Baby Moll hcc-46

by John Farris

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Macy, Pete. I thought you might be at the hotel. What’s new?”

  “I lucked out of a bomb try this morning, The boy who set the trap might be an ex-Cleveland hood named Winkie Gilmer. Apparently somebody’s nervous about me looking around for the one survivor of the fire. Her name is Carla Kennedy. She’d be about thirty now.

  “You’ve got a lead on her?”

  “Yes. I won’t know where she is until tomorrow night, though.”

  “How did you come up with this Gilmer?”

  “Mostly luck. An ex-cop told me about him.”

  “What’s Gilmer like?”

  “I haven’t met him yet. He’s supposed to be tough. I’ve been warned off him. Strictly a hired gun. I’m interested in who hired him. He can’t be very bright to wear a hat like that on a job. He might as well have had on a neon necktie.”

  “It sounds like a good break. Play it cool, Pete. You’ve been away a long time. Listen, stop by Stan’s Restaurant and see if Diane is there.”

  “She hasn’t showed up yet?”

  “No. She sent the kid home with Taggart this afternoon. Aimee’s cranky from those shots she got this morning. Tell Diane to pick up a car at the hotel and come on home. I don’t like her wandering around after dark, anyway.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Stan’s Restaurant was a low modern building with a curved roof and a front of thin orange bricks, fluted aluminum, chrome and glass blocks. His name blazed in the dusk in three-foot-high script letters. The restaurant was located on the flashy Rosamorada Strip eleven miles north of downtown and four blocks from Sunlan Park Race Track.

  Inside, the restaurant was separated into dining room and bar by an angle of wall padded with leather-like material on the bar side. I looked into the dining room first. There was an overflow crowd, including a lot of small dark men in good suits and some who weren’t so small, and beautiful women. The place was crawling with beautiful women, lean and fragile as expensive models. Yellow-jacketed waiters with placid expressions slipped between the full tables like good dancers, handling trays crisply.

  I recognized a few faces: Suarez, king of the Spanish Town bug; Venetti, waterfront gambling; Scobey, whose bootlegging enterprise ran to tens of thousands of gallons a year. There were stills throughout the back country, and cars with heavy-duty springs in the back ends and trucks packed with large milk cans of the stuff were thick on crumbling, weed-lined roads every night. I stood there for a moment, picking out the faces, recognition coming from the nod of a head, the expansive lift of a hand.

  Memories of a precarious time were sharp with the taste of danger light along the tongue. Annacone, call girls — and an uglier traffic in the merchandise of sex. There were strings tied to all of them, and to a hundred others scattered in half a dozen counties. Macy held all the strings, but not so securely any more.

  The cuts came in by the week, by the month. Some of it was delivered, some had to be collected. There was always cheating. Books falsified. Revenues faked. It had been my job to see the rake-off was always right, to see that the boys who might be tempted to pocket too much never forgot how narrow the line was, how uncertain the balance of favor; to make sure they were always just a little bit uneasy, that they never stopped looking behind them when night came. It was dirty work. I did it competently. Still, there were always the bold, whose fingers were too sticky, whose appetites for the big piles of easy money were not diminished by the gentle prod of an unseen gun. Some of them were killed. Nothing pretty about it. The shotgun was usually the final judge of the sweet plunge into temptation. Sometimes they went into the bay, or a canal. I never knew when it would happen, or who would do it. I didn’t want to know. I kept out of that. It was my only way of rebelling.

  They would recognize me if I wanted them to see me. They would be secretly anxious behind big empty smiles. Maybe the strings were being slipped and cut now, the men under Macy growing plump on profits that brought less commission for Macy each month while the organization crumbled and he sat on his island playing with the child of a whore, a deep moan in his mind as he thought of a killer who waited for his chance. Maybe Stan Maxine was shifting the strings skillfully and discreetly to his own fingers. The cheating, the holding back always went on, even if the man who held the strings leaned on his employees ceaselessly, playing one against another, sending his own boys in unexpectedly to check and recheck operations. Macy had been that kind of leader once. Now the boys would be running wild, filling their pockets before the inevitable change of leadership and a new crackdown, an over-all tightening. So my reappearance would be an omen. Macy was trying to pull things back together. The last feeble blow from a declining giant. The word would go out, passed to silent men in obscure bars. Before the sun went down on another day, I’d be dead — unless I was incredibly lucky.

  I pushed the thoughts away from my mind. I had enough to worry about. I went into the bar, which was about half full. On a small stage at the rear a Negro trio thumped out Jumping the Boogie. It was good barrelhouse stuff. I recognized one of the bartenders. He had once worked at the Coral Gardens, and he was good. Another gentle reminder that Stan was the fair-haired boy now. The flock came dutifully to his fancy watering hole.

  “Hello, Paul,” I said, leaning against the bar. He had hair like brushings from moths’ wings, and his face was aging gracefully.

  “Pete!” he said. “Pete, it’s good to see you.” A look of alarm killed the smile before it had a chance to widen. “You better get out of here, Pete.”

  “Why?”

  He looked up and down the bar, leaned closer to me. “Stan’s boys are turning this town upside down looking for you. It’s a rush order. You’re in bad trouble, son. Run for it.”

  “What is it? Why do they want me?”

  “I don’t know. The word was dropped. I’m telling you, Pete...”

  “I saw Maxine once today. I don’t get...”

  “Play safe, Pete.”

  “Yeah. Okay. I’ll clear out in a second. Have you seen a girl named Diane? She’s wearing a green skirt and one of those pullover playshirts. Tall blonde. She may come around here once in a while.”

  “I know her. She was in about four this afternoon. I saw her with the boss.”

  “Stan?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, Stan.” He looked past me and the hollows in his cheeks deepened. “Oh, Lordy,” he groaned. “Here comes trouble, Pete.”

  I turned around and put both elbows on the bar. They were on me already. One of them was tall and Irish-looking, with curly copper hair and a nose canted from too many beatings. The other one was shorter, wider, with about a quarter-inch of brown hair on his stone skull. His face was wider at the chin than through the forehead. He was wearing a purple necktie with a single streak of red in it.

  “You Mallory?” Irish asked.

  “That’s right.”

  He was polite. “I’m O’Toole. This is Kostrakis. We’ve been looking for you.”

  “You found me,” I said. “Shall we have a drink to celebrate?”

  His lip arched slightly. The Greek didn’t say a word. He just watched me.

  “We don’t have time. We’re going to see Stan.”

  “What does he want?”

  The Greek took one of my arms. He twisted it in such a way that his arm was inside my elbow, his hand on my wrist. He had a nerve under pressure in the wrist. With little effort on his part the arm could be broken.

  “Let’s walk on out,” he said.

  We went outside with the Greek at my side and O’Toole behind me. In the parking lot O’Toole moved up, edged the .38 from beneath my coat.

  “I pulled the teeth,” he said to the Greek. Kostrakis opened the door of a two-tone blue Chrysler and saw that I was seated comfortably before releasing the arm. He drove. O’Toole sat in back.

  “Just take it easy,” he advised. “Kostrakis, let’s have some music.” We had some music from the radio. O’Toole ma
de small talk.

  “Hear you used to work around these parts six or seven years ago. Ever know Vic Mount?” I never knew Vic Mount. “Cousin of mine. Used to pick up policy slips for Chiozza down around the Gresham Park district.” It went like that. I kept my eyes on the streets we took, wondering where we were going. I was careful not to let the tiny growth of fear feed and enlarge in my tense mind.

  We drove south on Rosamorada for a time, then turned right on Robinson Parkway, away from the bay. Ten minutes later we were at Lake Alena and we took a left at Jacaranda, the street on which Stan lived. In another minute we cut through an alley and pulled into a two-car garage. I was hustled through the darkened yard into Maxine’s kitchen. The boys weren’t trying so hard to be gentle now.

  Stan was in the living room. When I was shown in he glanced at me, his face unnaturally composed. He got up and pulled the blinds down over the front windows. He turned to me, his mouth set in anguished lines. “Nice of you to come.”

  “It wasn’t my choice.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Where is who?”

  “You know who. You know who I’m talkin’ about. Gerry. Where’s Gerry? What did you do with her, you bastard?” His breath spurted frantically from his lungs, betraying his unhealthiness.

  “Hold on, Maxine. I don’t know—”

  He stepped closer to me. Kostrakis turned at my side, bringing his fist up. “Let me,” Maxine whispered, his eyes full of tearful rage. His tongue pried his lips apart. Sweat glistened in the holes of his cheeks. His fist doubled. I moved my shoulders forward, balancing on the pads of my feet. Stan hesitated. “Hold him.”

  Fingers closed around my arms, yanked them back and away from my sides. Maxine grunted and drove his fist into my gut. One of my legs bounced up. I couldn’t double over to ease the pain. I kicked out at him but there was no strength in the kick. It missed.

  “Where did you take Gerry? Where is she? Damn you, Mallory, where’s my girl?”

  I couldn’t say anything. I strained for breath, my eyes weeping from the effort. I knew my face must be darkening.

  When I could speak I told him, “I don’t know where she is. I care less. You crazy or something, Maxine?”

  “You want her, don’t you?” he said. “I could tell today. Saw you looking at her. Where did you go with her?”

  “You’re nuts. I don’t touch it unless it’s been aged at least twenty years.”

  He moaned and hit me again. This time I managed to shy to one side so his blow grazed my ribs first. I writhed helplessly, clamped between the two big men.

  “You scum,” I said, my teeth tightly together. “What makes you think she didn’t run off? What makes you think she’d want to hang around you long? You got sex appeal or something?”

  His eyes pressed shut. He swayed a little. “Get him out of here,” he whimpered. “Get him out of here before I kill him! Find out if he’s lying.”

  They jerked me around and dragged me through the dining room and kitchen. My arms were numb from the grip of their fingers, swift needles of pain breaking in my palms and fingers. This time I went into the back seat of the Chrysler, face down on the floor. My head was held fast with a double length of rope fastened to a pair of hooks embedded in the floor, and passed across the back of my neck. It was hard for me to find a place for my legs. I finally had to bend them under me and lie cramped in the small space, my face scraping against the rough hairy matting at every bounce. There were a lot of bounces, because Kostrakis was an arrogant driver with a heavy right foot. Before long I was feeling calm, cold fury. They had my gun. But if I had just one, tiny chance I would try to get them with my hands.

  The ride was endless. Once there was the jostle of railroad tracks, then the Klaxon of a boat. The blare of horns came less frequently, and there were fewer traffic lights. I became resigned to spending the rest of my life tied to that swaying floor. The fury lessened. I wanted a drink of water. My throat was rougher than the floor covering. I wanted to stretch out my legs. I could feel the throaty drum of the motor as speed increased. Maybe we would be there soon — wherever we were going. Then they would let me up. I thought no further than the mercy of being released from the floor of that car.

  The Chrysler slowed down, lurched as tires bumped off the pavement. Gravel crackled and splattered under the wheels as the front end nosed downward. A few seconds of this and we stopped. Doors opened. Cool air feathered my hair. Something tugged at the ropes across my neck and they parted. I shifted position cautiously, rubbing at the stiff, fiery muscles.

  “Get out,” the Greek said.

  I put an arm over the front seat, dragged my legs forward, stepped out of the car. I had to lean against the door to stand. There was enough light to see that we were on the edge of swampland. I smelled the marshy water. Close to the Chrysler was the steel framework of a trestle for a huge steam shovel or crane.

  They went to work without speaking. A hand closed on my shirt and I was jerked forward. Another hand chopped down swiftly, the palm edge hitting with blunt shock at the base of my neck, near the ridge of collarbone. I felt the blow to my fingertips, bit off a groan and dropped to my knees in the gravel.

  Somewhere nearby, tires streaked the pavement as a car slowed suddenly, pitched off the highway. Headlights fanned toward us as the car skidded down the embankment, showering gravel. I looked up and saw the face of Kostrakis pinched with surprise in the sudden light. His hand made a move toward his coat, stopped, dropped to his side.

  I looked around and saw Taggart and Reavis, the gatekeeper, getting out of the car. I stood up wearily.

  “You guys want something?” O’Toole said angrily. Reavis went up to him and hit him with a long slashing fist. O’Toole arched backwards, fingers curling, and sprawled downhill, rolling loosely to the edge of weedy dark water. Kostrakis looked over his shoulder at him and kept his mouth shut.

  “What are you boys doing here?” I said, holding my bruised shoulder.

  Taggart tipped his massive head toward the car. Rudy was sitting behind the wheel and there was a blonde in the back seat.

  “Diane saw you walk into trouble at Maxine’s,” he said. “She called us. We figured you’d show up here sooner or later. Maxine’s boys favor this place for staying in shape. They stay in shape by beating hell out of guys like you. Right, Greek?”

  Kostrakis said nothing.

  “Unload your iron,” Reavis said. His coat was open and he had a hand near the gun on his belt.

  Kostrakis slipped a hand inside his coat, unholstered the gun with great care.

  “On the ground,” Reavis said. The revolver arced to the gravel.

  “Pick it up,” Taggart said.

  Kostrakis swallowed. He tried to stoop and pick the gun up while looking at Taggart. His hand couldn’t find it. He had to look. When he did Taggart stepped forward and smashed a knee into his face. The Greek slumped back against the door of the car, sitting down. His face was bloody from forehead to chin. As he breathed, bubbles formed at his mashed nostrils. He leaned forward, put his hands in the gravel and crawled like a chubby, awkward baby toward the gun.

  Taggart grinned and kicked the revolver away. It skidded down the slope and plopped into the water. Taggart kicked Kostrakis in the face. The Greek passed out. Taggart prodded him with a foot and he rolled gently after the gun, his bleeding face picking up dirt and loose gravel. Taggart looked after him indifferently.

  “If you’re all rescued,” he said to me, “let’s go.”

  I took my gun from the glove compartment of the Chrysler, followed Reavis and Taggart to their car. I got into the back seat with Diane. Rudy turned around cautiously and we edged up the incline to the highway.

  “Thanks for spotting me,” I said to Diane. “I would have picked up a good pounding down there.”

  “Why did Stan do that?” she said.

  “You were with him all afternoon. You ought to know.”

  “Sorry, I don’t,” she said unemotion
ally.

  “He thinks I ran off with his woman.”

  “I suppose you didn’t.”

  “In a way. But I didn’t touch her. He’s crazy jealous. What were you two doing today?”

  “I — there was someplace I wanted to go. We went together.”

  “Like where?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Like where?”

  “Lay off the goddam questions,” Taggart said.

  “Shut your face,” I told him. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  I saw his shoulders heave, but he didn’t turn around.

  “Easy,” Rudy murmured. “Somewhere you want to go?”

  “Stan’s Restaurant,” I said. “I’ll pick up the car there. You take Diane home. Macy’s been worried about the company she keeps.”

  She squirmed in the seat with her arms folded across her breasts, stared out the window. A blank sullen silence closed around all of us.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The desk clerk at the Coral Gardens Hotel told me Owen Barr had left the hotel an hour ago. I walked through the sedate lobby to the basement steps and went downstairs, opened the door of Owen’s little retreat. I couldn’t find a light switch anywhere. Grayish light from the windows was pinned to the tarpaulin on one wall and a long bar of it slanted across the dirty floor and crept up one of the old sofas, affectionately grasped a girl’s small bare foot.

  I shut my eyes tightly and waited for a few seconds. When I opened my eyes again I could see more clearly. Gerry was lying on the sofa on her back, sound asleep. She was mother-naked, but not like mother ever was. Her nudity irritated me somehow. I had nearly got my head knocked off while she slept comfortably down here.

  I walked over to the sofa and smacked her with the flat of my hand on her bare thigh. She jerked awake and moved her legs. She put one hand on the assaulted leg.

  “Hey! Wha — ” She struggled to focus her sleepy eyes on me. “Who are you?”

  “Mallory.”

  “Oh.” She winced. “What did you do that for?”