Backfire Page #3

Check every accident report

for December.

Any doctor who looks after him

has to file a report. That's the law.

- Okay?

- Thanks, captain.

All right. You'll hear from us.

- Where are you staying in town?

- I'm going over to the Biltmore.

Nice hotel.

Stay in it as much as possible.

Yeah. Sure.

- Goodbye.

- So long.

Say, Corey.

You ever play cops and robbers?

Why, sure. When I was a kid.

Take my word for it, it's a kid's game.

Let us find Steve Connolly.

Say, Mac, take me to the Fremont Hotel

instead of the Biltmore.

- The Fremont?

- Yeah, yeah. I changed my mind.

Brother, when you change it,

you really change it.

- Yes, sir.

- I'd like a room, please.

Register.

- How long you gonna be with us?

- I, uh, don't know yet.

Two dollars a day, $12 a week.

No noise after 12:00.

Okay.

Say, uh, how about room 228.

Is that vacant?

247's got more light.

I'd like 228, if you don't mind.

Why...?

Oh. Mr. Corey.

I should have recognized your voice.

- You called here often enough.

- Well, do I get the room?

You won't find anything.

Police cleaned it out weeks ago.

I know all that.

- lf you wait, the boy will help you up.

- I'll walk.

Mr. Corey, if you're

such a good friend of Connolly's...

...maybe you'd like to pay this bill.

He went out the back way.

- How much is it?

- Twelve dollars for rent.

Twenty cents for phone calls.

Connolly shows up, you get it back.

Yeah. I bet.

Right up the stairs, down the hall.

- Yes?

- Can I come in, Mr. Corey?

- Well...

- I'm Sybil.

Mr. Steve used to talk about you.

We were good friends,

me and Mr. Steve.

Oh?

- Come in, come in.

- Thank you.

He was my pet on this floor.

And every week there'd be a dollar bill

in this room for me...

...with a darling little note.

Oh, he was a gentleman,

Mr. Steve was.

The best we had on the second floor.

Well, right now

he could use a character reference.

I know. He shouldn't have run away.

That was his mistake.

You don't think he killed anybody,

do you?

Money makes a man do rare things,

Mr. Corey.

- The money was the trouble.

- Money? What money?

The $40,000 he and Mr. Blayne

were fighting about.

Forty thousand dollars?

I'm afraid you have the wrong Connolly.

Well, I know what I heard, Mr. Corey.

- You heard them?

- It was the night Mr. Blayne was killed.

Just a little before 9:00 it was.

I had worked my way down

to the second floor.

I saw this pair of legs

coming down the hall.

Living so close to the floor

most the time...

...I can tell a lot about people

from their shoes.

I didn't like this pair right off.

Too shiny.

Oh. Hello, Solly.

Aren't you gonna ask me in, champ?

Sorry. I was just on my way out.

You just broke your date.

Inside, champ.

A friend of mine tells me those suckers

went for a hundred grand in the game.

Not 20.

What's the difference?

The difference is I've got

another 40,000 coming on the split.

And if I don't get it by Saturday,

I'll let the law collect it for me.

What are you gonna do? Sue?

Better than that, champ.

The treasury department

pays plenty for a tip...

...on someone holding out

on income tax.

They also put guys in jail.

Okay, so what?

So? Forty grand.

By Saturday.

That was all.

But I knew Mr. Steve

was getting into real trouble.

I've seen it coming too.

He was worrying a lot

before it happened.

Pacing up and down nights,

like he couldn't sleep.

Did he have any other visitors?

Was there ever a girl?

Dark hair, spoke with a foreign accent?

No. No, I don't know

anything else about him.

Except this.

He left it. Mr. Steve did,

with a dollar pinned on it.

They were always darling notes.

Peerless Mortuary?

You know, I wondered at the time

what a young man like Mr. Steve...

...was doing with a card

from a mortuary.

And over in Glendale too.

Ms. Hallum, call Mr. Shelton.

Tell him the arrangements

have been made for 4.

Yes, sir.

This gentleman is waiting for you.

- Did you want to see me?

- Yeah. Uh...

A friend of mine had your card. I, uh...

Corey. Bob Corey.

Yeah.

What's the matter, cowboy?

Don't you recognize me?

Ben Arno.

Arno. Corporal Arno.

- That's right.

- Well, well.

How are you, cowboy?

Fine, fine. Now I've seen everything.

Don't let the makeup fool you.

This is for the customers.

That is, for the customers' next of kin.

You're not here on business, are you?

I hope you haven't, as we say,

lost a loved one.

Oh, no, Ben. Nothing like that. I, uh...

Good. Come on upstairs.

- Have a seat. Make yourself comfortable.

- Thanks.

- How do you like the layout?

- Oh, swell.

- But isn't it kind of, uh...

- I know what you mean.

- It's kind of close to, uh...

- Yeah.

Gives me the willies too sometimes.

Especially on foggy nights.

But I say to myself, "Ben, it pays the rent."

And that does it.

Well, what happened

to the nightclub business?

You used to say

if you ever got back to 52nd Street...

...you'd never leave.

- I went back all right but I missed the boat.

The guys who ran those joints

during the war years got all the gravy.

I got there, the shutters were going up

as fast as they could get lumber.

So I figured all the business

must have gone West.

And I came out to look things over.

Found a place too

out on Sunset Strip. Looked good.

Then I tried to get a loan. No dice.

The banks like to back a sure thing,

they said.

For instance, I said.

Something certain, they said.

All right, what's certain?

Two things. Death and taxes.

So I got to thinking,

who comes to California?

There's the ones who come here to live,

and the ones who come to die.

I couldn't get the live ones without a

nightclub, so, meet Ben Arno, mortician.

Well, like I said, death and taxes.

What brought you in here, cowboy?

I'm trying to find Steve Connolly.

I thought maybe you could help me out.

He had your card,

and I wondered how he got it.

Oh, sure. I gave it to him myself. Why?

Well, the cops are looking for him.

They say he killed Solly Blayne.

- Steve?

- Yeah.

I read about that in the papers.

There was no mention of Steve.

Well, they're looking for him anyhow.

Where'd you hear about this?

The cops picked me up this morning,

wanted to know if I had any ideas.

- And?

- The only lead I had was your card.

How do you like that?

I should've made him listen.

He was heading for trouble.

- I warned him.

- When was that?

A couple of months ago it was.

At the fights.

I go every Friday night.

I have a permanent ringside seat.

Generally I just catch the main event.

But this night the prelims were snafued.

And the last fight was going on

when I checked in.

That's it, Bingo.

Go on, Bingo. Knock him down.

Put him down. Put him down. Attaboy.

Give me your program.

That ain't Tiger Wallace.

The Tiger's sick. Substitution.

The name's Connolly.

Now he's sicker than the Tiger.

Ho-ho-ho!

One, two, three, four...

I couldn't believe my eyes.

I only saw a few seconds of the fight.

Half that time you were flat on your face.

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