Gat Heat

by Richard S. Prather

  I think he was about to give me a history lesson. And I’m not so hot on history. “This blackmailer,” I said.

  “He came here this afternoon, showed us this photograph—a copy of the original, he said. His demand is for twenty thousand dollars to be delivered to him tomorrow night. Or—well, I’m sure you understand the or else.”

  “Uh-huh. Also, the twenty G’s—should you fork it over—would undoubtedly be only the first installment. Tell me, adding up the net worth—of all the members of your group, Mr. Spork, what would you say the total would come to?”

  “I’d have to guess. I really don’t know. I’m worth over a million. Bersudian’s worth at least four or five. I’d guess the total at perhaps fifteen million. Might be thirty, for that matter.”

  “What time did this guy come by today?”

  “Fortunately I noted that. He was here at twenty minutes past two this afternoon.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “About five-six and thin. Narrow face. Rather washed-out blue eyes.”

  Sybil broke in, “I don’t think he was more than thirty or thirty-five, but somehow he looked a lot older.”

  “Little pits all over his face,” Mr Spork added. “Little scars.”

  “Bingo,” I said.

  14

  “What?”

  “That’s his name. Bingo—Lester Kestel.”

  “You know him?” Mr. Spork leaned forward. “You mean you recognize him from our description?”

  “From that and a couple of other things. I think. I’m reasonably sure it was Bingo.”

  “If you know who he is, I suppose we could have him arrested.” Mr. Spork shook his head. “But, frankly, we can’t take the chance he’d make good his threat to expose—”

  I smiled. “This should interest you. If I’m right about the little slob, we had him in the can already today. Him and two other hoods. Not for long, of course—not long enough. One of those boys has since tried to kill me. Bingo apparently came out to see you. I wonder what Little Phil’s been up to?” I added, largely to myself.

  “Well … what can we do?” That was Sybil.

  “I’ve got a couple things in mind,” I said. “I’m working, as you know, for Mrs. Halstead. But you can take it for granted that I’ll be working on this, too. And looking for Bingo, among others.”

  “We’d be so terribly grateful if you could help—”

  “We’ll pay you very generously, Mr. Scott—”

  That was Sybil first, followed by her husband. I interrupted both of them, “Forget that. There won’t be any fee. My fee, whatever happens, will come from Mrs. Halstead. We’ve already got that settled.” I paused. “But—just in case I should get lucky enough to solve your problem and get Bingo, or any of his friends, off your backs …”

  “Yes?”

  “Maybe you’ll be good enough to forget about the blue velvet draperies? And the carpet?”

  “Of course.”

  “And, um, the door upstairs with a big hole in it.”

  I think I could have added, “And burning down your house,” and they would happily have agreed.

  “O.K.,” I said. “Tell me more about this album. Whose idea was it originally? When were these photos taken, and where? Were they kept in a regular album—kept where? And how did Bingo, or whoever the guy was, get his hands on the photo he had with him today?”

  Each of them answered some of the questions, or parts of them, and added bits of additional info here and there. But when I put it all together, there wasn’t much.

  They didn’t know where Bingo had got the photo of Sybil and Hugh Pryer, but it had been taken at the Halsteads’ home on the night they “joined the club,” as Mr. Spork put it; and that had been about three months ago. The photos were kept—in Sybil’s words—in “a regular album, just like a family album.”

  Neither of them knew for sure who had originally broached the idea, only that the “album” had been s.o.p. when they joined the club, and the addition of their photographs to it a prerequisite for inclusion among the select and secret membership of the group.

  “It was like an initiation,” said Sybil. “Besides being for everybody’s protection, it did sort of break the ice. And besides that, it was lots of fun—”

  “A prerequisite,” drily continued Mr. Spork, who had been speaking, “in addition to approval of all other members, of course.”

  “Uh-huh. And those members then consisted of the Halsteads and Whists, the Bersudians and Rileys.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Which means the idea of the album must have been initiated by someone from among those four couples.” I thought a moment. “And I’d assume one of those couples had the album in their possession, for safekeeping.”

  “Yes, that was Ed and Marcelle.”

  “Somehow I’m not surprised. Didn’t you hear about the fire they had in their apartment at the Norvue?”

  “I was coming to that,” said Mr. Spork. “That was about a month ago, just before they dropped out. They said the album had been destroyed in the fire. It was in their bedroom—”

  “I know. Apparently the entire album wasn’t destroyed.”

  “No, dammit,” said Mr. Spork.

  “I suppose,” I said, “that one snap might have been recovered from the trash. But Bingo isn’t a trash man. Or a bellboy, for that matter. Assuming it was Bingo who came here today.”

  We talked another minute, then Mr. Spork said, “I’m arranging to have the twenty thousand in cash here tomorrow, in case there’s nothing else to do but pay the man—when I get instructions on how that’s to be accomplished. I’m inclined to agree with you that the one payment wouldn’t be the end of it, so we certainly hope you can help us in some way. I’d be glad to pay you the twenty—”

  I waved a hand. “Forget that. I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do what I can. A couple of things are puzzling me, and if I can work them out …” I didn’t finish it.

  That was about all there was to say, so we shook hands and I left.

  I went back to the Cad following the same route I’d used to get here—without all that darting of course—carrying my brace and bit and ladder. Hadn’t broken in any windows, so I hadn’t needed the roll of tape. Hadn’t really needed the ladder and brace and bit, I thought sourly.

  Rolling back toward Hollywood, I called Homicide and got Samson on the line again.

  I asked him if he’d dug up anything on the name Skiko and he said, “Not much. No record here, Shell. Checked R and I, and there’s not even a ‘Skiko’ in the monicker file. But there’s one lead. You remember Lane from ID?”

  “Sure.” He was retired now, but Sergeant Lane had been in Intelligence Division for several years.

  “One of his reports,” Samson went on, “mentions a Skiko. That’s all, no first name or last name, just included as one of the people he’d run into or heard about while putting together a folder of information.”

  “Information about what?”

  “He was checking on hoods moving into the L.A. area from out of state then. That was a couple years ago. Want me to get in touch with Lane, see if he remembers anything more?”

  “No, I know where he lives. I’ll give him a call and if he’s home I’m sure he’ll see me. Something else I wish you would do, though, Sam.”

  “Like what?”

  “I told you about this guy Walles. Ed, and wife Marcelle. Used the name Whist for a while.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve a hunch his name isn’t Walles, either. If you had a set of his prints, you could check them out for me, couldn’t you?”

  “Could. But how are we going to get his prints? If I know you, you want us to kick in some doors and—”

  “Nope, just check out those prints—as fast as humanly possible—when and if I get them to you.”

  “How are you going to get them? I suppose you’re going to kick—”

  “Relax, Sam. Cootie owes me a favor. He’l
l bring the prints in, if he makes out.”

  “Don’t tell me any more about it.”

  Cootie was a man who’d worked for me on other occasions. He’d been a police lab man for about six months, but hadn’t been exactly cut out for law-enforcement work, and now owned a string of two gas stations. He hadn’t forgotten his former skills, however, and could photograph—or lift—latent prints, which was all I wanted him to do. And which I was sure he would do, for a couple of C-notes.

  “O.K., but you know who he is. Thus when and if he shows up, you’ll know he’s my personal representative in the continuing fight against crime, the titanic struggle—”

  “I know who he is,” Sam interrupted wearily.

  “So, knowing he’s from me, that will make it police business.”

  “Not likely,” he said.

  But he hadn’t said he wouldn’t run a check on the prints. I told him I’d call in later, and hung up.

  Then I phoned the Edward Walles’ number in Beverly Hills. There was no answer. Which was what I’d expected.

  So I phoned Cootie.

  Sergeant Ben Lane, retired, was a still erect and solid-looking man of sixty-odd, with bushy gray brows and deep lines at the corners of his mouth. I’d found him at home, and been talking to him for several minutes.

  I got up, thanked him for his time—and info from the voluminous mental files still in head—and said, “Sounds like the guy, Ben. I didn’t get a very good look at him, but he was short and bald—and Stub called him Skiko, after all. Anyhow, I’ll know him if I see him again.”

  “Try those dumps I mentioned,” Ben said. “Might be he still hangs out in one of them. It’s been two years, but hoods don’t change much.”

  “Nothing that ever tied him to Jimmy Violet, though?”

  “No, like I said, he was just one of a bunch moving into town. Came from Illinois, I think. Got too hot for him there. He was just a small-timer, a punk. Wasn’t in with anybody else—not then, anyhow—just a loner rolling in. I never had anything on him, except he got busted a couple times back there, no convictions.”

  “Yeah, but the arrests were for extortion, and that’s good enough for me. Let me know if I can do anything for you, Ben.”

  He nodded and we shook hands.

  Back in the Cad I headed for La Cienega. Not the famed stretch of it known as “Restaurant Row,” but another face of the Boulevard farther from Hollywood, where within a mile or so were half a dozen run-down bars, beer joints, and grandly named cocktail lounges.

  According to Ben Lane, that was where Skiko had spent a good deal of his free time, where he could be a big fish in a little pool, trying to impress the B-girls and floozies who cadged drinks from the not-too-savory clientele. At least, that had been true a couple of years ago. Maybe it still was.

  It was.

  I found him in a joint called the Sphinx, which was at least as Egyptian in decor as the corner of Second and Main in L.A. When I walked through the dump’s entrance and stood in the gloom inside, letting my pupils open up again while wishing I could as easily close my nostrils, the only familiar thing was the beer-and-sour-burp smell of the place, which was nauseously reminiscent of the atmosphere in the three previous joints I’d cased.

  At first.

  Three or four men, a very fat gal sagging on and over a far-too-small bar stool, and a young but wasted-looking woman were sitting at the bar on my right. The booths were on my left and all seemed to be empty; but one wasn’t. The backs of the booths were high and I couldn’t see into the one at the end farthest from me, but I could hear the sound of a woman giggling there. It was an oddly whining giggle, as if she were tee-heeing through her nose.

  And then I heard the man’s voice. It was rasping but soft, or at least low-pitched. Like a loud, hoarse whisper.

  I couldn’t make out the words at first, but I walked closer and heard him saying, “… and then, doll, I just ankled away and left them all standin’ there with their faces fallin’ off. How about that? Don’t that grab you?”

  The woman was giggling all through his story, really giving her nostrils a workout. But the interesting thing to me was that male voice, the sound of it and the man’s words. Because I was remembering Samson’s telling me about the guy who’d phoned him right after Porter got it in the back.

  As I walked along the row of booths I smiled slightly, reached up and loosened the Colt in its holster, kept my hand on it.

  The conversation, and even the giggling, ended suddenly when I stopped in front of that last booth.

  Little guy. Bald. I could see a faint brown blotch on one of his cheeks and a thin scar in his upper lip—marks Ben Lane had described but which I hadn’t noticed when we’d met before. It was the same boy who’d been out in Westwood this afternoon with Stub Corey. With Stub and me.

  “Hello, fleeper,” I said. And then I added softly, “You can finish that story with the fuzz, Skiko. Yeah, I know who you are. That grab you, Papa?”

  15

  He’d been wrong about me twice so far.

  He made it three.

  Skiko could see I had my hand under my coat, obviously on my gun, even if he couldn’t see the Colt itself. And he for sure knew I carried a gun. Maybe he just didn’t think—or simply thought I was here to kill him. Or maybe he’d charged himself up so much selling himself to his floozie that he kept believing his lies for a little too long. Just a moment too long. But too long.

  Or maybe he thought he had a chance when I took my eyes off him and looked at the woman. Maybe, maybe not; but that’s when he made his move.

  The “doll” seated across from Skiko was somewhere between thirty and forty years old and approximately the same number of pounds overweight, a gal with the look of decay in her eyes and pain puckered around her mouth She was a faded blonde, dark roots showing close to her scalp. She stared at me with her too-red and oily-looking lips parted, the corners still pulled up slightly in what remained of her real or feigned amusement. Folds of dough-white flesh sagged over the low top of her dress, much as the fat gal had sagged on her bar stool.

  I just glanced at her, that was all.

  But in that second or two Skiko shoved his feet against the floor pushing himself farther from me while his right hand whipped up under his coat. His hand hitting the gun butt made a flat sound, like a thin stick breaking, and I yelled, “Don’t do it, you damn—”

  But that was all there was time for.

  He was yanking out the gun even as I jerked the Colt from its holster and slapped it toward him. His eyes fixed on the Colt in my hand and widened till the whites were enormous and his mouth started stretching open—but he didn’t let go of the gun, didn’t stop.

  I waited as long as I could. It wasn’t long. But the gun was out from under his coat before I pulled the trigger.

  When I pulled the trigger, though, when I had to pull it, I didn’t stop with one. I put three into him. A baby’s hand could have covered the three holes. But not the blood that poured, with astonishing suddenness, from them.

  He made a sound that seemed to come not from his mouth but from deep in his throat, almost like a gasp starting in his stomach. The hand holding his gun thudded against the table, hitting a glass and shattering it, sending splinters of glass and splashes of beer over the table and onto the low-cut dress and doughy breasts of the faded blonde.

  She started to scream.

  She just sat there and stared at the blood spreading over Skiko’s wrinkled white shirt, crawling in a thick dark U down toward his belt buckle, and screamed, over and over and over; the shrill nerve-racking screeches were punctuated only by the strangled throat rasp as she sucked in air.

  Skiko coughed. Blood bubbled on his lips.

  I picked up his gun, glanced over my shoulder. The bar was emptying, last of the customers just going through the door into late-afternoon sunlight. But the bartender was behind the bar, looking at us. I jerked my head, pointed to the woman still staring and screaming at the top of
her lungs.

  He hurried over, took the woman’s hand and pulled her away. I told him to plant her and call the cops. She stopped screaming, but kept making little gasping noises.

  I leaned over Skiko. His eyes were rolling.

  “Skiko,” I said, “where’d Bingo get that photo—” I stopped, started over. There might not be much time, and the number-one problem was making sure I stayed alive to ask other questions.

  So I said, “Who set me up for the kill at the Hamilton, Skiko?”

  He moved his head a little, got his eyes on my face. They weren’t dull, but almost glowing, hot and feverish. I’m not sure he understood me. Maybe he didn’t even hear me. He pushed his bloody tongue out and over the blood on his lips.

  I put my head closer to his, looked straight at him. “Look, you knew you got Porter—didn’t get me, anyway—because you and Stub showed up and tried again in Westwood. I know two guys did the blasting downtown and you phoned Samson right after that. So start there, at the Hamilton. You had to be near a phone. Who were the trigger-men?”

  “Gippo,” he said. It sounded as if he were gargling, but I caught the name; and I knew the rest of it, Gippo Crane. “And … Tooth.”

  “Billy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No brains there, Skiko. Who set me up for that kill?”

  His eyes rolled again. I grabbed the cloth of his suit coat, bunched cloth and shoulder padding in my hand, holding him up. “There at the Hamilton, Skiko! Who set me up for that kill?”

  His eyes didn’t look feverish any longer. He wasn’t looking right at me, but past my head. Not much juice in him now. Brain sluggish, heart slowing.