Scott O’Hara - Satan’s Angel

The Castle Club was a nighttime place. At night it was raw and loud and brazen, with the colored neon painting lurid highlights on the hoods of the big cars that nuzzled up to it. Bare shoulders and smoky music and false bottoms in the shot glasses. At night Sam Lossers office was as strange as work gloves on a chorine. It could have been the office of a hick lawyer. Golden oak and worn green carpet and a spittoon.

But in the daytime when the Castle Club was gray and dingy, when the tables were stacked, when a man in a dirty shirt checked the bottles on the backbar, and a slow old man knelt in the dirty gray rain and picked slivers of glass out of the parking lot in the daytime Sam Lossers office became the only touch of reality.

He had a rolltop desk and an oak table at right angles to it. I sat on the other side of the oak table, my purse and gloves at my elbow. Sams chair creaked. He held a slender cigar in his fat, muddy fingers, and huffed out a blue-gray column of smoke. He wore a baggy gray suit that matched his office. His bald head had a high sheen in the gray light from the big window.

With a slow movement, he reached out, spun the cigar in the ash tray, leaving a small neat cone of ash over the red glow.

His eyes were milky gray, almost opaque. He smiled and said, Now you make like a soap opera, Ellen. Big tears yet.

That doesnt answer the question, I said flatly, pleased that I could keep the quaver out of my voice.

The question? Oh, you wanted to know where Johnny is, didnt you? If you did know, it wouldnt do you any good. Your brother has got to stay put for a while, Ellen. Johnny James is a name the cops would like to know.

Arent you supposed to have the cops in your pocket?

He sighed. Machines I can fix. A few gas stations knocked off I can fix. Lots of little things I fix. Murder, no. Cops, they get eager about murder. So do all the kids in the D. A.s office. I go to my people and say that to me it would be a personal favor if they let it slide. They say that I stay out of this one.

Johnny didnt kill anybody, I said with a note of hysteria.

Ellen, you are a good girl. You do nice clean secretarial work. Maybe you look at that white paper and black writing too long. Life is not black and white. Life is full of shades of gray.

What difference whether Johnny did it or not? Johnny is a very excitable boy. Johnny, he like a lot of dough in his pants. He likes nice things. You know how it is. Maybe he did and maybe he didnt kill anybody this time. Maybe next time he does. Hes nervous.

I thought of my brother. Johnny with his clear reckless eyes and twisted smile and the ready fists. Johnny, who had worked in some mysterious capacity for Sam Losser ever since the dishonorable discharge he got for beating up his company commander.

On April fourteenth, three nights before, at two in the morning, three men had broken into the Connor Brothers Coal Company, smashed the safe and made off with a little over twenty thousand dollars. The watchman had died the following noon in the hospital from a depressed skull fracture. I had thought nothing of it until I found that Johnny had disappeared. He hadnt come back to his apartment. It was in the same building as mine. So I went to see Sam Losser.

Did... those men rob the coal company because you told them to, Mr. Losser?

He flattened his thick lips against his teeth as he smiled. His eyes were cold. You got me wrong, Ellen. I got a tough business to run out here. I got to hire rough boys to help me. Sometimes, on their time off, those rough boys do a few things for excitement. Can I help that?

You wont help Johnny?

He inspected the end of his cigar and rolled the ash off again. You make it difficult, Ellen. Maybe I can help him. I dont know. If the pressure goes off the case, maybe I can help him a lot. If it stays on... He shrugged.

Maybe the two men who were with Johnny are worth less to you than he is. Maybe if one of them...

He grinned, almost with delight. Miss James, you got the same idea I got, but you got it in reverse. The two boys with Johnny are good boys. Steady boys. They been in the business years. Johnny, hes still a punk. Like I told you, hes excite-able. If the heat stays on I got to protect my investment by having them find Johnny. Just to make sure Johnny wont talk, he might be dead when they find him.

The room spun and I felt my shoulders sag. Through thick mist Sam Lossers muddy face loomed and his faraway voice said, You dont feel so good?

I clung to consciousness, fought away the mists. I lifted my chin and said, I feel fine.

He said softly, You see, nobody was to get killed. Then its okay. But the deal went wrong. So what was a good job is now a bad job. I give it to you straight, Ellen. If they smell around too close to me, I got to throw Johnny to them. In Johnnys pocket will be a lot of the dough and a sap that will fit the smashed place on the head of that watchman. Then the pressure is off.

Did Johnny kill him?

I told you before, that doesnt make any difference.

He leaned back in his chair. It creaked again. I saw the thin gray threads of smoke rising toward the ceiling. If I could get Johnny, we could go away together. This thing would have driven the madness out of him. A new start. Johnny would become the same fine kid brother he had once been.

I said softly, Isnt there anything I can do? Anything at all?

He didnt answer. He stared at the rain pelting against his window. I said, Suppose Johnny was a very good man, very valuable to you, the same as the others. What would you do to take the heat off the three of them?

He shrugged. I might do a very dangerous thing. I might find some bum and have him killed and plant the stuff on him.

Why dont you do that this time?

Johnny isnt worth the danger, Ellen. You figure you got a bum and all of sudden hes got friends who were with him the night he was supposed to be knocking off the watchman. Maybe somebody sees you contacting the bum. You got two murders instead of one.

I remembered all the things about Johnny. He was a good kid. Somewhere along the line he had gotten twisted. He could be set right.

Sam squashed the butt of the cigar, handling it delicately with his thick fingers. He smiled up at me. Of course, if you could find us a bum for the part...

Me? I gasped.

Sure. You get hold of some stew bum off River Street and take him to some room you get under the wrong name and pump him and make sure there wont be a hitch. Then you let me know, and we arrange a pickup and wrap him up for the cops.

I remembered the clear look Johnny used to have in his eyes. I remembered him, proud in his first long trousers. I remembered how his thin shoulders shook as I held him tight after our parents were killed at the grade crossing. I said:

Suppose I do that. Then what?

Then you dont have to worry about Johnny. He can come back to work.

But suppose I want to take him away from here? Suppose I think I can straighten him out?

The rain was still pelting the windows, a shaft of sun shone between the clouds, a thin line of it making a bright spot on the green rug. Sam pointed to it. You can straighten Johnny out the same way I can pick up that sunbeam and tie knots in it.

But you will let him go?

Sam looked at me. He shrugged. Phone me here when you got the burn lined up. Phone from a pay station.

I stood up. He walked me to the door.

He laughed as he closed it. As I went along the narrow hall I could hear the distant sound of his laughter. I walked across the floor, out the side door and climbed into my coupe. The old man had finished picking up the shattered glass.