Collection 1983 - The Hills Of Homicide (v5.0) (30 page)

Stigler nodded. He took the cigar from his teeth. “Joe, I don’t know exactly where you’re going, but I won’t push this case against Mary Burns until I hear more from you. In the meantime, I think we’ll check the dead and missing for the last few months.”

Stigler got into his car and rolled away, and Ragan stared after him, then realized somebody was at his elbow. It was the receptionist with the figure. “Can I help? I’ve some free time now.”

“Not unless you can remember something more about Bradford and that setup. Did Keene know any more about them?”

“He was curious about a girl who came there, and he had me follow her once.”

“What sort of girl?”

“A slender girl with red hair. She wore a green suit and was quite attractive.”

For a moment Ragan just stood there. It made no sense, no sense at all.

His eyes turned to the blonde. “What’s your name, honey?”

“I was wondering if you even cared,” she said, smiling. There was no humor in her eyes, just something wistful, somehow very charming and very young. “I’m Marcia Mahan, and I meant what I said about helping.”

Ragan did not know what to do. There was little evidence against Mary. They had the testimony of Hazel Upton and Louella Chasen, but how would they stand up under severe cross-examination? Angie Faherty agreed she had gone to the rest room but had not been there at the time of the killing.

The gun was Ollie’s own, so with work they might build a stiff case against Mary. The worst of it was that if she was tried and acquitted, a few would always have their doubts.

He could not stop now. Ollie would have done it for him. Now he was beginning to see where the arrows pointed, and it made him feel sick and empty. One can control events only up to a point.

Other things were clicking into place now. His memory was a good one and had been trained by police work. He remembered something he had overlooked. In those files there had been one with the title
BYSTEN PACKING COMPANY
.

One of the big cases Al Brooks had broken was that of Clyde Bysten, a blackmail case.

Ragan threw his cigarette into the gutter. He was smoking too much since this case began. “All right, if you really want to help, you can.” He wrote an address on a slip of paper. “This is where Alice Towne worked. I want a list of the employees at that office during the time she worked there. Can you do that?”

Marcia nodded. “No problem.”

“And meet me at the Peacock Bar at four.”

Grabbing a cab, he headed for the bank. Within minutes he was closeted with a vice-president he knew and a few minutes later was receiving the information needed. When he left the bank, he felt he had been kicked in the stomach.

Yet his job was only beginning, and from then until four, he was going through files of newspapers, and using the telephone to save his legs, to say nothing of gasoline. He called business firms, and people he knew, and checked charge accounts and property lists. By four o’clock he had a formidable list of information, blackening information that left him feeling worse than he had ever felt in his life.

Outside the cocktail lounge he waited, thinking over what lay before him. He could see no end in sight. Once more he was going to enter an apartment without a search warrant, only this time he was hoping to find nothing. He was, in fact, planning to enter two apartments.

Marcia was waiting for him, a cup of coffee before her. She placed the list on the table and Ragan scanned it. His heart almost stopped when he saw the name, the one he was positive he would see, and feared to see.

“You look as if you lost your best friend,” Marcia said. “Can I help?”

“You help just by being here,” he said.

When Ragan came into homicide, Stigler was behind his desk. “I think I’ve got it.” He shoved a card at Ragan. “Sam Bayless. He did two terms for con games but was hooked into one blackmailing offense that could not be pinned on him. Smooth operator, fits the description we have of Bradford.”

“Dead?”

“Found shot to death in the desert near Palmdale. Shot four times in the chest with a .38. We have one of the slugs.”

“Good! Can you check it with that gun?”

“We will—somehow. Have you got anything more?”

“Too much.” Ragan hesitated. “He’s not in this alone. There’s a woman.”

Stigler rolled his cigar in his lips. He did not look at Ragan. “I had a hunch,” he said. “Do you know who she is?”

Ragan nodded. “Before the night’s over I believe we can cinch this case.”

I
T WAS HIS duty, his duty as a police officer and as a friend of Ollie Burns, a good friend and a decent officer, but he felt like a traitor. It was late when he went to the place near the park and stopped his car. He had rented a car for the evening, and with Marcia Mahan beside him they would seem to be any couple doing a little private spooning, to use an old-fashioned term that he liked.

“What do you want me to do when you go in?” she asked.

“Sit still. If they come back, push the horn button.”

The door of the apartment house opened and a man and a woman came out and got into a car. It was Al Brooks—hard, reckless, confident. He did not want to look at the girl, but he had to. It was Angie Faherty.

For an instant, her face was fully under the street light and Ragan saw her eyes come toward his car. She said something to Brooks. Ragan turned toward Marcia. “Come on, honey, let’s make it look good.”

She came into his arms as if she belonged there, and she did not have to make it look good. It
was
good. The first time their lips met, his hair seemed to curl all the way to the top of his head.

Brooks came across the street toward them, and turned his flashlight into the car. Ragan’s face was out of sight against her shoulder, and she pulled her head up long enough to say, “Beat it, bud! Can’t you see we’re busy?”

Brooks chuckled and walked away and they heard him make some laughing remark to Angie as they got into their car. Then they were driving away.

Marcia unwound herself. “Well! If this is the kind of work detectives do…”

“Come here,” Ragan replied cheerfully. “They might come back. I think we’d better give them at least fifteen minutes of leeway. They might have forgotten something.”

“I think you’d better go inside and see what you don’t want to see. I’ll wait.”

Opening the door was no trick. Once inside he took a quick look around. It was all very familiar, too familiar, even to the picture of himself on the piano. That picture must have given Brooks many a laugh.

His search was fast, thorough, and successful. The files were lying in plain sight on a shelf in the closet. He was bundling them up when the horn honked.

They came fast, because when he turned around, he heard the key in the lock. Ragan grabbed the files. One bunch slipped and he reached to catch it and the door slammed open. Al Brooks, his face livid, was framed in the door.

Slowly, Ragan put the files down. “Well, Al, here it is. We’ve been waiting for this.”

“Sure.” There was concentrated hatred in his eyes. “And I’m going to like it!”

Brooks had his gun in his hand and Ragan knew he was going to kill, but not without a fight.

Brooks fired as Ragan started for him, and something burned Ragan along the ribs. Ragan knocked Brooks back over a chair and went over it after him. They came up slugging, and Brooks was throwing them hard and fast. He caught Ragan with a wicked right that shook him to his heels, then brought over a left that Ragan slipped. Ragan had not been a fast light-heavyweight for nothing. Taking punches had been his line of business. He took the two going in, and smashed both hands to Brooks’s body. Brooks backed up and Ragan hooked a left to the mouth that smeared it to bloody shreds against his teeth. Brooks ducked to avoid the payoff punch and took it over the eye instead of on the chin. The blow cut to the bone and showered him with blood.

Shoving him away, Ragan swung again and Brooks jerked up a knee for his groin. Turning to avoid it, Ragan turned too far, and Al got behind him, running a forearm across his throat. Grabbing Al’s hand and elbow, Ragan dropped to one knee, throwing Brooks over his shoulder.

Al staggered up, his face a bloody sight. “What’s the matter, chum? Can’t you take it? Come on, tough boy! You wanted it, now you’re getting it!”

Brooks came in again, but Ragan stabbed a left into his face, then belted him in the wind. Al stumbled forward and Ragan grabbed a handful of hair and jerked Brooks’s head down to meet his upcoming knee. It was a neat touch, but hard on the features.

The door smashed open and Mark Stigler came in. Casey was right behind him. “Got him?” Stigler asked.

Ragan gestured and Stigler looked. “Man, oh, man! I’ve seen a few, but this!”

“There are the files.” Ragan pointed. “You’ll find the Towne, Chasen, and Upton files there, and a lot of others.” He glanced out the door. “Did you…? I mean, was Angie…? What happened to her?”

“She’s out there. Your blonde is with her.”

Angie did not look as lovely as he remembered her. In fact, her eyes were venomous. Her hair was all out of shape and she had a puffed lip.

“What hit you?” Ragan asked.

Marcia smiled pleasantly. “A girl name Mahan. She gave me trouble, so I socked her.”

Angie said nothing, and it was not in Ragan to get tough. She had double-crossed him and helped to frame Mary Burns, but it was not in him to hate her. “Whatever made you pull a stunt like this?” he asked.

She looked up. “You can’t prove a thing. You can’t tie this one on me.”

“Yes, we can, Angie,” he replied gently. “It is all sewed up. You killed Ollie Burns, then smeared him with lipstick. With you, whom he trusted, he would have talked. It was Al who called, but you who met him after you got Mary called away. Mary thought you were in trouble, and when she came back and you were gone, she tried to cover for you. She never dreamed you had killed Ollie.

“You took the gun from their home. Al Brooks wouldn’t have had access to it. You would.

“You had a good setup after Al came in with you. You were in it with Bayless or Bradford. You worked with Alice Towne and you wormed the information out of her that she was being blackmailed.

“On one of his vice raids, Al Brooks picked up some information and got hep to what you were doing, and declared himself in. Then he killed Bayless, and you two took over the business. He killed Keene when he caught him in your office after hours, then shot him to make it appear to be suicide.”

“Got it all figured, have you?” Brooks said. “Wait until I get out!”

Stigler just looked at him. “They don’t get out of the gas chamber, Al. We’ve got one of the bullets you put into Bayless. It checks with your gun.”

“The information that led to your arrest of Latko, Al, came from your blackmailing racket. You had a good thing going there.”

Ragan hitched his shoulder holster into place. That was the trouble with having been a fighter. When you were in trouble you used your fists.

“We checked some charge accounts of yours, Angie. Your bank accounts too. We have all the information we need. We know your brother did time with Bayless.”

“My brother?” Her eyes turned wild. “What do you know about him?”

“We picked him up today, and his girl friend talked. Anyway, we found him with enough guns to outfit an army. He was using the name Valentine Lewis.”

Later, when Al Brooks was being booked, he took a paper cup from the cooler and drank, then compressed the cup and pushed the bottom in with his thumb, an unconscious gesture. Seeing it, Stigler looked over at Ragan.

Marcia was standing beside Ragan. “Joe? Shouldn’t we go see that officer’s wife?”

“All right.”

“She’s a friend of yours, isn’t she?”

“One of the best.”

“Will she like me?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

They drove in silence and then he said, “How about dinner tomorrow night?”

“At my place?”

“I’ll be there.”

There was no moon, but they did not need one. There was a little rain, but they did not mind.

About Louis L’Amour

“I think of myself in the oral tradition—

as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man

in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way

I’d like to be remembered as a storyteller.

A good storyteller.”

I
T IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel,
Hondo
, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include
The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum
(his twelfth-century historical novel),
The Hills of Homicide, Last of the Breed
, and
The Haunted Mesa
. His memoir,
Education of a Wandering Man
, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.

The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour publishing tradition forward.