The Paul Cain Omnibus (42 page)

Kells twisted his mouth into a wholly mirthless smile, nodded. “You’re a genius, Willie.” He sipped his drink. “You know Max Hesse pretty well. You’ve been out to his house in Flintridge?”

“Sure.”

“Do you know what Dave Perry looks like?”

“No.”

Kells put his glass down. “A little, black, pop-eyed guy with a waxed mustache. Wears gray silk shirts with tricky brocaded stripes. Used to run a string of trucks down from Frisco—had some kind of a warehouse connection up there. Stood a bad rap on some forged Liberty Bonds about a year ago and went broke beating it. Married Grant Rainey’s sister when he was on top.”

“I’ve seen her,” Cullen said. “Nice dish.”

“You’ve never seen Dave at Hesse’s?”

Cullen shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“All right. It wouldn’t mean a hell of a lot, anyway.” Kells picked up his glass, drained it, stood up. “I want to use the phone.”

He dialed a number printed in large letters on the cover of the telephone book, asked for the reporters’ room. When the connection was made, he asked for Shep Beery. He spoke evenly into the instrument: “Listen, Shep, this is Gerry. In a little while you’ll probably have some news for me…. Yeah…Call Granite five-six-six-one…. And Shep, who copped in the fourth race at ’Juana? … Thanks, Shep. Got the number? …. Okay.”

Cullen was pouring another drink. “If all this is as bad as you’re making it look, you have a very trusting nature,” he observed.

Kells was dialing another number. He said, over his shoulder: “I win twenty-four hundred on
Kiosque.
”

“That’s fine.”

“Perry shot Doc Haardt to death about four o’clock.”

“That’s fine. Where were you?” Cullen was stirring his drink.

Kells jiggled the hook up and down. “Goddamn telephones,” he said. He dialed the number again, then turned his head to smile at Cullen. “I was here.”

The telephone clicked. Kells turned to it, asked: “Is Number Four on duty?” There was a momentary wait, then: “Hello, Stella? This is Mister Kells…. Listen, Stella, there weren’t any calls for me between two and four today…. I know it’s on the record, baby, but I want it off. Will you see what you can do about it? … Right away? … That’s fine. And, Stella, the number I called about three-thirty—the one where the line was busy…. Yes. That was Granite five-six-sixone… Got it? … All right, kid, I’ll tell you all about it later. ’Bye.”

Cullen said: “As I was saying…. You have a very trusting nature.”

Kells was riffling the pages of a small blue address book. “One more,” he said, mostly to himself. He spun the dial again. “Hello, Yellow? Lancaster stand, please…. Hello. Is Fifty-eight in? … That’s the little baldheaded Mick, isn’t it? … No, no: Mick…Sure…. Send him to two nine Iris Circle when he gets in…. Two…nine…That’s in Hollywood; off Cahuenga….”

They sat for several minutes without speaking. Kells sipped at his drink and stared out the window. Then he said: “I’m not putting on an act for you, Willie. I don’t know how to tell it; it doesn’t make much sense, yet.” He smiled lazily at Cullen. “Are you good at riddles?”

“Terrible.”

The phone rang. Cullen got up to answer it.

Kells said: “Maybe that’s the answer.”

Cullen called him to the phone. He said, “Yes, Shep,” and was silent, listening for a little while. Then he said, “Thanks,” hung up and went back to the deep leather chair. “I guess maybe we can’t play it the way I’d figured,” he said. “There’s a tag out for me.”

Cullen said slowly, sarcastically: “What a pal! They’ll trace the phony call that your girlfriend Stella’s handling, or get to the cab driver before he gets to you. We’ll have a couple carloads of law here in about fifteen minutes.”

“That’s all right, Willie. You can talk to ’em.”

Cullen grinned mirthlessly. “I haven’t spoken to a copper for four years.”

Kells straightened in his chair. “Listen. Doc went to Perry’s to see me…. What for? I was with Jack Rose being propositioned to come in with him and Doc, on the Joanna. They’re evidently figuring Rainey or Hesse to make things tough and wanted me for a flash.”

He looked at his watch. He said, “God! I wish that cab would show!”

Cullen was stirring ice into another drink.

Kells went on, swiftly: “When I open the door at Perry’s someone lets Doc have it, and goes out through the kitchen. Maybe. The back door slammed, but it might have been the draft when I opened the front door. Dave is cold, with an egg over his ear, and Ruth Perry says that a little queen with glasses shot Doc and sapped Dave when he spoke out of turn….”

Cullen said: “You’re not making this up as you go along, are you?”

Kells paid no attention to the interruption. “The rod is on the floor. I tell Ruth to stick to her story….”

Cullen raised one eyebrow and smiled faintly with his lips.

Kells said, “She
will
!” He went on: “…and try to keep Dave quiet while I figure an alibi, and try to find out what it’s all about. I smack her to make it look good, and then I get the bright idea that if I leave the gun there, they’ll hold both of them,
no matter what story
they tell. They’d
have
to hold somebody; Doc had a lot of friends downtown.”

Kells finished his drink, picked up his hat and put it on. “I figured Ruth to office Dave that I was working on it, and that he might keep his mouth shut if he wasn’t in on the plant.”

Cullen sighed heavily.

Kells said: “He was. Shep tells me that Dave says I had an argument with Doc, shot him, and clipped Dave when he tried to stop me. Shep can’t get a line on Ruth’s story, but I’ll lay six, two, and even that she’s still telling the one about the little guy.” He stood up. “They’re both being held
incommunicado.
And here’s one for the book: Reilly made the pinch. Now what the hell was Reilly doing out here, if it wasn’t tipped?”

Cullen said: “It’s a setup. It was the girl.”

Kells shook his head slowly.

“Dave knows it and is trying to cover for her,” Cullen went on. “She told you a fast one about the little guy, and I’ll bet she’s telling the same story as Dave right now.”

Kells said: “Wrong.”

Cullen laughed. “If you didn’t think it was possible you wouldn’t look that way.”

“You’re crazy. If she wanted to frame me she wouldn’t’ve put on that act. She wouldn’t’ve….”

“Oh, yes, she would. She’d let you go, and put the finger on you from a distance.” Cullen scratched his side, under the arm, yawned. Kells said: “What about Dave?”

“Maybe Doc socked Dave.”

“She’d cheer.”

“Maybe.” Cullen got up and walked to a window. “Maybe she cheered and squeezed the heater at the same time. That’s been done, you know.”

Kells shook his head. “I don’t see it,” he said. “There are too many other angles.”

“You wouldn’t see it.” Cullen turned from the window, grinned. “You don’t know anything about feminine psychology.”

Kells said: “I invented it.”

Cullen spread his mouth into a broad thin line, nodded ponderously. “Sure,” he said, “there are a lot of boys sitting up in Quentin counting their fingers who invented it too.” He walked to the stair and back. “Anyway, you had a pretty good hunch when you left Exhibit A on the floor.”

“I’m superstitious. I haven’t carried a gun for over a year,” Kells smiled to himself.

Cullen said: “Another angle—she’s Rainey’s sister.”

“That’s swell, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

“It might.” Cullen yawned again extravagantly, scratched his arms.

Kells asked: “Yen?”

“Uh-huh. I was about to cook up a couple loads when you busted in with all this heavy drama.” He jerked his head toward the stair. “Eileen is upstairs.”

Kells said: “I thought the last cure took.”

“Sure. It took.” Cullen smiled sleepily. “Like the other nine. I’m down to two pipes every other day.”

They looked at one another for a little while.

A car chugged up the short curving slope below the front door, stopped. Kells turned and went into the semidarkness of the kitchen. A buzzer whirred. Cullen went to the front door, opened it, said: “Come in.” A little Irishman in the uniform of a cab driver came into the room and took off his hat. Cullen went back to the chair and sat down with his back to the room. He picked up his drink.

The phone rang.

Kells came out of the kitchen and answered it. He stood for a while with the receiver to his ear, staring vacantly at the cab driver. Then he said: “Thanks, kid,” and hung up. He put his hand in his pocket and took out a small, neatly folded sheaf of bills. “When you brought me here from the hotel about four o’clock,” he said, “I forgot to tip you.” He peeled off two of the bills and held them toward the driver.

The little man came forward, took the bills and examined them. One was a hundred, the other a fifty. “Do I have to tell it in court?” he asked.

Kells smiled, shook his head. “You probably won’t have to tell it anywhere.”

The driver said: “Thank you very much, sir.” He went to the door and put on his hat.

Kells said: “Wait a minute.” He spoke to Cullen: “Can I use your heap, Willie?”

Cullen nodded without enthusiasm, without turning his head.

Kells turned to the driver. “All right, Paddy,” he said. “You’d better stall for an hour or so. Then if anyone asks you anything, you can tell ’em you picked me up here and hauled me down to Malibu. No house number—just the gas station, or something.”

The driver said: “Right,” and went out.

“Our high-pressure police department finally got around to Stella.” He went back to his chair, sat down on the edge of it and grinned cheerfully at Cullen. “How much cash have you got, Willie?”

Cullen gazed tragically at the ceiling, and groaned: “Goddamn! When is this man going to ask me for my right eye?”

“It was too late to catch the bank,” Kells went on, “and it’s a cinch I can’t get within a mile of it in the morning. They’ll have it loaded.”

“I get a break. I’ve only got about thirty dollars.”

Kells laughed. “You’d better keep that for cigarettes. I’ve got to square this thing pronto and it’ll probably take better than change—or maybe I’ll take a little trip.” He got up, walked across the room and studied his long white face in a mirror. He leaned forward, rubbed two fingers of one hand lightly over his chin. “I wonder if I’d like Mexico.” Cullen didn’t say anything. Kells turned from the mirror. “I guess I’ll have to take a chance on reaching Rose and picking up my twenty-four Cs.”

Cullen said: “That’ll be a lot of fun.”

The first street lights and electric signs were being turned on when Kells parked on Fourth Street between Broadway and Hill. He walked up Hill to Fifth, turned into a corner building, climbed stairs to the third floor and walked down the corridor to a window on the Fifth Street side. He stood there for several minutes, intently watching the passersby on the sidewalk across the street. Then he went back to the car.

As he pressed the starter, a young chubby-faced patrolman came across the street and put one foot on the running board, one hand on top of the door. “Don’t you know you can’t park here between four and six?” he said.

Kells glanced at his watch. It was five thirty-five. He said: “No. I’m a stranger here.”

“Let’s see your driver’s license.”

Kells smiled, said evenly: “I haven’t got it with me.”

The patrolman shook his head sadly at the stupidity of humankind. “Where you from?” he asked.

“San Francisco.”

“You’re in the big city now, buddy.” The patrolman sneered at Kells, the car, the sky. He seemed lost in thought for a half-minute, then he said: “All right. Now you know.”

Kells drove up Fourth to the top of the hill. His eyes were half closed and there was an almost tender expression on his face. He swore softly, continuously, obscenely.

His anger had worn itself out by the time he had parked the car on Grand and walked down the steep hill to the rear entrance of the Biltmore. He got off the elevator at the ninth floor, walked past the questioning stare of the woman at the key desk, down a long hall, knocked at the door of Suite 9D.

Jack Rose opened the door. He stood silently, motionlessly for perhaps five seconds, then he ran his tongue over his lower lip and said: “Come in.”

Kells went into the room.

A husky, pale-eyed young man was straddling a small chair, his elbows on the back of it, his chin between his hands. His sand-colored hair was carefully combed down over one side of his forehead. His mouth hung a little open and he breathed through it regularly, audibly.

Rose said: “This is Mister O’Donnell of Kansas City…. Mister Kells.”

The young man stood up, still straddling the chair, held out a pink hand. “Glad t’ know you,” he said.

Kells shook his hand cursorily, and said, “I stopped by for my dough.”

“Sure,” Rose said. He went to a cabinet and took out a bottle of whiskey and three glasses. “Why didn’t you pick it up at the store?”

Kells walked across the room and sat down on the arm of a big, heavily upholstered chair. O’Donnell was in his shirtsleeves. O’Donnell’s coat was lying across a table, back and a little to one side of Kells.

Kells said, “I want it in cash.”

Rose put the bottle and glasses down on a wide central table. “I haven’t got any cash here,” he said; “we’ll have to go over to the store.” He went towards the telephone on a desk against one wall. “I’ll order some White Rock.”

Kells said: “No.”

Rose stopped, turned; he was smiling. O’Donnell unstraddled the chair and sauntered in the general direction of Kells. His pale eyes were fixed blankly on Kells’ stomach. Kells stood up very straight, took two long, swift sidewise steps and grabbed O’Donnell’s coat. The automatic in a shoulder holster which had been under the coat clattered to the floor. O’Donnell dived for it and Kells stamped hard on his fingers, brought his right knee up hard into O’Donnell’s face. O’Donnell grunted, lost his balance and fell over backward; he rolled back and forth silently, holding both hands over his nose.

Rose was standing by the central table, holding the whiskey bottle by the neck. He was still smiling as if that expression had hardened, congealed on his face.