Say Yes to Murder - Todhunter Ballard (book club recommendations .TXT) 📗
- Author: Todhunter Ballard
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Book online «Say Yes to Murder - Todhunter Ballard (book club recommendations .TXT) 📗». Author Todhunter Ballard
He went on down the steps, through the bar, and out onto the street. Not until he started to get into his cab did the weight of his coat make him remember the silver dollars bulging his pockets.
4.
Pete Corrigan had been head of the vice squad for almost four months. He was a small man with the irregular features which mark the true Celt. If any doubt existed as to his blood origin, his flaming red hair and freckled cheeks would have settled that.
He was about fifty, and he had come up through the department the hard way. No office politician, he had waited twenty years to become a lieutenant, but once he had a chance to show what he could do ability and utter fearlessness had brought his captaincy quickly.
Corrigan swung around when Lennox came in and stared at him with unblinking blue eyes. “Hello, sonny boy. You sure as heck managed to get yourself into a sweet spot.”
Lennox grunted. “I know it.” He sank into a chair, pulled out a loose cigarette. When he did, the silver in his pockets clinked alarmingly.
“What the heck?” Corrigan said.
For answer Lennox dragged the silver out and stacked it on the desk. It made quite a pile. Corrigan grinned. “If the boats were still running I’d say you’d been gambling on the high seas.”
“A lot nearer than that,” Lennox said, and paused before he added, “At Honia’s.”
The smile stayed on Corrigan’s lips. “Are you trying to kid me? I know the spot is running, of course, but they keep it quiet and orderly. They only pick on movie dough, and most of the suckers who go for their entertainment can afford to lose. In a town with as much spare cash as Hollywood you gotta have a joint or two for the boys to let off steam in. We watch it because it’s easier to keep an eye on a place we know than to close it and have half a dozen other joints spring up in its place.”
Lennox knew the man was telling the truth. However, he’d come down there for one purpose.
“That isn’t the story I heard.”
Corrigan stared at him. “What story did you hear?”
Lennox said: “Kreach threw me out. I told him I’d have him closed, and he laughed. ‘You can’t,’ he said to me. ‘We’ve got protection.’”
“Oh. Protection is it.” The word angered Corrigan. It represented everything he had fought against in his thirty years on the force. “So he thinks we’re laying off because some pipsqueak politician is protecting his joint.” He glared balefully at Lennox, then his expression changed slowly and his eyes got crafty.
“Look, Bill. Come clean. This isn’t like you to turn someone in just because they tossed you out on your neck. There’s something else behind this. What are you up to?”
Lennox hesitated. For reasons of his own he did not want to mention the doped girl he had seen. He said finally: “Eddie Strong took me in there, and they wouldn’t let him leave with me. I don’t know why, but I’m worried. I haven’t anything definite, but I thought a raid…”
Corrigan was thinking to himself. “So Kreach thinks he has protection. Well, heck!” He reached for the phone. “It’s quiet tonight. I think I’ll just give him a sample of the kind of protection he actually has. Want to ride out with us?”
Lennox did not want to go out in one of the squad cars. He shook his head. “It’s none of my business. I opened my mouth too far as it is. I don’t have any inclination to stand around and yell I-told-you-so to Kreach when you bring him out. Go ahead, pull your raid and let him worry.”
He took a taxi out to the scene and ensconced himself in a strategic position near by. It was a good raid, and well executed. Lennox, during his newspaper days, had witnessed several, but he never seen one more neatly handled.
Lennox viewed the proceedings from the shadow of a building across the street. He saw the gambling dealers led forth, then the girls.
And last came Toni, Madam Honia, and Ed Strong. There was no sign of Kreach. Perhaps he had been warned; perhaps, through luck, he had not been in the building. But Lennox did not care. He was so relieved to see the piano-player alive that he felt like shouting.
Fog, settling into the hollow, seemed to add to the cold dampness of the night and made the stuffy heated air of the bail-bond office a pleasant change.
The radiator; pounded and sputtered by turns as if it had been unused so long that its pipes were badly clogged. The bondsman’s runner was short, with a thick neck and thicker glasses. He squinted through the glasses as if it were hard to see even with the help of the lenses. He grinned at Bill and said:
“This ain’t a bad racket. Not as good as it used to be before they got all these rules and regulations, but it’s better than working in a factory.”
Lennox glanced at his watch. It was twenty after two, and he yawned heavily, wishing he had a drink. “How soon will the wagon from Pico be here?”
A squad car whirled up the dark street from the direction of Pasadena Avenue and slid to a stop against the opposite curb. The bondsman rose and peered through the dusty window, then turned and shook his head. “That’s not Pico.” He went over to the scarred desk in the corner and picked up the phone.
“Hey, Sarge. What the heck happened to Pico?” He listened for a minute, then said, “O.K.” He hung up and put his frayed cigar butt in the overflowing ash tray, getting a fresh one from his pocket.
“They got a big load tonight. They’ll be half, maybe three-quarters of an hour late. Who is this guy you want me to take out?”
Lennox said. “His name is Strong. He got picked up in a raid. He’s probably still drunk.”
“They mostly are,” said the bondsman indifferently. “If it wasn’t for booze, I’d have to close up. I thought from what Sam Marx said on the phone that your pal was in a real jam.”
Lennox shrugged. “Let’s go outside for a while, the air is crummy in here.” He heaved himself out of the hard chair, walked to the door, and pushed it open.
They stood in the darkness, silent, staring across the empty windswept street at the lighted windows of Lincoln Heights Jail.
Three men came out of a bail-bond office farther down the block and walked up the roadway without seeing Lennox and his companion in the darkness.
One of the men in the road was Kreach, and the bondsman said in a low voice, “That’s Inky Kreach. Wonder why he’s down here?”
The short hairs at the back of Lennox’ neck were tingling as he watched the men pass. The bondsmen muttered: “I haven’t seen Inky down here for months. Do you suppose that they knocked off some of his girls?”
He got no answer, for a wagon and two squad cars whirled beneath the bridge and came on down the street to stop before the entrance to the jail.
“There’s Pico,” said the bondsman. “You better point out this guy Strong. He might not be booked under his right name.”
Bill stepped down off the stone porch, but he was careful to remain in the shadow. He did not care to meet Inky Kreach at the moment.
The bondsman was not so cautious. This was an old story to him. Each night, three hundred times a year, he stood and watched the various precinct wagons spew out their loads of human refuse into the gaping maw of the big jail. As he came forward, he nodded to one of the uniformed guards.
“Big load, huh?”
“Yeah,” the guard said, and yawned. The routine was old to him—as old as history. He looked bored while he watched the girls pile out of the wagon.
Some were laughing, others silent, a few noisily vindictive. None seemed scared, but Lennox was not watching the girls, for he suddenly had seen Ed Strong get out of one of the squad cars. He touched the bondsman’s arm and nodded toward the piano-player.
The bondsman nodded. “He looks old enough to know better,” was his only comment as he headed for the booking office.
Lennox retreated to the shelter of the steamy room and waited for an interminable length of time. He was just about ready to get another breath of air when he heard the scrape of heavy leather soles on the stone porch and saw the door open.
Ed Strong came in, followed by the bondsman, who was half-carrying a girl. Lennox stared. In the bad light it took a full moment for him to realize that it was the doped girl he had seen earlier at Madam Honia’s.
“What the heck?” he said.
Gregory paused and wiped the beads of perspiration from his greasy face with the sleeve of his dark suit. “Mister, I never had a tougher job.”
Strong had turned and was helping to put the girl into a chair. He didn’t look at Lennox.
Bill said, “What’s the idea?”
The bondsman shrugged. “Your pal wouldn’t come until I sprung the dame, and I never had a tougher job. Kreach’s bondsman raised hell. He claimed I was cutting in on his business, and if you think that I’m not scared of Inky Kreach, you’re crazy. He’s a tough baby to monkey with. If you hadn’t been a friend of Sam Marx…”
Lennox wasn’t paying any attention. He was looking toward Strong. “What’s the idea, Ed?”
Strong was sober. There was an acrid odor of stale whisky about him, but no sign of drunkenness. “My niece,” he said shortly, and turned his attention to the girl.
Lennox started to say something else, changed his mind, and looked at the girl instead. “Get a cab,” he told the bondsman, and heard the door close as the man went out. He wondered if the girl would ever snap out of it. She certainly didn’t look it.
The door opened finally, and Gregory stuck his head in. “Cab outside.” Ed Strong stooped and caught the girl up in his arms. Lennox followed. Time enough to question Strong later.
The cabman was big, with a low forehead and thick, coarse hair. You could tell from the way he watched as they put the girl into the taxi that he didn’t like it.
“Drunk,” said the bondsman, glancing warningly at Lennox.
Strong heaved an audible sigh of relief as the darkness closed about them. Even Lennox felt better. It was like being enveloped in a protective sheath.
The hacker came around the cab and climbed under the wheel, his weight making the springs sag as he settled into place. “Where to?”
Strong spoke first, he gave the man the number of Lennox’ apartment. “You don’t mind, Bill. I don’t dare to take her to my place. It’s the first spot that they’d search.”
“0. K,” said Lennox. “But you might tell me what this is all about.”
The girl was between them, and Strong slipped one arm around her shoulders to steady her as the cab started. “Later, Bill, later, and thanks for springing us.”
It was a dark and deserted hole in the center of a thriving city. All they needed now was an air-raid warning and the accompanying blackout. Faintly you could hear the rumble of the late traffic on the Parkway and the low moan of a freight engine in the distant rail yards.
They turned into Pasadena Avenue, and Lennox realized
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