The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!
- Автор: Флора Флетчер
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- ISBN: 978-1479436668
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!». Краткое содержание книги:
“Out to Club 44–40. The Schultz twins’ place. Dixie’s moving in.”
“Be careful, Ray. I’d die if anything happened to you.”
He lifted a hand with thumb and index finger tip to tip in the okay sign. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen to Ray Butler, baby. Nothing but good luck. The kind that was meant for the two of us.”
He went out into the hall past the maid, who was dusting, and outside to Dixie Cannon’s blue Caddy in the drive. Thirty minutes later he was at Club 44–40.
It was a sweet joint. Even on a day as hot as this, it had a cool, secluded look. Remote from the blistering concrete highway at the end of a white gravel drive, it sprawled with an effect of leisure beneath the drooping pale green branches of weeping willows.
Ray parked the Caddy in shade and went up to heavy double doors. They were unlocked, and he pushed his way inside, standing for a moment in the soft air-conditioned shadows of the lobby to tune his senses to the reduced momentum and volume of the club’s interior stirrings. Looking straight ahead through the small lobby, he could see a litter of chairs and tables, a dance area that was hardly more than a nominal concession to active patrons. Swinging his gaze clockwise through an arch, he picked up in dark glass a reverse view of a section of the bar. The angle showed him the back of a bald head that was not visible directly, and he went over to the arch and through.
The bartender watched his approach from under heavy lids. He stifled a yawn with a clean bar rag and shot a glance upward at the lighted dial of a clock.
“We’re not open yet. Mac. Come back in a couple hours.”
Ray covered red leather with the seat of his cords and leaned forward on his elbows.
“It’s nice in here. Nice and cool and quiet. I’ll have a Collins, I think. While I’m drinking it, you can tell the twins I’m here. Tell them it’s Ray Butler with a word from Dixie Cannon.”
Heavy lids flicked up reflexively and then dropped over a glitter of pupils. The bar rag made a swift swipe at mahogany that didn’t need it.
“Maybe. And maybe you’re Joe Blow with a bag full of brushes. You got identification?”
Ray laughed. “You’re hurting my feelings,” he said. “A guy gets to thinking he’s known around, and then some joker wants credentials. You’d better fix the Collins and see the twins.”
The bartender vacillated a moment longer between the unknown reaction of the twins and the nearer threat of a still, brown face. Then he reached for the gin. He mixed the Collins and left the bar through a door at the rear. Ray watched him go and began the pleasant work of uncovering the maraschino cherry that lay on the bottom of his glass. Spinning on the stool, he saw beside the door through which the bartender had gone a garish monster of a juke box, with bubbles rising endlessly in colored tubes. He went back, carrying the Collins, and deposited a nickel. A female voice with a cultivated sob lamented. It struck Ray as rather amusing. A fine laugh, really. He leaned against the box and heard the platter through, working at the Collins as he listened. The Collins was just finished and the platter back in the stack when the bartender returned. He jerked a thumb at the door.
“You can go on back. It’s the door at the far end of the game room.”
Ray nodded and set the empty glass on top of the juke box. He went through the door into the game room, and the reason for the nominal concession of space up front was immediately apparent. Most of it was utilized here, in the main business of the club. A nice layout. Better than that, it was a beautiful layout. Facilities for the works — roulette, dice, blackjack, everything for the luxury separation center. Expensive stuff. A lot of lettuce had gone into it.
At the indicated door, Ray knocked and waited for an invitation. Getting it promptly in a guttural voice, he stepped into deep pile and surveyed three faces. In point of differences, there might have been one face less. That is two of them were identical. They were heavy, swollen, with flesh like dough with too much yeast in it that encroached on eyes and gave to mouths a tucked, parsimonious quality. The brothers Schultz, Jake and Theo, who had, with characteristic economy, split an egg between them. They owned the place.
The third face was a study in contrast. Though its structure was almost exactly opposite that of the twins’, it achieved an equal ugliness. Long, gaunt and yellow, with a sour, twisted mouth. Sheriff Caleb Kirk. Prince Caleb, they called him. A county power. He’d bought, in his day, enough votes to elect a president.
Ray leaned against the door, palming the knob behind him, and smiled lazily. “Well, well. The sheriff himself. Glad to see you, Kirk. Finding you here will save me a trip to the county seat. It’s too damn hot for driving today.”
Kirk’s lips twisted. His eyes were flat and lusterless. “Detective Ray Butler. Personal bodyguard to the mayor. To Dixie Cannon himself. Word’s around that you’re a comer, Ray. Cops don’t usually work up so fast.”
Half of the twins, Jake or Theo at even money and take your pick, wiped an oily face with a wad of damp cloth and blew out a wet breath. He lowered his bulk into a chair behind a desk, tugging at the tie that tortured his bulging neck. “It’s too damned early. Too early for this heat.”
“You never know when the heat’ll come on.” Ray divided a pleasant look between the Schultz brothers, his brown face perfectly smooth and non-committal. “No heat in here, though. No reason at all for you boys to be sweating. The conditioning system must have set you back something. You’ve got a nice place.”
The other half of the twins lumbered to a liquor cabinet with a gelatin-like quivering of fat hips. “You like a drink, maybe, Ray boy? Real good stuff?”
“No, thanks. I had a Collins in the bar.”
“This is good. Old stuff. Stuff like this you don’t get at the bar.”
“The Collins was good enough.”
Caleb Kirk’s long, bony body jerked violently, as if the stringy muscles had contracted in a sudden seizure. “To hell with this folderol. You didn’t come here on any goddamned social call, Butler. What you got on your mind?”
Ray released the knob behind him and took a couple of steps into the room. His eyes drifted casually over the sheriffs sour, yellow face. “Like I told the boy up front, I’ve brought word from Dixie Cannon. It’s business for the twins. You their agent, sheriff?”
“Maybe.”
“Okay. Dixie said to remind you there was an election some time back. You remember?”
“Sure. Dixie got elected, like always. So?”
“It’s not his own election Dixie’s thinking about. It’s the vote out here in the county. In case you’ve forgotten that part of it, this area voted for annexation. It’s inside the city limits now.” Ray pivoted in a quarter turn to include the twins impartially in a deliberate inspection. “Dixie’s a patient man, boys, but now he’s getting a little annoyed. He waited for you to contact him, and you didn’t do it. That wasn’t polite. Not polite at all.”
Kirk’s voice intruded, rasping, grating on the nerves like sand underfoot. “What the hell you getting at, Butler? Cut the fancy talk and lay it on the line.”
Ray didn’t even bother to look at him. He lifted his eyes above the heads of the sweating twins and let them wander lazily along the line of junction where wall met ceiling. His voice descended to a deadly softness.
“Sure, sheriff. I’ll lay it on the line. The line’s the one where the city ends and the county begins. And you’re on the other side. Out in the county. Prince Caleb of the brush. Like I mentioned, this is a nice place. A place like this must separate the suckers from plenty. Just like you’re separating the twins from plenty. You’ve been collecting ice for years, and up to now it was all right, because you had jurisdiction. Now the line’s changed, and it’s different. You’ve got no more jurisdiction. Dixie Cannon’s got it.”