The roads end, p.10
The Road's End, page 10
But her hysteria made even that kind of kiss the match that lit the fuse. She wrapped her smooth, cool arms around my neck and clutched at my back.
I pulled away from her, then, my stomach quivering. She came after me. She pressed her hungry mouth over mine. My head whirled. She leaned away from me, her eyes shut tight. Her hands worked at snaps in the side of her bodice. With one swift, shrugging motion, she pulled it down to her waist. She threw her arms wide across the top of the seat, her head hanging back, her eyes still closed. "Love me!" she said through clenched teeth. Her small, conical breasts rose and fell shakily.
I looked at her, her young face drawn with some inner agony that wrenched at her shut eyes, and in that instant my whole body suddenly began to shake. I seemed to wake from a trance. My insides twisted painfully with the effort of fighting the desire to bury my face between those breasts. Instead, I tasted bitterness in my throat and mouth. I wrenched back from her.
"No!" I blurted. "That party's off. You're just a kid and I can't do it. This way you'd never get over it. O.K., so take the car the hell back to Bridesport, if you want. Or anywhere. It's no good this way."
Her eyes blinked open with shock that registered across her freckled face. She stared at me uncomprehendingly. Then her arms slowly crossed protectively over her chest. Abruptly she leaned forward against the steering wheel and had a good cry.
I let her. I sat there in the dark and listened to her. confused and miserable. She finally stopped, her head still lowered as though I had hit her.
"Don't worry about yourself so much," I said to the back of her bowed head. "You're all right. Be yourself and stop trying to be Elsie Daniels. Look where it got her. She's dead. But you're still alive. One of these days you'll meet the right guy, a guy you really care for instead of someone you're just using, like me. And you'll fall so hard you'll know how silly you were to ever worry."
Her head came up slowly, and when she looked at me this time I was surprised to see a half-smile on her tear-wet face. She rubbed one hand across her eyes, her arms still folded protectively.
"You're a nice guy, Danny," she said, unexpectedly. "I figured you out all wrong. You're a really nice guy." My laugh was an embarrassed one.
"C'mon," she said suddenly, sitting up and working at the fastening of her bodice with still trembling hands. "Let's get back to Sunbridge. I've got to do something tonight, and it might as well be losing my money!"
She let me drive on the way back to Sunbridge. She lay against me, quietly, and after a while she began softly to whistle.
I parked where she told me. We got out and I took my jacket from the back seat. After a moment's thought, when Grace was looking away, I opened the front door and slipped my gun into the glove compartment. I didn't want any of the characters in the club to feel it on me. Not till I knew what I was going to do with it.
We walked down the street to a darkened movie house. Grace looked up and down the street with exaggerated caution before leading me up the dark alley along its steep brick side. There was a door at the end of the alley. No sound came from inside. Grace hugged me and pushed at the bell-two long pushes, one short, one long.
I didn't hear responding rings. The bell might have been disconnected, but it wasn't. The door opened part way.
Brutal, Clef's bodyguard, appeared, blocking most of the light coming from behind him. He started a growl when he recognized me, but then he saw Grace, and changed the growl into an attempted smile. His smile was just an opening in his blank face.
"How'reya, Miss Stewart," he said. "Hi, Mistah Ginger."
He closed the door behind us and watched Grace lead me up a thickly carpeted stairway to another door. It swung open as we reached it. I looked back down the steps. Brutal had his thick finger pressed to a wall button.
I followed Grace through a curtained foyer, the sounds of chattering, excited men and women reaching through the curtains at us. There was a door to my left, near the door we'd just come through. It was marked: "Private." Two doors on my right were marked: "His" and "Hers." Cute.
Grace parted the curtains and I followed her into a long, narrow room crowded with well-dressed people.
The room was dim except for cones of sharp, yellow light that hung over green-felt-covered crap and blackjack tables and over a big roulette setup at one end. A bar filled the other end of the long room. Slot machines lined one of the lone walls. Everything was solidly in business.
We bought our chips at a booth near the curtains. I didn't get many. "I'll come back for more if I need them," I explained to Grace. "But I don't think I will. I feel lucky."
She wrinkled her nose lovingly at me. "So do I. But I felt that way last night, too. Come on, let's try shooting craps first."
We jammed in among players surrounding one table. Their faces shone with excitement. I caught it too. The room was conducive to it. After this, nobody would be satisfied with bare rooms over bars, however legal. A fat woman who shouldn't have been wearing a low-necked gown was riding high with the dice. We bet with her and won through four straight passes, letting our winnings ride. Then she sevened out. But Grace and I were out only our original ten-dollar bets.
Grace got the dice. "Kiss me for luck, Danny." I felt embarrassed, but none of the other players seemed to notice. Their eyes were on the table. Grace shook the dice hard and tossed them out. She rolled a ten and made it. I bet with her. Next she rolled a seven. Then another. Her face was alight with happy tension. She-nudged me. "Isn't this great? They've got a room for horse and dog betting, too, through that door." She pointed to a door near the bar. She rolled a six and made it in two passes. "Oh, Lady Luck is with me tonight, baby," she breathed. She tossed eleven. I took out most of my winnings, ninety dollars, but Grace pouted at me and let hers ride. She sevened and stuck out her tongue at me. I put the ninety dollars on No Pass and grinned at her. The excitement had me, too, for the moment. Then I thought of Pat, waiting for me at home-and Fisher, searching for me.
The gambling fever in me ebbed. Grace sevened out. I collected my chips. "Grace, I'll be back in a little while. Gotta go to the 'His' room." Grace was too absorbed in the game to do more than nod without looking up. I went over to the booth and cashed my chips.
I strolled leisurely back through the curtains into the foyer. My nerves were jittery. I wasn't sure I was doing this right. I probably wasn't but hell, I had to do it anyway. It wouldn't be too long before Fisher's alarm caught up with me. I put my ear to the door marked "Private." I couldn't hear a sound.
Breathing heavily, I put my hand on the knob and took a chance. It was a mistake.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There was a neat, white-haired man inside, seated under the light of a desk lamp, the only light on in the dim, windowless, paneled office. It was Clef. He was making notes in a big book on the desk. He looked up when I barged in, surprised. He didn't rise. He put his pen down and laid his small hands flat on top of the desk.
"Ginger," he stated without anger, his foxlike face intent on me, "that door's marked 'Private.' "
I closed the door and walked over to his desk, treading carefully, not sure of myself. "I know it," I said. "I want to talk to you."
He looked warily at me. "You're supposed to have amnesia. So how did you remember this place?"
"It was pointed out to me. Did I come here often, before?"
"Few times. Last time you walked out with a wad. You got a knack of picking up your dough just before the play goes against you. You can't figure the nags, though." Then he remembered I'd barged in. "Whaddya want in here?"
"Questions. I want to ask some. To help clear up my memory on a few points."
"What points?" His foxy eyes were slitted now. I tried to keep my face as stoic and knowing as his. The truth was that I didn't know what I wanted to ask, exactly.
I thought there was some connection between big money muscling into the county and three murders that were now pinned on me. All I could do was throw out buckshot and hope I hit something.
"First of all…" I started. But I stopped when the door opened behind me.
I turned in time to see three dark-suited plug-uglies file in, slam the door shut, and deploy around me like well-trained artillery. On of them was Brutal. The other two were smaller, but in their own gruesome ways they looked as deadly as Brutal. One was short, with a face and body as lean as a knife edge. The other was a twitchy-nervous kid in his teens, with bloodshot eyes in a flaccid gray face and a nagging need for another shot of dope. Knife Edge glanced at me without motion, then at the white-haired man behind the desk. "Beaver says you buzzed him, Clef?"
He nodded at his bully boys, smiling a fatherly smile. "Yes. Just stick around. Mr. Ginger here wants to ask me some questions, he says. I might not like them."
He nodded at me, sweetly. "Ask away, Mr. Ginger."
The menaces behind me shook my nerve, but there was nothing I could do now but plunge ahead. I pitched one, blindfolded, not knowing if he knew about Jeff's death yet: "How much money does my partner, Jeff Hull, owe you?"
"Your late partner. He lost heavily here over the past three months." Clef rapped his knuckles on the book before him. "He gave us his notes for twenty-four hundred dollars. He paid us one thousand of it five days ago. He still owes us fourteen hundred. So if you've come here trying to pin his murder on us, you know how foolish that is. His death leaves us out on a limb with his debt. Unless, of course, you've come here to square it for him, as his business partner?"
That answered two questions for me. One, Clef knew Jeff was dead. Two, he didn't know Fisher had me pegged for killing him. It also gave me some new ideas. I fished deeper, pushing my luck.
"Here's what I think, Clef old boy. I think you let Jeff go that deep into debt to you so you could get your hooks into our place and muscle into Bridesport. I wouldn't play' ball, of course, so you tried to kill me. I was with Elsie Daniels, so you had to kill her, too. But with me out of the way Jeff was able to take all the money from our business that he wanted. He was afraid to play ball with you and get Mack Fisher on his tail. So he started paying you off. Only I came back. Then he wasn't able to finish paying what he owed you, and he was still too scared to play ball with you. So you came to Bridesport and killed him-after making him hand over yesterday's receipts from our safe. That way, at least, you got back the money he owed you."
Clef showed no reaction other than a slight tightening of his handsome jaw. "You're way off base, Ginger."
I tried to pry more of a reaction out of his stubborn face. "You're a murderer!" I yelled. "If you didn't pay off Jeff's debt with our money today, let me see what you have under his name in that book you were writing in when I came through that door!" I lunged for the book.
Clef's palms slapped down on the book at the same instant that a weight like a charging tank slammed against the side of my head. I was spun around like a top, my spine crashing into the edge of the desk. I toppled to my knees. I sagged forward, my hands gripping the heaving floor. I held on till the roaring in my head died down. Then I looked up.
Brutal's face was broken by a wide, pleased grin. He had backhanded me. Blood flooded the insides of my eyeballs; hate flooded me, focusing on him. In a way it felt very satisfactory. I had been looking for such a focus for three days, and Jeff hadn't been a good one.
I staggered to my feet, holding my head. Clef's unperturbed voice sounded behind me. "Did he come in with anybody, Will?"
"Yeah," Brutal told him. "With that Stewart girl."
"Then don't hit him again unless I say so."
I turned to face Clef. "Thanks," I said, "you louse." His mouth drew into a narrow band of dislike. "You're in luck, Ginger. But don't push it too far. The Stewarts are very important people in this county. I don't want the girl to start shooting off her mouth about your getting beat up here. So I advise you to get her and head back to Bridesport-right now. And don't come back here. I don't like the direction of your conversation."
He stood up and glared at me. I pasted a sneer on my face. "If that truck behind me hits me again," I told him. "Mack Fisher will get this address before the morning."
Clef leaned on that book on his desk and shoved his chin at me. "Get this straight, Ginger. I don't want trouble with you, especially with Grace Stewart here. But Fisher found the last place we started. He closed it. But we're still in business, at a new stand. You open your trap to him, or you make more trouble here, and you won't open your trap again. The only thing that's saving you now is that we don't want the expense of moving again. Now get out!"
I went, moving warily past his three lieutenants. They all looked sorry to see me go. I slammed the office door and stood outside in the foyer a second, hesitating. Then I opened the door at the top of the stairs.
I hurried out of the alley and up the street to Grace's car. I sat in the front seat for a while, staring ahead at nothing. Someone had killed a girl I was with. Someone had killed my friend Jim Brill. Someone had killed my partner. Someone had beaten the past out of my brain. And at last I had an outlet for my formless, expanding anger: the four mobsters above the movie house. And because I feared Brutal most, I hated him most.
I opened the glove compartment and took out my gun. I put it in my jacket pocket. There was a long, three-battery flashlight in the glove compartment. I took it, too, and hefted it as I got out of the car. It was heavy.
Standing before the alley door this time, I remembered how Grace had rung the bell. I pushed it the same way: two long, one short, one long. I braced my right leg back. The tightly grasped flashlight formed one long, rigid bar with my hand and arm. I started swinging it with all my strength in a sweeping, overhanded arc as the door opened. The end of the flashlight crashed down on Brutal's head before he even saw me. It jolted my arm clear up to the shoulder. The flashlight bent and broke apart in my hand.
Brutal dropped to his hands and knees the way I had from his backhanded slap. I dropped the remains of the flashlight and took out my gun. I reversed it and slammed the butt into the back of his sagging, massive head. He keeled over onto his side and lay there like a dead sea lion.
I stepped inside, over his body, and closed the door. I found the wall button and jabbed it. The door at the top of the stairs swung open. I was up the steps and inside the foyer before it could swing closed again. I pointed my gun, curled my finger around the trigger, and crashed into the office, slamming the door shut behind me.
Clef was back at his desk, making notes in that book. Before the look of surprise was fully formed on his face, I was across the room, swinging my gun. Its barrel collided with his temple. He fell over backward, taking die chair with him. I walked around behind the desk. He lay on his face, his legs tangled in the legs of the chair. He was unconscious, which was the way I wanted him. No buzzers bringing bully boys.
With Brutal lying at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for someone to find him, I knew I had to work fast. I leafed through the book on the desk. It was a listing of people who owed the club gambling debts. The names were listed in alphabetical order, with the amount owed, the date of the debt, and the date of payments. I leafed through till I came to the H's. "Hull, J." was at the top of a left-hand page.
Under "Owed," there was "12,400." There was a "Paid: $1,000" under the date five days before. There was a blank space for more payments, but no more payments. I paused, stumped. But perhaps they had taken the money from our safe, and hadn't marked it in yet. I sifted through a small mound of paper slips by the book. There were notes of debts, personal I.O.U.'s, and canceled debts, but nothing about Jeff.
I knelt on the floor beside Clef, placing my gun carefully on the floor, and went through his pockets, after removing a gun from his shoulder holster. He had a lot of money on him, identification as Verne Clef, and a New York driver's license, but nothing about Jeff.
I picked up my gun and got to my feet, disgusted. I kicked his gun across the floor and glanced back at the open book. Then I froze, looking at a name at the bottom of the right-hand page. It was "Kane, Burt." Our blackjack dealer. There were many small, mounting debts listed at various dates. The most recent one, two nights before, brought the total to 11,645. And the notation under "Paid" was "pending services."
Burt Kane! My fishing expedition was bringing in unexpected fish. I remembered that time was slipping by, every second here was more dangerous than the past one. I grabbed the book, closed it, and slipped it under my left arm. My gun ready, I opened the door and stepped out into the empty, curtained foyer. I thought about Grace, still inside, gambling. Undecided, I opened the door and sneaked a look down the stairs. Brutal was up on his hands and knees, his huge head swinging back and forth in a groggy rhythm.
I hesitated a fraction of a second too long. The door marked "His" swung open and the knife-edged bully boy came out. He saw me. I swung the muzzle of my gun toward him, but his foot was faster. The point of his sharp black shoe cracked against my wrist. My agonized hand opened limply, spilling its gun down the whole flight of carpeted stairs. Knife Edge turned away from me. I lunged for him. He spun back toward me as I lunged, pulling a long, rubbery blackjack from inside his jacket.
The blackjack hit me across the forehead just as my fingertips reached him. A jolting blaze of pain broke the inside of my head apart, popped my eyes almost out of their sockets. I forgot about Knife Edge and turned to walk down the stairs. Only I couldn't see any stairs. Only a deep, dark well down which I plunged, rolling over and over. I could see when I got to the bottom. I could see two huge trunks of legs in dark trousers. I could see a monstrously oversize black shoe draw back and come forward against my temple. I lay on my back and sighed brokenly. Something thudded into my ribs. But that was far away-and getting farther.
