LITMIR.BIZ

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lips tightly together and concentrated on driving for several minutes before speaking. “They said you’d worked for this man, Maxie Temple, before—when he was still one of the big shots in Los Angeles. Was that true?”

      I nodded, feeling like a heel.

      “And the rest of it?”

      “He framed me before he got out of the country. Left me holding everything. I was sent up for three years. I swore then I’d pay him back for that.”

      “That’s why you were at the airport tonight?”

      “Partly. I knew he was supposed to be coming in on that plane. I didn’t want to kill him, not there. He had something I wanted. I needed him alive to clear me. Now it’s all finished, unless I can get some other lead.”

      “Such as what?”

      “Find out who killed Maxie Temple—and why. Then get the truth from his killer.”

      “They’ll be watching your place by now,” she said coldly.

      I hadn’t thought of that particular angle. It was true, of course. They would be taking no chances now. I’d slipped through their fingers once too often. They’d have to pick me up now, unless the cops did it first. And when that happened, there’d be a murder rap hanging over me so watertight that even a blind D.A. would be able to send me up for the big burn.

      If they wanted me, either way, they had me cold.

      “Where do you figure on spending the night, Johnny?” She looked at me again out of the corner of her eyes.

      “I’ll find somewhere, I guess.”

      “Care to come up to my place?”

      I watched her carefully. Maybe I went there, trusting, and there would be a couple of hirelings waiting behind the door, ready to pick me off. Things were happening too nicely for it to be anything but a fix. The big fix—and I was right in the middle of it. I could even feel it beginning to close in on me.

      But what was the other alternative? Wandering around the dives in the east end of town. Haunting the bars, an easy target for any mobster on the prowl. I decided to take the risk.

      “Sure. I’ll string along with you.”

      I said it for response, hoping to find out more than I already knew, or guessed.

      “My name is Dawn Grahame. I live a few blocks from here. You’ll be all right there.”

      We were in the better quarter of Los Angeles. She looked like a dame with plenty of dough. Maybe I’d done her an injustice. Maybe she was the type who tagged onto a man when he was down, helping to get him back onto his feet again, getting a short kick out of watching him fight his way back to the top.

      She cut a corner dangerously close, guided the car into the side. The house was in darkness, a two-story building of stone and redbrick, standing a little way back from the road. There was a garden of some kind in front of it, but in the darkness I couldn’t see much of it. The moon was a thin crescent, riding the clouds, high. I got out and heard her close the other door quietly behind her.

      Nearly ten-thirty. I shrugged my shoulders. They would still be looking for me. Men like Clancy Snow and Dutch McKnight. For four years I tried to keep away from contact with men like that. You couldn’t fight them, really.

      They are right in the background, behind the spider-webs of hoodlums and hirelings who took orders from above and worked you over good, so that you ended up crippled and maimed. Los Angeles was full of men who’d tried to defy the Organisation and lived to regret it.

      My lighter flamed and I lit a cigarette, drawing the smoke gratefully into my lungs. There were a lot of things I had to straighten out inside me. For the moment I was safe. They would search the nightspots downtown first. Then they’d come uptown, never giving up.

      One thing I knew without hesitation. The big men in L.A. would carry out their threats. They had got Maxie Temple within minutes of stepping off the plane. They’d had to stop him. If he’d lived and somehow made a comeback, their positions, individually, wouldn’t have been worth a damn.

      Then I followed Dawn up the white steps into the quiet porch and forgot about the Big Men of Los Angeles for a while. Somewhere, back in the early years, there had been a house like this for me, and the memory must have stayed with me somewhere, throughout the years, because I found I had never really lost it.

      She stopped outside the door, took her key from her bag and unlocked. We went inside, closing it gently behind us.

      “I’ll get you a drink,” she said. “You look as though you could use one.”

      “Straight bourbon,” I replied. “That’ll suit me fine.”

      The drink was fine. Somehow I began to feel good, more relaxed than before.

      “You’ll be all right here.” She sat down opposite me and leaned back. Her eyes followed me up and down. “Nobody’s likely to drop around.”

      “What about your three friends?” I asked with a touch of irony.

      “They won’t come here. Not tonight, anyway.”

      She watched me with that sparkling friendliness, her dark eyes softer than before, with that unfathomable mystery at the back of them. A man could get lost in them, I thought, but that wasn’t for me. Not yet. There were other, more important things to be taking care of.

      Otherwise, Johnny Merak would find himself up to the neck in a murder rap and other things beside.

      I took off my coat and shirt, pulled off my shoes, and took the soft blanket she handed to me before lying on the couch. While she was in the other room, I slipped the .38 from my pocket and pushed it beneath the pillow. No point in taking any chances. The heavy German automatic I’d taken from the hoodlum I unloaded and left in my pocket.

      “You all right, Johnny?” Her voice reached me through the open doorway.

      “Sure. I’m fine.”

      “Good night, Johnny.”

      There was a strange loneliness in her voice. I closed my eyes and there came the soft click of a door closing somewhere at the back of my consciousness.

      It was the morning when I opened my eyes again. A grey light was spreading out of the east, lighting the objects in the room with a kind of halo. I got up, quietly, wondering where Dawn was. She came in a minute later with coffee.

      “I thought you’d be up early,” she said, placing it on the small table in the centre of the room.

      The meal was one of silences, soon over. All the way through it she looked at me patiently, as if wondering why I did the things I did. Finally, she asked the question that had obviously been bothering her and it was a tough one.

      “Would you really have killed that man last night, if you’d had the chance, Johnny?”

      I thought a minute, and then decided not to lie to her. Time enough for that when I had to. “Yes,” I said. “I’d have killed him. He deserves everything he got. If there was anything dirty to be done, Maxie Temple was in it up to the neck, close to the dirt.”

      “You must have known him well in the old days to have hated him so much.” There was no accusation in her voice.

      “Sure. I knew him. Now that he’s dead, I’ll have to kill the others. It can’t be done any other way.”

      “But why, Johnny? You want to go through life with a dozen murder charges hanging over your head—running from the police, waiting for the other mobsters to catch up with you in some stupid, senseless vendetta?”

      “I guess it’ll have to be that way. Ever seen a rat when he’s cornered? Well, take a good look at one now, while you’ve got the chance.”

      “I don’t understand, Johnny.”

      “I thought

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