42 Days For Murder

Chapter Seventeen

The landlady brought me dinner at seven and was over her crying spell by then. She was even a bit ashamed of it. She put the tray down and said: “Lamb chops and green peas tonight. And like it. I shouldn’t have blown up the way I did this afternoon but I’d been thinking about it all day. It got me down. I’m getting old; I just can’t take it.” I said I was sorry and that I naturally would say nothing.

She looked at me thoughtfully and said she didn’t think I would. And then, still thoughtfully: “The place is still staked, if it means anything to you. Different man, but still on the job. You that hot?”

“It isn’t for me.”

“Was that shooting on the street meant for you?”

“Where’d you hear that?”

She said: “I’ve got ears. There’s talk, if you know where to listen for it.”

“Now look! I’m going out tonight. For a ride. Just to get out of the room. If I thought this was for me, would I do that? I’m not worried; I don’t think it’s for me.”

“You’d be safer staying in. That’s what Mac told me when you came.”

“I’d go nuts looking at four bare walls.”

She shrugged and said: “It’s your dice, mister man. I hope you like lamb chops and peas.”

“I won’t go out until after Macintosh comes. He’s coming up by and by.”

“He always comes up on this date. He hasn’t missed in years.”

She looked at me in a funny way and all of a sudden I got an idea. I said: “Say, listen! Is he some relation of yours?”

“In a way,” she said. She laughed, but it didn’t sound at all funny. “I married him once. We quit it when the girl was two. I couldn’t stand being married to a law man, I thought. I’d been on the other side too long, you see. It’s a different life. I couldn’t take it and we quit and I got the girl. Now do you see?”

“More all the time.”

“Mac’s helped with her, right along.”

“I figured him for the kind that would.”

“I didn’t tell you this, either. The man he shot was named Rucci. Gino’s brother. There were four of them; all in the same business. Gino and Luigi are left. He got one of them then, like I told you, and the third one happened to be killed in a liquor raid down in southern California.”

“Was Mac working prohibition then?”

She nodded. “Out of the Los Angeles office. The four brothers had always worked together, sort of. Mac knew that.”

I said: “Macintosh is quite a man.”

She just nodded again and left.

He came up, looking grey and grim, an hour later. He planked himself down in a chair and said: “Well, your man’s in jail and it’s a wonder to me you can’t hear him this far. He cried like a baby about it. He claimed I couldn’t do it and that was when the jailer was locking the door on him.”

“It won’t hurt him.”

“You really think he’s in danger?”

“I really do.”

“What about yourself?”

“I’m keeping out of circulation pretty well.”

“Maude tells me you’re going out tonight.”

“I’m going nuts staying inside. I’m keeping off the streets.” He shook his head. “I think you’re a damn fool to do it with this business coming to a head. Kirby’s worried; he’s afraid there’s nothing going to come of it.”

“There may not be. I won’t start anything until I’m sure of what I’m doing. I think it’ll be started for me, Macintosh.”

“This girl of yours. What d’ya know of her?”

“Not a hell of a lot. She’s just company.”

“She’s a friend of Rucci’s, Connell. If that means anything.”

“It means a lot. If she’s right, she won’t do me any harm. If she’s wrong, I may be able to use her.”

“What about your friend Kewpie Martin?”

“He’s okey, as far as I know. At least I thought so until he came up here with one of those yeggs I battled with out at the Three C. I didn’t crack to him; I don’t see how he could hurt me.”

“You can watch him, anyway. Maude says the place is staked.”

I laughed. “Who’d stake it? You and Kirby and my partner know I’m here. That’s all. If Crandall knew it, I’d have got some action before now. I think I would, anyway. I’ve come in and out pretty quiet; today was the first time out in daylight, since I moved in. It’s possible, of course.”

He said, speaking slowly: “I’m an older man than you, Connell. I’ve been an officer just about all my life and I’ve mixed with a lot of people. I’ve never made a mistake when I gave the other fella credit for more brains than I thought he had. Or for a lucky break. That figuring the other guy for a chump is the worst thing you can do.”

“I’m not figuring Crandall for a chump. Not ever.”

“And he’s with Rucci. Rucci’s smart. Plenty smart.”

I kept my face straight and said: “I figured him for it all the time.”

He looked up at the ceiling and said: “I’ve been trying to get something on the bastard for the last eight years and haven’t done it yet. It wants to be legal, if possible. I’ve been law too long to go the other route.”

“Sure! But if you can stick him over this business I’m on, what’s the difference? He’s in jail, just the same. What’s the difference what he goes up for?”

He kept looking at the ceiling. He said, very softly: “We’ve got gas in this state. I want to have him wait to go in that chamber and I want to see him every day while he waits. I want him up for murder. That French girl may be it. It may not be, I don’t know. But I can’t lose, can I?”

“I think it’s working out, Macintosh.”

He stood, said: “Watch yourself. Don’t trust that girl, unless you’re sure. Or Martin. Hell, man, in this business you can’t trust anybody. I wouldn’t even trust that guy I was working for if I was you. He’s such a damn fool he can’t see we’re trying to help him.”

“He’s not bright. Kewp’s all right; I think I’ve got the answer on that business of him being here. He smokes hay and was buying.”

“Of course I don’t blame Wendel for trying to straighten things with his wife. A man should do that.”

I didn’t think about how he could take it. I said: “A lot of trouble could be saved if this family trouble was straightened out when it started.”

He got white around the lips and said: “Yeah! That’s right, I guess. A lot of trouble.”

I saved it some with: “He wouldn’t have had to come out here and she’d have been saved all this divorce trouble. Everybody would have been ahead.”

He said: “Be seeing you,” and went out the door. He walked with a little roll, like a punch-drunk fighter. That birthday was bothering him as much as it was the landlady, and I don’t think I ever felt as sorry for a man in my life as I did for him right then.