Hell Has No Fury

Chapter Four Fitting the Puzzle Together

We went up from a narrow alley on rickety stairs into a large room that looked like it used to be a place to lay a bet. There was a flat top desk, with an undisturbed coating of dust. On the wall behind the desk, was an old slate blackboard with some faint chalk marks still on it.

The young gorilla who looked like a rah-rah boy pushed his hat onto the back of his head and said politely, “Ladies first.”

The bigger of the other two, grinned and smashed the platinum blond across the mouth with the back of his hand. The blow cracked like a rifle shot, and she cringed away with a squeal and a whimper, pressing one hand to her injured mouth.

“Where’s the tape?” Tan Eyes said. Before she could answer, the big guy backhanded her again, and a wet sob gurgled in her throat. Her eyes flared with hate and fear, and all the other hellish emotions that a woman like her can feel for a guy who belts her in the face.

“Where’s the tape?”

Tan Eyes said. The big guy drew his arm up and back again, so that his chin was fitted into the interior angle of his elbow, but before he could slash it out and down, I said, “It’s in a locker at Union Station.”

Tan Eyes turned to me, smiling. “A gentleman. A real, damned gentleman. Can’t stand to see a dame knocked around. I thought you’d be soft.”

The big guy came over to me and grabbed me by the lapels with his left hand. He brought the heel of his right hand down in a short chopping motion on my bandage. I could feel the cut pull apart, and blood welled out from under the bandage and ran down my face.

“That’s for not saying it sooner,” he said.

Tan Eyes held out a hand, palm up.

“You got a key?”

“No.”

The big guy hit me across the eyes with the edge of his hand. It was like getting hit with a tomahawk.

“Where’s the key?” Ten Eyes said.

I was blind. T had lost my vision in an intense flare of brilliant light that died instantly to total darkness. Now the darkness was diluted slowly by a gray infiltration, and objects and faces reappeared with a strange effect of coming down a line of perspective from a great distance. The big executioner had his chopper drawn back for a repeat, and Tan Eyes had his extended, as before, with the palm up.

I guess I could have taken more, if I’d had to. But I was glad I didn’t have to. Kitty had the key. She’d had at least twenty minutes to function, and Kitty was a smart gal. By this time, she was certainly in possession of the tape and the player.

“I dropped it in the coin slot in the juke box control,” I said.

The tan eyes faded to a cold and wary yellow. The lips below them barely moved.

“Don’t play fancy, counselor. If you say it, it better be true.”

“It’s true,” I said, and when the big one moved in for another cut, I added quickly, “The number’s six hundred and eight.”

Tan Eyes swung an arm out gently against the other’s chest. “To hell with the key,” he said. “A public locker’s no problem.”

The third guy had been standing against the door watching, just as he’d done in my office. It could be that he just went along for kicks, or that he was the coach. The guy who really called the plays and did the thinking when thinking was needed. He was the one who did it now, at any rate, even though it came a little late.

“The tape’s not in the locker,” he said.

Tan Eyes turned slowly. “No? You thinking of a better place?”

Number three, the Thinker, moved lazily against the door, lifting his shoulders slightly. “The tape’s not in the locker,” he said. “The key’s not in the slot. The dame’s got it.”

“Dame? This one?”

“No. The blond. The one drinking beer. I just remembered where I’ve seen her before. It’s been bothering me.”

The tan eyes were very still, fading again, masking the activity of the brain behind. “The secretary, his secretary!”

The Thinker’s lips curled. He nodded agreement. “Sure. I’m betting he passed the key off when he brushed the booth. One will get you ten if the tape’s not in his office right now, or on the way there.”

The executioner moved in again. His lips were twisted back off his teeth, and his hand was raised to chop. At the door, the Thinker straighted and said, “Later. We owe him something, but save it for later. Right now we’ve got no time.” He gave the disappointed executioner a placating smile, as one might smile at an unhappy child, promising future pleasure. “You stay here with the dame. She might get lonesome if we left her by herself.”

Tan Eyes took my arm like an old friend, and we went out of the room together and down the rickety stairs to the alley. The thinker followed along. In the alley we all got into the Caddy that had brought us from The Peanut; Tan Eyes behind the wheel, the Thinker and I in the rear seat.

“You boys do all of Stark’s strong-arm work?” I asked.

The Thinker smiled lazily and said, “Button up, counselor.”

The big Caddy rolled along with a pedigreed purr, taking its time and minding the traffic signals. No one seemed to be in a hurry, which was agreeable to me, and it was probably another twenty minutes before we crawled out onto the sidewalk in front of my shingle. Going up the stairs, like meat in a sandwich, between my brace of escorts, I prayed silently that Kitty had been sensible enough to take the tape someplace else. But Kitty, while clever, was given to being sensible only rarely, and this, apparently, wasn’t a rare occasion. She was sitting behind her desk, showing her teeth in a receptive smile.

“Hi, guys,” she said.

The thinker closed the door and leaned against it, as was his habit. Tan Eyes walked over to the desk and took Kitty’s chin between thumb and fingers, tipping her head back on her slender stem of neck. He let his eyes wander over her face and on down the arched stem of her neck. The eyes, she reported later, were tender.

“You’re a sweet doll,” he said. “You’re a luscious hunk of stuff. Wouldn’t it be a shame if I had to mess you up? Wouldn’t it be a crying shame?”

She kept on smiling as well as she could with the pressure on her face. Her voice was thin and strained from the tension in her throat.

“Anything you want to do, you better do quick,” she said. “My friend, Wiley Shivers of homicide, may be slow with a dame, but he can still fire his cannon allegro fortissimo. In your language, that means fast and loud as hell.”

He was like a guy in slow motion. His hand floated away from her face, and he turned by degrees from the hips, his arm bent at the elbow and suspended outward at his side. He looked like a kid’s dream of a gun-slinger. Only the gun wasn’t on his hip, it was under his arm. The suspended arm flashed up and inward as Wiley Shivers opened my private door. But Wiley’s gun was handier. It was already pointed accurately in the right direction.

Tan Eyes sat down very quietly on the floor and folded over like a supplicant. Against the hall door, the thinker was immobile, spread on the wood in a kind of mock and frozen crucifixion. Wiley Shivers, that remarkable, fat, little guy, looked down at his victim, who was obviously dead, and his expression was precisely the same as when he’d looked at his scuffed shoe, or at the visible charms of Kitty.

“A good gunsel,” he said, after a while. “A dead one.”

Kitty came out from under her desk, and looked at me across the top. Her voice took off like a wild knuckle ball. “You’re bleeding again. Why the hell don’t you learn to protect yourself?”

I didn’t answer. I watched Wiley Shivers walk over slowly to the body of the rah-rah gorilla and nudge it with a toe. The folded body, in delicate balance, stirred and slipped over, straightening on the floor. The face under the light brown crew-cut had acquired a new softness of line. It looked rather sophomoric. Shivers’ sour gaze lifted, roamed around the wall, and down across the thinker against the door. It came to rest on me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Sorry? For what? This guy?”

“No. For what I thought about you. I thought you were a crook. I thought you were hand-picked by Austin Stark to pin a rap on me.”

“I don’t give a damn what you thought.”

“Thanks, anyhow.”

His mouth twisted. His eyes looked like a couple of smeary marbles. When I was a kid, we used to call them snotties.

“That’s the trouble with you smart guys,” he said. “You think in generalities. We got crooks at headquarters, so you jump to the opinion that everyone’s a crook at headquarters. See what I mean? Under all the smartness, no brains at all. I’ll tell you something to remember, counselor. Wherever you go, you’ll always find a few honest guys.”

He moved over to the door and casually flipped an automatic from under the arm of the Thinker. Without turning, he said, “I’ll take this punk in. You two stay here and sit on those tapes. I’ll send back for them. And don’t worry about the cops I send, they’ll be honest. When I send them, they’re always honest. Wagon’ll be here for the guy on the floor.”

He was moving again, when I thought of the platinum blond. “They’re holding Richert’s widow,” I said. “I just happened to remember. The Thinker there can tell you where.”

Looking back for a second over his shoulder, he struck an attitude of ludicrous, flabby coyness. He was the only guy I’ve ever known you could love and hate at once.

“Much obliged. That’s real thoughtful of you. She’ll probably be very glad you just happened to remember. Incidentally, Stark’s in custody by now. I sent a couple men after him just as soon as I’d heard the tape. We’ll be springing Decker to make room for him.” His lips moved again into that sour twist that seemed to signify hatred for all the world and everything in it. “See you around, counselor.”

He went on out with the Thinker, and I said, “Not if I can help it. Never again.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Kitty picked her way around the body in front of her desk. “Wiley isn’t a bad guy. I knew right away he was honest. That’s why I called him to meet me here.”

“Yes? What made you so sure he was honest?”

She grinned. “That remark he made. About being too old for me. No one but an honest man could have said that! Let’s go in your office and play the tape with Mrs. Stark and Danny Devore on it. I’ve already listened to part of it. He’s quite the romantic type. You can learn a lot from Danny, even though he’s dead.”