Shake a Crooked Town

CHAPTER XI

“This is close enough,” Johnny called to the taxi driver when they were within half a block of the tavern. He turned to Micheline as the cab swung into the curb. “Wait for me here. I think the boy who runs this place is ready to change horses. It'll make a perfect cover until things quiet down.”

“You won't be long?” she asked. “Being in the open on the street like this makes me-concerned.” She glanced at the child quietly watching the passersby.

“The way I'll put it to him he'll give me a 'yes' or a 'no' in about thirty seconds,” Johnny promised. “An' after I get you two salted down in there I'm goin' to get in touch with Riley. I think he's another one about ready to change horses.” He opened the door and prepared to step out on the sidewalk.

“Be careful with that man,” she warned. The planes of her striking features were all highlights and shadows as she looked up at him through the open door. He thought that she had lost weight since the first night he had seen her. “Jack Riley is much changed,” she continued earnestly. “When I saw him in New York with Dick Lowell he had assumed an arrogance I never saw in Jefferson.”

“Yeah? Well, he's had a couple bumps lately that maybe reduced his hat size.” He closed the car door. “Hang on,” he said through the partly opened window, and started up the street toward the Gamecock.

A dozen yards from the cab the import of her remark struck him. He hesitated, half turned to go back, and then reversed himself. He strode rapidly up the street. Time enough later for the other. Right now he had to get those two off the street.

He entered the tavern and tried to adjust his eyes to the dimness of the interior. When he could see, he noticed that all the booth lights were out and that only a single shirt-sleeved customer stood at the bar. The Gamecock evidently did little business in the daylight hours. So much the better.

There was no one in sight behind the bar. “Rudy around?” Johnny asked the shirtsleeved man and saw in the same instant in the back-bar mirror that the man was Rudy himself. “What the hell, man?” he said in surprise. “You workin' the front as well as the back?” Rudy turned his head to look at him but said nothing. “Listen,” Johnny hurried on, “you look to me like a man who knows which side his bread's buttered on. We both know there's goin' to be some changes in this town. Do me a favor now an' I'll see to it you're not out in the cold when it comes time-”

He stopped abruptly in his sales talk. Several things had impressed him simultaneously: the complete immobility of the gambler's dark face, the almost hushed quiet in the tavern's poorly lighted recesses, the near-rigidity of Rudy's position at the bar. Johnny backed swiftly to the door.

“That's far enough, Killain!” Johnny halted in his tracks as Tommy Savino rose from a crouching position behind the bar, a small automatic level in his hand. Johnny's heart sank as Jim Daddario stood up at the opposite end of the bar and walked around it. “Over here with your friend,” Savino said with a sneering grin, motioning with the automatic.

Johnny slowly approached the bar alongside the wooden-faced Rudy and stood with his back to it. They were standing in the room's best light which came through the half-drawn drapes at the front window. Daddario approached them as Savino covered them with the automatic. Johnny saw that a silk scarf had been wound around his neck and throat Without a word the politician walked up to Rudy and punched him heavily in the mouth. “That'll teach you to even think about crossing me,” he said angrily.

Rudy's body slammed back into the bar, but he showed no sign of going down. He spat impassively but made no other move under the eye of the automatic. “He's a big, brave man, Rudy,” Johnny jeered. His hand closed on a heavy ash tray on the bar. “You should have seen him an hour ago like I did.”

“I'll get to you,” Daddario assured him.

Tommy Savino laughed as he angled out on the floor between Rudy and Johnny and the tavern's front door, the automatic unwavering. “Did you think I wouldn't go up to the penthouse because the elevator wasn't running?” he mocked Johnny. “And it was so nice of you to leave your phone number with the telephone operator.”

“So I'm stupid,” Johnny said. He took a half step out from the bar, raised his arm, and threw the ash tray between the half-drawn drapes and through the tavern's front window. The window vanished in a dull explosion of glass bursting out on the sidewalk. The automatic punctuated the noise with a sharp crack and Johnny felt a hot wind brush at his ear.

Jim Daddario rushed at Savino and knocked up his gun hand before he could fire again. “We've got to make him talk first!” he cried out. “Don't you go off half-cocked again!”

Johnny drew a shallow breath. A girl like Micheline would know what to do when she saw that plate glass come flying out into the street. She'd stand not upon the order of her going. Anything was better than having The front door opened suddenly and Savino pivoted. Dick Lowell dashed in, his white hair flying and his face scarlet. “You fools!” he burst out at Savino and Daddario. “He had them outside in a cab. They just drove off!”

“How do you know?” Daddario pounced.

“I followed them over here!” Lowell shouted. “If it wasn't for you idiots in another two minutes I'd have had-”

But Jim Daddario had recovered his wits. He silenced the mayor with a peremptory wave of his hand. “He'll know where they went,” he said with a look at Johnny. “And he'll tell us. Savino, take him inside. You go, too, Dick.” He glared at the silent Rudy. “You cover up on this. It's your neck now. Tell 'em something fermented in the window and blew out the glass. Tell 'em anything. You let me down and I'll personally see to it you never turn another trick on the east coast. Understand?” Rudy nodded and Daddario turned to the rest. “Hurry it up, everyone,” he said briskly. “Inside.”

Rudy opened the door and they entered the gambling room, Johnny in the lead with Savino's gun trained on his back, then Lowell, and finally Daddario. Rudy flipped a light switch and cold fluorescent light flooded the dark, window-less room, exposing the canvas-covered roulette wheels and the bare green tables. Johnny pulled a stool out from a blackjack table and climbed up on it, careful that a wall was at his back. Rudy closed the door and they all distinctly heard the click of the lock in the silence.

“Has he got us locked in here?” Dick Lowell demanded. His voice was hysterically shrill.

“Don't get yourself jerked off,” Savino advised him comfortably. “Jim's got a key.” The slim, dark man sat at a table two removed from Johnny's, far enough away so that Johnny couldn't rush him, the gun loosely in his hand.

“Where's your knife today, pigstabber?” Johnny gibed at him. Savino smiled unruffledly and touched his cloth-covered wrist. “That the one you used on Carl Thompson?” Johnny continued.

The smile disappeared. “He was dead when I found him, the no-good bastard,” he snarled, glaring.

“Yeah? How'd you get into the room?”

“A maid let me in, that's how!”

“Too bad your boss never believed you,” Johnny needled. “You know he's gonna toss you to the wolves when the hot breath is on the back of his neck?”

Savino flicked a glance at Jim Daddario and slid from his stool in a smoothly deadly suppleness. “You talk too damn much, Killain,” he said deliberately, stalking Johnny. “I'll fix-”

“Back off there!” Daddario ordered peremptorily. “Can't you see he just wants to get you within reach of his hands? I saw Kratz, if you didn't.”

Savino hesitated but retreated reluctantly to his chair. Johnny turned his attention to Daddario. “How you gonna feel when you're in the death cell as an accessory to a murder committed by that halfwit? You know what you should do?” He cut loose with a flood of rapid-fire Italian at Daddario.

Instantly suspicious, Savino was on his feet. “Talk English!” he hissed, and raised his gun hand as Johnny continued. “Damn you-!”

“Drop it!” Daddario roared. “I don't know what he's saying!” He glared right back at the dark man's skepticism. “If he's saying anything. Are you so stupid you can't see he wants us at each other's throats?” He spun on Johnny. “All I want to hear from you is where that cab went.”

“If that's all you want, come on over an' ask me,” Johnny said agreeably. “Or send him.” He looked at Savino, smiled, bit off a short Italian phrase, and spat on the floor.

Angry dark blood flooded the slim man's features. “Well, make him talk!” he yelled at Daddario. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

“Sure, make me talk,” Johnny said. “Can't you see your killer's gettin' nervous? He'll be foamin' at the mouth in a minute if you're not careful. You want-” He fell silent as a key clicked in the door lock. Rudy stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Hey, Rudy!” Johnny addressed him. “Where's my thousand bucks Riley left for me?”

“He didn't call me to release it,” Rudy said before he thought. As the sound of his words hung in the air he cut his eyes to Daddario staring at him.

“I'm gettin' goddamned tired of-” Savino began.

“Shut up.” Daddario walked over and confronted an unhappy-looking Rudy. “What the hell is this about Riley and a thousand dollars?”

“If you don't know I don't,” Rudy retorted with a matching asperity. “He put up a thousand in cash for me to release to this big bastard when he called me.”

“For doing what?” Daddario bellowed.

“How the hell do I know?” Rudy bellowed right back. In a rage, Daddario swung a right-hand punch. In a matching rage, Rudy stepped inside it and drilled a short left that sat the politician down abruptly. He looked around, dazed, as Savino started up from his chair.

“Cut that out, damn you!” he shouted at the gambler. He took three or four steps in Rudy's direction as that worthy turned warily to face him.

On his stool Johnny stood up and pulled off a shoe. With not an eye in the room on him he threw the shoe and hit the long fluorescent tube that ran the length of the room dead center.

There was a flash and a puff, and total darkness descended upon the room. The tinkling noise of small, falling glass particles was the only sound as the room seemed to hold its breath.

Johnny had already slid under his blackjack table and was crawling soundlessly in the direction in which he had marked Tommy Savino in the pitch black when Dick Lowell's voice raised quaveringly. “Don't anyone s-shoot!”

A scrambling sound to his right failed to distract Johnny. He wanted to reach Savino before the only man in the room with a gun had time to react. Instinct warned him of a presence immediately in front of him and he slowed. Was it the right man?

“Strike a match, someone!” Jim Daddario's voice ordered suddenly from a corner.

“Strike your own damn match,” Rudy said sourly from the left. With those two placed Johnny took a deep breath and grabbed hard at the thighs of the man before him. There was a startled grunt as he lifted him and catapulted him hard to the floor. Johnny knew he had guessed right when he heard the thud of a metal object hitting the floor and skidding off until it brought up against a wall. He closed tightly with the thrashing body beneath his, knowing he had to immobilize Savino's hands before he could get his knife from his sleeve holster.

“Who's that?” Jim Daddario inquired anxiously. “Dick? Savino? Is that you?”

Johnny's weight dropped amidships prevented more than a coughed grunt in return. He felt teeth in his wrist as he secured an arm with his left knee, and he backhanded the teeth briskly. Savino's head hit the floor with a hollow thump but he fought on desperately. Johnny caught the other flailing arm and forced it backward. “How d'you like it, you woman-beater?” he growled, and Savino shrieked as Johnny applied more pressure. Deliberately he levered himself up and over the suddenly silent figure.

A droplight over a card table came on in a dazzling flare in the blackness. Silhouetted against it, Jim Daddario stood poised with the recovered automatic. “You,” he said hoarsely to Johnny, and aimed the gun. “Get up.”

Johnny got to his feet slowly. Tommy Savino did not. The dark man lay quiet, oddly crumpled. Mayor Richard Lowell crawled from beneath a nearby table, his eyes bulging. Johnny looked in vain for Rudy. The gambler had made it to the door in the dark and must have let himself out in the first burst of light.

“Good God!” Dick Lowell said in a horrified tone, and turned his eyes away. He was shaking as with a chill.

“What's the matter, Richard?” Johnny asked him. “Carl Thompson didn't bother you.”

The white-haired man looked as though he were going to be sick. “Thompson-different-” he got out finally.

“The only thing different was that he got it with a knife. Where'd you get the knife, Dick?”

“It was his knife-” Richard Lowell began, and stopped. The silence built up in the room. Jim Daddario's arm dropped slowly to his side as he stared from the white-faced Lowell to Johnny.

“What the hell are you blathering about?” he demanded harshly. “Are you accusing him now? A minute ago it was-” His eyes flickered to the body on the floor with its neck awry.

“That's when I wanted you chewin' at each other's asses,” Johnny said softly. “We knew better, didn't we, Your Honor?” Richard Lowell swallowed visibly but stood mute. “It all fell into place twenty minutes ago when I heard he was in New York that day. After what you did to Thompson up here who in your crowd could get close enough to him to get a knife in his back? Only the man who had set him up here as the bagman before you muscled him out.”

“But him-” Daddario jerked a thumb at Lowell ”-a killer?” He snorted derisively. “Don't make me laugh. I've cut off his water by inches in this town and all he's done is whimper.”

“You tried to talk Thompson out of coming back up here, right?” Johnny prodded Dick Lowell.

The leonine features under the white hair had suddenly aged. “I told him he could do no good,” he said woodenly. “I told him he'd ruin us all. I offered to take care of him. He wouldn't listen. He was wild. He threatened me.” He swallowed again, hard. “He'd been cleaning tar from the sole of his shoe with the knife when he let me in. He paced up and down the room making all kinds of crazy plans. I stood there and saw everything I'd ever hoped for going down the drain with that-that fanatic. He charged up and shoved his face into mine and slavered spittle in his ranting-he turned to pace again-I grabbed up the knife-you'd have done the same thing, Jim!” He flung out a hand in appeal. “He was insane!”

“Somebody was insane,” Jim Daddario said bleakly. “And here I was trying to hold the lid down on a volcano like this. Jigger told me he-” his eyes went to the floor ”-had done it because he had your-“ the eyes returned to Johnny ”- thousand. I was ready to turn him in if worse came to worst.” His still partly unbelieving gaze returned to Richard Lowell. “By God, I remember now I tried to call you up here from the New York hotel suite and nobody knew where you were.” He shook his head. “I never dreamed he'd go down there himself as a result of his brother's call.”

“That's only half of it.” Johnny moved a cautious step nearer to Jim Daddario. “He had company when he went. Jack Riley.”

Dark blood rushed into Daddario's face. “Riley? My own man? Doublecrossing me?”

“Not right that minute. He was still your man. I imagine he went along to keep an eye on things, not knowing what else to do. But he knew where Lowell had been, and when he found out what happened to Thompson he thought he saw a chance to move up to Number One. With Lowell in his pocket, if he could dump you he figured he'd inherit the payoff here. Lowell and he didn't know what Thompson had told me, so Riley hired himself some local talent in a hurry to take care of me an' then he hustled Lowell out of town before he could be seen by any of your crowd.”

Johnny leveled a finger at the furious-looking politician. “But they'd been seen together by Micheline Thompson, before her husband was killed. Riley didn't know it an' Lowell didn't tell him till they got back up here. They both wanted me to find her. Riley so that he could hold her as a witness over the mayor's head.” He changed the direction of the pointing finger. “What would you have done if I'd found her for you, Lowell?”

“I'd have-I'd have convinced her she'd been in error in thinking she'd seen me,” Richard Lowell said faintly.

“The same way you convinced Thompson?” Daddario broke in. “Goddammit, what a mess! All I wanted was to keep the lid on the situation here and now you've-” He paused in disgust, thinking hard, then made a gesture of finality. “You're done, Dick. I can't save you. Nobody could. I don't know if I can save myself.”

“You'll save me,” Dick Lowell said irritably. “You'll do it or I'll swear you engineered the whole thing. This is my town and I'm not leaving it to you or any other jackal, understand?” His voice had risen childishly and cracked at the last word.

Johnny could see the hardening of Daddario's features and the almost imperceptible swing of his gun hand. “Lowell, I've had enough of your vanity. When it's compounded with murder-”

A thunderous knocking at the locked door interrupted him, a prolonged furious drumming on the wood. “Open up in there!” a bull-elephant voice blared.

Johnny had been estimating the distance between himself and Jim Daddario's gun hand. At the sudden outbreak of sound Richard Lowell started violently. He backed away tugging at a jacket pocket. “You're not selling me out!” he screamed. “You sent Rudy out to get someone to help you! I'll show you — ” His right hand emerged with the largest revolver Johnny had ever seen. Johnny went floorward as the wild-eyed man pulled the trigger five times, the large-caliber gun in the inexperienced hand jerking Lowell's arm up convulsively at each shot. In the enclosed space the. 45 sounded like a miniature cannon.

The wooden door went down with a tired screech of metal hinges as Jim Daddario doubled over with his arms wrapped around himself. Richard Lowell took one ashen-faced look at the broken down door and raised the revolver to his head and pulled the trigger. He was on his back on the floor before Jim Daddario finally lost his equilibrium and plunged forward on his face.

Johnny edged cautiously to his feet as a tall, skeleton-thin man in civilian clothes pushed through the uniformed men in the doorway. The tall man knelt swiftly beside Richard Lowell, feeling for a pulse. Almost at once he eased the wrist he had taken down to the floor again. “Dick,” he said gently, his sharp, homely features tight with concern. “Dick, you poor fool. It wasn't worth it.”

Johnny approached, but remained silent while the kneeling man struggled for self-possession. He spoke finally into the quiet. “Sorry, Toby. I thought I had it under control.” Toby Lowell looked up and nodded, his lined face tired. “How'd you get here?” Johnny asked.

“The young lady tracked me down at Lowell House.” Johnny looked and saw Micheline Thompson in the rear of the uniformed group. From its center Jack Riley's beefy figure emerged and strode up to join them. “From what she said, reinforcements seemed in order. I stopped for them.”

“We'll take care of everything here, sir,” Chief Riley said quickly. He didn't look at Johnny. He turned and started to beckon to the doorway.

“Just a goddamn minute.” Johnny caught the arm and spun the bulky-bodied chief about. His hand closed on the chief's gold badge and he ripped it from Riley's chest. It came free with half a yard of uniform attached. Johnny stripped off the cloth, centered the badge in his hands, and bore down. As they had in the hotel room that other day his hands crept down between his knees. They came up with the badge in two jagged pieces. Johnny slapped one of them into Jack Riley's nerveless hand. “There's your thirty pieces of silver, Jack.” He turned to Toby Lowell. “He's resignin'.” He swung around to the red-faced chief. “Tell him, Riley.”

“I'm-resigning.” Jack Riley spoke with difficulty.

“You'll have to put the pieces together again around here, Toby,” Johnny told him. “The merry-go-round broke down. In the cleanup you'll run across the name Burger. Don't bear down too hard.”

Toby Lowell nodded. “I'll have to take some leave.” He spoke as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. “Obviously, I should have done it before. Will you be around for a few days?”

“I've got to get back to New York,” Johnny began, and turned as a small, warm hand slipped into his. He looked down at Micheline Thompson's dark hair and the shadows beneath her luminous eyes. “Well, maybe for a few days,” he amended. “Till I get the stitches out.”

“How can I ever thank you, Johnny?” she asked quietly. “If you hadn't thrown that stone-”

“Ash tray,” he corrected her. He transferred from his own hand to hers the remaining half of Jack Riley's torn badge. “You can tell your grandchildren about it some day.”

He glanced once more about the room illuminated only by the single droplight at the gambling table. He looked at the canvas-covered roulette wheels, at the bodies on the floor, at the white-flaked bits of fluorescent tubing underfoot. He turned and caught Micheline Thompson's eye.

Arm-in-arm he walked with her out to the street.

Here's Killain, smooth as a ripsaw and gentle as a jackhammer, the happiest avalanche you'll ever meet, who spends his quiet moments riding herd on the hoods and hopheads, the hard guys and devilish dolls of New York's night side, just a knife's throw from Times Square.

Trouble's no stranger to Killain; when an out-of-town mob started making corpses in Johnny's room, he began to get annoyed.

Then the boys tagged him for the big fall, and there was only one thing to do-find the brain and shake his molars loose!

So Killain came to racket-ruled Jefferson, and the boys were there to welcome him-with clubs, knives, guns, and enough hired muscle to carry off Grant's Tomb.

When Killain kept coming, the boys turned mean.

They finally forced Killain to run… but they forgot to get out of his way!