by P. N. Elrod
“Where are they?”
“Look in that stairwell. The trapdoor. They’re inside it.”
“Good place to hide something.”
“I thought so. You just damn well better use them like you’ve said.”
“Or it’s meat-hook time?”
“It’s a promise. Come on, you guys, let’s go.”
Doc and Newton were already helping Frank toward the back door.
“What?” I asked, all injured. “No kiss good-bye?”
She looked like she’d rather shoot me instead and held her gun steady on my heart as she backed from the room. When the door snicked shut, I dropped back in my chair and didn’t do anything except feel like a wrung-out washrag for the next few minutes.
Then I felt it happen. Felt one of those anvils slipping from its previous spot on top of my head. It dropped fast and hard and made a satisfying clunk as it hit the floor. Jeez, but it felt good, just too bad about all the shit you have to go through before it falls off.
No time to celebrate, though. I still had a couple more firmly in place and had to get to work fast before I missed the opportunity of jogging them loose.
The phone rang. Whoever was calling was doing it every ten minutes or so, unless three people trying to call in were making a coincidence in their timing. I went to the kitchen and pulled the earpiece and said hello.
“That you, Fleming?” It was Gordy.
“In the flesh. Did you get the wires fixed?”
“Can it. Get over here to the club. Now.”
12
“YOU been calling here before?” I asked.
“Yeah, get over here.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The front door will be open, use it. Come to the office.”
“What’s—”
He hung up.
Okay, something was seriously wrong. I assumed it had to do with Sullivan, and Gordy wouldn’t or couldn’t give me any other details. Changing my shirt would have to wait. I locked up—for all the good it might do—and hurried out to my Buick.
At other times when I’m in a rush, it always seems to take forever to get where I need to be; not so for this trip. I had no idea what to expect and so I wasn’t that eager to arrive. Perversely, most of the stop signals were in my favor, and I made my best time ever getting to the Nightcrawler Club. I didn’t park right away, but circled the place, looking things over; that’s how I spotted the two cars the thugs had used escaping away from the hospital. The driver’s door on one of them wasn’t properly closed. I must have wrecked it a little yanking it open.
The next interesting thing I noticed was a Packard parked within sight of the club’s front entrance. Not too new and pocked with bullet holes; I was surprised at Gordy for taking such a chance. Of course, if he’d knocked off Calloway and Baker, then he was removing witnesses who could connect the car to him. I wondered if he had it in mind to try killing me, but not for very long. He knew better.
Not Sullivan, though. I had no reason to take him out of the running. Maybe they’d split the job, Gordy doing the hotel hit and Sullivan burning the roadhouse. All of that would put Angela out of the picture but good.
The club was dark, which was wrong. The raid a few nights back shouldn’t have kept the joint closed for this long a time. Maybe Sullivan didn’t like the noise.
I parked and thought about slipping into the building quietly just to see what might be lying in wait. Gordy’s specific mention of the front door was too important to ignore, though. If he’d wanted me to sneak in, he’d have found a way to say so. Unless he had a gun to his head.
Walked fast down the street, eyes wide to take in every shadow, every window. Nothing to see worth seeing until I got to the front steps. There were grills on either side of the door. Men usually sat in little rooms behind them to check out the customers as they came in. I couldn’t see past the grillwork too well, but did spot movement beyond each, so someone was on watch.
Opened the door, half expecting to see goons standing there with guns, but the outer lobby was empty. Only one light was on over at the hatcheck counter. I crossed to the next set of doors that led into the club.
The joint had been busted up, but cleaning had taken place since then. Chairs were piled onto tables, the tables shoved to one side, giving the floor cleaners room to work. The darkened stage and bandstand looked lonely. I hurried along to a door marked PRIVATE and pushed through.
The damage here was much more obvious. Every gambling device from the slot machines to the roulette wheel to the blackjack tables had been thoroughly worked over by sledgehammers. Nothing to do with the remains but haul them out to the junkyard and start over.
My shoes crunched against broken glass and splinters as I walked toward the back. Nobody here either. I was starting to get a good case of the creeps.
Another door marked PRIVATE; it opened to the back hall with the kitchen, various small offices, and stairs to the second floor, which was populated. Four men were hanging around the lower landing having a smoke. They all stopped talking and stared at me as I came through. I recognized them as regulars with Gordy. They knew me by sight and that Gordy had given me full run of the place.
“The boss in his office?” I asked.
One of them nodded. “Yeah, go on up.”
“Sullivan there?”
“He’s there.”
“What about his boys?”
“Why do you think we’re down here?”
“Don’t like ’em?”
“What I like don’t come into it.”
Went upstairs. Heard several radios playing, each set on different stations. The floor was fixed out with bedrooms and some of the men lived here. Not a bad place to flop if you didn’t mind the hours.
Three guys on the top landing. They looked a lot like me as far as their clothing went, with it being in less than perfect condition. One man had a black eye, another had his wrist bandaged; neither looked happy about it or about me. Though it seemed too late for it, I thought it best not to remind them of the riot by the hospital because they weren’t hiding their guns.
They glared plenty hard, but didn’t speak or make a move to stop me as I took the few steps to Gordy’s office. I knocked twice and opened the door.
I don’t breathe regular, but still held my breath, tensed, more than half expecting a bullet.
Nothing. Just Gordy’s voice telling me to come in, so I did.
He sat behind his desk, playing out a hand of solitaire. Half a dozen more goons from the hospital fight were scattered around the room. It wasn’t all that big, so they made for a good crowd. On the couch, the crease still fresh on his pants, was Sean Sullivan reading a magazine. He put it to one side and stood, looking me over.
“You’ve been busy tonight, haven’t you, Fleming?”
I couldn’t tell if he wanted an answer to that and knew if I opened my mouth it’d just annoy him. I shrugged. Shot Gordy a questioning look, but his face was way past being just deadpan.
Sullivan went on. “I heard you had a bit of an altercation with my boys. They were full of wild stories about you.”
“How flattering.”
He gave me a long dead stare, and during that time I got the impression he had some specific questions to ask about the fight, but didn’t dare ask them, not in front of everyone in a well-lighted room. You can’t start asking a guy how he kept disappearing and coming back, how he survived a bullet in the belly, and not lose face with the hired help. He wouldn’t get any straight answer out of me anyway, and probably figured as much.
So he left that and tried a different tack. “Why did you pretend to be working for Angela?”
“What’s with pretend? I do work for her.” It seemed best to continue that fiction.
“No, you don’t.”
“I don’t?”
“You’re working for Gordy—or at least you were.”
“Uh-huh.” Okay, so Gordy had fed him some kind of story, but I wasn’
t sure how to go along with it just yet. I looked at him. He looked back, still deadpan, and put a red queen on a red king. His hands were steady, but either what was going on was distracting the hell out of him or he was trying to tell me something. “So I was working for Gordy and then what? I quit and worked for Angela?”
“No, you sidestepped all of us and went to work for yourself.”
I shifted on my feet. The goons came alert. Two of them came forward and patted me down, but all they found were keys and an empty wallet. They looked disappointed as I put the items back in my pockets.
“So I’m self-employed?” I asked brightly. “The pay is lousy, then.”
At a nod from Sullivan one of the goons rapped the back of my head with something hard. It wasn’t too forceful, being meant to get my attention, nothing more. “Hey what’s the idea?” I looked at the goon, who had a blackjack in his fist. He just grinned at me.
“The idea,” said Sullivan, “is you planned to take the books and bookkeeper off on your own and go into business for yourself—that is, after Angela and I killed each other for you.”
Gordy glanced up at me a moment, then went back to his cards. Now he put a black nine under a black ten. He held to the stone face, but had given a very slight lift of his chin, so small that it could have been a normal movement of his head. I was to go along with this line.
Sullivan continued. “Of course there were no guarantees we would be so cooperative, so you were setting things up to make sure the right people died.”
“Like the hit in front of the hotel? I’d set a hit on myself and Opal?”
“No, that was the responsibility of this gentleman.” He gestured at Gordy.
I didn’t want to hear this. Thinking and suspecting is one thing, but it’s quite another to have to face it, face the ugly truth. “Gordy? Were you behind that?”
“What do you figure, kid? That I’m gonna let you get away gypping me? I’ve had my eye on you for months.”
My mouth dropped open. It was with vast relief, but Sullivan read it otherwise, as shock maybe, and that pleased him.
“Gordy has a lot of eyes and ears in this town. He got a tip you and Angela were at the hotel and sent some of his boys over thinking to do me a favor. They made a sorry job of it. Who did they think all those cops were, a girls’ glee club?” He addressed the last to Gordy. It obviously wasn’t the first time he’d needled away on the subject.
Indifferent, Gordy lifted his big shoulders a quarter inch. “They saw a short woman with a lotta guys that might have been bodyguards, and went in shooting. A mistake. Easy to make with the car moving so fast and it being dark. That bookkeeper could have been Angela.”
“Too bad she wasn’t.”
“Where is she?” I asked. “Where’s Opal?”
“She’s all right,” said Gordy, giving me another unblinking look. “We got a doctor looking after her. She’s going to be fine.”
He didn’t absolutely have to add that last part. I was glad he did. “Good.”
“Good for all of us,” said Sullivan. “All but Angela, that is—and you.”
“Hey, I—” Another crack on the head. A little harder than the last. The guy still grinned, daring me to try something.
Sullivan crossed his arms, cocking his head to one side. I’d bet money it was a trick he’d used on the old college debating team. “So when you come into my place you give me to think you work for Angela and can talk her out of the books. I took a chance on you, but you didn’t meet your obligations. Instead you gave Calloway the slip so you could get that drunk doctor out and kidnap my secretary. By the way, where is Maxwell?”
I had to dish him anything but the truth. “He’s okay. I got him stashed at a warehouse I know. It ain’t the Ritz, but it’s warm.”
“We will discuss his release momentarily, then. Why did you take the doctor? What use was he to you?”
“He was my ticket to get close to Angela.”
“You could have told me the truth instead of implying you had some assignation with her that would take all night.”
“Yeah, I could, but I knew you wouldn’t have let me walk out of there with Doc.”
“No, but I could have gotten the required information from him by other methods.”
“And maybe killed him before he talked. He’s a stubborn bird and loyal to Angela. He’d have died before giving you squat. But by getting him free, he was ready to trust me and take me right in.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“Who says he didn’t?”
That hooked his attention. “What are you saying?”
“That I finally got to her. She’s not someone you need to worry about anymore.”
“She’s dead?”
“Leaving town. You’ve got a clear field to—”
“Not good enough.”
“Huh?”
“That business with the roadhouse.”
“What about it?”
“Gordy and I are agreed that Angela is responsible for the deaths and damage. I’ve informed some friends of mine about the incident and the decision is that there has to be an accounting. If she wants to play rough with the big boys, then she’ll get a bloody nose and more, the same as anyone else.”
If it came to a face-to-face showdown with Sullivan, my money would be on Angela—unless he got the drop on her. I shut up to think a minute, but nothing wanted to jump into my brain just then. All I could figure was one was lying to the other for his own reasons. Gordy didn’t have anything to gain by destroying the roadhouse, though, but Sullivan did. He was probably playing some kind of a cute double game with New York to secure his place here. Set the fire, kill his pet cops, blame Angela for everything, get a contract on her, and . . . “So you’ve got permission to rub her out?”
“I’ve always had that as an option, should it become necessary, but it’s nice to have it official.”
“Well, you can call it off. She and her mob are blowing this town for good—but she left the books behind.”
He smiled, all tanned and true. He could have posed for a portrait of Jack Armstrong just then. “I was wondering when you’d get around to mentioning those.”
“I don’t have them—”
“You astonish me.”
“But I know where they are.”
That made him uncross his arms. “You’d have to prove that, and right now I’ve absolutely no reason to trust you with so much as a burned match.”
I thought he was trying for some joke connected to the roadhouse, but he seemed unaware of it. “I guess not, but you’ve got nothing to lose—I do. The feeling I’m getting here is that I’m dead meat.”
“That’s for certain.”
“I got a little ambitious, so you’re gonna make an example of me, is that it?”
Gordy nodded. “That’s it exactly, kid.” Now he put a red three on a black four. He was square with me again, giving me a warning to watch my step.
“But—” I spread my hands. “Do I look like a man scared of being killed?”
“It just means you’re a good liar.” Lots of contempt in Sullivan’s tone. He expected people to lie to him, it was part of the trade.
I snorted. “Before you think that, check with Gordy. He’ll tell you what kind of poker player I am.”
Gordy almost cracked a smile. “It’s true. He stinks. If he says he has the books, listen to him.”
“In which case,” I continued, “we’re going to have to work out something different from what you’ve got planned or you don’t get the books.”
Sullivan came within a foot of me, maybe hoping to intimidate. “Such as?”
I liked the way he met my gaze, it made things very easy. “Let’s keep it down to simple basics: I give you the books, and you let me go free.”
He went blank for as long as it took me to say it, then I backed off. He didn’t move right away, just blinked a lot, as though trying to remember something. I couldn’t do much more or his goons would notice
and get uneasy.
“Sullivan?” Gordy asked. He’d been watching, saw what I’d done, had been looking for it. “What do you think?”
“I . . . I . . . don’t like it.”
“Neither do I, but let’s play along just for laughs. It’s not like the kid’s gonna disappear on us.”
I chose to not take that as a signal to do so and waited.
“He’s a liar, he turned on you.”
“Then he’s my problem to deal with, not yours. If he’s got the books then take ’em and get outta my place. I got a business to run here and you and your boys are crowding me.”
Sullivan gave me a sharp look. I returned it with care. “This is on the up-and-up,” I said. “You can have the books, and I’ll get clear of your business.”
Release.
He shook his head, probably wondering what hit him. I sensed his men shifting on either side of me, ready for trouble. They were aware something was off, but not sure what.
“What’s your answer, Mr. Sullivan?” I prompted.
He made an impatient gesture. “All right. But you even think of pulling a double cross . . . ”
“Then hang me from a meat hook,” I suggested.
The guy with the blackjack had an expression like he’d be pleased to do the honors.
“Let’s get started,” said Sullivan. “Where are they?”
I put a hand up. “Not until I see Opal.”
“What for?”
“She’s a friend of mine.” I was ready to give him the eye again, but Gordy spared me the headache.
“Let him. It’ll only take a minute. I’ll send someone down to warm up the car.”
“Cars,” Sullivan added. “You want us out, we’re leaving. I haven’t had a decent meal the whole time I’ve been in this dive.” I guess manners weren’t part of the Ivy League curriculum these days.
Gordy produced another slight twitch around his mouth. It gave me the idea that maybe his cook for the duration of Sullivan’s visit had been told not to make any special efforts at the grub. “I’ll take him in to see the girl,” he said, and rose. As he stood he swept his hands over the unfinished game of solitaire, gathering the cards together in a neat stack, wiping out their message.