Private Eye 1: Private Eye

by T. N. Robb

  She didn't say anything. She was an artist of silence, he decided. She knew how to manipulate it, mold it, sculpt it to mean anything you wanted.

  He glanced down at the license. "Amazing what you can find out from just this little card, even at this time of morning. Let's see: 'Sarah Ann Thompson, born 1929, Lacrosse, Wisconsin.' No notable assets"—he dropped the license on the floor—"other than what you slide between the sheets with at night."

  He stuck his hands in his pockets, looked up, recalling the rest of the facts he had been told. "Part-time model, part-time actress, currently appearing as the merry widow of Buddy Williams in a beachhouse owned by one Eddie Rosen. Judging from your performance last night, I'd say you've got a real career ahead of you."

  She turned then, burying her face in her hands as her eyes misted in tears. He felt something rip open inside his chest. "Jack, please, let me explain. I tried to tell you last night when—"

  "It would've gone over, too. With the real Lana Williams back East for the month, and me..." He smiled painfully. "Well, let's say you had an effect on me. You made a couple mistakes, though. Your favorite little nook here looks like a new addition to me. Don't think there're too many memories here. But hell, I thought it might just have been redone. I wanted to believe it. You should've taken the necklace off with the rest of what you were wearing, though. That's where you went wrong."

  She turned back to the window, touched the gold heart; emotion shuddered through her. He could actually see it, a ripple that swept from her spine up her arms, to her neck, her face. "I wanted to tell you last night," she whispered, and then her voice broke and she covered her face again.

  It was a convincing performance and he almost bought it. Wanted desperately to buy it. But then he thought of Nick. Of Rosen. Ellen. Nick again. Always it came back to Nick.

  Cleary stepped closer to her, a thick, dispassionate skin growing around his heart even as he moved. "Tell me, what? You were going to tell me it was all a damn lie. That it? That you're on the payroll of the man that killed my brother, and made off with my wife."

  He grabbed her roughly by the arm, jerking her to her feet. "You look at me when I talk to you. Do you—"

  He broke off his tirade in mid-sentence when he saw the bruise that spread from the lower part of her jaw and then up along the side of her face. She looked like a woman who'd had the hell beaten out of her.

  "I didn't know they had killed anyone." She bowed her head as she spoke and touched her hand to the bruise. "I didn't. Really. Rosen told me just to get close to you, to find out what you knew about the Buddy Williams tapes."

  , Cleary touched her chin, lifting it. "They did this to you. Why?"

  She nodded. "They came here about an hour ago. They wanted to know where you were." She raised her eyes. Desperation manacled her features. "It wasn't all a lie, Jack, you've got to believe—"

  "I don't want to hear about it."

  He turned away from her, pacing the room like a man possessed, trying to fit everything into a logical framework, to make sense of what he was feeling. "Why'd you do it, Sarah? Money, what? What have they got on you?"

  She turned away from him again, staring out the window, finding it easier to speak to him if she didn't have to look at him. "I was seventeen years old when I came to this town, Jack. Let's just say I made a few mistakes along the way. The kind that some people won't let you forget."

  Cleary's hands found her shoulders. He turned her around, gently, and his fingers slid over the bruise, drawn to it with the same inexorable tug that a moth feels toward a flame. "You didn't tell them anything when they came here this morning. Why not?"

  She shrugged. "You don't want to hear about it, remember?"

  Cleary resisted the urge to put his arms around her, to hold her, to lift her up and carry her over to the bed. She was a victim as much as he was. Yet he also knew that neither of them was really a victim. They had each taken the steps that had led them to this place. But why, simply to test their endurance of spirit, their willpower?

  "Call them back, Sarah. Tell them I've got the tapes. Tell them I'm meeting you in three hours. At the reservoir. Do that for me."

  A look of alarm swept over her face, brighter than the light, deeper than the bruise. "Jack, they'll kill you. You've seen what they've done. They're ruthless."

  Cleary walked over, picked up the phone receiver, and held it out. "Make the call."

  There was, she supposed, a measure of comfort to be found at the brink of the Pacific. Or at least, there had been comfort in the past. But it wasn't there for her now.

  Sarah walked along the water's edge, lost somewhere inside herself. She felt the heat on her back, the warm sand against her bare feet, was aware of the relentless pounding of the surf, but all of it seemed to be happening someplace distant from her, too far away to touch.

  In the short time she and Cleary had spent together, she felt like he had helped her redefine her life. Restructure it. She had confessed to the lie, after all, rather than hiding behind it, and that was something, wasn't it? And she had stood up to the bastards who thought they could run her life. But it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough because Cleary wasn't supposed to mean anything to her, but he did. He had drawn her in like no other man she had ever known.

  Maybe it was this penchant of his for self-destruction. Maybe it was that desperation in him that she had hoped to quell. Hell, maybe it was just that they were great together in the sack. She didn't know anything anymore, except that he didn't have a chance of surviving against Rosen's hoods. Yes, of that much she was certain.

  Something had pushed him over the edge.

  She had.

  And then she had tried to pull him back, but it was too late. He had slid. He was a goner. Headed toward the end.

  She had reached the beachhouse again, and when she glanced up, saw a man in a dark suit standing there, watching her. He's back. Cleary's back. But as she neared she realized the man wasn't Cleary.

  She reached the steps to the patio, paused, gazed up at him. "Who're you?"

  "I'm looking for Jack Cleary."

  Big deal. So's half the L.A. police force.

  She climbed the steps, and slipped on her robe. "You're looking in the wrong place. There's no one named Cleary here."

  The man didn't respond, and she glanced over at him. His eyes, she thought. He had a cop's eyes, cold and dark and utterly blank. They all got that look alter a while, almost like an inner wall went up inside them.

  "My name's Fontana." He flashed his badge. "I know Cleary didn't kill that guy in the motel. I want to help him. Where is he?"

  She looked him over, did it openly, not caring what he thought. He seemed okay for a cop, and she thought she recalled Cleary having mentioned his name, but couldn't remember in what context. Good guy or bad? Yeah, when you looked at the world, when you reduced it to essentials, everything became black or white, good or bad.

  "Well, it's going to take an army to save him now. He's on his way to meet some pretty ruthless guys. I tried to talk him..." She shrugged. "It's what he wants. I can't tell you why. I don't know."

  She saw the crease between his eyes deepen as he nodded. "You mean Rosen's boys?" he asked. "They're the ones he's going to meet?"

  "Right."

  "Where? And when?"

  She told him. He glanced at his watch, nodded, and started to leave.

  "Do you know Cleary well?"

  "We were partners," he said, and trotted back toward his car. She watched him until he disappeared around the back of the house.

  Partners, she thought, then recalled what Cleary had told her last night about his former partner. "Oh God, no. Cleary, for God's sake, don't go there," she whispered.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The Rumble

  As Cleary drove up to the motor court Johnny Betts called home, he cringed. The damn place looked like a home away from home for vacationing bikers and stranded Okies, for derelicts and lost souls. The parking lot was decorat
ed with crunched beer cans, Harleys, and assorted car parts.

  Betts, sporting his customary grease-encrusted black denims, engineer boots, and a torn guinea T-shirt, was leaning into the engine compartment of his Mercury when Cleary spotted him. A twelve-transistor radio hung from a hood ornament, and he heard Johnny Cash singing, "I Walk the Line."

  He rolled down the window as he pulled next to the Merc. "What you doin' Betts?"

  He stood up, holding a dark-tipped spark plug in one hand, and looked at Cleary. He tossed his tension-wrench into the toolbox, dropped the old plug, and grabbed a rolled-up newspaper off the side rail of the Merc.

  "Did you see this, man? You made the front page. No wonder you were so hot-to-trot yesterday."

  Cleary took the paper. As he glanced at the article, his features tightened. "I'm going to need that hardware I left with you."

  Betts wiped his hands with a rag, then his forehead with the back of his hand. He leaned toward Cleary. "Look," he said, his voice low, "if you're going up against Rosen, you're traveling a little light."

  Cleary shook his head. "Thanks, kid, but all things considered I think you might want to sit this one out. No, I don't think it, I know it."

  "Think again, Cleary. You're going to need the help. And I'm the best choice you got."

  He closed the hood of the Merc and grabbed his shirt. Despite everything, Cleary laughed. Either the kid had guts or he was nuts, and whichever it was made no difference whatsoever to Cleary. He realized he respected Betts, and knew that he was seeing in him what Nick had.

  Betts opened the trunk of the Merc, pulled out the suitcase, and lugged it over to the Eldorado. He climbed into the passenger seat, and set the weapons at his feet. "Let's go." He wiped his forehead. "Ten o'clock, and it's hot enough out to kill old people."

  "And it's going to get even hotter," Cleary remarked, then stepped on the gas and the Eldorado took off.

  A few minutes later, they were slicing through the still, torrid air at a steady forty miles an hour. As they headed up Benedict Canyon toward Mulholland, Cleary sensed the inevitable drawing near. He stared straight ahead, steeling himself, and realized he felt nothing at all—not fear, not anticipation, nothing but a sense that he was going to seize his destiny, whatever it was, and give it his best shot.

  Betts, meanwhile, fumbled with the shells as he loaded the sawed-off. Sensing his anxiety, Cleary shook two Lucky Strikes out of his pack, offering one to him. It was a small gesture, but one which, for Betts, resonated deeply. He lit them both with Cleary's gold lighter, then handed the lighter to him.

  "I guess Nick gave you the lighter, eh?"

  Cleary looked over at him, dropping the lighter in his pocket. He knew Nick had given it to him, could remember the precise moment when it had happened, but he recalled little else about it. "Yeah, he did. How'd you know?"

  Betts combed his fingers through his hair and told him about the key he had found inside the lighter, and how it had led him to the tapes.

  Cleary nodded, and wondered if Nick had told him about the key. It was possible. Nick might've told him during his last bender and he could've forgotten. He literally lost days sometimes while he was drinking, blacked out, wasted, like they'd never happened at all. Time he couldn't pull back in. Time he couldn't reclaim.

  Had Nick realized the extent of the incriminating evidence on the tapes? Had he known that Rosen was linked with the city's political corruption? Maybe Nick knew, but hadn't told him, fearing he would do something stupid while he was drunk. He had done plenty of that without Nick's help. He conceded he might never find out just how much Nick had figured out before his death.

  High above the Los Angeles Basin, the city stretched below like some torpid beast, stupid and slow. Ringing the reservoir was an unpaved fire road, and a lifeless landscape of sycamore, mesquite, and manzanita. Everything was so parched, Cleary thought, that a fast thought would set it ablaze. A portentous silence reigned, as if the heat had even bludgeoned the locusts into submission.

  Then he spotted the cars moving through the heat. Two of them. They disappeared for a moment, first the Packard, then a Fleetwood, then reappeared around a bend. They slowed, parked in the roadside underbrush directly across from him and just before the entrance to a parking area.

  The man behind the wheel of the Packard stepped out, accompanied by a man with a submachine gun. The Fleetwood disgorged two more shooters, each cradling a sawed-off shotgun. Then Dibble stepped out of the back of the Fleetwood.

  Five of them, Cleary thought.

  The driver of the Packard took charge. He motioned the Fleetwood boys with the sawed-offs cover the curve. "We don't want no way out for him."

  "Battista," Dibble said, "we should get up above the road. We'll have a better advantage."

  "Don't worry about it. Everything's under control " He gestured to the submachine gunner. "Get up on the rocks. He should be here any minute."

  Cleary, crouched behind a roadside boulder, suddenly stood up. "You got that right."

  Battista and his lackeys looked up and saw Cleary covering all of them with a military-issued submachine gun. "Okay, drop 'em. Right now. Everything's under control," Cleary yelled.

  Battista glanced sharply at Dibble and the others. None dropped a weapon. Dibble smiled. "Hey, Cleary, you're a little outnumbered, wouldn't you say?"

  "Yeah. But we got loads of enthusiasm," Betts shouted from his position across the road. He lowered his sawed-off, grinned menacingly. "Who wants to dance, muchachos?"

  No one moved, and a deadly silence ensued. The cornered men traded uneasy glances. Suddenly Battista hissed something to Dibble and both men dove to the cover of the Packard. The others opened fire.

  Cleary responded with a short, economic burst of fire. One guy fell. The second shooter dropped to one knee, pumping off a round at Betts, who flattened against a roadside boulder, then wheeled about and returned one fatal round to the man, blowing him off his feet.

  Cleary ducked behind the rock as submachine gun fire ricocheted inches from his head. Betts returned the fire, knocking the submachine gunner clear off the road and into the reservoir with a twelve-gauge blast.

  Betts immediately broke down his sawed-off to reload just as Battista reappeared from behind the Packard, leveling a .38 flush at him. Battista's finger was tightening on the trigger when Cleary blew him away: cold, clean, and with a vengeance.

  Cleary wheeled around, hoping to knock off Dibble. Instead he found himself staring at the barrel of a .45. "Drop it, Cleary. You, too, kid," Dibble yelled from behind the Fleetwood.

  They both hesitated. Then, seeing no alternative, they dropped their weapons. Cleary slowly raised his hands.

  "Get down here," he barked.

  Cleary climbed off the rock.

  "What's it like to know you're about to die, Cleary?" asked a smirking Dibble. "Tell me about it."

  Cleary stared at him, refusing to give him the pleasure of seeing him beg.

  "You satisfied with your life? Happy with the world now? Got everything you want?"

  "I'm about halfway there."

  Dibble suddenly laughed, amazed at the brass of the man, then pulled back the hammer of the .45. "That's as far as a guy like you will ever get in this town, Jack. You can count on it."

  He was about to fire when a voice behind him shouted, "It's all over, Dan."

  Cleary turned slightly to see Charlie Fontana standing at the curve in the road, beside his Ford. His .38 was aimed at Dibble's back. "We can settle things here or down at the station."

  Dibble cautiously backed off from Cleary, lowered his weapon, and turned to Fontana. He shook his head, let out a contemptuous laugh. "Decisions, decisions."

  Then suddenly he raised his weapon, and shot Fontana square in the chest. Fontana returned fire, missing his target. Cleary dove for his weapon and raised it just as Dibble spun on him and fired.

  Cleary took the bullet in his left forearm, but still managed to squeeze off a vicious burst
of submachine fire that sent Dibble flailing across the road and into the shrubbery. The only thing he left behind as he departed the world was a shoe, abandoned in the middle of the dusty road.

  Cleary rushed up to the critically wounded Fontana. Betts was close at his heels as Cleary knelt down. "Oh Jesus, Charlie," he whispered.

  Fontana's shirt was stained with bright red blood. It was spreading even as Cleary lifted his head. Fontana barely pried an eye open. "You thought... I was dirty, too... didn't you, Jack?"

  The words burned.

  Cleary, favoring his wounded arm, ripped open Fontana's shirt, his face paling at the sight of the wound. He looked up at Betts, nodded to the Ford. "Help me get him in the car. Fast."

  Then, cradling Fontana in his arms, he lifted him as gently and as best he could, and with Betts's help, eased him into the Ford. "Cleary." Fontana coughed. His face seemed to grow even paler, as though all the blood in his body were rushing toward his chest wound, streaming out of him. "I was under... I was setting Rosen up. When you gonna start trusting people again, Jack?"

  TWENTY-THREE

  Farewell Party

  Cleary was seated in the corridor of the emergency room of St. John's Hospital. He stared blankly ahead, his arm propped in a sling. The bullet had passed in and out of his forearm, chewing up muscle, but causing no serious damage. He had told his story twice now. He knew there would be more questions, but no one had arrested him. They knew he had dug out the rot in the department that everyone had been smelling, and exposed it to the harsh light. No one was going to jail him for that.

  But one thing still kept him here.

  Fontana.

  He turned his attention to his right as two uniformed officers approached. He could tell from the way they were walking that they had something official to say. The hell if he was going to go back into their impromptu interrogation room and tell it all over again. He stared stonily at them as they stopped in front of him.

  "Just got word on Detective Fontana," one of them began. "Doctor says he's going to make it."