The Copenhagen Affair - Oram John. Страница 8

O’Flaherty looked at the beer.

“’Tis a commentary on the decadence of civilization,” he soliloquized, “that when I was no older than you a man could go out with five kroner in his pocket and be a monarch of the night. A few ore would buy him an ounce of tobacco the like of which ye would not find in Amalienborg Palace this day, and for no more there was lager like the gods drink on Olympia. Now”—he sighed gustily—“they rob you of three kroner the small bottle.” He nodded, looked Solo in the eye in the Danish fashion, nodded again, tilted back his head and the Carlsberg vanished. He put the glass back on the table and licked his lips.

Solo called the barman. “Same again,” he ordered.

“Barrin’ miracles, that settles it,” said O’Flaherty. “For nothin’ less would make you pay for drinks twice runnin’ and you shoutin’ the first round. Napoleon, you’re in trouble.”

The lager came and he swirled the bottom of the tall glass delicately.

“Now,” he said, settling back comfortably, “perhaps you’ll be so accommodatin’ as to inform me of the reasons for this peripatetic perambulation around our civic sidewalks, and you just fresh from a weary flight across the oceans of the western world.”

Solo said, “Remember the night at Todos los Santos, Jens?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” he grinned. “And I with one foot in the grave and the other tryin’ to kick the daylights out of them misconcepted Focacci brothers, to say nothin’ of me two guns empty and half an inch of Porky Romero’s shiv atwixt me fifth and sixth ribs? Sure, Napoleon, when you came through that saloon door and got to work with as pretty a bit of boot work as I ever had the pleasure of witnessin’ I give you my word I had begun to misdoubt would Mrs. O’Flaherty’s boy see the risin’ of another sun. ’Twas my life you gave me without a doubt.”

“Fine. Now here’s where you can start squaring up.”

O’Flaherty said, “Is there a murder in it, then, or just a nice fancy piece of robbery with violence?”

“Neither. All I want is information.”

“As to that,” he said, “’tis well known from Callao to Crooked Corners, Wisconsin, that in the matter of disseminatin’ elucidation and verbiage Jens Johannes O’Flaherty is in a class with himself. Would it be Epstein’s Theory that’s troublin’ you, now, or was you wishful of considerin’ the finer divagations of the higher pragmatism, with a side glance at the influence of the moon upon the tides at Langelinie?”

Solo cut straight through the Irish. “Where does Garbridge’s mob hang out?”

His bald dome creased like corrugated sheeting. “Garbridge,” he repeated. “There was a Lefty Garstein runnin’ a cleaners and pressers protection racket in Akron, Ohio, in ’29, and Honky Garside was a torpedo for Hymie Weiss in Chicago, but—”

“Cut it,” Solo said. “I’m talking about the top-drawer thug called Garbridge with a swank layout in Holte. He’s got a hideout around here and you know where it is.”

The creases ironed out and O’Flaherty’s face went dead. He gazed over Solo’s shoulder into the swirling tobacco haze. He said woodenly, “I never heard of any Garbridge.”

“And I never heard of L. B. Johnson. What’s the matter? Scared?”

A full minute passed before he answered, and then his voice was cold sober.

“Napoleon,” he said, “I have the reputation of being a tough boyo and it’s yourself knows the truth of it. In sixty years of roamin’ the far comers of the earth I never yet knew what it felt like to drink water and—God between us and harm—I never will.

“I’ve taken me chances with spiggotty insurrectionists and I’ve been town marshal of Concho, Arizona, and durin’ the late unpleasantness I did me small stint here with Holger Danske to make the Hun feel unwelcome. But I know me limitations. And I’m tellin’ you, Napoleon, they consists of drawin’ the line at tanglin’ with the crazy man you speak of.

“Sure, I’m scared, and ye can make the most of it, but it’s yourself I’m scared for. A poor misservice I’d be doin’ for the life I owe ye to help you out with the information ye’re after. Bad men is one thing, and you and me can handle ’em, but madmen are another. And mad they are, not barrin’ Garbridge himself, the blackest hearted devil that ever disgraced the mother that bore him. No, Napoleon, I’ll not help ye.”

Solo tried to smile, but he didn’t feel so good.

“My flesh is creeping like a laddered nylon,” he said, “and the icebergs in my bloodstream are giving me sciatica. The trouble is, Jens, I’ve got to mix it with these boys because the only alternative is a lifetime of slavery for all of us, and I don’t seem to have the temperament.”

O’Flaherty’s glass crashed on the table like a bursting shell, showering lager over his anorak. “By the holy!” he exclaimed. “There’s commies in it.”

“Worse,” Solo confirmed.

“Now why the devil didn’t ye say so in the first place?” he demanded. “And I thinkin’ you was just bent on a little hell-raisin’ for the pure delight of it. Is it tryin’ to keep me out of the fun you are? Me that made Ireland ring with me desperate deeds while you was no more than a baby in diapers? I take it unkindly of ye, Napoleon, to treat an old man so. Come on, now, and let’s be flayin’ the hide off of the crazy hellions would side the enemies of the true democracy.”

He was on his feet, all set to lead a frontal attack on the hosts of Mideon.

Solo shook his head. “Sorry, Jens. It’s a private fight. If you want to help, give me the dope and I swear I’ll let you in if I get the okay from the higher-ups.”

“That’s a promise, mind.”

“I’ll do my best.”

He sighed. “You can do no more. Now I’ll just see can the bartender find us a drop of whisky to take the taste of sedition from your mouth whilst I give ye the lowdown.”

The address O’Flaherty gave Solo was a narrow-gutted house in a tangle of streets behind Nyhavn. It stood in a cul-de-sac. There was a seamen’s slop shop on one corner of the cul-de-sac with a cheap cafe facing it. Solo went into the cafe and bought a beer and a smoked eel on rye bread open sandwich. Sitting at a table by the window, he had a grandstand view of the house he was interested in.

It was a two-story building dating from the early nineteenth century, when they had views about how the poor ought to live. In its first youth it must have been pretty much of an architectural nightmare, and the years had not improved it. One only had to look at the frontage to get a mental picture of peeling wallpaper, louse-infested plaster work and a colony of man-eating rats in the basement. Solo hoped Jens was right. If the major were living there, he would find it a deserved change from the Rodehus.

Solo watched the blistered door for about twenty minutes, which was as long as he could linger over one piece of smorrebrod without the cafe owner becoming suspicious. Nobody went in or out and there was no clue to be had from the long-uncleaned windows. Solo paid his bill and went out.

A few yards along the street he found, as he had hoped, a narrow passage. Slipping in, observed only by a prowling cat, he was able to study the back of the house. The lower regions were cut off from view by a brick wall, in which the builder had thoughtfully inserted a door. Solo tried the lock and felt it give slightly. He pushed gingerly until there was space between door and frame.

All he could see was a small shed, sometime whitewashed, and the beginning of a flagged path. It was enough. On general principles it was an even bet that the path would be short, leading probably to a half-glazed kitchen door. The shed door sagged open, hanging on one hinge. Inside Solo could see the rear wheel of a motorcycle.

It was no use straining the lock. Solo released the pressure and let the door in the wall settle back in place. There was nothing he could do until dark.

It was around eight at night when he returned to the alley. He stopped and listened before getting to work on the lock. The door opened easily and he slipped through into the tiny courtyard.