the Hills Of Homicide (Ss) (1987) Page 9

  "It's a nice sum." He looked at her again. "When are you leaving?"

  "I've got to go back to New York for Bobby."

  "Don't go yet." He took her by the shoulders. "In a couple of days, my lips won't be so swollen. They aren't right for kissing a girl now, but "

  "But I'll bet you could," she suggested, "if you tried!"

  *

  Author's Note:

  WITH DEATH IN HIS CORNER

  Kip Morgan's mother took a fancy to the writing of Rudyard Kipling and named her son after that great author of adventure tales. Kip is always a direct-action man who likes to bull right into the middle of things. Nobody puts the arm on him and gets away with it .

  Following his debut in DEAD MAN'S TRAIL, Kip builds his reputation for being a young and hungry professsional operator, but WITH DEATH IN HIS CORNER is an example of the way Kip got many of his cases: by helping out a friend . During his boxing days he had a knack for getting his fellow fighters out of trouble, and it was only natural that many of those same gentlemen called on Kip when they continued to get into difficulties long after their days in the ring. Kip always heeded their call, even though the results were frequently far more punishing than any of them ever faced as prizefighters.

  *

  WITH DEATH IN HIS CORNER

  The ghost of a mustache haunted his upper lip, and soft blond hair rolled back from a high white brow in a delicately artificial wave. He walked toward me with a quick, pleased smile. "A table, sir? Right this way."

  There was a small half-circle bar at one end of the place and a square of dance floor about the size of two army blankets.

  On a dais about two feet above the dance floor a lackadaisical orchestra played desultory music. Three women and two men sat at the bar and several of the tables were occupied. From the way the three women turned their heads to look, I knew all were hoping for a pickup. I wasn't.

  A popeyed waiter in a too-tight tux bustled over, polishing a small tray suggestively. Ordering a bourbon and soda, I asked, "Where's Rocky Garzo?"

  The question stopped him as if he'd been slugged in the wind, and he turned his head as if he were afraid of what he would see.

  "I don't know him," he said too hastily. "I never heard of the guy."

  He was gone toward the bar before I could ask anything further, but come what may, I knew I'd started the ball rolling. Not only did the waiter know Garzo, but he knew something was wrong. One look at his face had been enough. The man was scared.

  He must have tipped a sign to the tall headwaiter, because when he returned with my drink, the blond guy was with him.

  "You were asking for someone?" There was a slight edge to his voice, and the welcome sign was gone from his eyes. "What was the name again?"

  "Garzo," I said, "Rocky Garzo. He used to be a fighter." "I don't believe I know him," he replied. "I don't meet many fighters."

  "Possibly not, but it is odd you haven't met him. He used to work here."

  "Here?" His voice shrilled a little, then steadied down. He was worried; that was obvious. Whatever trouble Garzo was in it must be serious. "You're mistaken, I believe. He did not work here."

  "Apparently, you and Social Security don't agree," I commented. "They assured me he worked here, at least until a day or so ago."

  He did not like that, and he did not like me. "Well" his tone showed his impatience-I can't keep up with all the help. I hope you find him."

  "Oh, don't worry! I will! I will!"

  He could not get away fast enough, seeming to wish as much distance between us as possible. All Rocky's letter had said was that he was in trouble and needed help, and Rocky was not one to ask for help unless he needed it desperately.

  It began to look as if my hunch was right. Also, I did not like the way they were refusing to admit Garzo had even been around. I am not one to be irritated by small things, but I was beginning not to like what was happening. All I wanted was to know where Rocky was and what was wrong, if anything.

  Rocky Garzo was a boy who had been around. A quiet Italian from the wrong side of the tracks, but a simple-hearted, friendly sort who could really fight. He wanted no trouble with anyone and, except as a youngster, never had a fight in his life he didn't get paid for. I've heard men call him everything they could think of, and he would just walk away. But when the chips were down, Rocky could really throw them. Back in the days when Well, he fought the best of them.

  The fleshpots got him. He was a kid who never had anything until he got into big money in the fight game, and he liked the good food, flashy women, and clothes. His money just sort of dribbled away, and the easy life softened him up. Then the boys began to tag him with the hard ones. It was Jimmy Hartman who wound him up with the flashiest right hand on the Coast.

  He quit then. He went to waiting on tables. He was a fast-moving, deft-handed man with an easy smile. He quit drinking, and the result was he was doing all right until something went wrong here at the Crystal Palace.

  There was a pretty girl sitting at the table next to mine. She was with a bald-headed guy who was well along in his cups. She was young and shaped to be annoyed, if you get what I mean. The new look didn't keep the boys from giving her the old looks. Not with the set of fixtures she had.

  All of a sudden, she is talking to me. She is talking without turning her head. "You'd better take it out of here," she said. "These boys play rough, even for you, Kip Morgan!"

  "What's the catch?" I didn't turn my head, either. "Can't a guy even ask for his friends?"

  "Not that one. He's hotter than a firecracker, and I don't mean with the law. Meet me at the Silver Plate in a half hour or so and I'll ditch this dope and tell you about it."

  This place was not getting me anywhere. The waiter was pointedly ignoring my empty glass, and in such places as this they usually take it out of your hand before you can put it down. I took a gander at Algy or whatever his name was and saw him talking with a hefty lad at the door. This character had bouncer written all over him and looked like a moment of fun. I hadn't bounced a bouncer in some time.

  As I passed them, I grinned at Algy. "I'll be back," I said. "I like to ask questions."

  This was the cue the bouncer needed. He walked over, menace in his every move. "You've been here too long an' too much." He made his voice ugly. "We don't want you here no more! Get out an' stay out!"

  "Well, I'll be swiped by a truck!" I said. "Pete Farber!" "Huh?" He blinked at me. "Who are you, huh?" "Why, Pete! You mean you don't remember? Of course, our acquaintance was brief, and you couldn't see very well through all that blood. I had just hung that eyebrow down over your right eye and had you set for the payoff. Naturally, you didn't see me later because I was home in bed before they brought you out of it."

  "Huh?" Then awareness came, and his eyes hardened but grew wary also. He did have a memory, after all. "Kip Morgan!" he said. "Sure, it's Kip Morgan.

  "Right, and if you'll recall, Rocky Garzo and I teamed up in the old days. He was going down, but I was coming up, but we were pals. Well, I am a man who remembers his friends, and I am getting curious about this stalling I amgetting.

  "Play it smart," Farber said, "and get out while you're all in one piece. This is too big for you. Also"--he moved closer---"I got no reason to like you. I'd as soon bust you as not."

  That made me smile. "Pete, what makes you think you could do something now you couldn't do six years ago? You're fatter now, Pete, and slower. If you want a repeat on that job at the Olympic, just start something."

  Pete Farber's next remark stopped me cold.

  "You beat me," he said, "but you dropped a duke to Ben Altman. Well, you just forget Gam, because Altman's still a winner."

  When I got outside that one puzzled me. What was the connection between Ben Altman, formerly a top-ranking light heavyweight, and Gam?

  Then I began to remember a few things I'd forgotten. There had been some shakeups in the mobs, and Altman, a boy from the old Alberta section of Portland, had sud
denly emerged on top. He was now a big wheel.

  So Rocky didn't work here anymore. I climbed into a cab and gave the cabbie the address of Rocky's rooming house. He turned his head for a second look. "Chum," he said. "I'd not go down there dressed like you are. That's a rough neighborhood."

  "You're telling me? Let her roll, Ajax. Anybody who shakes me down is entitled to what he gets."

  He was disgusted. "Big talk won't ,get you no place. All men are equal at the point of a gun.'

  "Not quite. When somebody tries to make it with a gun, he has already admitted he hasn't the guts to make it the honest way. Whether he realizes it or not, life has already whipped him. From there on, it's all downhill."

  "Sometimes I figure it would beat hackin', but I don't know."

  "A while back, somebody took an average of all the boys in for larceny. The average sentence served was four years, the average take was twenty-one bucks."

  "I'll stick to hackin'."

  The rooming house was a decrepit frame building of two rickety stories. The number showed above a doorway that opened on a dark, dank-looking stairway. The place smelled of ancient meals, sweaty clothing, and the dampness of age. Hesitating a moment, I struck a match to see the steps, then felt my way up to the second floor of this termite heaven.

  At the top of the stairs, a door stood partly open, and I had the feeling of somebody watching.

  "I'm looking for Rocky Garzo," I said.

  "Don't know him." It was a woman's husky voice. I could picture the woman.

  "Used to be a fighter," I explained. "A flat nose and a tin ear."

  "Oh, him. End of the hall. He came in about an hour ago."

  My second match had flickered out, so I struck another and went down the hall, my footsteps echoing in the emptiness. The walls were discolored by dampness and ancient stains, no doubt left by the first settler.

  A door at the end of the hall stared blankly back at me. My fist lifted, and my knuckles rapped softly. Suddenly, I had that strange and lonely feeling of one who raps on the door of an empty house. My hand dropped to the knob, and the door protested faintly as I pushed it open. A slight grayness from a dusty, long-unwashed window showed a figure on the bed.

  "Rocky?" I spoke softly, but when there was no reply, I reached for the light switch. The light flashed on, and I blinked. I needed no second look to know that Rocky Garzo had heard his last bell, and from the look of the room he had gone out fighting.

  He was lying on his right cheek and stomach and there was a knife in his back, buried to the hilt. It was low down on the left side and seemed to have an upward inclination. The bedding was mussed, and a chair was tipped on its side. A broken cup lay on the floor. Stepping over the cup, I picked up his hand. It wasn't warm, but it wasn't cold, either.

  His knuckles were skinned.

  "Anything wrong, mister?" It was the woman from down the hall. She was behind me in the light of the door, a faded blonde who had lost the battle with graying hair. Her face was puffed from too much drinking, and only her eyes held the memory of what her beauty must have been.

  She was sober now, and she clutched a faded negligee about her.

  "Yeah," I said, and something of my feelings must have been in my voice, for quick sympathy showed in her eyes. -The Rock's dead. He's been murdered."

  She neither gasped nor cried out. She was beyond that. Murder was not new to her, nor death of any kind. "It's too bad," she spoke softly. "He was a good guy when he had it. In fact, he was always a good guy."

  My eyes swept the room, and I could feel that old hard anger coming up inside me. Rock had been a good guy, one of the best. There had to have been two men. No man fighting with the Rock ever got behind him. He must have been slugging one when the other stepped in from the hall with the shiv.

  "You'd better leave, mister. No use to get mixed up in this."

  "No, I'm not getting out. This boy was a beat-up ex-fighter and he's been murdered. Maybe he wasn't in the chips. Maybe he wasn't strictly class, but he was my friend."

  She was uneasy. "You'd better go. This is too big for you.

  "You know something about this?"

  "I don't know anything. I never know anything." "Look" I kept my voice gentle "this man was my friend. You're regular. I saw it in your eyes; you're the McCoy." I waved a hand at Rock. "He was one of the good ones. It isn't right for him to go out this way."

  She shook her head. "I'm not talking."

  "All right. You call the cops. I'll look around."

  She went away, and I heard her dialing the phone. I looked at Rock. He was a good Italian boy, that one. He came from the wrong side of the tracks, but he never let it start him down the wrong streets. He could throw a wicked right hand, that one. And he liked his spaghetti.

  "Pal," I said quietly, "I'm still in your corner."

  Without touching anything, I looked around, taking in the scene. One hood must have circled to get Rock's back to the door where the other one was waiting.

  When you knew about fights, in and out of the ring, and when you knew about killings, it wasn't hard to picture. Rock had come in, taken off his shirt, and the door opened. He turned, and the guy circled away from him. The Rock had moved in, slugging. Then the shiv in the back.

  But those knuckles.

  "You put your mark on him, Rock. I'll be looking for a hood with a busted face. The left side for sure, maybe the right, too."

  The woman came back to the room and stood in the door. "I've been trying to place you. You used to work out at the old Main Street Gym, and Rock talked about you. He figured Kip Morgan was the greatest guy on earth." She looked down, twisting her fingers. Her hands once had been beautiful.

  "Listen," she pleaded. "I've had so much trouble. I just can't take any more. I'm scared now, scared to death. Don't tell anybody, not even the police, but there were two of them. Both were well dressed. One was tall with broad shoulders; the other was heavy, much heavier than you."

  The siren sounded, then whined away and died at the foot of the steps. Detective Lieutenant Mooney was the first one up the steps. "Hi," he said, then looked again. "You, is it? Who's dead?"

  "Rocky Garzo. He was a fighter."

  "I know he was a fighter. I go out nights myself. Who did it? You?"

  "He was my friend. I came out from New York to see him."

  They started to give the room the business, and they knew their job, so I just stepped into the hall and kept out of the way. What little I had I gave to Mooney while they were shaking the place down.

  "If you want me," I said, "I'll be at the Plaza." "Go ahead, but don't leave town."

  A glance at my watch told me it was only forty minutes since I'd left the Crystal Palace, and I was ten minutes late for my date. The cab took ten more getting me there, but the babe was patient. She was sitting over coffee and three cigarette stubs.

  "They called them coffin nails when I was a kid," I told her.

  She had a pretty smile. "I thought you had decided not to come. That man I was with was harder to shake than the seven-year itch."

  "If you can help me," I said, "it would mean a lot. Garzo was my pal."

  "Sure, I know. I'm Mildred Casey, remember? I lived clown the block from Rock's old man. You two used to fix my bike."

  That made me look again. Blue eyes, the ghosts of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and shabby clothes. An effort to be lively with nothing much to be lively or happy about, but great courage. She still had that, with a fine sort of pride. There was hurt in her eyes where her heart showed, eyes that had kept looking at men wondering if this was the right one.

  "I remember," I said. She had been a knobby-kneed kid with stars for eyes. "How could I forget? It was your glamour that got me."

  She laughed, and it was a pretty sound. "Don't be silly, Kip. My knees were always skinned, and my bike was always busted."

  Her eyes went from my face to the clothes I was wearing. "You've done well, and I'm glad." If I do say so, they were
good. I'd always liked good clothes, liked the nice things that money could buy. Often they hadn't been easy to have because I also liked being on the level. Two of the boys I'd grown up with had ended in the chair, and another was doing time for a payroll job.

  "Kid" I leaned toward her--tell me about Rock. You've got to think of everything, and after you've told me, forget about it unless you talk to the police."

  Her face went dead white then, and her eyes grew larger. She took it standing, but I knew she understood. In the world where we'd grown up, you didn't have to draw the pictures.

  "Rock worked at the Crystal Palace only three weeks. He was a good waiter, but after his first week, somgthing was bothering him. He talked to me sometimes, and I could see he had something on his mind. Then, one night, he quit and never even came back for his money."

  "What happened that night?"

  "Nothing, really. After a rather quiet evening, some people came in and sat at one of Rock's tables. Horace, he's the blond boy, made quite a fuss over them, but nothing happened that I could see. Then, all of a sudden, Rock went by me, stripping off his apron. He must have gone out the back way."

  "Do you know who they were?"

  Milly hesitated, concentrating. "There were four in the party, two men and two women. All were well dressed, and the men were flashing big rolls of bills. One of the men was larger than you. He wore a dark suit. A blond girl was with him, very beautiful."

  "The big guy? Was he blond, too? With a broken nose?"

  She nodded, remembering his eyes. "Yes, yesl He looked like he might have been a fighter once."

  For a moment, I considered that. "Have you ever heard of Benny Altman?"

  Her face changed as if somebody had slapped her. "So that was Ben Altman!" She sat very quiet, her coffee growing cold in front of her. ''He knew a friend of mine once, a girl named Cory Ryan." She thought for a minute, then added, "The other man was shorter and darker." She reverted to the former topic. "If you want to know anything about Ben Altman, ask Cory Ryan. He treated her terribly."