The Duchess of Skid Row (10 page)

I said, “Yes, sir. I guess I did.”

“She said you hit him. Did you do that?”

“I just pushed him around a little. But that was yesterday.”

“The way she tells it,” the DA said, “you had motive and opportunity and she swears you killed Hoxey.”

I said, “I found him dead. He had been dead twenty or thirty minutes then.”

“Can you prove that?”

I was getting lightheaded. I sat down in his chair. I said, “Yes, sir. I took off when I heard the police car come. Maslin must have found the body right after I left.”

“What does that prove?”

“I have a witness for where I was until I found the body, and that wasn’t ten minutes before the police got to it.”

“It had better be a good alibi.”

I had been talking without doing very much thinking. Now I started thinking. And I had nothing to say. Because I remembered who could confirm my alibi. Nick Calumet.

I said, “On second thought, sir, it isn’t a very good one. But damn it, I didn’t kill Hoxey.”

“Who is this alibi?”

“Nick Calumet. I was talking to him just before I found Hoxey.”

He made a disgusted sound. His voice was full of ice when he said, “Calumet told Maslin that you came to his place looking for Hoxey. He said you were crazy mad. He said he tried to stop you but you knocked him down and ran out. Is that true?”

“It’s almost true. Calumet was trying to hold me with a gun.”

“What are you going to do now, Jeff? Where are you?”

“I’m in your office, sir. But I’m leaving right now.”

“You stay there. I’ll call Maslin and have him come for you. If you have a story, he’ll listen to it.”

I said, “There isn’t time, sir. I have something to do. Call Maslin. But tell him to get Captain Ritter and go to Hill Street. Somewhere in Calumet’s or Arch’s or the Blue Beagle there’s a wire service set-up. I’m going to find it.”

“Are you sure?”

I said, “Sure enough that I’m going to risk my neck to locate it—and a murderer.”

“Then let the police handle it. You sit tight. That’s an order.”

“No, sir. I’m going. Give me thirty minutes and then call Maslin.”

I didn’t give him a chance to give me any more orders. I hung up.

I
LEFT
the office and went down the hall to my own cubbyhole of an office. I opened the center desk drawer. I took out my gun. I put it in my belt and draped my jacket to hide the bulge of the butt.

I went to the service stairs and started down them. A search of my pockets told me that Stephanie had taken my car key. That meant she had my sedan. And I was a little too hot to go into the street and flag a cab.

I found that I didn’t have to worry about transportation after all. I went out the same service door I had come through. I stepped out of the dark shadow of the entryway and headed across the lawn.

Then I had company. Two of them. One came up on either side. I felt the hard hand on my left arm. I felt the gun nuzzle my ribs under my right arm.

I looked right. The face under the pulled down fedora belonged to Minto.

He said, “You took long enough coming out, McKeon. For a while we thought the cops got you.” He paused and added, “But she said you’d be too smart to let that happen.”

I swung my head and looked down at Pooly. He had an expression of happy anticipation on his face.

Minto had his car waiting on the dark south side of the City Park. He helped himself to my gun and then climbed in the back seat with me. Pooly drove.

Pooly swung the car toward Hill Street. He said, “You figured out how we’re going to work this, Minto?”

Minto said, “It’s all figured out. First McKeon is going to unbutton his lip a little. Then you can have him, Pooly. After that, we’ll run his car down the River Road and through the barricade at the end. What’s left of McKeon and his car will go in the river. How does that sound?”

“Swell,” Pooly said happily.

“You’re full of great ideas, Minto. But this one is too late. And your lady friend made a mistake. The Combine should be more careful when it hires women. Most of them aren’t stable enough to see a job of this kind all the way through.”

Minto laughed at me. He rapped the muzzle of his gun lightly into my ribs. He said, “Tell me all about it, McKeon.”

I was willing to tell him all he wanted to hear. The more I talked, the more time I would have. And right now I needed time to get back the strength Stephanie had sapped out of me.

I said, “As I see it, the Combine sent you up here to start the wire service. If all went well, they figured on expanding, taking over the whole Northwest. So you remembered a doll who had tried to lay her way into Hollywood. You went to her and bought her help.”

I paused. “How am I doing?”

He laughed again. “Just great.”

I said, “I want a cigaret.”

“Help yourself.”

I helped myself. I drew a lungful of smoke. I said, “She knew what the score was and she told you I was the one to get rid of first. With me on your back, you’d only have trouble. And she told you about one of my stoolies; one that hated my guts way down deep. So you roped Hoxey in. And then he or she cooked up the idea of throwing a smokescreen by tipping off Captain Ritter that I was working with the Combine. Only that backfired. Ritter swallowed the story, all right, but he also put an investigator on the job. Johnny Itsuko. And Johnny was smart enough to go around the smokescreen to see what was behind it. He came too close to the truth. So Stephanie warned you and you had Pooly beat him to death. At the same time you tried to frame me for the job.”

Minto slapped his thigh with his free hand. “Hear that, Pooly? McKeon’s a real smart boy, all right.”

“Ask him what brand he smokes,” Pooly said, and laughed.

Minto said, “All right, McKeon, keep going.”

“Before you could get your frame really tight, Hoxey stepped in to do a little work on his own. He tried the badger game on me so he could get back the evidence I’m holding over him and his girlfriend. He also put the heat on you. For cash or because he wanted a bigger cut or maybe you were just afraid he would talk to me. And Stephanie told you about the badger game angle. You figured you had a perfect frame for me again. So you had Pooly get rid of Hoxey too.”

I glanced out the window. We were crossing Hill Street. Pooly swung right at the next corner and pulled up at the curb. We were in the dark warehouse district. My sedan was parked just ahead of us. Pooly blinked his lights. The sedan swung away from the curb.

I said, “I’ve got a few more ideas.”

“Tell me on the way to the river,” Minto said.

Pooly let the sedan disappear around the corner. Then he followed.

Minto said, “Let’s hear your ideas, McKeon.”

“I have a pretty good idea where the wire service set-up is located.”

“You should, if you got a look at those papers Hoxey had.”

“I didn’t. Your girl friend rolled me first. But I don’t think I need them to know what they showed.”

He said softly, “What did they show, McKeon?”

“After Hill Street stopped being the main drag of the city, it was Chinatown for a while. The Chinese of those days weren’t interested in becoming part of the community. They wanted to live in their own little section, to keep out of sight as much as possible. So they did the same thing they did in the other cities they settled in. They hooked up the basements of all the buildings with tunnels. That way they could go back and forth without coming up to the street. They could have their fantan games, smoke their pipes, run their fancy whorehouses—in other words live as they wanted and not be bothered.”

“You’re quite a boy with the history, McKeon.”

“Like everyone else in these parts, I’d heard about the old tunnels and basement rooms they made, but I’d forgotten. Johnny Itsuko came across diagrams of them when he found those older remodeling permits. That tipped him off to the way the wire service was going to be hidden.”

“You’re still going great,” Minto said.

I looked out the window. We had left the City and were driving along the dark narrow blacktop of the river road. Tule swamps were on both sides of us, looking bleak under the cold drizzly sky. The tail lights of my sedan were barely visible ahead. I judged I had at most another five minutes.

I said, “When you came up here, you picked the most likely place to use for a front. And you brought Arch with you. He could really make a show as a legitimate businessman, because that’s what he was in L.A.”

“Didn’t Arch tell you the Combine ran him out of business?”

I said, “Sure. What else would he have told me?” I finished my cigaret. I reached over and rolled down the window. I held the cigaret between my thumb and first finger. I leaned forward toward the window to flip the cigaret outside.

I said, “My guess is that Arch’s fancy customers can get to the basement where the wire service is through the private dining rooms.”

“You’re a real smart boy,” Minto said.

I swiveled in the seat. I swung my right hand around and flipped the cigaret for his face. I chopped with my left where I thought his gun arm was. I figured I had a one-in-five-thousand chance. But getting shot was easier than being beaten by Pooly and then drowning.

The cigaret hit Minto under the right eye. Sparks sprayed. He screamed a curse at me. I felt the edge of my left hand hit the gun. My skin tore. The gun went off. I smelled the smoke and the odor of scorched upholstery as the bullet ripped into the seat.

I swung my right fist into the middle of Minto’s face.

His gun went off again. The jolt of the bullet raking my ribs slapped me back in the corner of the car. Pooly hit the brakes and I pitched forward. Minto braced himself with one hand. He lifted the gun with the other.

I lunged in front of him. He swung the gun around. I dropped to the space between the back of the front seat and his knees. I heard the gun go off. The noise beat at my eardrums in the small space. I worked one hand around and swung my fist.

His scream exploded out of him. I reached up and got his gun arm. He was twisting in a spasm of pain, and at the same time trying to fire again.

I clamped my hand over his wrist. His finger convulsed over the trigger. He fired his fourth shot.

The muzzle was staring him in the face when it went off.

I pushed him away from me and got the door open. I tumbled to the wet blacktop. I climbed to my feet and turned to run.

I stopped. There was no sound from Pooly, no indication that he was coming after me. I walked slowly back to the car and looked at him.

I saw where Minto’s third shot had gone. The windshield above the steering wheel was a mess.

Headlights swam out of the dark, coming from the direction of the river. I stepped into their glare and wig-wagged my arm. The lights came on, growing brighter, blinding me. I felt the wind of the car before I realized it was trying to run me down. I made a flying jump backward. The fender of the car barely flicked my hip. I spun into the tule swamp. Water splashed up around me. I climbed to my feet in time to see the rear end of my own sedan disappearing toward the city.

I parked the car by the warehouse where Pooly had paused to signal my sedan. It was no longer there. I didn’t expect it to be. I took time out to make a pad of my shirt tail and tie it across the bullet burn Minto had given me. Then I started walking.

I went down the alley to Arch’s rear door. I opened the door and walked down the hall to his office. I didn’t knock. I opened the door and stepped in.

Arch was sitting behind his desk. He took one look at me and reached for a drawer.

I showed him the gun I had taken from Minto. I said, “Put your hands up where I can see them.”

He put his hands flat on the desk top. He stared at me emptily. I said, “Did you kill Hoxey or did Pooly?”

He said, “Who is Pooly and why would I kill Hoxey?”

I said, “To get him out of your hair so you could have a clear run at Teddy Jenner. Or maybe because she asked you to.”

“You’re out of your head, McKeon. Teddy told me you killed Hoxey. She came over here to phone in the story of his death.”

“Did she say why I killed him?”

He didn’t answer.

I propped my back against the door. I got out a cigaret and lit it. I was covered with gooey tule mud. I could feel the burning pain from the bullet wound crawl up my side toward my brain. I knew that in a minute I’d be fighting to keep from blacking out.

I said, “Talk, damn it. And talk fast.”

He said, “She told me Hoxey was mixed up in a wire service racket. She said you forced him to work for you and help with it.”

I said, “Did she also tell you about the try she and Hoxey made to pull the badger game on me?”

He just stared at me. I took the roll of film out of my pocket. “Have this developed and see,” I said. I tossed the film at him. He caught it.

I said, “Or maybe it was your idea in the first place. Tell me, Arch, how does your other girlfriend feel about Teddy?”

An expression of puzzlement spread over his face. He said, “You look sick, McKeon. Maybe you’re going out of your head.”

“I’m talking about Stephanie Bartlett. The woman I had here the other night. The woman you planned to use when the Combine sent you and Minto up from L.A. The one you promised to give a break in Hollywood if she’d tap the DA’s office for you.”

Arch’s mouth was hanging open. He said, “I never saw that woman until last night, McKeon. And I told you how I stood with the Combine.” His expression changed. His face turned the color of a soiled eggshell.

“Did you say Minto? Carl Minto?”

I said, “I never asked him his first name.”

He said like a man in pain, “You’re sure he’s here in Puget City?”

I said, “Come off it, Arch. I haven’t got the time nor the energy to play word games.”

Arch said, “Believe me, McKeon. The Combine hates my guts.”

“So they sent Minto up here to work you over. Is that your story?”

He shook his head. “Minto isn’t Combine, McKeon. He’s the kind of punk they wouldn’t have in the organization. He’d double-cross himself if he thought he could make a buck doing it.”

“Then why get upset about him?”

Arch looked down at his big hands. He said slowly, “I met Teddy Jenner when she was in college. I was just starting in the restaurant business and she and a group of high-flying kids showed up. Maybe it was because both of us are outsized, but we got interested in one another.”

He stopped and took a breath. “My interest was more mature, I guess. Anyway, it lasted longer. She was one of those live-it-up college kids. They tried a little of everything. Weed, pornography parties, boyfriend swapping, that kind of stuff.”

I said, “But all the time good old Arch waited patiently for her to come to her senses and back to him.”

He flushed. He said doggedly, “Some people are built that way, McKeon. But it didn’t end like it should have. She got in a real mess and went home.”

“So when you couldn’t stand it any longer, you sold out and came up here after her.”

“When the Combine pushed me to the wall, I knew I had to leave. I hadn’t heard from her in a long time, but I found out where she was. I thought—I hoped she’d grown up. I decided to come here.”

“That isn’t the way you told it last time. You handed me a line about Griselda selling you on this place.”

“I wrote up here to the Chamber of Commerce. They sent me a list of properties. I spotted this one because it was next to Teddy’s place. I contacted the lawyer handling this property. The next thing I knew Griselda showed up, said the lawyer had steered her to me. That’s why I came up here.”

“And found Teddy still playing on the crummy side of the street—with Hoxey.”

He said in a low voice, “I can wait. She’ll get over wanting it that way.”

“What has all this to do with Minto?”

“Minto was a cheap private eye. He lived off the leavings of the Combine. His specialty was using his detective contacts to steer kids like Teddy to hot parties, strip gambling games, anything dirty that made money. The mess that got Teddy kicked out of school was started by Minto.”

I said, “She was hot for him down there. So you think he came here to muscle in on you again?”

“That’s about it.” He clenched his fists. “I’ll kill that bastard if I can get my hands on him. Where is he, McKeon?”