Collection 1983 - The Hills Of Homicide (v5.0) Page 4

  “Yes, I received a forwarded message yesterday. However, I had already had my attention called to it in the papers. What have you to do with it?”

  “Deputy sheriff. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  He turned abruptly. “Bill! Take over here, will you? I’ll be back later.” He motioned to me. “Come along.”

  With a snappy, military stride, he led me to the end of the runway and through a flap in a tent to a smaller tent adjoining. He waved me to a canvas chair, then looked over his shoulder. “Drink?”

  “Sure. Bourbon if you’ve got it.”

  He mixed a drink for each of us, then seated himself opposite me. “All right, you’ve got the ball. Start pitching.”

  “Where were you last Sunday night?”

  “On the road with the show.”

  “Traveling where?”

  “Coming here. We drove all night.”

  “How often do you have rest stops on such a drive as that?”

  “Once every hour for a ten-minute rest stop and to check tires, cages, and equipment.” He didn’t like the direction my questions were taking, but he was smart enough not to make it obvious. “I read in the papers that you had three likely suspects.”

  “Yes, we have. Your cousin, Johnny Holben, and—” deliberately I hesitated a little—“Blacky Caronna.”

  He looked at me over his glass, direct and hard. “I hope you catch the killer. Do you think you will?”

  “There isn’t a doubt of it.” I threw that one right to him. “We’ll have him within a few hours.”

  “You say him?”

  “It’s a manner of speaking.” I smiled. “You didn’t think we suspected you, did you?”

  He shrugged. “Everybody in a case like that can be a suspect. Although I’m in no position to gain by it. The old man hated me and wouldn’t leave me the dirtiest shirt he had. He hated my father before me. Although,” he added, “even if I could have gained by it, there wouldn’t have been any opportunity. I don’t dare leave the show and my animals. Some of them require special care.”

  “That Komodo lizard interested me. They eat meat, don’t they?”

  He looked up under his eyebrows. “Yes. On Flores and Komodo they are said to catch and kill horses for food. Men, too, I expect, if the man was helpless. They might even get him if he wasn’t. They are surprisingly quick, run like a streak for a short distance, and there are native stories of them killing men. Most such stories are considered fantastic and the stories of their ferocity exaggerated. But me, I think them one of the most dangerous of all living creatures.” He looked at me again. “I’d hate to fall into that pit with one of them when nobody was around to get me out.”

  The way he looked at me when he said that sent gooseflesh up my spine.

  “Any more questions?”

  “Yes. When did you last hear from Blacky Caronna?”

  He shifted his seat a little, and I could almost see his mind working behind that suave, handsome face. “What ever gave you the idea I might hear from him? I don’t know the man. Wouldn’t know him if I saw him.”

  “Nor Toni, either?”

  If his eyes had been cold before, they were ice now. Ice with a flicker of something else in them. “I don’t think I know anyone named Toni.”

  “You should,” I said grimly. “She knows you. So does Caronna. And just for your future information, I’d be very, very careful of Caronna. He’s a big boy, and he plays mighty rough. Also, unless I’m much mistaken, he served his apprenticeship in a school worse than any of your jungles—the Chicago underworld of the late Capone era.”

  That was news to him. I had a hunch he had heard from Caronna but that he imagined him to be some small-time, small-town crook.

  “You see,” I added, “I know a few things. I know that you’re set to inherit that dough, and I know that Blacky Caronna knows something that gives him a finger in the pie.”

  “You know plenty, don’t you?” His eyes were ugly and sneering. “This is too tough a game for any small-town copper, so stay out, get me?”

  I laughed. “You wrong me, friend. I’m not a small-time cop. I’m a private dick from L.A. whom Caronna brought over to investigate this murder. I learned a good deal and he fired me, and then the sheriff swore me in as a deputy.”

  He absorbed that and he didn’t like it. Actually, I was bluffing. I didn’t have one particle of evidence that there was a tie-up between Castro and Caronna, nor did I know that Castro was to inherit. It was all theory, even if fairly substantial theory. However, the hint of my previous connection with Caronna worried him, for it could mean that I knew much more about Caronna’s business than I should know.

  This was the time to go, and I took it. My drive over had taken some time, and there had been delays. It was already growing late. I got up. “I’ll be running along now. I just wanted to see you and learn a few things.”

  He got up, too. “Well,” he said, “I enjoyed the visit. You must come again sometime—when you have some evidence.”

  “Why sure!” I smiled at him. “You can expect me in a few days.” I turned away from him, then glanced back. “You see, when you were in this alone, it looked good, but that Caronna angle is going to do you up. Caronna and Toni. They’d like to cut themselves in on this million or so you’ll inherit.”

  He shrugged, and I turned away. It was not until I had taken two full steps into the deserted and darkened tent that I realized we were alone. While we were talking the last of the crowd had dwindled away, and the show was over.

  My footsteps sounded loud on the runway under my feet, but there was a cold chill running up my spine. Castro was behind me, and I could hear the sound of his boots on the boards. Only a few steps further was the pit in which the huge dragon lizard lay.

  The dank, fetid odor that arose from the pit was strong in the close air of the darkened tent with all the flaps down. With every sense in me keyed to the highest pitch, I walked on by the pit and turned down the runway to the exit. He drew alongside me then, and there was a queer look in his eyes. He must have been tempted, all right.

  “You think I killed Bitner,” he said. He had his feet wide apart and he was staring at me.

  Why I said it, I’ll never know, but I did. “Yes,” I said, “I think you killed him.”

  There was a sneer in his eyes. “Why, you fool!” he said. “You damned fool! If I had, you couldn’t prove it. You’d only make a fool of yourself.”

  That, of course, was the crux of the problem. I had to have evidence, and I had so little. I knew now how the crime had been done. This day had provided that information, but I needed proof, and my best bet was to push him into some foolish action, into taking some step that would give me further evidence. He was, as all criminals are, overly egotistical and overly optimistic, so with the right words I might light a fuse that would start something.

  We had turned away from each other, but I could not resist the chance, for what it was worth. “Ati, ati,” I said, “sobat bikin salah!”

  His spine went rigid, and he stopped so suddenly that one foot was almost in the air. He started to turn, but I was walking on, and walking fast. I had told him, “Be careful, you have made a mistake!” in Malayan…for the solution to this crime lay in the Far East.

  At the edge of the grounds I stopped to light a cigarette. He was nowhere in sight, but I noticed a canvasman I had seen nearby and the man walked up. “How’s for a light, mister?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Wasn’t this show in Las Vegas a few days ago?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You from there?”

  “Been around there a good bit. Have a hard drive over?”

  “Not so bad. We stop ever’ so often for a rest.”

  “Who starts you again—Castro? I mean, after a rest stop?”

  “Yeah, an’ he usually gives us a break once in a while. I mean, sometimes when we’re movin’ at night he lets us rest a while. Got to, or we’d run off the road.”

 
“Stop many times out of Las Vegas? That desert country must have been quiet enough to sleep.”

  “We stopped three, maybe four times. Got a good rest out in the desert. Twice he stopped quite a while. Maybe an hour once, maybe thirty minutes again. Boy, we needed it!”

  Leaving him at a corner, I walked over to my car and got in. There were several cars parked along the street and in one of them I saw a cigarette glow. Lovers, I thought. And that took my mind back to Karen Bitner. A lot of my thinking had been centered around her these last few hours, and little of it had to do with crime.

  * * *

  THE CAR STARTED easily and I swung out on the highway and headed west. It was a long road I had to drive, across a lonely stretch of desert and mountain road with few towns. When I had been driving for about an hour, a car passed me that looked familiar, but there was a girl and man in it. I grinned. Probably the two I’d seen back in town, I thought.

  Wheeling the car around a climbing turn, I made the crest and leveled off on a long drive across some rough, broken country. Rounding a curve among some boulders, I saw a car ahead of me and a man bending over a rear wheel. A jack and some tire tools lay on the pavement, and a girl, her coat collar turned up against the cool wind, waved at me to flag me down.

  Swinging to the opposite side of the road, I thrust my head out. “Anything I can do?” I asked.

  The girl lifted her hand and she held a gun. “Yes,” she said, “you can get out.”

  It was Toni. If the motor had been running, I’d have taken a chance, but I’d killed it when I stopped, believing they needed help. The man was coming toward us now, and with him was still another man who had unloaded from the car. The first was Nick Ries, Caronna’s man, but the other I had never seen before. “Yeah,” Nick said, “you can get out.”

  I got out.

  My gun was in my hand, and I could have taken a chance on a gun battle, but it was three to one, and they had a flashlight on my face. I’d have been cold turkey in a matter of seconds. With a flit of my right hand I shoved my gun off my lap and behind the cushion, covering the movement by opening the door with my left. I got out and stood there with my hands up while they frisked me. “No rod,” the new man told Nick. “He’s clean.”

  “Okay, get him off the road. We’ve got work to do.”

  They pushed me around behind some rocks off the road. I could have been no more than fifty yards from the road when we stopped, but I might as well have been as many miles. Nick stared at me, his eyes hard with enjoyment.

  “Looks like it’s my turn now. Tough guy, huh? All right, you tell us what we want to know, or we’ll give you a chance to show us how tough you are.” He waved the gun at me. “Did you see Castro? What did you tell him?”

  “Sure I saw him. I told him he was the guy who murdered Bitner. I asked him what Caronna wanted from him, and when Caronna got in touch with him last. It struck me,” I added, and this was for Toni’s benefit, “that he was a pretty smart joe. I think you guys are backing the wrong horse. Anyway,” I continued, “I’m riding with him.”

  “You?” Toni snapped. “What do you mean?”

  “Hell,” I said, offhand, “figure it out for yourself. I was ready to do business with Blacky, but he wouldn’t offer enough dough. Castro’s a gentleman. He’ll play ball with you. That’s what you guys should be doing, getting on his side!”

  “Shut up!” Nick snapped. Then he sneered, “You know what happens to guys that double-cross Blacky Caronna? I do. An’ I don’t want any part of it.”

  “That’s if he’s alive,” I said. “You guys do what I tell you. You go to Castro.”

  The line I was using wasn’t doing me any good with Nick, I could tell, but I wasn’t aiming it at him. I was pretty sure that Toni had her own little game, and that she was playing both ends against the middle. If I could convince her I was playing ball with Castro there was a chance she would lend a hand. A mighty slim chance, but I was in no mood or position to bargain with any kind of a chance.

  Of one thing I was sure. When they stopped that car they had no idea of ever letting me get away from this place alive. I had to talk fast. “I never expected,” I said, flashing a look at Toni, “to find you out here. If we’re going to get anything done, it will have to be done in Ranagat.”

  “Shut up!” Nick snarled.

  “Hold it up a minute, Nick,” Toni said. “Let the guy talk. Maybe we’ll learn something.”

  “What I was going to say was this. I’m in this for the dough, like you are. Caronna fires me, so I tie on with Loftus, figuring if I stay where the big dough is, I’ll latch onto some of it. So what do I find out? That Loftus and some others have a beautiful case built against Blacky. He’s got a bad rep, and the owners are figuring on getting rid of him over this highgrade deal. So they have all gone in together—the mine owners, Loftus, Holben, an’ all the rest. They are going to swear Caronna right into the death penalty. By the time that case goes to trial Caronna will be framed so tight he can’t wiggle a toe.

  “Why do you suppose he wanted me up here? Because he knows they’re out to get him. Because he’s hotter than a firecracker right now and he can’t afford to go on trial.

  “What I’m getting at is, why tie yourself to a sinking ship? Caronna’s through. You guys can go down with him, or you can swing over to Castro and make more money than you ever will from Caronna.”

  “But,” Ries objected, “the will Castro has leaves the money to him. Why should he give us a split?”

  “He’s leery of Caronna. Also,” I said, grinning, “I’ve got my own angle, but I’ll need help. I know how Castro killed the old man.”

  “How?” Ries said shrewdly.

  I chuckled. In the last few minutes I’d been lying faster than I ever had in my life, but this I really knew. “Don’t ask me how. You guys play ball with me, and I’ll play ball with you.”

  “No,” Nick said. “We got orders to bump you, and that’s what we do.”

  “Wait, Nick.” Toni waved a hand at him. “I’ve got an idea. Suppose we take this lug back to town. We can cache him in the basement at the café, and nobody’ll know. Then we can study this thing over a little. After all, why should Blacky get all the gravy?”

  “How do we know this guy is leveling with us?” Nick said. “He gives us a fast line of chatter, an’—”

  “Wait!” Toni turned to me. “If you know Castro, and if you’re working that close to him, you know about the will. Tell us.”

  Cold sweat broke out all over me. Here it was, and if I gave the wrong answer they’d never listen to me again. Hell. I wouldn’t have time to talk! I’d be too dead.

  Still, I had an idea, if no more. “Hell,” I said carelessly, “I don’t know what anybody else knows, but I know that Johnny Leader wrote that will, and I know that Castro stashed it away when he killed Bitner.”

  “That’s what Caronna figured,” Toni said. “This guy is right!”

  They didn’t see me gulp and swallow. It was lucky I had seen that sign over the small concession on the midway, a sign that said, JOHNNY LEADER, WORLD’S GREATEST PENMAN. And I remembered the comments Caronna had made to Toni about Leader. When I’d glimpsed that sign, it had all come back to me.

  At last they let me put my hands down, and we started back to the cars. I wasn’t out of the woods by a long way, but I had a prayer now. “Toni,” Nick said, “you come with me in this mug’s car. Peppy can drive ours. We’ll head for Ranagat.”

  It couldn’t have worked out better unless Ries had let Toni and me drive in alone. Nick had Toni get behind the wheel and he put me in alongside of her, then he got in behind. That guy wouldn’t trust his grandmother. Still, it couldn’t have been much better. My .45 was tucked into the crack behind the seat cushion right where I sat.

  As we drove, I tried to figure my next play. One thing I knew, I wasn’t taking any chance on being tied up in that basement, even if it meant a shoot-out in the streets of Ranagat. Then I heard something that ci
nched it.

  “Blacky’s figurin’ on an out,” Nick said to Toni. “He don’t know about this frame they’re springin’ on him. He’s all set to bump the babe and make it look like suicide, with a note for her to leave behind, confessin’ she killed Bitner.”

  A match struck behind me as Nick lit a cigarette. “He’s got the babe, too. We put the snatch on her tonight after he found them tracks she left.”

  “Tracks?” I tried to keep my voice casual. My right hand had worked behind me as I half turned away from Toni toward Nick, and I had the gun in my hand, under the skirt of my coat.

  “Yeah,” Nick chuckled. “She got into his place through the garage window an’ stepped in some grease on a tool bench. She left tracks.”

  Toni glared sidewise at me. “Weren’t you kind of sweet on her?”

  “Me?” I shrugged, and glanced at her with a lot of promissory notes in my eyes. “I like a smart dame!”

  She took it big. I’m no Clark Gable or anything, but alongside of Caronna I’d look like Galahad beside a gorilla.

  THE FIGHT

  WE ROLLED INTO the streets of Ranagat at about daybreak, and then I saw the sight that thrilled me more than any I could have seen unless it was Karen herself. It was Jerry Loftus. He was standing in the door of his office, and he saw us roll into town. This was a sheriff’s office car, and he would know I wouldn’t be letting anyone else drive for fun, not with Nick Ries in the back seat, whom he had seen me bash the night before.

  Something made me glance around then, and I saw two things. I saw a gray convertible, the one I had seen standing back of Castro’s tent, turning into Caronna’s drive, and I saw Nick Ries leaning over on his right elbow, fishing in his left-hand pants pocket for matches.

  My own right hand held the gun, and when I saw Ries way over on his elbow, I shoved down with my elbow on the door handle. The door swung open, and at the same instant I grabbed at the wheel with my left.