Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 32, No. 2, January 1973

The Last Payoff by Jim Duke

He was a baddo, a good man gone wrong, which is the worst kind of all. But he had been my pal and now he was dead and I had a debt to pay him. “Give me the dough,” I said. “Or you get a .38 where your heart was.”

The sign painted on the side said it was fireproof. That wasted bad. Forty years ago Carpenter was a big railroad town for the melon farmers; then came the trucking revolution and down went the dry, dusty town in the lower California desert.

The Dunpair Hotel shared a lot with the town: they were both havens for derelicts.

The bald-headed, pot-bellied guy at the main desk in the big empty hotel lobby eyed me sleepily when I came in out of the June Desert heat.

“Ed Glass,” I said.

Leaning back in his swivel, he glanced at the key slots.

“Two-oh-seven,” he said.

One look at the cage elevator and I decided to use the stairs.

I rapped five times on the door.

“Pick a number,” said the voice. A silly code, but it was Ed’s voice, thin, a lot weaker, but it shot me with memories.

“Thirty-one,” I said.

When Ed opened the door I knew what death looked like. Red eyes hid in dark hollows of a sallow, drawn face with stained islands all over. He gave me a bony hand, but he still had a hard handshake.

“You old S.O.B., Jason,” he said, closing the door quickly, locking it and aiming me at a beat-up table with a pair of chairs. Away from the window.

I pulled out the envelope and tossed it on the table.

“Got your message,” I said.

“Money talks, don’t it, Jason?”

“Five grand does, which I don’t need from an old friend. And which doesn’t explain this dump.”

Ed folded the money away, tried to grin, but his face wouldn’t let him. It was barely the face of a man I’d been a partner with ten years ago. The partnership was dissolved when the state took away his private investigator’s license after a solo blackmail scheme of his fell through.

I figured him dead, since I hadn’t heard from him. Not until the letter with the money the day before came to my L.A. office. He had backed me up in more than one scrape before, and I owed it to him.

“Your note said you’re in a corner,” I said.

“I’m a dead man, Jason,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

“You gotta help me. I’ve done a dumb thing, amigo. A real number one dumb thing and I’m fingered. I’m scared even to leave this hole.”

“And you can’t call for a cop,” I said.

“Sure, if I want to buy time at Folsom.”

“Better than no time, Ed.”

“Says you. Walls and me, Jason.”

I tossed a glance around the small, neat room and Ed knew what I was thinking.

His big-knuckled fingers went out and touched my hand. “You’re my only hope, amigo.” It was a dry little laugh. “Me, sharp as a tack, huh? Yeah, trying to buck the Mexican Mafia.”

“Great,” I said. “What were you, a bag man for them?”

He nodded. His body began to shake with the left-over booze in him. “Fifty grand, Jason. Simple delivery to a guy in Mexican Hernandez. Middle man in the Mexican syndicate. Six months I’ve been carrying payoffs between there and L.A. But fifty grand...”

He took on that far away look of a sot with dreams.

“You stupid bastard,” I said harshly.

I’d had more than one bump with Mafia, Mexican style. It was a popular reference to a loosely knit bunch of Latin narcotic dealers. They handled their own police by gunning them down, in between payoffs. They were right out of the Chicago-style of the 30’s.

“Been shot at twice,” he said. “Tried to get the money back. But the vine says they’ll get the money and me, too.”

“You want me to arbitrate,” I said.

“You gotta, Jason. It’s my only card. Set up the return of the money to Hernandez. Tell him to call off the muscle.”

I looked at my hands and felt tired. Seeing Ed Glass brought back the years, the good times. He and I cutting red tape, making good cases; then his hang-up with the bottle, the broads, the long slide. Blackmail. Now this. A cheap carrier, bag man. I wanted to walk out, leave him with the cards he’d given himself, but I came down knowing it wouldn’t be pretty and knowing I owed him.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do what I can to call off the dogs. The money, I take it, is well-hidden?”

“Yeah.”

I was at the door when he stopped me. “If you shake ’em off, Jason, I’m cutting out, cutting clean.”

I knew he was lying, if not to me, at least to himself.

Fifteen miles south I crossed the border at Calexico and was in Mexicali. It’s a border city with more respectability than Tiajuana and about as big as San Diego.

It was late afternoon when I made a first contact in Charro’s, a handsome restaurant-bar with mariachis in black and silver suits. Charro’s famed for its meat barritos, but I wasn’t eating. I had to go through three slick Italian-dressed Mexicans, a cab drive and two blocks of walking before I would up at a red brick, two-story house surrounded by a ten-foot adobe wall.

Bennie Hernandez, dark, heavy, looking at peace with the world, was on the back patio beside the big pool.

“Jason Varney, an L.A. private detective,” he said in fine English, and showing me his info system was quick.

Beside him sat a beautiful, long-haired Mexican girl, maybe eighteen, her pointed breasts making her red sweater work for its keep.

“Fifty grand and Eddie Glass,” I said.

Hernandez sipped a Margarita and smiled pleasantly. “You’re a friend, of course.”

“He’s had it,” I said. “Call off the dogs.”

“Really?”

“Set the place, the time. I return the money.”

“He’s set a bad precedente, Mr. Varney. A carrier that does this can give others bad ideas.”

“Frankly, I don’t give a damn what you do to him,” I said. “After I give him a break. He’s an old friend and from me he deserves a break. I intend to give it to him.”

“That is very dangerous loyalty, Mr. Varney.”

“Like you, I’m stuck with certain codes.”

“And if I should reject this—”

“Then you won’t be dealing with a boozed-up has-been, senor. I’m very good at what I do.”

Hernandez did not lose his amiable expression, but behind the eyes I knew he was evaluating me. I was betting his little info system was not only quick but went deep and he’d know my background.

“You know La Bola?”

“Yeah. A bar a block from the border.”

“Tomorrow. Eleven o’clock in the morning.”

I stood up.

“And I make no promises, afterward, senor.”

I went out the gate feeling the kind of nausea inside that conies with that kind of bargain. But I knew it was the best I could hope for: a little time to get Ed away from the border. The odds were pretty good he’d drift back, but that would have to be his decision.

I stopped at La Bola, had a Mexicali beer and checked out the place. It was dark, full of noise and smelled faintly of tortillas from the cafe next door, but It was okay for an exchange.

When I got back to Carpenter I found a motel, had a bite to eat in one of those brightly lit truck stops on the highway running through town and went to see Ed.

I figured to lay it out for him very simply. There was no reason to hide Hernandez’s hedged guarantee. If Ed didn’t want to buy it, then I had done as much as I could.

My rapping on his door got no answer. I went down and woke up the desk clerk.

“He ought to be up there,” he mumbled as he walked up the stairs in front of me. “Probably in a drunk sleep.”

When he unlocked the door I flipped the lights and Ed Glass was using a table leg for a pillow. The lamp cord was knotted around his thin neck.

“Damn.” the big man beside me whispered.

He started to loosen the cord.

“Leave it,” I said. “He’s dead and the cops like pictures the way it is.”

“Yeah, yeah, I guess so.”

When he was gone to call the local police, I made a quick check around the room. In the closet I found a loose wall board and behind it an empty hole where I knew the money had been.

I sat on the bed and looked at my old friend. Even if he was a drunk, he was no slob. The room was neat, if maybe heavy with that whiskey smell. It angered me to think Hernandez hadn’t called off his dogs in time — if he ever intended to. Now I thought about my promise to him. It would’ve been easy to leave and forget the whole stupid mess.

But I had a stubborn streak.

Lieutenant Henderson, a bland, thin man, questioned me and seemed bored by it.

“Glass was a bum,” he said, puffing on a black pipe, watching his I.D. man take his pictures. “You say he was an old friend?”

“Yeah,” I said.

He shook his head. “Well, the hotel owner, Tony, says three Mexicans came in a couple of hours ago.”

“He recognize them?”

“Nobody local.”

“That’s interesting,” I said.

“You know what this is about?”

“Nope,” I said.

He didn’t believe me but didn’t much care. He shrugged, puffed his pipe and nodded for me to go. Outside in the cooling night I hoped it would go away, that nasty feeling I get when I’m caught with my words hanging. “—you won’t be dealing with a boozed-up has-been.”

Nice speech, I thought. Full of dramatics. A speech to get drunk over, or maybe killed over.

Sleep didn’t come easy and the next morning my breakfast of over-easy eggs turned hard by a sloppy cook in the truck stop didn’t help my disposition.

It was a few minutes before eleven when I found a table in La Bola. A Scotch and water flushed away some of the bad egg taste. But nothing got rid of Ed Glass’ body lying in that fleabag hotel.

The Mexican in the tight green suit came in, looked around and walked over to me. He had a handsome scar starting just below his earlobe and angling south. No doubt the other guy had been the loser.

“Donde esta?” he asked.

“Don’t give me that,” I said.

“Que?”

“English,” I said. “And the ‘what’ of it is the money, meathead.”

He stood there, rooster-like, tight-suited and hating my existence, and I didn’t much give a damn. He wasn’t going to make a play there; I half-wished he would have.

“You do not have the money?”

“Ask your boss,” I said.

Without another word he left. I had two more Scotch and waters, getting a glow and feeling like a mean bastard when Hernandez, flanked by a pair of mustachioed bodyguards, strolled in. His face was all amiability and his teeth were pearls and I thought about my fist planted there.

“I told you,” I said when he sat down.

“What, Mr. Varney?”

“I got to give it to you. You play it out. Your boys garroted him, took the money.” I shook my head. “Bad news, senor.”

For the first time his face was not so cheerful. His eyes narrowed. “You’re saying he is dead and the money is gone?”

“Tell me you don’t know.”

“A joke, verdad?”

I didn’t smile.

“I know nothing of this. My men act only on my orders.”

“Three didn’t, then,” I told him.

“Tres hombres? For one drunk?” He laughed sharply. “That is a joke.” Then his lips drew tight. It seemed to draw the rest of his face skin like a drum top. “You are not trying a double-cross, are you, Mr. Varney?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m sitting here passing the time of day instead of legging for L.A. with fifty grand.”

“An interesting bluff, though?”

“And very dumb.”

“Yes. But, then, neither of us are very dumb.”

I sipped my drink. Hernandez’s two henchmen were itching to move in.

“We still have a partial deal, senor,” Hernandez said. “My men did not kill your friend. And you owe me fifty thousand dollars.”

Hernandez walked out and at the doorway his two boys looked back at me and I waited for the move. There was none.

I felt a whole hell of a lot better when I got back across the border. But there’s no one-hundred percent in these deals.

Driving back to Carpenter, I thought about a lot of bad money and I wondered about my own motives. Getting fifty grand back meant sending a hell of a lot of pot or smack right into the supply-demand racket. I hated the lousy racket, but here I was in the middle of it. And all for a friend. A dead friend, now.

If nothing else, Carpenter had the bars. I knew Ed would have a reputation in them. I began making the tour, watering my drinks and running through joints like the Green Room and the Happening.

I kept getting the name Dottie.

In a place called the Sagebrush, a piece of stucco near the railroad tracks, I found a talky bartender.

“Dottie and Eddie were in and out, sure. A real piece, that girl. Don’t know what she saw in the souse, though.”

“Where do I find her?”

“Sam’s Siding, last I heard. She held down a barmaid job. She was just waiting for Eddie to take her away from Carpenter. Always talking about Hollywood.” He shook his head. “Pretty girl, but not that pretty.”

Sam’s Siding was a converted railroad club car, now a bar, and the “conductor”, Sam Lark, glared at me When I mentioned Dottie.

“Skipped me! Not a damn word! You find her, you tell her I’ll wring her neck. It’s only proper she give notice.”

“I’ll tell her,” I said.

I tried the rest of the two-bit joints, the hotels and motels and no Dottie. But I got a picture of a pretty talky girl, booze talk — big dreams, big money. It was a joke, of course, that Eddie Glass was her dream man.

All the touring was a waste of time, of course, because when I walked into my motel room she was sitting on the bed. The small nickel-plated automatic was in her hand aimed at my chest. She was skinny and her hair was bleached nearly white and her face was beginning to fail her. But she hated me with all her blue eyes.

She didn’t take a breath before cracking the whip. “You did it, didn’t you!”

Crossing my arms, I propped a foot on the wood chair and leaned against the wall. The .38 under my arm felt a long way off.

“Kinda had you pegged for it,” I said. “You and some Mexican friends.”

“You’re crazy. Ed and me, we were going to L.A.”

“Yeah, but you knew he was trying to get the money back, Dottie.”

“We had plans.” Her thin body began to shake and I was getting very worried about the gun. “Money or no money, we had plans.”

“But better with the money.”

She shook her head emphatically. “Some friend. He was saying how you’d help him, save him for old times.”

“I didn’t build his trap.”

“Some friend.”

She was wiping her eyes when I kicked the chair at her. The slug hit the door and I hit her. She wailed as I yanked the little automatic from her hand and she buried her face in the bed pillow. Grabbing her shoulders, I pulled her upright.

“What’d you do with the money, Dottie?”

“I ain’t got it,” she cried. “I tell you—”

Pocketing her automatic, I tried to think. This whole mess smelled and I was beginning to feel so badly sucked into it I wondered where the out was. Finally I looked down at the pathetic limp frame of a girl on the bed.

I slammed the chair on its legs and sat down, facing her over the back.

“You’ve got something in your head I need,” I said. “Names, maybe. Something to tie ends up.”

“I don’t know a damn thing,” she said.

“Sure. Where were you last night?”

“Watching the hotel.”

“Lookout?”

“For Eddie. Across the street at the phone booth. I was to watch and call him if anybody suspicious came in.”

“And?”

“And now he’s dead.”

She began to blubber again and I grabbed her arm. “Cut out that crap, Dottie. Three Mexicans. Name them.”

She looked at me. “What three Mexicans?”

“Went into the hotel.”

“Nobody went in. I’d have called.”

I sat there a minute while she looked at me like I was crazy. Then I got up, kicked the chair against the wall and slammed the door when I left.

At the Dupair Hotel I checked the alley entrance. It was a double steel door, bolted tight shut. The fire escape was for coming down, not going up.

Tony, the pot-bellied owner, was behind the counter when I went in the front. His loose face, unaccustomed to warm greetings, wasn’t showing me any now.

“You wanna room?” he asked.

“Not in this dump,” I said. “Just a couple of answers, Tony.”

“About Glass.”

“That’s it.”

“I told the cop all I knew,” he said.

I leaned on the counter, my .38 firm under my coat. “Tell me, Tony. Tell me about three Mexicans you saw.”

“I told already.”

“Front door,” I said.

“Sure.”

“Walked right in.”

“Sure.”

I smiled. “I got people saying it never happened. And it doesn’t figure, anyway.” I stopped, but his blank face told me he wanted me to do the talking.

“Eddie Glass was scared,” I went on. “Scared to death. He’d never let three Mexicans in his room. But that locked door says he did, or they had a key, or...”

I was smiling again, and Tony shifted his weight forward on his swivel.

“Where’s the money, Tony? Man with the key, man knowing about wall holes to hide money in.”

“Don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

I shook my head. “Come on. One phone call to the P.D., explain a few facts, a little theory — a search warrant follows. I wait here, meantime, and watch you squirm cause you can’t get to it.”

Tony’s face had gone flat and I could see his eyes moving, figuring, calculating and hating.

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Fifty grand is too much money to hide anywhere but real close. More money than you ever saw, huh, Tony?”

When he moved to the desk drawer, I moved over the counter. I’m a bit overweight, but I can still make it. His old .45 was clearing the wood edge of the drawer when I hit him in the chest with my knee, By the time the gun had hit the floor my fist was mashing Tony’s fat nose.

After he wiped the blood away, he glared up at me.

“You bastard,” he said hoarsely.

“Where is it?”

“For you to get? Stick it, that’s what.”

With his .45 in his face, I used the phone. He sat watching, and I knew the only satisfaction he was getting was knowing I wouldn’t get the money.

His eyes got big when I got the Mexicali operator and asked for La Bola bar.

“Tell Hernandez,” I said to the bartender, “to send some muscle to the Dupair Hotel in Carpenter if he wants the dinero.”

Naturally the bartender pretended I was nuts — it can be said in a number of ways in Spanish. I hung up, knowing the message would get through pronto.

“Who’s this Hernandez?” Tony asked, worried now.

“He figures that fifty grand is his,” I said. “And he’s the man Eddie Glass was afraid of. But all the time Eddie should’ve been looking closer, huh, Tony? He should’ve been looking at a flop hotel owner who smelled money, figured the rumors true and saw a quick way to clear out of this hole.”

“Look, Varney, fifty grand splits nice down the middle,”

“I’ve made enough deals,” I said.

“Gimme a break, Varney.”

“Like you gave Eddie?”

“They’ll cut me to pieces. I seen the way they work.”

“I figured you had.”

The Mexican Mafia had tenacles stateside, so it didn’t surprise me when two local Chicanos walked in — like twins, big and dark and broad shouldered, both wearing heavy sheepskin jackets.

They saw the .45 in my hand and stopped.

“Usted es Varney?” asked the slightly bigger of the two. I nodded. “Este hombre?” He pointed at Tony and I nodded.

It was the kind of grin he had that you smelled, and Tony got a whiff of it strong. He moved with the quickness panic makes and slammed the door to the little room he slept in behind the counter.

“All yours,” I said, waving at the two muscles.

I counted on Tony having another gun, or at least something to cause the Mexicans to use theirs. I walked across the street to the phone booth. When I heard the first shot, a shotgun blast, I called the police like a. good citizen.

The morning newspaper said they caught the one Mexican five miles out of town with a briefcase full of money. One was dead in the hotel lobby, a face full of buckshot from Tony ’s.12 guage.

Tony took a .38 slug in the chest where the heart was.

Lieutenant Henderson called me at the motel just before I checked out and wanted to know what the hell I knew about the hotel mess.

“Not a thing,” I said. “What happened?”

When he hung up he was mumbling something about all the paper work involved in disposing of fifty grand.

I found Dottie camped at the Sagebrush bar. She was leaning heavy on her fifth Tom Collins, lamenting Eddie Glass. I joined her for one and then said:

“I’m going back to L.A. You want to ride?”

“For what?” she said, looking very sad.

“Hernandez didn’t get his money. He’s going to smell double-cross and maybe send guns to take out a little venganza on Eddie’s friends in and around the border.”

“To hell with it,” she said, gazing at her drink. “There’s no Eddie.”

I was on the highway in the middle of the desert, feeling better as I got farther north, when I thought of the. good comeback.

“There’s too damn many of them,” I should’ve said.