Sledgehammer

by Walter Wager

  Kisses, touches, morning greetings.

  “You’re really going?” she asked.

  “Matter of being responsible. No choice,” he assured in matter-of-fact tones.

  “You’re a strange man,” she judged without complaint.

  “Perhaps, but I used to be much worse. As a matter of fact,” he confessed wryly as he studied her lush beauty, “I was, in my youth, a highly successful bank robber, thief and criminal.”

  She laughed. American humor was so delightfully grotesque.

  “I’m not joking,” her handsome lover insisted. He stroked her shoulder, and her eyes opened wider as she took a deep breath. “I’m not kidding a bit; I worked with one of the smartest mobs in the business for more than three years.”

  Through the open bedroom door he could see the green metal trunk and he thought about Sammy. Marie Antoinette was certainly no fool, Carstairs admitted to himself without hesitation, but if this was really as important and difficult as the millionaire intuitively guessed, then they’d need Sammy Gilman. It wouldn’t hurt to have the wild Italian along either.

  4

  Samuel Mordecai Gilman, a short sturdy man with gray eyes and a talent for numbers, looked out the window at the array of glowing neon tubing and automatically began to compute the light bill of the big hotel half a mile away. He couldn’t help it, being mathematically inclined and endowed with a memory that retained all sorts of odd facts, including the rate schedule of the Las Vegas Electric Company. Remembering all this data served no particular purpose other than to keep his mind off the nonstop clutter that was life in Las Vegas. Even for a metropolitan pleasure dome dedicated to diversion, this city offered too many stimuli in endless irrational sequence. As a matter of fact, he reflected, there was no sequence at all.

  Gilman thought about the scores of whirring wheels and the heaps of colored chips and the all-night dentists, the $39.95 “instant wedding chapels with an orchid for the bride,” the squadrons of little red MGs and the platoons of big blond chorus girls and the peculiar twenty-four-hour days in which people ate breakfast at 3 P.M. and nobody noticed. Everything was going smoothly all the time, 365 days a year, so you could never tell when to brush your teeth or pick up a girl or get divorced. However, the weather was good and the pay was excellent and the cheese cake was almost as satisfying as that in New York. No air pollution, no violence in the streets, no parking problems and a lot of fine-looking women who had—in the words of Frank Loesser—perfect teeth and no last names.

  Mr. Gilman hit the adding machine again, smiled when he saw the total. He had been, of course, right. He could have found the gadget if he’d bothered to search, for he was very close to being an electronics expert, but it pleased him that he could prove the “rigging” mathematically. He enjoyed being right.

  He was always right—well, almost always. He’d been right about the armored car and he’d been right about the train job and he’d calculated the payroll messenger’s schedule right down to the second. He’d been wrong just once, the night everything had gone to pieces and Barringer was arrested. That hardly counted—being the work of an informer, who no longer counted. “The Widow Maker” had attended to that with a .38 Smith & Wesson special. Carstairs had always preferred revolvers to automatics, Gilman recalled absentmindedly.

  At that moment, Harold Dorelli entered the fourth-floor office and broke into Gilman’s reverie. Dorelli, whose dark impassive face resembled that of a forty-five-year-old George Raft, stood about six inches taller than the film star. Dorelli was neither an actor nor a gangster, the latter being quite important in the righteous state of Nevada where men with criminal records are not licensed to manage gambling casinos. Dorelli’s employers included several individuals with impressive underworld credentials and a lot of cash—the Cleveland Boys. Casino manager Dorelli worked for the Cleveland Boys, and Gilman worked for Dorelli.

  “What did you find? Does it check out?” Dorelli demanded.

  “Almost to the penny,” Gilman replied. “As I told you last week, somebody’s using an electronic gizmo to fix the Number Three wheel. It’s been paying out seventy-five hundred to ninety-five hundred more per night for ten days now, and that’s no accident.”

  Dorelli nodded.

  “You don’t believe in accidents, do you, Sammy?”

  “No, especially when it comes to gambling. I believe in mathematics, in averages, in scientific predictability—and so do you. If you didn’t,” he reminded his employer, “you’d be in another business.”

  Samuel Mordecai Gilman was, of course, right.

  Without being unpleasant about it—but still inevitably right.

  “Could one man do it from the outside, or would he need help from one of our people?” the manager of the Desert Delight wondered slowly.

  “Harold, our machines are equipped with the latest and most sophisticated defensive devices, and you know it.”

  The stocky Californian was, as usual, right. There had to be an “inside man,” an accomplice on the casino staff. That meant that the two individuals and their electronic “gizmo” had to be eliminated, but Dorelli wasn’t going to talk about those details with Gilman. They had an understanding on this subject; acts of violence or law-breaking were never to be discussed. Something quite violent and illegal was going to happen to the ambitious adventurers who had dared to steal some $89,600 that belonged to the Cleveland Boys, but Gilman preferred to ignore that.

  “You owe me one hundred dollars, Harold,” he reminded his employer.

  Raised on the Las Vegas code in which welshing on a bet is worse than matricide or bed-wetting, the manager of the Desert Delight paid the wager instantly. He should have remembered that, he thought with a frown as he removed the two $50 bills from his pocket. It was when he put the silver money clip back that he felt the folded telegram.

  “Wire for you,” Dorelli announced as he dropped the yellow Western Union envelope on the desk beside the adding machine.

  Gilman tore open the envelope, read—and then reread—the message from Marie Antoinette. The surprise in his face was unconcealed; he wasn’t prepared for this. All this had ended a long time ago. He glanced at his stainless-steel Omega, saw that he had only twenty-one hours to get there. There was no question of not going, not if Uncle Charles’ pen was involved.

  “Bad news, Sammy?”

  “I don’t know—but I’ll have to go East right away.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  The Californian shrugged noncommittally.

  “I suppose that Artie can look after things for a week or so,” Dorelli reckoned aloud. “Say, is this trouble? The wire?”

  Gilman paused to light a short Canary Island cigar, puffing twice on the luxurious Don Diego before he replied.

  “I would think so,” he answered. “The odds are—and I go with the odds—that this particular person wouldn’t have sent that particular telegram unless there was very big trouble.”

  “You need some money?” volunteered the casino manager, a true Las Vegas thoroughbred who could barely conceive of any problem that cash or a woman wouldn’t cure.

  The man who was always right nodded his thanks, shook his head.

  “Not money—a gun. Don’t look so startled, Harold,” Gilman advised with a wry, sad, amused smile. “Just because I’m so cerebral and statistical now doesn’t mean I didn’t used to be a first-class outlaw in my tarnished youth—a real two-gun pistolero. We were quite an organization, rough as any mob you ever saw in a B movie and ready for anything. We even knocked over a police station.”

  The manager of the Desert Delight gaped.

  “In our day, we were the best in the business,” the gray-eyed Californian recalled. “Quick, tricky, bold—and a little crazy. We even had an acrobat on the team, a big swinger from Boston named Tony Arbolino.”

  If Arbolino was alive and out of jail, Gilman mused as he puffed on the cigar, he’d be getting a wire too. There was no need to calculate the odds o
n that, however. It was a sure thing.

  5

  Tony Arbolino looked down the stairway swarming with armed police, and he laughed. He raised the sub-machine gun to squeeze off two more bursts, listened to the shattered thunder and laughed again in the best Jimmy Cagney tradition. He was well aware that there was nothing funny about this situation, but this was the peculiar way in which he made his living. The police were shooting back. No, he thought as he dodged behind the massive girder, this wasn’t nearly as much fun as the Old Days with Williston and P.T. and the others. The stakes had been much higher, the opposition much more deadly. That had been the Big League, the Biggest.

  The police had five or six lights glaring up at him from the warehouse floor, trying to pick him out on the narrow metal catwalk as they fired insistently from a dozen points below. There wasn’t much time left; they were closing in swiftly. Now the explosions of the machine guns and revolvers were nearly deafening, and big catlike Tony Arbolino tried to remember exactly how he was to get out. He let off three more short bursts as he went over it quickly, in his mind. They’d planned his exit quite carefully and in detail; it was a good scheme even if not too original. Arbolino noticed that the men in blue were putting on quite a show, especially the handsome blond “hero” who was leading the pack up the steps. That pretty boy was probably the lead in a class play at grade school when I was killing police with Andy Williston, Arbolino reflected as he squinted in the blinding beam, and now he’s a “star.”

  A tear-gas shell bloomed suddenly on the catwalk.

  It was about time, and Arbolino emptied his magazine with a defiant curse as he retreated. Gasping and choking in the swirling fumes, he staggered to the fire-escape exit and flung open the door to let in the fresh clean night.

  There it was—safety.

  At that moment, the handsome yellow-haired policeman reached the top of the stairs and fired. Crucified by intersecting spotlights, Tony Arbolino shuddered, stared for a long moment as he struggled to keep going and finally toppled off the roof. The shooting stopped.

  “Cut!” shouted the director, and the set buzzed again with half a hundred conversations. Make-up men rushed to the sweating blond star and script girls turned pages and two starlets who never wore brassieres puffed out their chests like pouter pigeons when they saw a Life photographer approaching in a covey of white-on-white press agents. Nobody but one assistant director, who was practically nobody, paid any attention to Arbolino as he landed in the safety net and bounced.

  The A.D. waved in approval, flashing a “thumbs up” sign. The smiling stunt man swung himself up and over, landing easily on his feet with the resilience of a professional athlete. He was just that, a lithe hard professional with medals as a distance runner, gymnast and judo champion. He had played at much more dangerous games in the past, but these grim sports he never mentioned here in Hollywood. In this city, he was known simply as the best stunt man in the business.

  Taking out the telegram again, he coughed out the last of the imitation tear gas and mopped his brow with the towel that some thoughtful production assistant had left draped over the net. The wire from Marie Antoinette had arrived just as he’d left his home three hours earlier, and now he had a feeling that he wouldn’t sleep in his own bed again for a long time. It was fortunate that his role in the film was completed, for he had to go home to pack. He was glad that there was money in the bank, that Maria was the sort of wife who would understand that he had to go even if he couldn’t spell out the precise reasons. He couldn’t have told her if he wanted to, he thought ruefully.

  No, he had no real idea as to what the telegram was all about—but tomorrow night he would be at the farm to meet them. They would all be there. Just as sure as little apples and summer rain and the way Maria smiled contentedly in the morning, they would all be there.

  And the killing would probably start all over again. He couldn’t predict how the others might feel, but he certainly didn’t look forward to it. He’d lost his taste for that other life so long ago, and now he had a wife and two children who depended on him. Well, at least he was in excellent physical condition. Maybe the killing wouldn’t be necessary, he reasoned as he strolled toward the dressing room.

  Maybe it would be different this time.

  6

  “Look again,” the big-headed man whom they called “Little Johnny” ordered in soft merciless tones.

  He was a large dark man with the shoulders of a stevedore, which he had been at seventeen, and if it seemed incongruous to speak of him as “Little Johnny” it was no more senseless than the widespread U.S. custom of calling king-sized males “Tiny” or addressing the most vicious corrupted bitches as “Baby.”

  “Look again,” he insisted.

  It was midnight and the roulette wheels and cash registers were clicking joyfully in the Fun Parlor, but all was not well in Paradise City. Mr. John Pikelis, who owned both the Fun Parlor and effective control of Paradise City, was ill at ease. He wore a $300 suit and a permanent smile that had all the charm of a durable-press shirt, but his cutting black eyes showed focussed irritation.

  “I tell you I went over his whole place ten times, Johnny—from top to bottom and inside out. We tore it to pieces,” beefy Ben Marton repeated nervously. The fifty-year-old police captain stood flat-footed and awkward on the thick cream-colored carpet, listening to the dim hum of the powerful air-conditioner and sweating like a day laborer in the noonday sun. Police Chief Marton was afraid of Johnny Pikelis, an attitude that was no mere male menopausal tantrum but was soundly based in reality. In Paradise City, only an idiot or an ignoramus would view Pikelis without fear.

  “Look and look and look—until you find it,” the underworld chieftain commanded. The press—not the local papers, of course—had often called Pikelis a racketeer, but that was as understated as describing Adolf Hitler as “aggressive” or that astonishingly buxom German “actress” at 20th Century-Fox as “friendly.” He was unquestionably and notoriously Number One, head of the criminal organization that dominated all of Jefferson County. He’d hacked and hammered, bulled and battered his way up from the docks—breaking everyone and everything in his path—and now he was used to having his way. Even though he now lived in this plush penthouse and had all the poise that goes with $4,500 worth of the best dentistry, he still thought like a man with a baling hook.

  “Look ten times more, Ben, and don’t stop until you find whatever that sly little bastard hid,” he told Marton in tones that were almost imperial. The city spread out below was his empire in many ways, his life-and-death power being only one facet of his total dominion. “We shut up Barringer, but we’ve got to find that evidence.”

  “But, Johnny—”

  “He wasn’t any childish hot-air artist, Ben,” the ganglord announced. “If he said that he had evidence against us, he damn well had it.”

  The balding flawed policeman sighed.

  “Maybe it was burned up in the car?” he suggested.

  Pikelis studied him for several seconds, wondering how it was possible for a grown male to be so corrupt and ruthless for so long and still remain so innocent and weak. Suddenly he appreciated how two of his private “heroes,” Mussolini and Batista, had been let down by similar incompetents. Hitler and Napoleon had been much better served by their staffs, but it was probably unrealistic to expect that sort of efficiency in a medium-sized Southern city on the border of Florida and Georgia.

  “I’ll spell it out in small simple words, Ben, and you listen just as hard as you can,” Pikelis grated. “I took over this city twenty years ago, built an organization. My organization runs this city, and we’re all rich. To stay rich and to stay out of jail, we’re breaking laws and cracking skulls and once in a while we still have to kill people. Despite all the state and federal cops, the investigations, the big magazine exposés and the nasty TV specials, we’re still in business. But if we don’t get our hands on Barringer’s evidence, everything and everybody is in trouble. May
be finished. That doesn’t mean just your nickel-plated badge, Ben. It could mean the electric chair.”

  The police chief grunted, calculated swiftly. Even as he stood there damp and tense, he realized that whoever held that missing evidence might also hold control of Paradise City.

  “I’ll give it another look, inch by inch. I’ll rip the walls out,” he promised with guarded sincerity.

  Pikelis stood up, walked from the armchair to the expanse of glass “picture window” that offered such a fine view of his city. “When you find it, don’t forget to bring it up here to me,” he advised. “The last fellow with the big wrong ideas about it ended up in smelly pieces on the sidewalk at Crescent Drive.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Write it on your desk calendar, Captain.”

  Marton blinked assent, started for the door. His hand was on the knob when the underworld ruler spoke again.

  “Give it that genuine Robert E. Lee try, Ben. Until we find it, not one of us can rest easy. Nobody’s safe. You got that clear? Nobody!”

  When the police chief left, Pikelis lit a long Jamaican cigar and considered whether Ben Marton might not require an “accident” himself before many weeks. A man in power—the top man—could never afford to trust anyone completely, he ruminated. It was part of the price of power. The head of U.S. Steel and the man in the White House probably had the same problems, he realized sadly as he blew a perfect blue-gray smoke ring that hung in the air like some work of transient pop art. Several seconds passed before the cool current billowing from the air-conditioner destroyed it.