LITMIR.BIZ

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Things have changed since then. You made the right move at the right time, when Clancy Snow and Dutch McKnight were rubbed out. It isn’t so easy for guys like me. I want to make a little more than salary and cakes, but they’ve got so much pinned on me they’ll never let me off the hook. If they don’t get me themselves, they’ll see to it that the cops get a full dossier on my past, and there’s enough in that to burn me ten times over.’

      ‘So where do you come in now? What was all that talk over the phone? If you’ve got any information, you’d better let me have it before any of your friends find you.’

      Of course, I knew what was coming. Get mixed up in a dirty deal and you meet dirty people.

      ‘Sure, Johnny. But what’s in it for me? Can you put in a word with this Federal friend of yours, try to get me off the hook if I give you this information?’

      ‘So that’s it.’ I looked him straight in the eye. A dangerous man in spite of his outward appearance of respectability. A changed guy? A solid, dependable citizen ready to take his place in society? Somehow, I didn’t think so. There was more to this than showed on the surface, but I was damned if I could see it. I fingered the gun in my pocket, saw his glance stray downward, a little muscle twitching in his cheek.

      ‘You’ll do it for me, Johnny. After all, we’re old friends.’

      Like hell we are, I thought savagely, but I didn’t say it out aloud. Tony Vitelli was my only lead, and whether I liked him or not, I was stuck with him if I wanted to get anywhere with this case.

      ‘I can’t do that, Tony, and you know it,’ I said steadily, watching him narrowly. I saw the sudden stiffening of his face, the sharp movement of his fingers on the polished top of the bar. He seemed to be taking a tight hold of himself, trying to make a decision. In the past, as one of the right-hand men of the big bosses, he had been in the position of giving orders and knowing that they would be carried out to the letter, that if he said someone had to die, then the guy was knocked off and few questions were asked, even by the cops.

      ‘O.K. Johnny, I guess I made a wrong pitch asking you to come along.’ He slid off the bar stool, moved away.

      I didn’t know what was in his mind. All I did know was that here was the only lead I had, and I was determined not to let it slip through my fingers. If I hadn’t been nervous about the men I was dealing with, I may not have been so quick to be rough with a man like Tony. There were a lot of ideas churning away inside me—the memory of a woman lying slain on a lonely sidewalk, the big men hiding in a net of treachery, and vice, fear, tension, and disgust.

      Reaching over, I took Tony’s left hand in my right, pressing down hard on his thumb, twisting him round until his wrist was jammed hard against his shoulder blades. He hadn’t made a sound. None too gently, I propelled him from the bar, towards the corridor leading out to the back. I knew it was unoccupied unless they had shifted some of their hirelings into it during the few minutes I had been talking in the bar.

      ‘This isn’t going to get you anything, Merak,’ he mumbled as I pushed him through the swing door, into the passage.

      ‘Maybe not,’ I said, shoving his head forward. The barman watched us out of the corner of his eye, but he wanted no part in this quarrel. He knew better than to get mixed up in anything like this which was not his concern. He might get in touch with some of the big men, but not right away, and by the time he contacted them, I hoped to be a long way away.

      By the time we reached the end of the corridor, he was making little hurt noises in his throat. I located the gun in his hip pocket and slipped it into my own. Obviously he had come prepared to bargain the hard way if things had gone against him. It still didn’t look like a trap, but I couldn’t be sure and I didn’t want to wait around long to find out. That was why I had to have the answers to my questions—and fast.

      ‘Going to talk, Tony?’

      He tried to nod his head against my arm. Watchfully, I let him free.

      ‘That’s better. Just what is your connection with this murder? It wouldn’t have been you who pulled it off, would it, Tony?’ It was a definite possibility. It bore the same kind of handmark as some of his past handiwork, but somehow, I doubted it. He gave the orders instead of carrying them out.

      ‘I work for Callen, you know that, Johnny,’ he said thickly. ‘You don’t have to be so tough.’

      ‘Then don’t be tricky, Tony. You make me jumpy.’ Harry Callen ran a big advertising agency in uptown Los Angeles, and had a finger in more than a dozen motels strung out along the major highways in the state. All in the open and perfectly legitimate. Behind the scenes, he headed a gang of thugs who managed the protection racket and worked several big syndicates ready to get evidence for blackmail, eager to rustle off anybody who made trouble.

      I knew what happened to guys who tried to set themselves up against Harry Callen. They usually disappeared off the face of the earth with no trouble and no fuss, only turning up sometime later when they were dredged out of the river. I didn’t want to be one of those guys, but if I was to get anywhere, this was one of the risks I had to take.

      ‘Talk, Tony,’ I said swiftly. ‘I don’t want to have to rough you up any more than I have to, but believe me, I will if you don’t tell me what I want to know.’

      He rubbed his throat, a crafty gleam in his eyes. I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him with one hand tied behind my back, but I wanted to know what he had been so anxious to sell.

      ‘I know who killed Caroline Lomer.’

      ‘Go on.’

      ‘Sure you won’t help me with Grenville, Johnny?’ There was a pleading note in his voice now. A big man whining because he wanted out. A frightened man, wanted for murder ten times over, and trying to find a way around it.

      ‘Keep talking.’

      He shrugged his shoulders. ‘O.K. Johnny. I knew this dame was going to be knocked off. Callen gave the order. Don’t ask me why he wanted her out of the way. Maybe she was getting in his hair. Maybe she knew something and was going to squeal to the cops. All I know is that the order went out a couple of days ago. They tried then, but somehow, it came unstuck. They only managed to get her last night.’

      ‘Who did the job?’

      ‘A guy named Torrens, Sid Torrens.’

      ‘Where can I find him now?’

      Vitelli rubbed his chin where I had slammed him hard. He eyed me narrowly. ‘You going to get this guy yourself, Johnny? If you’ve got that idea, be careful. You’ll need that gun of yours and more besides. He’s a killer.’

      I believed him, but I didn’t say anything. I waited for him to go on. I knew Tony Vitelli. A hardened killer, but with a flair for talking if you could only get him started and give him the encouragement he needed.

      ‘He’s hiding out a few blocks from here. I’ll take you there if you like.’

      ‘No go, Tony.’ I shook my head, smiling tightly. I knew the kind of man this hoodlum was. If he thought there was one chance in a million of taking me unawares, he would jump at it. I could see by the glint in his eyes that he wasn’t quite as scared as he wanted me to believe.

      ‘Suit yourself. I’ll give you the address if you want it that way.’ He looked sullen as if everything was not going the way he had planned it. There were little beads of sweat popping out on his forehead. He scribbled quickly on a piece of paper, then handed it to me. He looked uncomfortable.

      ‘Callen will kill me if he finds out about this,’ he said harshly.

      ‘That’s your trouble.’ I motioned him back over against the wall, turning round with his face to it. Then I hit him expertly behind the left ear with the heel of my right hand and he slumped forward at my feet without a murmur. I didn’t want him running to Callen with the news of my destination until I was ready for them. If possible, I wanted a little while with this guy Torrens before anybody

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