The Tough Guys Read online

  At first he wasn’t going to say anything, then he looked at me again. His voice had an edge to it. “Yes.”

  “Then you do like you did before, doc. You keep this under your hat, too. Let it get out and that kid is ruined here in town. She can be ruined no matter where she goes and it isn’t worth a public announcement.”

  “Somebody has got to stop it,” he said.

  I said, “It’ll be stopped, doc. It’ll be stopped.”

  A small frown furrowed his forehead. His smile was crooked. “Toxin-anti-toxin,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Poison against poison.”

  I nodded, spit, and said, “You go take care of that kid, then ride me back to the hotel.”

  When he had left I got sick again. I had to get those capsules I had left in my room. In just a few minutes now it was going to be worse than it ever had been and I’d be a raving maniac without a big jolt from the small bottle.

  I couldn’t tell how long he had been gone, but finally he came out leading the girl. A car pulled around from the side and the doctor bundled her into it, telling the driver to take her to his office and deliver her to his wife.

  As soon as the car left, he had me on my feet, got me in his Ford, and started up. At the hotel he got out, opened my door, and took the arm on my good side, to lead me in.

  Dari Dahl was behind the desk, in white nylon no longer. She was wearing a black sweater and skirt combination that dramatized every curve of her body and making the yellow of her hair look like a pool of light.

  The brief flicker of concern that hit her face turned to a peculiar look of satisfaction. She came around the desk, tiny lines playing at the corner of her mouth and said, “Trouble?”

  “What else. Now get my key, please.”

  She smiled, went back, picked the key out, and came over and handed it to me. “Are you hurting, Mr. Smith?”

  Both of us shot her funny looks.

  “Is it true that when a narcotic addict tries to lay off he fights it until he’s almost tortured to death before he takes a dose?”

  McKeever said, “What are you talking about, Dari?”

  “Ask him.” She smiled too sweetly.

  “She’s bugged, doc, let’s go.”

  We walked to the stairs, started up them, when Dari called, “Mr. Smith…”

  I stopped, knowing somehow what was coming.

  “Quite accidentally I dropped a bottle of capsules while cleaning your room. They fell down the toilet.” She stopped, letting it sink in, then added, “And so did several prescriptions that were with the bottle. I hope you don’t mind too much.”

  She could see the sweat that beaded my face and laughed. I could hear it all the way up the steps.

  I flopped on the bed and it was then, when my coat came open, that McKeever saw the blood. He opened my shirt, saw the red seeping through the bandages, took one look at the color of my face, and rushed out.

  Lying there, my ribs wouldn’t flex to my breathing and the air seemed to whistle in my throat. It was like being branded; only the iron never left.

  The door opened and I thought it was McKeever back, then I smelled the fragrance of her across the room. My eyes slitted open. She wasn’t wearing that funny smile she had before.

  “What the hell do you want?” I managed to get out.

  “Doctor McKeever told me…” she paused and moistened her lips, “about Gloria Evans. You tried to help her.”

  “So what?” I said nastily.

  “You tried to help Sonny Holmes the other night, too.”

  “Sure, I’m everybody’s buddy.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to control my breathing. She said softly, a still determined tone in her voice, “About the other thing… drugs. I’m not sorry about that at all.”

  McKeever came in then, panting from the run up the stairs. He uncovered me, got his fingers under the bandage and worked it off. He said, “A doctor took care of you, didn’t he?”

  All I could do was nod.

  I smelled the flower smell of her as she came closer and heard the sharp intake of her breath as she saw me. “What… happened?”

  “This man has been shot. He’s recuperating from an operation.” I heard Dr. McKeever open the bag and the clink of bottles. “Didn’t you have anything to take periodically to kill the pain?”

  I nodded again, my face a pool of sweat. I felt the needle go in my arm and knew it would be all right soon. I said through teeth held so tight they felt like they’d snap off, “Capsules. Morphine sulphate.”

  “Oh, no!” Her voice sounded stunned.

  McKeever said, “What?”

  “I thought he was a drug addict. I destroyed them.”

  The doctor said nothing.

  Slowly the pain was lifting like a fog. Another second and I’d sleep.

  Tonelessly, Dari said, “How he must hate me!” Then I was past answering her.

  It stopped raining on Wednesday. For two days I had lain there listening to my bedside radio. The hourly news broadcasts gave the latest U.N. machinations, then into the Cuban affair. Now the finger was pointing at Cuba as being the new jumping off place for narcotic shipments to the States. Under suspected Soviet sponsorship, the stuff came in easily and cheaply from China—a cleverly different kind of time bomb a country can use to soften an enemy.

  But two days were enough. I found my clothes, shaved, dressed, and tried to work the stiffness out of my muscles. Even then, the stairs almost got me. I took it easy going down, trying to look more unconcerned than I felt.

  McKeever wasn’t glad to see me. He told me I had no business being up yet and told me to sit down while he checked the bandage. When he finished he said, “I never asked about that gunshot wound.”

  “Go on.”

  “I assume it has been reported.”

  “You assume right.”

  “However. I’m going to report it again.”

  “Be my guest, doc. To save time I suggest you get the doctor’s name from the prescription I had filled here.”

  “I will.” He got up and reached for the phone.

  The druggist gave him the doctor’s name, then he called New York. When the phone stopped cackling, McKeever nodded, “It was reported, all right. Those prescriptions were good. Then you really are here on… a vacation.”

  “Nobody seems to believe it.”

  “You’ve been causing talk since you came.”

  “What about the girl?” I said. “Gloria Evans.”

  He slumped back in his chair. “She’s all right. I have her at my wife’s sister’s place.”

  “She talk?”

  The doctor shook his head. “No, they never talk.” He took a deep breath, tapped his fingers against the desk and said, “She was badly beaten, but there was a marked peculiarity about it. She was carefully beaten. Two instruments were used. One appears to be a long, thin belt; the other a fine braided whip-like thing with a small metal tip.”

  I leaned forward. “Punishment?”

  McKeever shook his head. “No. The instruments used were too light. The application had too deliberate a pattern to it.”

  “There were others like that?”

  “I took care of two of them. It wasn’t very pretty, but they wouldn’t talk. What happened to them would never leave permanent scars… but there are other ways of scarring people.”

  “One thing more, doc. Were they under any narcotic influence at all?”

  McKeever sighed deeply. “Yes. The Evans girl had two syringe marks in her forearm. The others had them too, but I didn’t consider them for what they were then.”

  I stood up. “Picture coming through, doc?”

  He looked like he didn’t want to believe it. “It doesn’t seem reasonable.”

  “It never does,” I told him.

  I stopped at the hotel and took the .45 from my shaving kit. I checked the load, jacked one in the chamber and let the hammer down easy, then shoved it under my belt on my good side
. I dropped a handful of shells in my coat pocket just in case. In the bathroom I washed down two of my capsules, locked my door, and went downstairs.

  The clerk waved me over. “New York call for you, Mr. Smith. Want me to get the number back? It was paid.”

  I told him to go ahead. It was Artie on the other end and after helloing me he said, “I have your items for you, Kelly.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “One, the car belongs to Don Casales. He’s a moderate-sized hood from the L.A. area and clean. Casales works for Carter Lansing who used to have big mob connections in the old days. Now he’s going straight and owns most of So-Flo Airways with headquarters in Miami. Two, Benny Quick has left the Miami area for parts unknown. Benny has been showing lots of green lately. Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Name Simpson in connection with Nat Paley or Lennie Weaver mean anything?”

  “Sure, remember Red Dog Wally? He’s got a bookie stall on Forty-ninth… other day he mentioned old Pigface Weaver. Some broad was around looking him up with tears in her eyes. A real looker, he said, but nobody knew a thing about Lennie. Red Dog said he’d ask around, found out that Lenny and Nat had something big going for them with an out of town customer and were playing it cozy. No squeal out on them either. So Red Dog told the broad and she almost broke down.”

  “Then their client could be Simpson.”

  “Who knows. Hell, they’ve strong-armed for big guys from politicians to ladies’ underwear manufacturers.”

  “Okay, Artie, thanks a bunch.”

  I hung up and stood there a minute, trying to think. I went over the picture twice and picked up an angle. I grinned at the thought and turned around.

  She was waiting for me, tall, beautiful, her hair so shiny you wanted to bathe in it. The gentle rise and fall of her breasts said this was a moment she had thought about and planned. She tried a tiny smile and said, “Kelly?”

  “Let’s keep it Mr. Smith. I don’t want to be friendly with the help.”

  She tried to hold her head up and keep the smile on, but I saw her eyes go wet.

  I tipped her chin up. “Now that we’ve exchanged nasties, everybody’s even. Think you can smile again?”

  It came back, crookedly at first, but there it was and she was something so damn crazy special I could hardly believe it.

  “Mr. Smith…”

  I took her hand. “Kelly. Let’s make it Kelly, sugar.”

  Before I knew what she was going to do it was over, a kiss, barely touching, but for one fraction of an instant a fierce, restrained moment. We both felt it and under the sheer midnight of her blouse a ripple seemed to touch her shoulder and her breasts went hard.

  She went with me, out to the truck, waiting while I went into police headquarters. I asked for Captain Cox and when he came said, “I want to lodge a complaint against two of Mr. Simpson’s employees. One is Nat Paley, the other a stranger.”

  Cox’s face drew tight. “About your brawl, I suppose.”

  “That’s right. They attacked me on the street. I recognized Paley and can identify the other by sight.”

  Nodding, Cox said, “We checked that one through already. The housekeeper whose place you used called us. Another party down the street thought he recognized one of Simpson’s cars. However, Mr. Simpson himself said none of his cars was out and all his employees were on the premises. A dozen others can vouch for it.”

  “I see.”

  “Anybody else to back up your side?”

  I grinned at him. “I think it can be arranged.”

  “You’re causing a lot of trouble, Mister,” he told me.

  My grin got big enough so he could see all the teeth. “Hell, I haven’t even started yet.”

  Dari and I drove through town and picked up a macadam road leading into the hills. Below us to the right Lake Rappaho was a huge silver puddle. Two lesser roads intersected and joined the one we were on.

  At the next bend we came upon the outer defenses of Simpson’s place. A sign read Hillside Manor Private. It was set in a fieldstone wall a good 10 feet high and on top were shards of broken glass set in concrete. That wasn’t all. Five feet out there was a heavy wire fence with a three-strand barbed wire overhang.

  “Nice,” I said. “He’s really in there. How long has it been like this?”

  “Since the war. About ‘47.”

  “This guy Simpson… he’s always had the place?”

  “No. There was another. It changed hands about ten years ago. That is, at least the owners changed. But the visitors; they’re always the same. You never see them in town at all. They come and go at night or come in by the North Fork Road or by Otter Pass. Sometimes there are a hundred people up there a week or two at a time.”

  “It can accommodate that many?”

  “At least. There are twenty-some rooms in the big house and six outbuildings with full accommodations. It’s almost like a huge private club.”

  “Nobody’s ever been nosy enough to look inside?”

  After a moment she said, “They caught Jake Adler in there once and beat him up terriblv. Captain Cox has been in a couple of times, but said he saw nothing going on. Several years ago two hunters were reported missing in this area. They were found dead a week later… fifty miles away. Their car went over a cliff. The police said they had changed their plans and decided to hunt elsewhere.”

  “Could have been.”

  “Possibly. Only one of them made a phone call from the hotel the day they were supposed to have disappeared.”

  I looked at her incredulously. “You report that?”

  “They said I wasn’t positive enough. I only had a photograph to go on and in brush clothes all hunters tend to look alike.”

  “Nice. Real nice. How can we get a look in there then?”

  “You can see the house from the road a little way up. I don’t know how you can get inside though. The wall goes all the way around and down to the lake.”

  “There’s an approach on the water?”

  Her forehead creased in thought. “There’s a landing there with a path leading through the woods. It’s well hidden in a finger cove. Are you…”

  “Let’s see the house first.”

  We found the spot. I parked the car and stood there at the lip, looking across a quarter-mile gulf of densely wooded valley at the white house that looked like a vacation hotel.

  A few figures moved on the lawn and a few more clustered on the porch, their dark clothes marking them against the stark white of the building.

  Behind me, Dari said, “A car is coming.”

  It was a blue sedan, an expensive job, the two in front indiscernible in the shadows. But the New York City plate wasn’t. I wrote the number down and didn’t bother putting the pencil back. Another plume of dust was showing around the Otter Pass intersection and I waited it out. We were back to black Caddies again and this one had four men in it and upstate New York plates. Fifteen minutes later a white Buick station wagon rolled past and the guy beside the driver was looking my way.

  Harry Adrano hadn’t changed much in the five years he had been up the river. His face was still set in a perpetual scowl, still blue-black with beard, his mouth a hard slash. And Harry was another number in a crazy combination because wherever Harry went one of the poppy derivatives was sure to follow.

  Very softly I said, “Like Apalachin… I got to get inside there.”

  “You can’t. The main gate is guarded.”

  “There’s the lake…”

  “Somebody will be there, too. Why do you have to go inside?”

  “Because I want to get the numbers on any cars that are up there.”

  “You’ll get killed in there.”

  “You know a better way?”

  The smile she gave me matched her eyes. “Yes. Grace Shaefer was in town yesterday. She’ll be making herself available for the… festivities there.”

  “Do you think she’ll go along with that?”

  Dari’s smile changed.
“I figure you’ll be able to coax her into it.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I took her arm and headed for the car. Before we reached it I heard tires digging into the road up ahead and tried to duck back into the brush. It wasn’t any good. The black Cad swept by going back toward town and both the guys in it had plenty of time to spot the two of us, if they had bothered to look. It didn’t seem that they had, but Benny Quick was driving and that little punk could see all around him without moving his head.

  We waited, heard the car fade off downhill, then got in the truck. At the Otter Pass turn-off, fresh tire tracks scarred the dirt and a broken whiskey bottle glinted at the side of the road.

  Just beyond the North Fork Road, the road turned sharply, and that’s where they were waiting. The Cad was broadside to us and Benny was standing beside it. If we were just casual tourists, it would look like a minor accident, but anything else and it was a neat trap.

  I braked to a stop 20 feet short of the Caddy and stuck my head half out the window so the corner post covered most of my face. Benny Quick tried to adjust a pleasant smile to fit his squirrelly expression, but did a lousy job of it.

  But Benny wasn’t the one I was worried about. Someplace nearby the other guy was staked out and there was a good chance he had a rod in his fist. I tugged the .45 out and thumbed the hammer back. Beside me Dari froze.

  I put on the neighborly act, too. “Trouble, friend?”

  Benny started toward me. I opened the door of the cab and swung it out as if I were trying to get a better look. I saw Benny take in the Willie Elkins’ Garage, Repairs and Towing Call Pinewood 101 sign printed there, make a snap decision, figure us for locals in the woods, and decide to write us off as coincidence.

  His smile stretched a little. “No,… no trouble. Pulled a little hard on the turn and skidded around. Just didn’t want anybody ramming me while I turned around.”

  He got in the Cad, gunned the engine, and made a big production of jockeying around in the small area. He wound up pointing back toward the mountain and waved as he went by. I waved too and at that moment our eyes met and something seemed to go sour with Benny Quick’s grin.

  Either he was turning it off as a bad fit a little too fast or he recognized me from a time not so long ago.