The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (54 page)

“You could do it a couple ways,” Slabbe encouraged. “Jake did, hey? Got a line on the boy?”

“Yeah. Traced him back to a silk mill in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which explains how he knew something about the business in the first place.”

Slabbe rubbed some wrinkles out of his lightweight gray trousers along the thigh. “Now we start to tie in a little,” he said. “Max Lorenz was picked up in Pennsylvania for this last rap in a black-market nylon setup. Nylons mean silk. Teel worked with silk. Carry on.”

The big chauffeur took his time over a swallow of beer almost as copious as Slabbe could manage. “Well, Teel was in on that black-market deal, whatever it was,” he said. “His name was Walter Evans then and he was a foreman in the shipping department in this Scranton mill, and Max Lorenz got to him – this is all what Jake George reported to Nola, understand? When the setup blew up on them, Teel lammed and joined the army under the name he’s using now. Lorenz took a rap, but didn’t split on Teel, so I honest-to-God don’t think the Scranton cops or the Feds could make a case against Teel without Max’s testimony if it comes down to it – which is why I don’t mind telling it to you upstanding officials.”

“You couldn’t stop being cute for a second, could you?” Carlin said. “No, I guess not. What next?”

The dark skin on Hurst’s wide cheekbones and jaw tightened till it almost glistened, but his voice was quiet enough. “John Nola decided Teel was nobody to marry Ione. But he knew how nuts Ione was about Teel and that she wouldn’t listen to reason. So he told Jake George to get to Max Lorenz in the pen and grease Max to give out with whatever was needed to hang a rap on Teel. Nola figured if he put Teel in the can, Ione wouldn’t be able to marry him at least till his term was up and by that time maybe she’d be over him – or maybe he figured that so long as he had enough on Teel to send him over he could scare Teel into bailing out. Got that?”

“Got more beer?” Slabbe said.

Hurst got up. His stride, going and coming from the refrigerator, was sinuous as a huge dark cat’s. He dealt out more bottles.

He said: “But Lorenz wouldn’t deal through a go-between. He had to see Nola personally and get as big a price as the tariff would bear. That’s why he came here when he was sprung. He came here and talked to Nola Monday afternoon just before I drove Nola to the airport. I don’t think they came together on a price, though, because Nola was sore.”

“Did you see the plane crack up?” Slabbe asked.

Hurst shook his head. “No. I carried Nola’s bag to it and put him on, then went back to the car. The plane and me took off at the same time. As soon as I got back here, though, it came over the local radio that the plane had burned. Miss Yates sent me back to the airport to make sure there was no hope, then I got Prentice at Fudge Burke’s and we got an undertaker.”

Carlin scowled. “If Nola didn’t hit a bargain with Lorenz, how come he told Jake George’s secretary that he’d put a check for Jake in the mail? That sounded like he was satisfied.”

Hurst gave Carlin a long, sideways glance. “I wouldn’t expect a cop to get it right off. Take time.”

Slabbe mused. “Whether they hit it off or not, Lorenz would tell Nola to call off Jake, huh?”

“Sure Lorenz had Nola weejied into a corner,” Hurst said. “Who could finger Teel for Nola? Only Lorenz. Suppose Lorenz said now you play ball with me or I’ll keep quiet till
after
your daughter marries this bum, and
then
I’ll sing – and how would an upstanding pillar of the community like that?”

The chauffeur nodded knowingly. “See, Lorenz had Nola on the short end and could afford to drag it out, only being a riffler he’d naturally want to get rid of anybody in the deal who smelled like copper, meaning Jake George. Lorenz probably said: ‘Pay this peeper off and make sure he’s satisfied and then we’ll talk business.’ ”

“Bushwah!” Carlin exploded.

Hurst wasn’t bothered. “You always say that, just on general principles. Your patsy there is thinking it fits.” He nodded at Slabbe.

Slabbe said: “I’m not just checking the framework. Anything’s possible. So Nola calls Jake George off the case. Then what?”

“Then Nola shoves off in that plane wreck,” Hurst said, “and it’s all Lorenz’s baby. It’s the life of Reilly for him from there in.”

“Yeah?” Carlin said.

“Why not?” Hurst countered. “Lorenz has it on Teel. Teel’s going to marry Ione. She inherits at least half of Nola’s estate. Lorenz can blackmail Teel till 1996.”

The phone rang. Hurst answered it, said, “Yes, Miss Yates,” hung up and buttoned his tunic again, adjusted his cap. “They want the car. Miss Reed is leaving,” he explained. “Anyhow, I’ve spilled it and that’s all the hospitality I have on hand.” He nodded at the empty beer bottles.

“What’s
your
angle?” Carlin said. “And what about Jake George?”

“Lorenz must have knocked George off,” Hurst shrugged. “Jake was the only other guy in the world that knew about it – except me, and Lorenz didn’t know I knew – and Lorenz didn’t want Jake mixing in and maybe trying to squeeze out a few dibs himself. My angle is only to save Miss Yates grief, like I said in the first place, by saving Ione grief, which means letting Bill Teel alone. Why not, you guys? You can’t make a case against him without Lorenz splits on him and maybe not even then. And Lorenz won’t be around here for a good stretch. He’ll wait till Ione and Teel are married and then try to bleed them – only maybe this time I’ll have something to talk over with him.” Hurst’s eyes glistened a little. “How about it? If you find Jake George’s body, you’ll see it fits.”

“Maybe we already found it,” Carlin said sourly.

“You don’t say. Where?”

“Guess.”

Slabbe said absently: “In Bleeker’s Canyon, burned to a crisp in Lorenz’s Chevvy.”

Hurst’s face showed nothing. Not Carlin’s. His started to redden, and the nostrils of his bony nose flared. He opened his mouth, but after Slabbe’s quick wink he closed it again.

“So what about it?” Hurst pressed. “Lay off Teel. He’s straight now, or I don’t know guys. He went through a war, and there
are
people who learn their lesson.”

Carlin had to take it out on somebody. He said nastily: “Like you, I suppose. You’re the little fixer-upper because the old girl caught you snitching pears once and let you go. In a pig’s eye! What
did
she catch you at, punk?”

If it had been two strides from Hurst’s position to Carlin’s chair, the slope-shouldered detective would have had clawed hands on his neck. He pawed for his sap.

It was three strides, though, and the huge chauffeur made a tremendous effort and caught himself. He was breathing hard. His yellow-flecked eyes were small and shiny. Deep in his chest, he said at the sap: “You think that thing could stop me?”

Slabbe made the floor vibrate, going toward the door.

Carlin yelped: “Hey!”

“Hey, hell!” Slabbe grunted. “While you jokers were waltzing there, I heard shots from the house.”

There were two wet marks on Ruby Reed’s lime-green suit. She was on her back in front of the main door to the Nola home. Her green eyes were open and the bruise on the left one was no particular color at all now, just darker than the rest of her white skin.

Her black hair was scarcely disarranged. Her long shapely legs were not twisted awkwardly, but it was not a posed tableau: her skirt was swirled higher than a photographer would have arranged it.

For a second Slabbe’s heavy face might have shown a bit more gray granite than usual, then he was again chewing gum stolidly, “I guess I don’t get to keep that date with you, baby,” he murmured.

“Who done it?” Carlin cursed softly, dark eyes everywhere. He bit his lips, barked at the people in the wash of light from the open door, “OK, I sound like a hayseed, but who saw it, or something?”

There was no immediate answer. Prentice and Ione Nola and Miss Yates and Bill Teel stood close to each other, elbows touching. Behind them servants fidgeted and whispered. Alan Hurst stepped toward the old lady in black taffeta, breathing heavily. “You don’t have to stay here, Miss Yates,” he said.

“Cut it!” Carlin snapped.

Hurst’s wide shoulders swung back viciously. Then his hazel eyes widened and he put a hand against the house to support himself. Miss Yates’ black eyes snapped to him. Her tinkling voice ordered: “Take Alan inside, Joseph – it’s his heart again,” and a butler sidled around her and took Hurst’s elbow.

Miss Yates transferred her glance to Teel’s haggard face. He looked older than she did. “What happened, William?” she said. “What’s wrong with your arm?”

Carlin rammed a cigar under his long nose. “I’ll handle this, thank you. Yeah, what
is
wrong with your arm, bo?”

Teel took his brown eyes off Ruby, sent them straight ahead to look at something a thousand miles away, and said without any inflection whatever: “I was standing in front of the door with her, waiting for Alan to bring the car around. Someone shot at us. I got hit in the arm.”

“Bill!” Ione Nola squealed and pawed at him.

“Shuddup!” Carlin bit. “He’ll live.” He looked at Teel’s tired mouth and empty eyes and his lips peeled back a trifle wolfishly. “For a while, anyhow. Hear me, son? This is a very, very old gag, maybe.”

Black taffeta rustled. The tinkling voice sounded like icicles breaking against one another. “I presume you represent the police,” Miss Yates said to Carlin. “It’s fortunate that you should be on hand at this time,
un
fortunate that you know only a single technique; intimidation.”

Prentice Nola scratched his beard. “Tell him, Aunt Serena,” he leered.

Carlin struggled with a mouthful of marbles.

Slabbe touched his gray hat deferentially. “Sorry, ma’am. If you people would just say where you were and if you heard the shots, and so on, you could go inside.”

“Thank you, Mr Slabbe,” Miss Yates said. “Bill was with Miss Reed, of course, as he’s admitted. Prentice, you may be sure, was no farther from a brandy decanter than necessary.”

“
Merci
, darling,” Prentice mocked. “I was indeed imbibing in my room on the second floor. I heard the shots and looked over my balcony railing, saw Ruby sprawled here and came down.”

Miss Yates said: “Ione, where were you?”

The pint-sized ash-blonde turned her head from Teel long enough to say, “Dressing,” and turned back again. Her little-girl’s fingers touched Teel’s gray cheek.

“I was also in my room,” Miss Yates said. “I heard the shots and also looked over my balcony railing and saw what had happened and came down. May I offer a suggestion?”

“Yes’m,” Slabbe said.

“Then I suggest you scour this vicinity for a medium-sized man who limps on his left leg.”

Carlin’s cigar gave a downward tilt as his mouth opened. “
What?
”

Miss Yates said coolly: “I can’t say if Prentice was using his eyes when he was on his balcony, but I was. And I saw such a man run east over the lawn.”

Slabbe looked quickly at Prentice, whose jaw was twitching and whose eyes were ugly on the old woman.

Slabbe shifted back to Teel. “We know about you, son,” he said quietly. “Did you see who it was? Was it Max Lorenz? It’s OK. We know you know him.”

Teel’s mouth opened three times for one word. When it came, it was: “Yes.”

Slabbe caught Carlin’s eye, jerked his head toward the door. Carlin scowled, said generally: “OK, you can go inside.”

“Oh, my book!” Ione Nola cried. She pointed at a slender volume that was lying near Ruby’s outstretched hand. “I loaned it to her. Bill gave it to me. I thought if she and Prentice were in love, she’d be thrilled to read—”

“Be quiet, Ione,” Miss Yates ordered. “Go inside.”

Slabbe stooped and picked up the book. It fell open at a well-marked page.

One eye on Ione, he read:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise . . .

Carlin raged. “What the – that’s enough! Cut that out!”

Slabbe paid him no attention. He was watching Ione’s starry eyes. She said: “Isn’t it marvelous, Bill?” to Teel. “That’s the way I feel for you and—”

“Ione! Inside!” The tinkling voice was sharp. Miss Yates caught the girl’s elbow, turned her to the door. Teel started to follow, his shoulders sagging.

“Not you,” Carlin snapped at him. “You stick here, I know all about you, boy. I don’t know why you’d knock this dish off, but you could have. Two shots for her and one for yourself and heave the rod into the shrubs over there and say you saw Lorenz do it. You and me got a session coming up.”

Slabbe took three steps backwards, saw that Carlin wasn’t paying attention, turned and plodded toward the street. He went to the Carleton Arms Hotel and cornered the houseman, Barney McPhail.

“You’re stuck for a hotel bill, chum,” he told the well-dressed, dapper handshaker. “Miss Ruby Reed. Dead. Shot. No more wolves will bother her. Who did?”

McPhail flicked the starboard end of a black waxed mustache delicately, pale eyes expressionless. “She registered here, 507, Saturday afternoon from New York City. So far as 1 know, she didn’t have any visitors or calls. I can check.”

“Suppose you do,” Slabbe encouraged.

McPhail did. Miss Reed had had no phone calls or visitors that anyone remembered, and such things were generally remembered in a lush thirty-five-story inn like the Carleton Arms.

“How’d she get the shiner?” Slabbe asked.

Barney McPhail did not look embarrassed, having learned poise in his day, but he squirmed just a little. “I hope nothing’s going to come of that, Slabbe,” he murmured. “It wouldn’t exactly be the job, but it would hurt my stock around here. A guy got into her suite and slugged her – she
said
.”