The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

ONE ESCORT – MISSING OR DEAD Roger Torrey

The ad was so screwy I didn’t want anything to do with it. But Miss Bryce was both worried and willing to pay me for the trip. Once more I looked over the unusual advertisement.

WILL THE LADY WHO LEFT THE YALE MAN CALL FOR HIM AT DARNELL’S TAVERN ON THE SAWMILL RIVER PARKWAY.

We left the car in the parking lot, and on my way to the door I said:

“This is a gag, Miss Bryce – and it didn’t miss. You’re falling for it.”

She was getting her own way and so she was feeling a little happier.

“You wait and see,” she told me. “There’s something wrong. You just wait and hear what they say.”

With that we went into the place.

It was very nice and the girl pointed this out to me with: “D’ya think I’d made a mistake about being here? I know what you’re thinking – that I was drunk and got mixed up. But I’ll even show you the booth we were in. It’s this way.”

She took my arm and led me to a booth about halfway down the dance floor. A waiter broke away from the bar and headed down our way. The floor was bigger than most places like that have, and the bar was at the end of the place. Booths all around the floor, with tables for two spotted out in front of them. And even as far away from the bar as we were I could see it was stocked with good liquor and a lot of it.

In other words the place had class.

The waiter came up and the girl leaned across and whispered: “That’s one of them! One of those I talked with.”

He was a tough-looking mug, and he came up as though he grudged having to give us the service. He was looking at me and paying no attention to the girl. I told him I wanted straight rye and water, and Miss Bryce said: “A Martini, please.”

He looked at her then – one of those so-here-you-are-again looks.

“That’s right, friend,” I told him. “It’s the same lady! How about the drinks?”

I watched him talking to the barman then, while the Martini was being mixed and when the order was being put on a tray.

The girl was speaking again: “You see? He knew me.”

“Well, why shouldn’t he? You told me you’d been talking to him about this missing man. He’d hardly forget a thing like that.”

“I should have gone to the police,” Miss Bryce said.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Well – well, because.”

“That’s a swell reason,” I began, and stopped because the waiter was back with the tray and with a check for the drinks already on it. He stood there, and when I didn’t do anything about it he said: “There’s the check.”

I told him I saw it.

“I just got told not to serve this lady any more drinks,” the waiter explained.

“Who told you?” I asked.

He jerked his head toward the barman and didn’t answer.

I said: “If there’s one thing I love it’s a snooty waiter. This is a public place, isn’t it? The lady isn’t drunk, is she? So you’ll serve us drinks and like it or I’ll find out the reason why.”

“I just do what I’m told,” he said to that. And I retorted: “That’s what I want, so where’s the argument? If I tell you we want a drink you get it.”

He turned his head then and beckoned for the barman, who came out from around his plank with one hand under his apron. He was as hard-looking as the waiter, but he had a nice soft voice. He used it, saying: “Trouble, Luigi?”

The waiter said: “The guy’s giving me an argument. I told him no more drinks for the gal and he gives me an argument.”

The barman said to me: “Look, Mister! I don’t know you and I don’t want any trouble. But I’m running this place and I’ll not serve that girl another drink.”

“Why not?”

He came up right to the edge of the booth table and said: “Well, I’ll tell you. She came up here just after I went on shift, and she gives us a story about leaving her boyfriend here. She claims she was in here night before last with him. She also claims that I was on the bar and that Luigi was, the one that served them. Now I was working that night. And so was Luigi.

“We just changed to day shift today. She wasn’t in here or we’d have seen her. We haven’t got any missing boys around here. The girl’s maybe a friend of yours, but she can’t come in here with a screwy story like that and get drinks served her. She made a scene, Mister. She called me a liar and she called Luigi a liar. So no drinks. Is that plain?”

Luigi said: “She’s just nuts, is all.”

I said to the barman: “You all through with the speech?”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because, if you are, get back to that bar and make us another drink. One for me and one for the lady. Now move!”

He did. Faster than I thought he would and entirely in the wrong direction. Toward me instead of toward the bar. I saw the light shine on the brass on his hand as he took it out from under his apron and rolled away from it, but I didn’t have a chance. I was sitting down and cooped, with that booth table catching me at the knees.

The barman caught me on the cheek with the first lick. I didn’t know where the second one landed until I woke up sitting in the seat of my own car with the Bryce girl alongside me. She had as nice a set of hysterics as I ever saw in my life. And it took me about a minute to decide my jaw wasn’t fractured, and to find that my gun had been slipped out of its clip and hadn’t been put back.

I didn’t argue. I remembered we’d passed a gas station down the road and I drove back there in a hurry . . .

It seemed the best thing to do at the time and in the circumstances.

The boys at the station were not only nice, but curious. I managed to cut the Bryce girl off before she could tell them anything she shouldn’t have. My story was that I’d stopped to pick up a hiker and that the guy had tried to bat me down and take my car, and that I’d shoved him off the running board.

The story went over, but I was praying no highway cop would come by and ask me leading questions. Fooling nice kids like those station boys and fooling a tough cop are two different things. I got the blood off my face and the girl quieted down. As I turned the car back toward town, she said: “Now what do you think? And what are you going to do about it?”

“I think you’ve got something. We were all alone there, and if you’d only been a little dopey they’d have never turned you down for drinks. You were with somebody, weren’t you, and you were sober. And that slugging match came up too fast to be on the up and up.

“And taking my gun wasn’t the right thing to do on just an ordinary little bounce, like I shouldn’t have been given. That’s a public place and they’re supposed to serve the public. So maybe you’ve got something there. Maybe this boyfriend of yours is really missing from the place, after all. Maybe you were right. Maybe you were there.”

“We were there all right. What are you going to do about it?”

The answer was so plain I thought she’d figured it out for herself. I said: “Why, I’m going to stop at the State Police station and tell the boys what happened. So will you. Then I’ll swear to a warrant and we’ll go back there with a bunch of cops while they shake the place down properly.

“I could pick up a cop along the road here, but it’s better to go to headquarters and do it right. We’ve got such a screwy story they’ll probably want to check on me before they’ll go for it.”

“We can’t do that,” Miss Bryce said.

“Why can’t we? If nothing else, I want my gun back.”

Miss Bryce then told me why we couldn’t go to the cops on the thing.

It seemed that she and this missing boy, whose name was George Harper, were engaged to be married, but that they’d had a struggle getting that way. George was a wild kid, and papa and mama Bryce didn’t think he’d do the right thing by their little daughter. He’d been in a couple of jams for drunken driving and his folks once had had to pay him out of a girl jam. Both families had money, or so I gathered.

The girl insisted that going to the cops was out. That I’d have to work it out in some way so there’d be no notoriety. She didn’t want her folks to hear of it.

They’d been in this place the night before. And they hadn’t been supposed to be in any place where liquor was sold because George was on strict probation.

For that matter, he was on probation with the cops as well. He wasn’t supposed to take even one drink and drive his car. That promise was the only thing that had saved his driver’s licence.

They’d got in an argument over the kid’s drinking. The girl had given him back some sort of a class pin that seemed to mean a lot to her and then had walked out on him.

We came to the police barracks about then, and I parked just the other side of it while we went over it.

I said: “Look, Miss Bryce! This is all well and good. But if you’re really worried about this boy the cops are the people to tell it to. They’ve got authority and I haven’t. I’m not going to take a chance on losing my licence by busting into that place without a bunch of cops and a search warrant behind me. On top of that I’ve just found out it’s too hard on the face and eyes.”

“How much?” she asked.

Which is what I’d been working for. The more I thought it over, the less I wanted to go to the cops with a screwy story like the one I had . . .

I didn’t go back until ten that night and I didn’t go back alone. I took Whitey Malone with me, and I had a spare gun and a sap as well as Whitey. I figured I shouldn’t take too much of a beating with all three, because Whitey, at one time, had been better than a fair middleweight. He was a little punchy, but he did what he was told to do – and that’s what I wanted. I parked the car behind a bunch of others.

“So you got it?” I said. “I go in first and you drift in behind me. Wherever I park, you park near. If I get in a beef, you know what to do.”

“Sure, Joe,” Whitey answered. “And if nothing happens and you give me the nod I sort of wander around and look the joint over. That right?”

“That’s right. Now you’ve got money and you’re supposed to buy a drink often enough for it to look good, but don’t get tight. If it comes to a brawl I’ll have a tough enough time getting out by myself, without having to dig you out from under a table and carry you on my back.”

“Don’t fret,” he said, sounding hurt, “I don’t get loopy when I’m working.”

I knew a lot better, but I was hoping he’d hold up that night. It was the stuff in bottles that had beaten him in the ring, not the men he’d fought.

So that’s the way we went in, and we found the place about half full.

I headed for the bar the first thing. If the lad who had given me the bounce had told me the truth he and his waiter pal had been off shift for some time. And the only chance I had for trouble would be that one or the other was hanging around. If that was the case I wanted to find it out right at the start, because I wanted to look around a bit and I wanted Whitey to do the same.

But the two barmen who were working then were strangers and I saw no trace of the waiter named Luigi. I took a couple of drinks at the plank, then gave Whitey the nod and sat down at a table where I could watch the dancing. Whitey drooped an eyelid at me and headed toward the back and the men’s lounge.

And he was still back there when the cigarette girl came by, with her cute little tray and her cute little uniform.

“Cigarettes, Mister?”

I’d have bought them anyway, but I was a cinch when I saw the pin that held her uniform blouse together. I’d had the Bryce girl give me a description of the pin she’d given back to the boyfriend, and if this wasn’t the one it was a dead ringer. I paid for the cigarettes with a five-dollar bill.

“If I told you to keep the change, would you get a cut on it?” I asked.

The girl was pretty and she was smart. She nodded her head and said: “That’s the boss just going behind the bar.”

I looked at the boss and saw what she meant. He was little and hard-looking and the type who wouldn’t let a dime out of his hands unless he was getting two dimes in return. And I knew how most cigarette girls have to turn in their tips.

I said: “Look! He’s watching. I’ll take the change back and meet you by the ladies’ lounge. I’ll pass it to you there. If you can’t get rid of it back there you’re not as smart as I think you are.”

“What’s the idea?” she asked, all the time counting me out the change. She wasn’t in any hurry about it. The girl kept smiling and nodding and acting like cigarette girls are supposed to act with customers who are spending money.

I put on the same kind of an act, and said: “You know something it’s worth twenty dollars to me to find out. The five is just so you’ll meet me and let me tell you what it is.”

“Watch when I go back,” she told me. “You come back in about five minutes. I like to talk about things like twenty bucks, Mister.”

I could tell by the way she acted that she figured I was on the make. It made me a little sore to be picked for a masher. But I’d walked into it and I was getting a chance to talk with the girl and that was what I was working for. She made her rounds and went out in the back. I waited the five minutes and went the same way.

The bar went about halfway across the back of the building, and the swinging doors to the kitchen opened at one end of it. Past this door was an open hall with a shaded sign on each side of it. One read: LADIES, the other GENTLEMEN. On the other side of the bar was another hall, but this one was curtained and there was no sign of any kind by it.

I took it for granted it would lead back to dressing-rooms for the floor show that was advertised as being on three times nightly. To be truthful I wasn’t worrying about it much. I was thinking I’d stumbled on a lead to my missing George Harper if I worked it right and got any kind of break.

As I went down my hall I saw the girl waiting for me. It was quite dark, so dark that I could scarcely make out the dim outlines of the girl.

She said: “Okay, hot shot! Spring it fast! I’ve got to get back on the floor. I’m not through work until four.”

I gave her the change from the five and said: “I’m law. I want to know where you got that pin that’s holding your blouse together. I’m willing to pay for the information, and if I don’t get it I’m willing to take you out of here right now. Not at four o’clock, but right now.”

“Tough, eh?” she said, sounding very thoughtful about it.

“Tough enough.”

She proved half smart right then. She said: “You’re private law, if you’re any law at all. No regular cop would pay for what he could get for nothing. Listen. I get through here at four and I ride back with some of the boys in the band. My name’s Mary Ames, and I live on West Seventieth. Can you remember the address?”

I said I could and she gave it to me.

She said: “I can’t talk now. I haven’t got time. And I haven’t got guts enough, either, Mister. You wait for me outside my place. I’ll be there about a quarter to five at the latest. And I’m not doing this for the twenty.”

“What for then?” I asked.

She said: “You wouldn’t understand.”

And with that the door of the men’s lounge opened and two men came out. And after them a third.

The first one was the bartender who’d heaved me out of the place that afternoon. The second was a dapper little man about half the barman’s size. The third was Whitey Malone. With the light from the open door on them they were in a spot where I could get a good look. And I looked even as I ducked so that the barman wouldn’t recognise me.

I even looked long enough to see the little man with him had a scarred neck. The scar ran from just back of his ear down into his collar. The barman and his pal ducked into a door right across the hall from the one they’d come out of – a door that in that shadow I hadn’t even seen. Whitey turned away toward the bar and dance floor.

I said to the girl: “Who was the big guy?”

“Oh!” she said worriedly. “Did he see us?”

I told her that I didn’t think it likely; that we were probably too much in shadow. I didn’t tell her that if that barman had seen me he’d have probably tried to repeat the afternoon performance, because I certainly didn’t have either the time or the wish to go into that right then.

“You be in front of my place at that time,” she said. “Hurry back now. I’ve got to go. Please! You don’t know the chance I’m taking.”

I said again that I’d be waiting for her and went back in the bar and dance place. As soon as I got Whitey’s eye I nodded toward the door and paid my bar check and went out. Whitey followed me in more of a hurry than I thought he’d be in. I asked him if he’d found out anything.

“Just that you were talking to a girl in that back hall,” he told me. “That’s all.”

“Did you see me?”

“Sure – not plain, but plain enough.”

That gave me something to think about while I was driving back into town.

It wasn’t until I’d been waiting a half-hour too long that I really started to worry. And at half-past five I started back alone. I had a notion to stop for Whitey, but all he was good for was a stand-up and knock-down fight. And I had a hunch it wasn’t going to be anything like that.

I was right. Plenty right. I left my car way this side of the place, before I came to the bridge which was at least a half-mile this side of the tavern. I went up through the brush at the side of the road, too, making the sneak as quiet as I could. But, just the same, I barely put my head out of the bushes, and where I could see the place, when somebody shot at it.

It wasn’t any mistake, either. It wasn’t anybody potting at what he thought was a rabbit with a small-calibre rifle. The weapon was a heavy pistol. And when I ducked my head like a turtle and went back in the brush they tried for a lucky break and emptied the gun just by guess in my general direction.

By the time they got it unloaded I was getting away from there fast. I didn’t have any reason at all to shoot back, even if I did have a dirty idea about it. And that wasn’t enough. I stopped for breath and heard them chasing me.

One of them shouted: “He went this way, Sam.”

The voice was over at the side, so I kept on heading down the general direction of the road, to where I’d left my car. And I pretty near got caught – because they figured I’d go that way and almost cut me off.

If they hadn’t I wouldn’t have found the car. I got to the bridge with them close enough behind so that I knew I’d never make it across without being seen. And I had the choice of making a target of myself or getting wet.

I took the latter. Ducking under the bridge with my gun out, I was ready to pop anybody who came in under there after me. The two of them who were chasing me stood right over me and talked it over.

One was the barman I’d had the trouble with. I knew his voice. The other belonged to a stranger, or at least I didn’t recognise it. The barman spoke, and it was all I could do to understand him because he was out of breath.

“The skunk got away. It’s the same guy, I tell you. The one I gave the heave-ho to this afternoon.”

The other one said: “You damn fool! How d’ya know that? And if it was, why didn’t you let him walk into something? What in hell did you start blasting at him for?”

The barman insisted: “It’s the same guy. He was snooping around tonight, too, I tell you. It was him talking to Mary.”

“It was probably some damn fool drunk wandering around the woods. Maybe some guy who ran out of gas and came up to the place looking for a borrow.”

“He wouldn’t come up through the brush, would he?”

The other man thought this over and finally admitted it wasn’t likely.

Then he said: “To hell with it! If the guy tries to pull the cops in they’ll laugh at him. He hasn’t got anything except an idea. If they come up and say anything we’ll tell ’em the guy must either be crazy or drunk. The place is clear.”

“It is not.”

“Why not?”

“Maury!”

The other man laughed. “Maury’ll be okay! Don’t you fret about Maury.”

They left, and I let down the hammer of my gun and looked around. I was in mud to my waist and in water up to my knees. But what I was looking at was the back end of a convertible coupé sticking up out of the water just under the overhang of the bridge. The car was just about on its nose, with the back end far enough out of water for me to see it was a new green car.

And Miss Bryce had told me her missing boyfriend was driving a new green convertible . . .

The cops took it as a routine case because I didn’t try to make anything else out of it. My story was that I had a leaking connection on my car radiator and stopped at the creek to fill up so I could limp into town and a garage. That I’d just stumbled on the convertible in that way.

That left the Bryce girl clear out of the picture, as far as the cops and the newspapers were concerned. The State Police sergeant said: “Anybody in it?”

I said I was afraid to look and that if there’d been anybody in the car they were certainly dead by that time. The car had been in the creek for some time.

“How d’ya know that?” he said.

“Because the creek’s muddy, as you can see by looking at me. The water was clear around the car.”

“Then why couldn’t you see if there was anybody in it?”

I explained again that the car was tipped. Of course by that time he’d sent a pair of troopers to investigate the thing. It was just a natural police suspicion that was causing the questioning. Not that it made me feel much easier, knowing this.

Then I really got sick. Another trooper came in and said:

“They’ve checked that identification on the girl I found, sergeant. Her name was Ames, all right. She lived on West Seventieth at the same address as was on the letter in her purse. The city police just called in.”

I hadn’t said anything before and now I couldn’t. The cops don’t like it when you only tell half a story and sometimes they do things about your licence for the holding out. I looked interested, and the sergeant said: “We picked up a girl alongside the road about an hour ago. She’d been thrown out of a car, it looked like. Another damn fool kid who let herself get picked up by strangers.”

“Local girl?”

He shrugged and said: “New York. At least that’s where she lived. The cops there just checked on it and verified it.”

That was that. Darnell’s Tavern wasn’t even in the picture, though the city police would no doubt find out the girl had worked there. And when they found it out the people at the tavern would just say the girl left with some man they didn’t know. The cops would put it down as a killing and let it go at that. Which is all they could do, knowing nothing about what had happened.

About then the two troopers who’d been sent to look at the car in the creek came back. They told the sergeant the car was empty and that they’d looked around and seen no evidence of anyone being hurt.

The sergeant sent the police wrecker after the car. I went back to the city to get some sleep – and to try for an idea that would break the thing up and still leave me in the clear with the police. I’d made up my mind that I was going to tell the police what I knew about the mess, client or no client – promise or no promise – if I didn’t think of something by that afternoon.

The worst part of the whole business was that there was no proof of a thing. The Bryce girl had a screwy story and nothing to back it up. My story about having the date with the dead girl had no proof back of it – any more than my story about being shot at did. The cops would naturally think that young Harper had run his car off the road while drunk.

They’d believe he had left it rather than report it to the police. For if Harper went to jail on a drunken driving charge he would certainly have lost not only his licence but have spent a little time in jail.

The people at Darnell’s would just blandly deny the whole thing. And the cops would believe them, because there was a logical answer to everything that left Darnell’s entirely out of the thing.

There was a good chance of young Harper having been murdered. But there was no question at all about the Ames girl being killed to keep her from talking to me.

That’s why I put the blame for her death where it belonged – on my own shoulders.

I live in an apartment hotel, a small one where the doors are locked each night at one. That’s when the clerk closes up shop and the bell boys take over. Whitey Malone called me at four and said he was coming over – so Whitey gets credit for saving my life. He’d just walked in, looking very unhappy. I’d telephoned down for ice and soda to go with the whisky I already had when there was a knock on the door. Whitey was nearest it.

I said: “That’ll be the ice, now. Open it, will you, Whitey?”

Whitey opened it and Luigi, the one who’d first refused to serve a drink to the Bryce girl at Darnell’s, walked in. Back of him came the little man with the scarred neck, the one I’d seen with the barman the night before. Both of them had guns, and Whitey and I backed away.

“Over against the window!” Luigi ordered.

My gun was on the dresser, out of its clip. The man with the scar picked it up and started to slide it in his side coat pocket.

“Nice gun, Luigi!” he said. “The dope knows guns, I guess.”

Whitey said: “I thought it was you, Maury! I thought it was you!”

The man with the scar looked Whitey over very carefully.

Whitey gave him a feeble grin and said: “If I was in trunks and didn’t have quite so much fat around my belly you’d know me.”

Maury said: “Whitey Malone, by hell!”

Recognising Whitey had taken his mind away from his business a second – and in that second Whitey moved in. Maury was handicapped by having one hand in his pocket and he’d dropped his gun muzzle a little in addition. And Whitey had always been fast. He slid in ahead and slammed the little man in the stomach. The little man expelled a whoosh and doubled over.

Then Luigi slammed his gun barrel against the side of Whitey’s head. Whitey went down on top of the little man with the scar, but by that time I had both hands on Luigi’s gun wrist.

He was shouting: “Let go! Let go!” and was pulling away and trying to get his wrist free. At the same time he was hitting me in the face with his free hand. He was off balance and all that, but it wasn’t doing me any good.

My face was still sore from the beating I’d taken the afternoon before, and this was giving him too much of an edge. We wrestled around until we got close to where Whitey Malone and Maury, the scarred man, were on the floor. Then somebody got me by an ankle and yanked.

I went down to the floor, but I took Luigi’s arm down with me – still holding to it with both wrists. Then I looked past Luigi’s leg and saw the bell boy standing in the door, with a trayful of ice and soda and with his mouth wide open.

I yelled: “Get help! Help!”

It was the scarred man who had me by the ankle, because he said: “Hold tight, Luigi: I’ll get him!”

I could also hear the bell boy out in the hall, shouting: “Help! Help! Help!”

If I’d let go of Luigi’s wrist I’d have been shot. I had to take a chance on what the little man was going to do, and what he did was rap me on the head with his gun. But he was about half lying on me and had to reach up to hit. So all it did was make me let go of Luigi’s wrist and fall on my face. I could hear, but I couldn’t move.

Luigi said: “I’ll get him right!”

The little man said: “Get the hell out of here! That hall’s going to be full in a minute.”

Then I heard them go out the door.

It seemed like it took me forever to get my face from the floor, but it couldn’t have been long. I twisted my head and there was my own gun in reach. Getting it, I reached the door in time to see Luigi and the little man just at the elevator. Luigi was half in it. The little man was the best target and so I picked him and let go. He went inside and the doors slammed.

I said: “I missed! Missed him!”

I got to the telephone to call the desk and could get no answer. The operator was probably listening to everybody on the floor telling her about the fracas. If she had any brains she’d probably already have called the cops. I put the phone down and Whitey Malone said:

“Argh-gh-gh!”

Whitey was trying to sit up and wasn’t doing well at it. I got him up on the bed and felt his head, where the gun had clipped him. But I couldn’t find any sign of a fracture. Then one of the biggest cops I ever saw in my life dashed in with a gun in his hand.

“Hey, you! Hands up!” he commanded.

I said: “Don’t be a fool! I’m going to call a doctor for my friend.”

The cop said: “There’s one downstairs. You killed that guy, didn’t you?”

“I missed him, I thought.”

“You missed him like hell! You shot his guts out all over the inside of the elevator.”

“What about the other one?”

“He got away. You got a gun?”

“On the dresser.”

He backed away from me until he got my gun. Then he said, a little friendlier: “What in hell happened, boy?”

Whitey’s eyes opened then. He looked as if he was around enough to understand what I was saying.

I said: “I’m damned if I know. The two guys came in with guns. My friend here took a swing at one of them and then the battle started. I shot at one, but I thought I missed.”

“You hit centre. Who were they?”

“I don’t know.”

“What d’ya mean, you don’t know. A couple of guys don’t just walk in and start trouble with a strange guy, do they?” “They did, didn’t they?”

“You’re a shamus?”

“Licence in my wallet. That’s on the dresser, too.”

He looked at my licence. I finally got the desk and told them to send the doctor up. By the time he arrived there were a lot more policemen, the manager of the hotel, two newspapermen inside, with a dozen others trying to get in.

It would have taken a hall to take care of the crowd that wanted to join us. But when I mentioned that to the cops they chased everybody out.

I thought that was so they could question Whitey and me with a little peace and quiet. But I was all wrong. That was to give themselves a chance for rough stuff, if they decided any was necessary – but Whitey and I fooled them.

We didn’t know either of the men. We didn’t know what they wanted to do a thing like that for. We’d never seen either of them before.

In fact, we didn’t know a thing.

We spent the next two days in jail and in different cells. But Whitey had the idea, and I wasn’t worrying about him saying anything. In fact there wasn’t a lot he could say. He knew nothing at all about the girl being found dead. I hadn’t had a chance to tell him about that.

Whitey didn’t know about my early-morning trip back, and about me being shot at and having to hide under the bridge. He wouldn’t have talked anyway – he’s not the talking kind.

The dead man was Maury Cullen, and he was a bad one. Cullen had served time for everything from plain robbery to manslaughter. He’d spent more time in jail than he had outside, if you counted the time he’d spent in reform schools while yet a kid. That was the only reason there wasn’t more trouble about it – the only thing that kept my licence for me.

I left Whitey at my place when I met the Bryce girl. I’d called her house the minute I left the station. Finally I got the girl after going through a performance that made me think I was trying to talk with a railroad president.

I said: “This is Joe Shannon, Miss Bryce. I’d like to see you.”

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you,” she said. “I’ve called your office at least a dozen times a day.”

“There’s been a little trouble.”

“You mean – you mean that George is in trouble.”

“I mean that I’m in trouble. Or don’t you read the papers?”

“Well, no. I don’t pay much attention to them. What happened?”

I told her I couldn’t talk to her over the phone and asked her to set a place to meet me. She suggested the Plaza. And when I laughed she told me she often met people there. I gave her the name of a halfway decent bar and restaurant on the wrong side of town. She agreed to meet me there in an hour.

And she did. She came in looking flustered. The minute we were in a booth, she leaned across to me and said:

“I’ve almost gone crazy. Haven’t you heard a thing about him?”

“You might as well get ready to take it on the chin, kid. I’m afraid there’s no news as yet. And this time no news is bad news.”

“I thought about that. I mean about George maybe being kidnapped.”

“That racket’s been out since the government men took over, Miss Bryce. I don’t mean that he was kidnapped. It’s worse than that, I’m afraid.”

The girl got white and asked me if I meant he was killed. I said that was it exactly, waiting for her to break down all over the place, but she did exactly the opposite.

She said: “But why?”

Her face was so white that the makeup stood out on it in patches. But her voice was even and no louder than it had been.

I said: “I don’t know. Did he have much money on him?”

“Very little. He just had an allowance, you know, and he was careless with money.”

“Then I can’t tell you, though I’m beginning to get an idea. It’s nothing I can go to the cops with.”

Then she said something that made me so mad I could hardly talk.

“If it’s more money you want, Mr Shannon, I can pay it.”

“There’s been a girl killed over this mess,” I said. “On top of that I’ve killed a man and spent the last couple of days in jail over it, even if I’m loose now. I damn near got killed myself, and a man who was working with me almost got the same. I’ve been beaten up and shot up and chivvied around by the cops, and you talk to me about money. Will your money bring back that girl?”

“I’m sorry,” said Miss Bryce. “What should I do?”

“If you’ve got any pull at all, or know anybody who has, you can find out who put that blind ad in the paper. The ad that started this. They’re not supposed to give out that information, but maybe you could get it for me. And if you’ve got the nerve you can go down to the morgue with me and look at all the unidentified bodies of men around the age of this George Harper.

“If he was killed and all marks cut out of his clothes, or if he’d been stripped, that’s where he’d be. If I knew him by sight I wouldn’t need you. Unless you want to tell his people the story.”

“Why break it to them that way?” she asked. “And, besides, we’re not sure yet. George had two little moles on his chest, and he weighed one hundred and sixty-two pounds. He was twenty-two. His hair was blond and his eyes were blue.”

“That won’t be enough.”

She didn’t change the expression on her face a bit as she said: “He had a birthmark – a strawberry mark I think you call it, on his left thigh. It was very large. As big as that.”

She made a big circle on the table.

I said: “Okay, I’ll go down and look while you try and find who put that ad in the paper. I’ll phone you back in two hours, say. At your house. And listen! If I go through with this and get into trouble, will you tell the cops about it? I mean if I fix it so there’s nothing to kick back on you or on the boy?”

“Why of course,” she said, looking surprised. “It’s only that I don’t want to make trouble for my people and his.”

We left it that way.

There was nothing doing at the morgue except that I damn near passed out while looking for the Harper boy’s body. I’d told the cop in charge that my brother was missing and that I was worried. I gave a vague description that tallied a little with the one the girl gave me. The attendant took me around and showed me every man they’d taken into the place during the last three days.

On the third tray they pulled out of the wall was Maury Cullen – the man I’d shot. They’d done a P. M. on him and sewed him up with a swell cross-stitch, but I could see what my slug had done to him. He’d probably been dead before the elevator got to the ground floor.

The attendant said: “I don’t suppose this one would be your brother, Mister, but to make sure you’d better look. He’s a little older than the way you say it, but it could be.”

I said: “No, but the guy looks a little familiar.”

He looked at me and said: “It gets you, looking at these stiffs. That is, at first. I’m sort of used to it. But at that I don’t eat my lunch in here.”

The place didn’t smell like any lunch room to me and I said so. It smelled of iodine and chloride of lime and formaldehyde, but all that wasn’t enough to kill the other smells. The attendant explained it with: “Some of these guys are taken out of the river after they’ve been in too long. Some of the others are found a little late. We freeze ’em and all that, but you can’t kill all of it.”

I got out of the place just in time to keep from being sick.

Miss Bryce said: “If he wasn’t there that means there’s still a chance, doesn’t it, Mr Shannon?”

“I’m afraid it’s slight,” I told her. “What about that ad?”

“I got a friend of mine who knows a columnist down there to ask about it. It was a girl named Mary Ames who put it in. Does that help you any?”

“Quite a bit!” Then I told her that I’d keep in touch with her.

I hung up the phone, feeling even sicker than I had at the morgue. I remembered what the girl had said when I’d mentioned the twenty dollars I was going to give her for the information. She’d said she wasn’t telling me anything because of the twenty, and I’d asked her why she was talking then. She’d said I wouldn’t understand – and I hadn’t then.

Finding about the ad gave me the answer. The kid had been sticking around and she’d seen he was going to get into trouble. She had tried to get him out of there without telling him anything that would hurt the place too much.

I didn’t understand this last – but I had a notion I would in a very short time. In fact, just after Darnell’s closed after that night’s business.

That’s when I planned on crashing the place.

We went in at half-past four. Just Whitey and I. We waited until the band boys had packed up and left and until most of the stragglers were gone. But we didn’t wait long enough for any of the help to leave. I mean kitchen help and waiters and bar men. I didn’t know who was wrong and who was right in the place. And I didn’t want any of the wrong ones to get away.

The doors were locked, of course, so we went in through a window we opened on the dressing-room side of the place. I went in first. Then Whitey passed me the gun I’d made for him during the afternoon and followed it.

It was a good gun, but not handy for housebreaking. I’d gone into a second-hand shop and picked up one of the best guns the Winchester people ever made – an 1897 model twelve-gauge shotgun. That’s the one with the hammer.

The new hammerless pumps are quieter and maybe they work a little smoother. But those old hammer guns never hung up and there was never a question about ’em being ready for action. All you have to do is pull the hammer back and pull the trigger.

I’d taken a hacksaw and cut the barrel off just in front of the pump grip. There were five shells in the barrel and another in the chamber, and all loaded with number one buck shot. That’s the size that loads sixteen in a shell, and for close-range work that’s just dandy. They’re big enough to blow a man to hell and back, and there’s enough of them to spread out and take in a lot of territory.

It was the logical weapon for Whitey, because he didn’t know any more about a pistol than a cat knows about heaven. And he’d shot a rifle and shotgun a few times.

And he was out for blood. It wasn’t that he’d been roughed up in my room at the time I killed Maury Cullen – because that didn’t bother him. That was just a piece of hard luck to him. When I’d been knocked out and my gun taken from me no doubt the barman had rolled me and found my address and had remembered it.

Whitey had just happened to be calling when they came after me. It wasn’t that. It was the girl being killed that was getting him crazy. And he was getting crazy, no mistake. He was a little punchy anyway, from a few too many fights, and when he got excited it hit him.

I whispered: “Now remember! I make the play, if there’s one made. Wait for me and back me up. Don’t start it.”

He mumbled: “The dirty skunks!”

I went out to the front and peeked through the curtain shutting off the hall from the main room. There were still a few people finishing up their last drinks. But the lights had been cut and the bar was closed, and only one waiter was in evidence.

Quite a lot of noise came from the kitchen, and I figured they’d be following the usual roadhouse custom of eating after the guests had left. So I went back to where I’d left Whitey and his shotgun.

“We’re getting a break!” I said. “I think they’ll all be together in the kitchen. Let’s find the door.”

Somebody found it for us. We were going down the hall toward the back of the place when a door opened just ahead of us and somebody stepped out. I could hear dishes rattle and heard somebody laugh. The man who’d opened the door turned away from us without seeing us, letting the door slam shut behind him.

He didn’t get far. I didn’t know who he was or whether he was right or wrong, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I caught him just as he started to open another door. When he turned his head to see who was running up to him I slammed him across the jaw with the side of my gun. It’s no trick – you just palm it and swing.

Down he went and I took a look in the room. It was empty and I went back to Whitey, who was just outside the kitchen door. Whitey was breathing through his nose, like he used to do in the ring.

I said: “Let’s go!” and opened the door into the kitchen.

And I was in, with Whitey and the shotgun right on my heels, before anybody even looked around.

It wasn’t the way I’d have put ’em if I’d had the placing. There were two guys in white aprons over in front of a big range. One man in a waiter’s uniform was just in back of them. The barman who’d first slugged me was sitting at a kitchen table, alongside the one the dead girl had pointed out as being the boss.

Another waiter was leaning across the table and telling them something they were laughing over. One other waiter was right in back of them, and two men were sitting at the same table with their backs to us.

They didn’t stay that way. The waiter saw by the look on the tough barman’s face that something was behind him, and he swung. So did the two men by him.

The odds were all wrong and I was glad the shotgun idea had occurred to me. Nine of them and two of us – but the shotgun evened it a bit.

I said: “Everybody over against the wall. Jump!”

I moved the muzzle of my gun a little, and Whitey croaked: “Move!”

The two cooks and two of the waiters started to move. But they never had time to get to the wall. All hell broke loose – like I was hoping it would. The big barman stood up and brought a gun up from where he’d pulled it under the protection of the table. I shot him as near centre as I could. When he didn’t fall I did it again.

He tottered and looked at his boss, just in time to see the front of the man’s face go out the back of his neck. I swear it looked like that. Whitey’s shotgun just blew his face off at that distance. One of the men who’d been sitting with their backs to us fell off his chair. He started to crawl under the table, but the other one stood up, dragging at a gun he must have been carrying in a hip pocket holster.

I took time and did it right. I lined the sights of my gun on the pit of his stomach and let go. Then he doubled up and fell straight toward me. He landed on his face, without even putting his hands out to break his fall.

Whitey’s shotgun blasted out again. The waiter on our side of the table went back through the air at least three feet. It was as if there’d been a rope around his middle and somebody had yanked. Then the man who’d ducked under the table shot. I sat down on the floor without knowing how I got there. Whitey shot twice. There was a lot of thumping noise coming from under the table and no more shooting.

The two cooks and the waiters who were left were against the wall, but only two of them were standing with their hands up. The other two were sitting on the floor holding their hands on their legs and howling blue murder.

Whitey said: “You hurt bad, Joe?”

The slug I’d taken had gone through the fleshy part of my leg. I didn’t think it had touched the bone because I could move my foot and not hear anything grate.

I said: “I don’t think so. Tell those guys over against the wall to come over to me one at a time. I’ll shake ’em down and you watch it.”

Whitey said: “To hell with it. They’re in this, too. They get the same.”

I don’t know yet whether he was bluffing or meant it, or was just a little crazy with excitement and didn’t realize what he was doing. Anyway, he raised the shotgun and the men by the wall screamed at him not to do it. I shouted the same thing.

“Go out in front and collect everybody,” I said. “Bring ’em in, customers and all. They see that shotgun and they’ll mind you.”

Whitey went out of the service door. He came back in a moment with a puzzled look and a bottle of whisky.

“There’s nobody there and the front door’s wide open,” he said. “I thought you could use a drink.”

I had the bottle up to my mouth when the big barman – the one I’d first shot – started to move. He’d fallen ahead, so that his head and upper body were across the table. Now he raised his head and looked at me, saying: “I knew I should have taken you and that girl out of the way that first time you came in. My name’s Ames – I was married to Mary.”

Then he put his head down again, but it didn’t stay there. He slipped down on the floor, moving gradually at first, then hitting the floor with a bang.

Whitey said to the four men by the wall: “Well, you guys going to talk, or do I turn loose on you?”

They talked with that, and I didn’t blame them. A dumb man would have found speech if he’d looked at Whitey and that shotgun, because Whitey certainly looked as though he wanted to use it.

I heard all about it in the hospital. It was a good hospital, too, and I had a private room. With the Bryce girl’s father footing the bills.

Whitey said: “Yeah, the state cops found Harper’s body back in the woods. One of them damn waiters showed ’em where to look. The kid got looping drunk and kept wandering around the place. Finally he walked into Maury Cullen and his two pals who were hiding out.

“The barman and Maury and his pals grabbed the kid, but they didn’t knock him off right then. They held him down in the hideout room, in the basement of the joint. That’s what the spot was doing as a side-line – hiding out guys who were plenty hot and willing to pay for a place to stay.”

“That’s what the cops said.”

Whitey went on: “Well, the gal didn’t want to turn in her husband, even if she wasn’t living with him. She gets the idea that if somebody come looking for Harper they’d get scared and turn him loose. They didn’t – they knocked him on the head and buried him instead. He’d been nice to the girl – he’d even given her his frat pin after his girlfriend had given it back to him. That killing got the girl. She wanted to squawk, but she was scared of her husband.”

“She was going to talk to me,” I said.

“But she wasn’t going to let her husband know about it,” Whitey explained. “He caught her and they knocked her off. Anyway, the whole gang were in the hideout racket and they’re all going up. You know, Joe, I should have told you about Maury, but I didn’t have the guts. I knew the guy the minute I saw him in the can.

“He was a bad one years ago. He’d come to me when I was fighting and wanted me to throw a fight. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you, see? I figured you’d think maybe I was crooked or something. Say! You going to get in trouble with the cops over this?”

“Hell, no!” I told him. “Bryce got everything cleared. The cops act like I’ve got a medal coming. They figured it cleared out a bad bunch they didn’t know about. And then, Bryce pulls a lot of weight. It’s all okay.”

“Swell, Joe,” Whitey said, beaming at me.

“Tell me something,” I said.

“Sure, Joe.”

“Did you throw that fight that Maury Cullen wanted you to throw?”

Whitey stared at me and said: “Why – hell, yes! D’ya think I’m nuts?”