Red Harvest Read online

  The secretary’s mouth and eyes popped wide.

  “What time did you leave Donald Willsson last night?” I asked.

  “You mean night before last, the night he was killed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “At precisely half-past nine.”

  “You were with him from five o’clock till then?”

  “From a quarter after five. We went over some statements and that sort of thing in his office until nearly eight o’clock. Then we went to Bayard’s and finished our business over our dinners. He left at half-past nine, saying he had an engagement.”

  “What else did he say about this engagement?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “Didn’t give you any hint of where he was going, who he was going to meet?”

  “He merely said he had an engagement.”

  “And you didn’t know anything about it?”

  “No. Why? Did you think I did?”

  “I thought he might have said something.” I switched back to tonight’s doings: “What visitors did Willsson have today, not counting the one he shot?”

  “You’ll have to pardon me,” the secretary said, smiling apologetically, “I can’t tell you that without Mr. Willsson’s permission. I’m sorry.”

  “Weren’t some of the local powers here? Say Lew Yard, or—”

  The secretary shook his head, repeating:

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We won’t fight over it,” I said, giving it up and starting back toward the bedroom door.

  The doctor came out, buttoning his overcoat.

  “He will sleep now,” he said hurriedly. “Someone should stay with him. I shall be in in the morning.” He ran downstairs.

  I went into the bedroom. The chief and the man who had questioned Willsson were standing by the bed. The chief grinned as if he were glad to see me. The other man scowled. Willsson was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.

  “That’s about all there is here,” Noonan said. “What say we mosey along?”

  I agreed and said, “Good-night,” to the old man. He said, “Good-night,” without looking at me. The secretary came in with the chauffeur, a tall sunburned young husky.

  The chief, the other sleuth—a police lieutenant named McGraw—and I went downstairs and got into the chief’s car. McGraw sat beside the driver. The chief and I sat in back.

  “We’ll make the pinch along about daylight,” Noonan explained as we rode. “Whisper’s got a joint over on King Street. He generally leaves there along about daylight. We could crash the place, but that’d mean gun-play, and it’s just as well to take it easy. We’ll pick him up when he leaves.”

  I wondered if he meant pick him up or pick him off. I asked:

  “Got enough on him to make the rap stick?”

  “Enough?” He laughed good-naturedly. “If what the Willsson dame give us ain’t enough to stretch him I’m a pickpocket.”

  I thought of a couple of wisecrack answers to that. I kept them to myself.

  6

  WHISPER’S JOINT

  Our ride ended under a line of trees in a dark street not far from the center of town. We got out of the car and walked down to the corner.

  A burly man in a gray overcoat, with a gray hat pulled down over his eyes, came to meet us.

  “Whisper’s hep,” the burly man told the chief. “He phoned Donohoe that he’s going to stay in his joint. If you think you can pull him out, try it, he says.”

  Noonan chuckled, scratched an ear, and asked pleasantly:

  “How many would you say was in there with him?”

  “Fifty, anyhow.”

  “Aw, now! There wouldn’t be that many, not at this time of morning.”

  “The hell there wouldn’t,” the burly man snarled. “They been drifting in since midnight.”

  “Is that so? A leak somewheres. Maybe you oughtn’t to have let them in.”

  “Maybe I oughtn’t.” The burly man was angry. “But I did what you told me. You said let anybody go in or out that wanted to, but when Whisper showed to—”

  “To pinch him,” the chief said.

  “Well, yes,” the burly man agreed, looking savagely at me.

  More men joined us and we held a talk-fest. Everybody was in a bad humor except the chief. He seemed to enjoy it all. I didn’t know why.

  Whisper’s joint was a three-story brick building in the middle of the block, between two two-story buildings. The ground floor of his joint was occupied by a cigar store that served as entrance and cover for the gambling establishment upstairs. Inside, if the burly man’s information was to be depended on, Whisper had collected half a hundred friends, loaded for a fight. Outside, Noonan’s force was spread around the building, in the street in front, in the alley in back, and on the adjoining roofs.

  “Well, boys,” the chief said amiably after everybody had had his say, “I don’t reckon Whisper wants trouble any more than we do, or he’d have tried to shoot his way out before this, if he’s got that many with him, though I don’t mind saying I don’t think he has—not that many.”

  The burly man said: “The hell he ain’t.”

  “So if he don’t want trouble,” Noonan went on, “maybe talking might do some good. You run over, Nick, and see if you can’t argue him into being peaceable.”

  The burly man said: “The hell I will.”

  “Phone him, then,” the chief suggested.

  The burly man growled: “That’s more like it,” and went away.

  When he came back he looked completely satisfied.

  “He says,” he reported, “‘Go to hell.’”

  “Get the rest of the boys down here,” Noonan said cheerfully. “We’ll knock it over as soon as it gets light.”

  The burly Nick and I went around with the chief while he made sure his men were properly placed. I didn’t think much of them—a shabby, shifty-eyed crew without enthusiasm for the job ahead of them.

  The sky became a faded gray. The chief, Nick, and I stopped in a plumber’s doorway diagonally across the street from our target.

  Whisper’s joint was dark, the upper windows blank, blinds down over cigar store windows and door.

  “I hate to start this without giving Whisper a chance,” Noonan said. “He’s not a bad kid. But there’s no use me trying to talk to him. He never did like me much.”

  He looked at me. I said nothing.

  “You wouldn’t want to make a stab at it?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll try it.”

  “That’s fine of you. I’ll certainly appreciate it if you will. You just see if you can talk him into coming along without any fuss. You know what to say—for his own good and all that, like it is.”

  “Yeah,” I said and walked across to the cigar store, taking pains to let my hands be seen swinging empty at my sides.

  Day was still a little way off. The street was the color of smoke. My feet made a lot of noise on the pavement.

  I stopped in front of the door and knocked the glass with a knuckle, not heavily. The green blind down inside the door made a mirror of the glass. In it I saw two men moving up the other side of the street.

  No sound came from inside. I knocked harder, then slid my hand down to rattle the knob.

  Advice came from indoors:

  “Get away from there while you’re able.”

  It was a muffled voice, but not a whisper, so probably not Whisper’s.

  “I want to talk to Thaler,” I said.

  “Go talk to the lard-can that sent you.”

  “I’m not talking for Noonan. Is Thaler where he can hear me?”

  A pause. Then the muffled voice said: “Yes.”

  “I’m the Continental op who tipped Dinah Brand off that Noonan was framing you,” I said. “I want five minutes’ talk with you. I’ve got nothing to do with Noonan except to queer his racket. I’m alone. I’ll drop my rod in the street if you say so. Let me in.”

  I waited. It depended on whether the girl had got to
him with the story of my interview with her. I waited what seemed a long time.

  The muffled voice said:

  “When we open, come in quick. And no stunts.”

  “All set.”

  The latch clicked. I plunged in with the door.

  Across the street a dozen guns emptied themselves. Glass shot from door and windows tinkled around us.

  Somebody tripped me. Fear gave me three brains and half a dozen eyes. I was in a tough spot. Noonan had slipped me a pretty dose. These birds couldn’t help thinking I was playing his game.

  I tumbled down, twisting around to face the door. My gun was in my hand by the time I hit the floor.

  Across the street, burly Nick had stepped out of a doorway to pump slugs at us with both hands.

  I steadied my gun-arm on the floor. Nick’s body showed over the front sight. I squeezed the gun. Nick stopped shooting. He crossed his guns on his chest and went down in a pile on the sidewalk.

  Hands on my ankles dragged me back. The floor scraped pieces off my chin. The door slammed shut. Some comedian said:

  “Uh-huh, people don’t like you.”

  I sat up and shouted through the racket:

  “I wasn’t in on this.”

  The shooting dwindled, stopped. Door and window blinds were dotted with gray holes. A husky whisper said in the darkness:

  “Tod, you and Slats keep an eye on things down here. The rest of us might as well go upstairs.”

  We went through a room behind the store, into a passageway, up a flight of carpeted steps, and into a second-story room that held a green table banked for crap-shooting. It was a small room, had no windows, and the lights were on.

  There were five of us. Thaler sat down and lit a cigarette, a small dark young man with a face that was pretty in a chorusman way until you took another look at the thin hard mouth. An angular blond kid of no more than twenty in tweeds sprawled on his back on a couch and blew cigarette smoke at the ceiling. Another boy, as blond and as young, but not so angular, was busy straightening his scarlet tie, smoothing his yellow hair. A thin-faced man of thirty with little or no chin under a wide loose mouth wandered up and down the room looking bored and humming Rosy Cheeks.

  I sat in a chair two or three feet from Thaler’s.

  “How long is Noonan going to keep this up?” he asked. There was no emotion in his hoarse whispering voice, only a shade of annoyance.

  “He’s after you this trip,” I said. “I think he’s going through with it.”

  The gambler smiled a thin, contemptuous smile.

  “He ought to know what a swell chance he’s got of hanging a one-legged rap like that on me.”

  “He’s not figuring on proving anything in court,” I said.

  “No?”

  “You’re to be knocked off resisting arrest, or trying to make a get-away. He won’t need much of a case after that.”

  “He’s getting tough in his old age.” The thin lips curved in another smile. He didn’t seem to think much of the fat chief’s deadliness. “Any time he rubs me out I deserve rubbing. What’s he got against you?”

  “He’s guessed I’m going to make a nuisance of myself.”

  “Too bad. Dinah told me you were a pretty good guy, except kind of Scotch with the roll.”

  “I had a nice visit. Will you tell me what you know about Donald Willsson’s killing?”

  “His wife plugged him.”

  “You saw her?”

  “I saw her the next second—with the gat in her hand.”

  “That’s no good to either of us,” I said. “I don’t know how far you’ve got it cooked. Rigged right, you could make it stick in court, maybe, but you’ll not get a chance to make your play there. If Noonan takes you at all he’ll take you stiff. Give me the straight of it. I only need that to pop the job.”

  He dropped his cigarette on the floor, mashed it under his foot, and asked:

  “You that hot?”

  “Give me your slant on it and I’m ready to make the pinch—if I can get out of here.”

  He lit another cigarette and asked:

  “Mrs. Willsson said it was me that phoned her?”

  “Yeah—after Noonan had persuaded her. She believes it now—maybe.”

  “You dropped Big Nick,” he said. “I’ll take a chance on you. A man phoned me that night. I don’t know him, don’t know who he was. He said Willsson had gone to Dinah’s with a check for five grand. What the hell did I care? But, see, it was funny somebody I didn’t know cracked it to me. So I went around. Dan stalled me away from the door. That was all right. But still it was funny as hell that guy phoned me.

  “I went up the street and took a plant in a vestibule. I saw Mrs. Willsson’s heap standing in the street, but I didn’t know then that it was hers or that she was in it. He came out pretty soon and walked down the street. I didn’t see the shots. I heard them. Then this woman jumps out of the heap and runs over to him. I knew she hadn’t done the shooting. I ought to have beat it. But it was all funny as hell, so when I saw the woman was Willsson’s wife I went over to them, trying to find out what it was all about. That was a break, see? So I had to make an out for myself, in case something slipped. I strung the woman. That’s the whole damned works—on the level.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’s what I came for. Now the trick is to get out of here without being mowed down.”

  “No trick at all,” Thaler assured me. “We go any time we want to.”

  “I want to now. If I were you, I’d go too. You’ve got Noonan pegged as a false-alarm, but why take a chance? Make the sneak and keep under cover till noon, and his frame-up will be a wash-out.”

  Thaler put his hand in his pants pocket and brought out a fat roll of paper money. He counted off a hundred or two, some fifties, twenties, tens, and held them out to the chinless man, saying:

  “Buy us a get-away, Jerry, and you don’t have to give anybody any more dough than he’s used to.”

  Jerry took the money, picked up a hat from the table, and strolled out. Half an hour later he returned and gave some of the bills back to Thaler, saying casually:

  “We wait in the kitchen till we get the office.”

  We went down to the kitchen. It was dark there. More men joined us.

  Jerry opened the door and we went down three steps into the back yard. It was almost full daylight. There were ten of us in the party.

  “This all?” I asked Thaler.

  He nodded.

  “Nick said there were fifty of you.”

  “Fifty of us to stand off that crummy force!” he sneered.

  A uniformed copper held the back gate open, muttering nervously:

  “Hurry it up, boys, please.”

  I was willing to hurry, but nobody else paid any attention to him.

  We crossed an alley, were beckoned through another gate by a big man in brown, passed through a house, out into the next street, and climbed into a black automobile that stood at the curb.

  One of the blond boys drove. He knew what speed was.

  I said I wanted to be dropped off somewhere in the neighborhood of the Great Western Hotel. The driver looked at Whisper, who nodded. Five minutes later I got out in front of my hotel.

  “See you later,” the gambler whispered, and the car slid away.

  The last I saw of it was its police department license plate vanishing around a corner.

  7

  THAT’S WHY

  SEWED YOU UP

  It was half-past five. I walked around a few blocks until I came to an unlighted electric sign that said Hotel Crawford, climbed a flight of steps to the second-floor office, registered, left a call for ten o’clock, was shown into a shabby room, moved some of the Scotch from my flask to my stomach, and took old Elihu’s ten-thousand-dollar check and my gun to bed with me.

  At ten I dressed, went up to the First National Bank, found young Albury, and asked him to certify Willsson’s check for me. He kept me waiting a while. I suppose he phoned
the old man’s residence to find out if the check was on the up-and-up. Finally he brought it back to me, properly scribbled on.

  I sponged an envelope, put the old man’s letter and check in it, addressed it to the Agency in San Francisco, stuck a stamp on it, and went out and dropped it in the mail-box on the corner.

  Then I returned to the bank and said to the boy:

  “Now tell me why you killed him.”

  He smiled and asked:

  “Cock Robin or President Lincoln?”

  “You’re not going to admit off-hand that you killed Donald Willsson?”

  “I don’t want to be disagreeable,” he said, still smiling, “but I’d rather not.”

  “That’s going to make it bad,” I complained. “We can’t stand here and argue very long without being interrupted. Who’s the stout party with cheaters coming this way?”

  The boy’s face pinkened. He said:

  “Mr. Dritton, the cashier.”

  “Introduce me.”

  The boy looked uncomfortable, but he called the cashier’s name. Dritton—a large man with a smooth pink face, a fringe of white hair around an otherwise bald pink head, and rimless nose glasses—came over to us.

  The assistant cashier mumbled the introductions. I shook Dritton’s hand without losing sight of the boy.

  “I was just saying,” I addressed Dritton, “that we ought to have a more private place to talk in. He probably won’t confess till I’ve worked on him a while, and I don’t want everybody in the bank to hear me yelling at him.”

  “Confess?” The cashier’s tongue showed between his lips.

  “Sure.” I kept my face, voice and manner bland, mimicking Noonan. “Didn’t you know that Albury is the fellow who killed Donald Willsson?”

  A polite smile at what he thought an asinine joke started behind the cashier’s glasses, and changed to puzzlement when he looked at his assistant. The boy was rouge-red and the grin he was forcing his mouth to wear was a terrible thing.