The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 3: 1934-35 by Frederick Nebel

Author:Frederick Nebel [Nebel, Frederick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Detective/Hard-Boiled
Publisher: Altus Press
Published: 2013-08-18T07:00:00+00:00

Too Hot to Handle

Chapter One

The Man With the Missing Hand

IT WAS one A.M. in the Dynamite Bar. The blue-checkered cloths of the small square tables had plenty of elbows on them still, and the lad with the broken nose was rippling the ivories in his own version of Rhapsody in Blue. The Dynamite Bar was in a cellar in a house off Pacific Street and among its patrons were disillusioned poets, bloated plutocrats and a sprinkling of chaps who couldn’t be placed at all. It was noisy, smoky. Its stone walls were painted a dull red and in one corner there was a potbellied stove. There was a legend connected with the place: you might get plastered there, but if you got too plastered somebody would always take you home.

Cardigan came down the winding stone staircase at a few minutes past one, his big, distorted shadow moving along the wall beside him. His cheeks were reddened by the cold out-of-doors and as he made his way among the tables toward the bar he unbuttoned his shaggy ulster, pushed back his batted fedora.

Miles O’Mara was leaning on the bar. He was a thin, hawk-nosed man, nattily dressed, with tight red hair and a small sliver of a red mustache.

Cardigan said: “What’s it, Miles, a gag?”

“Have a drink,” O’Mara said, and motioned to the barman.

The barman said: “What’ll it be, Mr. Cardigan?”

“Rye and seltzer on the side.” Cardigan turned, looked the place over. “Nice crowd, Miles. Where’d you get the piano player?”

“He came with the piano.”

Cardigan chuckled, leaned his elbows on the bar. “I was just turning in. What’s the gag?”

“It’s no gag, Jack.” They drank and O’Mara nodded toward a curtained doorway. “He’s in the next room. I think the guy’s got a complex, but if he has—what the hell. He’s afraid to go home in the dark. I offered to send Jakie home with him, but he gave me a knowing leer and said, ‘Oh, no you don’t, mister. I want a detective—a guard or something.’ Then he asked me for a phone book and he looked in the classified ads and found your agency. He told me to call the number. I kept calling you ‘Mr. Cardigan’ on the phone because I didn’t want him to think I knew you personally.”

Cardigan said: “Maybe he’s screwy.”

“No, he’s just tight. He came in here about an hour ago and Max here”—he nodded to the barman—“said he asked for four Scotches. Max thought he was with a gang at some table, so he poured out four Scotches. Well, the guy just stands here and downs ’em—one, two, three, four. Then he has another. Of course he was tight when he hit here. Then his knees began to give away and I took him in the back room. Then he began wanting somebody to take him home.”

Cardigan groaned. “My God, Miles, and you get me down here on a job like this!”

O’Mara spread his palms. “What could I do? I offered to send Jakie home with him.

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