“I’ll tell her,” I said.
I tried the rest of the two-bit joints, the hotels and motels and no Dottie. But I got a picture of a pretty talky girl, booze talk — big dreams, big money. It was a joke, of course, that Eddie Glass was her dream man.
All the touring was a waste of time, of course, because when I walked into my motel room she was sitting on the bed. The small nickel-plated automatic was in her hand aimed at my chest. She was skinny and her hair was bleached nearly white and her face was beginning to fail her. But she hated me with all her blue eyes.
She didn’t take a breath before cracking the whip. “You did it, didn’t you!”
Crossing my arms, I propped a foot on the wood chair and leaned against the wall. The .38 under my arm felt a long way off.
“Kinda had you pegged for it,” I said. “You and some Mexican friends.”
“You’re crazy. Ed and me, we were going to L.A.”
“Yeah, but you knew he was trying to get the money back, Dottie.”
“We had plans.” Her thin body began to shake and I was getting very worried about the gun. “Money or no money, we had plans.”
“But better with the money.”
She shook her head emphatically. “Some friend. He was saying how you’d help him, save him for old times.”
“I didn’t build his trap.”
“Some friend.”
She was wiping her eyes when I kicked the chair at her. The slug hit the door and I hit her. She wailed as I yanked the little automatic from her hand and she buried her face in the bed pillow. Grabbing her shoulders, I pulled her upright.
“What’d you do with the money, Dottie?”
“I ain’t got it,” she cried. “I tell you—”
Pocketing her automatic, I tried to think. This whole mess smelled and I was beginning to feel so badly sucked into it I wondered where the out was. Finally I looked down at the pathetic limp frame of a girl on the bed.
I slammed the chair on its legs and sat down, facing her over the back.
“You’ve got something in your head I need,” I said. “Names, maybe. Something to tie ends up.”
“I don’t know a damn thing,” she said.
“Sure. Where were you last night?”
“Watching the hotel.”
“Lookout?”
“For Eddie. Across the street at the phone booth. I was to watch and call him if anybody suspicious came in.”
“And?”
“And now he’s dead.”
She began to blubber again and I grabbed her arm. “Cut out that crap, Dottie. Three Mexicans. Name them.”
She looked at me. “What three Mexicans?”
“Went into the hotel.”
“Nobody went in. I’d have called.”
I sat there a minute while she looked at me like I was crazy. Then I got up, kicked the chair against the wall and slammed the door when I left.
At the Dupair Hotel I checked the alley entrance. It was a double steel door, bolted tight shut. The fire escape was for coming down, not going up.
Tony, the pot-bellied owner, was behind the counter when I went in the front. His loose face, unaccustomed to warm greetings, wasn’t showing me any now.
“You wanna room?” he asked.
“Not in this dump,” I said. “Just a couple of answers, Tony.”
“About Glass.”
“That’s it.”
“I told the cop all I knew,” he said.
I leaned on the counter, my .38 firm under my coat. “Tell me, Tony. Tell me about three Mexicans you saw.”
“I told already.”
“Front door,” I said.
“Sure.”
“Walked right in.”
“Sure.”
I smiled. “I got people saying it never happened. And it doesn’t figure, anyway.” I stopped, but his blank face told me he wanted me to do the talking.
“Eddie Glass was scared,” I went on. “Scared to death. He’d never let three Mexicans in his room. But that locked door says he did, or they had a key, or...”
I was smiling again, and Tony shifted his weight forward on his swivel.
“Where’s the money, Tony? Man with the key, man knowing about wall holes to hide money in.”
“Don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
I shook my head. “Come on. One phone call to the P.D., explain a few facts, a little theory — a search warrant follows. I wait here, meantime, and watch you squirm cause you can’t get to it.”
Tony’s face had gone flat and I could see his eyes moving, figuring, calculating and hating.
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Fifty grand is too much money to hide anywhere but real close. More money than you ever saw, huh, Tony?”
When he moved to the desk drawer, I moved over the counter. I’m a bit overweight, but I can still make it. His old .45 was clearing the wood edge of the drawer when I hit him in the chest with my knee, By the time the gun had hit the floor my fist was mashing Tony’s fat nose.
After he wiped the blood away, he glared up at me.
“You bastard,” he said hoarsely.
“Where is it?”
“For you to get? Stick it, that’s what.”
With his .45 in his face, I used the phone. He sat watching, and I knew the only satisfaction he was getting was knowing I wouldn’t get the money.
His eyes got big when I got the Mexicali operator and asked for La Bola bar.
“Tell Hernandez,” I said to the bartender, “to send some muscle to the Dupair Hotel in Carpenter if he wants the dinero.”
Naturally the bartender pretended I was nuts — it can be said in a number of ways in Spanish. I hung up, knowing the message would get through pronto.
“Who’s this Hernandez?” Tony asked, worried now.
“He figures that fifty grand is his,” I said. “And he’s the man Eddie Glass was afraid of. But all the time Eddie should’ve been looking closer, huh, Tony? He should’ve been looking at a flop hotel owner who smelled money, figured the rumors true and saw a quick way to clear out of this hole.”
“Look, Varney, fifty grand splits nice down the middle,”
“I’ve made enough deals,” I said.
“Gimme a break, Varney.”
“Like you gave Eddie?”
“They’ll cut me to pieces. I seen the way they work.”
“I figured you had.”
The Mexican Mafia had tenacles stateside, so it didn’t surprise me when two local Chicanos walked in — like twins, big and dark and broad shouldered, both wearing heavy sheepskin jackets.
They saw the .45 in my hand and stopped.
“Usted es Varney?” asked the slightly bigger of the two. I nodded. “Este hombre?” He pointed at Tony and I nodded.
It was the kind of grin he had that you smelled, and Tony got a whiff of it strong. He moved with the quickness panic makes and slammed the door to the little room he slept in behind the counter.
“All yours,” I said, waving at the two muscles.
I counted on Tony having another gun, or at least something to cause the Mexicans to use theirs. I walked across the street to the phone booth. When I heard the first shot, a shotgun blast, I called the police like a. good citizen.
The morning newspaper said they caught the one Mexican five miles out of town with a briefcase full of money. One was dead in the hotel lobby, a face full of buckshot from Tony ’s.12 guage.
Tony took a .38 slug in the chest where the heart was.
Lieutenant Henderson called me at the motel just before I checked out and wanted to know what the hell I knew about the hotel mess.
“Not a thing,” I said. “What happened?”
When he hung up he was mumbling something about all the paper work involved in disposing of fifty grand.
I found Dottie camped at the Sagebrush bar. She was leaning heavy on her fifth Tom Collins, lamenting Eddie Glass. I joined her for one and then said: