by Rod Reynolds
‘The other missing woman. From the photograph.’
Lang nodded. ‘Tell me her name again.’
‘Nancy Hill.’
‘I’ll keep it in mind.’
I wanted more, but held back. ‘Who’s behind this, Sheriff?’
‘You?’
I flinched as he said it, tried to hold onto my composure. ‘Don’t talk crazy.’
‘Maybe you arrived at the thought he killed the young lady you came all this way for. Do you own a gun, Mr Yates?’
I felt my neck go hot, remembering Lizzie’s fears about them pinning something on me. ‘I never set eyes on him before.’
‘That so?’ He took out his notebook, scrutinising something on the page. ‘A man matching your description, with a car much like this one and what I’d guess was the same firecracker sat inside it—’ He glanced at Lizzie, watching on intently. ‘—visited his house yesterday. Did you perhaps catch up with Mr Booker later on?’
Newland shot me a dirty look but I could only stare at Lang, my vision tunnelling. ‘You know why I was looking for him, the same damn reason I came to you yesterday. Nancy Hill.’
‘Every time you say that name you sound a little bit angrier.’
I wanted to protest more, but realised that was to walk further along the blind alley he was leading me down.
‘I’d like for you to come back to the department with me. Both of you.’
‘Are you arresting me?’ I fought to keep my voice level, bluffing he couldn’t rattle me.
‘Second time you asked me that in the day I known you.’
‘You can’t arrest me because you know this is garbage, so if I’m not under arrest, I’ll go about my business.’
He took a deep breath, drawing it out. ‘Your business is to be at my office anyhow, the way I instructed you to yesterday. I have some questions about your movements; if you don’t want to discuss them voluntarily that’s your choice, but it wouldn’t reflect well. Now, I insist you allow me to give you a ride.’
I gritted my teeth, hating myself for making it easy for him. That same unending loop of murder and lies and guilt trampling me. The feeling that I was being railroaded to fit Lang’s agenda and that if he put me behind bars, Nancy Hill was gone for ever. ‘I need a moment with my wife.’ Before he could say anything more, I walked around the car and opened the door to lean in.
Lizzie spoke first. ‘This is a trap, Charlie, you can’t go with him—’
‘I have no choice.’
‘Charlie—’
‘Call Colt Tanner. Tell him where I am and get him to pull some strings to make them back off. Don’t let on where you’re staying. Stay out of sight – everyone’s.’
Lang tapped the car’s hood. ‘Mr Yates …’
She looked at me a moment and nodded, her eyes hard but resolute – enough to shame me at how acclimated she’d become.
I mouthed, ‘Be safe,’ and stepped back, closing the door as she slid over to the driver’s seat.
Lang put a hand on the windscreen. ‘Don’t stray far, Mrs Yates. I may want to speak with you as well.’
I followed him to his car, hearing Lizzie take off behind me.
*
Coming in from the fresh air, Lang’s office was stifling. He motioned for me to take a seat along the wall then left again without explanation, leaving the door open. His latest move in whatever game he was playing. Another officer had led Newland to a different room when we arrived and I hadn’t seen him since.
There was a window across from me, slick with condensation. It looked out towards the Union Pacific depot in the distance, a new building in the Moderne style that was so prominent in LA. Had to be a recent replacement for the original. A railroad town trying to reinvent itself; it made me question Newland’s certainty that the Flamingo had no place in its future.
Lang returned and took a seat behind his desk, started searching for something in his paper tray.
‘I took a room at the El Cortez last night. I was in the casino until around midnight – ask any dealer or waitress and they’ll confirm it. After that I was in my room sleeping until Trip Newland called me there at seven this morning.’
He looked up. ‘The El Cortez?’
I nodded.
‘“El” means “The” so you’re saying it twice. It’s just “El Cortez”.’
I picked at the chipped armrest. ‘Did you bring me here with the intention of wasting my time?’
He set a piece of paper down and put on his eyeglasses. ‘El Cortez is an interesting choice of lodging. All the hotels available to you and you went ahead and picked that one.’
I shook my head, shooting him a questioning look that said I didn’t know what he was talking about.
‘It was owned until shortly ago by, among others, Mr Benjamin Siegel of Los Angeles, California. Of course, you knew that already.’
I glanced away, mind racing – Lizzie left on her own there. I flicked back to him again. ‘I did not.’
He lifted his chin. ‘Mr Siegel and his backers sold it in the middle of this year – not twelve months after they bought it. To the same man they bought it from. At a profit.’
I stilled my hand on the armrest. ‘So what?’
‘That seem like a normal business arrangement to you?’
‘I don’t know anything about the hotel business.’
‘Normal for Mr Siegel, though, correct?’ He sat back in his chair, eyes locked on mine. ‘You think maybe he sold it back soon as he’d had it long enough to staff with people loyal to him?’
‘Why am I here, Sheriff? You know I didn’t shoot Henry Booker.’
‘I don’t know that at all.’
‘I had more interest in keeping him alive than anyone—’
He held his hand up to stop me. ‘What’s your association with Benjamin Siegel, Mr Yates?’
I kept looking at him, fighting to show calm even as he wrong-footed me every time he spoke. ‘I have none.’
‘If I may, I find that hard to swallow. You arrive here from Los Angeles at short notice, claiming your story about a missing woman – now dead. You waltz onto Mr Siegel’s construction site with apparent impunity, take a room at one of his properties – forgive me, former properties – and go to the home of a man who turns up dead no time later. A man was working on building Mr Siegel’s Flamingo and who, turns out, was mixed up in the death of the aforementioned young woman. What am I missing?’
I was rocked that he knew I’d been at the Flamingo. I tried to find clarity in my head. ‘If you thought it amounted to anything, you’d arrest me.’
‘I might yet.’ He stood up. ‘Did Mr Booker cross Ben Siegel in some way?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did Siegel have a tryst with the dead woman?’
‘What?’
‘Were he and Booker rivals for her affection? Was it jealousy?’
‘No.’
‘No? Something else then. Siegel only cares for money or women, and I can’t see where Booker and money intersect.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You said “no” first time, implying you do know something. Did Siegel send you here?’
‘What? No, I have nothing to do with—’ I stopped dead. He was one move ahead of me every time and I suddenly wondered if he was aware of Siegel’s shakedown scam. My role as point man – and how bad that would look. Impossible as it seemed, I wondered if he knew the names Trent Bayless and Lyle Kosoff.
‘Speak free, don’t hold your tongue.’
I took a shallow breath, let it out. ‘Siegel didn’t send me here and I don’t know why they’re dead.’
He stood looking at me, saying nothing, working his left thumb with his other hand.
I closed my eyes and opened them again. ‘My only care is finding Nancy Hill.’
Someone knocked on the office door, breaking the silence.
He kept looking at me as he rounded the table and crossed over to it. He placed his hand on th
e door handle. ‘But not finding out who killed Miss Desjardins?’
He whipped it open before I could issue a rebuttal.
I closed my eyes and sank into the chair. I was seated on the other side of the open door and couldn’t see who Lang was talking to. The man outside said something I didn’t catch before Lang said, ‘Show him up.’
He ducked back around the door. ‘On your feet. This appointment can’t wait but we’ll talk again directly. Wait here, please.’ He pointed to a row of chairs outside his office door and signalled to another officer. ‘Get him a glass of water, would you?’
I thought about Lizzie at El Cortez again. ‘I need to make a telephone call.’
‘To ask the boss for an attorney?’
‘I need to speak to my wife.’
‘We’ll see if we can fix that up.’ He left me standing there and went inside again.
I took a seat and lolled my head against the wood panelling behind me. There was no one else in the waiting area, and the door to the outer office was open, affording a view of the exit leading to the stairwell. It seemed as if he was testing me, daring me to run. To what end, I didn’t know – but it gave rise to dark possibilities. I’d come in willingly, convinced he didn’t have me as suspect, but I hadn’t taken the care to look at the sequence of events from his perspective. There were holes in his theory, and he knew it, but it sounded compelling the way he laid it out – which might be all he wanted. It was enough to make me certain I needed Tanner’s help.
A civilian came through the outer door and led a heavyset man through the waiting area and into the office, depositing him with Lang and closing the door on them. I reached to grab his sleeve. ‘I need to make a telephone call.’
‘That’s up to the sheriff.’ He turned and went.
The office wall I sat against was only a partition and I could hear the men start talking inside.
‘He came around again, Bob. That goddamn Hebe only takes his hand out of my pocket long enough to put it in the other one.’
‘Hebe’ caught my ear – Siegel?
‘You know you’re not alone, Harry.’ It was Lang talking now. ‘Wheels are in motion.’
‘And what the good goddamn does that mean? You have a tendency to talk vague when I—’
‘It’s not a problem can be fixed overnight.’
‘Which implies it can be fixed in time – but I’m seeing no signs. I’m sick of paying the Jews and Italians back East only to pay another goddamn Hebe down the street.’
‘Down the street’ – had to be Siegel.
‘I know it,’ Lang said. ‘I know it. Will you be in attendance this evening?’
‘The Flamingo?’
A pause – Lang nodding an affirmative to the man’s question, perhaps. Then the heavyset man carried on. ‘You bet your ass I will. He’s gonna take my money, I’m sure as hell gonna make sure he sees me drink his liquor and eat his food. I’m paying for it, god’s sake.’
‘All due respect, it’s not the moment to kick up a fuss.’
‘We’re in your office, but don’t overstep your mark, Bob.’ There was silence a moment, uncomfortable. Then the man again: ‘What about the girl?’
‘Go on.’
‘Can you pin it on him?’
At that everything else tuned out. ‘The girl’ – Desjardins?
‘I’m not comfortable with that choice of words,’ Lang said.
‘Well, I’m not comfortable with his hand up my ass, and I’m sure as hell not comfortable that nothing’s getting done about it. What is it until the elections, fifteen months?’
‘It’s in hand, Harry. Stay with me, the others are.’
A loud sigh, followed by the sound of shuffled footsteps. My brain was freewheeling. Pinning Desjardins’ murder on Siegel: because it was a weapon to use against him – or because they suspected he was involved but couldn’t prove it? I thought back to standing in the desert where they found her, his grand plan rising in the distance.
A loud back-and-forth kicked up in the squadroom outside, making it hard to hear what they were saying behind me. I whipped over to the outer door and closed it, went back to the partition to listen again.
The heavyset man was speaking. ‘… the dead man’s part in it? He worked for him, correct?’
‘Correct.’
‘Well, isn’t that enough?’
‘It’s a start. There’s another party I’m interested in too, he may be the link.’
There was silence and then a grunt – as if Lang had gestured to where I sat. Odds on: referring to me.
I heard footsteps moving towards the partition I was pressed against and I tore myself away. I saw the heavyset man’s silhouette through the frosted panel in the door, then he spoke again, clearer now he was close. ‘You say the others are with you but that’s not what they say in private. I’m the only one will tell it to your face.’
He wrenched the handle and the door swung open. He marched across the outer office, stopping briefly to peer at me, and then he let himself out the other door.
Lang stood in his doorway and watched him go. Then he went back inside, beckoning me to follow.
I lifted myself out of the chair and did as he indicated. ‘Who was that?’
He ignored me, skirting the edge of his desk as I came inside. His face was creased in a different way than before, as if he’d had a bad night’s sleep in the fifteen minutes since we’d been interrupted.
He retook his seat. ‘When we first spoke you told me you were in Los Angeles right before you arrived here. Your man Acheson confirmed your presence there the night before, but what about prior to that?’ He was glancing at the sheet of paper on his desk again; I tried to get a look but he saw what I was doing and picked it up to hold it out of view.
‘Is that the coroner’s report on Desjardins?’
He slammed his fist onto the desk. ‘I asked you a damn question.’
I sat straight, chastened and trying not to betray it. I tried to remember my movements in Los Angeles, seeming so distant now even at a couple days’ remove. The timeline came clear then – before Acheson, I’d been with Moe Rosenberg when he and Gilardino killed Bayless. And before that, at Ciglio’s. Benjamin Siegel’s fingerprints all over my life. I stared hard at Lang, stilling gut tremors, wondering if he knew.
‘Well?’
The answer, again, was Tanner. I’d spent the whole afternoon in his presence, after Trent Bayless’ murder, and I’d been with him the night before that. I wondered whether to volunteer it – whether Lizzie would be able to contact him and, if so, whether he’d be willing to speak up for me. I’d run out on him and his operation; his comeback could be to leave me swinging. And without his confirmation, my story about the FBI as my alibi sounded too ludicrous to carry any water.
‘I have a man can confirm my whereabouts.’
‘Name?’
‘My wife is trying to contact him now. I need to speak with her first.’
‘Give me his name.’
‘I have to speak with my wife.’
He hung his head, bristling. ‘You talk as though withholding your alibi gives you some credibility.’
He got up and moved to the door, went out. When he came back, he had a deputy with him. ‘Take him downstairs. See how long you want to keep playing games with me.’
*
The cell was one of a row of six, only two of the others occupied. To my right, a man slept on a bare bunk, facing the wall, his shoes still on his feet. To my left, a man was on his haunches smoking, huddling against himself for warmth. I stood holding the cold bars, peering along the corridor, waiting for Lang or someone else to appear.
Coming on noon. I’d been there more than three hours. The deputy had ignored my protests for a telephone call when he locked me up, and when I’d asked to call an attorney, his response had been, ‘What for? You’re not under arrest.’
I let go of the bars and stuffed my hands under my armpits, lack of food making the cold that
much more penetrating. The cinderblock wall opposite was unpainted and it felt as though the air from outside flowed right through its pores.
A door opened at the end of the cellblock. The sleeping man didn’t stir, but the man smoking got up and went to the bars to look, same as me.
Footsteps – two pairs coming towards me. A deputy came into view and then so did the man behind him. Special Agent Colt Tanner.
The smoking man sloped back to his bunk. I checked my watch, wondering if I’d miscalculated how long I’d been there.
The deputy hung back. Tanner stopped in front of me, folded his arms with his thumbs under his armpits. ‘Safer here than on the street, I’ll grant you that.’
‘My wife spoke to you?’
He nodded. ‘What you did in Los Angeles was foolish and reckless.’
I stepped back from the bars. ‘Where’s Kosoff? Is he …’
He bulged his cheeks, blowing out a breath. ‘What the hell possessed you?’
I shook my head, looking away.
‘You think that’ll suffice? Hold your tongue and shrug?’
‘I was scared for my wife.’
His eyes flared. ‘So you brought her here? I mean, why not lay up in Siegel’s house instead? Don’t run that noble husband number on me.’
‘What about Kosoff?’
He turned and walked a few paces, looking at the sleeping man and then the empty cell at the end. ‘He’s alive. According to MGM he’s unavailable due to a family emergency. We know that he’s holed up at the Toluca Lake Country Club, with a man on the door day and night.’
‘They haven’t moved on him yet?’
‘It’s a little late for guilt, wouldn’t you say?’ He walked back to where I stood, watching me, but I didn’t know what for. ‘There’s every chance they’ve issued a contract on him.’
I gripped the bars again and met his stare. ‘I need you to get me out of here. They’re trying to hang something on me I had nothing to do with and—’
‘I helped you before and you ran out on your end of the deal.’
‘This is my life, Tanner, you can’t play games.’
He kept staring at me, no response.
I shifted my weight. ‘What do you want?’
He pointed at me. ‘You know damn well already.’