by L. A. Morse
I rolled over to see where the light was coming from. It was the headlights of the Chevy. For a second, I couldn’t figure what my car was doing in the bathroom, and then everything came back with a dizzying rush that almost made me sick again.
The car’s engine was off. Both doors were open. Beneath the one on the passenger side, a dark shape was sprawled on the ground.
I tried to call Sal’s name, but my throat was raw and it came out more like a growl.
Slowly, slowly, I thought. I wanted to get over to Sal, but I wouldn’t do either of us any good if I was sick again.
I got up to a sitting position. The damage didn’t seem too bad. I had a lump at the base of my skull, but whoever had hit me had known what he was doing. The blow had gone mostly onto my neck, and it didn’t seem that anything was broken. He’d just wanted to put me out temporarily, not cause permanent damage. How considerate.
Everything else seemed to be okay as well, even though I was stiff and sore all over. I had a bruise on my left side, under my arm, where I’d fallen on my gun. Lot of good that had done. Jesus.
From the way my knees hurt, I figured I must have dropped onto them as I went down, but they moved, so I guessed they’d be all right. In fact, nothing seemed to be too bad, which was kind of a pleasant surprise, since I knew very well that seventy-eight-year-old bones had a tendency to snap like matchsticks. Shit. A broken hip on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere was not my idea of a classy exit. I didn’t even want to think about an obit for that one. A little too close. A little too real.
Also a little too real was Sal Piccolo lying in the dirt, unmoving, next to my car.
Using the barrier, I pulled myself up to my feet. For a second I thought I was going to go over again, but I held on until the dizziness passed.
Pain shooting up and down from my knees with every slow step, I crossed the twenty feet to where Sal lay. It felt a hell of a lot farther, and part of me wished that it was. Even though I had to get to him, I wasn’t at all anxious to find what I knew would be there.
I thought I probably felt worse than I’d ever felt in my life. Christ, what an asshole I’d been to think this was going to be fun. What a schmuck. Why didn’t I just stick to my memories and my paperbacks and my park bench, like every other fucking old fart.
I turned Sal over, expecting to see a bloody hole, or something. Instead, his eyelids fluttered open.
“Oh, shit,” he said, and then groaned.
All the stuff I’d been feeling burst out in a barking laugh. It was relief. I realized I’d been thinking things would continue on just like in the book, where Marlowe got up and found his client dead. So much for life imitating art.
“What’s so fucking funny?” Sal said hoarsely.
“Nothing.” I shook my head, which was a mistake, because it felt like things were still loose inside. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I think so.” He groaned again as he tried to sit up.
“Careful. Take it easy.”
“I’m okay. Just help me up.”
Easier said than done. For the second time that day, we flailed around like a pair of Skid Row drunks whose motor coordination had been wiped out by too much Sterno and shoe polish. However, I finally got Sal sitting on a corner of the front seat, with his feet resting on the ground. He was leaning forward, holding his head in his hands. It looked like it might be too heavy for them. I sort of draped myself over the open door, breathing heavily.
“I assume the money’s gone?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
Sal closed his eyes and put his fingers up to his temples, concentrating. After a minute he opened his eyes and raised his head. He swiveled around so that one foot was inside the car, and he leaned heavily against the back of the seat. Under the dim courtesy light his skin was gray. His expensive black suit was covered with dust and dirt. He looked beaten, exhausted. I could only imagine what I looked like. I didn’t want to know.
“Let’s see,” Sal said. “You bent down, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. The barrier was caught, or fastened, or something.”
“Well, as you did, this guy came out of the bushes over there.” Sal pointed off to the right. The scrub was thick and outside the range of the headlights. A platoon could’ve waited there unseen.
“What’d he look like?”
Sal shook his head, wincing a little at the movement. “Don’t know. He had one of those ski-mask things on. He was big. Moved fast. By the time I saw him, he was almost up to you. I tried to warn you, but—”
“Yeah. I heard you call my name, just before I got hit.”
“Yeah, shit. I was too slow. By the time I realized what was happening, you were going down.”
“What was I hit with? Could you see?”
Sal shrugged. “I think it was a sap of some kind. It didn’t look like it was the first time he’d used it.”
“That was what I thought. He could’ve cracked my head like an egg, but he hit me in just the right spot. Either I was lucky, or he knew what he was doing.”
“I’ve seen enough of those guys at work. I’d say he knew what he was doing.”
I carefully touched the lump I had. It hurt like a son of a bitch. “I suppose I should be thankful. What next?”
Sal shook his head, his mouth twisting into an expression of disgust. “Jesus, Jake, I froze. Like some goddamn greenhorn who’s never seen any action. I couldn’t decide if I should get out and help you or get behind the wheel and get the hell out of here.”
No question. He should’ve gotten away. Whatever had happened to me, had happened. Nothing Sal could’ve done would’ve changed it, but the issue about himself and the dough hadn’t been decided yet. Still, it was kind of nice that he’d even thought about helping me. Stupid, but nice.
“You should’ve driven away,” I said.
“I guess. What gets me is that I didn’t do anything. Just sat there like a farm boy, with my mouth open and my dick hanging out, saying, ‘Huh? Huh?’ Shit, I know better than that.”
“Maybe you knew better, Sal. Face it, it’s been a long time since either of us has been street-fast.”
“Yeah, but still... Shit!”
“We’re both old and slow—okay?—so give it a rest. What happened next?”
Sal looked like he wasn’t convinced that being old and slow was a satisfactory explanation. I usually felt the same way, but it didn’t change anything.
He nodded a little. “Actually, it wouldn’t have made any difference even if I had done something.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, almost as soon as you went down, a car pulled out from behind and blocked the road.”
“From behind? You mean, it came up the road behind us, or that it had been parked, and pulled out from the side?”
“From the side. About fifteen, twenty yards back.”
Shit. A nice setup, and we walked into it like a couple of pigeons.
“So even if you’d jumped right behind the wheel, you wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere. You’d’ve been stuck between the barrier and the car, right?”
“Right. But the point is, I didn’t think fast enough to even try.”
My head was getting worse by the minute, and I didn’t need any more of Sal’s self-recriminations. “The point is, we shouldn’t have been here in the first place. But we were. So go on.”
“Okay,” he sighed. “A guy got out of the car. Fast. Ran over to me, waving a gun. He had a mask on, too, but he was a lot smaller than the other guy. Couldn’t have been more than five-three, four.”
“Anything else about him?”
“Yeah. He had a real funny voice.”
“Funny? How?”
“I don’t know. Sort of high-pitched, squeaky. Like, maybe, a record that’s being played too fast. I’m not sure, but I got the idea he was pretty young.”
“How young? A kid?”
“Not that young. Twenties, I’d gu
ess, but I don’t know. I have trouble with age. Below forty or so, they all seem the same to me.”
“I know what you mean.”
“But I still think he was young.”
“Okay. That’s something.”
That’s something. What the hell did I think I was going to do with it? Listening to myself, I couldn’t believe what I was doing, that I was carrying out an interrogation like it was routine, like it hadn’t been more than fifteen years since I had last done it, and like I was going to do something with the answers. Christ! Like I wasn’t some decrepit old dick with a bump on his head who hurt all over, and who should have been in bed hours ago with a glass of warm milk and a plate of graham crackers.
“So he told me to get out of the car,” Sal went on. “I got out. He told me to hand over the money. I said I didn’t have any money, but he just repeated I should hand it over. I asked him if he had Tommy, if Tommy was all right. He didn’t say anything, just said to give him the dough, in that high squeaky voice of his. It sounded like he was getting real pissed off, you know. And I got the idea that maybe he wasn’t quite right.” Sal tapped his temple with a forefinger. “The other guy, the one who’d hit you, had come over by then. The little one told me to turn around. I said he didn’t have to do that, that the money was in the briefcase. I said he could have it, but to just let me have Tommy back. He kind of laughed then, a real strange sound that almost made me shiver, and I got the idea that maybe I had a real crazy one there, like, uh, Eddie Peanuts. You remember him?”
Yeah, I remembered Eddie Peanuts. Few people that had heard of him were ever liable to forget. His real name was Eddie Patterson or Peterson, something like that, but he was known as Eddie Peanuts, because he always carried a pocketful of them that he cracked with one hand, usually while the other one held a razor-sharp six-inch blade. He was also called Mad Eddie, but only by people who were pretty sure he’d never hear about it.
For a couple of years, ‘31–’32, maybe ‘32–’3, Eddie was very much in demand by anyone who wanted to scare anybody else—or worse. He loved hurting people, a true sadistic psychopath. He probably would’ve worked for nothing, but everybody made sure Eddie was well paid.
With somebody like Mad Eddie, you could never be certain which stories were true and which were just stories, but the fact that they were told at all was usually enough. He’d been known to reduce big tough numbers to quivering aspic just by sitting in the same room with them, cracking his peanuts, one after the other. Eddie’s type, though, had a tendency to flame very brightly but also very briefly. It wasn’t long before the people who employed him decided he was more of a liability than an asset. One dark April night, Eddie was helped off the Santa Monica pier, with enough lead inside him to make sure he’d sink. Even so, it was a long time before a lot of people could see peanuts without feeling an uncomfortable twinge. If Sal was right, and the guy that had gotten us was anything at all like Mad Eddie, things didn’t look encouraging for our side.
“What happened next?” I said.
“Well, when I heard that laugh, I figured that wasn’t anyone I was going to fuck around with. He looked up at me and said real quiet that I should turn around. I knew what was coming but I didn’t say anything, and I turned around. Shit, I can’t remember ever doing anything like that—saying, okay, here I am, I’m all yours, slug me.”
“That you did is probably the only reason you still have a head to ache. So you were hit then?”
“Yeah. Down and out. I figure it must’ve been the big one. He’s really good. I’ve hardly got a bump.” Sal shrugged. “That’s it. What do you think?”
I felt like telling him that things had worked out just the way he deserved for being so stupid and stubborn, but I didn’t. The temptation was always great, but I’ve never yet encountered a situation that was improved by saying I told you so. Anyway, I recognized that part of the responsibility was mine.
I looked at Sal for a while. I was still hanging onto the door. I badly wanted to sit down, but I wasn’t sure I could get up again if I did.
“Well,” I said, “there are two possibilities. The pair that hit us are the same ones that grabbed Tommy, and for whatever reason, they decided to change the arrangements.”
“You think it could be that?”
I shrugged. I kind of doubted it, but I really didn’t know one way or the other.
Sal nodded sadly. “And if not...”
I shrugged again. “Then a joker entered the scene. Somebody ripped off both you and the kidnappers.”
Sal and I looked at each other. There was no need to say anything more. He didn’t exactly seem to shrink; it was more that he went hollow, that there was nothing but a thin gray shell around a terrible, terrifying emptiness.
“What do you think?” he finally said, sounding tired, very tired. “Should we go on to the drop?”
I looked at my watch. We were twenty minutes late. Christ, only twenty minutes. It felt a lot longer, years longer. Amazing how time flies when you’re having fun.
I shook my head. “No, there’d be no point. If the kidnappers were the ones that hit us, they were never at the drop. If it wasn’t them, they must have figured something went wrong and cleared out. And even if they are still there, I doubt they’d come out and talk. No, you can figure they’ll be in touch.”
“Then we’re going back?” Sal sounded completely defeated.
“It looks the best thing. We don’t know what the situation is. I mean, you might be getting a phone call telling you to pick up Tommy.”
Sal gave me a look—half hopeful, half hopeless—that made me wish I hadn’t said that. Especially since I didn’t really believe it. Real smart, Spanner.
With a groan I launched myself from the door. I reached in the car, got a flashlight from the glove compartment, and started hobbling, stiff-legged, down the road. My knees were now so sore I could hardly bend them, and I began to wonder if something hadn’t cracked after all.
“What are you doing?” Sal called, but I waved my hand without turning around.
What I was doing was continuing to play the damn stupid game I had been playing all night, acting out the role I’d been hired for. After having fucked up all the way down the line, I was now going right by the book. Questioning Sal. Getting the story down. Taking in all the information there was to get. Just like I was still in business, and not an ancient fool. Now I was going to check out the place where the car had been parked.
The old dick looks for clues.
Swell.
Moving with all the grace of a rusting mechanical toy, I staggered over to the spot, a thirty-foot-deep break in the manzanita scrub that lined the road. I didn’t know what I thought I might find. Or what I’d do with it if I did find something. Make a plaster cast of tire tracks? A fragment of fiber from a ski mask, to be analyzed and then traced in turn to the manufacturer, the sporting goods store, and the crook who bought it? Maybe a discarded matchbook that would lead me to Flo’s Cantina, where the gang hung out? Sure.
In any event, I didn’t find anything. Nothing. It had been months since there was any rain, so the ground was as hard as concrete and there were no tracks. Nor were there any matchbooks, or butts from a rare brand of Egyptian cigarette sold by only one tobacconist in a hundred-mile radius. In fact, there was no sign that anyone or anything had ever waited in ambush. Which, I supposed, was exactly what one would expect. In all the cases I’d worked on, the number of times that the discovery of an obscure bit of physical evidence had led to a solution could be counted on one hand. And you’d still have fingers free to scratch your head and pick your nose. It just didn’t happen. Maybe to Al Tracker, but not to me. Still, you never knew. So you went through the motions, which was what I did.
On the way back to the car I paused and looked at the area from the road. I tried to remember if I’d noticed the opening on the way in, but I couldn’t recall. Probably not. My attention had been directed ahead, and it was just about at that point
that I first saw the barricade. Was missing the gap one more lapse, or had it been unavoidable? I couldn’t tell. The area was in pretty heavy darkness. Perhaps a car parked back as far as it could go wouldn’t be noticed in passing unless you happened to turn to look right at it. Maybe not even then, I tried to tell myself, if it was dark-colored.
Shit.
I realized that for all my careful questioning, I had failed to ask Sal what was probably the only meaningful thing. Like a has-been ham, I was playing a familiar role but I kept forgetting my lines.
I got back to the car and climbed behind the wheel. My legs still hurt like crazy, and it was a relief to sit down. Sal was slumped in the seat, leaning back, eyes closed. When I pulled the door shut, he turned and looked at me.
“Anything?” he asked, not really sounding interested.
“No. Look, I’m a jerk. What the hell kind of car was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on. Think.”
“I said I don’t know. What difference does it make?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe plenty. Just don’t give up yet. Things might still work out.”
“Sure.”
“Look, asshole, this has been your thing all the way. You want to pack it in now? Fine. You can let them take your grandkid and your dough and hit you, and you can just roll over. I didn’t want in this at all, and if that’s the way you want it, be my guest.”
I turned the key in the ignition. It would’ve spoiled the effect of my pep talk a little if the engine had sputtered and died, but the Chevy once again rose to the occasion.
Sal sat up, some life showing in his eyes. “Okay.”
“Okay.” I smiled and put my hand on his arm. “Hold on, pal. What kind of car was it?”
“I really don’t know. You know, they all kind of look the same now, not like it used to be.”
“Yeah, I know. Does that mean it was new?”
“I think so. Fairly big.”
“Color?”
“Dark.” Sal closed his eyes, thinking. “No, I can’t do better than that. Just dark. Maybe black, maybe blue. Even brown or green. Shit, I don’t know. Big help.”