Ladies of Chance

Chapter 19

I was just taking my fourth drink after getting back to my hotel when the phone rang. A man’s voice: “Barlow?”

I said, “Yes,” and he said he was coming right up to see me, and hung up before I had time to ask who the hell he was or what he wanted.

I went back to the table and finished my fourth drink. I yelled, “Come in,” to a knock on the door.

A man came in and closed it behind him. A good-looking young fellow. Broad-shouldered and well-dressed, with a soap and toothpaste look about him. I had never seen him before that I could recall. He looked at me without saying anything or blinking, and I set my empty glass down.

“You’re Barlow? Ed Barlow?”

“That’s right. Who are you?”

“My name is Benton.” He walked toward me slowly. His voice was flat and unemotional.

I poured myself a drink, set the bottle near him and gestured toward a clean glass. “Join me.”

“I don’t,” he said, “drink with skunks...”

“I don’t make a practice of it myself,” I told him.

He waited until I set my glass down — empty. Then he slapped me.

I moved backward toward the dresser where I could get my hand on a gun.

I stopped six feet short of the dresser when he took a blunt revolver out of his pocket and carelessly pointed it in my direction.

His ring had cut a little gash on my chin. I wadded my handkerchief against it to stop the blood. His eyes were gray and hard. He had the look of a man itching for an excuse to pull the trigger.

I sat down in a rocker, being careful to keep my hands in plain sight so he couldn’t get any foolish ideas.

“What’s it all about, fellow?”

“For you, Barlow, it’s about the end.”

I didn’t say anything and he stood there holding the gun on me.

After a while, I said: “It’s your move.”

He scowled and said: “I’m trying to decide whether you’re worth killing.” He spoke as though it was an abstract problem. Like a problem in algebra.

I said: “Men have burned for thinking too far in that direction.”

He hunched his heavy shoulders. “I’m not worrying about what might happen to me.”

“Pulling the trigger would be a fair way of committing suicide,” I agreed. “Not quite as messy as the way your wife elected.”

He shook his head as though there was an unendurable pain inside. He crouched and said: “Damn your soul to everlasting hell.”

“Nuts,” I told him disgustedly. “Blast away if you think I had anything to do with your wife’s trouble. You’ll wake up in hell knowing you’ve made a bad mistake.”

His lips were quivering. He looked like a college boy sitting on the sidelines watching his team fail to advance the ball in the big game.

I took a chance and jumped him. The gun went off into the wall. I got a nice uppercut flush to his chin and laid him out. Then I poured myself a drink, sat him upright in the rocker, and went to the door to explain to a porter and two or three excited guests that a bottle of warm champagne had blown up. I don’t know whether any of them believed me or not, but a glance into the room was enough to convince them that a couple of us were throwing a jag and a champagne bottle might have blown up.

Benton was coming to when I got rid of the gang at the door. The glaze was going out of his eyes, and he was waggling his head up and down.

I poured a snifter of brandy and held it under his nose. His mouth flew open and he gulped mechanically when I poured it down. Then he sat up straighter and looked around with a pained expression.

I sat down in front of him and unloaded his gun. Then tossed it in his lap, saying: “It’s safer to carry one unloaded.”

His lips came back from his teeth and he said, in that same flat tone he had used at first: “You goddamn’ lowdown bastard.”

I took a drink and offered him one. He waved it aside, not taking his eyes off me.

“Get it out of your system,” I urged him. “Maybe you’ve got some more pet names you’d like to call me while you’re able.”

He shook his head, looking a little bit bewildered. “I was a fool not to pull the trigger when I had the chance.”

“All of us do foolish things now and then,” I consoled him. “But just what would it have got you to bump me?”

His nostrils flared at the base and he breathed hard: “It would have made some amends for... what happened to June.”

“You’re blaming me for that?”

“You’re goddamn’ right I am. I know all about it.” His lips twitched and his voice broke.

I said: “Have another drink, sonny,” pushing the bottle toward him.

He took it this time, his hand shaking so badly that he spilled an ounce of cognac on the rug while getting half an ounce down his throat.

“I suppose you’ve been talking to Dolly?”

“To Dolly and...”

“And who?”

“None of your goddamn’ business.”

“And who?”

“I’m not telling who. I promised.”

I motioned toward the gun in his hand. “I’ve got you dead to rights on an attempted murder charge. That costs twenty years in Florida.”

“I don’t give a goddamn’.” His lips twisted up into a boyish snarl of defiance. “I’d be just as well off in Raiford I guess. I’m nothing but a goddamn’ bungler.”

“You’re that all right. And you’ll be the biggest kind of fool alive if you don’t trade me the person that sent you here for my promise to forget what happened.”

“No! I’ll be goddamned if I’ll play stool pigeon.”

“That’s very heroic. Little Lord Fauntleroy couldn’t have said it any nobler.”

“Why don’t you call the police?” he flared at me. “I’ll do some talking when they come for me, you can bet your bottom dollar on that. I’ll tell them plenty about you. If I do twenty years in Raiford, you’ll be doing forty.”

That gave me something to think about. I took a drink and thought about it. I’d be in a hell of a mess if he went blabbing to the police now — just when I had things about sewed up. But I needed to know who had filled him full of the idea of coming to my room with a loaded gun. That was important. Someone who wanted me out of the way pretty badly.

“I haven’t got anything to hide,” I told him at last. “Any shooting off you do to the police will be your own hard luck.”

“All right.” He was all wrought up and defiant. “We’ll see. I just dare you to lift the phone and call them.”

“You’re acting,” I told him, “like a two-year-old.”

“And you’re acting like a man with plenty on his conscience,” he gibed.

I started to take another drink — decided to lay off until I thought up some answers. This was going to take a lot of figuring. I couldn’t turn him in, and I couldn’t let him out of my sight in the shape he was in. He had a pretty bad case of the jitters coming on if I wasn’t badly mistaken.

But I couldn’t keep him in that damned hotel room. One yell would bring someone who wouldn’t be as easily satisfied as the porter had been.

I walked back and forth while I looked through the mess for an answer. He sat in the chair and watched me with a smirking air of triumph.

The cognac bottle was less than half-full. I took it up and hefted it with him watching me. He didn’t know I was calculating how hard to swing it without killing him. I didn’t want to swing it too hard. Dead, he wouldn’t be any good to me.

I swung it and caught him just above the left ear. He toppled over without a groan and with a surprised look on his face. I got some adhesive tape from a drawer, taped his mouth and arms, found his heart was still beating, and called Pete Ryan at his rooming house.

He sounded grumpy and sleepy: “Who the hell is it now?”

“Ed. And I’m in one hell of a jam.”

“Oke.” He came awake like that. “Where are you and what do I do?”

“In my room with a body that may come back to life any time. Know a good place to take a man to make him talk?”

Pete thought a minute and then said, “Sure.”

“I’m going to get him down the back stairs. Meet me in your flivver at the alley entrance in ten minutes.”

“It’s a date,” Pete said blithely, and hung up.

I put a bottle of liquor and a loaded automatic in my pocket, bundled the still unconscious Benton over my shoulder like a drunk and dragged him down the rear stairway. Pete was waiting for me with an anxious grin and no questions. We got Benton in the front seat between us and Pete drove away.