Sally's in the Alley by Norbert Davis (best color ereader .txt) 📕

Chapter 6

DOAN AND PETERKIN CAME OUT OF THE Double Eagle Hotel and walked north along the main street toward the older and dimmer part of town.

“You want I should walk behind you?” Peterkin asked. “So people won’t know you’re arrested-like?”

“I can stand it if you can,” Doan told him. “I was thinking of going to jail anyway as soon as I got around to it. Is Dust-Mouth Haggerty there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who could I ask that would?”

“Oh, we’ll find out when we get there. Dust-Mouth checks in and out at sort of odd hours.”

“I see,” said Doan. “Why?”

“He lives there.”

“Lives in j ail?” Doan asked.

“Yup,” said Peterkin.

“All right,” said Doan. “Why?”

“Well, he ain’t got no place else to live.”

“Sure,” said Doan. “Why?”

“The government went and stole his claim. That was an awful dirty trick to play on Dust-Mouth. He never did any harm to anybody. He never even voted in his life.”

Doan sighed. “Okay. Do you know a character by the name of Free-Look Jones?”

“Sure.”

“What business is he in?”

“He’s a private detective.”

Doan stopped short. “Oh, now wait a minute.”

“I guess he has a couple of other jobs, too,” Peterkin admitted. “I guess he’s a sort of an agent or salesman in his spare time.”

Doan started on again. “I should hope so. You know, I’d keep an eye on him if I were you”

“Would you?” Peterkin inquired, interested.

“Yes. He looks to me like the sort of a guy who would cheat at cards.”

“Oh, he does. All the time.”

“What if someone caught him at it?”

“He’d run, likely.”

“Maybe he might not,” Doan said. “Maybe he’d haul out that knife he carries and use it.”

“Maybe,” Peterkin agreed gravely.

“A really alert law officer,” Doan said, “would sort of think of those things and go out and look over his shack once in awhile.”

“What for?” Peterkin asked.

“To see if he could find any—ah—clues.”

“What are them?”

“Clues? Evidence.”

“Like in court?”

“Sort of.”

“Oh,” said Peterkin.

They turned into a narrower street that wasn’t quite so fearfully lighted. A small, towheaded boy marched toward them. He had his head down and his shoulders hunched, and he was kicking the walk hard with his heels.

“What’s the trouble, Joey?” Peterkin asked.

The boy looked at them with his lower lip thrust out an inch. “Aw, them big kids. They won’t let me play with ‘em. I don’t never have no fun.”

“Aw, now,” Peterkin soothed. “I’ll tell you something you can do that’ll just be more fun than the dickens.”

“What?” said the, boy, skeptically.

“Well, you see that rock over there? Suppose you take that and sneak up on Schmaltz’s Variety Store and heave it through the front window. There’ll be a big smash and crash, and people will holler and everything.”

“Gee,” said the boy, entranced.

Doan and Peterkin walked on. The boy was contemplating the rock with glistening, eager eyes.

“You don’t like Schmaltz?” Doan asked.

“Huh? Why, sure I do. Schmaltz is one of my friends.”

“Why the business with the rock and the window?”

“Oh, that’s for the S.E.C.”

“Securities Exchange Commission?”

“Nope. Society to Encourage Crime. It’s an organization just for police officers.”

“Umm,” said Doan. “What does it do?”

“Like it says, encourages crime.”

“Why?” said Doan wearily.

“Say, did you ever think what would happen if everybody turned honest all of a sudden?”

“No,” said Doan.

“All police officers would lose their jobs, that’s what! That’s why we got the S. E. C. We got to keep a supply of criminals comin’ along all the time so there’ll be a big demand for police officers. Now you take Joey there. We start ‘em out easy, like I did him. He starts bustin’ windows. He sees how easy it is. So pretty soon he starts bustin’ windows and stealin’ the stuff inside. Get it?”

“Oh, sure. Big oaks from little acorns. Does Susan Sally come here very often?”

“Sure. Lots.”

“Why?”

“She used to live here. She comes back to sort of show us how wrong we was.”

“About what?”

“Well, she used to go around tellin’ everybody how pretty she was gonna be when she grew up, and everybody laughed at her because she sure was an ugly little mutt. She ain’t now, though.”

“I noticed,” said Doan. “Who complained on me, anyway? I mean, who asked you to arrest me?”

“Nobody. I thought it up myself. On account of Doc Gravelmeyer told me he was gonna perform a delicate operation on Parsley Jack, and when Doc Gravelmeyer gets to operatin’, delicate or otherwise, you just can never tell.”

“Did it ever occur to anyone to hop him for malpractice?”

“Doc Gravelmeyer? Oh, you couldn’t do that. He used to be an abortionist.”

“I’m a little slow this evening,” Doan said. “Why would that stop me?”

“You couldn’t get him convicted. Half the doctors in the state would testify for him. They’d have to. They used to send him patients, and he can prove it. Doc is a very smart fella in his way.”

“This is a nice little town you have here,” Doan observed.

“Ain’t it, though? Here’s the jail. I’ll bet you’ll like that, too.”

It was a square, substantial-looking building with white stucco walls and a red tile roof, and the shiny iron bars on the windows blended in pretty well with the Spanish motif. Someone had spent a lot of time and money landscaping the lawn around it and installing floodlights at strategic intervals.

“Nifty,” Doan commented. “For a town this size.”

“Yup,” said Peterkin proudly. “You see, we might belong to either Nevada or California, so we have to collect taxes for both states. But on the other hand, we might not belong to either one, so of course it would be wrong to pay them the taxes we collect. So we spend ‘em on improvements.”

“Who’s we?”

“Well, me.”

“I thought so,” said Doan. “Don’t you have any competition for this job of yours?”

“Well, there was a couple of guys, but they got sick. Doc Gravelmeyer did his best to save ‘em.”

“He didn’t succeed, though.”

“Nope,” said Peterkin. He pushed open the heavy black varnished door. “Step right in.”

It was a reception room and a very nice one. There was a deep red carpet on the floor and oil paintings on the cream colored walls and a big, flat executive’s desk in the far corner. The bald little man behind the desk took off a pair of pince-nez glasses and tapped them against one forefinger in a businesslike way.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “Yes?”

“This is Mr. I. Doanwashi, Harold,” Peterkin said. “You can call him Doan for short. He’s the fella that jumped Parsley Jack. Jack is over to Doc Gravelmeyer’s.”

“Suspicion of murder,” said Harold. He took a big green and gold fountain pen from the desk-set in front of him and wrote in a leather-bound ledger. “Rates are five dollars a day.”

“Rates?” Doan repeated.

“Single cell, southern exposure,” Peterkin explained. “Home cooking.”

“Oh,” said Doan. “Will you take a check?”

“On what bank?” Harold demanded.

“The Bank of England.”

Harold scowled at him. “Where’s that?”

“In England.”

Harold nodded. “Oh, I think we can arrange it.”

Peterkin said, “Have you got a gun on you?”

“Sure,” Doan answered. He pulled the Police Positive out of his waistband and slid it across the desk.

Harold shied back. “Is it loaded?”

“Why, yes. It won’t shoot unless it is.”

“Take it away!” Harold cried. “Peterkin! You know I’ve told you I won’t have loaded guns around here!”

“I’ll keep it,” Peterkin soothed, sliding the revolver into his coat pocket. “Well, I got to run along now, Mr. Doanwashi, and see how Parsley Jack is comin’. Harold will show you to your cell. So long.”

“So long,” Doan answered. He waited until Peterkin had closed the door behind him and then said, “Where’s the nearest pawn shop?”

“There’s only one—Uncle Ben’s Lend-Lease Emporium.”

“How much will Uncle Ben give Peterkin on that gun of mine?”

“Just half of whatever he says he did when you come around to redeem it.”

“Thanks,” said Doan.

Harold stood up. “Right this way, Mr. Doanwashi.”

He opened a door at the back of the reception room and preceded Doan into a corridor painted a cool, clean green that glistened quietly in the indirect lighting. Steel bars made an interesting architectural pattern along each wall.

Harold opened a section of bars and said, “Here you are. Dinner hour is over, but I can bring you a late lunch if you want to pay extra for it.”

“I’ve lost my appetite,” Doan said.

“Good night,” said Harold, closing the barred door.

He went back up the corridor and closed the door into the reception room. Doan looked around. It was a roomy cell, and the cot had a monks’ cloth cover on it. The sheets were clean, too. Doan lay down on the cot and stared at the ceiling, and wondered if he was dreaming or if his brain had given way under some unsuspected stress. He decided that in either case it wouldn’t do him much good to worry about it, so he went to sleep.