My Gun Is Quick

Chapter Twelve

As I got into my car I thought over what Pat had said. Murray was gone. Why? That damned, ever-present why! Did he duck out to escape what would follow, or was he taken away because he knew too much? A guy like Murray was a slicker. If he knew too much he knew he knew it, and knew what it could cost him, so he'd have to play it smart and have insurance. Murray would let it be known that anybody who tried to plow him under would be cutting their own throats. He'd have a fat, juicy report in a lawyer's hands, ready to be mailed to the police as soon as he was dead. That's double indemnity... the bigger boys would have to keep him alive to keep their own noses clean.

No, Murray wasn't dead. The city was big enough to hide even him. He'd show sooner or later. Pat would have covered that angle, and right now there'd be a cop watching every bus terminal, every train station. I bet they'd see more rats than Murray trying to desert the sinking ship.

The rain had turned into a steady drizzle that left a slick on the pavement and deadened the evening crowd. I turned north with the windshield wipers clicking a monotonous tune, and stopped a block away from Lola's apartment. A grocery store was still open, and the stack of cold cuts in the window looked too inviting to pass up. When I had loaded my arms with more than I could eat for a month, I used the package to shield my face and walked up to her place.

I kicked the door with my foot and she yelled to come in. I had to peek around the bundle to see her stretched out on the couch with her shoes off and a wet towel across her forehead.

"It's me, honey."

"Do tell. I thought it was a horse coming up the stairs."

I propped the package in a chair and sat down on the edge of the couch, reaching for the towel. She came out from under it grinning. "Oh, Mike! It's so good to see you!"

She threw her arms around my neck and I leaned over and kissed her. She was nice to look at. I could sit there all day and watch her. She closed her eyes and rubbed her hair in my face.

"Rough day, kid?"

"Awful," she said. "I'm tired, I'm wet and I'm hungry. And I didn't find the camera."

"I can take care of the hungry part. There's eats over there. Nothing you have to cook either."

"You're a wonderful guy, Mike. I wish..."

"What?"

"Nothing. Let's eat."

I slid my arms under her and lifted her off the couch. Her eyes had a hungry sparkle that could mean many things. "You're a big girl," I said.

"I have to be... for you. To the kitchen, James." She scooped up the bag as I passed the chair and went through the doorway.

Lola put the coffee on while I set the table. We used the wrappings for plates and one knife between us, sitting close enough so our knees touched. "Tell me about today, Lola."

"There isn't much to tell. I started at the top of the list and reached about fifteen hock shops. None of them had it, and after a few discreet questions I learned that they never had had it. A few of the clerks were so persuasive that they almost made me buy one anyway."

"How many more to go?"

"Days and days worth, Mike. It will take a long time, I'm afraid."

"We have to try it."

"Uh-huh. Don't worry, I'll keep at it. Incidentally, in three of the places that happened to be located fairly close to each other, someone else had been looking for a camera."

My cup stopped half-way to my mouth. "Who?"

"A man. I pretended that it might have been a friend of mine who was shopping for me and got one clerk to remember that the fellow had wanted a commercial camera for taking street pictures. Apparently the kind I was after. He didn't look any over; just asked, then left.."

It was a hell of a thought, me letting Lola run head on into something like that. "It may be a coincidence. He may have shopped just those three places. I don't like it."

"I'm not afraid, Mike. He..."

"If it wasn't a coincidence he might shop the other places and find that you were ahead of him. If he guessed what you were doing he could wait up for you. I still don't like it."

She became grim then, letting a shadow of her former hardness cloud her face for an instant. "Like you said, Mike, I'm a big girl. I've been around long enough to stand any guy off if he pulls something on the street. A knee can do a guy a lot of damage in the right places, and if that doesn't work, well... one scream will bring a lot of heroes around to take care of any one guy no matter how tough he is."

I had to laugh at that. "O.K., O.K., you'll get by. After that speech I'll even be afraid to kiss you good night."

"Mike, with you I'm as powerless as a kitten and as speechless as a giraffe. Please kiss me good night, huh?"

"I'll think about it. First, we have work to do."

"What kind, I hope... ?"

"Look at pictures. I have a batch of pics Nancy had tucked away. They're pictures and I paid for them, so I'll look at them."

We cleared the mess off the table and I went in for the box. I took them out of the box and piled half in front of Lola and half in front of me. When we took our seats I said, "Give every one a going-over. They may mean something, they may not. They weren't where they should have been, that's why I'm thinking there might be something special in the lot."

Lola nodded and picked a snapshot from the top of her pile. I did the same. At first I took in every detail, looking for things out of the ordinary, but the pictures followed such a set pattern that my inspection grew casual and hurried. Faces and more faces. Smiles, startled expressions, deliberate poses. One entire group taken from the same spot on Broadway, always the same background.

In two of them the man in the picture tried to shield his face. The camera was fast enough to stop the motion, but the finger on the shutter trigger was too slow to prevent him getting his hand in the way. I went to put one back on the discard pile, looking at it again carefully and put it aside instead. The portion of the face that showed looked familiar.

Lola said, "Mike...

She had her lip between her teeth and was fingering a snap. She turned it around and showed it to me, a lovely young girl smiling at a middle-aged man who was frowning at the camera. My eyes asked the question. "She was one of the girls, Mike. We... went on dates together."

"The guy?"

"I don't know."

I took the snap and laid it face down with the other. Five minutes later Lola found another. The girl was a poetic creature, about thirty, with the statuesque lines of a mannequin. The guy she was with could have been a standin for a blimp. He was short and fat, in clothes that tried to make him look tall and thin and only made him look shorter and fatter.

"She's another one, Lola?"

"Yes. She didn't last long in New York. She played it smart and married one of the suckers. I remember the man, too. He runs a gambling joint uptown. Some sort of a small-time politician, too. He used to call for her in an official car."

It was coming now. Little reasons that explained the why. Little things that would be big things before long. My pile was growing nicely. Maybe every picture on the table had a meaning I couldn't see. Maybe most were just camouflage to discourage hasty searchers.

I turned the snap over, and lightly pencilled on the back near the bottom was "See S-5." There was more to it than the picture, evidently.

Could it be nothing more than an office memo... or did Nancy have a private file of her own?

My breath started coming in quick, hot gasps. It was like seeing a half-finished picture and recognizing what it would be like when it was finished. If this was an indication... I pulled the remaining photos closer and went to work on them.

The next one came out of my deal. I got it because I was lucky and I was hating some people so damn hard that their faces drew an automatic response. The picture was that of a young couple, no more than twenty. They smiled into the camera with a smile that was youth with the world in its pocket and a life to be led. But they're weren't important.

It was the background that was important. The faces in the background. One was that of my client, his hand on the knob of a door, a cane swinging jauntily over his arm. Behind him was Feeney Last in a chauffeur's uniform, closing the door of the car. It wasn't just Feeney, it was the expression on his face. It was a leer of hateful triumph, a leer of expectancy as he eyed a guy in a sports outfit that had been about to step past him.

The guy was pop-eyed with fear, his jaw hanging slack, and even at that moment he had started to draw back as he saw Feeney.

He should have been scared. The guy's name was Russ Bowen and he was found shot full of holes not long after the picture was taken.

I could feel the skin pulling tight around my temples and my lips drew back from my teeth. Lola said something, but I didn't hear her. She grabbed my hand, made me look at her. "What is it. What is it, Mike? Please... don't look that way!"

I shoved the picture in front of her and pointed to the little scene in the background. "This guy's dead, Lola. The other guy is Feeney Last."

Her eyes came up slowly, unbelievingly. She shook her head. "Not Feeney... it can't be, Mike."

"Don't tell me, kid. That's Feeney Last. It was taken when he worked for Mr. Berin. I couldn't miss that greaseball in a million years "

She stared at me hard. Her eyes drifted back to the picture and she shook her head again. "His name is Miller. Paul Miller. He--he's one of the men who supplies girls to... the houses."

"What?"

"That's right. One of the kids pointed him out to me some time ago. He used to work the West Coast, picking them up there and sending them East to the syndicate. I'm positive that's him!"

Nice going, Feeney, I thought, very nice going. Keep a respectable job as a cover-up for the other things. Good heavens, if Berin-Grotin in all his insufferable pride ever knew that, he would have had Feeney hanging by the thumbs! I looked at the snap again, saw my client unaware of the little scene behind him, completely the man-about-town bent on an afternoon of mild pleasure. It was a good shot, this one. I could see the lettering on the door there. BAR ENTRANCE, ALBINO CLUB, it read. Apparently Mr. Berin's favorite haunt. He'd have his cup of good cheer while five feet away a murder was in progress.

"Do you know the other guy?"

"Yes. He ran some houses. They found him shot, didn't they?"

"That's right. Murdered. This thing goes back a long way."

Lola closed her eyes and dropped her head forward. Her face was relaxed in sadness. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. "There's something on the back, Mike."

It was another symbol. This one said "See T-9-20." If that dash stood for "to," it meant eleven pages of something was connected with this. The details of the Russ Bowen murder maybe? Could there be a possibility that the redhead had come up with something covering that murder? Ye gods, if that were true, no wonder Feeney was on her neck. How many angles could there be to this thing?

I could not find anything else; I went through my pile twice and nothing showed for me, so I swapped with Lola and started all over again. I didn't find any more, either, but Lola did. When she was through she had half a dozen shots beside her and called my attention to the women. They were her former associates. She knew some of the men by sight, too, and they weren't just pickups. They dipped dough in the cut of their clothes and the sparkle of diamonds on their fingers.

And always there was that notation on the back referring to some other file. There was an envelope on the dish closet and I tucked the prints in it, stowing them in my pocket. The rest I threw back in the box and pushed aside. Lola followed me into the living room, watched me pace up and down the room. When she held out a cigarette I took it, had one deep drag and snuffed it out in a dish.

Feeney Last. Paul Miller. He came from the Coast. He saw a way to get back East without arousing suspicion. He was connected with the racket but good, and he could operate under the cover of old boy's respectability. Feeney was after Nancy and for good reason. If it was blackmail, the plot went pretty deep. She wasn't content to stick to strangers with herself as the catch... she used the tie-up with girls already in the racket.

I stopped in the middle of the floor, fought to let an idea battle its way into my consciousness, felt it blocked by a dozen other thoughts. I shook my head and began pacing again.

"I need a drink," I said.

"There's nothing in the house," Lola told me.

I reached for my hat. "Get your coat. We're going out."

"Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"Not that dead. Come on."

She pulled a raincoat from the closet, stepped into frilly boots that did things for her legs. "All set, Mike. Where are we going?"

"I'll tell you better when we get there."

All the way downtown I put my mind to it. Lola had snuggled up against me and I could feel the warmth of her body soaking through her coat to mine. She knew I was trying to think and kept quiet, occasionally looking up at me with interest. She laid her head on my shoulder and squeezed my arm. It didn't help me think any.

The rain had laid a pall over the city, keeping the spectators indoors. Only the tigers were roaming the streets this night. The taxis were empty hearses going back and forth, the drivers alert for what few fares there were, jamming to a stop at the wave of a hand or a shrill whistle.

We went past the Zero Zero Club and Lola sat up to look. There wasn't much to see. The sign was out and the place in darkness. Somebody had tacked a "Closed" sign on the door. Pat was going whole hog on this thing. I pulled into a half-empty parking lot and we found a small bar with the windows steamed up. Lola had a Martini and I had a beer there, but the place had a rank odor to it and we left. The next bar was three stores down and we turned into it and climbed on the stools at the end.

Four guys at the other end with nothing much to talk about until we came in suddenly found a topic of conversation and eight eyes, started looking Lola up and down. One guy told the bartender to buy the lady a drink and she got another Martini and I got nothing.

She was hesitant about taking it at first and I was too deep in thought to argue the point. The redhead's face floated in front of me. She was sipping her coffee again, the ring on her finger half-turned to look like a wedding band. Then the vision would fade and I'd see her hands again, this time folded across her chest, and the ring was gone, leaving only a reddish bruise that went unnoticed among the other bruises. The greaseball would laugh at me. I could hear his voice sneering, daring, challenging me to get the answer.

I ordered another beer. Lola had two Martinis in front of her now and one empty pushed aside. The guys were laughing, talking just loud enough to be heard. The guy on the end shrugged as he threw his leg off the stool, said something dirty and came over to Lola with a cocky strut.

He had an arm around her waist and was pulling out the stool next to her when I rolled the cigarette down between my fingers and flipped it. The lit end caught him right in the eye and his sweet talk changed into a yelp of pain that dwindled off to a stream of curses.

The rest of the platoon came off the stools in a well-timed maneuver that was a second later than mine. I walked around and kicked the wise guy right in the belly, so hard that he was puking his guts out before he hit the floor doubled up like a pretzel. The platoon got back on their stools again without bothering to send a first-aid party out.

I bought Lola the next Martini myself.

The guy on the floor groaned, vomited again, and Lola said, "Let's leave, Mike. I'm shaking so hard I can't lift the glass."

I shoved my change toward the bartender, who was watching me with a grin on his face. The guy retched again and we left.

"When are you going to talk to me?" Lola asked. "My honor has been upheld and you haven't even bestowed the smile of victory on me."

I turned a smile on her, a real one. "Better?"

"You're so ugly you're beautiful, Mike. Some day I want you to tell me about those scars over your eyes... and the one on your chin."

"I'll only tell you part of the story."

"The woman in your life, huh?"

When I nodded happily she poked me in the ribs and pretended to be hurt.

One side of the street was fairly well deserted. We waited for a few cars to pass and cut over, our collars turned up against the drizzle. The rain in Lola's hair reflected a thousand lights, each one shimmering separately on its deep-toned background. We swung along with a free stride, holding hands, our shoulders nearly touching, laughing at nothing. It struck me that we were the faces in those pictures, the kind of people the redhead snapped, a sure thing to buy a print to remember the moment.

I wondered what her cut of the quarter was. Maybe she got five cents for every two bits sent in. A lousy nickel. It wasn't fair. Guys like Murray Candid rolling in dough, monkeys with enough capital to finance a weekend with a high-class prostitute. Greaseballs like Feeney Last being paid off to talk a girl into selling her body and soul for peanuts. Even Cobbie Bennett got his. Hell, I shouldn't squawk, I had mine... and now I had five hundred bucks too much. Ann Minor certainly didn't have time to cash that check. It should still be in her apartment, nobody else could cash it, not with the newspapers carrying all the tripe about the investigation and her death.

"Where are we going?" Lola had to step up her pace to keep abreast of me.

"The Albino Club. Ever been there?"

"Once. Why there? I thought you didn't want to be seen."

"I've never been there either. I owe my client five bills and there's a chance he might be there. He may want an explanation."

"Oh!"

The club wasn't far off. Ten minutes' walking brought us to the front entrance and a uniformed doorman obviously glad to see a customer for a change. It was a medium-sized place, stepped down from the sidewalk a few feet, lacking the gaudy atmosphere of the Zero Zero. Instead of chrome and gilt, the wall lights reflected the sheen of highly polished oak and brought out the color of the murals around the room. There was an orchestra rather than a band--one that played, soft and low, compositions to instill a mood and never detract from the business of eating and drinking.

As we stepped into the anteroom we both had a chance to look at the place over the partitions. A few tables were occupied by late diners. Clustered in a corner were half a dozen men still in business suits, deep in discussion with occasional references to pictures sketched on the tablecloth. The bar ran the length of the room and behind it four bartenders fiddled with glasses or did something to while away the time. The fifth was pouring whisky into the glasses of the only two patrons.

Lola went rigid and she breathed my name. I saw what she meant. One of the guys at the bar was Feeney Last. I wasn't interested in him right then. The other was the guy I had beat the hell out of in the parking lot. The one I thought might have been looking for his car keys. My conscience felt much better when I looked at the wreck of his nose. The bastard was after the ring.

Lola read my mind again. "Are... you going in... after him?" I wanted to. God, how I wanted to! I couldn't think of anything I'd sooner do. Feeney Last, right here where I could get to him. Man, oh man, the guy sure felt secure. After all, what did the cops have on him? Not a damn thing... and if anything hung over his head he was the only one that had an idea where it could be found. Except me.

And I was supposed to be dead.

We didn't go in the Albino Club after all. I snatched my hat back from the rack and pushed Lola outside. The doorman was cut to the quick yet able to nod good night politely.

On the corner of Broadway a glorified dog-wagon was doing a land-office business in late snacks. When I saw the blue-and-white phone disc on the front I steered Lola in, told her to order us some coffee, then went down the back to the phone booth.

Pat was home. He must have just gotten in because he was breathing hard from the stairs. I said, "This is Mike, kid. I just saw Feeney Last in the Albino Club with a guy I tangled with not long ago. Can you put a man on him? I have things to do or I'd tail him myself."

"You bet!" Pat exploded. "I've had him on the wires for over two hours. Every police car in the city is looking for him."

It puzzled me. "What... ?"

"I had a teletype from the Coast. It's Feeney they want out there for that murder. He answers the description in every respect."

Something prompted me to ask, "What kind of a kill was it, Pat?"

"He broke the guy's neck in a brawl. He started off with a knife, lost it in the scuffle, then broke his neck."

A chill crept up my back and I was in that hallway again, feeling the cut of a smashing blow under my ear. There wasn't any doubt about it now, not the slightest. Feeney had more than one technique. He could kill with a rod or a knife, and with his hands if he had to.

"The Albino Club, Pat. You know where it is. He's there. I'm going to race the patrol car and if I win you'll need the dead wagon."

I slammed the phone back and shoved my way through the crowd at the counter. Lola was looking for me and she didn't have to be told that something had happened. When I went past her as though she wasn't there she called after me and spun off her stool, but by that time I was on the street and running, running as fast as I could go and the few people on the sidewalk got out of the way to stare after me with their mouths dropping open.

My gun was in my hand when I took the corner. My chest was a ball of fire that ejected the air in quick, hot gasps and all I could think of was smashing the butt end of the rod in Feeney's face. From far off I heard the wail of a siren, a low moaning that put speed in my feet and craving desire to get there first.

We both lost. In the yellow light of the street I saw a car pull away from the curb and when I got outside the Albino Club Feeney Last and his friend had left.

I found out why in a minute. There was, a radio at the bar and Feeney had persuaded the bartender to keep it on police-calls just for laughs. He had the laugh, all right. He was probably howling his goddamn head off.