The Last Laugh Page 5

here; you and three other guys. The big difference between you and two of the other guys is that you're still alive."

  I held out the photo for him. At the sight of it he went as white as a pimp's coffee table. We could have painted his lips red and thrown him to the nearest cop.

  "Frame...?" he asked hoarsely.

  "He popped it earlier tonight - bellyfull of spaghetti a la arsenic."

  Miss Parrish hissed at me. "Spaghetti's italian."

  "Yeah, so?"

  "Well that doesn't make sense..."

  I looked at her. "Sweets: you don't make sense."

  Then French cut in again, still sounding weaker than a pencil pusher's tricep. "You two, if you've finished I'll.. I'll tell you want you want to know. Just let me get a drink first."

  He signalled to a waiter who was lurking nearby. "The usual."

  I didn't want to waste any time: "So what's the deal?"

  French sighed. "The deal was between Frame and me. Sure we went our different ways after the Giggles Brigade, but things were looking bad so we took out our own insurance policy: if anything happened to either one of us then the other one would spill everything."

  "I'm starting to like the way you talk."

  Now that the shock had started to wear off French's face was quickly fading to grey. "If I tell you everything I know it won't be long before I end up the same as Frame. You've got to protect me, can you do that?"

  "Sure," I lied, figuring as long as he didn't spend too long around me he'd be as safe as any ex-clown in this city.

  The waiter came back with Frank's medicine - a tall, cold one - I could tell he needed it. French took it without a word, eyed it sombrely for a beat, then drained the lot. The waiter took a few steps back and waited: I guess that's what he was paid for.

  "Let me see the photo again," French asked, sounding half human again.

  I held it up for him.

  "That's Julius on the left there. Without him we were nothing; if there was one guy who could have the audience rolling in their seats it was Julius. He just lived to make people laugh so when we got outlawed he took a gun to his head."

  French coughed. "That's the official version, anyway - Frame always reckoned it was a piece of work. Whatever it was he's dead now. Frame got scared and decided to keep his mouth shut."

  "But you couldn't wait to blab could you?" Miss Parrish threw at him.

  French coughed again. It sounded like the guilt was finally getting to him. "I just did what I had to. Someone needed to look after Frame, and all those other clowns would have been hunted down anyway. This way I got something back and neither me or Frame ended up living in the gutter."

  "Oh you're a real saint," I said obligingly.

  "You don't know what sort of stuff I've had to keep my hat on all these years," he said, coughing again. "You see, you don't know who the last guy in the photo is - that's the real killer - that's the one that's really gonna - "

  He broke off, coughing again, but this time he was looking scared about it and I had a hunch French wouldn't be saying anything else to us that night. His breath started sticking in his chest, his hands went up clutching at his throat. From the corner of my eye I noticed the waiter edging away, and it didn't look like he was heading to get help either.

  I stood up, trying to stop the weasel from getting away, but French leapt up at me, his hands frantically grabbing at my coat. He let out one last strangled line, something like: "It's m-muh..."

  He was dead before he hit the floor, and the waiter was nowhere to be seen. Miss Parrish pointed to a doorway behind the bar. "He went that way," she said, then knelt down by French's body, leaving me to the chase.

  It wasn't a long chase. The goon had been angling to make it out of the back door, trouble was he'd picked the wrong door once he got behind the bar and ended up in a store room. I might have figured it was just me who'd gotten lost, but his next mistake of the night was to try to drop me as soon as I opened the door.

  I didn't hit him too hard: I wanted to make sure he could still talk.

  The way he was looking at me I couldn't tell if he was in a listening mood or not, so I cut to the chase: "Let's make this quick - you can go to the chair if you want, or you can tell me who paid you to off French and I'll put in a good word. What's it gonna be?"

  The waiter rubbed his stomach, still recovering from its recent encounter with my fist, and stared at me like a prize schmuck: "What chair?"

  "What do you mean what chair? The electric chair, you dumbass!"

  He looked like he was about to throw up. "Jesus, man, you're going to send me to the chair just for taking a swipe at you?"

  I had to admit it was a nice thought. "Yeah, if I was running things in this town that's just the way it'd be, but right now you're heading to the chair for poisoning French.

  "I didn't do anything," he squealed. "I just serve drinks. Lloyd's the barman, he's one who mixes them, he's the one you should be talking to. The boss never liked him anyway."

  I didn't like being given the runaround, also I'd done nearly enough talking for one night. "Right now you're the one I'm talking to, so how about you tell me all about Lloyd and I might think about taking him in instead of you."

  The waiter started talking so fast it sounded like his words were going to start coming out backwards: "He started a few months back. I heard him talking with the boss. Said he had to give him the job because someone called Mr Rice had said so. The boss was pissed about it, but it didn't look like he had any choice, so Lloyd ended up working here - "

  "Where was Lloyd a couple of hours ago?"

  "He got to work late tonight. I don't know where he was - "

  "Okay, fine," I urged him to stop. "I get the picture."

  For all I knew the waiter was stitching this Lloyd up; they could have been in the whole thing together, or Lloyd the barman could have never mixed anything worse than a Pina Colada. My guts told me this perp was either too stupid or too scared to lie - maybe even both; either way he'd given me a new name to chew over.

  "Why don't you tell me more about this Mr Rice?" I suggested.

  The waiter just stared at me open-mouthed. A moment later I realised why.

  "Hands up Nickel!" came a voice behind me.

  I recognised the quivering tone immediately. "Rudi," I said, without turning round. "Let me guess: someone phoned the station and left a tip you might find me here? Was it Lloyd or Rice?"

  "Maybe I just found you by myself, huh?"

  "Yeah, because of all the store rooms in all the sleazy night clubs in all the town you happened to know I'd be standing in this one, right?"

  I could hear Rudi frowning at that one. "No... I just ... anyway, the Chief wants to talk to you, and he's gonna be real interested in why there's a dead man lying in the same club that you're standing in."

  Rudi still hadn't bothered to get me to turn round, or even told me to get my hands out of my pockets. He hadn't taken the safety off his gun either: I would have heard it. He was about to wish he'd done all of those things. When Captain Sniggles had sent me packing he'd made sure I was packing heat.

  I pulled the gun from my pocket and turned to face Rudi, sticking the cold metal right in his face. "You're a good kid, Rudi, but you're dumb as dishwater. You know damn well I didn't kill that guy in there but if you take me in now I'll never find out who did, so put your gun down and walk away and I might even buy you a coffee for it," I offered, then added: "Next year. Maybe."

  Rudi stared at me like his eyes were going to pop out, then he was dumb enough to grin. That made me really mad. "How about you put down your gun?" he said.

  "How about you buy me a hearing aid because I'm sure I misunderstood you back there. Why would I want to do a thing like that?"

  He smirked again. "Because you can't shoot me with a water pistol."

  I should have known the gun didn't feel right: it wasn't even close to being heavy enough and, sure enough, there was
water dripping out of the business end. That Captain Sniggles was one prize clown: he had switched my gun for one of his circus pieces.

  "You're right, Rudi. I can't put you down with this gun," I had to admit. "But I can do this - "

  I shot him square in the face. The stream of water hit him full in the left eye. Rudi blinked and before he'd figured out what was going on I grabbed the real gun out of his hand.

  "How about it, Rudi? I reckon I can probably shoot you dead with this one - you wanna take that for a spin? I'll even shoot you twice if you like?"

  He wasn't smirking anymore. He just looked at me sourly.

  "It's just not your night, kid."

  I wanted to cut him some slack, but I knew he'd go running to MacLane as soon as I turned my back on him, and then MacLane wouldn't have any choice but to send the whole pack after me. I could only hope Rudi lasted long enough in the job to develop a healthy layer of cynicism.

  "I'm gonna have to put you down for a bit, you know that don't you?" I warned him.

  "I don't think you'll need to do that," came Miss Parrish's voice from the corridor.

  "Go ahead, ruin my night," I groaned.

  She smiled and held up a small black book. "I think I just found the smoking gun. This case is signed, sealed and delivered."

  "Now you're talking my kind of talk," I grinned, and sent Rudi down with an elbow to his ear.

  Parrish stared at him lying feebly on the floor and fixed me a look as if I'd just shot a puppy. "I said you didn't need to do that - in a few hours no one's going to be after you anymore."

  "Yeah," I admitted. "But I wanted to."

  She