“Figures,” Mantz snorted. “Leave it to you to find a way to make a buck out of this.”
“I’m not in it for the money,” I said testily. “But what’s the harm of having your cake and eating it, too?”
Now the orchestra was playing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”
“There are some damn dangerous people involved in this affair, Nate,” Mantz said. “That bird Miller, for one.”
“Frank Nitti’s a friend of mine,” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’ve run into tougher birds than William Miller.”
Last night, I’d told young Robert not to mention to anyone, even his parents, what we’d heard on the family Philco; but assured the boy he’d be hearing from me. I’d gone from the Myers house to the Bay Farm Airport Hotel, where after my day and a half of no sleep, I collapsed on the bed in a comalike pile. I didn’t wake up till noon, and took the train back to Los Angeles, catching a cab to the Burbank airport. There, late afternoon, I spoke with Ernie Tisor, to see if he’d be willing to come forward with what he knew, explaining that it would be to the press, not the authorities. He was willing. Mantz had left for the day, but Tisor mentioned his boss’s plans to take Terry out for dinner and dancing at the Club Continental. Then I’d driven the Terraplane to Lowman’s Motor Court, where I still had a room, from which I called both Margot DeCarrie and Walter McMenamy, to see if they were willing to come forward, too. Both said yes.
And, after a shower and a shave, I’d finally gotten out of that yellow polo and tan slacks and into my garbardine.
At the moment, Mantz was looking at me with his eyes round under a furrowed brow. “You don’t really believe you heard Amelia and Fred getting nabbed by the Japs?”
I’d just shared with Mantz and his fiancée the results of my slumber party at the Myers kid’s house.
“If it was a hoax,” I said, sipping my rum and Coke, “it was a hell of a job.”
Mantz smirked, shaking his head. “You do know, don’t you, that the March of Time did a reenactment of the flight, the day after Amelia disappeared? And so many calls came in, at Pearl Harbor, they flashed the Itasca that Amelia was transmitting!”
“I think I know the difference between Amelia’s voice and Westbrook Van Voorhis,” I said, referring to the radio show’s announcer.
He put a hand on my shoulder; his speech was slightly thick. “Nate, every paper in the country’s givin’ banner headlines to any scrap of information on our missing girl, and that includes every rumor, false hope, and practical joke…. These publicity-seeking radio hams are jammin’ the airwaves with their phony broadcasts!”
“I’m enlisting McMenamy to check with his radio-ham pals,” I said. “We’ll sort out the pranksters and publicity hounds, and see if anybody else heard what that kid and I did, last night. Anyway, even without that, I got juicy stuff for FDR’s enemies in the Fourth Estate.”
Harl Smith and his boys were having a go at “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.”
“Excuse me,” Terry said, gently, “but I don’t see how this helps Amelia.”
Mantz had said almost the same thing, yesterday.
“It doesn’t,” I admitted. “But it helps me.”
“Make a buck?” Mantz asked.
“Sleep at night.”
“You really wanna see G. P. get his tit in a wringer,” Mantz said with a chuckle.
Terry didn’t blink at his crudity.
I took a last gulp of rum and Coke. “Him and the other sons of bitches who put her at risk…. Pardon my French.”
“I think you’re very sweet,” Terry said, stirring her drink with a swizzle stick.
“I don’t get accused of that, often.”
“Amelia’s lucky to have a friend like you,” she said.
With his fiancée’s seal of approval, I figured this was the perfect time to spring it on Mantz.
I slipped an arm around his shoulder. “So, Paul, how about it? Will you come forward, when I’m lining up sources for the Chicago Tribune?”
He sighed; his mouth twitched. He glanced across at Terry who was looking at him, carefully.
“Sure,” he said. “It might be fun to watch Gippy Putnam twist in the wind.”
They invited me to have dinner with them, and I accepted, with no further talk of the Amelia matter. The happy couple shared Chateaubriand, and I tried the Lobster Newburg. Later, as the orchestra played “Where or When,” I danced with Terry, who pointed out Mr. and Mrs. Joe E. Brown, Mr. and Mrs. George Murphy, and Marion Marsh with lanky, craggily handsome Howard Hughes, who you may recall was an acquaintance of Robert Myers. Hughes wasn’t wearing a tux, either; we had that much in common.
As I was taking my leave of them at their booth, Mantz said to me, “If you haven’t picked up your train tickets, Nate, keep in mind I can get you a discount on fares, if you fly United or TWA. You got to come by and drop off the Terraplane at my hangar, anyway.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I kinda had my fill of airplanes.”
Traffic was light as I made my way back toward Lowman’s Motor Court, and I wasn’t speeding, in fact I was probably poking. My stomach warm and full, I felt a certain satisfaction knowing what I was going to do about Putnam and company. I did believe what Robert and I had heard last night, and had a small sense of relief knowing Amy was alive, though a nagging sense of dread about what she might be going through, a spy in the hands of the Japanese.
So I was surprised, as I loped along North San Fernando Road, when I heard the siren coming up behind me, and my first notion was they were on their way to some emergency. I pulled over to let them pass, but they rolled in behind me, a black patrol car, its side-mounted white spotlight hitting the Terraplane with its blinding beam.
Terraplane idling, I got out, shielding my eyes from the glare but still able to see a cop getting out on either side of the black Ford, the blouses of their dark uniforms bisected by the black leather straps of their holsters, badges gleaming on blouses and flat-crowned caps.
This was a somewhat undeveloped stretch, North San Fernando Road also being Highway 6, scrubby landscape on either side of us. A breeze was whispering through the underbrush; suddenly the night seemed chillier.
“What’s the problem, officers?” I asked, meeting them halfway.
Their faces were pale blots; with that light in my eyes, I could make out no features, but the first voice was older: “Okay, boyo—lean your hands against the side of the car.”
I gladly turned my back on the blinding light, heading back to the Terraplane, where I leaned against the sleek curve of a fender, waiting for the frisk. It came. My gun was back in the motel room, which was a good thing, I guessed. I felt my wallet leave my back pocket; my little notebook was in the motel room, also.
“Does this car belong to you?” the second one asked; he was young, or anyway younger.
“No it doesn’t.”
“You’re damn right it doesn’t,” the older cop said. “This car was reported stolen.”
Christ! Putnam. Somehow he got wind I was using Amy’s car, and he set me up, the prick.
“This is a misunderstanding,” I said, and risked looking back with a small smile. “I was loaned this car.”
“That may come as news to the guy you pinched it from,” the older one said. “You’re going to have to come with us, boyo.”
A night in jail loomed ahead. No reason to fight it. Mantz could straighten it out tomorrow morning; this was just Putnam’s way of getting back at me.
The older officer took me by the arm and hauled me around; a little rough, nothing special, par for the copper course. I knew enough not to cross him.
“Hey, Calvin,” the younger one said, gazing into my open wallet as if it were a crystal ball. “I think this guy’s a cop….”
Calvin, still holding onto my arm, snatched the wallet from his young partner’s grasp and held it close to his face. “What’s this…Chicago Police
Benevolent Association?…You on the job?”
“I work private now,” I said. “I was on the Chicago department for ten years.” That was a five-year lie.
I could now make out their faces. The older one had sharp features and dull eyes. The younger one had a bulldog mug that would make a great cop face, in a few years, but right now it looked a little silly.
“Ten years, you say,” the older one said. “Why’d you step down?”
“Disability,” I lied. With my free hand, I gestured to the arm he had hold of me by. “Took one in the shoulder.”
He blinked and let go of my arm as if it were hot. “How’d it happen, son?”
I’d gone from “boyo” to “son”—an encouraging raise in rank.
“Stickup guy,” I said, as if that explained it.
They nodded, as if I’d explained it.
The older cop’s sharp features softened. “You didn’t really steal this car, did you, son?”
“No. It was loaned to me. Like I said.”
The two cops looked at each other, then the younger one’s bulldog mug wrinkled into a plea of mercy, and the older one nodded.
“Look, friend,” the older one said, promoting me again, “this was a roust. We were supposed to haul you in. Keep you busy.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know.” The younger one shrugged. “A guy tipped us you’d be driving down this road sometime this evening, and we been keepin’ an eye out.”
I jerked a thumb toward the Terraplane. “Was this car reported stolen?”
“No,” Calvin said, shaking his head, a thumb in his gunbelt. “But the guy said you’d buy the story.”
I nodded. “And you’d just put me in a holding cell for a few hours.”
“Yeah,” the young one said. “And call a number and let this guy know we had ya…then again when we let ya out.”
Didn’t these clowns know they might have been setting me up for a rubout? No self-respecting Chicago cop would do that—for less than a C-note.
“What did this guy look like?”
“Gray hair, dark eyebrows, dark suit,” the younger one said. “Medium build, maybe six feet. Respectable-looking.”
Miller.
“What did he pay you?”
“Sawbuck each,” Calvin said.
Life was cheap in California. I dug in my pocket, but the younger one said, “No! Your money’s no good.”
I don’t think his partner appreciated this magnanimous gesture, but he let it go.
In fact, he said, “We ain’t gonna be party to rousting a brother officer.”
“Thank you, fellas,” I said.
And they tipped their hats to me, walked back to their black Ford, cut the spotlight, and headed back toward Burbank.
A few minutes later, I pulled into Lowman’s Motor Court, wondering just what the hell I’d gotten myself into. If Miller was military intelligence, willing to buy off local cops to set me up in some fashion, I needed to head home in a hurry, back to my contacts at the Trib. The sooner this was in print, the better.
I didn’t remember leaving the lights on in my cabin, and in retrospect you’d figure a guy in my business would be smarter; but the truth is, if I was smart I wouldn’t be in my business, and nobody had been parked in my stall, or the two stalls next to mine, which was the last in the row of cabins, so when I stepped inside and found the two guys tossing my room, I was genuinely surprised.
And they were surprised to see me, as after all I was supposed to be in a holding cell in Burbank or Glendale or somewhere. So I froze and they froze….
They were the best-dressed shakedown artists I ever saw, clean-shaven men in their late twenties in dark well-pressed suits with tasteful striped ties and clean collars and flourishes of hanky in their damn breast pockets and lighter-color fedoras with snappy snugged-down brims. The one nearest me was larger, with the blank expression of a college boy on an athletic scholarship; the other one was smaller but sturdy-looking with a blandly handsome face out of a shirt ad. Neither had taken off his coat to search the place, which was turned well and truly upside-down, bed stripped, mattress on the floor, drawers out of the dresser, the couple chairs upended, nightstand lamp sitting on the carpet, my suitcase on the floor, my clothing scattered. They were insurance investigators poking around the aftermath of a tornado.
The dresser, though its drawers were stacked atop each other on the floor, remained upright, and on it were a few key effects of mine, specifically my little notebook and my nine-millimeter Browning.
It took perhaps a second and a half for all of that to register, and another half-second for one of the clean-cut customers—the one nearest me, who’d been thumbing through a Bible withdrawn from the nightstand drawer, perhaps seeking guidance—to lunge at me, straight-arm slamming the door behind me, sealing me within the cabin, and with his left hand, in a blow as casual as it was powerful, slapping me with the Bible.
The Good Book taught me a lesson, sending me to my knees; but I’d learned other lessons long ago, and swung an elbow up into his groin, not once, but three times, eliciting a howl and sending him tumbling back, cushioned by the mattress on the floor, though I don’t think it did him much good.
The smaller intruder, his face white and wide-eyed with alarm, was reaching inside his suitcoat and I doubted it was for his card. I was still on my knees—the bigger guy was busy rolling around, clutching his balls and yowling in pain—and my fingers found that Bible and I flung it at the smaller bastard, and its pages fluttered like wings as it flew past him, crashing into the far wall, but startling him enough to send his fedora flying and gain me time to get to my feet, grab the nightstand lamp from the floor, and hurl it at him like a bomb.
This missed him also, smashing into, and just plain smashing, the dresser mirror, but at least it kept the bastard on his toes. The bigger one seemed to be emerging from that fetal ball he’d been rolling around in, and I stomped him in the stomach before charging toward the smaller guy, who was clawing under his suitcoat. If he wanted a gun, mine was right next to him, on the dresser, and when I reached him, I snatched the nine-millimeter in my grasp, shaking off shards of mirror making brittle rain, and whapped the barrel across his face, breaking his nose in a shower of blood, twin streams of scarlet shooting from his nostrils, and when his hand emerged from inside his suitcoat, he indeed did hold a gun, a short-barreled .38, but it didn’t last long, fumbling from his unconscious fingers as he tumbled backward, in a crumpled pile that would do his nicely pressed suit absolutely no good at all.
I turned back to the bigger intruder, who was pushing up off the mattress, a very tough man in a nice suit; his hat had flown off too, his face a mask of the rage that had overridden the pain from my elbows in the nuts and stomp to the stomach. He was digging under his suitcoat and probably wasn’t looking for his comb; I pointed the nine-millimeter at his face and said, “Let’s play Wild West and see who wins.”
Something registered in his eyes, and his hand froze within the coat, and I leaned forward and slapped him with the nine-millimeter, like he’d slapped me with the Bible, and his eyes did a slot-machine roll before he fell backward onto that mattress again.
Something was grasping at my pants leg, and I glanced over my shoulder and down where the smaller guy had crawled over—tears streaming down his face with its shattered nose and blood trailing into his mouth like a dripping scarlet Groucho mustache—and I shook him off, as if he were a dog trying to hump my leg. I pointed the gun down at him and said, “This is my best suit. Get blood on it at your own risk.”
He was breathing hard and then he started to choke on the blood in his mouth from his nose. I said, “Shit,” and stuck my gun in my belt, reached down and picked him up by the lapels and sat him on the bed’s box spring, to help him not strangle on his own blood. I’m just that kind of guy.
The bigger one, asprawl on the mattress, was still unconscious. I removed his gun from its shoulder holster, turning myself into a t
wo-gun kid by stuffing it in my waistband next to my nine-millimeter; then I looked in his inside suitcoat pocket for his billfold. The name on his driver’s license was John Smith and he resided in Encino, California; no pictures of a wife and kids, no business cards, no nothing. The other guy, who was sitting there whimpering and snorting blood, didn’t protest when I checked out his billfold.
His name was Robert Jones, and he lived in Encino, too. He also had no wife and kids, nor any sign of being in any sort of business.
A knock came at the door. Had somebody finally noticed the slight commotion? The mild hubbub?
“Yeah?” I called.
The voice was timid, male. “Mr. Heller, are you all right? It’s the manager. Should I call the police?”
“No! No, I’m fine.”
The timid voice tried for strength. “Mr. Heller, please open the door. I’m afraid I have to insist….”
I dug in my pocket for my money clip, figuring a sawbuck ought to pave the way to a little silence. With some luck I could catch a night train to somewhere; a sleeper sounded mighty good right now. Maybe a double sawbuck…
I opened the door and William Miller’s hand holding a damp white cloth reached out and the overwhelming odor of chloroform accompanied my final thought, which was to wonder if I’d ever wake up again.
Groggy, my mouth filmed with a medicinal aftertaste and the thickness of sleep, with perhaps just a hint of Lobster Newburg, I blinked under the glare of a high overhead light, a conical shaft of brightness that singled me out in a darkened room. For the second time tonight, I was in the spotlight. If this was still tonight….
I sat slumped in a chair, a simple metal folding chair, and my hands were free; I ran one of them up over my face and felt the stubble of beard and ran my fingers into my scalp and massaged. My Florsheimed feet were roped to the legs of the chair; another rope looped my midsection, tying me to the chair. I was in the pants of my garbardine suit and in my white shirt, my suitcoat gone, my tie gone. And needless to say, the nine-millimeter and .38 I’d stuffed in my waistband were long gone.
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