Red Harvest Page 13

  “Take the right turn at the top of the hill.”

  We took it, into a dirt road that wound between trees down the side of a rock-ridged hill. Ten miles an hour was fast going here. After five minutes of creeping along Reno ordered a halt. We heard nothing, saw nothing, during the half-hour we sat in darkness. Then Reno said:

  “There’s an empty shack a mile down the way. We’ll camp there, huh? There’s no sense trying to crash the city line again tonight.”

  Dinah said she would prefer anything to being shot at again. I said it was all right with me, though I would rather have tried to find some path back to the city.

  We followed the dirt track cautiously until our headlights settled on a small clapboard building that badly need the paint it had never got.

  “Is this it?” Dinah asked Reno.

  “Uh-huh. Stay here till I look it over.”

  He left us, appearing soon in the beam of our lights at the shack door. He fumbled with keys at the padlock, got it off, opened the door, and went in. Presently he came to the door and called:

  “All right. Come in and make yourselves to home.”

  Dinah cut off the engine and got out of the car.

  “Is there a flashlight in the car?” I asked.

  She said, “Yes,” gave it to me, yawned, “My God, I’m tired. I hope there’s something to drink in the hole.”

  I told her I had a flask of Scotch. The news cheered her up.

  The shack was a one-room affair that held an army cot covered with brown blankets, a deal table with a deck of cards and some gummy poker chips on it, a brown iron stove, four chairs, an oil lamp, dishes, pots, pans and buckets, three shelves with canned food on them, a pile of firewood and a wheelbarrow.

  Reno was lighting the lamp when we came in. He said:

  “Not so tough. I’ll hide the heap and then we’ll be all set till daylight.”

  Dinah went over to the cot, turned back the covers, and reported:

  “Maybe there’s things in it, but anyway it’s not alive with them. Now let’s have that drink.”

  I unscrewed the flask and passed it to her while Reno went out to hide the car. When she had finished, I took a shot.

  The purr of the Marmon’s engine got fainter. I opened the door and looked out. Downhill, through trees and bushes, I could see broken chunks of white light going away. When I lost them for good I returned indoors and asked the girl:

  “Have you ever had to walk home before?”

  “What?”

  “Reno’s gone with the car.”

  “The lousy tramp! Thank God he left us where there’s a bed, anyway.”

  “That’ll get you nothing.”

  “No?”

  “No. Reno had a key to this dump. Ten to one the birds after him know about it. That’s why he ditched us here. We’re supposed to argue with them, hold them off his trail a while.”

  She got up wearily from the cot, cursed Reno, me, all men from Adam on, and said disagreeably:

  “You know everything. What do we do next?”

  “We find a comfortable spot in the great open spaces, not too far away, and wait to see what happens.”

  “I’m going to take the blankets.”

  “Maybe one won’t be missed, but you’ll tip our mitts if you take more than that.”

  “Damn your mitts,” she grumbled, but she took only one blanket.

  I blew out the lamp, padlocked the door behind us, and with the help of the flashlight picked a way through the undergrowth.

  On the hillside above we found a little hollow from which road and shack could be not too dimly seen through foliage thick enough to hide us unless we showed a light.

  I spread that blanket there and we settled down.

  The girl leaned against me and complained that the ground was damp, that she was cold in spite of her fur coat, that she had a cramp in her leg, and that she wanted a cigarette.

  I gave her another drink from the flask. That bought me ten minutes of peace.

  Then she said:

  “I’m catching cold. By the time anybody comes, if they ever do, I’ll be sneezing and coughing loud enough to be heard in the city.”

  “Just once,” I told her. “Then you’ll be all strangled.”

  “There’s a mouse or something crawling under the blanket.”

  “Probably only a snake.”

  “Are you married?”

  “Don’t start that.”

  “Then you are?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll bet your wife’s glad of it.”

  I was trying to find a suitable come-back to that wise-crack when a distant light gleamed up the road. It disappeared as I sh-sh’d the girl.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “A light. It’s gone now. Our visitors have left their car and are finishing the trip afoot.”

  A lot of time went by. The girl shivered with her cheek warm against mine. We heard footsteps, saw dark figures moving on the road and around the shack, without being sure whether we did or didn’t.

  A flashlight ended our doubt by putting a bright circle on the shack’s door. A heavy voice said:

  “We’ll let the broad come out.”

  There was a half-minute of silence while they waited for a reply from indoors. Then the same heavy voice asked: “Coming?” Then more silence.

  Gun-fire, a familiar sound tonight, broke the silence. Something hammered boards.

  “Come on,” I whispered to the girl. “We’ll have a try at their car while they’re making a racket.”

  “Let them alone,” she said, pulling my arm down as I started up. “I’ve had enough of it for one night. We’re all right here.”

  “Come on,” I insisted.

  She said, “I won’t,” and she wouldn’t, and presently, while we argued, it was too late. The boys below had kicked in the door, found the hut empty, and were bellowing for their car.

  It came, took eight men aboard, and followed Reno’s track downhill.

  “We might as well move in again,” I said. “It’s not likely they’ll be back this way tonight.”

  “I hope to God there’s some Scotch left in that flask,” she said as I helped her stand up.

  18

  PAINTER STREET

  The shack’s supply of canned goods didn’t include anything that tempted us for breakfast. We made the meal of coffee cooked in very stale water from a galvanized pail.

  A mile of walking brought us to a farmhouse where there was a boy who didn’t mind earning a few dollars by driving us to town in the family Ford. He had a lot of questions, to which we gave him phoney answers or none. He set us down in front of a little restaurant in upper King Street, where we ate quantities of buckwheat cakes and bacon.

  A taxi put us at Dinah’s door a little before nine o’clock. I searched the place for her, from roof to cellar, and found no signs of visitors.

  “When will you be back?” she asked as she followed me to the door.

  “I’ll try to pop in between now and midnight, if only for a few minutes. Where does Lew Yard live?”

  “1622 Painter Street. Painter’s three blocks over. 1622’s four blocks up. What are you going to do there?” Before I could answer, she put her hands on my arm and begged: “Get Max, will you? I’m afraid of him”

  “Maybe I’ll sic Noonan on him a little later. It depends on how things work out.”

  She called me a damned double-crossing something or other who didn’t care what happened to her as long as his dirty work got done.

  I went over to Painter Street. 1622 was a red brick house with a garage under the front porch.

  A block up the street I found Dick Foley in a hired drive-yourself Buick. I got in beside him, asking:

  “What’s doing?”

  “Spot two. Out three-thirty, office to Willsson’s. Mickey. Five. Home. Busy. Kept plant. Off three, seven. Nothing yet.”

  That was supposed to inform me that he had picked up Lew Yard at two th
e previous afternoon; had shadowed him to Willsson’s at three-thirty, where Mickey had tailed Pete; had followed Yard away at five, to his residence; had seen people going in and out of the house, but had not shadowed any of them; had watched the house until three this morning, and had returned to the job at seven; and since then had seen nobody go in or out.

  “You’ll have to drop this and take a plant on Willsson’s,” I said. “I hear Whisper Thaler’s holing-up there, and I’d like an eye kept on him till I make up my mind whether to turn him up for Noonan or not.”

  Dick nodded and started the engine grinding. I got out and returned to the hotel.

  There was a telegram from the Old Man:

  SEND BY FIRST MAIL FULL EXPLANATION OF PRESENT OPERATION AND CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH YOU ACCEPTED IT WITH DAILY REPORTS TO DATE

  I put the telegram in my pocket and hoped things would keep on breaking fast. To have sent him the dope he wanted at that time would have been the same as sending in my resignation.

  I bent a fresh collar around my neck and trotted over to the City Hall.

  “Hello,” Noonan greeted me. “I was hoping you’d show up. Tried to get you at your hotel but they told me you hadn’t been in.”

  He wasn’t looking well this morning, but under his glad-handing he seemed, for a change, genuinely glad to see me.

  As I sat down one of his phones rang. He put the receiver to his ear, said “Yes?” listened for a moment, said, “You better go out there yourself, Mac,” and had to make two attempts to get the receiver back on its prong before he succeeded. His face had gone a little doughy, but his voice was almost normal as he told me:

  “Lew Yard’s been knocked off—shot coming down his front steps just now.”

  “Any details?” I asked while I cursed myself for having pulled Dick Foley away from Painter Street an hour too soon. That was a tough break.

  Noonan shook his head, staring at his lap.

  “Shall we go out and look at the remains?” I suggested, getting up.

  He neither got up nor looked up.

  “No,” he said wearily to his lap. “To tell the truth, I don’t want to. I don’t know as I could stand it just now. I’m getting sick of this killing. It’s getting to me—on my nerves, I mean.”

  I sat down again, considered his low spirits, and asked:

  “Who do you guess killed him?”

  “God knows,” he mumbled. “Everybody’s killing everybody. Where’s it going to end?”

  “Think Reno did it?”

  Noonan winced, started to look up at me, changed his mind, and repeated:

  “God knows.”

  I went at him from another angle:

  “Anybody knocked off in the battle at the Silver Arrow last night?”

  “Only three.”

  “Who were they?”

  “A pair of Johnson-brothers named Blackie Whalen and Put Collings that only got out on bail around five yesterday, and Dutch Jake Wahl, a guerrilla.”

  “What was it all about?”

  “Just a roughhouse, I guess. It seems that Put and Blackie and the others that got out with them were celebrating with a lot of friends, and it wound up in smoke.”

  “All of them Lew Yard’s men?”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.

  I got up, said, “Oh, all right,” and started for the door.

  “Wait,” he called. “Don’t run off like that. I guess they were.”

  I came back to my chair. Noonan watched the top of his desk. His face was gray, flabby, damp, like fresh putty.

  “Whisper’s staying at Willsson’s,” I told him.

  He jerked his head up. His eyes darkened. Then his mouth twitched, and he let his head sag again. His eyes faded.

  “I can’t go through with it,” he mumbled. “I’m sick of this butchering. I can’t stand any more of it.”

  “Sick enough to give up the idea of evening the score for Tim’s killing, if it’ll make peace?” I asked.

  “I am.”

  “That’s what started it,” I reminded him. “If you’re willing to call it off, it ought to be possible to stop it.”

  He raised his face and looked at me with eyes that were like a dog’s looking at a bone.

  “The others ought to be as sick of it as you are,” I went on. “Tell them how you feel about it. Have a get-together and make peace.”

  “They’d think I was up to some kind of a trick,” he objected miserably.

  “Have the meeting at Willsson’s. Whisper’s camping there. You’d be the one risking tricks going there. Are you afraid of that?”

  He frowned and asked:

  “Will you go with me?”

  “If you want me.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I—I’ll try it.”

  19

  THE PEACE CONFERENCE

  All the other delegates to the peace conference were on hand when Noonan and I arrived at Willsson’s home at the appointed time, nine o’clock that night. Everybody nodded to us, but the greetings didn’t go any further than that.

  Pete the Finn was the only one I hadn’t met before. The bootlegger was a big-boned man of fifty with a completely bald head. His forehead was small, his jaws enormous—wide, heavy, bulging with muscle

  We sat around Willsson’s library table.

  Old Elihu sat at the head. The short-clipped hair on his round pink skull was like silver in the light. His round blue eyes were hard, domineering, under their bushy white brows. His mouth and chin were horizontal lines.

  On his right Pete the Finn sat watching everybody with tiny black eyes that never moved. Reno Starkey sat next to the bootlegger. Reno’s sallow horse face was as stolidly dull as his eyes.

  Max Thaler was tilted back in a chair on Willsson’s left. The little gambler’s carefully pressed pants legs were carelessly crossed. A cigarette hung from one corner of his tight-lipped mouth.

  I sat next to Thaler. Noonan sat on my other side.

  Elihu Willsson opened the meeting.

  He said things couldn’t go on the way they were going. We were all sensible men, reasonable men, grown men who had seen enough of the world to know that a man couldn’t have everything his own way, no matter who he was. Compromises were things everybody had to make sometimes. To get what he wanted, a man had to give other people what they wanted. He said he was sure that what we all most wanted now was to stop this insane killing. He said he was sure that everything could be frankly discussed and settled in an hour without turning Personville into a slaughterhouse.

  It wasn’t a bad oration.

  When it was over there was a moment of silence. Thaler looked past me, at Noonan, as if he expected something of him. The rest of us followed his example, looking at the chief of police.

  Noonan’s face turned red and he spoke huskily:

  “Whisper, I’ll forget you killed Tim.” He stood up and held out a beefy paw. “Here’s my hand on it.”

  Thaler’s thin mouth curved into a vicious smile.

  “Your bastard of a brother needed killing, but I didn’t kill him,” he whispered coldly.

  Red became purple in the chief’s face.

  I said loudly:

  “Wait, Noonan. We’re going at this wrong. We won’t get anywhere unless everybody comes clean. Otherwise we’ll all be worse off than before. MacSwain killed Tim, and you know it.”

  He stared at me with dumbfounded eyes. He gaped. He couldn’t understand what I had done to him.

  I looked at the others, tried to look virtuous as hell, asked:

  “That’s settled, isn’t it? Let’s get the rest of the kicks squared.” I addressed Pete the Finn: “How do you feel about yesterday’s accident to your warehouse and the four men?”

  “One hell of an accident,” he rumbled.

  I explained:

  “Noonan didn’t know you were using the joint. He went there thinking it empty, just to clear the way for a job in town. Your men shot first, and then he really th
ought he had stumbled into Thaler’s hideout. When he found he’d been stepping in your puddle he lost his head and touched the place off.”

  Thaler was watching me with a hard small smile in eyes and mouth. Reno was all dull stolidity. Elihu Willsson was leaning toward me, his old eyes sharp and wary. I don’t know what Noonan was doing. I couldn’t afford to look at him. I was in a good spot if I played my hand right, and in a terrible one if I didn’t.

  “The men, they get paid for taking chances,” Pete the Finn said. “For the other, twenty-five grand will make it right.”

  Noonan spoke quickly, eagerly:

  “All right, Pete, all right, I’ll give it to you.”

  I pushed my lips together to keep from laughing at the panic in his voice.

  I could look at him safely now. He was licked, broken, willing to do anything to save his fat neck, or to try to. I looked at him.

  He wouldn’t look at me. He sat down and looked at nobody. He was busy trying to look as if he didn’t expect to be carved apart before he got away from these wolves to whom I had handed him.

  I went on with the work, turning to Elihu Willsson:

  “Do you want to squawk about your bank being knocked over, or do you like it?”

  Max Thaler touched my arm and suggested:

  “We could tell better maybe who’s entitled to beef if you’d give us what you’ve got first.”

  I was glad to.

  “Noonan wanted to nail you,” I told him, “but he either got word, or expected to get word, from Yard and Willsson here to let you alone. So he thought if he had the bank looted and framed you for it, your backers would ditch you, and let him go after you right. Yard, I understand, was supposed to put his O.K. on all the capers in town. You’d be cutting into his territory, and gypping Willsson. That’s how it would look. And that was supposed to make them hot enough that they’d help Noonan cop you. He didn’t know you were here.

  “Reno and his mob were in the can. Reno was Yard’s pup, but he didn’t mind crossing up his headman. He already had the idea that he was about ready to take the burg away from Lew.” I turned to Reno and asked: “Isn’t that it?”

  He looked at me woodenly and said:

  “You’re telling it.”