by L. A. Morse
“I hope you’re not going to give me any of that stuff about seeing this through to the end. Honor, that’s what a man does, shit like that. That got you into this in the first place.”
“No. I meant that I can’t. I’ve got no place to run to. I’ve got nothing to run with. And even if I did, I don’t see how I could go far enough or stay away long enough. I figure I’ve got people on both sides with long reaches and longer memories.”
“Then you better provide some explanations they can buy.”
I nodded agreement. “It looks like I’ve got two lines to go on—Sal, and the kid.”
“And not much time.”
“Not much at all.”
“You could probably use some help.”
I smiled and shrugged. “Probably.”
“You know, Jake, I was pissed when you cut me out before.”
“I know, but I figured it was my operation. I still do.”
“Okay.” O’Bee nodded. “But this time, I want in all the way.”
“Shit. You see what’s going on here. This is no joke. It’s really scary.”
“I see it.”
I looked at him. I wanted his help, but I couldn’t see it from his side. “Why?”
For a second I saw that same look that had disturbed me in the lieutenant’s office; then he grinned. “Tradition. I told you, Jake, O’Brien always has to save Spanner’s ass.”
“You mean like some people save old tin foil or pieces of string?”
O’Bee thought a minute, then shook his head. “Nah. That stuff might be good for something one day.” He winked.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Back into town.
I dropped O’Brien at one of his cop bars, where he was going to see what more he could get on Tony New. I was concerned about O’Bee. In just the two days since I’d last seen him, he looked worse—older, weaker, less healthy. He didn’t say anything and brushed off the few cautious probes I made, but I didn’t have a very good feeling about him. Still, the thought of doing something other than sitting around Sunset Grove collecting lint seemed to pick him up.
I went to the library on 5th Street. There’d been times when it seemed I spent a large part of my life in there, going through old telephone directories, trying to get a line on some deadbeat or other, seeing if I could figure what hole the rabbit had run into.
I was prepared for another long haul, but I got lucky. Both O’Brien and Nicholson had put Sal’s death at two years ago. Using that as the starting point, I went forward and backward, a week at a time, through the microfilmed Times. In the fifth week I found it.
It hadn’t been one of the day’s big items, only four inches on page 27. “Ex-gangster, three others, die in rooming-house fire.” The headline was almost as long as the story that followed, which did little except twice repeat that information, and mention that arson was suspected.
The Examiner had about the same information, fleshed out with a picture of a gutted house, and a mostly fictional account of Sal’s criminal career, which sounded like it might have come from a pulp magazine from the time Sal was sent up. They also had a few hyperventilated quotes about the “blaze” from the rooming-house manager, one Herbert Soames, who’d been lucky enough to have a room on the ground floor and a window that opened.
Not a hell of a lot to go on. I looked through another ten days’ of papers, but there were no follow-ups. The story was as dead as the guys in the rooming house.
I found a pay phone and decided to see if my luck would hold. It did. The first eleven H. Soameses said “No” when I asked if they had lived in such-and-such a rooming house two years before. My twelfth dime brought me a guy that said, “If you’re from the insurance company, I already told everything I know, a hundred times. If you’re anybody else, go fuck yourself.” Then he hung up. Though we were a ways yet from the cocktail hour, it sounded like Herbert had decided to get a jump on things.
The address for him was pretty close to the library. After that pleasant exchange on the phone, I thought I’d have better luck if I called on him in person.
His place was another crummy rooming house, a smallish two-story wooden affair, not too far from the one that had turned. Like every other building on the block, it had needed paint and repairs for at least ten years, but the only likely renovations would be done with a bulldozer. The neighborhood had never been that swell. Now it was home to transients, welfare cases, illegal immigrants, recent parolees, and old people trying to get by on Social Security. If I got booted out of my house, I figured this kind of place might be my future.
Always assuming Tony New and Sergeant Nicholson were going to let me have a future.
A sickly, hollow sensation opened in my stomach, like I’d stepped into an elevator and found the car wasn’t there. I took a couple of deep breaths. One thing at a time, Spanner, one at a time.
I noticed a pair of ancient, scared-looking eyes staring out from a crack in the curtains in the house next door. Down the street a couple of nine-year-old hoodlums were eying me speculatively, probably wondering if it would be worth their while to roll me. In a nearby backyard a cat screamed.
I stepped over a rusting tricycle that was missing a rear wheel and went up the shaky front steps. Around the foundation there were empty beer cans, brittle pieces of yellow newspaper, and other flotsam deposited by some invisible tide. A faded cardboard sign announced ROOMS. A smaller hand-lettered card thumbtacked on the jamb informed me that Herbert Soames was the manager here. Only previous experience could have gotten him such a cushy position.
The front door was open, and I went down the hallway. Like a thousand similar buildings, it smelled of sweat, rancid oil, and futility. The last door had a metal strip on it that said Manager. I knocked.
After sounds of coughing, spitting, groaning, and shuffling, the door opened. Herbert Soames was a skinny guy with a concave chest, gray skin, and a dry, flaking scalp. His eyes were bloodshot and looked nicotine-stained. The collar of his shirt was buttoned, way too large for his saggy chicken neck. In the dark room behind him, most flat surfaces were covered with empty bottles, overturned glasses, and dirty plates. He looked to be my age. I figured he was actually about fifty.
“Thirty-five a week. In advance. No cooking in the rooms.” He belched. I didn’t say anything. “ ‘Course, if you explain the situation—” he made the universal gesture, thumb and forefinger rubbing together “—exceptions can be made.”
The flat edge to his voice indicated that before he came here to make his fortune he’d come from somewhere in the Midwest. Christ, how many guys like Herbert Soames had I dealt with over the years, alcoholic fleabag flunkies trying to screw a nickel wherever they could? Hundreds, probably more. I wondered if he realized he was a cliché.
“I don’t want a room,” I said. “I want some information.”
“Did you just call?” Yellow eyes narrowed.
“Yeah.”
“And what’d I tell you.”
“To fuck myself.”
“Good advice.” He started to shut the door.
“I didn’t say I wanted free information.”
Both the door and his eyes opened slightly. I pulled a sawbuck out of my pocket. A claw shot out and grabbed the bill. He held it close to his face. I couldn’t tell if he was studying it or smelling it. Whichever, satisfied as to its quality, he made it disappear into a deep trouser pocket.
“That don’t buy a hell of a lot.”
I figured it could buy every single thing he knew, and with my change I’d have enough for a good dinner. “I don’t want much,” I said.
Soames walked back into the room, leaving the door open. I followed him in. He sat down, located an unlabeled bottle that still had something in it, and poured some brown stuff into a dirty jelly glass. I moved some magazines aside, clearing a space for myself on the daybed. It looked like Herbert might’ve been a good customer of one of Tony New’s establishments devoted to adult entertainment. Maybe I was ju
st old, but I couldn’t see what pleasure Herbert derived from pictures of women doing things to themselves with pieces of fruit.
I started asking my questions. Not surprisingly, he had few answers. The other rooming house had been much like this one. Other than the fact that Sal had lived there for about a year before the fire, Soames couldn’t tell me anything about him. Didn’t know what he’d been doing, didn’t know who he’d been seeing, nothing. Big help. I began to think I’d wasted my money.
When I asked him about the fire, he got very evasive, defensive, and I got the idea that some people had thought he’d had some responsibility for it, if only through negligence. Soames said that was most unfair, since the inspector had been nearly certain it’d been deliberately set. Besides, Soames said, he himself had barely escaped. He’d been in bed because he’d been feeling poorly that night. Yeah, I thought; a couple quarts of cooking sherry can do that to you.
“So you were the only survivor?”
“No. There was one other.” He sounded disappointed, as though this in some way diminished his uniqueness.
“Oh? The papers didn’t say anything about that.”
Soames made a face, brought up some phlegm that he hawked into a filthy handkerchief. He examined the treasure before putting the rag away.
“Well, I say there was one, see? Five guys lived on the second floor. Five.” He held up a hand with the fingers spread wide. “But they only found four bodies. Four.” He tucked his thumb in. “And you shoulda seen them. Bar-bee-cued! Talk about being burned to a crisp! Ha!” That idea seemed to cheer him up, and he took a big swallow from his glass. “Why, there wasn’t much more of them there than you’d get from a twenty-five cent cee-gar.”
Oh, yeah? The papers hadn’t said anything about that either. I began to see what might have happened.
“How’d they identify them, then?”
Soames lifted his narrow shoulders and shuddered, then took another swig. “The fire guys had me tell them where everybody’s room was. Kind of draw a plan. Then—” He cringed again. “Then those bastards made me walk through the place, pointing everything out to them. There wasn’t any call for that. I was a sick man.” He coughed a couple of times. “You know, I can’t go by one of those take-out rib places without being reminded of that night. Shee-it.”
I didn’t know if it was the musty smell of old corruption in Soames’s apartment or his story, but I was feeling a bit queasy myself.
“About the, uh, survivor,” I said casually, “you know what happened to him?”
Apparently, I wasn’t casual enough, because Soames went all sly on me. He coyly smiled, showing a few teeth about the same color yellow as his eyes, and made that gesture with his thumb and forefinger.
Hell, why bother? Was he liable to tell me anything I wanted to know? I doubted it, but I pulled out a five. This was the kind of game you had to play through. At least, that was the way I’d always done it before.
Soames grabbed the bill, rubbed a greasy thumb across Abe’s whiskers, and made it disappear into the same pocket.
“Don’t know!” Soames cackled gleefully.
Shit. I was getting tired of being jerked around. Seventy-eight or not, I was going to wring that booze-rotted son of a bitch’s scrawny neck. And enjoy doing it.
It must’ve showed, because Soames hastily held up his hands. “No. I meant, that’s what’s so funny about it.”
“What’s so funny about what?”
“After the fire. This guy—Winchester was his name—”
“Winchester?”
“Yeah. Harry Winchester. Like the rifle, you know? That’s how I remember it.”
“Okay. Goon.”
“Well, this Winchester never showed up.”
“Never showed up?”
“That’s right. Disappeared. Never seen again.”
“Then what makes you so sure he wasn’t killed in the fire?”
Soames made a face, like I was a real dumb shit. “Told you. Four rooms, four bodies. But Winchester’s room was empty.”
Therefore... Well, why not? It must’ve looked reasonable at the time. Besides, what difference did it make if it was one poor loser or another? Who was there to care?
I stood up.
“A good thing, too,” Soames said.
“What?”
“That he never showed up.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. He probably woulda wanted some of his rent back.”
“And you weren’t going to give it to him.”
“ ‘Course not! The management can’t be responsible for things like that. You pay your money and you takes your chances.”
Soames nodded vigorously a couple of times at the righteousness of management’s stance. I left him chuckling over the recollection of this ancient—and dubious—triumph.
After the claustrophobic atmosphere of Soames’s room, even the dismal street felt pretty good.
Well, I’d paid my money and it had gotten me more out of Herbert than I’d had any right to reasonably expect.
One mystery was solved. That left me with only eighty or ninety more to go.
Obviously, what’s-his-name Winchester hadn’t been the one who got away. He had disappeared, though. Literally up in smoke.
The problem was, my explanation raised almost as many questions as it answered. Why had Sal disappeared after the fire? Why did he not correct the mistake that’d been made, apparently preferring to be thought dead? What was he trying to hide or get away with? Or from? Could it be that he’d set the fire to cover his trail?
Sal was a nasty, sinister bastard, but I thought that that would’ve been too vicious, even for him. His style was different On the other hand, my previous assessments of him had not been exactly dead-on. I thought I’d better stop making assumptions.
Since I now had some idea about what had happened two years before, I needed to find out why. Maybe that would give me an angle on Sal’s resurrection.
And the other miracles that followed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Barbara Twill lived on one of those little streets near the Hollywood Cemetery, close to where the B studios of Gower Gulch used to be. It was one of those remnants of old Hollywood, two rows of tiny stucco bungalows facing each other across a narrow flagstone courtyard. The Mexican tile fountain in the center hadn’t worked since V-E Day, and it was now filled with rubbish. A headless plaster flamingo lay on its side in one of the dried-up flower beds.
A couple of lifetimes ago, Barbara had been one of those slender, bouncy little false blondes who filled up chorus lines or the background in steamy bath scenes in Roman extravaganzas. She once told me she’d been in sixteen pictures and had spoken a total of twenty-three words, most of them one syllable. Finally, she got tired of having to say yes ten or twelve times in somebody’s office before she got the chance to say it on the screen.
Like a lot of girls in her situation, she’d run with the speedy crowd of demi-crooks who made up the fringes of the big time—gamblers, hustlers, and other hopefuls who were known as local color. Using those connections, she’d set herself up as a bookie, and found she was more successful giving betting lines than lines of dialogue. She’d been doing it ever since, making her maybe the oldest bookmaker in the world.
She hadn’t left her bungalow for twenty years, and for the last ten, had hardly ever gotten out of her specially built armchair. Still, her telephones kept her wired to everything, and she knew more about what was going on in the twilight world of sharks and shakers than nearly anyone in the city. Sooner or later everybody, cops and clowns, talked to Barbara Twill, to tell her his troubles or to get the lowdown on someone else’s.
Behind the three-quarter-closed Venetian blinds of her front window, I made out a bulky shape that raised an arm in greeting. Before I could tap on the door, I heard a voice call that it was open.
I went into a nearly dark room, the only light being the few rays that got in between the slats of the blinds.
There was a short whirring sound, and an immense overstuffed chair swiveled to face me.
“My, my. Jake Spanner. What an unexpected pleasure. What brings you here? Is one of us dying?”
I laughed. “Not you, I hope. How are you, Babs?”
My eyes were becoming adjusted to the dim light and I saw her hand wigwag, meaning so-so. The hand was small and very puffy, like an inflated latex glove. Her legs were straight out on a built-in foot rest. The feet inside laceless men’s tennis shoes were tiny, but the ankles ballooned out. Emerging from her tentlike pink housecoat, her legs were thick unmoving columns loosely wrapped in Ace bandages. Her little heart-shaped mouth was nearly lost among the jowls and chins. In her wild young days as a starlet she’d been known as Bubbles. Forty-five years and a hundred fifty pounds later, she looked like Orson Welles in drag.
“Take a load off, Jake.”
I pulled over a folding metal chair and did. There was a muted buzzing. Barbara rotated her chair and picked up the receiver of one of the five telephones on the large L-shaped table that half enclosed her. The table also held books, snacks, medicine—anything she might need. Immobilized by her weight, asthma, edema, varicose veins, and who knew what else, her physical world had contracted to a five-foot-square area. She seemed, however, more alive, in tune, than a lot of the zombies I had observed in my recent travels around town, each riding his own hobbyhorse with monomaniacal dedication.
“Yes... yes,” Barbara said. “A hundred across the board. Right.” She hung up and tapped out something on the typewriter terminal of one of those small personal computers which sat next to her phones. “What a sucker bet. Christ, what a turkey! He could put money on the sun coming up and lose. But I guess if gamblers were smart, there’d be a lot of poor bookies. And there aren’t.”
“Not many, no.” I pointed to the computer. “That’s new, isn’t it?”
“Gotta keep up with the times, Jake. Don’t know how I ever got along without it. Getting too old to keep all those numbers in my head.”