Читать книгу Rackets, Inc.: A Johnny Merak Classic Crime Novel - John Glasby - Страница 5

CHAPTER TWO

THE LADY SAYS YES

I slipped in beside her, and we pulled away into the mainstream of traffic. I turned my head and looked at her. She still seemed a trifle uncertain, not sure whether she had done the right thing or not.

“You know, you could be letting yourself in for a lot of trouble doing this for me,” I said quietly. We were past the three lurking shadows and they had made no move, so I guess they hadn’t spotted the switch.

“I always seem to do foolish things on the spur of the moment,” she answered. There was an odd edge of strength to her voice and a quiet, dependable determination. A woman who could be trusted whenever the going got a little tough, I decided. But all that was only for the right guy. Not just anybody like Johnny Merak.

“How did you guess I was in trouble?”

“Oh, that.” She laughed a little. “I was watching you back there at the airport. You didn’t look like a man who’d come down to meet an old friend. You were after that man who was killed, weren’t you?”

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, eyeing me up and down in a way that made me feel hot inside.

“You seem to know quite a lot,” I said cautiously. “Just where do you fit in on this deal?”

It struck me then that, apart from the obvious strength of character, this woman had a certain direct interest in my affairs. And that could mean trouble for both of us.

She didn’t answer that one, not that I’d really expected her to, so I said: “What about those three guys you were with at the airport? They’re tailing us right now, I suppose.”

I must have sounded pretty bitter, because she took her eyes off the road for an instant to look round at me.

Then she shook her head. “I don’t want to pry into your affairs, but you looked like a guy who could do with a break. I know you didn’t shoot that man back there. But if you don’t want to trust me, get out and walk the rest of the way, wherever it is you’re going.”

She slowed the car and edged in towards the kerb. There was no anger in her voice, nothing at all.

“Steady,” I said, holding her arm. “Don’t get sore. This is nothing personal. But I’m in a spot where I can’t trust anybody. Not even a dame who happens to be in the right place at the right time. There’s always something about that set-up that smells.”

“Shall we say I was interested then. You’re Johnny Merak, aren’t you? It’s all right. I got your name from one of the men who was with me back there. They seemed to know a lot about you.”

“Yeah. I bet they did.”

She clamped her lips tightly together and concentrated on driving for several minutes before speaking. “They said you’d worked for this man, Maxie Temple, before—when he was still one of the big shots in Los Angeles. Was that true?”

I nodded, feeling like a heel.

“And the rest of it?”

“He framed me before he got out of the country. Left me holding everything. I was sent up for three years. I swore then I’d pay him back for that.”

“That’s why you were at the airport tonight?”

“Partly. I knew he was supposed to be coming in on that plane. I didn’t want to kill him, not there. He had something I wanted. I needed him alive to clear me. Now it’s all finished, unless I can get some other lead.”

“Such as what?”

“Find out who killed Maxie Temple—and why. Then get the truth from his killer.”

“They’ll be watching your place by now,” she said coldly.

I hadn’t thought of that particular angle. It was true, of course. They would be taking no chances now. I’d slipped through their fingers once too often. They’d have to pick me up now, unless the cops did it first. And when that happened, there’d be a murder rap hanging over me so watertight that even a blind D.A. would be able to send me up for the big burn.

If they wanted me, either way, they had me cold.

“Where do you figure on spending the night, Johnny?” She looked at me again out of the corner of her eyes.

“I’ll find somewhere, I guess.”

“Care to come up to my place?”

I watched her carefully. Maybe I went there, trusting, and there would be a couple of hirelings waiting behind the door, ready to pick me off. Things were happening too nicely for it to be anything but a fix. The big fix—and I was right in the middle of it. I could even feel it beginning to close in on me.

But what was the other alternative? Wandering around the dives in the east end of town. Haunting the bars, an easy target for any mobster on the prowl. I decided to take the risk.

“Sure. I’ll string along with you.”

I said it for response, hoping to find out more than I already knew, or guessed.

“My name is Dawn Grahame. I live a few blocks from here. You’ll be all right there.”

We were in the better quarter of Los Angeles. She looked like a dame with plenty of dough. Maybe I’d done her an injustice. Maybe she was the type who tagged onto a man when he was down, helping to get him back onto his feet again, getting a short kick out of watching him fight his way back to the top.

She cut a corner dangerously close, guided the car into the side. The house was in darkness, a two-story building of stone and redbrick, standing a little way back from the road. There was a garden of some kind in front of it, but in the darkness I couldn’t see much of it. The moon was a thin crescent, riding the clouds, high. I got out and heard her close the other door quietly behind her.

Nearly ten-thirty. I shrugged my shoulders. They would still be looking for me. Men like Clancy Snow and Dutch McKnight. For four years I tried to keep away from contact with men like that. You couldn’t fight them, really.

They are right in the background, behind the spider-webs of hoodlums and hirelings who took orders from above and worked you over good, so that you ended up crippled and maimed. Los Angeles was full of men who’d tried to defy the Organisation and lived to regret it.

My lighter flamed and I lit a cigarette, drawing the smoke gratefully into my lungs. There were a lot of things I had to straighten out inside me. For the moment I was safe. They would search the nightspots downtown first. Then they’d come uptown, never giving up.

One thing I knew without hesitation. The big men in L.A. would carry out their threats. They had got Maxie Temple within minutes of stepping off the plane. They’d had to stop him. If he’d lived and somehow made a comeback, their positions, individually, wouldn’t have been worth a damn.

Then I followed Dawn up the white steps into the quiet porch and forgot about the Big Men of Los Angeles for a while. Somewhere, back in the early years, there had been a house like this for me, and the memory must have stayed with me somewhere, throughout the years, because I found I had never really lost it.

She stopped outside the door, took her key from her bag and unlocked. We went inside, closing it gently behind us.

“I’ll get you a drink,” she said. “You look as though you could use one.”

“Straight bourbon,” I replied. “That’ll suit me fine.”

The drink was fine. Somehow I began to feel good, more relaxed than before.

“You’ll be all right here.” She sat down opposite me and leaned back. Her eyes followed me up and down. “Nobody’s likely to drop around.”

“What about your three friends?” I asked with a touch of irony.

“They won’t come here. Not tonight, anyway.”

She watched me with that sparkling friendliness, her dark eyes softer than before, with that unfathomable mystery at the back of them. A man could get lost in them, I thought, but that wasn’t for me. Not yet. There were other, more important things to be taking care of.

Otherwise, Johnny Merak would find himself up to the neck in a murder rap and other things beside.

I took off my coat and shirt, pulled off my shoes, and took the soft blanket she handed to me before lying on the couch. While she was in the other room, I slipped the .38 from my pocket and pushed it beneath the pillow. No point in taking any chances. The heavy German automatic I’d taken from the hoodlum I unloaded and left in my pocket.

“You all right, Johnny?” Her voice reached me through the open doorway.

“Sure. I’m fine.”

“Good night, Johnny.”

There was a strange loneliness in her voice. I closed my eyes and there came the soft click of a door closing somewhere at the back of my consciousness.

It was the morning when I opened my eyes again. A grey light was spreading out of the east, lighting the objects in the room with a kind of halo. I got up, quietly, wondering where Dawn was. She came in a minute later with coffee.

“I thought you’d be up early,” she said, placing it on the small table in the centre of the room.

The meal was one of silences, soon over. All the way through it she looked at me patiently, as if wondering why I did the things I did. Finally, she asked the question that had obviously been bothering her and it was a tough one.

“Would you really have killed that man last night, if you’d had the chance, Johnny?”

I thought a minute, and then decided not to lie to her. Time enough for that when I had to. “Yes,” I said. “I’d have killed him. He deserves everything he got. If there was anything dirty to be done, Maxie Temple was in it up to the neck, close to the dirt.”

“You must have known him well in the old days to have hated him so much.” There was no accusation in her voice.

“Sure. I knew him. Now that he’s dead, I’ll have to kill the others. It can’t be done any other way.”

“But why, Johnny? You want to go through life with a dozen murder charges hanging over your head—running from the police, waiting for the other mobsters to catch up with you in some stupid, senseless vendetta?”

“I guess it’ll have to be that way. Ever seen a rat when he’s cornered? Well, take a good look at one now, while you’ve got the chance.”

“I don’t understand, Johnny.”

“I thought I’d finished with dirty deals, Dawn. I thought maybe I could get out and turn into something decent and respectable. But I can’t. These men like Clancy Snow and Dutch McKnight, they’re rotten to the core.”

A low voice saying big things, but the brain knowing full well that I lacked the courage or the ability to carry them out.

“But why do you have to take all the risks, get yourself beaten up and shot up?”

“I’m the only one who can do it, don’t you see? There’s blood on my shadow already. Maxie’s blood. They’ve got me framed so tight I can’t wriggle out. Maxie’s gone, but I’m still around. They won’t leave it to the cops to pick me up, that would be too uncertain. They’ll come looking for me themselves. Now I have to get out of here. Maybe you don’t know how they treat women. I do.”

“They don’t scare me.” Her face was uplifted towards mine, her eyes shining as they had the night before.

“No, I guess you don’t scare so easily,” I said. There was a quick, deep look. She came to me quietly, put her arms around me, lifting her mouth to mine. That was when I really found her, and it was like nothing I had ever known before.

“Do you realise how powerful these people really are I’m trying to fight?” I asked. “Do you know that they’d cut your pretty face into little ribbons and laugh while they were doing it?”

“It’s odd,” she said quietly. “You seem to be more concerned about me than I am myself.” She smiled. “I know them. I’ve met their type before and they don’t frighten me.” Her mouth twisted in contempt.

“Don’t underestimate them, Dawn. Never do that.” I was deadly serious.

Dawn looked at me, her eyes deep and black, her lips half-open. Her face was without expression.

“What do you intend to do?”

“There’s only one way of meeting trouble,” I said, “and that’s halfway. No sense in running away from it. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since Maxie left. The first thing I’ve got to do is get a lead of some kind. There must have been somebody who saw what happened last night.”

“Do you think they’ll talk? Especially to you.”

“I’ll find some way of making them,” I said seriously, and meant it. Time was running out for me.

“Take my car, if you like,” said Dawn, placing her hand on my arm. “But watch yourself.” She went over to the window overlooking the street, pulled back the curtain gently and peered out.

“Anybody there?” I asked pointedly.

She shook her head. “The street looks deserted. Nobody in sight.”

I drank another cup of coffee, found a half-full bottle of whiskey in the small kitchen, and had that best of all morning drinks.

The little thoughts in my mind had a final chance to scamper around my brain as I made my way down the garden path and slid myself behind the wheel of Dawn’s car. Usually, girls like Dawn Grahame don’t act this way towards strangers, particularly a man with a record like mine. There was something more behind it. Something I meant to find out as soon as the opportunity presented itself.