himself as engineering noises clanked above and below him and the cage took off. On 5 he got out gingerly and rapped on Dink Quint’s door.

A dry, tired whisper eddied from beyond the door, repeated itself several times before Slabbe’s ears organized it. It was saying: “Come in. Come on in. For crissakes, are you deaf? Come in.”

Slabbe tested the door, found it unlocked and filled it for a second and then was in a fairly spacious hotel cell. Dry, tired eyes checked him over. The whispering vocal chords sighed, and Dink Quint slid a small-wristed pale hand from under his pillow, made himself more comfortable under four blankets, reached for an eye-cup on the table beside his bed and began filling it with eye-wash from a blue bottle. Five colors stabbed and slashed each other in his silk pajamas.

“Snazzy pajumpers there,” Slabbe admired. “Steal ’em from a Jap? I guess Fudge called and said I was coming?”

“I don’t sleep with the door open,” Dink husked and sat up and threw a shot into each eye. He was five feet three, a good hundred pounds after a steak dinner, with tiredness living closer to him than his skin – except when he was on duty in front of the one-way glass in Fudge Burke’s office. Then he missed nothing.

Slabbe looked for a chair, dismissed the contraption as unfit for heavy duty and balanced himself for a stand.

He said: “Shoot then.”

Dink put down his eye-cup, jacked a cigarette between his dry, tired lips and turned his thin face sideways so he didn’t have to lift the match farther than necessary. He began to talk.

“Jake George came into Fudge’s place Monday afternoon about three-thirty and had two shots and two beers while he was waiting for a sandwich: pickled tongue. He ate it and had a couple more drinks. He was killing time. He was ready to shove off again when he got a phone call.”

“That was his secretary, Susie,” Slabbe nodded.

“Yeah, a little after four o’clock. Well, when he was coming from the phone booth, all smiles, a guy steps up to him and his smiles go away, and I see the guy has a rod on Jake. In his pocket, the rod was, but I see stuff like that.”

“Who was the guy?”

“So I says to Fudge – he was eating a candied apple – ‘Fudge, a guy just put a rod on Jake George and took him out. Does he get away with it?’ Fudge says, ‘See what’s up, Dink – Slip’ll take over.’ I chase after Jake and the guy, follow them. The guy has a car. He makes Jake drive.”

“Who was the guy?”

“Jeez, you got patience! Ike Veech.”

Slabbe’s lips pulled back as if he were going to whistle between his teeth. “Ike Veech,” he said softly, “wouldn’t kill his old lady for less than a C-note. Where’d he ride Jake to!”

“Lilac Lake,” Dink said. “A cabin up there. Going into it, he cut Jake down.”

“Hard enough to kill him?”

“No, not then,” Dink said judiciously. “He just rocked him to sleep and then cooked himself some supper. Boy, it made me hungry.” Dink sighed. “I hung around a long time, and it was bacon he made: I smelled it.”

“OK, OK.”

“After dark about eight o’clock another guy drove up to the cabin and went in. Him, I don’t see clear. No moon or nothing, and they had the curtains pulled. Say another hour, and the two of them bring Jake out, not on his feet, and put him in the back of Ike’s car. He was no more Jake then. You can tell by the sag and slop of ’em when they’re meat.”

Slabbe wet his lips. “Uh-huh?”

“The other guy jumps in his car and starts off. I figure he’s my pigeon now and go after him. But – you dumb slob!” Dink screeched, with the first show of vitality in his voice. “You let him follow you here!”

Slabbe was stone. There was life in Dink’s murky hazel eyes now, bright life, life that wanted to stay life. Dink’s cigarette glowed cherry red, though the rest of him, except for the eyes, was rigid.

There was no need for Slabbe to look around. He said woodenly. “Who is it? Ike?”

Dink didn’t move. The door behind Slabbe closed delicately. “It’s me, yeah,” said Ike Veech’s twang. “Nuh-uh, don’t turn yet.”

There was a gliding, stealthy sound behind Slabbe. A hand gentle as air moved over him, found his armpit clip, whisked out the compact .38 he carried. The air stirred again as Veech drew back. The .38 hit the floor.

“You can turn now, not fast,” he said through his nose. He added reprovingly: “You never were mouthy, Dink. How come?”

Slabbe pivoted, but slowly. Ike Veech’s dapper shoulders were against the door. The .32 in his gray-gloved hand was carelessly assured, his shiny patent leather slippers were flat on the floor. His dark liquid eyes roved only as much as necessary between Slabbe and Dink on the bed.

Slabbe defended himself to Dink. “He wasn’t on me when I came in.”

“Why, no,” Ike Veech, agreed sympathetically. “A guy built like you ain’t hard to trail, though.”

“Lissen, Ike,” Dink said fast. “I don’t talk unless Fudge says so, see? And he knows I know, and you don’t walk in on him, brother. He takes care of his guys, too. You better take it easy with me.”

“What’s the color, Dink?” Veech chuckled.

“White! Go to hell! I’m just telling you. Give it to me and see. Fudge’ll have Slip and Tommy and Pointer run you down even in South America.”

“Shuddup!”

“Sure!”

“Why didn’t you shuddup right along? A rat’s a rat.”

“—you!” Dink said. “Fudge liked Jake George. I don’t know why. Maybe Jake sent him a box of candy once. He told me to tell Slobby here what I seen, so I tell him. I didn’t tell him about the guy with you ’cause I didn’t make him. Like I was just saying, I start after him when he pulls out after helping you dump Jake in your car. Only my jalopy is parked away from the cabin so’s you wouldn’t hear me start up, and while I’m running for it, your partner gets a start. I try for about five miles but don’t catch him, then I come back to the cabin to see what you’re gonna do with Jake’s body, only by then you’re gone too. That’s a lot I know, isn’t it? And would I tell it in court? You don’t have to touch me—”

“Shuddup!” Ike Veech stirred the air with his gun barrel, in Slabbe’s direction. “He goes. That’s for sure.”

Dink let his pillow have him again. His teeth chattered just a little, stopped. He might have been a bit tireder than normally, but the difference was too slight for Slabbe to judge. He knew Dink had talked his way out of it, though. Dink knew, too.

He said wearily to Ike Veech: “Not here. Not now. Take him out.”

Veech frowned, cocked his pearl-gray fedora back on crisp black curls with a casual twist of the gun barrel. “It has to be here,” he decided. “I wouldn’t fool with him in an elevator or like that.”

“Not with
me
here!” Dink squeaked. “The johns would put me through the wringer. I’m not taking that.”

Veech’s voice snarled: “Get out, then!”

“I’m not dressed.”

“
Get
dressed!”

“Yeah. OK. Watch him now.”

Dink flung his blankets aside, came to sitting position, swiveled to get his feet over the edge of the bed. And while he did this, his scrawny wrist disappeared under his pillow and he brought it around, pillow and all, and shot three times like that.

Two of his slugs missed Ike Veech completely. One of them, the second probably, took Veech in the midsection.

Slabbe was on the floor.

Veech cursed loud and bitterly. He emptied his gun at Dink.

He was curdling at the knees, though. Slabbe didn’t know it and got his hand on his .38 and turned it up, butt braced on the floor. He shot twice, held the third because he saw, by then, that Veech’s gun was pointing at nothing but the ceiling. Presently Veech’s head and open eyes were, too.

Dink still had the pillow in his lap, only now he was trying to hold something together with it. It was smouldering, and little curls of acrid smoke twisted into his face. They were not dispelled by any breathing for an interval.

Slabbe got to a knee, stood, reached to slap the pillow out.

Dink wouldn’t – or couldn’t – let it go. His voice had never been tireder. “It wasn’t Fudge that liked Jake George,” he said. “It was me. Jake helped me get a divorce and put my kid in a good school, years ago. That’s why I sang. If I’d-uh had guts, I’duh gone into that cabin. Honest, I didn’t think they were gonna g-give it to him, though.”

Slabbe stopped trying to pull the pillow away. There was no flame in it and Dink didn’t seem to mind.

Slabbe said: “You didn’t make the guy Ike was working with?”

“Honest, no. The car, though, I know it good. A twelve- cylinder Caddy. That bigshot’s, John Nola. You can take it from there, huh?”

Dink bent in the middle over the pillow.

Carlin’s dark eyes smouldered on the burnt pillow which a medical examiner had pried away from Dink Quint’s middle. He said: “Damned if it wouldn’t have been another corpse burned behind you, at that.” His cigar jutted suspiciously Slabbe’s way. “Did you smell this coming?”

“I read it in Dink’s palm, yeah,” Slabbe said. “Don’t be that way. I told you just how it happened.”

“Don’t you always –
afterwards?
”

“Let’s eat, Pat.”

“You stay right where you are!”

“C’mon, I’ll buy.”

“You’ll . . . Well, OK then.” Carlin issued instructions to his squad, stepped long legs over Ike Veech’s body by the door. Slabbe followed. They went to a chophouse, ordered.

“I hated to do that,” Slabbe said. “Shoot Veech, I mean. He could have busted it wide open for us, maybe, if he knew why he helped kill Jake George. I wonder did he, though.”

“Gun for hire was all he was,” Carlin shrugged. “Lorenz just picked him up to do a job.”

“Lorenz, huh?” Slabbe mused. “You think it was Lorenz in that Caddy that came to the cabin to meet Veech?”

“Don’t
you?
”

Slabbe’s shrug was as informative as the booth walls.

“He ain’t saying,” Carlin informed his steak. “Here’s my end: Jake George traces Max Lorenz for John Nola, puts five hundred bucks on the line with the warden for Lorenz to come here soon as he’s sprung. Lorenz does that – incidentally, we accounted for him along the way.”