by Max Lockhart
There was absolute silence in the room, like the calm before the storm, broken only by the panting breaths of Joe and Sidney. Cleary heard his own voice break the silence like a distant roll of thunder. "Take it easy, Joe," he said softly. Joe's eyes focused on him with only faint recognition, but that was better than nothing. "That's right, just calm down. Let's all have a drink and talk about this."
Joe held the gun as though it were a foreign object, rubbing the barrel across his forehead, his stance like an animal at bay. "What the hell's going on here, Jack?" he asked in a distant, confused voice. He stood in the middle of The Crescendo Club, but Cleary knew Quinlan wasn't completely aware of either time or place.
"We'll sort it out, Joe. Just be careful of that gun. It might have a hair trigger."
But Joe was struggling to sort it out for himself. "Nothing's been the same around here since the war. Since these bloodsuckers moved in here with their guns and five-hundred-dollar suits. We shouldn't even be in the same room with lowlifes like these, Jack. You know that, don't you?"
"You're talking yourself into a jackpot," warned Mickey, his Peter Lorre eyes looking meaner than ever.
"Shut up!" yelled Joe, swinging the gun toward Mickey, his voice and eyes murderous.
"Put it down, Joe," said Cleary. "It's not worth it. You've got a choice. This time you got a choice."
Joe switched his attention back to Cleary. "I sure do, don't I?" He thought a minute, and Cleary dared to hope that maybe, just maybe, the whole situation could be resolved without anybody bleeding.
Joe turned to Mickey. "You know, I was going to pay this fat bastard back because you went to bat for me"—he hesitated—"now, I'm not paying nothing." Cleary thought for a moment the problem would become academic, because judging from the swollen veins in Mickey Gold's neck, the mobster was in the midst of an apoplectic fit. A second later he decided it was a good thing he didn't go into medicine, because he would have made a lousy doctor. Mickey didn't expire in the middle of his melting cherries jubilee, but half rose from his chair and pushed the table over.
Joe raised the gun, and Cleary grabbed his shoulder. "Don't do it, Joe."
Joe bared his teeth in a man-eating grin, snapped open the revolver and extracted the shells, letting them drop noisily to the floor. Tossing the gun aside, he spread his legs and raised those large hands. "Come on, Mickey," he crooned. "Come on and try me."
Mickey, Cleary noted, was smarter than Sidney. Recognizing that Joe would like nothing better than to beat his brains and other more delicate portions of his body into mush, Mickey sat down. "I'll pass," he said, his eyes promising death and dismemberment at the earliest opportunity.
"I thought so," said Joe, turning back toward Cleary. "I'm sorry I got you into this, Jack. But remember, I didn't ask for any help."
Cleary watched him leave, a battered survivor of wars, public and private. No quarter asked and none given. Just like a certain private detective named Jack Cleary, he thought bitterly.
"We'll be seeing ya, Quinlan," Mickey yelled after him. The pudgy mobster moved to the bar, delicately blotting his face with a napkin. "Sidney, I want you guys to take care of this first thing in the morning." Sidney looked like a boy who'd just opened a birthday present and found exactly what he wanted inside. "Right, boss."
Folding the napkin in half and brushing at a speck of cherries jubilee on his jacket, Mickey turned to Cleary. "You know, we used to have a lot of these wild-haired young guys running around the Strip, Cleary. There ain't none of them around no more. They're all dust. Same as your friend's going to be."
Cleary ripped the napkin out of Mickey's hand, rage blurring his vision until only Mickey's face was in focus. "You know I'm not going to let that happen, Gold. How would you like the Vice Squad to raid your gambling dens every night? Pick up your numbers runners? Hassle your pimps? How would you like the Health Department and Fire Department to issue citations to your nightclubs for public health and fire regulation violations? Roaches in the kitchens, bad wiring backstage? Wouldn't sound good in the newspapers, would it? I can still do it, you plump little slug. People downtown still owe me a few favors, and they don't like you. I don't like you. You're a bloated toad, living off the nickels and dimes from the poor suckers who don't have the sense to know something's rotten when they smell it."
"Hey, I'm a businessman. I provide a service—" began Mickey.
"I know. You're just General Motors," finished Cleary, almost wishing he had that loaded revolver in his hand. Almost.
"I don't get it, Cleary. The guy's not your cousin or anything," said Mickey plaintively.
"I told you, he's a friend."
"All right, let me think a minute. I gotta weigh my options."
"I'm generous. I'll give you two minutes," replied Cleary, feeling a pall of darkness settle in at the edges of his mind. He had lied to Gold. Joe wasn't just a friend; he was the flip side of Jack Cleary. They were both suckers looking for black-and-white choices when life had faded to gray.
Mickey came out of his mental computations and snapped his fingers. "Give us a minute," he said to the mice and lizards serving him. He waited until everyone had moved off, then turned to Cleary. "You ever hear of a guy name of Frank Tucci?"
Cleary turned the words over, looking for the trap. "The New York crime boss," he answered cautiously.
Mickey nodded. "He's taking over a spot on the Strip. I need someone like you to act as kinda a go-between with him and me. I'll pay you, say three times your normal rate. And your friend Quinlan's off the hook."
Cleary saw the trap and sidestepped it. Black versus white. Clear-cut choice. No gray areas. "Go-between? For Mickey Gold and Frank Tucci? You forget who you're talking to, Gold?"
Mickey waved the question away. "This Tucci's an animal. Nobody can talk to him. He'll listen to you."
"If he's an animal, what does that make you, Gold? You're both just rats fighting over the same garbage can. Get yourself another errand boy." He ground out his cigarette with deliberate care. "And stay away from Joe Quinlan."
He was nearly to the door when Gold's voice stopped him. "What's wrong, Cleary? Can't even compromise your sacred ethics for one lousy week?"
Cleary turned. "Gold, you wouldn't know an ethic if it bit you in the ass."
Mickey's eyes were as cold and hard looking as the asphalt pavement in front of the club. "You can jack me around if you want. Send your friends from Public Health. Let 'em find cockroaches as big as horses. Pick up my hookers. I'll have them bailed out and back on the street in an hour. You can deal me some misery, sure, but your buddy won't be around to laugh. I did you a favor by forgetting the vig, and giving your boy another chance. He blew it. Now you owe me a favor. Think about it, Cleary. Quinlan's dead meat otherwise."
THREE
Cleary leaned back and noticed something different about his squeaking leather chair. It seemed to fit him. And it wasn't only the chair that was different, he thought, forcing himself to view his dead brother's office objectively. His books on local Los Angeles history were lined up beside Nick's tomes on electronics, useful if one did a lot of wiretapping, psychology, and the California criminal code. The latter was useful in keeping detectives out of jail for tapping phones.
Other than the books, he noticed other changes. Nick's desk was no longer neat. Files were stacked on one side. Napkins and matchbooks, covered with his own scrawl, were tucked under the blotter. Many of his clients associated a spiral notebook with cops.
Consequently he had learned to jot down notes on whatever was handy.
His coat was tossed over a chair back, spare packages of cigarettes were scattered on top of filing cabinets, bookcases, and the windowsill. A large wall calendar with cryptic notes hung in place of a painting. The office wasn't exactly untidy; it was just more lived in. It looked like him, not his brother. Nick had been an everything-in-its-place, round-cornered sort of guy. Jack Cleary's corners, on the other hand, were more knocked off than rounded.
"I know you guys go back a ways, and I'll put him under protective custody if you want. But he'd lose my guys going around the block," said Charlie Fontana, sitting in sweaty shirtsleeves and pouring himself another drink from Cleary's office bottle.
Cleary got up and stepped to the window. Turning his head, he studied his old partner from the LAPD. Charlie Fontana didn't look like a cop if you ignored the gun tucked in his shoulder holster. His slightly square face was honest and open, a little sad looking maybe, but still an all-American boy grown up to be an accountant, or law clerk, or pharmacist, or cashier at the local bank. Anything but a cop. Until you looked at his eyes. Fontana had a cop's eyes. Cynical from dealing with rats like Mickey Gold, weary of the citizens' stupidity, despairing of the violence and filth that infested the Strip like fleas on a mangy dog. But honest. Charlie Fontana had honest eyes that even held a little hope if you looked deeply enough.
Cleary wondered what his own eyes expressed. Sure, he believed if you just kept slugging it out with the bad guys and made the right choices, eventually everything would work out. Maybe. If you kept your fingers crossed and didn't catch any lead in a vital area. If that was hope, then he had some.
He tapped his fingers on the desk. Hope was missing from Joe Quinlan's eyes. Joe kept fighting, but he didn't have any hope. And a man without hope doesn't care if he gets killed or not. It was Cleary's job to keep Joe Quinlan alive until he did care again. And Charlie Fontana wasn't being very helpful.
"Jack, have I got a wart on my nose? You're staring at me like I do," said Fontana, looking worried. That was another thing about Fontana, Cleary thought. He worried a lot.
"I was just thinking."
"Did you hear what I said about Quinlan? He's too slick to tail."
Cleary took a drag on his cigarette. "Yeah. You got any better ideas, Charlie?"
Fontana opened his mouth to answer, or maybe it gaped open in amusement. Cleary wasn't sure. He would bank on amusement, though, because the sight of Dottie's generous behind decked out in a skintight dress and squashed against the plate-glass front office door was worth a big smile of appreciation.
From the second pair of arms visible through the plate glass, Cleary judged Dottie was caught in the throes of a monster kiss. He was surprised she found the strength and coordination to reach behind her back and open the door. She even walked, or stumbled, into the office and managed to straighten her clothes at the same time. Cleary had underestimated Dottie's physical dexterity.
"Ooh, I love French movies," said Dottie to her escort.
Cleary recognized his secretary's date from the recent publicity shot she had begun displaying on her desk. He was one Vinnie Alberts, two-bit actor, wearing pleated pegs, matching two-tone jacket and bucks, and weighed down by an experimental thirty-weight pompadour. Hell, everybody under thirty was trying to imitate that new singer from Tennessee. What was his name? Elvis something?
"Don't you just love them, too, Vinnie?" continued Dottie. "They're so"—she hesitated—"como se dice." She searched for just the right word, and as usual scored a near miss. "Continental."
Vinnie nodded in agreement, snapping his gum at a hundred and fifty rpms as he moved in to cop a quick feel. Vinnie was strong on actions, but a little short on words, Cleary noticed.
Dottie slipped awkwardly out of his clutches and reverted back to Cleveland, Ohio. "Whatta you been on the range too long?" she asked in a nasal tone of voice as she realigned her uplift bra, which was on a down drift.
Vinnie snapped his gum and sneered. Or at least Cleary assumed Vinnie sneered. It was hard to tell when the greaseball's lip seemed to have a permanent curl to one corner.
Dottie caught her faux pas, and immediately shifted into her Leslie Caron personality. "We have all evening, Vinnie. Que sera, sera..." She looked up and choked.
Cleary glanced at his watch, then cocked an eyebrow at her. "Your apartment closed for remodeling, Dottie?"
Dottie pulled Vinnie's coat back on his shoulders. "I, uh, forgot"—she nearly dislocated her neck looking around—"my Kitty Kallen record."
Grabbing the record off her desk, she pulled Vinnie by his sleeve back out the door. His face hadn't changed expression, so Cleary was sure the lip curl was permanent. Probably a birth injury when Vinnie's mother tried to tie him in a tow sack and drop him in the river.
Dottie stuck her head back in. "Anything else I can do?"
"Good night, Dottie," said Cleary.
She gave an embarrassed shrug and softly closed the door.
Fontana looked at Cleary. "What'd you say that girl's name was?"
"Dottie."
Fontana took a sip of his drink, his face serious. "Her mother must've been clairvoyant."
"I'm not, but I know Joe's in way over his head, Charlie, and he doesn't care. They might just kill him," said Cleary, forgetting Dottie and her boyfriend.
"Not if you take Mickey's offer."
"I don't believe what I'm hearing. You must have had a couple of belts before you came off duty, not to mention the inroads you've made in my winter supply of bourbon. You forget we used to put guys like Mickey Gold and Frank Tucci away."
Fontana looked directly at him, and Cleary' noticed his eyes were different. More cynical. And desperate, as if hope were in danger of dying. "We used to try, Jack. Tucci's one smooth bastard. Nobody's come close to nailing him. Every time we get a grip on him, he wiggles away like a greased pig."
He took a step closer to Cleary, his voice as earnest as his face. "Mickey Gold's dropped an opportunity right in our laps, one you'd have given your right arm for when you were in the department. It's a chance to bring down Frank Tucci before he gets a foothold out here, and set Mickey Gold back a good five years. It may be the only chance we get, Jack."
Cleary moved restlessly, then met Fontana's eyes. "I don't collect my paycheck from the city anymore, Charlie."
Fontana's eyes held a cautious expression that Cleary didn't like. "I know that."
"So forget about it."
Fontana nodded, then smiled. "Fine, it's forgotten. You're a civilian. Can't expect civilians to be crime fighters."
Cleary turned to gaze out the window at the lights of the restless city below. Then turned back to see Fontana's smile. That smile irked the hell out of him. It was hopeful, as if Cleary were some kind of superhero coming to save the town.
"And even if I was going to consider something like that"—he watched the hope in Fontana's eyes grow—"it'd just be to get Joe out of a bad jam. I'm not Superman, Charlie, I don't look good in tights. And I wouldn't want any of those grunts of yours from Metro on my tail. Guys like this can smell a backup a mile away."
Fontana misplaced his smile. "Whoa, wait a minute, Jack. You're the one talking like Superman. You think you can just walk in there like you can't be hurt? Gold and Tucci are smart, and both are like nitro. A slight shift in room temperature can set them off, and you'll be sitting square in the middle. Go-between for two killers, no backup, and no room for errors."
Cleary felt bitterness draw the skin taut over his cheekbones. "And I'm the match, Charlie. You can't have it both ways. Either I set them off, and you pick up the pieces, or Gold and Tucci will divide up this town like a pie. I'm the only choice you got, so we'll play it my way." He turned back to the window. "If I decide to deal myself in."
Fontana's answer was a long time coming. "You'll de
al yourself in, Jack, because you can't stand by. And not just because of Joe Quinlan. Oh, maybe you owe him something I don't know about, but that isn't the debt that's eating your guts out. It's that Chinatown mess five years ago—"
"Shut up about Chinatown!" said Cleary, hearing the raw pain in his own voice.
"You didn't make a difference then, couldn't maybe. The choices were there to make, but you got dealt a bad hand. You were too young, and too soft to go for the tough decision. You hung on to believing in happy endings a lot longer than most of us. And if you'd made the other decision, it probably wouldn't have changed what happened. But you're always looking for a way to make up for it, Jack. I don't know if Quinlan's going to balance the score, but I do know you'll try to save his ass just because you didn't save that girl."
Cleary gripped the windowsill and stared blindly out. Fontana was right. He couldn't walk away this time. "I'll think about paying Gold a visit tomorrow morning."
"Jack, I don't want any of the pieces I pick up to be yours. Play it cool."
"You know, Charlie, five years ago you could see where the lights ended at the edge of town."
In Mickey Gold's Black and Tan Club, a bartender stacked chairs in the background as Mickey sat at his table, sipping a large glass of milk while he counted out the night's receipts with Meyer Alliance. Sidney Bloom, his bruises turning purple and yellow like decaying flesh, dropped a small metal strongbox on the table. Mickey quickly stuffed the money into the box, his pudgy fingers not lingering on the bills. He wasn't interested in the bits of green paper themselves, but only in the power over others they represented. He had been without money before, and could survive without it, but he never intended to be without power again. Power meant respect, and he likedrespect. Jack Cleary had no respect, and neither did that asshole Quinlan.
Sidney snapped the strongbox closed. Mickey made a final notation on the cocktail napkin and slid it over to Meyer. No need for a copy. He would remember the figures. He had a good memory, always has had. And a long one. Mickey Gold never forgot anything. Or anyone. And he never let anyone off the hook, just baited it better. Camouflage, like in the army. Question was, would Cleary recognize the camouflage, or would he take the bait? If he took it, Mickey Gold would have a double fillet: Jack Cleary and Frank Tucci. Then he would pick his teeth with Joe Quinlan's bones.