Collection 1983 - The Hills Of Homicide (v5.0) Page 12

  “All right, I’ll take that!”

  “You will like—!” It dawned on me that it was not Candy Pants speaking but Ben Altman, and he had a gun. The makeup kit was in my left hand, and I threw it, underhanded, at Ben; then I went for him.

  The gun barked, and it would have had me for sure if I had not tripped over Candy Pants, who was trying to get up. Ben kicked at my head, but I threw myself against his anchoring leg, and he went down. We came up together and he swung the gun toward me as I came up, jamming the papers into my pocket.

  By that time, I was mad. I went into him fast, the gun blasted again, and something seared the side of my neck like a red-hot iron. My left hooked for his wind, and my right hacked down at his wrist. The gun fell, and I clobbered him good with a right.

  Suddenly, the apartment, the knifes, guns, and Horace on the floor were forgotten. It was as if we were back in the ring again. He slipped a jab, and the right he smashed into my ribs showed me he could still hit. I belted him in the wind, hooked for the chin, and landed a right uppercut while taking a left and right. I threw a right as he ducked to come in and filled his mouth full of teeth and blood. I finished what teeth he had with a wild left hook that had everything and a prayer on it.

  Crook he might be, but he was game, and he could still punch. He came at me swinging with both hands, and I nailed him with a left, hearing the distant sounds of sirens. I was hoping I could whip him before the cops got there.

  As for Benny, I doubt if he even heard the siren. We walked into each other punching like crazy men, and I dropped him with a right and started for a neutral corner before I realized there weren’t any corners and this was no ring.

  His left found my face again and again. Then I caught his left hook with my right forearm and chopped down to his cheek and laid open a cut you could have laid your finger in.

  He tried another left, and I hit him with a right cross, and his knees buckled. He went down hard and got up too quickly, and I nailed him with a left hook. When Mooney and the cops came in you could have counted a hundred and fifty over him. He was cold enough to keep for years.

  Mooney looked at me, awed. “What buzz saw ran into you?”

  I glanced in the mirror, then looked away quickly. Altman always had a wicked left.

  Handing Mooney the pages from the diary, I said, “That should help. Unless my wires are crossed, it was Candy Pants here who put the knife into Garzo.”

  Milly came through the open door as I was touching my face with a wet towel, trying to make myself look human. “Come,” she said, “we’ll go to my place. There’s something to work with there, and I’ll make coffee.”

  Rocky Garzo could rest better now, and so could his brother. I could almost hear the Rock saying, as he had said to me after so many fights, “I knew you could do it, kid. You fought a nice fight.”

  “Thanks, pal,” I said aloud. “Thanks for everything.”

  “What are you talking about?” Milly asked. “Are you punchy or something?”

  “Just remembering Garzo. He was a good boy.”

  “I know.” Milly was suddenly serious. “You know what he used to say to me? He’d say ‘You just wait until Kip gets back, things will be all right!’ ”

  Well, I was back.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  * * *

  THE STREET OF LOST CORPSES

  In a story like THE STREET OF LOST CORPSES Kip Morgan shows that even though he can handle the knives and guns preferred by his criminal adversaries he is most comfortable defending himself with his fists.

  This makes perfect sense for Morgan. A fighter has to be very fast on his feet; Kip could move like a big cat. In his day the fighters were very quick, most were also very athletic. Boxing in those days was much more skillful than it is now. Boxing was a matter of making someone miss punches by a fraction of an inch and landing your punches by just about that margin, too.

  Kip Morgan, at about 175 pounds would have been classified as a light heavyweight. His fight career was successful up to a point, but like many fighters of his time he decided to go on to other pursuits. He may have given up the canvas but he did not give up his professional edge.

  THE STREET OF LOST CORPSES

  * * *

  IN A SHABBY room in a dingy hotel on a street of pawnshops, cheap nightclubs, and sour-smelling bars, a man sat on a hard chair and stared at a collection of odds and ends scattered on the bed before him. There was no sound in the room but the low mutter of a small electric fan throwing an impotent stream of air against his chest and shoulders.

  He was a big man, powerfully built, yet lean in the hips and waist. His shoes were off, and his shirt hung over the foot of the bed. It was hot in the room despite the open windows, and from time to time, he mopped his face with a towel.

  The bed was ancient, the washbasin rust-stained, the bedspread ragged. Here and there, the wallpaper had begun to peel, and the door fit badly. For the forty-ninth time, the man ran his fingers through a shock of dark, unruly hair.

  Kip Morgan swore softly. Before him lay the puzzle of the odd pieces. Four news clippings, a torn bit of paper on which was written all or part of a number, and a crumpled pawn ticket. He stared gloomily at the assortment and muttered at the heat. It was hot—hotter than it had a right to be in Los Angeles.

  Occupied though he was, he did not fail to hear the click of heels in the hall outside or the soft tap on his door. He slid from his chair, swift and soundless as a big cat, and in his hand there was a flat, ugly .38 automatic.

  Again, the tap sounded. Turning the key in the lock to open the door, he stepped back and said, “Who is it?”

  “It’s me.” The voice was low, husky, feminine. “May I come in?”

  He drew back, shoving the gun into his waistband. “Sure, sure. Come on in.”

  She was neat, neat as a new dime, and nothing about the way she was dressed left anything to the imagination. Her blouse was cheap and the skirt cheaper. She wore too much mascara, too much rouge, and too much lipstick. Her hose were very sheer, her heels too high.

  He waved her into a chair. There was irritation in his eyes. “At least you had sense enough to look the part. Didn’t I tell you to stay away from me?” His voice was purposely low, for the walls were thin. “I had to come!” Marilyn Marcy stepped closer, and despite the heat and the cheapness of her makeup he felt the shock of her nearness and drew back. “I’ve been worried and frightened! You must know how worried I am! Have you learned anything?”

  “Shut up!” His tone was ugly. Her coming into that part of town worried him, and dressed like that? She was asking for it. “Now you listen to me! I took the job of finding your brother, and if he’s alive, I’ll find him. If he’s dead, I’ll find out how and why. In the meantime, stay away from me and leave me alone! Remember what happened to that other dick.”

  “But you’ve no reason to believe they killed him because of this investigation!” she protested. “Why should they? You told me yourself he had enemies.”

  “Sure Richards had enemies. He was a fast operator and a shrewd one. Nevertheless, Richards had been around a long time and had stayed alive.

  “As to why they should kill him for looking into this case, I have no idea. All I know is that anything can happen down here, and everything has happened at one time or another. I don’t know what happened to your brother or why a detective should get a knife stuck into him for trying to find out. Until I do know I am being careful.”

  “It’s been over a week. I just had to know something! Tell me what you’ve found out, and I’ll go.”

  “You’ll stay right here,” he said, “until I tell you to go. You came of your own accord, now you’ll leave when I tell you. You’ll stay for at least an hour, long enough to make anybody believe you’re my girl. You look the part. Now act it!”

  “Just what do you expect?” she demanded icily.

  “Listen, I’m just talking about the looks of the thing. I’m working, not playing. You’
ve put me on the spot by coming here, as I’m not supposed to know anybody in town. Now sit down, and if you hear any movement in the hall, make with the soft talk. Get me?”

  She shrugged. “All right.” She shook out a cigarette, offering him one. He shook his head impatiently, and she glared at him. “I wonder if you’re as tough as you act?”

  “You better hope I am,” Kip replied, “or you’ll have another stiff on your hands.”

  He stared grimly at the collection on the bed, and Marilyn Marcy stared at him. Some, she reflected, would call him handsome, and men would turn to look because of his shoulders and a certain toughness that made him seem as if he carried a permanent chip on his shoulder. Women would look, then turn to look again. She had seen them do it.

  “Let’s look at the facts,” he said. “Your brother was an alcoholic. He was on the skids and on them bad. Even if we find him, he may not be alive.”

  “I realize that, but I must know. I loved my brother despite his faults, and he took care of me when I was on my way up, and I will not forget him now. Aside from George, he was all I had in the world.

  “We loved each other and we understood each other. Either of us would do anything to help the other. He was always weak, and both of us knew it, yet when he went into the army, he was a fairly normal human being. He simply wasn’t up to it, and when he received word his wife had left him, it broke him up.

  “However, there is this I know. If my brother is dead, it was not suicide. It would have to be accident or murder. If it was the former, I want to know how and why; if the latter, I want the murderer brought to trial.”

  Kip’s eyes searched her face as he listened. Having seen her without makeup, he knew she was a beautiful girl, and even before she hired him, he had seen her on the stage a dozen times. “You seem ready to accept the idea of murder. Why would anybody want to kill him?”

  “I’ve heard they kill for very little down here.”

  “That they do. In a flophouse up the street, there was a man killed for thirty-five cents not long ago. Value, you know, is a matter of comparison. A dollar may seem little, but if you don’t have one and want it badly, it can mean as much as a million.”

  “I’ve seen the time.” Drawing her purse nearer, she counted out ten fives and then ten tens. “You will need expense money. If you need more, let me know.”

  His attention was on the collection on the bed. “Did Tom ever say anything about quitting the bottle? Or show any desire to?”

  “Not that I know of. I’ve told you how he was fixed. Each month he received a certain sum of money from me. We always met in a cheap restaurant on a street where neither of us was known. Tom wanted to keep everyone from knowing I had a brother who was a drunk. He believed he’d disgrace me. I sent him enough to live as he wished. He could have had more but refused it.”

  Morgan nodded, then glanced at her. “What would you say if I told you that for three weeks prior to his disappearance he hadn’t touched a drop?”

  Marilyn shook her head. “How could you be sure? That doesn’t sound like Tom. Whatever would make him change?”

  “If I knew the answer to that I’d have the answer to a lot of things, and finding him would be much easier. Tom Marcy changed suddenly, almost overnight. He cleaned up, had his clothes pressed and his shoes shined. He took out his laundry and then began doing a lot of unexpected running around.”

  Obviously, she was puzzled, but a sudden glance at her watch and she was on her feet. “I must go. I’ve a date with George and that means I must go home and change. If he ever guessed I had come down here looking like this, he would—”

  Kip stood up. “Sure, you can go.” Before she could protest he caught her wrist, spun her into his arms, and kissed her soundly and thoroughly. Pulling away, she tried to slap him, but he blocked it with an elbow. “Don’t be silly!” he said. “I’m not playing games, but this hotel is a joint. When you leave here, you’re going to look like you should, and your lipstick will be smeared, but good!”

  He caught her again and kissed her long and thoroughly. She began to struggle, but he held her, and she quieted down. After a moment he let go of her and stepped back. She stared at him, her eyes clouded and her breast heaving. “Did you have to be so—thorough about it?”

  “Never do anything by halves,” he said, dropping back into the chair. He looked up at her. “On second thought, I—”

  “I’m leaving!” she said hastily, and slipped quickly out of the door.

  He grinned after her and wiped the lipstick from his mouth, then stared at the red smear on his handkerchief, his face sobering. He swore softly and dropped back into the chair. Despite his efforts, he could not concentrate.

  He walked to the washbasin and wiped away the last of the lipstick.

  What did he know, after all? Tom Marcy was an alcoholic with few friends, and only one or two who knew him at all well. Slim Russell was a wino he occasionally treated, and another had been Happy Day. Marcy minded his own affairs, drank heavily, and was occasionally in jail for it. Occasionally, too, he was found drunk in a doorway on skid row. The cops knew him, knew he had a room, and from time to time, rather than take him to jail, they’d take him to his room and dump him on his bed.

  Then something happened to change him suddenly. A woman? It was unlikely, for he did not get around much where he might have met a woman. Yet suddenly he had straightened up and had become very busy. About what?

  The pawn ticket might prove something. The ticket was for Tom Marcy’s watch. Obviously, he had reached the limit of his funds when some sudden occasion for money arose, and rather than ask his sister for it, he had pawned his watch.

  When he failed to appear at the restaurant, something that had not happened before, Marilyn was worried.

  She returned to the restaurant several times, but Tom Marcy had not showed up. When the following month came around, she went again, and again he had not appeared. In the meantime, she had watched the newspapers for news of deaths and accidents. Then she hired a detective.

  Vin Richards was a shrewd operative with connections throughout what has been called the underworld. A week after taking the case, he was found dead in an alley not far from the hotel in which Kip Morgan sat. Vin Richards had taken a knife in the back and another under the fifth rib. He was very dead when discovered.

  Morgan began with a check of the morgue and a talk to the coroner’s assistants. He had checked hospitals and accident reports, then the jails and the police.

  The officers who worked the street in that area agreed that Tom Marcy never bothered anybody. Whenever he could, he got back to his room, and even when very drunk, he was always polite. It was the police who said he had straightened up.

  “Something about it was wrong,” one officer commented. “Usually when they get off the bottle they can’t leave the street fast enough, but not him. He stayed around, but he wouldn’t take a drink.”

  Seven weeks and he had vanished completely; seven weeks with no news. “We figured he finally left, went back home or wherever. To tell you the truth, we miss him.

  “The last time I saw him, he was cold sober. Talked with me a minute, asking about some old bum friend of his. He hesitated there just before we drove away, and I had an idea he wanted to tell me something, maybe to say good-by. That was the last time I saw him.”

  He had disappeared, but so had Vin Richards. Only they found Vin.

  “Odd,” the same officer had commented. “I would never expect Vin to wind up down here. He used to be on the force, you know, and a good man, too, but he wanted to work uptown. Hollywood, Beverly Hills, that crowd.”

  The pawn ticket answered one question but posed another. Tom Marcy needed money, so he hocked his watch, something he had not done before. Why did he need money? If he did need it, why hadn’t he asked Marilyn?

  The news clippings now—two of them were his own idea, one he found in Tom’s room. And there was a clue, a hint. His clipping and one of Tom’s were id
entical.

  It was a tiny item from the paper having to do with the disappearance of one Happy Day, a booze hound and clown. Long known along East Fifth Street and even as far as Pershing Square, he had been one of Marcy’s friends.

  Marcy’s second clipping was about a fire in a town sixty miles upstate in which the owner had lost his life. There was little more except that the building was a total loss.

  The last clipping, one Kip Morgan had found for himself, was a duplicate of one Tom Marcy left behind in the hockshop. The owner, thinking it might be important, had put it away with Tom’s watch and mentioned it to Kip Morgan. At Kip’s request, the pawnbroker had shown him the clipping. In a newspaper of the same date as the hocking of the watch, Morgan found the same item. It was a simple advertisement for a man to do odd jobs.

  That Marcy had it in his hand when he went to hock his watch might indicate a connection. The pawning of the watch could have been an alternative to answering the ad. Yet Marcy had straightened up immediately and had begun his unexplained running around.

  Could the advertisement tie in with the disappearance of Happy Day? A hunch sent Morgan checking back through the papers. Such an ad appeared in the papers just before the disappearance of Happy Day! Once Kip had a connection, he had followed through. Had there been other disappearances? There had.

  Slim Russell, Marcy’s other friend, had vanished in the interval between the disappearance of Happy Day and that of Tom Marcy himself. Apparently, it had been these disappearances that brought about the change in Tom Marcy.

  Why?

  Checking the approximate date of Slim Russell’s disappearance, for which he had only the doubtful memories of various winos, he found another such ad in the newspaper.

  The newspaper’s advertising department was a blind alley. On each occasion, the ad came by mail, and cash was enclosed, no check.

  Morgan paced the floor, thinking. Not a breeze stirred, and the day was hot. He could be out on the beach now instead of there, sweating out his problem in a cheap hotel, yet he could not escape feeling he was close to something. Also, and it could be his imagination, he had the feeling he was being watched.