RED HARVEST by Dashiell Hammett

“You know where it is. Been up to some of your cute tricks?”

I went back into the kitchen, opened the top of the refrigerator, and attacked the ice with an ice pick that had a six-inch awl-sharp blade set in a round blue and white handle. The girl stood in the doorway and asked questions. I didn’t answer them while I put ice, gin, lemon juice and seltzer together in two glasses.

“What have you been doing?” she demanded as we carried our drinks into the dining room. “You look ghastly.”

I put my glass on the table, sat down facing it, and complained:

“This damned burg’s getting me. If I don’t get away soon I’ll be going blood-simple like the natives. There’s been what? A dozen and a half murders since I’ve been here. Donald Willsson; Ike Bush; the four wops and the dick at Cedar Hill; Jerry; Lew Yard; Dutch Jake, Blackie Whalen and Put Collings at the Silver Arrow; Big Nick, the copper I potted; the blond kid Whisper dropped here; Yakima Shorty, old Elihu’s prowler; and now Noonan. That’s sixteen of them in less than a week, and more coming up.”

She frowned at me and said sharply:

“Don’t look like that.”

I laughed and went on:

“I’ve arranged a killing or two in my time, when they were necessary. But this is the first time I’ve ever got the fever. It’s this damned burg. You can’t go straight here. I got myself tangled at tile beginning. When old Elihu ran out on me there was nothing I could do but try to set the boys against each other. I had to swing the job the best way I could. How could I help it if the best way was bound to lead to a lot of killing? The job couldn’t be handled any other way without Elihu’s backing.”

“Well, if you couldn’t help it, what’s the use of making a lot of fuss over it? Drink your drink.”

I drank half of it and felt the urge to talk some more.

“Play with murder enough and it gets you one of two ways. It makes you sick, or you get to like it. It got Noonan the first way. He was green around the gills after Yard was knocked off, all the stomach gone out of him, willing to do anything to make peace. I took him in, suggested that he and the other survivors get together and patch up their differences.

“We had the meeting at Willsson’s tonight. It was a nice party. Pretending I was trying to clear away everybody’s misunderstandings by coming clean all around, I stripped Noonan naked and threw him to them– him and Reno. That broke up the meeting. Whisper declared himself out. Pete told everybody where they stood. He said battling was bad for his bootlegging racket, and anybody who started anything from then on could expect to have his booze guards turned loose on them. Whisper didn’t look impressed. Neither did Reno.”

“They wouldn’t be,” the girl said. “What did you do to Noonan? I mean how did you strip him and Reno?”

“I told the others that he had known all along that MacSwain killed Tim. That was the only lie I told them. Then I told them about the bank stick-up being turned by Reno and the chief, with Jerry taken along and dropped on the premises to tie the job to Whisper. I knew that’s the way it was if what you told me was right, about Jerry getting out of the car, starting toward the bank and being shot. The hole was in his back. Fitting in with that, McGraw said the last seen of the stick-up car was when it turned into King Street. The boys would be returning to the City Hall, to their jail alibi.”

“But didn’t the bank watchman say he shot Jerry? That’s the way it was in the papers.”

“He said so, but he’d say anything and believe it. He probably emptied his gun with his eyes shut, and anything that fell was his. Didn’t you see Jerry drop?”

“Yes, I did, and he was facing the bank, but it was all too confused for me to see who shot him. There were a lot of men shooting, and–“

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