The Duchess of Skid Row, page 6
We went through the foyer into a bar. A sign over the entrance read: Booths for Ladies.
Since women had to sit at a table to have a drink in this state, Arch wasn’t just tossing around atmosphere. I led Stephanie to a booth opposite the bar. There were a dozen people in the room, all of them with the prosperous look of the city’s upper class. I ordered our drinks.
I said, “Sit tight. If you want another one, help yourself to mine. Give me twenty minutes before you get restless.”
She put a hand on my arm as I got up. “Be careful, Jeff. What you just said about men like this Hoxey scares me.”
“Don’t worry about me and Hoxey. He’s not the kind of rat that fights when it’s cornered.”
I found my way to the hall with the private dining rooms opening off it. I kept going and went out the rear door into the alley. It was dark and chill with the drizzle still coming down. I turned up my coat collar and plowed through the blackness to the back end of the Blue Beagle. I stepped through the rear door and climbed the stairs. I walked past Teddy’s red door and stopped in front of Hoxey’s blue and white one. I rapped on the panel.
There was no answer. I tried the knob. The door was locked. I backtraced and hammered on Teddy’s door. There was a moment of silence. Then Teddy said, “McKeon?”
“That’s right,”
“Can’t you let us alone?” she demanded. “I’m trying to get some rest before the nine o’clock rush.”
“Give me Hoxey and you can have all the rest you want.”
I heard the floor creak. The lock clicked back. I opened the door and stepped into her apartment.
Teddy was walking away from me. She had her blouse off and she was reaching up behind her back in an effort to rub at the red marks a wideband brassiere had left on her skin. It was very smooth, white skin. She turned sideways to me and faced a mirror. She began to rub at the marks the brassiere had made under her small, hard breasts.
I said, “Where’s Hoxey?”
“He hasn’t got here yet.”
“Did you tell him to come?”
Teddy ran her fingertips under her breasts, lifting them high and toward the mirror. They were pear-shaped and they looked odd on her wide-shouldered torso. “I told him. He’ll be along.”
I said, “How did you contact him?”
“I called Nick Calumet. I told you Hoxey worked for him.”
I said, “Have you figured out what Calumet was doing up here yesterday?”
“No. If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” Her voice was vicious. She swung toward me. “Now get off my back, McKeon. I’m sick of answering your questions.”
“You’d be sicker if you went to jail.”
She walked to the coffee table and rooted through the litter until she came up with a cigaret. She plastered the end against her lower lip. She walked toward me, making her breasts sway. “You’ll play hell getting me in jail now, McKeon. I read the papers. You’ve got about as much standing with the cops as Hoxey has.”
“It isn’t my standing that counts. It’s what I have in that envelope marked for the DA. And that’s still dynamite.”
Teddy paused about three feet from me. She cocked her head and grinned. Then she said in a loud voice, “You’ve had it, McKeon. You’re finished.”
I stared at her; at the crazy way the cigaret flopped as she talked; at the wild, gleeful gleam in her eye. I heard the hall door open behind me. Even then I didn’t get the warning signal. I didn’t get it until Teddy came at me, swinging both hands for my face. I ducked and grabbed her wrists.
I yelled, “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
She was pulling against my grip. Suddenly she stopped and pushed herself half at me. Her face contorted as if I was breaking her arm. She shouted, “Now!”
The bright explosion of a flashbulb blinded me. I dropped Teddy’s arms. I blinked away the black spots in front of my eyes. I turned and saw Hoxey and a camera going out through the door into the hall. I started after him. My legs tangled in something. I went sprawling, head first, reaching as I slid. I landed half in the hall and half in the room. Hoxey’s door slammed.
I got to my feet. Teddy was bent over rubbing her shin. Her cigaret was gone but otherwise she looked the same. She gave me a mocking grin.
I brushed at my suit. I said, “That’s the world’s oldest gag. You’ll find it in the Bible. Sorry, but it just won’t work.”
She said, “The old gags are the best ones, McKeon. A man with a reputation like yours for chasing women—and a man with no more friends on the police force—he’s had it.” Her eyes mocked me. “I know just the cop who’ll buy what we’ve got to sell.”
She was wrong, but she was right too. Normally, Hoxey’s trick would have been a waste of time. But right now wasn’t normal. And Ritter would give a lot to get a picture of me apparently trying to work over a half-naked woman.
But I had a rule. Let a punk get away with something once and you’re through. I walked out on her. I went down the hall to Hoxey’s door. I stood back and lifted my foot. I hit just below the lock with my heel. The ancient lock ripped out of the doorframe. I pushed the door open and walked into Hoxey’s apartment.
Hoxey grinned unpleasantly at me. He had once been good-looking. But his way of life and his way of looking at life had softened his face, weakened his mouth, given him the look of a thousand other cheap gunsels.
“Trying to peddle that picture won’t buy your way off the hook, Hoxey. If I turn my evidence over to the DA, you can still take the big fall.”
His hands were empty. I wondered where he had stashed the camera. “Maybe we can swap, McKeon. Then nobody gets hurt.”
“I don’t swap with your kind. I ask questions and you give answers.” I took a step toward him. For once he didn’t try to back away.
I said, “Let’s start with your new boss, Nick Calumet. What kind of racket is he running these days?”
“He’s got a legitimate business,” Hoxey said.
“If he had, he wouldn’t need you. Where did he get the money to lease the Forum?”
“I didn’t ask him,” Hoxey said.
“Is he fronting for the Combine or is Arch? Or both of them?”
Hoxey kept the smile on his loose mouth. “If you want answers, McKeon, you got to ask the right questions. You lost me way back.”
I took another step and another. I was within reaching distance. I said, “Last night a friend of mine was killed. His car was stolen. It was blown up later. His toolshed was blown too. The job had your touch, Hoxey. I think so and the police think so. Now who hired you?”
The grin started to slip. Then he put it back in place. His eyes moved past me. I heard a footstep and glanced quickly around. Teddy had come into the room. She stood just inside the door, watching us.
Hoxey said, “I’ve got an alibi for last night, McKeon. I haven’t blown anything since I left the army.”
I picked him up by the front of his new suit coat. I lifted him in the air and started walking him backwards, toward the wall. He made no effort to defend himself.
“Who hired you to kill Johnny Itsuko, Hoxey?”
His tongue flicked out, wetting his lips. “I never killed anybody,” he said.
I slapped him against the wall. I held him there with his shoetips barely brushing the floor. “Who hired you, Hoxey? Who did you build those bombs for?”
The amusement began to leave Hoxey’s expression. He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, McKeon. So help me.”
“I’m going to hold you here, Hoxey. With this hand. I’m going to start hitting your gut with the other. I’m going to keep on hitting it until you talk. And keep on talking. Let me hear it all—Itsuko, Calumet, Arch—every bit of it.”
Hoxey twisted his head on his scrawny neck. “Teddy!” It was a wail of desperation.
Teddy moved into the room. She said, “I’ve got a gun, McKeon. So let loose of Hoxey. And get out of here. If you want your picture, bring the evidence. But right now, get out of here!”
I swung Hoxey away from the wall. I pivoted and threw his lightweight body straight at Teddy. She threw up both hands as if to keep him from striking her. The barrel of her gun rammed against the side of his nose. He let out a howl and pawed blindly at her. I stepped around behind them both and knocked the gun out of her hand.
I said, “I’ll be back for Hoxey. I want answers to my questions.” The sight of them was making me sick.
I walked out the door, down the stairs, and outside.
7
STEPHANIE was where I had left her. But now she had company. Arch was at the table, throwing out a lot of charm. He turned it on me as I sat down.
“I was just telling this lady about our private dining rooms, McKeon,” he said heartily. “Maybe you’d like one for dinner.”
I said, “We might, if it isn’t bugged.”
His smile changed to a scowl. “You have real tact.”
I was still disgusted by what I’d been through at the Blue Beagle. I said, “I don’t feel tactful. I just got through watching Teddy Jenner and Hoxey try the old badger game on me.”
His scowl deepened. He got to his feet. I looked up at him. It was like looking up at a mountain. I said, “Before you try breaking me in two, take a look for yourself. The last I saw, she was getting ready to change his diapers and tuck him into bed.”
Arch’s big hands opened and closed like the jaws on a steam shovel. Then he pivoted and stalked away. My drink was still on the table. I picked it up and downed it in one gulp.
I said, “Let’s get out of here. I’m not in the mood to fight that much beef.”
Stephanie gave me a puzzled frown as I walked her toward the door. “What was that all about? I thought Mr. Archer was a very nice man.”
I said, “I didn’t know you were friends.”
“Don’t sound so nasty,” she said tartly. “I recognized him from your description and I asked him over to the table.” We went outside. “I was trying to pump him,” she added.
I said, “Did you learn anything?”
She stopped and hunched her shoulders against the cold drizzle. “I learned that he thinks he has the best chef in town. And I’m hungry.”
I said, “We’ve got too much to do to eat a fancy meal.” I steered her across the street to a hamburger place. “Take a rain check. If Arch comes out clean, I’ll buy you his best fifteen-buck dinner.”
She didn’t look particularly happy when I settled her in the front booth of the hamburger shop. I took the seat where I could see across the street.
Stephanie ordered a bowl of chili and two cheeseburgers. I didn’t feel much like eating, but I managed to push some of the chili inside myself.
I watched her wolf down the food. I said, “What else did you find out from Arch?”
“That he won the intercollegiate wrestling championship his senior year in college.”
“Great. And what did you tell him?”
She swallowed a mouthful of beans. “I didn’t do any talking. I listened.” She drank some water to wash away the heat from the chili. “He knows Griselda Cletis,” she added.
“So I heard. Does he know who you are?”
“He didn’t act like it,” she said. She went to work on the chili again. “What happened to you at the Blue Beagle? You snarled at Arch as if everything was his fault.”
“It might be at that.” I told her about the trick Hoxey and Teddy had pulled on me.
“Can they really get away with that?” Stephanie demanded. “I mean, will anyone believe people like this Hoxey even if he has the picture?”
“Teddy is too smart to pull a stupid gag like that one unless she did know she could get away with it,” I told Stephanie. “That means she must know pretty well where I stand these days. So how did she find out?”
“Your resignation was in the paper,” Stephanie said.
I said, “The story on my resignation didn’t tie me up with Johnny’s death or with any other kind of trouble.”
I shook my head. “She must have inside information. Otherwise she wouldn’t risk bucking the evidence I have on her and Hoxey.”
Stephanie finished her second cheeseburger. “Just what is this evidence you keep talking about?”
“Not long after Teddy came home from college, she met Hoxey on a local slumming party. Something about him attracted her. She moved off the hill and down here. She had a little money and she started up the Blue Beagle. But she wasn’t making enough money to satisfy Hoxey. So he cooked up an angle to make more. She was so gone on him that she did what he told her.”
I took time out to light a cigaret. I said, “He started a camera club.”
“A what?” Stephanie demanded.
“You bring your own camera and film. The guy who runs the club furnishes the models and also develops the film for you.” I explained in detail the “art” that was photographed.
Stephanie’s cheeks turned pink.
I said, “I broke up Hoxey’s little ring. I managed to confiscate some of the film. I needed a contact on Hill Street, so I made a deal with Teddy and Hoxey. They kept me posted on what went on here; I kept the evidence out of the hands of the Vice Squad.”
“It sounds like blackmail to me,” Stephanie said.
“When you fight dirt, you sometimes have to be dirty.”
I got up. “Let’s get to work.”
We went up to the corner of Third and back across the street. The weather was bad but not bad enough to keep people away from Nick Calumet’s.
Teddy had told me that after the well-heeled set left Arch’s place, they came slumming to the Blue Beagle. They also seemed to go in the opposite direction. Calumet’s penny arcade was two-thirds full, and most of the customers were obviously the well-to-do from the north hill.
I glanced through the archway that led into the big barroom. The crowd there was the kind I expected to see on Hill Street. It was the usual mixture of overdressed women and hard-faced punks. I turned back and watched men in tuxes and women in evening gowns drift through the penny arcade and into the movie section of the place. A foursome was coming out. The men were grinning and the women were trying to appear embarrassed, but without much luck.
I said, “It looks as if Nick has struck a gold mine.”
Stephanie teetered on her spike heels. “Which one is he?”
“He isn’t around. But he’ll turn up fast enough.” I nodded toward an old man behind the news stand counter. “I’ve been spotted. Nick will hear about us any minute now.”
I took her arm and steered her to the black curtain that covered the entrance to the movie section. We stepped into near darkness. The “movies” were peephole machines each with a tiny light over the front so that the customer could see where to put his money. Some of them had still shots of what the viewer could expect for his dime or his quarter. The machines stood in long rows separated by narrow, almost pitch-dark aisles. There must have been fifty of them. At least half were occupied, some by couples peering at the same machine together.
I went up to a cubbyhole with an old man behind it. I bought two dollars worth of dimes and quarters. I dumped the money into Stephanie’s coat pocket.
I said, “Let’s start at the back. It looks less crowded there.”
She followed me down the dark aisle. We came to the end of the row of machines. A cross aisle led to the left. A blank door lay straight ahead. I wondered if that was the way into Calumet’s office.
I turned Stephanie left. We passed the entrance to two other aisles. The third aisle was the last one. It had two machines tucked into the corner made by the end and side walls. The machines were set so that they formed a particularly dark area.
I said, “You’ve got a pocket full of money. Spend it any way you want. Just stay around here so I can find you again. I won’t be long.”
I left her and went off to find Nick Calumet.
I hiked back to the doorway at the end of the first aisle. I tried the knob. The door opened. I stepped into a hallway and let the door swing shut behind me. The hall was lighted with bright overheads. A shadow about ten feet from me moved under the harsh lighting as a door swung open.
Nick Calumet came into view. He was still wearing his padded sport jacket. His hair was slicked down tight and greasy. He looked my way. His eyes were as unpleasant as ever.
He said, “This is private, McKeon.”
I walked toward him. “I’m looking for Hoxey.”
“Try the other end of the block,” Calumet said.
“If he isn’t here, you’ll do. Do we talk in the hall or where it’s more private?”
Calumet’s hand twitched toward his coat as if he wanted to go for his knife. I kept moving toward him. He said, “I haven’t anything to talk to you about, McKeon.”
I took a final step and stopped within reach of him. He said, “Don’t try throwing your weight around. I read the papers. Right now, you’re nothing.”
I didn’t waste time arguing with him. I grabbed the front of his sport coat. I walked him backward, through the doorway and into the room he had come out of. He didn’t fight me. He didn’t say a word. He just took the pushing.
He was almost too docile for Nick Calumet.
We were in his office. I shoved him toward a desk. He went around it and sat down.
He said, “Where do you think this will get you, McKeon? All I have to do is call the cops. They’ll run you out fast enough.”
I laughed at him. “I’d like a framed picture of Nick Calumet calling the law.” I shook my head. “You wouldn’t. Not when you have a pair of imported goons to do your work for you.”
“Do you know what you’re talking about, McKeon?”
“I met Minto and Pooly, Nick.”
He tried to look puzzled. He was a pretty fair actor. I couldn’t be sure just where he stood. I said, “Let’s start at the beginning. Somebody in this town is trying to hang a frame on me. They set me up by spreading rumors that I was helping the Combine get back into Puget City. I wasn’t even here to defend myself. When I did come home, I got put on the hook for Johnny Itsuko’s murder.”
