The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

My dogs were killing me when I reached the car. I’d have bet I walked a hundred miles, seeing the Fair in one day. I climbed into my coupé, unlaced my shoes, kicked them off and sat back wiggling my toes, sighing with the ecstasy of relief. After that I got a cigarette going and settled down to wait for Mac.

It was a little after midnight and there was a balmy summer breeze blowing in from the Golden Gate. My Zephyr was in the parking space at the north end of Treasure Island, and from where I sat in it I could see the lights of San Francisco across the water to my right and the lights of Berkeley and Oakland twinkling off to my left.

Most of Treasure Island was still lighted up too, and at night like that, with the buildings bathed in all the different colors, it looked like fairyland — though about all I could see of it from this dark end of the island was the tall spire of the Tower of the Sun. The exhibit halls had all closed at ten p.m., but the Gayway was still going strong, its lights and its noise reaching back here from a distance.

What was left of the crowd was on the Gayway. It didn’t look as if there were many cars remaining on the lot, but that was because they had thinned out, were sprinkled far and wide over the approximate hundred acres of parking grounds. Two men and a girl had come from the direction of the Gayway into the parking grounds, and having nothing better to do I watched them approach.

One of the men was so fat he waddled, and the girl was between him and the other guy. They each had hold of one of her arms and were walking her along as if she’d had one too many and wasn’t able to navigate without help. It wasn’t till they passed right in front of the Zephyr that I caught on there was more to it than that.

I heard the girl say in a fierce whisper, “Let me go!” and realized she was struggling against the grip the two had on her arms. I acted instinctively, leaned forward and switched on the headlights. Caught in the glare, the men’s heads jerked up and around and their stride faltered.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, sticking my head out the side window — and my nose into something that probably wasn’t any of my business, a bad habit of mine.

“Nothing,” the nearest one answered in an annoyed tone, and I recognized his face as the light hit it.

He wasn’t the fat one, and his name was Art Vogelsang. I’d run into him off and on when I’d worked the police beat for the Tribune in past years. He’d been a runner for a crooked shyster then, until the lawyer got himself disbarred. Then he’d worked for a bail-bond broker who was later tried and convicted as a fence. Vogelsang had slipped out from under both times, and I didn’t know what he was doing now. But I did know he was a smoothie, an opportunist who worked on the shady side of the law.

“Hold it,” I said. “I’ve got a gun here. Are you sure everything’s all right, miss?”

I didn’t have a gun, but they stopped just within the beam of light and the girl cried: “No... no, everything’s not all right! These two men are forcing me to go with them!”

She was a tiny trick in a dark tailored suit, a rakish hat with a feather stuck in it at a jaunty angle. She had a round baby face and a turned-up nose. Her eyes were large and glistening in the headlight glare, but she seemed more angry than afraid. The fat man jerked her arm, growled in a deep bass:

“Shut up, you!” He squinted into the light. “She’s drunk. She don’t know what she’s saying. Come on.”

His eyes were almost hidden in his moon face and he had wet blubbery lips. He was built like a gigantic egg. I’d never seen him before that I remembered, and if I had I would have remembered anyone his size.

“Wait,” I said. “I don’t think the girl wants to go with you, fatty. Let go of her. Or would you rather I called some of the Exposition cops?”

Fatty looked at Vogelsang and Vogelsang’s teeth made a white glitter as he smiled. He wore tweeds — a lean, sharp-faced blond man with expressionless blue eyes and a clipped mustache. His voice was oily as he said:

“This is all a mistake, brother. The little lady is slightly tipsy. We’re going to see that she gets home safely.”

“I’m not tight,” the girl denied, and stamped one foot indignantly. “Let me go! I don’t want to go with you. Please,” she said, addressing her appeal to me, “make them let me go!”

“O.K.,” I said, and got my teeth into the words. “Let the little lady go. I’ll see that she gets home safely. She don’t seem tight to me, and I’ll take her word against yours anytime, Vogelsang, you cheap chiseler.”

His mouth and eyes tightened down and he tried to see me through the light glare. “Who are you?”

“Never mind that,” I bit out. “Let the girl go or I’m going to start squeezing lead and noise out of this heater and draw a swarm of cops around here.”

He hesitated a moment, standing very tense and still, then tossed his jaw at the fat man and they let go of the girl’s arms. She moved away from them, straightening her jacket with a disdainful jerk of her shoulders.

“Let that be a lesson to you, you heels,” she told them scornfully. “Picking on a lady!”

Vogelsang was still glaring in my direction, but I was pretty sure he couldn’t see me. “You’ll regret this, brother,” he lipped tightly.

“So I’ll regret it,” I said cheerfully. “Scram, you and your fat stooge. Get in your car and highball out of here. If you’re not off the Island in two minutes, I’ll get some law on your tail. Molesting a girl — and she looks like a minor at that. Go on, beat it.”

Vogelsang swung away without another word and, trailed by the waddling fat man, strode off toward a light sedan about twenty yards away. The girl moved around to the right side of my coupé and watched them as they got in their car. The sedan’s motor came to life with a sputtering roar, its lights blinked on and it jerked forward, wheeled around and charged straight at the left side of my Zephyr. Headlight beams caught me in the face and I ducked back. The sedan veered off, went by the tail of the Zephyr in a rush that raised a miniature whirlwind, headed for the outlet along the west edge of the island which led across Yerba Buena to the Bay Bridge.

I watched it go, knowing Vogelsang and his fat partner had seen me and now knew who I was. And I had a feeling in my bones the guy hadn’t been fooling when he’d told me I’d regret interfering.

Swearing at and to myself for the impulse that had made me stick my neck out again, I turned to the girl. She was standing by the open right-hand window and I flicked on the dome light so I could see her. She was pert and doll-faced with large doll-like eyes and hair the color of pine shavings. She looked about seventeen and spoke with the suggestion of a lisp.