I wasn’t being very bright. But I’d been more or less ignored all evening, which annoyed me, and then this ape comes over to flex his muscles.
He put on his B picture scowl. “Maybe you’d like to see me fight at real close range?”
“Go away,” I said and turned in my chair.
The back of his hand caught me heavily across my ear, and I lost my head. It was probably the liquor. I came up out of the chair, twisting to the right, and bringing my left hand in a stiff arc with the swing of my body.
I caught him flush on the mouth and felt the tooth snap, and saw the blood spurt from his upper lip. I came in on his left, crowding him, and heard the women screaming all over the joint. I shoved the top of my head right into his bleeding mouth and kneed him in the groin as his head slammed back.
Where he got the moxie for the single punch he threw, I’ll never know. He made it a good one, a bulls-eye. The last thing I heard before the curtain was the chair crashing under me.
When I came to, I was out on the pier and somebody was bathing my face with cool water. Overhead, I could see the windows of the barroom and people looking out at me.
It was Jean bathing my face. I groaned and sat up, and a man’s voice in the dimness to my right said, “Easy, Champ. He really connected with that Sunday punch.”
It was a fat little producer who’d been at our table.
Jean said, “What started it?”
“He made some slurring remarks about you.” Rattles in my head and I dug at the back of my neck. “I marked him though, didn’t I?”
“Marked him?” the producer said. “You remodeled his face. He’ll need caps for four teeth and I think his nose is broken.”
“That’s enough, Nick,” Jean said. “Please—” Her voice sounded faint and sick.
I put a hand down on the planking of the pier and got up slowly. There was a pain behind my eyes and an ache at the back of my neck. Jean had her arm around my waist, partly supporting me as I took a deep breath of the sea air. We started to walk down toward the shore end of the pier, and then I had to stop as my brain began to rattle. My right hand began to throb.
“For me,” she said. “You took those lumps for me.”
“He only hit me once. I brought you, baby, and I’ll defend your character any place.” We started to walk again.
She chuckled. “You’re a little late for that. I didn’t think a girl’s character meant anything to you.”
“What the hell kind of remark is that?”
We were at the end of the pier and heading for her car. She said quietly, “I was thinking of Bea Condor.”
She had the door of the car open now, holding it for me. She said, “I’ll drive.” Her eyes met my stare without interest.
I said, “What do you know about Bea Condor?”
“Don’t be silly, Joe. Half the movie people in town know all about that case. You paid off the stooges, didn’t you?”
I said, “That was Deutscher’s baby. I was just the leg man.”
“Oh,” she said. “Get in, honey. I’ll drive.”
“I’m not getting in until you understand that,” I said.
She looked at me steadily. “What difference does it make? I’m no angel, Joe.”
“If it didn’t make a difference to you, you wouldn’t have mentioned it. If we’re going to work together, we’ve got to have some regard for each other.”
“All right, Joe. Get in, now. You can tell me about it while we drive.”
The way I figured it, this Jean Roland still had some old-fashioned ideas about the world she lived in. I wanted to be on the good side of her through the first part of this deal because she was the key to Willi Clifford. So I gave her a hoked up version of the Condor case. I told her Deutscher had given me some money and told me where to deliver it, and I’d followed instructions without realizing I was defeating justice.
“I see, I see,” Jean said, when I’d finished. “I suppose it doesn’t matter that Rickett didn’t go to the gas chamber. The girl would have been just as dead, either way. But everybody who knew her, every decent person who knew her, seemed to think so much of her.”
I said nothing. I was sobering up, and the rattles in my brain had changed to a dull and steady ache. This was some fine flesh next to me and the door to a mint. I didn’t want to jeopardize my in with her with too much conversation. If a man, wants to lie successfully, he’s got to remember to underplay it.
Jean’s voice was tender. “Feeling real bad, honey?”
“Real bad.”
“I’d like to stay with you tonight, hold you in my arms all night, but Willi would be suspicious.”
“We can’t have that, can we?”
Her hand came over to grip my knee. “Not now. Later we won’t worry about Willi, will we?”
“Later,” I assured her, “we won’t worry about anybody but us.”
That big Chrysler purred along the Coast Highway and the fog came in off the beach, shrouding the cliffs to our left. Everybody bleeding for Bea Condor, I thought. All the decent people Jean called them. Well, this was no town for mice and Bea had been a mouse, a virgin, in a whore’s town.
I said, “It looks like Rickett is going to get his anyway, so everybody should be happy.”
“He’ll worm out of it.”
“Not this time. They’ve got him cold.”
“Joe, that isn’t anything you’re likely to be implicated in, is it? This would be a bad time for you to get any publicity. Willi can read, you know.”
“I’m clean, as a whistle,” I said. “Target’s dead and so is the girl, that Josie Gonzales.”
“You mean that—that prostitute who testified?”
“That’s the one.”
“Migawd. Did Rickett kill her, too?”
“No. She just died. Would it be all right if we didn’t talk? I’m full of aches.”
“I’m sorry, honey. You take a hot bath when you get home and load yourself with aspirin. And phone me as soon as you get up in the morning.”
In front of my place, she lifted her lips and I kissed her and smelled her expensive perfume and wondered if, when the time came, I could walk out on a body like hers. Hell, with money a guy can get all the bodies he wants in this town. Or any town.
I did take a hot bath and it helped. I took three aspirin and hit the hay and was asleep in five minutes.
It was a gray morning when my doorbell wakened me. I put on a robe, turned up the heat, and went to the door.
Deutscher stood there. He looked at the robe and smiled. “Alone?”
“Naturally. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“It’s almost ten o’clock.”
“Come in,” I said. “It’s too chilly to keep this door open.”
He came in and sat on the rattan davenport while I put the water in the coffee pot and turned on the flame. When I came back to the living room, he was making a ritual out of peeling the wrapper from a cigar.
“Anything new?” I asked him.
“Nothing sensational. Roland was over to see me last evening. He puzzled me a little.”
I sat across from him and lighted a cigarette. “How?”
Deutscher looked at the cigar, pursing his lips. Great ham, this man. “He wants me to take a more active part in his pitch.” He paused. “Or less money.” He looked up at me steadily.
I met the look. “That puzzled you?”
“Coming when it did, right after he had dinner with you.”
“You think it was my idea, Peter?”
“Was it?”
I shook my head.
He put the cigar in his mouth and pulled out a packet of matches from his pocket. I gave him all the time he wanted. I didn’t offer any dialogue.
“I brought you into this, Joe.”
“At Miss Roland’s suggestion.”
“All right then, at her suggestion. But when she did suggest it, I was all for it. If you owe any loyalty, it’s to me, Joe.”
I grinned at him. “That
would be two of us loyal to you, me and you. Who’s going to be loyal to me?”
“You seem to be doing all right, having dinner with Roland and taking his daughter out last night.”
“You sure keep an eye on me, don’t you, Peter?” I heard the water bubbling and went out into the kitchen to put the coffee in.
When I came back into the living room, Deutscher was standing near the window, looking out. He turned to face me. “Got into a fight too, I heard.”
“You heard right. A café heavyweight, Moose Jelko. Claimed to be a friend of Little Phil’s. Very silly, but we were both drunk.”
Deutscher shook his head. “I don’t understand you, Joe. I never could. It’s not as though you were stupid. You can’t afford any fights now. This Clifford business isn’t small time. We can’t afford to take any chances on queering it.
I said nothing.
“And working against me,” he said. “Don’t you see that’s exactly what the Rolands want so they can grab all the loot? If they get rid of one of us, the other would be easy to handle. Both of us would be too much for them. We’ve worked together before, Joe.”
“That’s a polite way to put it,” I said. “The truth is I worked for you, did your dirty work.”
“And you were paid. You didn’t go into it blind.”
“No, but I went into it hungry. Like some coffee? It should be done now.”
He nodded.
When I brought the coffee in, he was back on the rattan davenport, looking worried. “Get anything on Little Phil?”
“Only that Jelko told me he used to be a handler for him when he was still in the ring. The connection between Little Phil and Rickett, I can’t get at all.”
“It’s very probably Jennings.” Deutscher sipped his coffee. “Joe, are we going to work together or aren’t we?”
“I wouldn’t work against you, Peter. You know that. You’ve got too many connections in this town. But I get the feeling I’ve got to be on guard when I work with you.”
“Well,” he said, “get rid of it. We’re tied up with two very smooth operators and we could be left holding the bag. We’ll need to trust each other, Joe.”
“Okay,” I said and held out a hand. “Shake on it. I’m still bigger than you, if not brighter.”
He smiled as he took my hand. “Well come out of this one on top. Don’t worry about that.”
After he left, I fried a couple eggs and made some toast. I had just started on the eggs when my doorbell rang again.
It was Little Phil, looking humble for a change. He said, “I heard about Jelko.”
“So—?” I said.
“I didn’t sic him on you.”
“Come in,” I said. “I’m trying to eat.”
He came in and sat across from me as I again tackled the eggs. He said, “I don’t want any trouble. I got a nice business.” He looked at me thoughtfully and then laid five ten dollar bills on the table.
I smiled at him. “Trying to buy me, Phil?”
“I wondered who hired you.”
“For fifty bucks that’s all you want, the name?”
“I figured maybe you’d also lay off, for fifty.”
“Maybe. The man’s name is Jennings.”
Phil’s eyes went wide. “That son-of-a-bitch—You mean he—” He clamped his mouth tight shut.
“Know him, do you? How do you happen to know him?”
“I’ve heard of him.” He wasn’t looking so humble any more.
I reached out and picked up the five tens. “Phil, a lot of silence all around is what we want, isn’t it? You don’t know Jennings, and I can’t get any line on you for him, and you were never here. You’ve still got that nice business, I’ve got the fifty and Jennings will have a bill for my services in a couple of days. Nobody gets hurt.”
“That makes sense to me,” he said and stood up. “What’d you hit Jelko with? He used to be a pretty fair pug.”
“With the top of my head. As a part of this deal, you keep him off my neck, huh?”
“I’ll try. It’s hard to promise anything; he’s kind of punchy.”
“Sure. And I’m usually armed. You tell him that.”
“Okay. Do we shake hands or something on this?”
“Why not?” I said. “It’s free.”
We shook hands and Little Phil left. Which made two visitors for the day. The important one, the third one, I wasn’t to have until the afternoon.
From my office, I phoned Jennings. He wasn’t in, his secretary informed me. He was due any minute, and she’d have him phone the minute he got in. I sat there, listening to the typewriters clatter in the Gardaluck Music Company until the phone rang.
I told Jennings about my fight with Jelko. I said I’d had no luck with the case, so far.
“You can’t quit,” he said. “Rickett’s practically confessed. Send me a bill, Joe. I’ve got to have a record of these expenses.”
I promised I would, thanked him for the business and hung up.
A bill, he wanted, so it would look like he’d spent money to clear Rickett, like he was interested in clearing Rickett. If the time ever came that the police wondered about him, he could prove he’d spent money trying to save his client. I sat there, thinking back on yesterday, wondering if I’d left any gaps anywhere, anything that might queer the big pitch to come. In a steal this size, a man couldn’t be too careful.
Deutscher, I couldn’t see in it. He had a way of declaring himself into pay-offs and he had the knowledge now to spill it to the law if he thought he was being frozen out. He knew that. He also knew we knew it, and he was riding on the threat of it. Sixty thousand dollars he’d be getting for contributing nothing. Sixty grand for keeping his mouth shut. It could be done cheaper.
I looked down to find my hands trembling. I went over and got a drink of lukewarm water from the tap. Stupid, paying a man for nothing—with money the three of us had earned. I couldn’t shake the thought.
Easy now, I told myself. This is a con game, and violence doesn’t belong in this kind of steal. The stakes are too big to have a murder rap messing it up.
I went over to Herbie’s for lunch. I had a couple drinks first, and then some onion soup and chili.
Some character who’d been standing at the bar while I ate and watching me, came over now. He was a man about fifty, dressed in a cheap gray suit, with a rugged weather-beaten face.
“Pardon me, sir, but aren’t you Tony Puma’s son?”
This happened to me all the time. I nodded.
He held out a hand. “I just want to say he was the greatest man this crummy town ever saw. I worked with him when I first got into organizing.”
“Thank you,” I said and went back to my chili.
Sure, great man. Great dead man. And when he’d been alive, he couldn’t get ten bucks from any bank in town. If he was such a great man, why didn’t they chip in for a memorial? I’d handle the money.
I had a couple more drinks and went home. I don’t know if it was nervous tension or last night’s hair pull, but I was tired. I pulled down the bed, took off my shoes, and flopped.
The bell rang just as I was dozing off. I went to the door in my stocking feet. A girl stood there. Rather, a woman. I thought for a second I was dreaming. She was a prostitute, one of Target’s string, and I hadn’t seen her since the trial.
She was the girl Deutscher had called dead, Josie Gonzales.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE WAS AN OLIVE-SKINNED girl with large, liquid brown eyes and coarse, curly black hair. Her cheap perfume didn’t quite blanket her BO.
She asked softly, “May I come in?”
“Of course,” I said. “I’m a little—startled to see you.”
She came in and I closed the door. I indicated a chair and she went over to sit in it. What in hell did she want now? She looked thinner, though not thin. She’d been on the overstuffed side. Now she was just comfortably upholstered. Her face was thin, however.
She sat there, s
taring at me, and I suddenly realized she looked frightened.
“Something’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Al,” she said.
“Al—? Oh, Albert Target, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“You know who killed him?”
She shook her head, staring at me. “Do you know?”
“No, I don’t. Is that what you came here to find out, Josie?”
“No. No, I thought—” She looked at me beseechingly. “I thought—maybe, money?”
I studied her, trying to determine how much of the request was threat. I decided none of it was. “Why money?” I asked. “Aren’t you working?”
“In a house, I’m working. Al told me his clients were tired of me, so I went to a house and there is no money made in a place like that. I want to leave town.”
“Why, Josie?”
“I’m frightened. Al dead and if that Peter learns I am not dead, he will come bothering me, again.”
“You mean Peter Deutscher?”
She nodded. “After the trial, he was after me all the time. In his place, all night, and not paying. He said I should be good to him and I would stay out of jail. He killed Al, didn’t he?”
“He could have. What made him think you were dead?”
“This doctor I know, the one who stops babies, he liked me and he told Peter that for me about the cancer.”
“I see.” I studied her. “And if you don’t get any money from me, what will you do?”
She shrugged and then for a second she looked at me searchingly. I wondered if she’d meant to threaten me and lost her nerve when she got in here alone with me.
I said, “You don’t like Peter much then?”
“He is a beast, a pig.” Her voice showed its first sign of emotion.
“I guess he is, Josie,” I said sadly. “You knew that was his money I paid you with, don’t you?”
She shook her head.
“Well,” I explained, “it was really the producer’s, and Peter took a big cut before he passed it on to me to give to you. But of course I’d be the one to go to jail, if they learned it.”
“I would never tell,” she said. “You never harmed me. You never asked for anything free.”
“I try to be a gentleman,” I agreed. “It’s—difficult in this business, but I never forget I came from a good family. But if you were arrested, and they tortured you—” I shrugged.
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