He crossed the room to the door behind the crap table. The lock gave him a little argument for a moment, then a piece of the panel dropped off and he went through, shut the door after him.
It was very silent in Shamey’s now. I looked at the barman.
«This guy’s tough,» I said quickly. «And he’s liable to go mean. You can see the idea. He’s looking for an old sweetie who used to work here when it was a place for whites. Got any artillery back there?»
«I thought you was with him,» the barman said suspiciously. «Couldn’t help myself. He dragged me up. I didn’t feel like being thrown over any houses.»
«Shuah. Ah got me a shotgun,» the barman said, still suspicious.
He began to stoop behind the bar, then stayed in that position rolling his eyes.
There was a dull flat sound at the back of the place, behind the shut door. It might have been a slammed door. It might have been a gun. Just the one sound. No other followed it.
The barman and I waited too long, wondering what the sound was. Not liking to think what it could be.
The door at the back opened and the big man came through quickly, with a Colt army .45 automatic looking like a toy in his hand.
He looked the room over with one swift glance. His grin was taut. He looked like the man who could take forty grand singlehanded from the Great Bend Bank.
He came over to us in swift, almost soundless steps, for all his size.
«Rise up, nigger!»
The barman came up slowly, gray; his hands empty, high.
The big man felt me over, stepped away from us.
«Mr. Montgomery didn’t know where Beuiah was either,» he said softly. «He tried to tell me — with this.» He waggled the gun. «So long, punks. Don’t forget your rubbers.»
He was gone, down the stairs, very quickly, very quietly.
I jumped around the bar and took the sawed-off shotgun that lay there, on the shelf. Not to use on Steve Skalla. That was not my job. So the barman wouldn’t use it on me. I went back across the room and through that door.
The bouncer lay on the floor of a hall with a knife in his hand. He was unconscious. I took the knife out of his hand and stepped over him through a door marked Office.
Mr. Montgomery was in there, behind a small scarred desk, close to a partly boarded-up window. Just folded, like a handkerchief or a hinge.
A drawer was open at his right hand. The gun would have come from there. There was a smear of oil on the paper that lined it.
Not a smart idea, but he would never have a smarter one — not now.
Nothing happened while I waited for the police.
When they came both the barman and the bouncer were gone. I had locked myself in with Mr. Montgomery and the shotgun. Just in case.
Hiney got it. A lean-jawed, complaining, overslow detective lieutenant, with long yellow hands that he held on his knees while he talked to me in his cubicle at Headquarters. His shirt was darned under the points of his old-fashioned stiff collar. He looked poor and sour and honest.
This was an hour or so later. They knew all about Steve Skalla then, from their own records. They even had a ten-year-old photo that made him look as eyebrowless as a French roll. All they didn’t know was where he was.
«Six foot six and a half,» Kiney said. «Two hundred sixtyfour pounds. A guy that size can’t get far, not in them fancy duds. He couldn’t buy anything else in a hurry. Whyn’t you take him?»
I handed the photo back and laughed.
Hiney pointed one of his long yellow fingers at me bitterly. «Carmady, a tough shamus, huh? Six feet of man, and a jaw you could break rocks on. Whyn’t you take him?»
«I’m getting a little gray at the temples,» I said. «And I didn’t have a gun. He had. I wasn’t on a gun-toting job over there. Skalla just picked me up. I’m kind of cute sometimes.»
Hiney glared at me.
«All right,» I said. «Why argue? I’ve seen the guy. He could wear an elephant in his vest pocket. And I didn’t know he’d killed anybody. You’ll get him all right.»
«Yeah,» Hiney said. «Easy. But I just don’t like to waste my time on these shine killings. No pix. No space. Not even three lines in the want-ad section. Heck, they was five smokes — five, mind you — carved Harlem sunsets all over each other over on East Eight-four one time. All dead. Cold meat. And the newshawks wouldn’t even go out there.»
«Pick him up nice,» I said. «Or he’ll knock off a brace of prowlies for you. Then you’ll get space.»
«And I wouldn’t have the case then neither,» Hiney jeered. «Well, the hell with him. I got him on the air. Ain’t nothing else to do but just sit.»
«Try the girl,» I said. «Beulah. Skalla will. That’s what he’s after. That’s what started it all. Try her.»
«You try her,» Hiney said. «I ain’t been in a joy house in twenty years.»
«I suppose I’d be right at home in one. How much will you pay?»
«Jeeze, guy, coppers don’t hire private dicks. What with?» He rolled a cigarette out of a can of tobacco. It burned down one side like a forest fire. A man yelled angrily into a telephone in the next cubbyhole. Hiney made another cigarette with more care and licked it and lighted it. He clasped his bony hands on his bony knees again.
«Think of your publicity,» I said. «I bet you twenty-five I find Beulah before you put Skalla under glass.»
He thought it over. He seemed almost to count his bank balance on his cigarette puffs.
«Ten is top,» he said. «And she’s all mine — private.»
I stared at him.
«I don’t work for that kind of money,» I said. «But if I can do it in one day — and you let me alone — I’ll do it for nothing. Just to show you why you’ve been a lieutenant for twenty years.»
He didn’t like that crack much better than I liked his about the joy house. But we shook hands on it.
I got my old Chrysler roadster out of the official parking lot and drove back towards the Central Avenue district.
Shamey’s was closed up, of course. An obvious plainclothes man sat in a car in front of it, reading a paper with one eye. I didn’t know why. Nobody there knew anything about Skalla.
I parked around the corner and went into the diagonal lobby of a Negro hotel called the Hotel Sans Souci. Two rows of hard, empty chairs stared at each other across a strip of fiber carpet. Behind a desk a bald-headed man had his eyes shut and his hands clasped on the desk top. He dozed. He wore an ascot tie that had been tied about 1880, and the green stone in his stickpin was not quite as large as a trash barrel. His large, loose chin folded down on it gently, and his brown hands were soft, peaceful, and clean.
A metal embossed sign at his elbow said: This Hotel Is Under the Protection of the International Consolidated Agencies, Inc.
When he opened one eye I pointed to the sign and said: «H.P.D. man checking up. Any trouble here?»
H.P.D. means Hotel Protective Department, which is the part of a large agency that looks after check bouncers and people who move out by the back stairs, leaving second-hand suitcases full of bricks.
«Trouble, brother,» he said, in a high, sonorous voice, «is something we is fresh out of.» He lowered the voice four or five notches and added, «We don’t take no checks.»
I leaned on the counter across from his folded hands and started to spin a quarter on the bare, scarred wood.
«Heard what happened over at Shamey’s this morning?»
«Brother, I forgit.» Both his eyes were open now and he was watching the blur of light made by the spinning quarter.
«The boss got bumped off,» I said. «Montgomery. Got his neck broken.»
«May the Lawd receive his soul, brother.» The voice went down again. «Cop?»