Killer Take All

  Killer Take All

  By

  PHILIP RACE

  Killer Take All

  By Philip Race

  First Published in 1959.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce and redistribute this ebook or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. No part of this ebook may be copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the expressed written permission of the publisher.

  For information, contact:

  Digital Vintage Pulps

  An imprint of SRS Internet Publishing

  236 West Portal Avenue, #525

  San Francisco, CA 94127 USA.

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  vintage-pulp-ebooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-936456-09-3

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  INTRODUCTION

  A new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America—a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and how people would purchase and read them.

  In 1939 a new publishing company—Pocket Books—stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book. These books were cheaply produced and sold in numbers never before seen, in large part due to a bold and innovative distribution model that soon after made Pocket Books available in drugstores, newsstands, bus and train stations, and cigar shops. The American public could not get enough of them, and before long the publishing industry began to take notice of Pocket Book’s astonishing success.

  Traditional publishers, salivating at the opportunity to cash in on the phenomenal success of the new paperback revolution, soon launched their own paperback ventures. Pocket Books was joined by Avon in 1941, Popular Library in 1942, and Dell in 1943. The popular genres reflected the tastes of Americans during World War II—mysteries, thrillers, and “hardboiled detective” stories were all the rage.

  World War II proved to be a boon to the emerging paperback industry. During the war, a landmark agreement was reached with the government in which paperbound books would be produced at a very low price for distribution to service men and women overseas. These books were often passed from one soldier or sailor to another, being read and re-read over and over again until they literally fell apart. Their stories of home helped ease the servicemen’s loneliness and homesickness, and they could be easily carried and read anywhere—in fox holes, barracks, transport planes, etc. Of course, once the war was over millions of veterans returned home with an insatiable appetite for reading. They were hooked, and their passion for reading these books helped launch a period of unprecedented growth in the paperback industry.

  In the early 1950’s new genres emerged—science fiction, lesbian fiction, juvenile delinquent and “sleaze”, for instance—that would tantalize readers with gritty, sinful stories never seen before. Publishers had come to realize that sex sells. In a competitive frenzy for readers, they tossed away their staid and straightforward cover images for alluring covers that frequently featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised stories of sex and violence within the covers. Before long, books with sensational covers had completely taken over the paperback racks and cash registers. To this day, the cover art of these vintage paperback books are just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago.

  We are excited to make these wonderful paperback stories available in ebook format to new generations of readers. We present them in their original form with very little editing so as to preserve the tone and atmosphere of the time period. In fact, much of the language—the slang, the colloquialisms, the lingo, even the spellings of some words—appear as they were written fifty or sixty years ago. We hope you will enjoy this nostalgic look back at a period in American history when dames were dangerous, tough-guys were deadly and dolls were downright delicious.

  DEDICATION

  To Jerry Paris… For a variety of things.

  Chapter 1

  The fog lay heavy on the highway. For miles now I'd been creeping along, aiming at the white line in the center of the narrow asphalt road. I had no idea where I was. None at all. And that was a damned uncomfortable feeling for Johnny Berlin, who always liked to know how the game was rigged and where the gimmick lay.

  The Ford and I puttered along the winding road, making just enough headway to call it driving. I couldn't see a thing, but the ribbon of white paint led me on.

  The fog was a recent development. I'd left the funny little northern California town where I'd spent the night determined to get to Portland, or at least to Salem, before digging in again. Not that I was in any particular hurry.

  This road was evidently traveled only by Chinese Seventh Day Adventist Missionaries. And then only in daylight. I hadn't seen a car in hours. Then I saw two.

  Both big machines, parked trunk to trunk on the left side of the road. The one pointing toward me had fog lights and I saw them in time to slow. I crept through the swirling fog, blinked my lights to let the guy know I wanted to talk with him. I drifted up beside the two cars, stopped.

  A motor roared. I caught a flash of a white face through the window of the first car, then it raced away, motor howling. It disappeared into the fog like a beetle into a hole.

  The other car, a green Cadillac, still sat there. I rolled my window down, stuck my head out. "Hey! How about a little—"

  The big car surged forward. I drove my foot down on the accelerator, jumped ahead of the Cadillac. Both of us were just beginning to pick up speed and I stayed in front. It was a very narrow road; he couldn't go around me. I touched my brakes, slewed back and forth, slowing. I couldn't see a thing. Just gray fog. What kept me on the road, I don't know. I stopped slowly, taking the middle of the highway. The guy behind had no choice. He stopped twenty feet back, sat there.

  The sound of my shoes scraping on the fog-wet asphalt was loud. As I neared the green car I could see a hand wiping the sweat from the inside of the windshield; he wanted to see me, too.

  I peered in the window on the driver's side. There was only one person in the car—a small, dark man with a slash of mustache and a hat shading his upper face. As I looked, he rolled down the window. I found myself looking down the smooth barrel of a very big gun.

  "Hey! What's that for?"

  "Why did you obstruct me?" The man's voice was treble, had a strange flavor I couldn't identify.

  I stiffened, bent over like that, hands held out from my sides. The eyes looking up the barrel of the gun were black as the inside of nothing; they gleamed in the light from the dash.

  "Look, mac. All I wanted was some directions. I'm lost. This fog, you know? I'm nobody you need a cannon for, believe me."

  "Who are you?"

  I straightened. The muzzle followed me.

  "Johnny Berlin," I said. "Which I'm sure means nothing to you. I'm just traveling through. I got lost. All I want is someone to show me how to get to Salem. Or Portland. Anywhere they got street lights."

  "You are from Portland?"

  I figured, what the hell. "Yeah, I'm from Portland."

  "You're a liar," the little man said. He waved the gun. "Step back from the door."

  I stepped back. He climbed out of the Cad, motioned me ahead of him. We walked to my Ford, still sitting there muttering on the fog-shrouded road. Puffs of exhaust mixed with the gray mist.

  "Nevada plates," the little man said.

  "Yeah. Look, I lied. I'm sorry. I thought you wanted me to be from Portland. I'm from Vegas, most recently. And Reno. I'm a dealer,
a crap dealer. Going to Portland because I've never been there."

  "That's the only reason?"

  "So help me."

  He grunted. "Why were you on this particular road? At this particular time?"

  "I told you, mac. I got lost. Believe me, all I want to do is get the hell out of this fog."

  "Don't call me mac."

  "Yes, sir."

  I said "yes sir" because he had a gun. You know a better reason?

  "Now step back," he said. "There, on the side of the road, where I can see you. Please do not do anything foolish. I am a nervous man and a coward. I will shoot you."

  I believed him. He was a shrimp, about five-six, maybe seven. A good suit draped him and he had manicured nails. He seemed to be about forty or thereabouts. I watched as he carefully shook down the front of the Ford. He found my papers in the glove compartment.

  "This is a little-used road, Mr. Berlin." The dark man climbed from the Ford, after riffling through the suits and other stuff in the rear seat. "Not much traffic."

  "I'm hip to that," I said.

  "Perhaps you are what you claim to be. And then again, perhaps you are something very different."

  "Look. Let me climb in that Ford and I'll shove out of here so fast you'll know I don't care about you. All I need is a direction to go in."

  "You know where you are?"

  I shook my head, got a cigarette lit now that he had relaxed that gun. "I've been driving in fog since I turned off on this stinking road forty or fifty miles ago."

  The little man pushed the gun into a coat pocket. He stood for a moment, head lowered, thinking it over. Then he nodded.

  "You are on the Edson Road—the beach road. It is rarely used in this season. You missed the McKaneville cutoff several miles back. Now, where would you like to go?"

  "What's this McKaneville? A big town?"

  "Fairly large. A lumber port, lumber mills. I'm going in that direction. To Edson. That's about three miles past McKaneville."

  I moved closer. His face gleamed wetly in the fog streamers wisping between us. It was a thin face with a sharp chin. The eyes, as I'd suspected, were so dark as to be almost black.

  "Let's think about it, huh? I don't want to spend my young life running around in this stuff. And not right next door to the Pacific Ocean for sure. Why don't you let me follow you to this Edson? They got a hotel there?"

  "No. Not in Edson. But you could swing around and back a little to McKaneville. From Edson it's quite simple." He studied me for a moment, dipped his sharp chin in a nod. "Righto. I know the road. I'll go ahead. You follow. But not too closely."

  "You got a deal."

  I shook his hand, stepped on my cigarette. He trotted off to the Cadillac, built-up heels clicking loudly in the cotton-wrapped silence.

  And that's how I met Marino Donetti.

  Edson was two slow signs separated by fifty people. A wide spot. The kind I hate. Every carny has an abnormal fear of very small towns. They're nothing but trouble. You can work your game all over the bigger towns. But hit a village where the whole population turns out for the first grind of the midway, and five gets you fifteen there's a beef before all the tops are pegged down.

  Edson was small. Edson had nothing for me. Except the Club Cherbourg which stuck a pink neon twenty feet up into the fog. The Cadillac wheeled off the highway into a graveled parking area immediately in front of a white-and-red Colonial-style building.

  Civilization. Any place they got sense enough to charge for liquor I figure is a community.

  I got out, locked the Ford. This place looked like liquor and I needed that. The little man stayed in his car. I walked to it, wiggled my fingers at him.

  "Thanks."

  He rolled the window down. "Not at all. Sorry about the gun. I run a place out the road a piece. The Devil's Play Spot. Carry a bit of money, most times."

  "It's all right. Buy you a drink?"

  "I think not." His hand strayed beside him to a small tan-leather attaché" case on the seat. "I go on here, out the Portland road a few miles. You go this way—" he gestured "—to the next fork. Turn right. Three miles to McKaneville and no way to get off the road."

  I started to ask him what had been going on in the middle of the night on a foggy road; two cars and guns and all that jazz. Then I thought about the gun again and decided to mind my own business—which was getting as far away from Las Vegas and a tall leggy redhead named Charlene as possible. I just smiled, started toward the lighted doorway of the nightclub or roadhouse, or whatever it was.

  "Oh, Berlin," the little man said. I turned back to the Cad. "Are you looking for work?"

  "Work? Well, not particularly. Why?"

  "You are a dealer? A gambler?"

  "Dealer. Never gambled in my life."

  "Yes, of course. This county is quite liberal. You might find employment in this area." He fished for a card, handed it to me through the window. "If you are interested see me at the Devil's Play Spot. Anyone can tell you."

  The Club Cherbourg was quite a joint for a whistle-stop town. Four very obviously home-grown musicians made noises on a bandstand set flush against the front of the place, on the right as you entered. A dance floor spread out from the tiny stand; tables surrounded it and blended into the darkness beyond. A bar, canopied in maroon and silver—with spears holding it up—stretched along the left side just past a tiny checkroom. The room was large and softly lit. It might have been San Francisco.

  I found a seat at the bar. It wasn't hard. There was only j one other person at the bar. And only three or four couples at the tables. I wondered about that because I remembered the service station across the street being loaded with cars. Plus those in the lot. The bartender appeared in front of me. He was a medium specimen with a very black, very straight mustache and watery eyes.

  "Yes, sir?"

  "This Saturday, mac?"

  His eyebrows climbed. "Saturday? Yes, sir, this is Saturday."

  "Where is everybody?"

  He grinned. "I heard a joke like that once. It had to do with a cockatoo—"

  "Yeah, sure." I lit a Camel. "I heard it. Bring me a double, Johnny Walker Red, with water."

  He zipped away, came back with the drink. Just then the music stopped and I knew where everyone was. In the comparative silence, I heard the well-remembered chuckle of rolling dice, the low-voiced murmur of a crap game in progress. I paid the mustache. He thanked me, made change. He dropped bills and silver on the bar, leaned forward over the plank.

  "Everybody's in the game room." He jerked a thumb toward the far end of the bar.

  All I could see were backs. But there was a familiar feel; the gambling aura. Feverish and ripe. Almost a force. Hot game. The room itself was small, holding only the crap table, a twenty-one snap getting absolutely no play, and a green-topped poker table, round and empty in the deeper reaches of the room's rear. The crowd was around the dice table, quiet and interested.

  I touched the shoulder of a guy in front of me.

  "What's going on?"

  The man turned and I caught a flash of irritation and then a big splash of white teeth in a square tanned face.

  "I don't know for sure." He increased the grin. "Wish I did. My name's Gurion. I own the place. You care to try?"

  He spread his hand toward the crowd.

  "Why the mob?" I asked.

  He ran a square hand through black hair touched here and there with gray. He shrugged. "Some woman. Having a run of luck. Good advertisement."

  But he didn't mean it. His eyes were worried. He caught a murmur from the crowd, a woman's delighted squeal, and forgot about me. I followed him into the crush of onlookers. Being tall has some compensations. I shouldered through a couple layers of people and looked over the heads of the rest.

  A nervous brunette, very well dressed, was shooting. The table was what is known in the trade as a California double-dealer. That means that two people work identical layouts on either side of the stickman. This one was a
little different, however. The backline barred ace-deuce instead of double-ace or double-six; the propositions all read "for one" instead of "to one." As percentages go, this layout was lethal. If anyone was managing to beat this game, I wanted to see it.

  The brunette swept the dice down the table and a subdued murmur arose.

  "Sixes, two—crap twelve, she threw," the stickman said. He was a young Indian-looking joker in shirt sleeves, wearing a worried expression.

  A girl worked the box. Calling her just girl was a little like calling Whirlaway just horse. She was blonde, with a face like they launched all those ships for back in Troy. She had hair so blonde it was almost white and it capped her head like lemon froth. Her skin was deeply tanned and her body, what I could see of it over the table, was trim and complete. As I inventoried her, she reached over the layout, stacked twenty-nine chips on the one the nervous brunette had on the thirty-for-one crap twelve. Her hand trembled slightly. She frowned, looking out over the crowd. Our eyes met for an instant and held. She looked perplexed and very lovely. I smiled and she turned back to the game.

  She was a real doll. But cold. She was classic beauty, fastened together with loving care, each piece being more perfect than the last; built to excite and delight and maybe enslave. And then frozen, the whole thing. There was a coldness about her you could feel.

  The brunette shot again, won with a natural. I'd seen enough. The stickman couldn't handle it.

  A hand on my bicep spun me. The woman facing me filled slacks and blouse like they should be filled. She wore a dealer's apron of pool-table green. Her lips were smiling and she seemed glad to see me. It took a moment, then I remembered.

  "Bev," I said. "Bev King. Haven't seen you since Tahoe. How are things?"

  "Big Johnny Berlin," the girl said. "Still pretty and still stuck-up. What are you doing around here?"

  I pulled her out of the crowd. She gripped my arm against one swelling breast and walked, smiling up at me.

  "For one thing," I said, "I'm watching this joint go broke."