Fast One Read online

  Fast One

  by Paul Cain

  Chapter One

  KELLS WALKED NORTH on Spring. At Fifth he turned west, walked two blocks, turned into a small cigar store. He nodded to the squat bald man behind the counter and went on through the ground-glass-paneled door into a large and bare back room.

  The man sitting at a wide desk stood up, said, “Hello,” heartily, went to another door and opened it, said: “Walk right in.”

  Kells went into a very small room, partitioned off from the other by ground-glass-paneled walls. He sat down on a worn davenport against one wall, leaned back, folded his hands over his stomach, and looked at Jack Rose.

  Rose sat behind a round green-topped table, his elbows on the table, his long chin propped upon one hand. He was a dark, almost too handsome young man who had started life as Jake Rosencrancz, of Brooklyn and Queens. He said: “Did you ever hear the story about the three bears?”

  Kells nodded. He sat regarding Rose gravely and nodded his head slowly up and down.

  Rose was smiling, “I thought you'd have heard that one.” He moved the fingers of one hand down to his ear and pulled violently at the lobe. “Now you tell one. Tell me the one about why you've got such a load on Kiosque in the fourth race.”

  Kells smiled faintly, dreamily. He said: “You don't think I'd have an inside that you'd overlooked, do you, Jakie?” He got up, stretched extravagantly and walked across the room to inspect a large map of Los Angeles County on the far wall.

  Rose didn't change his position, he sat staring vacantly at the davenport. “I can throw it to Bolero.”

  Kells strolled back, stood beside the table. He looked at a small watch on the inside of his left wrist, said: “You might get a wire to the track, Jakie, but you couldn't reach your Eastern connections in time.” He smiled with gentle irony. “Anyway, you've got the smartest book on the Coast— the smartest book west of the Mississippi, by God! You wouldn't want to take any chances with that big Beverly Hills clientele, would you?”

  He turned and walked back to the davenport, sank wearily down and again folded his hands over his stomach. “What's it all about? I pick two juicy winners in a row and you squawk. What the hell do you care how many I pick?— the Syndicate's out, not you.”

  He slid sideways on the davenport until his head reached the armrest, pulled one long leg up to plant his foot on the seat and sprawled the other across the floor. He intently regarded a noisily spinning electric fan on a shelf in one corner. “You didn't get me out in this heat to talk about horses.”

  Rose wore a lightweight black felt hat. He pushed it back over his high bronzed forehead, took a cigarette out of a thin case on the table and lighted it. He said: “I'm going to reopen the Joanna D.—Doc Haardt and I are going to run it together—his boat, my bankroll.”

  Kells said: “Uh huh.” He stared steadily at the electric fan, without movement or change of expression.

  Rose cleared his throat, went on: “The Joanna used to be the only gambling barge on the Coast, but Fay moved in with the Eaglet, and then Max Hesse promoted a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot yacht and took the play away from both of them.” Rose paused to remove a fleck of cigarette paper from his lower lip. “About three months ago, Fay and Doc got together and chased Hesse. According to the story, one of the players left a box of candy on the Monte Carlo—that's Hesse's boat—and along about two in the morning it exploded. No one was hurt much, but it threw an awful scare into the customers and something was said about it being a bigger and better box next time, so Hesse took a powder up the coast. But maybe you've heard all this before.”

  Kells looked at the fan, smiled slowly. He said: “Well—I heard it a little differently.”

  “You would.” Rose mashed his cigarette out, went on: “Everything was okay for a couple weeks. The Joanna and Fay's boat were anchored about four miles apart, and their launches were running to the same wharf; but they both had men at the gangways frisking everyone who went aboard—that wasn't so good for business. Then somebody got past the protection on the Joanna and left another ticker. It damn near blew her in two; they beached, finally got into dry dock.”

  Kells said: “Uh huh.”

  “Tonight she goes out.” Rose took another cigarette from the thin case and rolled it gently between his hand and the green baize of the table.

  Kells said: “What am I supposed to do about it?”

  Rose pulled the loose tobacco out of one end of the cigaret, licked the paper. “Have you got a match?”

  Kells shook his head slowly.

  Rose said: “Tell Fay to lay off.”

  Kells laughed—a long, high-pitched, sarcastic laugh.

  “Ask him to lay off.”

  “Run your own errands, Jakie,” Kells swung up to sit, facing Rose. “For a young fella that's supposed to be bright,” he said, “you have some pretty dumb ideas.”

  “You're a friend of Fay's.”

  “Sure,” Kells nodded elaborately. “Sure, I'm everybody's friend. I'm the guy they write the pal songs about.” He stood up. “Is that all, Jakie?”

  Rose said: “Come on out to the Joanna tonight.”

  Kells grinned. “Cut it out. You know damn well I'd never buck a house. I'm not a gambler, anyway—I'm a playboy. Stop by the hotel sometime and look at my cups.”

  “I mean come and look the layout over.” Rose stood up and smiled carefully. “I've put in five new wheels and—”

  “I've seen a wheel,” Kells said. “Make mine strawberry.” He turned, started toward the door.

  Rose said: “I'll give you a five-percent cut.”

  Kells stopped, turned slowly, and came back to the table. “Cut on what?”

  “The whole take, from now on.”

  “What for?”

  “Showing three or four times a week.... Restoring confidence.”

  Kells was watching him steadily. “Whose confidence, in what?”

  “Aw, nuts. Let's stop this god-damned foolishness and do some business.” Rose sat down, found a paper of matches and lighted his limp cigarette. “You're supposed to be a good friend of Fay's. Whether you are or not is none of my business. The point is that everyone thinks you are, and if you show on the boat once in a while it will look like everything is under control, like Fay and I have made a deal; see?”

  Kells nodded. “Why don't you make a deal?”

  “I've been trying to reach Fay for a week.” Rose tugged at the lobe of his ear. “Hell! This coast is big enough for all of us; but he won't see it. He's sore. He thinks everybody's trying to frame him.”

  “Everybody probably is.” Kells put one hand on the table and leaned over to smile down at Rose. “Now I'll tell you one, Jakie. You'd like to have me on the Joanna because I look like the highest-powered protection at this end of the country. You'd like to carry that eighteen-carat reputation of mine around with you so you could wave it and scare all the bad little boys away.”

  Rose said: “All right, all right.”

  The phone on the table buzzed. Rose picked up the receiver, said “Yes” three times into the mouthpiece, then “All right, dear,” hung up.

  Kells went on: “Listen, Jakie. I don't want any part of it. I always got along pretty well by myself, and I'll keep on getting along pretty well by myself. Anyway, I wouldn't show in a deal with Doc Haardt if he was sleeping with the mayor—I hate his guts, and I'd pine away if I didn't think he hated mine.”

  Rose made a meaningless gesture.

  Kells had straightened up. He was examining the nail of his index-finger. “I came out here a few months ago with two grand and I've given it a pretty good ride. I've got a nice little joint at the Ambassador, with a built-in bar; I've got a swell bunch of telephone numbers and several thousand friends in the ba
nk. It's a lot more fun guessing the name of a pony than guessing what the name of the next stranger I'm supposed to have shot will be. I'm having a lot of fun. I don't want any part of anything.”

  Rose stood up. “Okay.”

  Kells said: “So long, Jakie.” He turned and went through the door, out through the large room, through the cigar store to the street. He walked up to Seventh and got into a cab. When they passed the big clock on the Dyas corner it was twenty minutes past three.

  * * * * *

  THE DESK CLERK gave Kells several letters, and a message: Mr. Dave Perry called at 2:35, and again at 3:25. Asked that you call him or come to his home. Important.

  Kells went to his room and put in a call to Perry. He mixed a drink and read the letters while a telephone operator called him twice to say the line was busy. When she called again, he said, “Let it go,” went down and got into another cab. He told the driver: “Corner of Cherokee and Hollywood Boulevard.”

  Perry lived in a kind of penthouse on top of the Virginia Apartments. Kells climbed the narrow stair to the roof, knocked at the unsheathed fire door; he knocked again, then turned the knob, pushed the door open.

  The room filled with crashing sound. Kells dropped on one knee, just inside, slammed the door shut. A strip of sunlight came in through two tall windows and yellowed the rug. Doc Haardt was lying on his back, half in, half out of the strip of sun. There was a round bluish mark on one side of his-throat, and, as Kells watched, it grew larger, red.

  Ruth Perry sat on a low couch against one wall and looked at Haardt's body. A door slammed some place toward the back of the house. Kells got up and turned the key in the door through which he had entered, crossed quickly and stood above the body.

  Haardt had been a big loose-joweled Dutchman with a mouthful of gold. His dead face looked as if he were about to drawl: “Well... I'll tell you ...” A small automatic lay on the floor near his feet.

  Ruth Perry stood up and started to scream. Kells put one hand on the back of her neck, the other over her mouth. She took a step forward, put her arms around his body. She looked up at him and he took his hand away from her mouth.

  “Darling! I thought he was going to get you.” She spoke very rapidly. Her face was twisted with fear. “He was here an hour. He made Dave call you....”

  Kells patted her cheek. “Who, baby?”

  “I don't know.” She was coming around. “A nance. A little guy with glasses.”

  Kells inclined his head toward Haardt's body, asked: “What about Doc?”

  “He came up about two-thirty.... Said he had to see you and didn't want to go to the hotel. Dave called you and left word. Then about an hour ago that little son of a bitch walked in and told us all to sit down on the floor....”

  Someone pounded heavily on the door.

  They tiptoed across to a small, curtained archway that led to the dining room. Just inside the archway Dave Perry lay on his stomach.

  Ruth Perry said: “The little guy slugged Dave when he made a pass for the phone, after he called you. He came to, a while ago, and the little guy let him have it again. What a boy!”

  Someone pounded on the door again and the sound of loud voices came through faintly.

  Kells said: “I'm a cinch for this one if they find me here. That's what the plant was for.” He nodded toward the door. “Can they get around to the kitchen?”

  “Not unless they go down and come up the fire escape. That's the way our boy friend went.”

  “I'll go the other way.” Kells went swiftly to Haardt's body, knelt and pick up the automatic. “I'll take this along to make your story good. Stick to it, except the calls to me and the reason Doc was here.”

  Ruth Perry nodded. Her eyes were shiny with excitement.

  Kells said: “I'll see what I can get on the pansy—and try to talk a little sense to the telephone girl at the hotel and the cab driver that hauled me here.”

  The pounding on the door was almost continuous. Someone put a heavy shoulder to it, the hinges creaked.

  Kells started toward the bedroom, then turned and came back. She tilted her mouth up to him and he kissed her. “Don't let this lug husband of yours talk,” he said—-jerked his head down at Dave Perry—“and maybe you'd better go into a swoon to alibi not answering the door. Let 'em bust it in.

  “My God, Gerry! I'm too excited to faint.”

  Kells kissed her again, lightly. He brought one arm up stiffly, swiftly from his side; the palm down, the fist loosely clinched. His knuckles smacked sharply against her chin. He caught her body in his arms, went into the living room and laid her gently on the floor. Then he took out his handkerchief, carefully wiped the little automatic, and put it on the floor midway between Haardt, Perry and Ruth Perry.

  He went into the bedroom and into the adjoining bathroom. He raised the window and squeezed through to a narrow ledge. He was screened from the street by part of the building next door, and from the alley by a tree that spread over the back yard of the apartment house. A few feet along the ledge he felt with his foot for a steel rung, found it, swung down to the next, across a short space to the sill of an open corridor-window of the next-door building.

  He walked down the corridor, down several flights of stairs and out a rear door of the building. Down a kind of alley he went through a wooden gate into a bungalow court and through to Whitley and walked north.

  * * * * *

  CULLEN'S HOUSE WAS on the northeastern slope of Whitley Heights, a little way off Cahuenga. He answered the fourth ring, stood in the doorway blinking at Kells. “Well, stranger. Long time no see.”

  Cullen was a heavily built man of about forty-five. He had a round pale face, a blue chin and blue-black hair. He was naked except for a pair of yellow silk pajama-trousers; a full-rigged ship was elaborately tattooed across his wide chest.

  Kells said: “H'are ya, Willie,” went past Cullen into the room. He sat down in a deep leather chair, took off his Panama hat and ran his fingers through red, faintly graying hair.

  Cullen went into the kitchen and came back with tall glasses, a bowl of ice and a squat bottle.

  Kells said: “Well, Willie—”

  Cullen held up his hand. “Wait. Don't tell me. Make me guess.” He closed his eyes, went through the motions of mystic communion, then opened his eyes, sat down and poured two drinks. “You're in another jam,” he said.

  Kells twisted his mouth into a wholly mirthless smile, nodded. “You're a genius, Willie.” He sipped his drink, leaned back.

  Cullen sat down.

  Kells said: “You know Max Hesse pretty well. You've been out to his house in Flintridge.” Sure.

  “Do you know what Dave Perry looks like?”

  “No.”

  Kells put his glass down. “A little patent-leather, pop-eyed guy with a waxed mustache. Wears gray silk shirts with tricky brocaded stripes. Used to run a string of trucks down from Frisco—had some kind of warehouse connection up there. Stood a bad rap on some forged Liberty Bonds about a year ago and went broke beating it. Married Grant Fay's sister when he was on top.”

  “I've seen her,” Cullen said. “Nice dish.”

  “You've never seen Dave at Hesse's?”

  Cullen shook his head. “I don't think so.”

  “All right. It wouldn't mean a hell of a lot, anyway.” Kells picked up his glass, drained it, stood up. “I want to use the phone.”

  He dialed a number printed in large letters on the cover of the telephone book, asked for the Reporters' Room. When the connection was made, he asked for Shep Beery, spoke evenly into the instrument: “Listen, Shep, this is Gerry. In a little while you'll probably have some news for me.... Yeah.... Call Granite six five one six.... And Shep— who copped in the fourth race at Juana?... Thanks, Shep. Got the number?... OK.”

  Cullen was pouring drinks. “If all this is as bad as you're making it look—you have a very trusting nature,” he observed.

  Kells was dialing another number. He said, over his shou
lder: “I win twenty-four hundred on Kiosque.”

  “That's fine.”

  “Perry shot Doc Haardt to death about four o'clock.”

  “That's fine. Where were you?” Cullen was stirring his drink.

  Kells jiggled the hook up and down. “Goddamn telephones,” he said. He dialed the number again, then turned his head to smile at Cullen. “I was here.”

  The telephone clicked. Kells turned to it, asked: “Is Number Four on duty?” There was a momentary wait, then: “Hello, Stella? This is Mister Kells... Listen, Stella, there weren't any calls for me between two and four today... I know it's on the record, baby, but I want it off. Will you see what you can do about it?... Right away?... That's fine. And Stella, the number I called about three-thirty—the one where the line was busy... Yes. That was Granite six five one six.... Got it? ... All right, kid, I'll tell you all about it later. 'Bye.”

  Cullen said: “As I was saying—you have a very trusting nature.”

  Kells was riffling the pages of a small blue address book. “One more,” he said, mostly to himself. He spun the dial again. “Hello—Yellow? Ambassador stand, please.... Hello. Is Fifty-eight in?... That's the little bald-headed Mick, isn't it?... No, no: Mick.... Sure... Send him to two eight nine Iris Circle when he gets in.... Two... eight... nine ... That's in Hollywood; off Cahuenga....”

  They sat for several minutes without speaking. Kells sipped at his drink and stared out of the window. Then he said: “I'm not putting on an act for you, Willie. I don't know how to tell it; it doesn't make much sense, yet.” He smiled lazily at Cullen. “Are you good at riddles?”

  “Terrible.”

  The phone rang. Cullen got up to answer it. Kells said: “Maybe that's the answer.” Cullen called him to the phone. He said, “Yes, Shep,” and was silent a little while. Then he said, “Thanks,” hung up and went back to the deep leather chair. “I guess maybe we can't play it the way I'd figured,” he said.

  “There's a tag out for me.” Cullen said slowly, sarcastically: “My pal! They'll trace the phony call that your girl friend Stella's handling, or get to the cab driver before he gets to you. We'll have a couple carloads of law here in about fifteen minutes.”