I paused as if listening, and I was thinking I was really playing it smart, when Collier Breed reached across the desk, snatched the phone out of my hand, and started to stick it up against his ear.
For a moment I froze. I just stared at the phone in his fat hand, moving toward his fat head, and the thought flashed through my mind that as soon as that buzz, buzz, buzz hit Breed's ear he'd hit the ceiling and the L. A. population was due to start decreasing. I'd made a nice stab at this, but all the time I'd been digging my own grave.
And then, with the phone halfway between me and Breed, I did the only thing I could do, and I did it fast. I slammed my fist down hard on the base of the phone and broke the connection.
Breed's face started getting purple. He glared at me, holding his breath, then he let it out in a rush. "Just what the hell was that, Scott?"
I thought in a hurry. "You want to spoil the whole play? One word out of you to Sader and he'd know I was with you. That blows up the whole deal. I don't get you, Breed."
He lowered his voice. "Oh, you don't? You don't get me? God damn it, I wasn't going to say anything. I was going to listen! You—Scott, you'd better be on the level." He pulled the phone toward him and said, "Now tell me that number, Scott. The number of the Pit."
He had me. Maybe he knew the number; maybe he didn't. But if he did and I gave him a phony number, it wouldn't be good. I said, "Michigan one-one-six-four-five."
He dialed the number.
I couldn't take much more of this. I was getting weaker and weaker. If I lived I was going to quit the business. I was going to be a file clerk—join a monastery.
Breed listened to the phone, then held it toward me. "Busy," he said. "How about that?"
"What do you expect?" I asked him. My voice cracked; I couldn't help it. I almost yodeled.
He leaned toward me. "What's the matter with you, Scott? What's the matter with your voice?" Cat and mouse, the bastard.
I took a huge breath. "Well, Jesus Christ, man. You pick up the phone and call Sader and you can still ask? If he gets wind of this double cross I'm dead. You trying to get me killed? Even if you didn't say a word, just called him and hung up, he'd smell something fishy. You pull that again and I'll have a heart attack." I wasn't kidding, but it seemed to satisfy him.
He asked, "What'd you mean just now? You asked me what did I expect."
"Just that. Sure the phone's busy. I told Sader there was some trouble. Also that we had to have the lists of pushers. He's almost sure to be on the phone, getting the lists and maybe calling some boys."
It was weak from my point of view, but Breed sighed and leaned back in his chair. "O.K., Scott. Get busy. But it'd better be good." He turned to the boys behind him. "Lonely, tie Flick up. You got his gun; give that to me. Then you boys take Mr. Scott on his little errand." He considered a moment and added, "All you boys better go, in case there's trouble."
"Hey!" I said. "If I bust in with a mob, what's Sader going to think?"
Breed chuckled. "It doesn't matter what he thinks; he won't think it long. That's one reason all the boys go with you. Besides, Scott, you didn't think you were going alone, did you?"
I hadn't. And I'd been a little behind, too. With what I'd given Breed, it was obvious that Sader was due for a deep grave. And, I asked myself, where does that leave me? And Iris, too?
"Breed," I said, "how about the girl? You can let her go."
He shook his head. "She stays with me and Flick. Till you—uh, get back." He grinned and I knew damn well what that meant. Somehow the idea of my not getting back wasn't a bit humorous to me, but I guess it's all in how you look at it.
I was practically twitching, and I'd burned up about a million brain cells, but I had one more thought. Maybe it wasn't worth much, but I played with it. The way it stood now, Lonely, Shenandoah, Joe-Joe, and Harry were all going to be my escort—and all concentrating like mad on me. Breed was going to be here with Flick and Iris, both of whom would be tied up. If Flick sat here with Breed, he might be able to go over my story piece by piece and find the flaws in it Flick might even get Breed to check with the girl he'd said he'd been with.
But if Flick went along with us, not only would he not be able to talk to Breed, but the boys would have to keep an eye on him, diverting a little of the attention from me. I wondered, though, if I could make Breed see it my way.
Lonely had already given Flick's gun to Breed and was starting to tie Flick's hands when I said, "I didn't think you'd want Flick tied up, Breed."
He looked at me, surprised. "You think I want him loose?"
"Uh-uh. That's not what I meant." I smiled, weakly, and added, "Somehow, Breed, I get the impression you don't trust me entirely. I think I've got you convinced about Flick, but why not let me prove it? It looks like I'm going to be working for you from now on—if I'm working for anybody. I'd like to prove I'm telling the truth about Flick; I want you as convinced as I am."
The idea of my working for him must have practically convulsed him, but he was content to let me dream. He asked me, "How you expect to prove that?"
"Simple. When we hit Sader's your boys can watch the play. Sader will welcome Flick with open arms. That'll be your proof."
He thought about it. Then the idea seemed to appeal to him and he nodded. He turned to Lonely. "O. K. You all go. But watch 'em. And," he added quietly, "if Scott is trying to pull a fast one, don't bring him back."
There wasn't any way I could twist that around so it meant anything except I'd be dead.
Breed said, "Get going. And, Lonely, you phone me. One way or another."
The boys herded Flick and me out in front of them and followed close behind. They separated us outside to put us into different cars, but before they did Flick hissed at me, "It won't be long, Scott. This is gonna bust right in your goddam face. And when it does, I'll kill you."
Lonely drove the black Cadillac I was pushed into, and Joe-Joe sat in the back seat with me. Joe-Joe and his 45-degree nose and .44 automatic. Behind us came the black Plymouth with Flick, accompanied by Shenandoah and Harry. Flick would be bending their ears all the way into town.
And so, one car right behind the other, we went rolling merrily on our way, like a stray segment of a funeral procession. And I couldn't help thinking that undoubtedly that was exactly what it was.
Chapter Fifteen
THERE WAS little traffic at this quiet hour. Now it was just after midnight, that lonesome time of morning, and the sky was partly overcast, with film across some of the dim stars. Occasionally headlights appeared coming toward us, flashing briefly upon our faces as the lights grew large and bright and then whipped by us. Then shadows would leap up inside the car again and it would seem darker than before. But always there was illumination from the street lights and from that other car following us into town.
Lonely kept his eyes on the road ahead of him, and Joe-Joe sat silently sucking on a cigarette and watching me. I could see, when I glanced at him, the automatic in his hand, centered on my middle.
And it was cold. Cold and windy. The gusts of wind that had been alternately swelling and dying all night long had grown in frequency and intensity until now, every once in a while, the Cadillac would sway momentarily as a heavy wall of wind buffeted the car. Lonely drove up Riverside Drive to the Freeway at Figueroa, then turned right and headed for the Civic Center.
I'd been perspiring back there at Breed's, and now my thin shirt was damp and felt like ice on my skin. The cold seeped into the car and ran up my back and crawled down inside my stomach.
It took fifteen or twenty minutes to get from Breed's "finance" company to the Pit. Lonely pulled into the alley off Seventh Street and parked outside the elevator that led down into Marty Sader's club. He left the keys in the ignition when he got out, I noticed. That was a break; things were really going my way. The other car pulled in behind us and stopped. The lights of the cars were turned off and I stepped out into the black alley.
The wind hit me as soon a
s I got out of the car. It was a raw, rough wind that scraped the skin on my face and bit into my lungs. I was shivering, and it was cold enough to make a man shiver, but that wasn't the only reason. The closer we'd come to the Pit, the bigger the ball of fear had grown in my stomach. Depression had been growing inside me, too. I tried to shake it off. Hell, I thought, I'm not dead yet. And that cheered me up so much I damn near threw up.
I'd talked my way out of Breed's office, but I wasn't patting myself on the back. Silver-tongued Scott. Sure. That was like talking yourself right out of the lion's mouth and into his stomach.
I wish I knew what was coming when the crowd of us stepped out of that elevator and into the Pit below. There were a lot of possible angles. Sader might have a dozen gunmen there ready to blast us; Breed's boys might find Marty alone and kill him, or they might go hog-wild and shoot up anybody that was in the place. Or it could even be that the Pit was empty now, though there'd been somebody there thirty or forty minutes ago when I'd phoned and got a busy signal. But of all the possibilities, I couldn't find one that meant I could keep on living.
In the time since I became a private detective, and the four years before that, as a Marine in a bigger murder mess called, euphemistically, World War II, I'd been shot at and scared and almost killed a lot of times. But never in all those years had the dead weight of hopelessness weighed me down like it did now. I had the feeling that this was finally it, that I was washed up. I was tired to the bone, my head ached and throbbed, and I was weary of even thinking. I'd been up for fifteen or sixteen hours already and I felt it. There was a physical and mental exhaustion all through me, so leaden that I could almost say I didn't give a damn what came next. Almost, but not quite. A man always has a little something in reserve somewhere, and I knew if I got any kind of chance I'd do something with it—and if I could, I'd take one or two of these boys who were casually planning to murder me right along with me.
We all gathered around the elevator. The door was unlocked and the elevator was up at the top, and it looked to me as if maybe nobody was down below. That perked me up a little. Even if Marty had been here before, if he'd taken the elevator up and gone someplace else, I might be able to stall my guards for a while. Tell them Marty would show up, something like that. At least it was something to hang onto.
The four boys shoved Flick and me in first, facing out the way the door would open below, then got in behind us. If anybody shot at us, we'd get it first. A new way to get it going and coming. Then we started down. There wasn't any sensation of movement, and I remembered the last time I'd been in here with Iris—only we'd been coming up. Well, I'd got my wish. Then I'd wanted to know what the score was, what was behind all the screwy activity of the morning, and I knew now: Sader had been trying to muscle into the rackets and Big Boy Breed had sent the "upstart" an ultimatum with Lobo—and Sader had killed Lobo. Then Iris, me, and a madhouse—the beginnings of a gang war, and me in the middle of no man's land with a slingshot. I knew all about it now, but I'd felt better this morning before my curiosity had been satisfied.
The elevator stopped, the door automatically started sliding open, and I finally remembered that little bulb over the door in Sader's office. It had been burning for sixty seconds now. The boys I was with might not know about that gimmick, but I did, and I knew that whoever was in the Pit knew there was company on the way.
My throat was dry as the door opened and there was nothing but blackness ahead of us in the club. I was still in the middle: Sader in front, Breed behind, Breed's boys all around me, and Flick right next to me dying to put a bullet in my belly. And none of us could see a thing out there in the darkness.
Somebody shoved me from behind and I stumbled out of the elevator, Flick alongside of me. One of the boys pushed the elevator door shut and the light was squeezed out behind us. It took a few seconds for my eyes to get accustomed to the darkness, but when they did I saw a narrow thread of light under what would be the door to Sader's office. Then there was a hand against my back and we were all moving toward the light.
I knew that every step gave me less of a chance and I was thinking up a storm. There was somebody in there, and if it was Sader—and I didn't know anybody else who would be here this late—I was headed for hell and no place to grab. But if I could get the boys to let Flick and me go in alone, on the pretense that Sader would "welcome" Flick, I might—I might what? Leap up through the ceiling? But it was better than nothing.
I tried to slow down and started to whisper my brilliant idea to the man behind me, but a horny hand was slapped over my mouth and the cold, hard muzzle of a gun was shoved roughly against the back of my neck.
That settled that, and now that we were so close, part of my fear was dissolving into a kind of desperation. We reached the door. One of the men brushed by me, felt for the doorknob, and flung the door open. Hands hit my back and practically hurled me into the room.
I tripped on the carpet at the edge of the door, staggered forward into the room, and grabbed the sharp corner of the white desk to keep from falling. I blinked in the sudden flood of light and looked across that gleaming white desk right into Marty's eyes. His dead eyes.
They didn't find the hole in Sader's head right away, but finding him like that was a fat shock for me. I'd half expected guns to roar and people to die all around me, and maybe with me, and finding Sader dead jarred me so hard I stopped moving and my mouth dropped open.
Flick shut it for me. He whirled on me with his lips in a hard grin, and his hand shot out and grabbed at my throat. His knuckles glanced off my chin and jolted my teeth together. I slapped his arm away and reached for him, but I didn't get to him. Big, burly Harry grabbed my arms, and Shenandoah and Lonely latched onto Flick. Flick's face twisted and he yelled at me, "You smart son of a bitch!"
Then Lonely shouted, "Shut your trap, Flick. What the hell is this?" He glared at Flick for a moment, then walked to the desk and looked down at Sader.
There'd been a surge of voices, but everybody quieted down now except Shenandoah. He gawked at the dead man and said softly, "Jesus," shaking his head.
Marty had fallen onto the desk, his right arm stretched forward over it and his other arm dangling over the side. The left side of his face was flat on the desk top and his eyes were open, staring blankly. His rimless glasses lay unbroken on the desk, two or three inches from his head. The carefully combed black hair was only slightly mussed, but the fine hair had fallen aside and Sader's bald spot gleamed dully in the strong light. It seemed almost indecent.
Flick hadn't taken his eyes off me except for a brief glance at the body. He ran his tongue over his teeth and squinted his small black eyes. I knew he was thinking, getting ready to make a little spiel of his own, and he looked as if he were enjoying imagining how I'd squirm. I had an idea I'd squirm plenty.
Lonely lifted Sader's head casually by a few strands of hair, looked curiously at it and at Sader's chest, then pointed at the back of Sader's head with his other hand. "Lookit," he said. "A little one. A twenty-two or twenty-five, maybe." He might have been asking the time of day. He let Sader's head flop back on the desk. I felt the thud in my spine.
Everybody had to take a look except Shenandoah and Flick. Shenandoah took Lonely's word for it, and Flick was more interested in me. Lonely glanced at a smear of red on his finger, and wiped it on Sader's black coat. Little Joe-Joe Klein looked Sader over and started prowling around the desk while one of the other boys roamed around the room. Shenandoah, at a word from Lonely, went into the next room and threw on switches that flooded the entire club with light. He left the door open when he came back in, and I glanced over my shoulder, out the office door to the inside of the club, where lights flooded the chairs and booths and tables.
Then Joe-Joe straightened up. "Hey, boys! Lookit this!" He held a wisp of a handkerchief in his hand. A woman's handkerchief. He squinted at a corner of it. "What's this?" he asked, then read off the letters, "C-A-G." He laughed. "Who's that, huh? Cag? Short fo
r Cagney, maybe? Wait'll Bogart hears about this." He haw-hawed.
I thought about it, myself, wondering who C. A. G. might be. I mentally listed the women I knew in this deal: Mrs. Vivian Sader, Kitty Green, Iris Gordon, Mia—something or other. "Something you couldn't pronounce," she'd said. Nobody seemed to fit.
And then I stopped even wondering because I realized it didn't make any difference to me, and I started realizing fully and completely what this new development did mean. It looked as if, with the death of Sader, had gone any and all of the cracked and cockeyed hopes I might have had of pulling something, anything, to get myself out of the mess I was in.
And Flick took that very moment to start in on me.
"Lonely!" he snapped. "All the rest of you guys. Listen. Now you see what this Scott bastard's been trying? I told you guys he was lyin'. I tried to tell you. You gonna listen to me now?"
All four of the other men straightened up and walked over by Flick. They all had guns in their hands, and they kept both Flick and me covered, but they grouped around Flick and looked at me. I'd never had them really convinced, and I'd lost them now. But Flick had at me anyway. He'd been dying for this chance ever since I'd screwed him up in front of Breed and his chums. He took advantage of it now.
"Scott," he said softly, "get with it. Let's have a little co-operation, bright boy. Where's this safe with all the cabbage? Give us that goddam list you was singin' about." He stopped and looked at me.
I licked my lips and my tongue felt like a dry corncob. There wasn't even one gun pointed at Flick now. It was my scene; I'd had my cue, and five pairs of hostile eyes stared at me. And four guns pointed at me. Three .45 automatics scattered around, and one .38 revolver in Lonely's big right hand. It seemed like every time I turned around today I ran into a guy with a gun. Everybody had a gun—and they were all pointed at me.
Everybody Had A Gun Page 13