WEST ON 66

by James H. Cobb

  Lisette lounged beside me on the front seat, now clad in a scarlet polo shirt and a pair of snug white denim short-shorts. By some unspoken agreement, we stayed away from talk about this thing we were involved in. Instead, we let the radio cue our con­versation. She trended more toward the Four Aces while I'm strictly a Jerry Lee Lewis kind of guy. We found mutual ground with Nat King Cole and Les Baxter, though, and we both agreed that this new kid, Buddy Holly, had a lot going for him.

  She had a nice laugh when I had a chance to hear it. She also had her own opinions about a wide variety of topics, rang­ing from Ike sending the troops in down at Little Rock to who was going to come out on top in the World Series.

  And there was that drawing pad, the one that I'd noticed back at the Dixie. That afternoon it either sat beside her on the seat or lay cradled open in her lap, the pencil flashing across its pages. The pad itself was of high-quality art paper, and the pencil was an expensive mechanical one—the tools of a pro­fessional.

  The sketching was either an instinct or a nervous habit with her, something she did almost without thinking. Half a dozen times she'd effortlessly maintained a conversation while draw­ing. She also had the effortless ability to not let you see what she was working on, and speaking God's honest, I was damn curious.

  I finally asked her about it when we stopped for a break at one of the little roadside grape stands outside of Rolla. They had a picnic table out beside the highway under a shade tree, and Lisette was hard at it when I came back with a couple of tall paper cups of iced juice.

  "Hey, are you an art student or something?" I asked, ca­sually trying for a look at the pad as I set her cup on the table.

  "Not really," she replied, giving the pad an equally casual flip shut. "I've taken some arts and graphics classes, but mostly, I just fool around with it. More like high-class doodling than anything else."

  "You seem to get into it pretty deep for doodling, Princess," I commented, straddling the bench across from her.

  "Oh, I've thought about fashion design and some other things, but I've never been able to get serious about it."

  "Why not, if that's what you want to do?"

  I felt the guards click up into place. "Because," she replied carefully, studying the cup in front of her, "what I want hasn't ever really been much of a factor in my life."

  I let the subject drop.

  Figure her out? Hell no, not even close. However, now and again as we drove, I'd notice her closing her eyes and lifting her face toward the sun, nuzzling into the light and the clean flow of air through the windows. It was kind of a shock when I realized that she was happy.

  She was running from danger to danger in a stranger's car, with no money, no future, and only a little hope to her name, but she was still happy. No matter how screwed up a situation this was, it still must be better than what she'd come from.

  I found myself wishing to just have the road and the girl out here.

  Arlington, the deep cut at the Devil's Elbow, Waynesville, and a sun sinking toward a shadowed ridgeline.

  The sky was on fire to the west and the evening air was mellow as bonded bourbon as we came in on Springfield, the Missouri one. Entering the outskirts of the little city, I noticed Lisette had the guidebook out again. With her dark eyes nar­rowed, she studied one of its pages with that feline intensity of hers, intermittently glancing up at the businesses strung out along the Route 66 miracle mile.

  "What's up, Princess?" I inquired as we rolled along at a sedate thirty miles an hour.

  "Nothing much," she replied noncommittally. "I'm just checking on something."

  "On what?"

  "Probably nothing important," she replied, the slight edge in her voice suggesting that I mind my own business.

  Her tone changed a couple of minutes and a few blocks far­ther on. "Oh, hold it! Wait! Pull over here!" she exclaimed, pointing to the curb on her side.

  For "nothing important" Lisette was suddenly excited about something. She'd pulled us up in front of the town Lincoln-Mercury dealership. Now the sun gold Premiere Landau that rotated slowly on the big turntable inside the showroom was a good-looking car, and I've heard some interesting things about the new 430-cubic-inch V-8 that Lincoln's just in­troduced, but I couldn't figure Lisette's sudden automotive angle.

  "This place looks like it's been here awhile, doesn't it?" the girl asked thoughtfully, eyeing the place through the passenger-side window.

  "It doesn't look like a fly-by-night outfit to me," I replied. And it didn't. The big, brick-faced car agency had a definite air of midwestem. solidity to it.

  "There're still a couple of salesmen inside. Go in and ask how long they've been here? How long this dealership's been open?"

  "What? Why?"

  Lisette shot an annoyed look back over her shoulder. "Just do it. Okay?"

  "Yezz, bozz."

  I got out from behind the wheel and walked around the front of the '57, asking myself, and not for the first time, why I hadn't played it smart and stayed in the army.

  I was back out beside the car in only a couple of minutes. "Here's the word," I said, hunkering down at Lisette's window. "The guys inside say that this dealership opened right after the war."

  "Nineteen forty-six?"

  "Yeah, that'd be when the first new models would have been available."

  "Okay." She nodded to herself. "That would have worked out all right then."

  "What would have worked out all right?"

  "Oh, nothing." The girl looked away and slid the guidebook back into her purse.

  It was getting late, so we stopped for the night there in Springfield, choosing a little mom-and-pop motel over on the town's west side. Lisette stayed in the car while I went into the office to conduct negotiations.

  "Welcome to the family, Sis," I said, sliding back behind the '57's wheel with the room key. "I got us a two-bedroom unit around in back. And in case anyone asks, you are my beloved kid sister whom I am escorting back to college. Just remember, the last name is Pulaski, with a u."

  The girl snubbed out a half-smoked Fatima in the ashtray. "You didn't have to go to all that trouble," she sighed, looking straight ahead. "The conventional 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith' would have been all right."

  She'd started to go tense again as soon as we'd started look ing for a place to stay. I could guess why, and I decided that it was time for a little clarification in policy.

  "No. No, it wouldn't have been all right," I said, half-turning in the seat to face her. "Mostly because I don't haappen to buy into rape. Okay?"

  Defiantly she looked up. "I'll pay my way on. this trip!! Last night, I said that was part of the deal. I'm saying yes if you want it. It won't be rape."

  "And I'm saying that I don't want it, thank you kindly. Not that way."

  We stared each other down for a long second. "Loook," I went on finally. "I read in the papers about this nutcase we had out in LA awhile back, a guy who assaulted women. He'd hold a knife to his victim's throat and then make the woman beg to have sex with him. And after that, he'd proceed to sscrew the living hell out of her. When the cops finally nailedi this psycho, he claimed that he couldn't be sent up for rape because, after all, all the women had asked for it."

  Actually, I'd helped work on that case and I'd been present at the grinning-ass son of a bitch's interrogation. 1'm also pleased to say I was present when his interrogators pointed out the errors in his logic. I even helped pick a few of his teetth up off the floor afterward.

  I settled back in my seat. "As far as I'm conxerned, it's all the same deal. A knife held at your throat or circumstsances held over your head, you're still being forced. Hey, Princeess, a guy would have to be either a nut or a homo not to want to get next to a girl like you. Hell, I'll be the first to admit it:. But not under those terms. That's not how I do things. I carries into this deal on straight speculation—a fifty-fifty cut of the looot, if we find it. Beyond that, you don't owe me a damn thing, es­pecially yourself. Got it?"
<
br />   I'm not sure if she did. She stared at me as if I 'd just stepped off the 8:45 flying saucer from Venus, wary, trying to figure my angle. I guess where she came from, everybody always had an angle and the only loyalty to be found was the kind you could buy. I just sat there and gave her time, not being afraid to meet her eyes. After a second, her fur stopped bristling and there was the start of that wry smile. "Well," she said, "if you insist."

  I left Lisette in the room while I took the '57 over to the Phil­lips station across the highway. Car needed gas, and I needed to make a discreet touch with home base.

  "Talk to me, Jack," I said into the pay phone.

  "I don't know how you do it, kid," my partner's faint voice came back. "But, as usual, you've managed to stick your foot in a real mess."

  "You've got something for me?"

  "A three-goddamn-inch-thick file in front of me right now. And that's just our stuff. The kickbacks from back east are just starting to come in."

  "Give me the short and sweet, man."

  "There's nothing short about it," La Baer replied. "This thing goes all the way back to the midthirties in Chicago, right after the end of prohibition and the bust-up of the old Capone mob."

  "Keep talking."

  "It seems that one of Capone's lesser money men, a guy named Aaron Leopold, was missed when the feds made their sweep. Leopold was a pretty sharp customer and apparently an ambitious one. When the heat came on, he headed for the storm cellar, taking some of the Capone loot with him, along with a list of the buyable men in the Chicago city administra­tion. Enough of both to put together his own operation."

  "And did he?"

  "Yep. Leopold lay low for a while and then started pulling in some lieutenants. There were a couple of his old Capone acquaintances, Nick Vallessio and William Bougher, and a cou­ple of new soldiers in off the street, Mason Spanno and John Kingman."

  "Kingman wouldn't have happened to go under the alias of Johnny 32, would he?"

  "That was his caliber of preference. Kingman and Spanno were a team. Johnny was the rodman, wlhile Spanno specialized in busting ribs and kneecaps. Between the two of them they could put up a very persuasive argument in favor of anything Leopold wanted."

  I glanced across the highway at our motel unit. "And what did Leopold want?"

  "His own little empire on the Loop. In a couple of years he and his boys had a pretty smooth setup going, too. Prostitution and gambling mostly. They had three or four backroom casinos running and a long string of call girls, along with the usual squeeze and juice rackets on the side. Through the war years they did real well for themselves. Too well, come to find out."

  "What happened?"

  "They attracted the attention of the Big Boys. The Mob

  reorganized and started to squeeze out the independent oper­

  ators. Leopold and his boys didn't have the guns to fight a war

  or the influence to cut a deal. Instead, they took the advice of

  both Horace Greeley and Bugsy Siegel. 'Go west, young

  man!' "

  "They shifted their operations out to the coast?"

  "You got it, kid. LA was virgin territory back then. We think that in 1947 Leopold made a series of trips out here to scout possibilities and to establish contacts in the local under­world. He knew that LAPD's intelligence people had the train stations and airports under surveillance, so he always came in by car, accompanied by one or more of his lieutenants, usually either Spanno or Kingman. By August they were ready to make their move."

  "Did this move involve a load of money?"

  "A whole shitpot full. The feds estimated the gang had a war chest in excess of a quarter of a million dollars. Leopold knew how to handle cash. He remembered the way Capone got nailed through tax evasion, so he never used banks to hold the gang's money reserves or to transfer funds. That way, there was no paper trail that could be followed."

  "So they ran the loot out to the coast themselves."

  "Yeah, Leopold, Vallessio, and Kingman. Spanno and Bougher stayed behind to close out the Chicago operation. The thing is, Leopold and Vallessio never made it out to the coast."

  "What happened?"

  "Nobody knows for sure, but a couple of days after leaving Chicago, Leopold and Vallessio turned up in a pile of mine tailings, very well ventilated. Whoever buried them misjudged the persistence of the local coyotes."

  "Kingman?"

  "He was the boy at the head of the list, at least in the opinion of the other two lieutenants. When word reached Chi Town about what had happened, Spanno and Bougher apparently went after Kingman. And they succeeded in tracking him down."

  "In LA?"

  "Yeah. About a week after Leopold and Vallessio were found, there was a hell of a gunfight in one of those cheap hotels down Long Beach way. Kingman and Bougher were found lying in the hall outside of the room Kingman had been using under an assumed name, both of them shot to pieces. The thing is, a ballistics check indicated that the slugs that put Kingman down didn't come from the heat Bougher was pack­ing."

  "Spanno?"

  "He was the prime suspect. However, no hard evidence was ever recovered directly linking him to the killing. It never went to trial, and LA Homicide still lists the case as open."

  It was getting hot inside the phone booth, and I cracked the door open to admit some road noise and cool air. I needed to get back to the room, but I also needed a little more informa­tion.

  "What about the war chest?" I asked.

  "As far as anyone knows, most of it was never recovered. The key to a bus station locker was found hidden in Kingman's room, along with a steamship ticket. The locker contained fifty thousand dollars in fifties and hundreds, while the ticket was for a slow freighter due to sail the next day around South America to the East Coast.

  "Kingman was apparently planning to take a nice, leisurely ocean cruise while the heat was on. The fifty Gs was just his running money. He must have stashed the bulk of the loot away somewhere for recovery after things had cooled down."

  "Any chance Spanno could have got it?"

  "It doesn't look like it," Jack replied. "According to the In­diana state attorney's office, Spanno surfaced in Gary a couple of months after the LA shootout. And while it didn't take him long to become a pain in the ass to the local law, he didn't seem to be packing the weight a big bankroll would have given him."

  I nodded to myself. "Okay, this is all matching up with what I'm hearing out here. So far, so good. Now, what's the current line on Spanno?"

  "He's got his own outfit going these days. Loan-sharking, hot cars to Canada, and girls again. He's not one of the Princes of the Loop anymore, but he's not a nickel-and-dime operator, either. Indiana's gone for him twice on racketeering charges. In both cases, key witnesses either refused to testify or kinda dis­appeared just before the trial. So far, he's only taken one heavy fall. Two years for aggravated assault and battery on one of the prostitutes in his street string."

  "What were the particulars?"

  "Mr. Spanno is the possessive type. The girl was a good moneymaker, and she made the mistake of trying to leave Spanno's stable and go independent. Spanno personally pro­ceeded to disjoint her like a chicken. She was in the hospital for months. I guess she ended up permanently crippled."

  "How the hell did he get let off with just assault and bat­tery?"

  "It was a kind of a plea bargain with the Gary district at torney's office. The attempted murder rap would be dropped, and Spanno would be allowed to cop for A and B. And in return, the complaining witness would be allowed to not end up on the bottom of Lake Michigan."

  "I can dig it. Now, what do you have on Lisette Kingman?"

  "That she was born. Nothing else so far. Nobody seems to be holding a sheet on her and no kickbacks yet from the Mich­igan or Indiana DMV."

  "Okay . . . Okay. One thing more. Where were the bodies of Leopold and that other guy found?"

  "Uh, lemme see." I faintly heard papers rustle over the f
il­tering of the phone. "Outside of someplace called Quapaw, Oklahoma.

  I nodded to myself again. Baxter Springs is right on the Kansas-Oklahoma border. Throw a rock across the line and it would land in Quapaw.

  "Okay, Jack. I have to go. We'll be in Baxter Springs to­morrow. I'll make my next touch within twenty-four hours."

  "Right. You want that I should talk to the captain about this?"

  "No, hold off. I want to work this deal on my own for a little while longer."

  "Okay. Just watch yourself, kid."

  "Don't sweat it, Daddy-O."

  I heard a snort at the other end of the line and the click of a disconnect.

  Driving back across 66, I parked in front of our motel unit. As I entered, I heard the shower hissing in the bath and I discov­ered Lisette's clothes scattered on the floor of the bedroom she had selected. Her shoulder bag also sat on the edge of the bed­side table.

  I didn't waste the opportunity. With one ear cocked to the sound of the shower, I went for the purse.

  It was plain black leather, with a flap top and gold clasp, good quality and fairly new, showing only a little use wear.

  Quickly I ran an inventory. Gold compact, cologne spray, and lipstick. Lisette's colors and scent. A half-pack of her Fatima's. No lighter—ladies like Lisette never have to light their own cigarettes. Comb and brush, handkerchief, wallet—she really did only have two dollars and twenty-seven cents. The guide­book, I'd save that for when I had more time. Photographs, the one of John Kingman and another of an elegant dark-haired woman who must have been Lisette's mother.

  Then there were just the odds and ends you always find at the bottom of a woman's purse. Brown bobby pins, an art gum eraser, a broken rubber band, a single golden earring, and the snub end of a roll of chocolate Life Savers. Nothing unusual there.

  What was unusual was what wasn't there. No checkbook or check stubs. No address book. No old bills or letters. No driver's license. No charge-a-plates. Not even a library card.

  There was nothing in that purse with a name or an address on it. It had been systematically stripped of anything that could provide a hard connection to an identity. The little celluloid envelopes in the wallet showed hazy wear marks where things had been removed. Lisette Kingman had deliberately thrown away her entire past life.