Black Money

21

The cashier of Mercy Hotel had eyes like calculators. She peered at me through the bars of her cage as if she was estimating my income, subtracting my expenses, and coming up with a balance in the red.

“How much am I worth?” I said cheerfully.

“Dead or alive?”

That stopped me. “I want to pay for Mr. Harry Hendricks for another day.”

“It isn’t necessary,” she said. “His wife took care of it.”

“The redhead? Was she here?”

“She came in and visited him for a few minutes this morning.”

“Can I see him?”

“You’ll have to ask the head nurse on the third floor.”

The head nurse was a starched, thin-mouthed woman who kept me waiting while she brought her records up to date. Eventually she let me tell her that I was a detective working with the police. She got quite friendly then.

“I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t ask him some questions. But don’t tire him, and don’t say anything to upset him.”

Harry was in a private room with windows, which overlooked the city. With the bandages on his head and face he looked like an unfinished mummy.

I was carrying the pearl-gray hat, and his eyes focused on it. “Is that my hat?”

“It’s the one you were wearing yesterday. The name inside is Spillman, though. Who’s he?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You were wearing his hat.”

“Was I?”

He lay and thought about it. “I got it at a rummage sale.”

I didn’t believe him, but there was no point in saying so. I tossed the hat onto the chest of drawers. “Who clobbered you, Harry?”

“I don’t know for sure. I didn’t see him. It was dark, and he knocked me out from behind. Then he stomped on my face, the doctor says.”

“Nice guy. Was it Martel?”

“Yeah. It happened up at his place. I was poking around the back of his house. The wind was making so much noise I didn’t hear him come up behind me.”

His fingers crawled over the sheet which covered his body. “He must of given me quite a going over. I’m sore all over.”

“You were in an auto accident.”

“I was?”

“Martel put you in the trunk of your car and parked it on the waterfront. Some winos stole and wrecked it.”

He groaned. “It isn’t mine. My own clunk died on me, and I borrowed the Caddie off the lot. No insurance, no nothing. Is she a total goner?”

“It wouldn’t be worth the price of the body work.”

“Wouldn’t you know it. There goes another job.” He lay silent for a minute, looking at the sky. “I’ve been thinking about myself this aft. I bet – no, I won’t bet, I’ll just say it: I’m the biggest failure west of the Mississippi. I don’t even deserve to live.”

“Everybody deserves that.”

“It’s nice of you to say so. Incidentally, they told me a Mr. Archer made the down payment on this pad. Was that you?”

“I chipped in twenty.”

“Thanks muchly. You’re a real pal.”

“Forget it. I’m on an expense account.”

But he was touched. “I guess I’m lucky – lucky to be alive, for one thing. Then my wife came to see me, which makes it old home week.”

“Is Kitty still in town?”

“I doubt it. She said she was leaving.” His head lay inert on the pillow for a moment. “I didn’t know you knew her.”

“We had a talk last night. She’s a beautiful woman.”

“Don’t I know it. When I lost her it was like losing the moon and stars, boy.”

“Did Ketchel take her away from you?”

Another silence. “You know him, too?”

“I know something about him. What I know I don’t like.”

“The more you learn the less you’ll like it,” he said. “The one great foolish mistake of my life was getting caught in his meat-hooks. It lost me Kitty.”

“How so?”

“I’m a gambler,” he said. “I don’t know why. I just am. I love to gamble. It makes me feel alive. I must be nuts.”

His eyes seemed to be looking down a hole. “So one hot morning about dawn I walked out of the Scorpion Club into Fremont Street with nothing, no wife, nothing. How do you like that? I lost my wife in a crap game. She was so disgusted with me she went with him and stayed.”

“With Ketchel?”

Harry lay looking at the hat on the bureau. “His real name is Leo Spillman. Ketchel is just a name he uses. It’s an old-time boxing name. Kayo Ketchel, he called himself. He was a pretty good light-heavy before he went into the rackets full-time.”

“What rackets is he in, Harry?”

“Name it and he has a piece of it, or used to have. He started in slot machines in the Middle West and got fat off of army bases. You might say that he’s still in slot machines. He’s majority owner of the Scorpion Club in Vegas.”

“Funny I never heard his name.”

“He’s a concealed owner, I think they call it. He learned to keep his name quiet, like traveling under the name of Ketchel. Leo Spillman is a name with a bad smell. Of course he’s semi-retired now, I haven’t seen him for years.”

“How did you get hold of his hat?”

“Kitty gave it to me when she came to see me last week. Leo’s a much bigger man than I am but we have the same size head, seven-and-a-quarter. And I needed a hat to go up against the people in Montevista.”

“Where can I find Leo?”

“I guess you could try the Scorpion Club. He used to have a suite there next to his office. I know him and Kitty have a hideout someplace in Southern Cal, but she never gave me a hint of where it is.”

“What about his cattle ranch?”

“He sold that long ago. Kitty didn’t like to see them branding the calves.”

“You’ve kept in pretty close touch with her.”

“Not really. But I’ve seen her over the years. When she gets in a real jam, or has a real need, she comes to old Harry.”

He raised his head a few inches from the pillow and looked at me. “I’m leveling with you, Archer, and you know why? I need a cohort, a partner.”

“So you said yesterday.”

“I need one worse today.”

With a slow sweep of his chin he called attention to his helplessness, and let his head fall back on the pillow. “And you’ve been a real pal. I’m going to offer you an equal share of a really big deal.”

“Like a concussion?”

“I’m serious. There may be more than a hundred grand up for grabs. Is that laughable?”

“You mean the money Martel-Cervantes stole?”

“Martel-who-did-you-say?”

“Cervantes. That’s another name Martel used.”

“Then he’s the man!”

Harry sat up in his excitement. “We’ve got him.”

“Unfortunately we haven’t got him. He’s on the run, with a hundred grand in cash. Even if we do get hold of it, won’t Leo Spillman want it back?”

“Naw.”

His hand slid up in a steep gesture. “A hundred grand or two hundred is just peanuts to Leo. He’ll let us keep it, Kitty said he would. The money they’re really after, Kitty and him, is up in the millions.”

His hand went up to the full length of his arm and stayed there for a second in a kind of salute. He fell back onto the pillow.

“Martel stole millions from him?”

“So Kitty said.”

“She must be stringing you. There’s no way to steal a million dollars, unless you rob a Brink’s truck.”

“Yes, there is. And she isn’t lying, she never has to me. You got to understand that this is the chance of a lifetime.”

“The chance of a death-time, Harry.”

The thought sobered him. “Yeah. That, too.”

“Why would Leo Spillman put it in your hands?”

“Kitty did. I’m the only one she trusts.”

He must have noticed my dubious look because he added: “That may sound funny to you, but it’s a fact. I love Kitty, and she knows it. She says if I can pull this out she might even come back to me.”

His voice rose, trying to make it truer.

I could hear soft rapid nurse-footsteps approaching in the hall.

“Kitty told me she used to live here in town.”

“That’s right, Kitty was a local girl. Matter of fact, we had our first honeymoon in the Breakwater Hotel.”

His eyes rolled under his bandages.

“What was her maiden name?”

“Sekjar,” he said. “Her old man was some kind of Polack. So’s her mother. She hated my guts for robbing the cradle, she called it.”

The head nurse opened the door and stuck her head in. “That’s enough now. You said you’d keep it quiet.”

“Harry got a little excited.”

“We can’t have that.”

She opened the door wide. “Out now.”

“Are you with me, Archer?” Harry said from the bed. “You know what I mean.”

I wasn’t with him and I wasn’t against him. I made a circle with my thumb and forefinger and showed it to him in a gesture of encouragement.