The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (51 page)

“Thanks.” Kip picked up the phone and called, then sat down.

A few minutes later, the call was returned. The car was a rental. And, he reflected, certainly rented under an assumed name.

The day passed slowly. At dusk, he paid the boys off and started them home, to return the next day. Then he went down to the coffee shop and ate slowly and thoughtfully. After paying his check, he walked outside.

He must not go anywhere near Helen Whitson. He would take a walk around the block and return to the hotel room. It had been stuffy, and his head ached. He turned left and started walking. He had gone less than half a block when he heard a quick step behind him.

Startled by the quickening steps, he whirled. Dark shadows moved at him, and before he could get his hands up, he was slugged over the head. Even as he fell to the walk, he remembered there had been a flash from a green stone on his attacker’s hand, a stone that caught some vagrant light ray.

He hit the walk hard and started to get up. The man struck again, and then again. Kip’s knees gave way, and he slipped into a widening pool of darkness, fighting to hold his consciousness. Darkness and pain, a sense of moving. Slowly, he fought his way to awareness.

“H
EY
, B
ILL
.” The tone was casual. “He’s comin’ out of it. Shall I slug him again?” Walls and a roof of graying lumber swam into view.

“No, I want to talk to the guy.”

Bill’s footsteps came nearer, and Kip Morgan opened his eyes and sat up.

Bill was a big man with shoulders like a pro football player and a broken nose. His cheeks were lean, his eyes cold and unpleasant. The other man was shorter, softer, with a round, fat face and small eyes.

“Hi!” Kip said. “Who you boys workin’ for?”

Bill chuckled. “Wakes right up, doesn’t he? Starts askin’ questions right away.” He studied Morgan thoughtfully, searching his mind for recognition. “What we want to know is who you’re workin’ for. Talk and you can blow out of here.”

“Yes? Don’t kid me, chum! The guy who hired you yeggs hasn’t any idea of lettin’ me get away. I’m not workin’ for anybody. I work for myself.”

“You goin’ to talk or take a beatin’?”

His attitude said plainly that he was highly indifferent to the reply. Sooner or later, this guy was going to crack, and if they had to give him a beating first, why, that was part of the day’s work.

“We know there’s a babe in this. You was seen with her.”

“Her?” Kip laughed. “You boys are way off the track. She’s just a babe I was on the make for, but I didn’t score. Private dicks are too poor.

“This case was handed to me by an agency in Newark, an agency that does a lot of work for banks.”

He glanced up at Bill. “Why let yourself in for trouble? Don’t you know what this is? It’s a murder rap.”

“Not mine!” Bill said. The fat man glanced at him, worried.

“Ever hear of an accessory? That’s where you guys come in.”

“Who was the babe?” Bill insisted.

Kip was getting irritated. “None of your damn business!” he snapped, and came off the cot with a lunge.

Bill took a quick step back, but Kip was coming too fast, and he clipped the big man with a right that knocked him back into the wall.

The fat man came off his chair, and Kip backhanded him across the nose with the edge of his hand. He felt the bone break and saw the gush of blood that followed. The fat man whimpered like a baby, and Kip ducked a left from Bill and slammed a fist into the big man’s midsection. Bill took it with a grunt and threw a left that Kip slipped, countering with a right cross that split Bill’s eye.

Bill started to fall. Kip grabbed him, thrust him against the wall with his left, and hit him three times in the stomach with all the power he could muster. Then he stepped back and hit him in the face with both hands.

Bill slumped to a sitting position, bloody and battered. Kip glanced quickly at the fat man. He was lying on the floor, groaning. Morgan grabbed Bill and hoisted him into a chair.

“All right, talk!” Morgan’s breath was coming in gasps. “Talk or I start punching!”

Bill’s head rolled back, but he lifted a hand. “Don’t! I’ll talk! The money…it was in an envelope. The bartender at the Casino gave it to me. There was a note. Said to get you, make you tell who you worked for, and we’d get another five hundred.”

“If you’re lyin’,” Kip said, “I’ll come lookin’ for you!”

Kip took up his battered hat and put it on his head, then retrieved his gun as he was going out and thrust it into his shoulder holster.

He stepped outside and looked around. He had been in a shanty in the country. Where town was he did not know.

On the dark highway, he shoved the gun back in its holster and straightened his clothing. Pulling his tie around, he drew the knot back into place and stuffed his shirt back into his pants. Gingerly, he felt his face. One eye was swollen, and there was blood on his face from a cut on his scalp. Wiping it away with his handkerchief, he started up the road. He had gone but a short distance when a car swung alongside him.

“Want a lift?” a cheery voice sang out.

He got in gratefully, and the driver stared at him. He was a big, sandy-haired man with a jovial face.

“What happened to you? Accident?”

“Not really. It was done on purpose.”

“Lucky I happened along. You’re in no shape to walk. Better get into town and file a report.” He drove on a little way. “What happened? Holdup?”

“Not exactly. I’m a private detective.”

“Oh? On a case, huh? I don’t think I’d care for that kind of work.”

The car picked up speed. Kip laid his head back. Suddenly, he was very tired. He nodded a little, felt the car begin to climb.

The man at the wheel continued to talk, his voice droning along, talking of crimes and murders and movies about them. Kip, half asleep, replied in monosyllables. Through the drone of talk, the question slipped into his consciousness even as he answered, and for a startled moment, his head still hanging on his chest, the question and answer came back to him.

“Who are you working for?” the driver had asked.

And mumbling, only half awake, he had said, “Helen Whitson.”

As realization hit him, his head came up with a jerk, and he stared into the malevolent blue eyes of the big man at the wheel. He saw the gun coming up. With a yell, he struck it aside with his left hand, and his right almost automatically pushed down on the door handle. The next instant, he was sprawling in the road.

He staggered to his feet, grabbing for his own gun. The holster was empty. His gun must have fallen out when he spilled into the road. A gun bellowed, and he staggered and went over the bank just as the man fired again.

How far he fell, he did not know, but it was all of thirty feet of rolling, bumping, and falling. He brought up with a jolt, hearing a trickle of gravel and falling rock. Then he saw the shadow of the big man on the edge of the road. In a minute, he would be coming down. The shape disappeared, and he heard the man fumbling in his glove compartment.

A flashlight! He was getting a flashlight!

Kip staggered to his feet, slipping between two clumps of brush just as the light stabbed the darkness. Every step was agony, for he seemed to have hurt one ankle in the fall. His skull was throbbing with waves of pain. He forced himself to move, to keep going.

Now he heard the trickle of gravel as the man came down the steep bank. Stepping lightly, favoring the wounded ankle, he eased away through the brush, careful to make no sound. Somewhere he could hear water falling, and there was a loom of cliffs. The big man was not using the flashlight now but was stalking him as a hunter stalks game.

Kip crouched, listening, like a wounded animal. Then he felt a loose tree limb at his feet. Gently, he placed it in the crotch of a low bush so it stuck out across the way the hunter was coming. Feeling around, he found a rock the size of his fist.

Footsteps drew nearer, cautious steps and heavy breathing. Listening, Kip gained confidence. The man was no woodsman. Pain racked his head, and his tongue felt clumsily at his split and swollen lips.

Carefully, soundlessly, Kip moved back. The other man did what he hoped. He walked forward, blundered into the limb, and tripped, losing his balance. Kip swung the rock, and it hit, but not on the man’s head. The gun fired, the shot missing, and Kip hobbled away.

He reached the creek and followed it down. Ahead of him, a house loomed. He heard someone speaking from the porch. “That sounded like a shot. Right up the canyon!”

He waited; then, after a long time, a car’s motor started up. Kip started for the house in a staggering run. He stumbled up to the porch and banged on the door.

A tall, fine-looking man with gray hair opened it. “Got to get into town and quick! There’s going to be a murder if I don’t!”

Giving the man’s wife Helen Whitson’s number to call, he got into the car.

All the way into town he knotted his hands together, staring at the road. He had been back up one of the canyons. Which one or how far, he did not know. He needed several minutes to show the man identification and to get him to drive him into town. It had taken more effort to get the man to lend him a gun.

However, the older man could drive. Whining and wheeling around curves and down the streets, he finally leveled out on the street where Helen Whitson lived. As they turned the corner, Kip saw the car parked in front of the house. The house was dark.

“Let me out here and go for the police!”

Moving quickly despite the injured ankle, Kip crossed the lawn and moved up to the house. The front door was closed. He slipped around to the side where he found a door standing open. As he eased up the steps, he heard a gasp and saw a glimmer of light.

“Hello, Helen!” a man’s voice said.

“
You,
Henry!”

“Yes, Helen, it has been a long time. Too bad you could not let well enough alone. If your husband hadn’t been such an honest fool, I couldn’t have tricked him as I did. And this detective of yours is a blunderer!”

“Where is Morgan? What have you done to him?”

“I’ll kill him, I believe. And with you dead, I’ll feel safer. I was afraid this might happen so I have plans to disappear again, if necessary. But first I’m going to have to kill you.”

Kip Morgan had reached the door, turning into it slowly, silently. Helen’s eyes found him, but she permitted no flicker of expression to warn Willard. Then a board creaked, and Willard turned. Before he could fire, Kip knocked the gun from his hand, then handed his own to Helen.

“I want you,” Morgan said, “for the chair!”

The big man lunged for him, but Kip hit him left and right in the face. The man squealed like a stuck pig and stumbled back, his face bloody. Morgan walked in and hit him three times. Desperately, the big man pawed to get him off, and Kip jerked him away from the sofa and hit him again.

A siren cut the night with a slash of sound, and almost in the instant they heard it, the car was slithering to a stop outside.

Helen pulled her robe around her, her face pale. Kip Morgan picked up Willard and shoved him against the wall. Hatred blazed in his eyes, but what strength there had been four years before had been sapped by easy living. The door opened, and two plainclothes detectives entered, followed by some uniformed officers.

The first one stopped abruptly. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

“This man is Henry Willard,” Kip said, “and there is a murder rap hanging over him from New Jersey. Also, a fifty-thousand-dollar payroll robbery!”

“Willard? This man is James Howard Kendall. He owns the Mario Dine & Dance spot and about a dozen other things around town. Known him since he was a kid.”

“He went back East, took the name Willard, and—”

“Brady,” Willard interrupted, “this is a case of mistaken identity. You know me perfectly well. Take this man in. I want to prefer charges of assault and battery. I’ll be in first thing in the morning.”

“You’ll leave over my dead body!” Kip declared. He turned to Brady. “He told Mrs. Whitson that he had already made plans to disappear again if need be.”

“Morgan, I’ve known Mr. Kendall for years, now—”

“Ask him what he is doing in this house. Ask him how he came to drive up here in the night and enter a dark house.”

Kendall hesitated only a moment. “Brady, I met this girl only tonight, made a date with her. This is an attempt at a badger game.”

“Mighty strange,” the gray-haired man who had driven Kip to town interrupted. “Mighty strange way to run a badger game. This man”—he indicated Kip—“staggered onto my porch half beaten to death and asked me to rush him to town to prevent a murder. It was he who sent me for the police. This house was dark when he started for it.”

“All you will need are his fingerprints,” Kip said. “This man murdered a payroll guard, changed clothes with the murdered man. Then he took the money and came back here and went into business with the proceeds from the robbery.”

“Ah? Maybe you’ve got something, Morgan. We always wondered how he came into that money.”

Kendall wheeled and leaped for the window, hurling himself through it, shattering it on impact. He had made but two jumps when Morgan swept up the gun and fired. The man fell, sprawling.

Policemen trained their revolvers on Morgan. “You’ve killed him!” Brady said.

“No, just a broken leg. Call the medics and he’s all yours.”

As the police left, Kip turned to Helen Whitson. “You did it!” she exclaimed. “I knew you could! And you’ve earned that five thousand dollars!”

“It’s a nice sum.” He looked at her again. “When are you leaving?”

“I’ve got to go back to New York on Monday.”

“Don’t go yet.” He took her by the shoulders. “In a couple of days, my lips won’t be so swollen. They aren’t right for kissing a girl now, but—”

“But I’ll bet you could,” she suggested, “if you tried!”

The Street of Lost Corpses

I
n a shabby room in a dingy hotel on a street of pawnshops, cheap nightclubs, and sour-smelling bars, a man sat on a hard chair and stared at a collection of odds and ends scattered on the bed before him. There was no sound in the room but the low mutter of a small electric fan throwing an impotent stream of air against his chest and shoulders.

He was a big man, powerfully built, yet lean in the hips and waist. His shoes were off, and his shirt hung over the foot of the bed. It was hot in the room despite the open windows, and from time to time, he mopped his face with a towel.

The bed was ancient, the washbasin rust-stained, the bedspread ragged. Here and there, the wallpaper had begun to peel, and the door fit badly. For the forty-ninth time, the man ran his fingers through a shock of dark, unruly hair.

Kip Morgan swore softly. Before him lay the puzzle of the odd pieces. Four news clippings, a torn bit of paper on which was written all or part of a number, and a crumpled pawn ticket. He stared gloomily at the assortment and muttered at the heat. It was hot—hotter than it had a right to be in Los Angeles.

Occupied though he was, he did not fail to hear the click of heels in the hall outside or the soft tap on his door. He slid from his chair and crossed silently to the door.

Again, the tap sounded. “Who is it?”

“It’s me.” The voice was low, husky, feminine. “May I come in?”

Turning the key in the lock, he stepped back. “Sure, sure. Come on in.”

Nothing about the way she was dressed left anything to the imagination. Her blouse was cheap and the skirt cheaper. She wore too much mascara, too much rouge, and too much lipstick. Her hose were very sheer, her heels too high.

He waved her into a chair. There was irritation in his eyes. “At least you had sense enough to look the part. Didn’t I tell you to stay away from me?” His voice was purposely low, for the walls were thin.

“I had to come!” Marilyn Marcy stepped closer, and despite the heat and the cheapness of her makeup he felt the shock of her nearness and drew back. “I’ve been worried and frightened! You must know how worried I am! Have you learned anything?”

“Now you listen to me!” His tone was ugly. Her coming into that part of town worried him, and dressed like that? She was asking for it. “I took the job of finding your brother, and if he’s alive, I’ll find him. If he’s dead, I’ll find out how and why. In the meantime, stay away from me! Remember what happened to that other dick.”

“But you’ve no reason to believe they killed him because of this investigation!” she protested. “Why should they? You told me yourself he had enemies.”

“Sure Richards had enemies. He was a fast operator and a shrewd one. Nevertheless, Richards had been around a long time and had stayed alive.

“As to why they should kill him for looking into this case, I have no idea. All I know is that anything can happen down here, and everything has happened at one time or another. I don’t know what happened to your brother or why a detective should get a knife stuck into him for trying to find out. Until I do I’m being careful.”

“It’s been over a week. I just had to know something! Tell me what you’ve found out, and I’ll go.”

“You’ll stay right here,” he said, “until I tell you to go. You came of your own accord, now you’ll leave when I tell you. You’ll stay for at least an hour, long enough to make anybody believe you’re my girl. You look the part. Now act it!”

“Just what do you expect?” she demanded icily.

“Listen, I’m just talking about the looks of the thing. I’m working, not playing. You’ve put me on the spot by coming here, as I’m not supposed to know anybody in town. Now sit down, and if you hear any movement in the hall, make with the soft talk. Get me?”

She shrugged. “All right.” She shook out a cigarette, offering him one. He shook his head impatiently, and she glared at him. “I wonder if you’re as tough as you act?”

“You better hope I am,” Kip replied, “or you’ll have another stiff on your hands.”

He stared grimly at the collection on the bed, and Marilyn Marcy stared at him. Some, she reflected, would call him handsome. Men would turn to look because of a certain toughness that made him seem as if he carried a permanent chip on his shoulder. Women would look, then turn to look again. She had seen them do it.

“Let’s look at the facts,” he said. “Your brother was an alcoholic, and he was on the skids. Even if we find him, he may not be alive.”

“I realize that, but I must know. I love my brother despite his faults, and he took care of me when I was on my way up, and I will not forget him now. Aside from George, he was all I had in the world.

“He was always weak, and both of us knew it, yet when he went into the army, he was a fairly normal human being. He simply wasn’t up to it, and when he received word his wife had left him, it broke him up.

“However, if my brother is dead, it was not suicide! It would have to be accident or murder. If it was the former, I want to know how and why; if the latter, I want the murderer brought to trial.”

Kip’s eyes searched her face as he listened. Having seen her without makeup, he knew she was a beautiful girl, and even before she hired him, he had seen her on the stage a dozen times. “You seem ready to accept the idea of murder. Why would anybody want to kill him?”

“I’ve heard they kill for very little down here.”

“That they do. In a flophouse up the street, there was a man killed for thirty-five cents not long ago. Value, you know, is a matter of comparison. A dollar may seem little, but if you don’t have one and want it badly, it can mean as much as a million.”

“I’ve seen the time.” Drawing her purse nearer, she counted out ten fives and then ten tens. “You will need expense money. If you need more, let me know.”

His attention was on the collection on the bed. “Did Tom ever say anything about quitting the bottle? Or show any desire to?”

“Not that I know of. Each month he received a certain sum of money from me. We always met in a cheap restaurant on a street where neither of us was known. Tom wanted to keep everyone from knowing I had a brother who was a drunk. He believed he’d disgrace me. I sent him enough to live as he wished. He could have had more but he refused it.”

Morgan nodded, then glanced at her. “What would you say if I told you that for three weeks prior to his disappearance he hadn’t touched a drop?”

Marilyn shook her head. “How could you be sure? That doesn’t sound like Tom. Whatever would make him change?”

“If I knew the answer to that I’d have the answer to a lot of things, and finding him would be much easier. Tom Marcy changed suddenly, almost overnight. He cleaned up, had his clothes pressed and his shoes shined. He took out his laundry and then began doing a lot of unexpected running around.”

Obviously, she was puzzled, but a sudden glance at her watch and she was on her feet. “I must go. I’ve a date with George and that means I must go home and change. If he ever guessed I had come down here looking like this, he would—”

Kip stood up. “Sure, you can go.” Before she could protest he caught her wrist, spun her into his arms, and kissed her soundly and thoroughly. Pulling away, she tried to slap him, but he blocked it with an elbow. “Don’t be silly!” he said. “If you’re going to leave here, you’ll need to look like you should. That means your lipstick should be smeared, but good!”

He let go of her and stepped back. She stared at him, her eyes clouded and her breast heaving. “Did you have to be so—thorough about it?”

“Never do anything by halves,” he said, dropping back into the chair. He looked up at her. “On second thought, I—”

“I’m leaving!” she said hastily, and slipped quickly out of the door.

He grinned after her and wiped the lipstick from his mouth, then stared at the red smear on his handkerchief, his face sobering. He swore softly and dropped back into the chair. Despite his efforts, he could not concentrate.

He walked to the washbasin and wiped away the last of the lipstick.

What did he know, after all? Tom Marcy was an alcoholic with few friends, and only one or two who knew him at all well. Slim Russell was a wino he occasionally treated, and another had been “Happy” Day. Marcy minded his own affairs, drank heavily, and was occasionally in jail for it. Occasionally, too, he was found drunk in a doorway on skid row. The cops knew him, knew he had a room, and from time to time, rather than take him to jail, they’d take him to his room and dump him on his bed.

Then something happened to change him suddenly. A woman? It was unlikely, for he did not get around much where he might have met a woman. Yet suddenly he had straightened up and had become very busy. About what?

The pawn ticket might prove something. The ticket was for Tom Marcy’s watch. Obviously, he had reached the limit of his funds when some sudden occasion for money arose, and rather than ask his sister for it, he had pawned his watch.

When he failed to appear at the restaurant, something that had not happened before, Marilyn began to worry.

She returned to the restaurant several times, but Tom Marcy did not show up. When the following month came around, she went again, and again he had not appeared. In the meantime, she had watched the newspapers for news of deaths and accidents. Then she hired a detective.

Vin Richards was a shrewd operative with connections throughout the underworld. A week after taking the case, he was found in an alley not far from the hotel in which Kip Morgan sat. Vin Richards had taken a knife in the back and another under the fifth rib. He was very dead when discovered.

Morgan began with a check of the morgue and a talk to the coroner’s assistants. He had checked hospitals and accident reports, then the jails and the police.

The officers who worked the street in that area agreed that Tom Marcy never bothered anybody. Whenever he could, he got back to his room, and even when very drunk, he was always polite. It was the police who said he had straightened up.

“Something about it was wrong,” one officer commented. “Usually when they get off the bottle they can’t leave the street fast enough, but not him. He stayed around, but he wouldn’t take a drink.”

Seven weeks and he had vanished completely; seven weeks with no news. “We figured he finally left, went back home or wherever. To tell you the truth, we miss him.

“The last time I saw him, he was cold sober. Talked with me a minute, asking about some old bum friend of his. He hesitated there just before we drove away, and I had an idea he wanted to tell me something, maybe just say good-by. That was the last time I saw him.”

He had disappeared, but so had Vin Richards. Only they found Vin.

“Odd,” the same officer had commented. “I would never expect Vin to wind up down here. He used to be on the force, you know, and a good man, too, but he wanted to work uptown. Hollywood, Beverly Hills, that crowd.”

The pawn ticket answered one question but posed another. Tom Marcy needed money, so he hocked his watch, something he had not done before. Why did he need money? If he did need it, why hadn’t he asked Marilyn?

The news clippings now—two of them were his own idea, one he found in Tom’s room. And there was a clue, a hint. His clipping and one of Tom’s were identical.

It was a tiny item from the paper having to do with the disappearance of one “Happy” Day, a booze hound and former circus clown. Long known along East Fifth Street and even as far as Pershing Square, he had been one of Marcy’s friends.

Marcy’s second clipping was about a fire in a town sixty miles upstate in which the owner had lost his life. There was little more except that the building was a total loss.

The last clipping, one Kip Morgan had found for himself, was a duplicate of one Tom Marcy left behind in the hock-shop. The owner, thinking it might be important, had put it away with Tom’s watch and mentioned it to Kip Morgan. At Kip’s request, the pawnbroker had shown him the clipping. In a newspaper of the same date as the hocking of the watch, Morgan found the same item. It was a simple advertisement for a man to do odd jobs.

That Marcy had it in his hand when he went to hock his watch might indicate a connection. The pawning of the watch
could
have been an alternative to answering the ad. Yet Marcy had straightened up immediately and had begun his unexplained running around.

Could the advertisement tie in with the disappearance of “Happy” Day? A hunch sent Morgan checking back through the papers. Such an ad appeared in the papers just before his disappearance. Once Kip had a connection, he had followed through. Had there been other disappearances? There had.

Slim Russell, Marcy’s other friend, had vanished in the interval between the disappearance of Day and that of Tom Marcy himself. Apparently, it had been these disappearances that brought about the change in Tom Marcy.

Why?

Checking the approximate date of Slim Russell’s disappearance, for which he had only the doubtful memories of various winos, he found another such ad in the newspaper.

The newspaper’s advertising department was a blind alley. On each occasion, the ad came by mail, and cash was enclosed, no check.

Morgan paced the floor, thinking. Not a breeze stirred, and the day was hot. He could be out on the beach instead of there, sweating out his problem in a cheap hotel, yet he could not escape feeling he was close to something. Also, and it could be his imagination, he had the feeling he was being watched.

Richards, cold and cunning as a prairie wolf, an operator with many connections and many angles, had been trapped and murdered. Before that, three men had disappeared and were probably dead.

Clearing away the Marcy collection, Morgan packed it up, then stretched out and fell into an uncomfortable state of half awake, half asleep.

Hours later, his mind fogged by sleep, he felt rather than heard a faint stirring at the door. His consciousness struggled, then asserted itself. He lay very still, every sense alert, listening.

Someone was at the door fumbling with the lock. Slowly, the knob turned.

Morgan lay still. The slightest creak of the springs would be audible. Perspiration dried on his face and he tried to keep his breathing even and natural. Now the darkness seemed thicker where the door had opened. A soft click of the lock as the door closed.