Catch the Brass Ring

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THEY LED US DOWNSTAIRS, Vito first, walking backwards with what looked like a German Luger. Then Karen, then me. Kellum bringing up the rear with Billy Drake’s .38 Special.

At the bottom of the stairs, at the entrance to the dining-room, we met Allison. I sneered, but it was too dark. Vito stood at the foot of the stairs. Karen was on the second step, I was right behind her. I could feel Kellum breathing down my neck. They were going to take us out in the Allison I, a long way out, more than halfway to Connecticut, probably, and drop us. We were dead ducks and it was foolish to fade out without trying. If I dropped quick and whirled and grabbed Kellum’s legs, maybe. Just maybe he wouldn’t shoot anybody. But then there was Vito. Karen stood two steps above him. Lovely angle. She was athletic. She could kick him right in the teeth. We had to get coordinated, that’s all.

I whirled and dove at Kellum’s knees and yelled, “Kick him!” A gun roared and another. Something slammed against my shoulder and I thought I’d been hit, but it w«s Kellum, thrashing and kicking. I straightened up and heaved and saw him go over the bannister headfirst, waving his arms frantically and dropping the .38. A section of the bannister crashed down with him and on top of him and I dove after it, bringing my legs up under me. I landed that way, feet first, on his back. He made a loud gargling noise, the closest he could get to a scream under the circumstances. I clutched a chunk of bannister as big as a baseball bat and whacked him across the base of the skull with it. He clawed the carpet once, shuddered, and subsided. His skull looked oddly flattened in the half-light, and unless there was an awful lot of space between bone and brain he was dead.

I scrambled around the base of the stairs on all fours, climbed to my feet and saw Vito fighting a woman for the second time. He was doing all right but he’d done better the last time. He had Karen down on her back and he was choking her, but his mouth was a bloody ruin and a couple of teeth dangled loosely and bloodily from slack lips while he cursed.

The Marquis of what’s-his-name would have turned over in his grave, but our only audience was the Grim Reaper, still undecided which way to let his scythe fall. I called Vito’s name and he turned around. I brought my club up like a chipping iron, in a short, brutal arc. It caught Vito under the chin and smeared his face crimson as he twisted grotesquely and flipped over on his back. I’d made the decision for the guy with the scythe.

I wanted to go to Karen, but she could wait. Instead, I stalked toward Allison, dropping my club and flexing stiff fingers.

“They shouldn’t electrocute no-good whores like you,” I said. “They ought to tear you apart one limb at a time.”

Her mouth hung open. She stared at me and wanted to say something but the words wouldn’t come. She stared at the ruin that was Kellum and the worse ruin that was Vito and still she didn’t say anything.

“They’ll get you,” I said. “They can give you a trial and electrocute you or do whatever they want. But first I want you.”

Allison’s mouth opened and closed. She was talking. She thought she was talking, but the words didn’t come. I was going to beat her black and blue and then call myself a louse. It would be worth it.

There was barking close by. A door opened. A breeze stirred. Shamus pawed his way across the carpet, Gregory Tolliver’s restraining hand white on his harness. “Lucca?” Tolliver called, staring sightlessly. “Lucca, where are you?” Silence. Gideon Frey had struck out long ago as a detective.

“Lucca, is anything the matter? I heard shots.”

“Gregory!” Allison screamed. “Gregory, Gregory, Gregory… what…?”

Shamus growled, drooling spittle. The smell of blood got to him. Shamus strained at the harness and advanced, dragging Gregory a few steps down the hall toward us, then growled again. The blood was too much. Shamus broke loose in a quick angry streak of brindle fury. Allison whimpered and was borne to the floor. There was flashing white and flashing brindle and Shamus’ low, deep-throated growling. His teeth had found the side of Allison’s throat and he shook her around like a rag doll.

Karen screamed. Tolliver was yelling. I picked up the .38 Special and blew the back of Shamus’ head off. He yelped quickly and angrily and died, leaping off Allison as if he’d been shot from a cannon.

My stomach flipped up, then down. Not just what I’d eaten today, but what I’d had all week threatened to come up and spill out before it subsided, like a lead weight, down below my belt buckle. Skin and flesh hung in two loose, triangular flaps from Allison’s face and neck. She clawed at it feebly and whined.

I’ve never seen Tolliver’s face minus the composure, the smooth, sure poise. I saw it now. “I can’t see,” he wailed. “I can’t see!” He probably realized it for the first time in his life. He couldn’t see. It had never mattered before. It mattered now. “What’s happening? Where is everybody? Who’s here? Talk to me. I can’t see. Shamus. Shamus, boy. Where are you? Allison? Allison! I thought you… were staying in the city overnight. You said you were staying in the city overnight. You promised. I can’t see. Shamus? Shamus, heel. Heel, Shamus. Oh, my God, I’m blind. I’m blind!”

It was like a terrible revelation to him.

“The boat is ready, Lucca,” he said. “The boat is waiting. Take me to the boat. You have the Tanner girl and Gideon Frey? Good.”

“She’s not dead,” Karen told me. It had taken an effort to go near Allison. Karen’s face was drawn and white. “If I can stop this bleeding I think she’ll live.”

“Good,” I mumbled. Good. Bad. Indifferent. I didn’t care. But I knew. I knew. A blind man. You’d never think a blind man who had everything…. “Tolliver,” I said, “it wasn’t Allison. It was you. Of all the people involved only you could pay the bill.”

“Frey? I recognize your voice. What happened to Lucca? Where is everybody? Shamus, can’t you hear me?”

“Shamus is dead,” I told him slowly. Tolliver got down on the floor and began to feel around. He was going in the wrong direction, toward the wall, but I didn’t stop him. Vito had told me Allison had hot-pants, so I’d homed right in on it, thinking if Vito knew how it was with Allison and if Vito was a go-between, that made Allison top dog. It was crazy. It was like saying the batboy won the pennant for Brooklyn.

All Vito’s knowledge told me really, was that I’d find the boss, the letter writer, at Blind Man’s Bluff. And then I remembered Tolliver had said, that day in the rain before the inquest and again out here at the Bluff, that Allison was so interested in Funland, she ran things for him there, even drawing a personal income from it. That pointed the finger at Allison, but it wasn’t enough. I should have known it was Tolliver. A blind man, but capable. Somehow you just don’t think of a blind man as a puppeteer pulling the strings in a million-dollar criminal enterprise. So you settle on his queer, greedy — but innocent — wife. Well, at least it got me to the right place.

“You and the crazy game you made of life,” I told Tolliver, who had stopped at the wall and was turning around slowly, like a swimmer under water. “You didn’t need the money you made from the still.”

“I ran it right under their noses. I’d write letters and people would jump. You would appreciate my typewriter, Frey. It’s made for a blind man.”

“Only Kellum and Vito Lucca knew who you were,” I said. “The rest of them just got instructions. When Bert came back from Korea he was afraid to go to the cops because of Karen, but you wanted to scare him to make sure. You told Kellum to do the job, but he botched it. He locked Bert in the steam room and waited too long, and Bert suffocated.”

Tolliver was still on all fours. In another moment he would reach the dog’s body with his groping hands. Karen had taken off her blouse and crouched there, golden in the dim light, pressing the folded cloth against Allison’s face.

“When I remembered Vito had told me Allison was a nympho, that led me here,” I said. “But I should have realized a nympho isn’t good for much else. It had to be you. It wasn’t Vito who clobbered me out on the beach. It was Kellum. You told Kellum to try and scare me off. Then, when that didn’t work, it was Kellum who got scared. You didn’t tell him to kill me, but when it was time for the inquest he figured I must have known something for sure. So he took a pot-shot at me from the pay John.

“I don’t know about Ben Lutz. Maybe you had nothing to do with that.”

“Who is Ben Lutz?” Tolliver asked. His hands were inches from Shamus’ body.

“Then I was right about Ben. Vito killed him. At that time Vito still didn’t know I wasn’t what I claimed to be. I’d scared him into thinking his job was ready for grab. He was crazy jealous in other things besides love. When Ben went around shooting off his mouth about how I was going to move him up in the organization, Vito must have thought he could get two birds with one stone. Kill Ben, who might take his job away. And pin it on me, thinking maybe you’d have given him my job. Later on he must have asked you and probably realized he’d killed Ben for nothing, but Vito was like that.

“At first I thought Karen had been kidnapped to quiet her, to get her out of the way. But you really had Karen brought here as bait for me. Vito didn’t know I was a phony until after they showed me around the still. He must have called you, or maybe Kellum did. Anyway, you got Allison out of the way, but she came back earlier than you thought.

“I still don’t know what made you so sure I wouldn’t go to the police. You must have known how it was between Karen and me. You figured I wasn’t sure how she stood in all this, or maybe you figured I’d be afraid you’d kill her if the police came. And Kellum was going to take me here if I still hadn’t figured where Vito went with Karen.”

It was then that Tolliver’s hands found Shamus. They ran over the body slowly, the fingers like ten small, trembling snakes. They found the bloody head and held it. They clenched in brindle and crimson.

Tolliver stood up slowly, getting the toe of his shoe under Shamus’ body. The dead dog rolled over, legs straight up for a moment, then fell on its side.

Tolliver went outside, sure of himself, not touching the walls with his hands, not hesitating. But slowly. Karen looked at me but I shook my head and followed Tolliver.

He kept right on going and maybe I should have stopped him. He stood at the edge of the cliff behind the house, at a point where the water lapped deep and hungry a hundred feet below him. He climbed over the guard rail and hung that way, silhouetted by the moon which had finally broken through the clouds. He always lived by his own rules, I thought, and this was the end of his game.

He turned around and looked back at me once as if he could see, then dropped over the edge. When I reached the spot where he’d gone over, there was nothing but the water, hissing and frothing and claiming its own, far below.

I walked slowly back to the house. Vito was dead in there and Kellum. Allison would live if we called a doctor. It would be a living hell with the scar and all that unrequited desire. I was too tired to decide whether she deserved it or not, or whether the D.A. would indict a mixed-up Irish kid named Sheila O’Keefe when everything came out in the wash.

I found the phone and called the operator and got the police. They were on their way, I’d sleep on it before calling the T-men in the morning. Right here, right now, and I didn’t care if there were a dozen corpses in the parlor. If the cops would let me, which they wouldn’t.

I was low. Morbid. Feeling like you get to feel in Korea. Worse. I didn’t want Karen to see me that way and I thought some liquor might help. I tried a few stiff ones in the living-room and when that didn’t work tipped up the bottle and drank. That didn’t work, either. I gave it up as a bad job and sought Karen.

That’s the trouble with me. Stupid.

Can’t figure what’s good for what ails me. Karen’s medicine. My medicine, anyway. She was pale and haggard. She had fingermarks around her neck like a livid necklace, but she carfle to me as the police sirens wailed distantly and I didn’t feel so bad.

Morbid? Who was morbid?

We’d find ourselves a big chunk of time, all of time, and get lost in it together. We had a drink on it, too. This time it worked.

me with fair frequency. And that attitude on my part was like feeding him poison. Harry and Job were weaker stuff. They took it. But Bill didn’t. And because he was the man he was, he reacted in the way he did. Violently, but subtly.” Vickers shook her gently. “So you see, Cleopatra, it’s more my fault than yours.”