Killer in the Rain
KILLER IN THE RAIN
ONE
We were sitting in a room at the Berglund. I was on the side of the bed, and Dravec was in the easy chair. It was my room.
Rain beat very hard against the windows. They were shut tight and it was hot in the room and I had a little fan going on the table. The breeze from it hit Dravec’s face high up, lifted his heavy black hair, moved the longer bristles in the fat path of eyebrow that went across his face in a solid line. He looked like a bouncer who had come into money.
He showed me some of his gold teeth and said: «What you got on me?»
He said it importantly, as if anyone who knew anything would know quite a lot about him.
«Nothing,» I said, «You’re clean, as far as I know.»
He lifted a large hairy hand and stared at it solidly for a minute.
«You don’t get me. A feller named M’Gee sent me here. Violets M’Gee.»
«Fine. How is Violets these days?» Violets M’Gee was a homicide dick in the sheriff’s office.
He looked at his large hand and frowned. «No — you still don’t get it. I got a job for you.»
«I don’t go out much any more,» I said. «I’m getting kind of frail.»
He looked around the room carefully, bluffing a bit, like a man not naturally observant.
«Maybe it’s money,» he said.
«Maybe it is,» I said.
He had a belted suede raincoat on. He tore it open carelessly and got out a wallet that was not quite as big as a bale of hay. Currency stuck out of it at careless angles. When he slapped it down on his knee it made a fat sound that was pleasant to the ear. He shook money out of it, selected a few bills from the bunch, stuffed the rest back, dropped the wallet on the floor and let it lie, arranged five century notes like a light poker hand and put them under the base of the fan on the table.
That was a lot of work. It made him grunt.
«I got lots of sugar,» he said.
«So I see. What do I do for that, if I get it?»
«You know me now, huh?»
«A little better.»
I got an envelope out of an inside pocket and read to him aloud from some scribbling on the back.
«Dravec, Anton or Tony. Former Pittsburgh steelworker, truck guard, all-round muscle stiff. Made a wrong pass and got shut up. Left town, came West. Worked on an avocado ranch at El Seguro. Came up with a ranch of his own. Sat right on the dome when the El Seguro oil boom burst. Got rich. Lost a lot of it buying into other people’s dusters. Still has enough. Serbian by birth, six feet, two hundred and forty, one daughter, never known to have had a wife. No police record of any consequence. None at all since Pittsburgh.»
I lit a pipe.
«Jeeze,» he said. «Where you promote all that?»
«Connections. What’s the angle?»
He picked the wallet off the floor and moused around inside it with a couple of square fingers for a while, with his tongue sticking out between his thick lips. He finally got out a slim brown card and some crumpled slips of paper. He pushed them at me.
The card was in golf type, very delicately done. It said: «Mr. Harold Hardwicke Steiner,» and very small in the corner, «Rare Books and De Luxe Editions.» No address or phone number.
The white slips, three in number, were simple IOU’s for a thousand dollars each, signed: «Carmen Dravec» in a sprawling, moronic handwriting.
I gave it all back to him and said: «Blackmail?»
He shook his head slowly and something gentle came into his face that hadn’t been there before.
«It’s my little girl — Carmen. This Steiner, he bothers her. She goes to his joint all the time, makes whoopee. He makes love to her, I guess. I don’t like it.»
I nodded. «How about the notes?»
«I don’t care nothin’ about the dough. She plays-games with him. The hell with that. She’s what you call man-crazy. You go tell this Steiner to lay off Carmen. I break his neck with my hands. See?»
All this in a rush, with deep breathing. His eyes got small and round, and furious. His teeth almost chattered.
I said: «Why have me tell him? Why not tell him yourself?»
«Maybe I get mad and kill the — !» he yelled.
I picked a match out of my pocket and prodded the loose ash in the bowl of my pipe. I looked at him carefully for a moment, getting hold of an idea.
«Nerts, you’re scared to,» I told him.
Both fists came up. He held them shoulder high and shook them, great knots of bone and muscle. He lowered them slowly, heaved a deep honest sigh, and said: «Yeah. I’m scared to. I dunno how to handle her. All the time some new guy and all the time a punk. A while back I gave a guy called Joe Marty five grand to lay off her. She’s still mad at me.»
I stared at the window, watched the rain hit it, flatten out, and slide down in a thick wave, liked melted gelatin. It was too early in the fall for that kind of rain.
«Giving them sugar doesn’t get you anywhere,» I said. «You could be doing that all your life. So you figure you’d like to have me get rough with this one, Steiner.»
«Tell him I break his neck!»
«I wouldn’t bother,» I said. «I know Steiner. I’d break his neck for you myself, if it would do any good.»
He leaned forward and grabbed my hand. His eyes got childish. A gray tear floated in each of them.
«Listen, M’Gee says you’re a good guy. I tell you something I ain’t told nobody — ever. Carmen — she’s not my kid at all. I just picked her up in Smoky, a little baby in the street. She didn’t have nobody. I guess maybe I steal her, huh?»
«Sounds like it,» I said, and had to fight to get my hand loose. I rubbed feeling back into it with the other one. The man had a grip that would crack a telephone pole.
«I go straight then,» he said grimly, and yet tenderly. «I come out here and make good, She grows up. I love her.»
I said: «Uh-huh. That’s natural.»
«You don’t get me. I wanta marry her.»
I stared at him.
«She gets older, get some sense. Maybe she marry me, huh?» His voice implored me, as if I had the settling of that.
«Ever ask her?»
«I’m scared to,» he said humbly.
«She soft on Steiner, do you think?»
He nodded. «But that don’t mean nothin’.»
I could believe that. I got off the bed, threw a window up and let the rain hit my face for a minute.
«Let’s get this straight,» I said, lowering the window again and going back to the bed. «I can take Steiner off your back. That’s easy. I just don’t see what it buys you.»
He grabbed for my hand again, but I was a little too quick for him this time.
«You came in here a little tough, flashing your wad,» I said. «You’re going out soft. Not from anything I’ve said. You knew it already. I’m not Dorothy Dix, and I’m only partly a prune. But I’ll take Steiner off you, if you really want that.»
He stood up clumsily, swung his hat and stared down at my feet.
«You take him off my back, like you said. He ain’t her sort, anyway.»
«It might hurt your back a little.»
«That’s okay. That’s what it’s for,» he said.
He buttoned himself up, dumped his hat on his big shaggy head, and rolled on out. He shut the door carefully, as if he was going out of a sickroom.
I thought he was as crazy as a pair of waltzing mice, but I liked him.
I put his goldbacks in a safe place, mixed myself a long drink, and sat down in the chair that was still warm from him.
While I played with the drink I wondered if he had any idea what Steiner’s racket was.
Steiner had a collection of rare and half-rare smut books which he loaned out as high as ten dollars a day — to the right people.