Poison ivy, p.14
Poison Ivy, page 14
Supposin’ I am right, then here is a first-class explanation for the letter that Willie wrote to Carlotta, the one I found in the pocket of Rudy Saltierra’s tuxedo. Willie was stuck on Carlotta an’ he was goin’ to give her the tip-off that Myras Duncan was gumshoein’ around lookin’ as if he might put his finger on somethin’ in a minute, an’ that it looked as if the best thing for Willie to do was to blow the whole gaff to Myras an’ so save his own skin. He wanted to see her that night to tell her to get out while the goin’ was good before Myras had heard the truth an’ started pinchin’ people.
Now I am beginnin’ to see what was in Duncan’s mind when he had the palaver with me down in Moksie’s bar. He didn’t know just what Willie the Goop was goin’ to come across with, but he knew he was goin’ to spill the works about something an’ so all he wanted to do was to put Willie on to me so’s I could get ahead with the business from that point.
Willie was gettin’ all stewed up about Carlotta. He knew that if he wanted to save her skin he’d got to contact her an’ tell her to scram out of it before Duncan started grillin’ people. Maybe Willie was goin’ to arrange some story with Carlotta that would explain her bein’ in on the job an’ would yet sorta let her out when it came to layin’ criminal charges.
Lookin’ at it from this angle everything sorta begins to clear itself up in my mind. At last it looks like I am seein’ a spot of daylight. The tough thing is that it looks like it is a spot too late.
While I am thinkin’ all this stuff I have got my hand held up to my head an’ am sittin’ lookin’ hard at the letter. Outa the corner of my eye I am watching Rudy an’ wonderin’ just what is comin’ next.
After a bit I fold up the paper an’ I hand it back to him. I am glad to say that my right arm is beginnin’ to ease up a bit but I don’t let him know this, I give it back with my left hand, an’ then I flop back in my chair like I was all out for nothin’.
He gives a big horse laugh. I tell you this Rudy was good an’ pleased with himself.
“Well, copper,” he says, “you see we got some brains runnin’ this racket an’ you ain’t heard the half of it. Now then,”—he draws himself up like he was goin’ to say somethin’ really good—“I’m goin’ to make a proposition to you, an’ I don’t care whether you take it or not, but I’m goin’ to give you the chance.”
He lights himself a cigarette an’ looks at me through the flame of the lighter with his lousy snakes’ eyes, an’ he keeps ’em on me while he shoves the cigarettes over to me.
“Here’s the way it is, sap,” he says. “I’m goin’ to tell you the whole works so you know what you’re doin’. The gold shipment all youse guys is worryin’ about so much left New York about ten hours ago on the Maybury, an’ once she was to sea I reckon the Federal Government just breathed a hearty sigh of relief an’ thought that everything was hunky dory. Well, it ain’t, because it might interest you to know that we’re goin’ to snatch that gold an’ it’s goin’ to be so simple that you just don’t know.”
He helps himself to another drink an’ gulps it down, watchin’ me all the time. This guy is beginnin’ to interest me.
“So what?” he goes on . . . “So just this, what you guys ain’t realised is that this racket is an international racket. This is the first time that we got boys workin’ on both sides of the Atlantic on the same job. You police palookas reckon you got organisation. Well, so have we.
“The Maybury is about as fast as a hearse. They might just as well have got a wind jammer to take that gold over. This boat you’re on is as fast as they make ’em, an’ in a couple of days we’re goin’ to be hangin’ on the tail of the Maybury. But we don’t do a thing . . . not a little thing.
“So what. . . . Why, when the Maybury gets to Southampton, England, we just stick around out to sea, just sorta hangin’ around, an’ then they’re goin’ to take the gold shipment off the Maybury an’ put it through the Customs, an’ that gold is scheduled to go up to London on a special night train. Our English mob have got that all doped out.
“O.K. Now let’s get down to real business. When they’re stickin’ that gold on the train we’re standin’ off between Selsey Bill an’ Chichester. We got the place all charted an’ we can stand right in close to the shore.
“Soon after the train leaves Southampton she passes through the right spot, an’ then what happens. Well,”—he grins at the joke—“the boys on the other side are goin’ to stick up that train. There ain’t ever been a train stick up in England before an’ they’ll be so surprised they’ll wonder what’s hit ’em.
“The engine driver of that bullion train is goin’ to find something big across the track. He’s goin’ to pull up, ain’t he? An’ the next thing he knows is that somebody pulled a gun on him. We got forty boys stickin’ that train up an’ they know their stuff. The nearest signal box will be heisted too an’ one of these British palookas who knows his railway stuff is goin’ to close the line for traffic.
“We got it scheduled that we’ll have the gold bars taken off that train an’ shipped into lorries drawn up on a road alongside the rail track inside twelve minutes, and then the lorries are goin’ to shoot across country through some place called Havant to the coast. When they get there they signal us an’ we stand in an’ take delivery of the gold in two launches pullin’ collapsible rafts that we’re goin’ to send ashore.
“We’re allowin’ fifteen minutes to get that gold aboard, an’ then we’re scrammin’. Got it.”
“By the time the news of this snatch has trickled out the English coppers will be lookin’ around for the gold in England. They’ll find the lorries left all over the place on country roads where the English mob leave ’em after we’ve got the stuff. It’s a cinch they’ll never think that somebody had enough brains to snatch the stuff on to a boat. An’ how do you like that?”
How do I like it? I reckon this is a good one, an’ it looks as if these thugs can get away with this thing. It looks to me as if this time the Federal Government has played right into their hands by thinkin’ that whoever tried to snatch this gold was goin’ to do it in the States. This way the fact that this brother of Skendall’s—the guy who Rudy smacks over the head with the bottle—shoots his mouth off while he is dyin’, is absolutely a help to the mob because it makes the Government take the gold shipment off the original boat an’ stick it on the Maybury which bein’ a slow boat just helps these guys along considerable.
Another thing, what Rudy says about it being easy to snatch the gold in England is right. If anybody wanted to do a stick-up job England is the place to do it, because nobody ever thinks that anybody is goin’ to stick anybody else up in that man’s country. I don’t mean that the English cops are saps because believe me those babies know their stuff, but crooks ain’t fools enough to do stick-up jobs in England because although they might pull ’em off they can’t get away when they’ve done the job, the country’s too small and the police check-up on the ports, roads, an’ airports is too hot.
But combined with the scheme for stickin’ up the gold train, closin’ the line so that nobody ain’t goin’ to know what’s happenin’ before it’s all over, gettin’ the gold across country in lorries an’ then meetin’ it with a boat an’ scrammin’ off with it, is such a darned bit of horse cheek that it looks as if it would come off easy.
The English cops ain’t goin’ to know the gold’s gone. They’re goin’ to think that some English mob have pinched it an’ are stickin’ around with it, an’ a long time is goin’ to elapse before somebody finds out that the stuff’s been carried abroad.
An’ it looks as if this job’s been pretty well organised, an’ in this respect anyhow I gotta hand it to Rudy because I didn’t know he’d got the brains to organise a thing like that, although I do know that mobs have been workin’ together in Europe for a long time an’ that crooks are learnin’ to be international just as easy as coppers, an’ because coppers have to organise against what the crooks do, they got to wait till the crooks do it first, which makes the mobs one jump ahead of the coppers all the time, although they usually lose in the long run.
The only thing that’s goin’ to worry ’em is when Harberry Chayse finds that somebody’s pinched his boat in order to pull a gold snatch. Directly he gets good an’ busy an’ finds out what has been done this guy is goin’ to the cops an’ the cops are goin’ to get wise. They’re goin’ to smell a rat an’ try to find out what’s happened to the Atlantic Witch, an’ it won’t be very long before some bright guy puts two an’ two together an’ guesses what’s been goin’ on.
Even this way the Saltierra mob have got a lot of time to make their getaway. They got a fast boat, an’ the world before ’em, an’ I reckon that there’s plenty places they can make an’ land the stuff at before somebody starts gettin’ the Navy to work.
Altogether it looks to me like a darn good lay-out. I gotta hand it to these crooks. They are pretty good this time, an’ it looks as if I’m goin’ to hand in my dinner pail this journey.
There’s only one thing in my mind. I can’t expect any help from nobody. The Feds don’t know where I am an’ I’m all washed up, but maybe somehow there’s just a chance that I can pull a fast one, an’ if I have to hand in my pay-sheet an’ shuffle off to wherever it is “G” men go to when they’re bumped, then I reckon that I’m goin’ to try an’ take this Saltierra crook with me, and that goes for Carlotta too, because of all the lousy crooks I ever met, an’ I’ve met a few, I reckon I got it in for these two more than anybody I ever contacted.
Well . . . this is where I play along. I look at Rudy, an’ I screw up my face as if I was sufferin’ great pain.
“I give up,” I tell him. “I’m all washed up an’ I know it. What’s the good of my arguin’ with you. You got the low-down on me Saltierra, an’ I know it.
“What’s your proposition? I’m playing ball.”
Chapter Ten
PAUSE FOR EFFECT
“Okey doke,” he says. “Well, there it is.”
He gets up an’ he opens the porthole behind me. Then he motions with his head for me to look out. Outside I can see the Atlantic—just a big sweep of sea stretchin’ for miles. It don’t look so hot to me neither. It is cold and gray an’ sorta clammy.
“I had a swell idea about you this mornin’,” he said. “One of the sailor guys on this boat tells me they used to work a big idea on cusses they didn’t like in the old days. When a guy got fresh they tied a rope under his armpits, made the other end fast to the stern rail an’ chucked him overboard. This guy got dragged through the sea considerable an’ every time he was about to fade out through cold or exhaustion or something they pulled him up an’ gave him some hot liquor, sorta made a fuss of him just till he felt good again, then they chucked him overboard some more. This guy eventually got tired of this business an’ sorta died; but it took plenty time an’ it wasn’t so hot while he was doin’ it. How d’ya like that?”
“I ain’t very partial,” I tell him. “So what? Where do we go from there?”
He grins. This Rudy looks like a coupla tigers who don’t like each other—an’ then he gets up.
“I think it’s a swell idea,” he says, “an’ up to the minute that’s the idea we got for you, an’ you can just stick around an’ think about it. Maybe we’ll do it to-morrow an’ maybe we’ll do it the day after, an’ maybe we’ll start in tonight. In the meantime I’m goin’ to move you to a cabin an’ sorta look after you—fattenin’ you up so’s we can get a bigger laugh out of a punk copper who thought he’d got all the brains.”
He goes out an’ in come the two guys, an’ they take me along to some cabin an’ chuck me in. They handcuff my hands in front of me this time which ain’t quite so bad. Then they lock the door an’ scram.
I lie there an’ do some heavy thinkin’. But it looks to me like I can go on thinkin’ all day an’ all night, but it’s goin’ to take a bit more than that an’ a whole lotta luck to get me outa this jam. I reckon that I’m goin’ to live just so long until Rudy takes an extra shot of liquor an’ thinks that he’d like a little cheap amusement, after which he will start doin’ this performin’ seal act with me over the stern rail, an’ havin’ regard to the look I had at the sea it won’t be so nice neither—for me I mean.
Then I get to thinkin’ just what chance there is of this gold snatch bein’ short circuited, an’ it looks to me that they got a good chance of pullin’ it off, that is if they got the English end of the job laid out as well as they had the other end. The idea about takin’ the gold outa the country after they snatched it is swell, because if they go through with the actual pinch without some copper gettin’ wise to them, then everybody will think that this gold is somewhere in England. They will never think that it’s been taken off abroad pronto.
But there’s one way they can slip up. Supposin’ Harberry Chayse finds out that somebody’s snatched his boat, well, he’s goin’ to do something about it, ain’t he? He’s goin’ to the Connecticut State police an’ it’s just possible that they might contact some New York copper who knows about the proposed gold snatch an’ links the two things up, but it’s a long shot and I don’t think there’s much chance of it coming off. First of all because there ain’t any real reason why anybody should link up the yacht stealin’ episode with the gold, an’ secondly I reckon that when that gold was stored aboard the Maybury, the U.S. Government patted themselves on the back an’ told each other that everything was hunky-dory. They ain’t goin’ to be worried about the stuff bein’ stolen on the high seas—that is supposin’ they thought that was goin’ to be done—because that’s the marine insurance people’s bother, an’ anyhow they have got to know that it has been stolen before they do anything about it.
Altogether takin’ everything by an’ large it looks as if Rudy had gotta good chance of gettin’ away with everything including bumping me off, which he is certainly goin’ to do because I know too durn much.
Another thing that is worryin’ me is why they worried to get this guy San Reima on the boat. If they was just plannin’ to get their hooks on me they mighta known that when I got the letter tellin’ me about the seance that I would fall for it an’ go down. Well if I do this all they gotta do is to grab me when I get aboard an’ chuck me in the calaboose an’ wait till the boat’s at sea an’ then give me the works an’ throw me overboard. I do not see why they have to have San Reima on the boat an’ go through with all this seance business when every durn guy aboard knows just who killed Willie the Goop, an’ is in on the gold-snatchin’ scheme.
I lie on my back on this berth lookin’ at the ceilin’ an’ wonderin’ about this an’ that. Maybe you will think that I am a bit screwy to be goin’ on this way when any minute these thugs are comin’ in to give me the works, but to tell the truth I have been in some very tough spots before durin’ the time that I have been workin’ for the Federal Government, an’ I’ve been in jams that looked maybe as hopeless as this one does an’ still I have managed to break out of ’em somehow. I’m one of them guys who believes that while there’s life there’s hope, an’ I am therefore goin’ to amuse myself while I am still livin’, in tryin’ to get this thing worked out.
I would like very much to know just what it was that Hangover found out that sent him sky-rocketin’ off some place without even tellin’ me or givin’ me a hint—even if it was all wrong—as to what he was at. I can understand him sendin’ me the letter tellin’ me about the seance because it looks to me that what has happened is just this:
In the first place Hangover goes along to see Harberry Chayse an’ starts talkin’ about Willie’s bump off. The old man then tells Hangover about this guy San Reima, an’ says that if the police don’t do somethin’ he is goin’ to have this seance an’ try to find out that way. Hangover probably talks him into sayin’ that he will get ahead with this seance business right away an’ then dashes off an’ writes an’ tells me what is goin’ to be done. But maybe, soon after Hangover leaves the old man, Mirabelle arrives an’ Harberry Chayse tells her the big idea. She probably tells him that it’s a lotta punk an’ that supposin’ this San Reima does put his finger on the murderer—well then what? It’s one thing gettin’ some prophet to tell you who’s bumped somebody an’ another thing provin’ a charge of murder against the guy that the prophet picks.
Mirabelle probably tells him all this an’ maybe either Harberry Chayse believes her an’ changes his mind, or else he gets fed up with her planning the scheme an’ just tells her that he won’t do it or he will put it off so as to keep her quiet, or—an’ this looks more likely to me—so as to stop her from askin’ to be down there on the boat when it happens, because it looks as if by what I have heard that she an’ the old man ain’t so friendly as they have been, although what the reason is I do not know.
Alright, well, supposin’ that Harberry has planned to go through with the thing, an’ it looks as if he had—even if the letter that was written to me was phoney an’ he never wrote it—then where is he? San Reima got down on the boat alright. Why didn’t Harberry Chayse?
But then again I don’t know that Harberry Chayse ain’t on this boat. He might be—or maybe they have given him the works on his way down an’ he is bumped off an’ nobody knows it. It stands to reason that if these guys have gone to the trouble of ironin’ out the son they ain’t goin’ to be too particular about givin’ the old man his.
If I am right here there ain’t a dog’s chance for anybody, because the only person who can start something is Harberry Chayse if he is alive, an’ before he does it he has gotta find out that his boat has been snatched, an’ he has gotta go to somebody with sufficient horse-sense to tie up the boat snatch with the gold snatch, an’ as there ain’t nobody except the Feds who know about the gold business, then even that chance looks pretty slim to me.
