Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 31, No. 1 — January, 1948)

Red Christmas by George F. Kull

The girl who walked into Carlo’s Beanery on Christmas Eve was in a holiday mood. And she had a few love letters of the leaden variety for anyone who didn’t share her festive spirit.

It was Christmas Eve in Reno. Soft fat snowflakes were coming down with little thuds. The Salvation Army Santas were just about through banging away with their little bells in front of the big department stores. Their iron kettles were pretty well loaded.

The attendant at the Silver City gas station on the corner of Arroyo and Virginia figured he was just about through too. There might be a few more customers straggling in, of course, but he wasn’t going to wait for them — not on Christmas Eve.

He changed his mind abruptly as a battered old Chewy coupe lurched up to the pumps and came to a steaming stop. He grabbed up a clean rag and hopped out to the car.

“Yes’m,” he said cheerfully, and swished at the windshield. He could see the woman in the car. She looked tired.

“Something’s wrong,” the woman said sourly. “Motor’s hot.”

He could see that without looking. He raised the hood and, with the rag wrapped around his hand, removed the radiator cap. It was steaming, but not dangerously so.

“Needs water,” he said. He waited a minute while the steam spurted away.

“C’mon, c’mon,” the woman growled. “Shake it, will you!”

The attendant looked hurt. “I’m sorry, Miss, have to wait until the steam’s gone. Guess it’s O.K. now, though.”

“Snap it up!” she said.

He picked up the small water hose at his feet and filled the radiator, replaced the hood. He went around and wiped the rear window and took a careless flick at the blob of snow that partially covered her California plate.

“Anything else, Miss?” he asked politely.

Her fingers prowled inside a worn looking handbag and then withdrew suddenly as another car slid to a stop on the other side of the pumps.

“No,” she said hastily. Then: “Yes. Where can a gal get some food?”

The attendant took a good look at her rumpled beret, her near-white wool shortie; her faded blue levis. He noticed her hands which looked like she’d done a few oil change jobs.

“There’s a stand down the street a ways,” he said. “Carlo’s Beanery. You won’t miss it. Neon.”

She curled a lip in what might have been a smile and whined her skidding wheels out into the thin Christmas Eve traffic.

The neon was covered with lazy looking snow and for that reason she almost did miss Carlo’s, but at the last minute she caught it out of the corner of one eye and slithered her coupe into the curb.

She got out, reached back in to yank out the key from the ignition, and entered the small restaurant.

There was just one customer at the long counter — a seedy character who sat hunched over a hot cup of coffee. He was blowing on it. The girl came in, stamping snow from her feet. He didn’t bother to look up.

A young kid with chicken feathers for hair and a white apron three sizes too big was sweeping under the few tables in the place. He dropped the broom and hurdled the low counter. He shook the chicken feathers out of his eyes.

“What’ll it be, sister?” he wanted to know.

“Hamburger. No onion. And coffee.”

The guy sipping the coffee down at the end of the counter looked over her way, looked back again. He took a wary gulp at the coffee, took another. The next try drained it. He put the cup down with a clatter, tossed a dime on the counter and shuffled out.

The kid flipped the hamburger, reached up a hand to push the feathers back over his forehead.

“Christmas Eve. Guess we’re the only ones not home tonight. Me, I gotta work till ten.”

The woman said nothing. The kid scooped up the burger, tossed it at a roll, placed it before the woman, and drew a cup of coffee. He slid that over and leaned his elbows on the counter.

She wasn’t a bad looking gal, he decided. A little rough at the moment but clothes would fix that. Twenty-five, maybe twenty-six. Couple of years older than himself. What the hell?

“You could stick around I’ll stand you to a couple of quick ones when I get off,” he said, looking at her.

The woman raised her eyes, chewed for a moment. “You’re sweet,” she said.

The kid grinned. “You’re kinda sweet yourself, sister. What’s your name?”

“Call me Candy,” she said.

“Candy? Haw, haw! Yeah, O.K., Candy. Call me Sugar Lump, I’m rationed.”

The girl looked at him again. Longer this time. Finally she reached for the coffee. It was cool enough now. She drank it quickly. She reached in her faded black handbag, took out a dull, blunt .32 automatic, slid off the safety.

“Empty the register, Sugar Lump,” she said, a half grin around her lips.

The kid’s eyes owled at her. His mouth dropped open, closed again. “Huh?”

The automatic played little circles in the air. The half grin faded from the woman’s lips. “You’re taking awful chances, sad pants,” she said coldly. “Empty the register!”

The kid gulped. “Look, lady, a joke’s a joke, but that thing might go off...”

The gun flicked jerkily at him. It seemed to drive him to action. “Why you cheap...” he sneered, grabbing for the woman’s wrist. He should never have tried that.

The automatic coughed once, twice. Then it was silent.

The youth slid down a little and rested over the counter. His right hand fell clumsily off the counter, dropped to the hot steam table at his side. He didn’t seem to notice. His feathered hair fell over his face like a blanket. After that he didn’t move again.

The girl stared at him. “Sorry as hell about that, Sonny,” she whispered. “I was saving it for someone else, but you had to play smart.”

She dropped the automatic into her handbag, went to the register. She poked the ‘no sale’ key and stood away to let the drawer spring out.

She stuffed her bag with a handful of silver dollars. Then she filled a red leather wallet with fives, tens and twenties. About two hundred dollars in all. She closed the bag, shut the register drawer.

On the way out she took a look at the kid. He hadn’t moved. He never would again. “Merry Christmas from Candy,” she said.

The woman slid her coupe around in a tight ‘U’ turn and headed out Virginia Street till she came to the row of motels just at the entrance to the city. The first one she looked at had a vacancy sign on it — which was unusual at this time of night.

She removed two overnight bags from the coupe, entered cabin eighteen, grinning. She’d signed the register Candy Smith.

She stripped, took a hot shower and carefully scrubbed her hands. Removing a strawberry-red pleated wool suit from one of the bags, she dressed again. She took a neat black chesterfield from the coupe and put it on.

She locked the car, threw the key at a cluster of poplars, went back inside, wadded up the beret, shortie coat and levis, stuffed them into a corner and grabbed up her two bags.

She left the cabin, walked carefully out through the snow-covered court and down to the nearest corner. When the Virginia Street bus came along, she hailed it. The driver was a nice guy who’d been raised right. He politely got out from behind the wheel and helped her on with the bags.

“Name me a hotel downtown,” the woman asked him.

Paul Barda put the whiskey bottle down on the small table with long tapering fingers — the fingers of a gambler.

“Soda?” he asked.

A girl on a big parrot-colored davenport across the room stared moodily at the fire. Her mouth pouted like a little kid’s. “O.K.,” she said.

Paul Barda brought over the two drinks, handed the girl one of them.

“There’s just one sensible way to look at it, Sherry,” he said decisively.

Sherry Halloran raised her eyes to his. Her tapered red-lacquered fingernails clicked around the stem of the glass.

“Sensible,” she repeated dully.

Paul Barda squeezed his white teeth together impatiently. “We’ve been over it before,” he said in a bored tone. “Sooner or later your husband’s going to fit the pieces together. Call it a Merry Christmas and forget me.”

Sherry Halloran gasped and lurched to her feet. Her knee hit the small coffee table, upsetting her drink.

“Paul!”

“Oh, cut it out, Sherry! We’ve gone through all of this mess before. It’s quits, understand? I was crazy to come here tonight anyway. Of all nights, Christmas Eve!” He shook his blond Head. He was a little annoyed at himself.

The girl’s eyes balled with dismay. She believed it now. She’d been believing it for some time, but not till now had it come clean in her consciousness.

“All right, Paul,” she said quietly. She walked across the room to a tiny rosewood desk, opened the miniature drawer in its exact center. Then she turned again to face the blond man. Her hand held a .25 caliber revolver. She extended her hand.

“Remember the gun you gave me for my birthday, Paul?”

Paul Barda waved a careless wrist. “Keep it...” he started to say, then looked down at her hand unbelievingly. The revolver was extended muzzle first. The hand that held it didn’t waver, didn’t shake. It looked like the hand of death itself.

“Sherry!” he exclaimed, shocked.

She pulled the trigger. The gun jerked insanely, a thin criss-cross of smoke patterning its movement. It jerked again and again. Then she flung the gun at the davenport. “Goodbye, Paul,” she said.

Paul Barda grabbed at his middle. He almost made it to the door. Almost but not quite. Then he slid down easily and crumpled up in a tight ball on the floor. He tried to get up once after that but his outstretched hand hit against the door casing and remained that way.

Sherry Halloran sobbed once and fainted.

There were two doors leading into this room — one at which Paul Barda had fallen and one other at the back. This latter led to the bright kitchen. Doctor John Halloran had been standing in this second doorway. He had heard and he had seen.

The hair at his temples seemed to glisten from the reflected lights of the Christmas tree in the far corner of the room. He stepped inside and leaned over his wife. She was a buoyant feather in his arms. He carried her to the bedroom, went back for his bag from which he took a hypodermic needle. He injected something into her right arm.

“Sleep tight, honey,” he whispered, “and don’t worry. Maybe I can do something about... that.”

Doctor Halloran stared around the living room. He righted Sherry’s overturned glass, went to the kitchen for a towel and carefully wiped up the spilled liquor.

He took both glasses back to the kitchen and washed them. Then he returned them to the small table with the whiskey bottle on it.

He surveyed the room, straightened a small throw rug. His last job was the unpleasant one.

He knelt on the floor close to the body of Paul Barda. There wasn’t much use in trying anything. Barda was as dead as last year’s good resolutions.

He stood up, went to the front door, opened it and looked up and down the deserted street. The snow had blanketed everything with a soft white mantel and it was coming down now in a thick layer. It made the air smell fresh and clean. At the curb stood Paul Barda’s convertible coupe where he had left it. Doctor Halloran spent some few minutes on the step, thinking. Then he went to the coupe, tried the turtle back. It was unlocked. He lifted it open.

Barda was slim, but solidly built. Doctor Halloran grunted as he carried the body out of the house and stuffed it into the turtle back of the convertible. The deck came down with a little jar, disturbing the snow on the license plate. 40-241, he read. He looked inside the car before he returned to the house. Barda had left the keys in the ignition.

Doctor Halloran carefully picked up the small .25 caliber gun on the davenport. This he meticulously wiped with his handkerchief and dropped it into his coat pocket. The only thing remaining was to wipe up a small smear on the varnished, waxed floor. After that he took his handkerchief to the fireplace and tossed it in. It burned completely in a few minutes. He watched it burn, thinking.

The blackjack dealer at the Marlo Club shuffled the cards, cut the deck, used a small stack of them to sweep a non-existent bit of dust from the green felt and looked out at the almost deserted club.

“Make your bets,” he intoned to nobody.

The croupier at an adjoining roulette wheel grinned and tossed a silver dollar onto the other’s felt.

“Things is mighty rough, pardner,” the dealer husked. He tossed a silver dollar of his own over to the croupier. “Twenty-eight black,” he said.

Then he began to shuffle the cards again. “Your first is a nine,” he announced.

“Hit me,” said the croupier.

The dealer threw down another, face up. “Ten.”

The croupier smiled.

The dealer threw a card of his own. “Five.” He threw a second. “Six.” Another. “Nine.” He held the cards spread widely. He grinned loosely, scooped the silver dollar with a card, stacked it neatly with a hundred others.

The croupier spun the wheel, tossed the ball in the opposite direction, waited. His mustache twitched. He reached up one slender finger and smoothed it. His eyes were impassive. “Seventeen red,” he announced.

The ball lay as he had said.

The dealer shrugged. “Helluva night.”

“It’ll pick up. Me, I go at eleven. Just in time to watch the kids put up the Christmas tree.” He looked at his watch. It was fifteen minutes before. He started to say something else, looked up and cleared his throat instead.

A small woman with a strawberry-red pleated suit and hair the color of an eight ball was coming their way. She made for the blackjack table.

The dealer smiled. “Merry Christmas.”

The woman looked at his eyes briefly, took out a stack of silver dollars from a white plastic handbag, and tossed five on the table. The dealer gave her two cards, one down, one up.

“Again,” she said dully. He tossed it to her.

She turned up her buried card. “Twenty-three,” she said. The dealer smiled politely, scooped up the five dollars.

“Ever hear of a boy called Paul Barda?” the woman asked him.

“Paulie? Sure. Was in here this afternoon. Haven’t seen him tonight.”

“Where’s he live, you know?”

The dealer shook his head and she turned to go.

“Try Joe over at the bar,” he advised. “He might know.”

The girl walked toward the bar.

The bartender finished shaking a cocktail, laid it on the tray at the end of the bar and nodded.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I know Paul Barda. But I never knew where he lived.”

The girl studied him. “Whiskey,” she said. “Soda on the side.”

He placed it before her and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. It gave him a chance to examine the woman. He decided to play it safe. “Haven’t seen Paul in quite a spell,” he offered tentatively.

“He was in here this afternoon.”

The bartender’s face reddened and he leaned over to grab at a bar rag. “That so?” he murmured.

The woman tossed off the whiskey, sipped a little of the soda water and threw a silver dollar on the bar.

“Put the change in the collection plate Sunday if you can spare it,” she told him.

She walked out. A tall, carefully shaven man who was sitting hunched up on a bar stool got up and followed her. He poked his head out of the door. “Lady!” he hissed.

The woman stopped, turned and came back. The man closed the door behind him.

“You’re looking for Barda?”

“Maybe.”

The man grinned a thin grin. “Sure. You come up to a bar, and ask for Paul Barda. But you’re only looking for him ‘maybe’.”

“So I’m looking for Barda. You know where he lives?”

“Sure I know where he lives. But better still I know where he is right now.”

“Talk to me.”

The man looked up at the sky. A snowflake hit him on the nose. He blew it off again. “Let’s say you’re the recording angel and I’m giving you the dope. No motive. What’s it matter if Barda messes around with my girl? He messes with ’em all. No motives, then. Just facts.”

“Let’s just say you’re a pigeon,” the woman bit off. “Who the hell cares? Give it to me straight.”

The carefully shaven face cringed but the voice said: “Straight. He’s up at 3232 Bret Harte Road with another guy’s wife. If you act fast, you catch him.”

“I’ll catch him all right. Don’t you lose no sleep over it, honey.”

“Not that it matters,” the man lisped, “but are you an ‘ex’, too? Not that it matters.”

The girl dug into her handbag, pulled out a five dollar bill and threw it on the ground at his feet. “Not that it matters,” she repeated. “If you’re a sample of his friends, he must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel lately. Thanks.”

The big bronze door chimes struck the quarter hour. Doctor Halloran tensed, the blood vessels at his temples pulsing quickly. He took slow, deliberate strides to the door and swung it open. A woman faced him.

“Maybe I’m wrong. If so, no harm’s done. Back in!”

Her hair was ebony. She wore a pretty chesterfield over a strawberry-red pleated suit. Her voice sounded thin — ageless as the Sphinx, but thin.

He backed into the living room, keeping his hands well away from his sides. He didn’t especially care for the automatic the woman held pointed at him. He stopped when his feet bumped into the green davenport.

The woman pulled the automatic back into her hip deeply where it would be safe. With her left hand she pawed his clothing, found Barda’s gun, took it.

“Sit down.” she said. “I’ll like it better that way.”

He did so slowly.

“Make me a story,” she began, “a story about Paul Barda.”

Doctor Halloran pulled his hands onto his knees, palms down. The fingers spread, stayed that way.

“Paul Barda,” he repeated. “I don’t believe I know him.”

Something in the tone made the woman whip her gun up. “No mistake,” she whispered. “This is the place all right. Talk!”

Doctor Halloran sighed. His fingers relaxed. His voice, when he replied, sounded tired and a little resigned.

“It seems to me,” he said, “you have all the cards but one. On the other hand I have none — nor am I even interested in the game. Suppose you talk, instead.”

“I’ve already burned a guy down tonight,” she said. Her eyes glared, making his skin itch. “For nothing at all except I wanted a little money and he couldn’t see it that way. What’s more, I came here to bum another. One more added to the score won’t matter.”

He raised his right hand, halted it in mid-air and replaced it on his knee. He nodded. His eyes even seemed to light up in pleasant agreement.

“As you say. One more won’t matter. It won’t matter to me, either, for reasons you wouldn’t guess.”

The automatic was a tight black line pointing straight at him. “Something tells me I’m wasting my time,” she said. “But I’ll give it a try. All right. Paul Barda used to be in love with me.” Long eyelashes flicked toward the ceiling.

“Oh, it was an easy thing for him. He’s had so much practice. But he got tired. Me, I didn’t tire easy. And I thought maybe I could get him back by doing some dirty laundry for him... A guy died in my apartment.

“Paul swore he’d never forget me and I got off easy with five years. Did you ever spend five years waiting day after day, night after night — in hell — waiting for someone you loved? Or waiting for a letter? A postcard, even?” Her lip curled. “That was me, brother.”

Doctor Halloran dropped his eyes to his hands, studied them. He said nothing.

“I’d played it smart — if you don’t use brains at all, that is. And when I finally got out I banged my head some more hunting around, finding out how Paul had spent those five years on the outside. It led me to Reno. And here.

“They said he’d be here with some guy’s wife. It sounded like Paul. He can take any woman and do that to her. He did it to me. I used to be a good woman. Would you believe it?”

Doctor Halloran raised his eyes. They were tortured eyes, hot with the agony of something seen for the first time.

The logs in the fireplace stirred.

“You’ve wasted your time,” he said slowly. “Paul Barda isn’t here. You may search the place if you like. You may shoot me if you like. You may steal my car which stands at this moment outside with the keys in the ignition. You have my gun and you have your own.”

The woman grunted. “You talk plenty, mister, but the words don’t mean anything.”

He sighed again, more audibly this time. “I’ve told you once. Barda isn’t here. I don’t even know the man.”

The woman’s gun faltered. Her hand began to tremble just the slightest. She breathed noisily.

“Your wife?” she finally asked. “It was your wife?”

“Yes.” He got up, went over to the small table upon which rested the whiskey bottle. He poured himself a stiff drink.

“I’m sorry for you, brother,” she said. “I can mean that from the heart. I can really mean that. And where do you think they’d go?”

Doctor Halloran raised the whiskey to his lips, let the fluid bum there a moment. Then the faintest suggestion of a grin crossed his eyes.

“They say Las Vegas is a winter playground,” he murmured.

“Yeah. Vegas. That sounds like Paul. Anywhere just so long as there’s plenty of gambling. I’ll take you up on that car business. I’ll ditch it somewhere to the south. Maybe Carson City. I can pick up another there. O.K.?”

“Carson City,” he agreed.

“You want your gun? No, I’ll take it along. It’d be a nice gesture in Vegas, wouldn’t it? I think you’d like that.” Doctor Halloran watched the woman drive away with Paul Barda’s convertible. He waited several minutes and then went to the telephone, dialed Police Headquarters. Outside a sleigh full of kids went by noisily. Christmas Eve carols.

“I’d like to report a stolen car,” he said. The voice on the other end told him to hang on. Then: “Stolen Car Division. Avila speaking. What make? What’s the license?”

The instrument seemed made of lead, it was so heavy. He shuffled it in his hand. “I...” he said hesitantly.

“Yeah? What’s the dope. What car? You still there?”

Doctor Halloran dropped the phone in its cradle. “Never mind,” he whispered to no one.

He went to the bedroom, looked down at his wife. She was sleeping the heavy relaxed sleep of a drugged person. He went over to the window, raised the shade and looked out at the thick glittering snowfall. It was going to be a beautiful white Christmas in Reno this year.