Gat Heat

by Richard S. Prather

  “Well, that’ll be a little tough. I don’t have a wife.”

  “Not any more?”

  “Not ever, Aggie. I’ve never been married.”

  She blinked. “How old are you? You look at least—well, you’re getting close to thirty, aren’t you?”

  “That’s it. On the button. In fact, I’ve been thirty for a hell of a time now.”

  She was aghast. “Thirty! And not married? Never married?”

  Then she actually stood there, after all she’d said to me, blood burbling in her arteries as though sap in an ancient tree and oozing through her veins like grabbers stirring in a purple swamp, and said, “Oh, Shell, you’ve missed the greatest joy and fulfillment any man could ever have!”

  That’s what she said. Just when I was starting to like her, too, almost.

  10

  Something was going on near the Hamilton Building.

  Whatever it was, I’d missed it. Thanks to Aggie I was seven minutes late.

  The Hamilton, where I have my office, is in downtown L.A. on Broadway, between Third and Fourth Streets. Near the office is a lot where I park the Cad, and that’s where I was heading—only I didn’t make it. Not right away.

  I was still a block from the lot when the sound of a police siren shrilled in my ears. I pulled over to the right, stopped. The car was a couple blocks away, coming toward me on Broadway, red light flashing on its top.

  It was going like hell, at least forty or fifty miles an hour, which was more than plenty for crowded Broadway. It came right past the Hamilton and flashed past on my left, the siren-whine loud enough to stretch the nerves in my spine. As it faded slightly it was joined by another, the second siren wailing nearby. A counterpoint to it was a third somewhere.

  There was more shrill noise and screeching and wailing than I’d ever heard in this area before. A police car skidded to a stop in front of the Hamilton. Even from a block away I could clearly hear the tires protesting on the asphalt. One officer, then another, leaped from the car and ran to the sidewalk. I could see other people running.

  A crowd was gathering, milling there. There—not near the Hamilton, but right in front of it.

  I put the Cad in gear and hit the gas, gunned across Fourth, swung into the lot as another car, siren howling, drew near. This one wasn’t a police buggy but a long limousine, an ambulance; attendants opened its back doors as I left my car with the attendant in the lot and began trotting down the sidewalk.

  As I pushed through several dozen citizens standing around and gawking, ambulance attendants made their way to the sidewalk carrying a wheeled stretcher. I was only a few feet from the focus of all the excitement, half a dozen men and women still between me and the body sprawled on the cement. It was a man, face down on the sidewalk, legs splayed and feet pointing in opposite directions.

  “Excuse me,” I said, tapping a man on the shoulder. He didn’t want to move. So I moved him.

  Not roughly, I just pushed a bit, and kept pushing, and he moved. He didn’t mind. He hardly noticed. But he did turn his head and look at me, eyes bright and face a little pale. “How about that?” he said.

  This had probably made his day. I don’t know why it is, but the ghouls gravitate to big or little calamities, and sometimes it seems the bigger it is the better they like it. They look, a little frightened, maybe, but more fascinated than frightened, staring at the dead, the maimed, the injured, the dying. Civilized man, at scenes of sorrow.

  The guy on the sidewalk looked dead.

  I still hadn’t made my way into the open, but I could see most of him, see his back, see the holes and dark stains of blood in the cloth of his hound’s-tooth jacket, and the mess that was one side of his head.

  I moved forward. “Pardon me, Miss. I’ve got to get through.”

  Another one, right in the front row—a woman, at that. Sometimes they’re worse than the men. But this one was not what I’d have expected in the front row, not what I’d have expected anywhere in the area. Maybe that’s because I find it difficult to think ill of gorgeous tomatoes.

  And that’s what she was: a gorgeous tomato. Tall, with blonde hair swooping smoothly down from the back of her head to rest, gleaming, just about level with her shoulders. I hadn’t seen her full-face, only from the side; but it was the kind of profile that might have graced the temples of Troy, and the body belonged to the queen of saturnalia.

  Simply dressed, pale blue sweater and darker skirt, a wide belt, white scarf tied around her neck, she was standing with arms crossed over exceptionally abundant breasts, gazing down at the man on the sidewalk.

  As I touched her shoulder she turned. And I saw her full-face. And the face melted.

  That’s about the only way I can describe it with reasonable accuracy. She looked at me, quite calmly, for about two seconds. For the third and fourth seconds her features seemed to become—well, rigid. Congealed. Like a fixed photograph, rather than something of flesh and blood, juices and bone. But then it melted, twisted, changed.

  Her eyes slowly grew wider and wider until they were enormous in her lovely face.

  “Ohh-hh,” she said, breath sighing from moist, warm-looking lips.

  She pulled in her breath with a soft “Ah—” in three separate jerks, as though her lungs had stopped working involuntarily, and she had to pull, suck at the air, to fill them again.

  Then once more the sigh, “Ohh-hh,” and her face paled as I watched.

  It was odd that I could notice so many things about her in those few seconds. It was a very short time. Ten seconds maybe, all told, before she was gone, before she turned and pushed almost blindly through the men and women behind us.

  But I noticed that her eyes were hazel, dotted with tiny flecks of gray; that her skin was smooth as still water; and that she wore no makeup except lipstick and darkness on her lashes.

  When she turned, suddenly, pushed past me and away, I watched her move, tall and slim, limber and lithe. She moved with the natural grace of a slim tree swaying in warm winds, a tree laden with ripe, heavy fruit. I would not forget that face; and I would remember the way she moved.

  But what the hell, I wondered, had sent her into the small fit?

  I looked down at the man before me. The attendants had the stretcher next to him now, and were preparing to lift him onto it. Another police car was sliding to a stop and I heard two car doors slam, one after another, then the splat of feet on pavement as somebody ran this way.

  I recognized the injured man—dead man, it looked like. Hell, he had to be dead. I could clearly see the side of his skull now, a great ugly wound there in his white hair. Not to mention the holes in his back.

  I looked at that white hair again. I’d got it by then, I think.

  He was a big guy, a man named Porter who’d taken an office in the Hamilton only a couple of weeks ago, a C.P.A. with a wife and a couple of kids. He was over fifty, more than twenty years past my thirty, but he did look quite a bit like me—from the back. Mainly, I guess, it was the white hair, cut fairly short. And the size of him.

  And of course, he’d been going into the Hamilton Building. His body lay only a yard short of the entrance, blood spilled next to, and from, his head.

  As I looked down at him, Captain Samson ran up, bent over the body. He must have been one of the men trotting over here from that last police car.

  “Hey, Sam,” I said.

  He was looking at the dead man’s face. So he must have known it wasn’t me. But his head snapped around, as if somebody had socked his chin a good one; and he stared at me as he rose to his feet.

  His face was white, not its usual healthy pink. And he appeared to have aged a bit, but not more than a hundred years.

  “You sonofabitch,” he said—right out in front of all those people. “You—you scared hell out of me.”

  I stepped over next to him, let a hand flop on his shoulder. “I’m a little spooked myself, old buddy,” I said. “You know who the guy is, Sam?”

  He s
hook his head.

  I told him and he stepped to the nearest police car, radioed the info in.

  When he came back he said, “I thought it was you, you damn fool.” He was still mad at me.

  “So did somebody else, Sam.”

  He looked toward the body now being lifted into the back of the ambulance. I could just see the dead man’s shoulders and head.

  Samson got out a black cigar, lit it, clamped his strong teeth on it, big jaw wiggling. About half a minute of that and the cigar would be on the cement, and he’d be chewing tobacco.

  “Like who?” he said—then glanced around and added, “Skip that.”

  Too many ears around, and we couldn’t know who all of them belonged to. Sam knew there would be plainclothes men mingling with the crowd, listening to comments from the interested citizens, some of whom just might be more interested than the average casual bystander.

  They’d report to Sam a little later, but in the meantime we knew a few things. Sam filled me in when we got back to the Police Building and were in his office.

  I did, by the way, before leaving the Hamilton Building, make sure little Hazel knew I was not dead, and gave her a big and unmistakably enthusiastic kiss—despite her squeals and gentle fist-flailing protests. And left, smiling at her parting comment: “But I was a virgin!”

  In Sam’s office he said, “What we’ve got so far, throwing out the witnesses who think it was seven men in a tank”—there are always some of those, in any investigation—“is this. Two men, not on foot, in a pale-colored sedan, maybe blue, maybe brown. They pulled up at the curb, lifted the hood—like trouble, you know, had to stop.”

  I nodded.

  “Nobody knows what happened until the shots were fired. Probably when they spotted Porter one of the men put the hood down, driver started the car; they were all ready to go. Four slugs hit Porter in the back, one in the neck, two in the head. That’s not all that were fired; we figure maybe two full clips. Automatics, .45 caliber. Most likely they breezed a few blocks and switched to another car. Clean, no descriptions worth a damn. Who knew you were going to show up at your office about two o’clock?”

  “What makes you think somebody knew?”

  “Two things. One’s Porter. He looks enough like you. I thought it was you.”

  “What’s the second thing?”

  “I got a phone call. Tell you about it in a minute. Somebody did know you were going to show.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yeah. Only I don’t know who.” I told him about the call to Hazel earlier, setting up the two o’clock appointment, then said “Phones are busy today. Who rang you?”

  “Man, kind of whispery voice, rough, like whiskey-rough. He decided not to give me his name and address.”

  “What’d he say?”

  Sam squinted, thinking back. “Like this. ‘Hey, Papa, Shell Scott just got shot at the Hamilton. Shot and killed. That grab you, Papa?’ Then he hung up, with more noise than necessary.” Sam rubbed his ear, remembering.

  “Wonder why in hell the guy would phone you?”

  “Rub it in. Punks are getting pretty cocky these days. Might be that’s all of it—or some guy who hates my guts.”

  “Not very fond of mine, either, I’d guess.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t hate anybody’s guts. Just hates cops, part of the stick-the-fuzz routine. S.o.p., Shell, the kookie climate.”

  “Yeah, maybe. What time did the call come in?”

  Sam glanced at a pad on his desk. “Man didn’t lose anything by tipping me. It was five after two when he reached me. Maybe a minute before the first call came in to the complaint board.”

  “Uh-huh. That would have been right after the shooting. When your caller figured I was good and dead. Could be the guy was close enough to hear the shots—maybe even see Porter go down.”

  Sam rubbed his head. “Haven’t had anything like this, not downtown, for a hell of a time. They must have wanted you bad enough to take the big chance. But …” He paused. “If we were going to pick them up on the streets, something should have come in.”

  It was true. They would have switched cars, maybe a couple of times by now. Or they might be in a hotel room, strolling on the streets, sitting in a bar somewhere. Probably raising a toast to the memory of the late, unlamented Shell Scott.

  I sat quietly for a minute, thinking.

  “Well,” I said finally, “right at first I thought maybe there was a slim chance they were after Porter instead of me. But the call you got chalks that off. And that was a hood job. Pro, or damn good amateurs, anyway. Only hoods I’ve been chumming around with lately is the Jimmy Violet collection of creeps.”

  “Yeah. I talked to Lieutenant Peterson an hour ago. I think he’d give his pension to get those punks good—Hollywood Division gets most of the action, and trouble, with that bunch.”

  “Those three didn’t spend much time in the clutches of the law, did they?”

  “Hell, no,” Sam said. Not with rancor, not even wearily. I suppose he was getting used to it by now.

  “What’s Jimmy up to out there these days?” I asked him.

  “Nothing we can prove. And even if we could—” he waved a big hand. “Oh, he’s still in prostitution; got some call girls on the string. Still gets a rakeoff from the union he headed before he was sent up.

  “He’s still able to swing sweetheart contracts, and help call off a threatened strike from time to time. Enough to pick up pocket money. But we think he’s worked into narcotics in the four years since he got out of San Quentin. Nothing solid, no evidence. Just the picture the ID gets.”

  I’d gone through the Intelligence Division’s file on Violet myself. Aside from the things Samson had mentioned, he seemed to have tried his hand at virtually anything that might mean fast and easy money. He’d picked up several new ideas during the three years he’d spent in Q, apparently.

  I said, “Well, two guys in the blue or brown sedan. Add your friendly caller, who had to be part of the play in advance. So that’s three, at least. Probably more. Which starts adding up to an organization. I popped Jimmy on his beak yesterday, but—”

  “You what?”

  “I biffed him a pretty good one on the nose.”

  “Why the hell did you do that?”

  “It seemed like a splendid idea at the time. He was getting pretty bad-mouth with me. And breathing on me, besides.”

  “Will you never learn—”

  “Look, so I clobbered him a little. I don’t think even Jimmy would send two or three wipers after me for that—not for that alone. Oh, he’d want to, but if you ask me, he’d need something else, another reason.”

  “You could be wrong, too.”

  “I guess it’s possible.”

  We talked about the Halstead killing for a couple of minutes. There was nothing new, nothing of much value, at least. I told Sam about finding Ed Walles; hit a few highspots in my activity of the day.

  When I finished he glanced at his watch. “Guess we missed ’em.”

  “There’ll be another time.”

  He looked at me, sharp brown eyes steady on mine. I suppose he was thinking of Porter, prone on the cement with his head open.

  As a matter of fact, I thought of it every once in a while myself.

  11

  I went in the same gate, through the same lovely garden, over the same white gravel path.

  It was broad daylight this time, but the difference was more than merely the difference between day and night. It was very quiet. Only the hum of the pool pump broke the stillness, and the water swirled gently, clear and blue.

  Mrs. Halstead was expecting me.

  She was waiting for me at the back door, looking quite pretty if a bit tired, sunlight saucy on her strawberry-blonde hair and the full-curved figure covered by a loose-fitting white shift. We didn’t go inside, but instead sat side by side on a small, padded bench resting on a few square yards of fluffy green dichondra; two weeping willows and a clump of
tall queen palms were filtering the sunlight.

  I didn’t like bothering Mrs. Halstead so soon after her husband’s death. But she was my client, after all. Even more important, she had not leveled with me. Maybe she’d leveled in the parts she’d told me, but Mrs. George Halstead had sure left a lot unsaid. Of course, I didn’t really blame her.

  It was sure as hell time, however, for all the facts to come out. And if I had to be just a little rough on Mrs. Halstead, then that’s how it was going to be.

  So I started by telling her of the recent scene in front of the Hamilton Building. I made the telling reasonably detailed, and attempted to draw a colorfully graphic picture for her.

  I wound it up, “Last I saw of Porter—who was, as I have indicated, supposed to be me—was when they were putting him into the ambulance. Just before they got him in it, his head jiggled off the edge of the stretcher, and a piece of his brain fell onto the street.”

  She closed her big, cool, green eyes, and swayed, just a little.

  “Why … why are you telling me this?”

  “Because that was supposed to be my piece of brain, and I haven’t got any pieces to spare. At least, not like that. And it’s very possible, if not probable, that I’ll get stupendously killed unless people start telling me all the little things which might help keep me alive.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Keep listening. I mean I may buy it like Porter if people keep holding out on me. The way you’ve held out on me.”

  “I’ve told you everything—”

  “When’s the last time you heard from Jimmy Violet?”

  “Jimmy … who?”

  It was a hundred to one she wouldn’t have answered like that if she’d ever heard of the guy. Not “Who did you say?” not even “Jimmy who?” Just questioning, slightly puzzled.

  She shook her head. “Did you say Jimmy Violet? Like the color?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head again. “Goodness, no,” she said. “Who is he?”

  “A hood. Never mind. Maybe there’s no connection.”