Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories Page 3

  His gun raked the side of my face but it didn’t go off. He was already limp. He writhed down gasping his left side against the floor. I kicked his right shoulder—hard. The gun jumped away from him, skidded on the carpet, under a chair. I heard the chessmen tinkling on the floor behind me somewhere.

  The girl stood over him, looking down. Then her wide dark horrified eyes came up and fastened on mine.

  “That buys me,” I said. “Anything I have is yours—now and forever.”

  She didn’t hear me. Her eyes were strained open so hard that the whites showed under the vivid blue iris. She backed quickly to the door with her little gun up, felt behind her for the knob and twisted it. She pulled the door open and slipped out.

  The door shut.

  She was bareheaded and without her bolero jacket.

  She had only the gun, and the safety catch on that was still set so that she couldn’t fire it.

  It was silent in the room then, in spite of the wind. Then I heard him gasping on the floor. His face had a greenish pallor. I moved behind him and pawed him for more guns, and didn’t find any. I got a pair of store cuffs out of my desk and pulled his arms in front of him and snapped them on his wrists. They would hold if he didn’t shake them too hard.

  His eyes measured me for a coffin, in spite of their suffering. He lay in the middle of the floor, still on his left side, a twisted, wizened, bald-headed little guy with drawn-back lips and teeth spotted with cheap silver fillings. His mouth looked like a black pit and his breath came in little waves, choked, stopped, came on again, limping.

  “I’m sorry, guy,” I grunted. “What could I do?”

  That—to this sort of killer.

  I went into the dressing-room and opened the drawer of the chest. Her hat and jacket lay there on my shirts. I put them underneath, at the back, and smoothed the shirts over them. Then I went out to the kitchenette and poured a stiff jolt of whiskey and put it down and stood a moment listening to the hot wind howl against the window glass. A garage door banged, and a power-line wire with too much play between the insulators thumped the side of the building with a sound like somebody beating a carpet.

  The drink worked on me. I went back into the living-room and opened a window. The guy on the floor hadn’t smelled her sandalwood, but somebody else might.

  I shut the window again, wiped the palms of my hands and used the phone to dial headquarters.

  Copernik was still there. His smart-aleck voice said: “Yeah? Dalmas? Don’t tell me. I bet you got an idea.”

  “Make that killer yet?”

  “We’re not saying, Dalmas. Sorry as all hell and so on. You know how it is.”

  “O.K. I don’t care who he is. Just come and get him off the floor of my apartment.”

  “Holy—” Then his voice hushed and went down low. “Wait a minute, now. Wait a minute.” A long way off I seemed to hear a door shut. Then his voice again. “Shoot,” he said softly.

  “Handcuffed,” I said. “All yours. I had to knee him, but he’ll be all right. He came here to eliminate a witness.”

  Another pause. The voice was full of honey. “Now listen, boy, who else is in this with you?”

  “Who else? Nobody. Just me.”

  “Keep it that way, boy. All quiet. O.K.?”

  “Think I want all the bums in the neighborhood in here sightseeing?”

  “Take it easy, boy. Easy. Just sit tight and sit still. I’m practically there. No touch nothing. Get me?”

  “Yeah.” I gave him the address and apartment number again to save him time.

  I could see his big bony face glisten. I got the .22 target gun from under the chair and sat holding it until feet hit the hallway outside my door and knuckles did a quiet tattoo on the door panel.

  Copernik was alone. He filled the doorway quickly, pushed me back into the room with a tight grin and shut the door. He stood with his back to it, his hand under the left side of his coat. A big hard bony man with flat cruel eyes.

  He lowered them slowly and looked at the man on the floor. The lad’s neck was twitching a little. His eyes moved in short stabs—sick eyes.

  “Sure it’s the guy?” Copernik’s voice was hoarse.

  “Positive. Where’s Ybarra?”

  “Oh, he was busy.” He didn’t look at me when he said that. “Those your cuffs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Key.”

  I tossed it to him. He went down swiftly on one knee beside the killer and took my cuffs off his wrists, tossed them to one side. He got his own off his hip, twisted the bald man’s hands behind him and snapped the cuffs on.

  “All right, you —” the killer said tonelessly.

  Copernik grinned and balled his fist and hit the handcuffed man in the mouth a terrific blow. His head snapped back almost enough to break his neck. Blood dribbled from the lower corner of his mouth.

  “Get a towel,” Copernik ordered.

  I got a hand towel and gave it to him. He stuffed it between the handcuffed man’s teeth, viciously, stood up and rubbed his bony fingers through his ratty blond hair.

  “All right. Tell it.”

  I told it—leaving the girl out completely. It sounded a little funny. Copernik watched me, said nothing. He rubbed the side of his veined nose. Then he got his comb out and worked on his hair just as he had done earlier in the evening, in the cocktail bar.

  I went over and gave him the gun. He looked at it casually, dropped it into his side pocket. His eyes had something in them and his face moved in a hard bright grin.

  I bent down and began picking up my chessmen and dropping them into the box. I put the box on the mantel, straightened out a leg of the card table, played around for a while. All the time Copernik watched me. I wanted him to think something out.

  At last he came out with it. “This guy uses a twenty-two,” he said. “He uses it because he’s good enough to get by with that much gun. That mean’s he’s good. He knocks at your door, pokes that gat in your belly, walks you back into the room, says he’s here to close your mouth for keeps—and yet you take him. You not having any gun. You take him alone. You’re kind of good yourself, pal.”

  “Listen,” I said, and looked at the floor. I picked up another chessman and twisted it between my fingers. “I was doing a chess problem,” I said. “Trying to forget things.”

  “You got something on your mind, pal,” Copernik said softly. “You wouldn’t try to fool an old copper, would you, boy?”

  “It’s a swell pinch and I’m giving it to you,” I said. “What the hell more do you want?”

  The man on the floor made a vague sound behind the towel. His bald head glistened with sweat.

  “What’s the matter, pal? You been up to something?” Copernik almost whispered.

  I looked at him quickly, looked away again. “All right,” I said. “You know damn well I couldn’t take him alone. He had the gun on me and he shoots where he looks.”

  Copernik closed one eye and squinted at me amiably with the other. “Go on, pal. I kind of thought of that too.”

  I shuffled around a little more, to make it look good. I said slowly: “There was a kid here who pulled a job over in Boyle Heights, a heist job, and didn’t take. A two-bit service station stickup. I know his family. He’s not really bad. He was here trying to beg train money off me. When the knock came he sneaked in—there.”

  I pointed at the wall bed and the door beside. Copernik’s head swiveled slowly, swiveled back. His eyes winked again. “And this kid had a gun,” he said.

  I nodded. “And he got behind him. That takes guts, Copernik. You’ve got to give the kid a break. You’ve got to let him stay out of it.”

  “Tag out for this kid?” Copernik asked softly.

  “Not yet, he says. He’s scared there will be.”

  Copernik smiled. “I’m a homicide man,” he said. “What you have done, pal?”

  I pointed down at the gagged and handcuffed man on the floor. “You took him, didn’t you?” I s
aid gently.

  Copernik kept on smiling. A big whitish tongue came out and massaged his thick lower lip. “How’d I do it?” he whispered.

  “Get the slugs out of Waldo?”

  “Sure. Long twenty-twos. One smashed on a rib, one good.”

  “You’re a careful guy. You don’t miss any angles. You know anything about me. You dropped in on me to see what guns I had.”

  Copernik got up and went down on one knee again beside the killer. “Can you hear me, guy?” he asked with his face close to the face of the man on the floor.

  The man made some vague sound. Copernik stood up and yawned. “Who the hell cares what he says? Go on, pal.”

  “You wouldn’t expect to find I had anything, but you wanted to look around my place. And while you were mousing around in there”—I pointed to the dressing-room—“and me not saying anything, being a little sore, maybe, a knock came on the door. So he came in. So after a while you sneaked out and took him.”

  “Ah.” Copernik grinned widely, with as many teeth as a horse. “You’re on, pal. I socked him and I kneed him and I took him. You didn’t have no gun and the guy swiveled on me pretty sharp and I left-hooked him down the backstairs. O.K.?”

  “O.K.,” I said.

  “You’ll tell it like that downtown?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’ll protect you, pal. Treat me right and I’ll always play ball. Forget about that kid. Let me know if he needs a break.”

  He came over and held out his hand. I shook it. It was as clammy as a dead fish. Clammy hands and the people who own them make me sick.

  “There’s just one thing,” I said. “This partner of yours—Ybarra. Won’t he be a bit sore you didn’t bring him along on this?”

  Copernik tousled his hair and wiped his hatband with a large yellowish silk handkerchief.

  “That guinea?” he sneered. “To hell with him!” He came close to me and breathed in my face. “No mistakes, pal—about that story of ours.”

  His breath was bad. It would be.

  IV

  THERE were just five of us in the chief-of-detective’s office when Copernik laid it before them. A stenographer, the chief, Copernik, myself, Ybarra. Ybarra sat on a chair tilted against the side wall. His hat was down over his eyes but their softness loomed underneath, and the small still smile hung at the corners of the cleancut Latin lips. He didn’t look directly at Copernik. Copernik didn’t look at him at all.

  Outside in the corridor there had been photos of Copernik shaking hands with me, Copernik with his hat on straight and his gun in his hand and a stern, purposeful look on his face.

  They said they knew who Waldo was, but they wouldn’t tell me. I didn’t believe they knew, because the chief-of-detectives had a morgue photo of Waldo on his desk. A beautiful job, his hair combed, his tie straight, the light hitting his eyes just right to make them glisten. Nobody would have known it was a photo of a dead man with two bullet holes in his heart. He looked like a dance-hall sheik making up his mind whether to take the blonde or the redhead.

  It was about midnight when I got home. The apartment-door was locked and while I was fumbling for my keys a low voice spoke to me out of the darkness.

  All it said was: “Please!” but I knew it. I turned and looked at a dark Cadillac coupé parked just off the loading zone. It had no lights. Light from the street touched the brightness of a woman’s eyes.

  I went over there. “You’re a darn fool,” I said.

  She said: “Get in.”

  I climbed in and she started the car and drove it a block and a half along Franklin and turned down Kingsley Drive. The hot wind still burned and blustered. A radio lilted from an open, sheltered, side window of an apartment house. There were a lot of parked cars but she found a vacant space behind a small brand-new Packard cabriolet that had the dealer’s sticker on the windshield glass. After she’d jockeyed us up to the curb she leaned back in the corner with her gloved hands on the wheel.

  She was all in black now, or dark brown, with a small foolish hat. I smelled the sandalwood in her perfume.

  “I wasn’t very nice to you, was I?” she said.

  “All you did was save my life.”

  “What happened?”

  “I called the law and fed a few lies to a cop I don’t like and gave him all the credit for the pinch and that was that. That guy you took away from me was the man who killed Waldo.”

  “You mean—you didn’t tell them about me?”

  “Lady,” I said again, “all you did was save my life. What else do you want done? I’m ready, willing and I’ll try to be able.”

  She didn’t say anything, or move.

  “Nobody learned who you are from me,” I said. “Incidentally, I don’t know myself.”

  “I’m Mrs. Frank C. Barsaly, Two-twelve Fremont Place. Olympia Two-four-five-nine-six. Is that what you wanted?”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, and rolled a dry unlit cigarette around in my fingers. “Why did you come back?” Then I snapped the fingers of my left hand. “The hat and jacket,” I said. “I’ll go up and get them.”

  “It’s more than that,” she said. “I want my pearls.”

  I might have jumped a little. It seemed as if there had been enough without pearls.

  A car tore by down the street going twice as fast as it should. A thin bitter cloud of dust lifted in the street lights and whirled and vanished. The girl ran the window up quickly against it.

  “All right,” I said. “Tell me about the pearls. We have had a murder and a mystery woman and a mad killer and a heroic rescue and a police detective framed into making a false report. Now we will have pearls. All right—feed it to me.”

  “I was to buy them for five thousand dollars. From the man you call Waldo and I call Joseph Chaote. He should have had them.”

  “No pearls,” I said. “I saw what came out of his pockets. A lot of money but no pearls.”

  “Could they be hidden in his apartment?”

  “Yes,” I said. “So far as I know he could have had them hidden anywhere in California except in his pockets. How’s Mr. Barsaly this hot night?”

  “He’s still downtown at his meeting. Otherwise I couldn’t have come.”

  “Well, you could have brought him,” I said. “He could have sat in the rumble seat.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Frank weighs two hundred pounds and he’s pretty solid. I don’t think he would like to sit in the rumble seat, Mr. Dalmas.”

  “What the hell are we talking about, anyway?”

  She didn’t answer. Her gloved hands tapped lightly, provokingly on the rim of the slender wheel. I threw the unlit cigarette out the window, turned a little and took hold of her.

  I was shaking when I let go of her. She pulled as far away from me as she could against the side of the car and rubbed the back of her glove against her mouth. I sat quite still.

  We didn’t speak for some time. Then she said very slowly: “I meant you to do that. But I wasn’t always that way. It’s only been since Stan Phillips was killed in his plane. If it hadn’t been for that, I’d be Mrs. Phillips now. Stan gave me the pearls. They cost fifteen thousand dollars, he said once. White pearls, forty-one of them, the largest about a third of an inch across. I don’t know how many grains. I never had them appraised or showed them to a jeweler, so I don’t know those things. But I loved them on Stan’s account. I loved Stan. The way you do just the one time. Can you understand?”

  “What’s your first name?” I asked.

  “Lola.”

  “Go on talking, Lola.” I got another dry cigarette out of my pocket and fumbled it between my fingers just to give them something to do.

  “They had a simple silver clasp in the shape of a two-bladed propeller. There was one small diamond where the boss would be. That was because I told Frank they were store pearls I had bought myself. He didn’t know the difference. It’s not so easy to tell, I dare say. You see—Frank is pretty jealous.”
>
  In the darkness she came closer to me and her side touched my side. But I didn’t move this time. The wind howled and the trees shook. I kept on rolling the cigarette around in my fingers.

  “I suppose you’ve read that story,” she said. “About the wife and the real pearls and her telling her husband—

  “I’ve read it,” I said.

  “I hired Joseph. My husband was in Argentina at the time. I was pretty lonely.”

  “You should be lonely,” I said.

  “Joseph and I went driving a good deal. Sometimes we had a drink or two together. But that’s all. I don’t go around—”

  “You told him about the pearls,” I snarled. “And when your two hundred pounds of beef came back from Argentina and kicked him out—he took the pearls, because he knew they were real. And then offered them back to you for five grand.”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “Of course I didn’t want to go to the police. And of course in the circumstance Joseph wasn’t afraid of my knowing where he lived.”

  “Poor Waldo,” I said. “I feel kind of sorry for him. It was a hell of a time to run into an old friend that had a down on you.”

  I struck a match on my shoe sole and lit the cigarette. The tobacco was so dry from the hot wind that it burned like grass. The girl sat quietly beside me, her hands on the wheel again.

  “Hell with women—these fliers,” I said. “And you’re still in love with him, or think you are. Where did you keep the pearls?”

  “In a Russian malachite jewelry box on my dressing-table. With some other costume jewelry. I had to, if I ever wanted to wear them.”

  “And they were worth fifteen grand. And you think Joseph might have hidden them in his apartment. Thirty-one, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I guess it’s a lot to ask.”

  I opened the door and got out of the car. “I’ve been paid,” I said. “I’ll go look. The doors in my apartment house are not very obstinate. The cops will find out where Waldo lived when they publish his photo, but not tonight, I guess.”

  “It’s awfully sweet of you,” she said. “Shall I wait here?”

  I stood with a foot on the running-board, leaning in, looking at her. I didn’t answer her question. I just stood there looking in at the shine of her eyes. Then I shut the car door and walked up the street towards Franklin.