Deep is the Pit Read online

  Stannard suddenly smiled, his attention wholly captured. “Go on.”

  “I will. I went along with my father because my mother died when I was four years old and the old man couldn’t afford to leave me anywhere. And as I got old enough and big enough I went to work in the hotels where my father worked. I’ve worked as a bellboy, busboy, waiter, porter, janitor, doorman, clerk, bouncer, and anything else you can name up to manager. I had more on the ball than the old man, and pretty soon I was supporting him, until he died. There isn’t a job in the business I haven’t held down, and damned well, or a section of the country I haven’t worked in. Now you think that maybe I know what I’m talking about?”

  “I can check on that?”

  “You certainly can. I’ll give you a list as long as your arm. But understand this: You’ll hear from them all that I am a good man, but a drifter. There’s a reason for that. Ever since I was old enough to think I couldn’t stand anything second-rate. For me it had to be the best, always. The only seat I care to sit in is the one at the head of the table. But for that you need know-how, plenty of it. I wanted to know everything there was to learn in the business. Everything. The only way that can be done is to drift from one place to another, pick up ideas here and ideas there and learn from the really smart managers. You have to go to the establishments that are paying off and find out why they’re paying off. You even have to go to the bum ones and learn why they’re bum. I’ve learned. Now I’m ready to go on my own.”

  He leaned back in his chair, glaring at Stannard, waiting for him to bring the interview to a close. Stannard, however, had turned halfway away from him and was looking up at a painting on the wall. Marty glanced up at the portrait of a man about forty years of age, his hair brushed back from his forehead and handle-bar mustaches drooping over the corners of his mouth. The painting had been done sometime in the mid-1800’s. The artist had not been overly skilled, but he had managed to capture the power and drive in his subject’s eyes, the ruthless curve of his jaw, and the single-purpose set of the mouth. On the frame was printed the name Eli Stannard.

  Frank Stannard turned to look back at Marty. “My grandfather,” he said. “He was a man with ideas. Always sat at the head of the table. Any table.” He flipped the interoffice key and spoke into the box. “Miss Rose, cancel my next appointment and don’t interrupt me for at least an hour.” He flipped off the key and his green eyes, no longer as cold as they had been, swung back to Marty. “Go ahead, Mr. Lee.”

  Marty was dumfounded to realize not only that was Stannard interested, but that they had already progressed to a point that would have taken weeks if he had followed his original plan. For a moment he was confused, but only for a moment. The situation reminded him of an armed robbery in Dallas where the schedule had gone wrong and two men had been shot, yet the job had been completed successfully in half the time expected. He had planned so well in the beginning that when the original idea went wrong he had been able to select alternatives and extemporize on the spot. He had handled that all right; perhaps he could handle this situation just as well. He decided to continue plunging.

  But there was a great change. He was no longer angry. His brain was again functioning in its usual cool and concise manner. What had seemed formidable opposition had been overcome or melted away. He was inside.

  He continued, “I have also been doing some speculating on the side — stocks, cotton futures, oil, and, since the war, some very lucky deals in surplus.”

  Stannard gave him the nod of a compatriot. “I presume you did all right.”

  “Better than that, considering that I had practically nothing to start with. Frankly, I cleaned up. Small change for you, I suppose, but big enough for the stake I wanted. So while staying with the hotel business, learning its every detail, I have also managed to pile up enough to start out on my own.”

  Stannard asked, “Big enough to buy the hotel?”

  Marty smiled and shook his head. “Not big enough for that, but big enough to persuade you to turn it over to me. You’re losing money on it, by your own admission. I have heard it will probably be torn down and replaced by a garage or office building.”

  “We have considered it.”

  “But if it could make money, wouldn’t you rather it remained a hotel?”

  Stannard was not committing himself. “Perhaps.”

  “It would be a crime to tear it down. I imagine that you and your family have always been a little proud of it. After all, it’s one of the few hotels left in the business with the old, grand traditions. If I had it — naturally, I mean to keep the name — you would be even prouder of it. I can do things with that hotel. Big things. For years I have been looking for the right place to make my pitch — I mean, go into business. This is it.”

  Stannard had not missed the slip of the tongue. “And how do you intend making your pitch?”

  Marty grinned broadly. “Now, please, you don’t really expect me to tell you everything I have in mind, do you? I’m not here simply to hand over my ideas to you. All I am willing to say is that I intend not to modernize, which would surely mean failure, but to accent the old-fashioned qualities of the hotel, clean out the deadwood, and make it a place that the heavy-spending set will flock to.”

  Stannard chuckled. “That sounds like a large order.”

  “It is, but I can do it. How it’s done will remain my secret, but I’m willing to gamble a couple of hundred thousand on it.”

  Stannard drummed his fingers on the desk. “Is this an offer?”

  “In a way. I have enough money to carry through my idea, but not enough to pay down any large sum on the actual purchase price of the hotel. If we agree on the price, then I could put down perhaps thirty or forty thousand to bind the sale. After that I would need a year to execute my ideas and get under way. The heavy payments on the purchase could not possibly start until the end of two years. That’s a bare minimum.”

  Stannard started to say something, but Marty interrupted. “The down payment is ridiculous on such a piece of property, I’m aware of that, but until the real payments are made I would be pouring in a quarter of a million or more, which is yours in case I fail. All responsibility is mine. While the hotel is in my name you lose no money on it, you have everything to gain, and, further, you will be keeping the Stannard name above a great hotel with a national reputation. Are you interested?”

  Stannard was interested. He asked questions in rapid-fire order, he took down Marty’s references of banks (where he had deposits) and of hotels in which he had worked and kept him talking for a full hour. At the end of that time he shook hands and told Marty, “You’ll hear from me within the next few days.”

  Marty stopped in the reception room on the way out and paused before Miss Rose’s desk. She adjusted her blouse, smoothed back her hair, and gave him a warm smile. “Yes, Mr. Lee?”

  “Tell me something, Miss Rose: Was it Eli who built the Stannard fortune?”

  “Oh, yes. He came out here from Boston during the gold rush. A rugged individual, from all I’ve heard.”

  “He was a miner?”

  “No, indeed. The miners did all the work and he took it away from them.” She blushed and stammered, “What I mean — well, that is, he didn’t do any actual mining. He opened stores and ran freight lines and steamship companies, then banks and all that sort of thing.”

  “Maybe a few highway holdups on the side?”

  She laughed. “That I wouldn’t know.”

  “Was he the one who built the Stannard Hotel?”

  “Just before he died, yes.”

  “That’s what I thought. Thanks.”

  He went out of the office and waited in the hallway for an elevator to take him down. He wiped his hand across his forehead and was surprised to find it covered with perspiration. Jees, he thought, that one was tougher than cracking a bank.

  He started to laugh, silently at first, then loudly. Another man, also waiting for the elevators, stared at him and edge
d a few feet away. Marty didn’t mind. He was on his way.

  Chapter Three

  MARTY was restless that night, too much so to stay in the hotel. He went down to the lobby and asked the bell captain where he could get the best steak in town. “Well, sir, it’s a funny thing, but I think the Little Club’s got the best steaks. Believe it or not, that’s a night club.”

  “Good steaks in a night club?”

  “Just that one. Honest, they’re out of this world. U.S. Prime, two inches thick and cooked the way you want ‘em over charcoal. It’s a fact.”

  “If it isn’t I’ll come back here and beat your brains in.”

  The Little Club was not many blocks away, on Turk Street in the heart of San Francisco’s tenderloin district, so Marty walked. It was a soft, warm night and San Franciscans were out in force, window shopping, jamming the bars, and going to the theatres. Marty mingled with the crowds, peered into the lighted windows of the shops, stopped in a bar for a vermouth cassis, and made his leisurely way to the night club.

  The Little Club was on the second floor of a corner building. As its name implied, it was not very large. It was also crowded. But Marty managed to secure a tiny table in a far corner of the room that could never have accommodated more than one person. He gave the waiter his order of onion soup, salad, New York cut rare with French fries, pie with cheese and coffee, then turned his attention to the room. It was a square room, with a tiny dance floor in the exact center and a bandstand before a half shell against one wall. The tables were packed so densely that the customers had difficulty keeping their elbows out of each other’s ribs. The lighting was unusually low and soft, practically the only illumination coming from a hooded candle stuck in a brandy bottle on each table. The five-piece orchestra was not bad. In fact, after a few minutes Marty conceded that it was very good indeed.

  He was concentrating on the food and only barely listening to some woman singing before the band. After a while, though, his attention was captured by a certain earnest appeal in her voice, as if she meant every word she was singing. The voice, too, seemed familiar, as if he had heard it before, but softly, more modulated, at closer range. He cocked his head to one side and listened. She was good. He glanced at the people around him. They were all listening. That was unusual at the dinner hour. The singer was excellent. She had to be to compete with those steaks.

  Marty tilted his chair back so that he could see around a small pillar between himself and the bandstand. She was standing in the spotlight on the dance floor just before the bandstand. She was not using a microphone. Her voice was full and rich and too good for artificial aid. Her wide eyes were slumbrous, in the mood of the song. Her tantalizing body swayed faintly with the rhythm, her breasts, high and almost bare, rippling with the movement of her arms, her thick blonde hair like a soft halo in the spotlight. Marty had the word for her — spectacular.

  He also had her name — Dotty Kimball.

  Slowly he lowered the chair back to its four legs. He lifted the coffee and sipped at it. He swore under his breath when he noticed that his hand was shaking. The little bitch. The two-timing, double-crossing little bitch. She had taken his money and she hadn’t gone. Her hotel rent was paid a month in advance, but, even so, she should have cashed that in too and gone on to New York. She had seemed so eager. But she had taken a job instead. It could be bad. It could mean trouble. It could mean she was hanging around to help the police spot Red Martin.

  She finished her song, sang an encore, then left the floor. She made her way through the tables straight toward Marty. He was not conscious of it, but he had stiffened and was holding his breath. Dotty brushed against his shoulder as she went by and the familiar scent of her perfume was in his nostrils. He turned his head slowly to look after her. She had stopped directly behind him. She knocked lightly at a door marked “Office,” opened it, and disappeared. Marty let out his breath in a sharp sigh that came from his stomach.

  He got the waiter as quickly as he could, paid the check, picked up his hat, and hurried out of the Little Club. He went down the street to a drugstore, looked up the number of a poolroom on lower Fillmore, and stepped into a phone booth. He made sure that no one was standing closely by before he dialed the number. A man answered and asked curtly what he wanted. Marty asked for Scappy Logan, the proprietor. It was Scappy who had secured Hank and Joe for Marty three weeks before. Being also in the bail-bond business, he was neatly situated for bringing together members of the underworld.

  He answered the telephone after a few minutes. “Yeah?”

  Marty placed a handkerchief over the mouthpiece of the phone. He was afraid that, his mouth free of the rubber inserts, his voice would be unrecognizable to Scappy. He thought quickly of a conversation he had had with Scappy the month before, when he had called him from Los Angeles to secure the services of two good men. He remembered kidding Scappy, tell him that he was going to buy a bank and walk in through the front door with his own key.

  “Scappy?” he asked.

  “Look, pal, I ain’t got all night.”

  “I got that key, Scappy.”

  “You got what?”

  “That key I was telling you about, when I called you from L.A. I bought my own bank.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence, then Scappy shouted, “Red! You ain’t still here!”

  “It only took a nickel.”

  “But Red, you’re nuts. You had at least four hours to get away before the heat was on. You gone crazy? This is a tough town to get out.”

  Marty squirmed into a more comfortable position in the narrow confines of the booth. “That’s why I’m calling. I got delayed.”

  “You crazy fathead! So for once in your life your timing went wrong, huh?”

  “Not exactly. I’m pulling out later on tonight. Don’t worry. I’ll send you love and kisses from New Orleans. But what I’d like to know — how’s the beef stand?”

  “Not so good, goddamn it. Hank, that screwball jerk, he musta dropped something on the job.”

  Marty thought of the gold cigarette case with the blue peacock and said, “I know. He told me. So they got his prints.”

  “Him and Joe both. Was them two in love or something? Whatever the cops picked up had both their prints.”

  “But they got clear?”

  “Up until now. Yeah. They got out. But you know how long that’s gonna last. Them two jerkimers are gonna start splashing lettuce around somewhere, and that’s it.”

  “That’s their problem, not mine. But how about me? What’s the word?”

  “Same old story. They figure the other bad little boy was Red Martin and that’s all they figure, period.”

  Marty said tensely, “This is important, Scappy. I have a funny hunch there’s been a tip-off. How about it?”

  There was a long period of silence, while Scappy was apparently turning over many matters in his devious brain, but after a while he said, “Nothing yet, anyways. I was up at Central not more’n two hours ago. They figure you’re a million miles away by now. They’re still looking — don’t make no mistakes there on your way out — but they don’t think they’ll find what they’re looking for. Not here.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “Listen, pal, I’m in the business. What goes on here I know about. Now, you get the hell on your way. It scares me just talking with you.”

  “One thing more. It’s worth five centuries to me. Can you get an alarm out for me in — let’s see — Chicago? Maybe a phony pickup? It’ll be better if this party I got a hunch about thinks I’m somewhere else.”

  Scappy demurred, “Well, now — ”

  Marty’s voice rose a degree and came out with a killing edge: “Listen, you goddamned, chiseling, two-bit operator. You’ll do it or I’ll be back calling on you personally.”

  “Hey, wait a minute. Hold on, boy. Hold on. Jees,” he whined, “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. Anything for a pal. You know how it is. Sure. Sure. I think I can fix up something.�
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  Marty said dangerously, “I’m depending on it.”

  “Sure. Sure. Hell, yes. Couple of friends of mine in Chicago. Sure. Don’t give it another thought.”

  “O.K. You’ll get the five centuries in the mail tomorrow. Be seeing you.”

  “Yeah. Sure. For God’s sake, get moving.”

  Marty hung up, put the handkerchief in his pocket, and opened the folding door. A policeman in uniform was standing two feet away, facing him. Marty felt as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over his head. The policeman brushed by him into the phone booth and turned to smile at Marty. He jerked his head toward the outer doors and the general direction of the street corner. “Damned call box is out of order. Imagine that! Have to use my own nickel.”

  Marty managed a weak smile. He walked away on stiff legs. But by the time he had reached the hotel he was feeling better. At least, Dotty had not gone to the police. It was silly to think that she would. She wasn’t the type. When he got up to his rooms he had forgotten her and his brain was again busy with the many ramifications of the hotel deal.

  While waiting to hear from Stannard, Marty spent his time prowling the hotel and becoming acquainted with all of its details. He made dozens of sketches for revisions and wrote down ideas so rapidly that his sitting-room desk became covered with papers. Marty planned carefully. He had learned that trick from Slim Page, the man who had taught him the fine art of armed robbery.

  Slim had once been a guest in a modest hotel where Marty had gone to work after being discharged from the Army. Slim passed himself off as a traveling salesman, but Marty had known too many salesmen and their habits and idiosyncrasies to be fooled. He watched Slim carefully and noticed that he had spent much of his time in the neighborhood of a bank two blocks down the street from the hotel. When the bank was robbed by four men one morning, Marty was sure he knew the identity of one of them.