Neon Mirage

by Max Allan Collins

  “Now you’re talking,” I said, smiling back at him.

  He glanced at his watch. “It’s early yet. Not even ten. How about coming back to the house with us? I got something I wouldn’t mind running past you.”

  “I don’t know, Ben…”

  He stood, picking up the check. “Aw, come on. Georgie’s gonna drop by around eleven or so, and we can play some cards or something.”

  I hadn’t seen Raft this trip; I wouldn’t mind seeing him.

  “Sure,” I said. “What house is this where we’re going?”

  “Virginia’s bungalow,” he said. “Follow us up Wilshire. We’ll show you the way.”

  Thirty-five minutes or so later, give or take, we drew up in front of the Beverly Hills haunts of La Hill, hardly a bungalow, rather a Moorish castle of pale pink adobe with a red tile roof on North Linden Drive. The near mansion had obviously cost big bucks, but it was surprisingly close on either side to its next-door neighbors, and the sloping lawn was relatively modest. I left my A-1 Agency Ford at the curb across the way, while the powder-blue Cadillac driven by Smiley (whose car it was) went up into the car port alongside the house.

  Ben and his little party of three came down to greet me at the sidewalk and go up the short flight of cement steps to the walk, where at the front door Siegel produced a solid gold key (a gift from Tabby). Chick and Jerri, who seemed to be an item, had their arms around each other’s waists; Smiley had a newspaper, the early edition of tomorrow’s Times, courtesy of Jack’s-at-the-Beach. The night air was full of night-blooming jasmine.

  Siegel unlocked the door, stepped inside, flicking on the hall light, and we all followed him into the spacious living room.

  Which wasn’t a particularly attractive room, despite Virginia Hill’s redecorating efforts. I couldn’t help but think how classy Falcon’s Lair had been (a “dump” to Ginny) and how tacky this room was, with its bronze cupid statue, marble Bacchus statue, oil painting of an English dowager on the wall over the fireplace fighting a nearby art deco study of a nude with wine glass, French Provincial coffee table, the flowery chintz divan clashing with the flowery drapes of the windows behind it.

  Siegel settled on that divan, at the right end of it, taking the newspaper from Smiley, who sat down at the divan’s left end. I took a comfortable easy chair to one side of Siegel, who said to Chick and his girl, “Why don’t you kids go upstairs? I want to talk some business with Al and Nate.”

  Chick was agreeable to the notion of going upstairs with his little redhead—who wouldn’t have been?—and the redhead was equally agreeable and, so, they disappeared. Ben was glancing at the paper as he spoke: “I’d like you to come to work for me, Nate.”

  “Ben, we’ve been down that road before…”

  “No we haven’t. I’m not talking about security work.” He looked at me; bloodshot they may have been, but those baby blues were magnets when he trained them on you just right. “I think you got a lot on the ball. You gave me good advice at the Flamingo, when everybody else around me was either kissing my ass or stealing from me—or both, like Moey.”

  “It was just common sense.”

  “Yeah, well I seen how you’re doing with your own business. Which is to say, very well. I have a lot of legitimate business interests, now—that’s why I wanted you to meet Al, here. We got some feelers out on an oil deal; and we got a legitimate business in salvage materials called California Metals.”

  Smiley was smiling, nodding. I didn’t know much about the guy, although Fred had mentioned this “business associate” of Ben’s had a rap sheet as long as a player-piano roll.

  “Anyway, I want you to consider getting involved with me on a management level. An executive level.”

  “That’s flattering, Ben—but I don’t really want to be doing business with the likes of Jack Dragna or even Mickey Cohen…”

  “You won’t be. Those guys are involved in areas wholly outside what you would be. Nate, consider this…”

  Glass crashed as gunfire rocked the room, shook Ben like a ragdoll, his right eye flying, nose crushed, and I hit the deck; so did Smiley, who yelped, a bullet nicking his arm. Rapidly, the gunfire, from a carbine, a .30-30 from the sound of it, chewed up Ben and the room, another slug entering from behind his head and turning his face into a mask of blood. Smiley was scrambling across the floor, like a crab, moving past the couch and the dead Siegel and from where I was plastered to the floor; he crawled inside the fireplace. I wish I’d thought of it.

  Marble statues shattered; bullets ate patterns in the walls; the dowager in the picture took a slug; so did the nude with the wine glass. Meanwhile, Ben’s head rolled back against the divan as if he finally had found time to rest, but his body danced as more slugs came tearing through the couch behind him, cracking ribs, shearing muscle and organs.

  Then silence.

  There had been nine shots—a full carbine clip—and I waited, flat on my face on the floor, to see if another clip would follow.

  Then Chick, in T-shirt and boxer shorts, was running into the room, a .38 in hand.

  “Get down!” I yelled, and he had sense to.

  A minute later, though, I moved toward the kid, staying low, and put my hand out. “Give me that—I’m going after them.”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever killed Ben. Give it to me!”

  He did, and I crawled across the room and got up against the wall and edged along till I was next to the windows, that is the yawning place where the window glass had been. I thrust myself into that firing line, .38 held out in two hands, faced the jagged-edged former window, but there was nobody there: just the rose trellis beyond, where the carbine had no doubt been steadied.

  I jumped out, feet landing on cement and glass, the latter crunching under my shoes.

  I could see a figure moving across the enclosed back patio, by the pool; then he was hopping over the cement fence and into the alley, where a car no doubt waited.

  Chick was looking out the window.

  “Call Cohen,” I said. “Find out what he wants done, and then call the cops.”

  “Why do it that way?”

  “Because it’s what Ben would want. Do it!”

  I didn’t wait for a response. I ran down to my Ford and got in and started it up. I did not turn on the lights. I sat and waited and watched the intersection of Linden and Whittier to my back. Seconds later a battered green Pontiac—very wrong for Beverly Hills—went lumbering by. In no hurry.

  I was in no hurry, either. I did a slow, easy U-turn and turned past the small dividing island onto Whittier, a wooded, winding street, expensively residential. I kept my lights off. The Pontiac was up ahead.

  Perhaps two minutes later, they turned right on Wilshire. I kept well back. At times I turned my lights on. Other times I pulled over and parked and waited while they (I could make out at least two shapes in the car) were stopped at a light. Westwood Boulevard was one such stop; Bundy, another. I kept at my quiet pursuit as Wilshire dropped ever so gradually to the ocean, through toney residential districts and blocks of apartment houses and a business district now and then. I kept thinking of that newspaper Ben had been reading, which had wound up bloody in his lap. The paper, given him courtesy of the restaurant’s management, had been stamped: Good night. Sleep well with our compliments.

  I wanted a smoke, but I didn’t have any. We passed a military cemetery at Veteran and Wilshire, an infinity of white crosses; soon we crossed through a sprawling complex of modern wooden buildings, a V.A. hospital. I’d been following the enemy—and I hoped that was who they were, I hoped my instincts about the battered Pontiac were correct—for fifteen minutes, now.

  Maybe there were some cigarettes in the glove compartment, yes! Camels, and I didn’t even have to walk a mile for them. I lit one up, sucked the harsh smoke into my lungs. Sweat beaded my forehead. The night was pleasantly warm, rushing in my rolled-down windows, but my eyes were burning.

  I got up fairly close behind the
m, in Santa Monica. Three of them. Three shapes. I checked the .38. Six bullets.

  Resting the gun on the seat beside me, I dropped back, kept my distance as they led me from Wilshire to Palisades Beach Road and up Pacific Coast Highway. The world had become strangely desolate, suddenly; the lights of Santa Monica winked in my rear view mirror, civilization bidding me a wry farewell, but to my right was a cliff side, and to my left, not more than five hundred yards, was the water line, waves beating against the shore every twenty seconds or so, sounding distant and yet a roar. That, and the hum of the motor, was all that kept me company on this eerily quiet drive along the coast; oh, and the sight of the red rear lights of the car glowing up ahead. I was driving with my lights on, now, but I was back well enough, and there was some traffic out here to cover me. Not much, though. Not much.

  Just past where Sunset Boulevard emptied out, a busy street dissipating down to the middle of nowhere, the Pontiac pulled over, off the road, onto the sandy shoulder. They had another car waiting there. A dark blue Plymouth parked there, newer than what they were driving, which was either stolen or black-market untraceable.

  I glided past them, and saw them, bathed in moonlight, one man in a Hawaiian shirt, two others wearing sportjackets, getting out of one car, heading to the other.

  Old friends. Small world.

  The man who’d been driving was Bud Quinn, formerly a lieutenant with the LAPD, formerly an employee of the late Benjamin Siegel; it was Quinn wearing the Hawaiian shirt, of course. His two riders were boys from out of town who needed a savvy chauffeur like Quinn.

  They were from Chicago. West Side boys. Like me.

  Well, not quite like me. They were bookies. Name of Davey Finkel and Joseph “Blinkey” Leonard.

  And this time they’d pulled off a hit without a hitch.

  Almost.

  I slowed, threw it in reverse and hit the pedal.

  The car had screeched to a stop just next to them, as they froze in their procession toward their nearby second car, and their eyes were wide and white in the night as I leaned out the window and said, “Any of you boys know the way to the V.A. hospital?”

  Widow’s-peaked Finkel was just opposite me, and I opened the car door into him, hard, throwing him back, hard, onto the sandy ground. I jumped out, .38 in hand and before I could tell them not to, both Quinn and Blinkey went for guns, Quinn to a .38 stuck in his waistband, Blinkey clawing under his unbuttoned jacket.

  Quinn I shot in the head, right above the bridge of his nose and he went back hard in a mist of red and thudded in the sand, his gun in hand, at the ready. Blinkey, having trouble maneuvering his gun from his shoulder holster, thought twice and ran, heading toward the beach and the lapping waves. Finkel was still on his back, but was making a move for his gun; I kicked him in the head and he stopped.

  I ran after Blinkey; he had his gun out, now, and was looking back at me, moonlight glinting off the glass of his glasses, and he was shooting back at me, the gunshots sounding strangely hollow in this big empty landscape. We ran in slow motion, the sand under our feet making a mockery of the chase, but when he reached the shoreline, he seemed to pick up speed, feet leaving impressions in the wet sand, foam flicking his ankles, and he was smiling crazily as he looked back at me and aimed and I put a bullet in one of his eyes, glass cracking. His howl could barely be heard over the crash of the surf, and he went splashing back into the sea, his feet on the sand, toes up, his body covered, and then uncovered, and then covered by the tide.

  I was walking back toward my car when another shot rang out, and I felt a bullet hit me just above the left temple; it threw me back, on my ass, and blood streamed down into my face, into my left eye. I wasn’t dead or even dying; it had to be just a bad graze, and I was pushing up with one hand when I saw Finkel looming above me, his impressively ugly face a symphony of bushy eyebrows, thick lips, and facial moles, his rotten teeth pulled into a ghastly smile. His head was bleeding some, too, from where I kicked him; he wasn’t dead, either, or dying, and he seemed to take glee in pointing his automatic down at me.

  I shot him in the smile and his teeth went away and so did he; he went back, hard, though the sand cushioned the blow, not that it mattered, as now he was dead, or dying, and I struggled to my feet, wiping the blood off my temple and forehead, getting sand in the wound, blinking, the sand under my feet slowing me down as I moved toward my Ford.

  I got behind the wheel. Put the gun on the seat beside me. Lit up a cigarette. Sat and smoked and glanced out at the landscape, littered with bodies, turned silver and blue in the moon and starlight.

  Then I drove away.

  I drove north. By all rights I should have headed back to the city, but I drove north. I was bleeding. Blood was flowing gently, not gushing or anything, just trickling down over my eyebrow into my eye. I held a handkerchief to my head and drove with one hand. The ocean at my left remained a constant, reassuring presence; to my right the cliffs moved gradually back and became hills.

  Finally there was a T intersection with a diner and a gas station and a phone booth. I stumbled into the latter, feeling woozy.

  I had enough change to put a call through to Fred Rubinski, at home.

  “What the hell is it, Nate?” he said thickly. “It’s after midnight…”

  “Do you have Cohen’s number?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Mickey Cohen’s number. Can you reach Mickey Cohen?”

  “Sure, yeah. I suppose. I got his unlisted number in my black book. Why?”

  “Call him and give him this.” I read off the pay phone’s number. “Tell him that’s where he can reach me. Tell him to call right away.”

  “Okay, but what’s up?”

  “They hit Ben Siegel tonight.”

  “Jesus!”

  “He was sitting on the couch in Virginia Hill’s place and somebody outside the window with a carbine shot him, good and dead.”

  “Jesus. Jesus. Where do you fit in?”

  “What you don’t know can’t hurt you. But why don’t you get dressed and go over and sniff out the situation. Protect my interests.”

  “Well, Christ, Nate, just how do your interests need protecting exactly?”

  “Just do it, Fred. Play it by ear.”

  “Were you there when it went down?”

  “I don’t know yet. That’s one of the things I gotta find out.”

  “Oh, brother.” He paused. “You know, you don’t sound so good. Are you all right?”

  “I’m on top of the world. Call Cohen.”

  I hung up.

  I sat down in the booth, my butt inside it, my feet hanging out onto the cinder parking area of the diner. Nobody tried to use the phone, or if they did, saw me sitting there and said the hell with it.

  My teeth were chattering, and my head was burning. What was this, a fucking malaria flare-up? Hell of a time. Why wouldn’t my forehead stop bleeding? I didn’t feel so good.

  The phone rang.

  “This is Heller.”

  “This is Mick. What the fuck happened?”

  I told him.

  “Fuck a duck! You nailed all three of ’em?”

  “That’s right. So what’s the score? Do I go to the cops, Mick, or do you just clean up after me?”

  “Nobody saw it happen? Not a soul?”

  “Not a living one.”

  “I got to talk to somebody.”

  “Who? Dragna?”

  “What you don’t know won’t hurt you, pal.”

  Where had I heard that before?

  The phone clicked dead.

  I hung up, sat down and waited some more. I still felt punk; feverish. Was I in shock? Did I have a concussion? Did I still have a screw loose that triggered some kind of ersatz malaria flare-up after a “combat” situation? Totally sane people don’t get mustered out on a Section Eight, after all.

  The phone rang.

  “You was never there.”

  “Never where, Mick?”
>
  “Anywheres. Not at Siegel’s house or the beach, neither. In fact, nothing happened at the beach.”

  “If you say so.”

  “What was you usin’?”

  “A .38 I got from Chick, at Siegel’s house.”

  “You’re calling from where, exactly?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not exactly a native. Somewhere near Malibu, I suppose.”

  I read off the name of the diner and the gas station.

  “Toss the piece in the drink,” Cohen advised, meaning the .38.

  “Just that easy, huh? Then head back to L.A.?”

  “No. Keep driving. Before long you’ll see a motor court. El Camino Motel. Don’t even check in. You’ll find unit seven unlocked.”

  “I could use some rest,” I admitted. “But I want to get out of here soon as I can. I got a flight out Sunday morning.”

  “Good, ’cause with that wound of yours, you got to duck the cops.”

  “But, Mick, I was seen with Ben at that restaurant.”

  “Right. So they’re gonna want to talk to you. Fine. Just get out of town before they have a chance.”

  “Maybe I ought to just drive back to the city and check in with the cops…”

  “You just killed three guys. You left the scene of a shooting. Two shootings. You was with Bugsy Siegel when he was hit. Any of this sound like anything you wanna be tied up with in court? In the papers? Any of this sound good for business?”

  “No,” I said.

  “No is right. Meantime, we’ll get a doctor for you.”

  “I don’t need a doctor,” I said, blinking blood out of my left eye.

  “Jack says you got to have a doctor. We got our own guy who don’t report gunshot wounds, you know?”

  “It’s just a graze,” I said, but my legs were wobbly.

  “Better safe than sorry. Now do it.”

  “Okay,” I said, and hung up.

  I walked back to the car, feeling shaky, wondering if my judgment was worth a fuck. Was this a set-up? Was I a loose end they were going to tie off?

  No. That wasn’t like Cohen at all. He was a straight shooter, and he hated the Capone crowd like poison—and this hit had obviously gone down from the Chicago end, either at the request, or with the complicity of, the east coast Combination.