Crime Stories Page 38

  I took a step toward him. He sprang away, across the room.

  “Aw, I didn’t mean nothin’. I was only kid-din’!”

  “Shut up and sit down,” I advised him.

  I had known this Porky Grout for three years, and had been using him for nearly that long, and I didn’t know a single thing that could be said in his favor. He was a coward. He was a liar. He was a thief, and a hop-head. He was a traitor to his kind and, if not watched, to his employers. A nice bird to deal with! But detecting is a hard business, and you use whatever tools come to hand. This Porky was an effective tool if handled right, which meant keeping your hand on his throat all the time and checking up every piece of information he brought in.

  His cowardice was—for my purpose—his greatest asset. It was notorious throughout the criminal Coast; and though nobody—crook or not—could possibly think him a man to be trusted, nevertheless he was not actually distrusted. Most of his fellows thought him too much the coward to be dangerous; they thought he would be afraid to betray them; afraid of the summary vengeance that crookdom visits upon the squealer. But they didn’t take into account Porky’s gift for convincing himself that he was a lion-hearted fellow, when no danger was near. So he went freely where he desired and where I sent him, and brought me otherwise unobtainable bits of information.

  For nearly three years I had used him with considerable success, paying him well, and keeping him under my heel. Informant was the polite word that designated him in my reports; the underworld has even less lovely names than the common stool-pigeon to denote his kind.

  “I have a job for you,” I told him, now that he was seated again, with his feet on the floor. His loose mouth twitched up at the left corner, pushing that eye into a knowing squint. “I thought so.” He always says something like that.

  “I want you to go down to Halfmoon Bay and stick around Tin-Star Joplin’s joint for a few nights. Here are two photos”—sliding one of Pangburn and one of the girl across the table. “Their names and descriptions are written on the backs. I want to know if either of them shows up down there, what they’re doing, and where they’re hanging out. It may be that Tin- Star is covering them up.”

  Porky was looking knowingly from one picture to the other. “I think I know this guy,” he said out of the corner of his mouth that twitches. That’s another thing about Porky. You can’t mention a name or give a description that won’t bring that same remark, even though you make them up.

  “Here’s some money.” I slid some bills across the table. “If you’re down there more than a couple of nights. I’ll get some more to you. Keep in touch with me, either over this phone or the under-cover one at the office. And—remember this—lay off the stuff! If I come down there and find you all snowed up, I promise that I’ll tip Joplin off to you.”

  He had finished counting the money by now—there wasn’t a whole lot to count—and he threw it contemptuously back on the table.

  “Save that for newspapers,” he sneered. “How am I goin’ to get anywheres if I can’t spend no money in the joint?”

  “That’s plenty for a couple of days’ expenses; you’ll probably knock back half of it. If you stay longer than a couple of days, I’ll get more to you. And you get your pay when the job is done, and not before.”

  He shook his head and got up. “I’m tired of pikin’ along with you. You can turn your own jobs. I’m through!”

  “If you don’t get down to Halfmoon Bay tonight, you are through,” I assured him, letting him get out of the threat whatever he liked.

  After a little while, of course, he took the money and left. The dispute over expense money was simply a preliminary that went with every job I sent him out on.

  After Porky had cleared out, I leaned back in my chair and burned half a dozen Fatimas over the job. The girl had gone first with the twenty thousand dollars, and then the poet had gone; and both had gone, whether permanently or not, to the White Shack. On its face, the job was an obvious affair. The girl had given Pangburn the work to the extent of having him forge a check against his brother-in-law’s account; and then, after various moves whose value I couldn’t determine at the time, they had gone into hiding together.

  There were two loose ends to be taken care of. One of them—the finding of the confederate who had mailed the letters to Pangburn and who had taken care of the girl’s baggage—was in the Baltimore branch’s hands. The other was: Who had ridden in the taxicab that I had traced from the girl’s apartment to the Marquis Hotel?

  That might not have any bearing upon the job, or it might. Suppose I could find a connection between the Marquis Hotel and the White Shack. That would make a completed chain of some sort. I searched the back of the telephone directory and found the roadhouse number. Then I went up to the Marquis Hotel. The girl on duty at the hotel switchboard, when I got there, was one with whom I had done business before. “Who’s been calling Halfmoon Bay numbers?” I asked her.

  “My God!” She leaned back in her chair and ran a pink hand gently over the front of her rigidly waved red hair. “I got enough to do without remembering every call that goes through. This ain’t a boarding-house. We have more’n one call a week.”

  “You don’t have many Halfmoon Bay calls,” I insisted, leaning an elbow on the counter and letting a folded five-spot peep out between the fingers of one hand. “You ought to remember any you’ve had lately.”

  “I’ll see,” she sighed, as if willing to do her best on a hopeless task.

  She ran through her tickets.

  “Here’s one—from room 522, a couple weeks ago.”

  “What number was called?”

  “Halfmoon Bay 51.”

  That was the roadhouse number. I passed over the five-spot.

  “Is 522 a permanent guest?”

  “Yes. Mr. Kilcourse. He’s been here three or four months.”

  “What is he?”

  “I don’t know. A perfect gentleman, if you ask me.”

  “That’s nice. What does he look like?”

  “He’s a young man, but his hair is turning gray. He’s dark and handsome. Looks like a movie actor.”

  “Bull Montana?” I asked, as I moved off toward the desk.

  The key to 522 was in its place in the rack. I sat down where I could keep an eye on it. Perhaps an hour later a clerk took it out and gave it to a man who did look somewhat like an actor. He was a man of thirty or so, with dark skin, and dark hair that showed gray around the ears. He stood a good six feet of fashionably dressed slenderness.

  Carrying the key, he disappeared into an elevator.

  I called up the agency then and asked the Old Man to send Dick Foley over. Ten minutes later Dick arrived. He’s a little shrimp of a Canadian—there isn’t a hundred and ten pounds of him—who is the smoothest shadow I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen most of them.

  “I have a bird in here I want tailed,” I told Dick. “His name is Kilcourse and he’s in room 522. Stick around outside, and I’ll give you the spot on him.” I went back to the lobby and waited some more.

  At eight o’clock Kilcourse came down and left the hotel. I went after him for half a block-far enough to turn him over to Dick—and then went home, so that I would be within reach of a telephone if Porky Grout tried to get in touch with me. No call came from him that night.

  When I arrived at the agency the next morning, Dick was waiting for me. “What luck?” I asked.

  “Damnedest!” The little Canadian talks like a telegram when his peace of mind is disturbed, and just now he was decidedly peevish. “Took me two blocks. Shook me. Only taxi in sight.”

  “Think he made you?”

  “No. Wise head. Playing safe.”

  “Try him again, then. Better have a car handy, in case he tries the same trick again.”

  My telephone jingled as Dick was going out. It was Porky Grout, talking over the agency’s unlisted line. “Turn up anything?” I asked.

  “Plenty,” he bragged.

&nbs
p; “Good! Are you in town?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll meet you in my rooms in twenty minutes,” I said.

  The pasty-faced informant was fairly bloated with pride in himself when he came through the door I had left unlocked for him. His swagger was almost a Cakewalk; and the side of his mouth that twitches was twisted into a knowing leer that would have fit a Solomon.

  “I knocked it over for you, kid,” he boasted. “Nothin’ to it—for me! I went down there and talked to ever’body that knowed anything, seen ever’thing there was to see, and put the X-rays on the whole dump. I made a—”

  “Uh-huh,” I interrupted.

  “Congratulations and so forth. But just what did you turn up?”

  “Now le’me tell you.” He raised a dirty hand in a traffic-cop sort of gesture. “Don’t crowd me. I’ll give you all the dope.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I know. You’re great, and I’m lucky to have you to knock off my jobs for me, and all that! But is Pangburn down there?”

  “I’m gettin’ around to that. I went down there and—”

  “Did you see Pangburn?”

  “As I was savin’, I went down there and—”

  “Porky,” I said, “I don’t give a damn what you did! Did you see Pangburn?”

  “Yes. I seen him.”

  “Fine! Now what did you see?”

  “He’s camping down there with Tin-Star. Him and the broad that you give me a picture of are both there. She’s been there a month. I didn’t see her, but one of the waiters told me about her. I seen Pangburn myself. They don’t show themselves much—stick back in Tin-Star’s part of the joint—where he lives—most of the time. Pangburn’s been there since Sunday. I went down there and—”

  “Learn who the girl is? Or anything about what they’re up to?”

  “No. I went down there and—”

  “All right! Went down there again tonight. Call me up as soon as you know positively Pangburn is there—that he hasn’t gone out. Don’t make any mistakes. I don’t want to come down there and scare them up on a false alarm. Use the agency’s under-cover line, and just tell whoever answers that you won’t be in town until late. That’ll mean that Pangburn is there; and it’ll let you call up from Joplin’s without giving the play away.”

  “I got to have more dough,” he said, as he got up. “It costs—”

  “I’ll file your application,” I promised. “Now beat it, and let me hear from you tonight, the minute you’re sure Pangburn is there.”

  Then I went up to Axford’s office. “I think I have a line on him,” I told the millionaire. “I hope to have him where you can talk to him tonight. My man says he was at the White Shack last night, and is probably living there. If he’s there tonight, I’ll take you down, if you want.”

  “Why can’t we go now?”

  “No. The place is too dead in the daytime for my man to hang around without making himself conspicuous, and I don’t want to take any chances on either you or me showing ourselves there until we’re sure we’re coming face to face with Pangburn.”

  “What do you want me to do then?”

  “Have a fast car ready tonight, and be ready to start as soon as I get word to you.”

  “Righto. I’ll be at home after five-thirty. Phone me as soon as you’re ready to go, and I’ll pick you up.”

  At nine-thirty that evening I was sitting beside Axford on the front seat of a powerfully engined foreign car, and we were roaring down a road that led to Halfmoon Bay. Porky’s telephone call had come.

  Neither of us talked much during that ride, and the imported monster under us made it a short ride. Axford sat comfortable and relaxed at the wheel, but I noticed for the first time that he had a rather heavy jaw.

  The White Shack is a large building, square-built of imitation stone. It is set away back from the road, and is approached by two curving driveways, which, together, make a semi-circle whose diameter is the public road. The center of this semi-circle is occupied by sheds under which Joplin’s patrons stow their cars, and here and there around the sheds are flower-beds and clumps of shrubbery. We were still going at a fair clip when we turned into one end of this semicircular driveway, and—

  Axford slammed on his brakes, and the big machine threw us into the windshield as it jolted into an abrupt stop—barely in time to avoid smashing into a cluster of people who had suddenly loomed up.

  In the glow of our headlights faces stood sharply out; white, horrified faces, furtive faces, faces that were callously curious. Below the faces, white arms and shoulders showed, and bright gowns and jewelry, against the duller background of masculine clothing.

  This was the first impression I got, and then, by the time I had removed my face from the windshield, I realized that this cluster of people had a core, a thing about which it centered. I stood up, trying to look over the crowd’s heads, but I could see nothing.

  Jumping down to the driveway, I pushed through the crowd.

  Face down on the white gravel a man sprawled—a thin man in dark clothes—and just above his collar, where the head and neck join, was a hole. I knelt to peer into his face. Then I pushed through the crowd again, back to where Axford was just getting out of the car, the engine of which was still running. “Pangburn is dead—shot!”

  Methodically, Axford took off his gloves, folded them and put them in a pocket. Then he nodded his understanding of what I had told him, and walked toward where the crowd stood around the dead poet. I looked after him until he had vanished in the throng. Then I went winding through the outskirts of the crowd, hunting for Porky Grout.

  I found him standing on the porch, leaning against a pillar. I passed where he could see me, and went on around to the side of the roadhouse that afforded most shadow.

  In the shadows Porky joined me. The night wasn’t cool, but his teeth were chattering. “Who got him?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know,” he whined, and that was the first thing of which I had ever known him to confess complete ignorance. “I was inside, keepin’ an eye on the others.”

  “What others?”

  “Tin-Star, and some guy I never seen before, and the broad. I didn’t think the kid was going out. He didn’t have no hat.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “A little while after I phoned you, the girl and Pangburn came out from Joplin’s part of the joint and sat down at a table around on the other side of the porch, where it’s fairly dark. They eat for a while and then this other guy comes over and sits down with ‘em. I don’t know his name, but I think I’ve saw him around town. He’s a tall guy, in fancy rags.”

  That would be Kilcourse.

  “They talk for a while and then Joplin joins ‘em. They sit around the table laughin’ and talkin’ for maybe a quarter of an hour. Then Pangburn gets up and goes indoors. I got a table that I can watch ‘em from, and the place is crowded, and I’m afraid I’ll lose my table if I leave it, so I don’t follow the kid. He ain’t got no hat; I figure he ain’t goin’ nowhere. But he must of gone through the house and out front, because pretty soon there’s a noise that I thought was a auto backfire, and then the sound of a car gettin’ away quick. And then some guy squawks that there’s a dead man outside. Ever’body runs out here, and it’s Pangburn.”

  “You dead sure that Joplin, Kilcourse and the girl were all at the table when Pangburn was killed?”

  “Absolutely,” Porky said, “if this dark guy’s name is Kilcourse.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Back in Joplin’s hang-out. They went up there as soon as they seen Pangburn had been croaked.”

  I had no illusions about Porky. I knew he was capable of selling me out and furnishing the poet’s murderer with an alibi. But there was this about it: if Joplin, Kilcourse or the girl had fixed him, and had fixed my informant, then it was hopeless for me to try to prove that they weren’t on the rear porch when the shot was fired. Joplin had a crowd of hangers-on who would swear to a
nything he told them without batting an eye. There would be a dozen supposed witnesses to their presence on the rear porch.

  Thus the only thing for me to do was to take it for granted that Porky was coming clean with me. “Have you seen Dick Foley?” I asked, since Dick had been shadowing Kilcourse.

  “No.”

  “Hunt around and see if you can find him. Tell him I’ve gone up to talk to Joplin, and tell him to come on up. Then you can stick around where I can get hold of you if I want you.”

  I went in through a French window, crossed an empty dance-floor and went up the stairs that led to Tin-Star Joplin’s living quarters in the rear second story. I knew the way, having been up there before. Joplin and I were old friends.

  I was going up now to give him and his friends a shake-down on the off-chance that some good might come of it, though I knew that I had nothing on any of them. I could have tied something on the girl, of course, but not without advertising the fact that the dead poet had forged his brother-in-law’s signature to a check. And that was no go.

  “Come in,” a heavy, familiar voice called when I rapped on Joplin’s living-room door. I pushed the door open and went in.

  Tin-Star Joplin was standing in the middle of the floor: a big-bodied ex-yegg with inordinately thick shoulders and an expressionless horse face. Beyond him Kilcourse sat dangling one leg from the corner of a table, alertness hiding behind an amused half-smile on his handsome dark face. On the other side of the room a girl whom I knew for Jeanne Delano sat on the arm of a big leather chair. And the poet hadn’t exaggerated when he told me she was beautiful.

  “You!” Joplin grunted disgustedly as soon as he recognized me. “What the hell do you want?”

  “What’ve you got?”

  My mind wasn’t on this sort of repartee, however; I was studying the girl. There was something vaguely familiar about her—but I couldn’t place her. Perhaps I hadn’t see her before; perhaps much looking at the picture Pangburn had given me was responsible for my feeling of recognition. Pictures will do that.