Spanish Blood
SPANISH BLOOD
ONE
Big John Masters was large, fat, oily. He had sleek blue jowls and very thick fingers on which the knuckles were dimples. His brown hair was combed straight back from his forehead and he wore a wine-colored suit with patch pockets, a wine-colored tie, a tan silk shirt. There was a lot of red and gold band around the thick brown cigar between his lips.
He wrinkled his nose, peeped at his hole card again, tried not to grin. He said: «Hit me again, Dave — and don’t hit me with the City Hall.»
A four and a deuce showed. Dave Aage looked at them solemnly across the table, looked down at his own hand. He was very tall and thin, with a long bony face and hair the color of wet sand. He held the deck flat on the palm of his hand, turned the top card slowly, and flicked it across the table. It was the queen of spades.
Big John Masters opened his mouth wide, waved his cigar about, chuckled.
«Pay me, Dave. For once a lady was right.» He turned his hole card with a flourish. A five.
Dave Aage smiled politely, didn’t move. A muted telephone bell rang close to him, behind long silk drapes that bordered the very high lancet windows. He took a cigarette out of his mouth and laid it carefully on the edge of a tray on a tabouret beside the card table, reached behind the curtain for the phone.
He spoke into the cup with a cool, almost whispering voice, then listened for a long time. Nothing changed in his greenish eyes, no flicker of emotion showed on his narrow face. Masters squirmed, bit hard on his cigar.
After a long time Aage said, «Okey, you’ll hear from us.» He pronged the instrument and put it back behind the curtain.
He picked his cigarette up, pulled the lobe of his ear. Masters swore. «What’s eating you, for Pete’s sake? Gimme ten bucks.»
Aage smiled dryly and leaned back. He reached for a drink, sipped it, put it down, spoke around his cigarette. All his movements were slow, thoughtful, almost absent-minded. He said: «Are we a couple of smart guys, John?»
«Yeah. We own the town. But it don’t help my blackjack game any.»
«It’s just two months to election, isn’t it, John?»
Masters scowled at him, fished in his pocket for a fresh cigar, jammed it into his mouth.
«So what?»
«Suppose something happened to our toughest opposition. Right now. Would that be a good idea, or not?»
«Huh?» Masters raised eyebrows so thick that his whole face seemed to have to work to push them up. He thought for a moment, sourly. «It would be lousy — if they didn’t catch the guy pronto. Hell, the voters would figure we hired it done.»
«You’re talking about murder, John,» Aage said patiently. «I didn’t say anything about murder.»
Masters lowered his eyebrows and pulled at a coarse black hair that grew out of his nose.
«Well, spit it out!»
Aage smiled, blew a smoke ring, watched it float off and come apart in frail wisps.
«I just had a phone call,» he said very softly. «Donegan Marr is dead.»
Masters moved slowly. His whole body moved slowly towards the card table, leaned far over it. When his body couldn’t go any farther his chin came out until his jaw muscles stood out like thick wires.
«Huh?» he said thickly. «Huh?»
Aage nodded, calm as ice. «But you were right about murder, John. It was murder. Just half an hour ago, or so. In his office. They don’t know who did it — yet.»
Masters shrugged heavily and leaned back. He looked around him with a stupid expression. Very suddenly he began to laugh. His laughter bellowed and roared around the little turretlike room where the two men sat, overflowed into an enormous living room beyond, echoed back and forth through a maze of heavy dark furniture, enough standing lamps to light a boulevard, a double row of oil paintings in massive gold frames.
Aage sat silent. He rubbed his cigarette out slowly in the tray until there was nothing of the fire left but a thick dark smudge. He dusted his bony fingers together and waited.
Masters stopped laughing as abruptly as he had begun. The room was very still. Masters looked tired. He mopped his big face.
«We got to do something, Dave,» he said quietly. «I almost forgot. We got to break this fast. It’s dynamite.»
Aage reached behind the curtain again and brought the phone out, pushed it across the table over the scattered cards.
«Well — we know how, don’t we?» he said calmly.
A cunning light shone in Big John Masters’ muddy brown eyes. He licked his lips, reached a big hand for the phone.
«Yeah,» he said purringly, «we do, Dave. We do at that, by — !»
He dialed with a thick finger that would hardly go into the holes.
TWO
Donegan Marr’s face looked cool, neat, poised, even then. He was dressed in soft gray flannels and his hair was the same soft gray color as his suit, brushed back from a ruddy, youngish face. The skin was pale on the frontal bones where the hair would fall when he stood up. The rest of the skin was tanned.
He was lying back in a padded blue office chair. A cigar had gone out in a tray with a bronze greyhound on its rim. His left hand dangled beside the chair and his right hand held a gun loosely on the desk top. The polished nails glittered in sunlight from the big closed window behind him.
Blood had soaked the left side of his vest, made the gray flannel almost black. He was quite dead, had been dead for some time.
A tall man, very brown and slender and silent, leaned against a brown mahogany filing cabinet and looked fixedly at the dead man. His hands were in the pockets of a neat blue serge suit. There was a straw hat on the back of his head. But there was nothing casual about his eyes or his tight, straight mouth.
A big sandy-haired man was groping around on the blue rug. He said thickly, stooped over: «No shells, Sam.»
The dark man didn’t move, didn’t answer. The other stood up, yawned, looked at the man in the chair.
«Hell! This one will stink. Two months to election. Boy, is this a smack in the puss for somebody.»
The dark man said slowly: «We went to school together. We used to be buddies. We carried the torch for the same girl. He won, but we stayed good friends, all three of us. He was always a great kid … Maybe a shade too smart.»
The sandy-haired man walked around the room without touching anything. He bent over and sniffed at the gun on the desk, shook his head, said: «Not used — this one.» He wrinkled his nose, sniffed at the air. «Air-conditioned. The three top floors. Soundproofed too. High-grade stuff. They tell me this whole building is electric-welded. Not a rivet in it. Ever hear that, Sam?»
The dark man shook his head slowly.
«Wonder where the help was,» the sandy-haired man went on. «A big shot like him would have more than one girl.»
The dark man shook his head again. «That’s all, I guess. She was out to lunch. He was a lone wolf, Pete. Sharp as a weasel. In a few more years he’d have taken the town over.»
The sandy-haired man was behind the desk now, almost leaning over the dead man’s shoulder. He was looking down at a leather-backed appointment pad with buff leaves. He said slowly: «Somebody named Imlay was due here at twelve-fifteen. Only date on the pad.»
He glanced at a cheap watch on his wrist. «One-thirty. Long gone. Who’s Imlay? Say, wait a minute! There’s an assistant D.A. named Imlay. He’s running for judge on the Master-Aage ticket. D’you figure —»
There was a sharp knock on the door. The office was so long that the two men had to think a moment before they placed which of the three doors it was. Then the sandy-haired man went towards the most distant of them, saying over his shoulder: «M.E’s man maybe. Leak this to your favorite newshawk and you’re out a job. Am I right?»