by P. N. Elrod
“So what’d he say?”
“Enough about you to get me in good with the cops. It was stupid to use grenades again, especially at Lennet’s old place. What the hell were you thinking? When they start sweating you, you’re gonna need a friend with influence, not some jumped-up hoofer in a monkey suit. You need me, Shivvey. You need me alive and on your side.”
“Lennet’s place? What were you doing there?”
Damn. Maybe I shouldn’t have altered Nevis’s memory. What I’d put there didn’t jibe with Coker’s talk.
“Don’t change the subject,” Nevis purred. “You missed me tonight, and I could still kill you for it, but for old time’s sake I can let it slide.”
“You could kill me? I’m the one with the gun.”
“True, but I’m the one with the money. You’ll need it to get the Ace up and running again. Taking me out of the picture would complicate everything for you.”
“Not really. No one has to know you’re dead. With the cops giving you the eye like today, no one’ll blame you if you skip town and don’t leave an address.”
Nevis snorted. “You think with me out of the way you can waltz in here and take over like Gordy did with the Nightcrawler? That won’t happen for you, my friend. You like to play too much. And there’s not a lot of time off when you’re being boss. When you’re running things, it means you have to be here all night every night, in good health or on your deathbed. You don’t have the head for the paperwork or the patience to deal with every drunken asshole who thinks he’s Diamond Jim Brady on a roll. In a month the new would wear off for you along with all the fun, and you’d suddenly realize you’re not the owner of the club, the club owns you. It’s too late to get away then because you have to have the money like a train needs tracks.”
Jeez. And I thought I was good at hypnotizing people. Nevis had me half-convinced.
“Having this club means no more time for skirt-chasing unless you settle down with Rita, and she’s too smart to get stuck with you.”
“Shut up, Nevis.”
“If this annoys you, then that means I pegged it. Face the facts, Shivvey, you want the money but not the work that goes with it. Believe me, you’re much better off with the job you’ve got. If you want a raise, you can have one; all you had to do was ask.”
Somewhere along the way Coker had lost control of the conversation, and I doubted that he was aware of it.
“I see now that’s what you tried to do with Lennet way back when. You figured to bump him, and I get the blame, and you take over running the club, only it didn’t work out like you wanted. Lennet’s joint gets boarded up and you’re out of a job, so you came over to my payroll, liked how I do things, and settled in for a few years. They were pretty good years—until Fleming opens the old joint up again and finds what’s in the cellar. Is that what set this off for you, Shivvey? Did his finding Lena set it off?”
Coker didn’t answer immediately. I wanted to see his face. He could be raising the gun right then.
“It did and it didn’t,” he muttered instead.
“Come on and spill.” Nevis sounded more like an understanding big brother than a man seated six feet away from a bullet.
“I figured if the cops put you away for her, then I might as well be here to take over. Just makes sense to make another try when the odds favor.”
“Yeah, that does make sense,” agreed Nevis. “I might have done the same thing myself. But they’re not going to put me away. Not enough evidence.”
That’s when Coker woke out of Nevis’s spell and laughed. “You don’t know everything. Boss.”
“Fill me in. I’m not going anywhere.”
“No, you’re not. For one thing, your sweet little twist Lena was stealing from you.”
“Tell me what I don’t know.”
“Good, Nevis. I didn’t think you were that dumb. Why’d you let her get away with it? Were you in love?”
Nevis kept his temper against the inherent contempt. “It didn’t bother me is all. Anything else?”
“Oh, yeah. Plenty. Lena kept a record of every bet she made. I think it was some kind of insurance for her in case you decided to fall out of love.”
Great. One cat out of the bag. One can of worms opened wide. One pot of beans spilled to hell and gone all over the floor. I suppose I could edit Nevis’s memory later. What’s a splitting headache or two between friends?
“A record?”
“She had a little book. The only thing in it was your name and a lot of numbers and dates of all the work you had for her with the bookies. Very incriminating. It wouldn’t take the cops very long to—”
“You’re lying.”
I could almost see Coker’s shrug. “Doesn’t matter. I was going to give it to them to nail you to the wall, but then they’d close this place down for good. Or make it too expensive for me to pay them off.”
“So you forget the book and kill me instead? And who do you think they’d pick as the most likely suspect?”
“Me, of course. Only I’ll have plenty of alibi. Same as the other time.” He didn’t have to add that last bit. It was his way of informing Nevis his end was definitely nigh, just as it’d been for Welsh Lennet.
“The other time it went bust on you.”
“Not my fault. I got things better prepared now.”
“Sure you have. You think I wouldn’t know? Or allowed for it? You bump me, and you won’t see one thin dime off this place. I made a will.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Something happens to me, and it all goes to my uncle in San Francisco. I figure it might make up for some bad blood between us.”
“Well, you said it yourself, don’t kid a kidder.”
“You’ll find out the truth of it soon enough.”
“Maybe so,” Coker said after a minute. “But even if it does go to him, he’ll need someone local to run things. I still get the club. Why you shaking your head?”
“Because my uncle is anything but stupid, except when it comes to women—which runs in the family if I’m any judge of myself. He may not like me, but he’d get over it once I’m dead. He’s funny that way about relatives. He can hit them, but no one else can. He will turn this town inside out, call in every favor to get my killer. You, my old buddy, would lose, because you don’t have that many friends willing to keep their yaps shut once he starts waving the cash around. Then, when he closes on you . . .”
“Yeah, what?”
“You’ll end up wishing your ma and pa never made eyes at each other. I’ve seen Uncle Grim at work.” Nevis drew a breath between his teeth to make a hissing sound. “It’s ugly. You have to have a strong stomach to watch, but he’s kind of an artist about it. The results are impressive. It’s amazing how long he can keep them alive, too. You wouldn’t think—”
“That’s good, Nevis. I almost believe you, but if any of that were true, you’d have said something about it a long time back. You like to talk too much, but you’ve never mentioned any of this before.”
“I’ve never had a man holding a gun on me for this long before. It’s downright inspiring to the memory.”
“You’re boring me.”
“I’m just getting to the good part, though, the part where we both come up smelling like roses.”
This was something I wanted to hear as well.
“The part where I make you a real deal—one we can both live with.”
A pause. “Okay, go ahead. Surprise me.”
“I just might. Lena had a practical streak in her. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to hook up with me permanent. If she’d ever wanted out and I said no, she’d have had that book to convince me to back off. Something simple and easy. You can use it the same way.”
“Which is... ?”
“I run the club, you pull the strings. You get ten percent of the weekly take after it’s cleaned up. You’ve got the book to keep me from killing you, and you don’t kill me because I’m doing the work.”
&nbs
p; “Keep talking.”
“All you have to do is fix up a dead man’s switch with the book. If you’re ever killed or you disappear, the book is delivered to the cops with an appropriate note about me. You can find a lawyer somewhere who’ll do it for you. You will always be safe from me. Actually, I’ll have a vested interest in keeping you safe and healthy for years to come.”
“What keeps me from killing you? I forget.”
“My business sense. You don’t really want to run the club, you just want to be boss. This way you get to be boss but without the responsibilities.”
“And what do you get out of it?”
“I get to live. Which I want more than this club. I could sign the place over to you, but it wouldn’t be the same. You wouldn’t trust me not to sneak up on you someday, dead man switch or no, and you’d have to bump me. But this way we both win. We both get something.”
Coker fell silent. I couldn’t tell if he was fuming or thinking. “I want fifty percent.”
“Fifteen is as high as I can go. Ten’s pushing it as it is. The people I report to will notice a drop in the profits. Fifteen I can blame on hard times; any more, and you risk getting noticed.”
I couldn’t laugh in this form but wanted to; I should have been taking notes.
“What’s to keep you from bumping me until I get this lawyer thing set up?”
“Nothing, but you’re a smart boy, Shivvey, and there’s the phone. You can find someone to sit with me until you’re squared away.”
“Sure, so you talk to them like you did with Tony? Turn them against me?”
“Then tie and gag me for the duration. I’d prefer that to a grenade or bullet.”
“You got all the angles figured, don’t you?”
“It’s what I’m good at. Is it too early to start calling you boss?”
Coker took a long time thinking, probably thinking very hard, then he laughed once. “Hell, why not?”
Something banged and thumped—a door opening violently—and a woman’s shrill voice cut in on what might have been their pending handshake.
“You goddamn bastards!”
“Rita?”
Couldn’t tell which of them said it; I was too busy hauling ass.
I got to her a fraction too late, a gun went off just as I materialized in the hall next to her.
She gave a loud, full-throated screech of pure outrage as I pummeled against her big body, pushing her out of the doorway. She staggered and fell, cursing. Good. If she could do that, then she’d not been shot.
“Let me go!” she bellowed, struggling to rise. I’d planted a foot square between her shoulders and bent to take her gun. Awkward, but I managed to pull it clear without breaking her fingers or having it fire.
The muzzle was hot. I left her. Looked inside the office.
Nevis was on the floor in front of the couch, having apparently ducked. He didn’t seem to be injured and was staring at Coker, who stood next to the desk. He had his gun on Nevis but swung it toward me. Slack-jawed shock rocked him on his heels.
“Fleming? How the hell . . . ?”
Another fast move for me, risking a bullet to melt the few steps between us. I expected Coker to be surprised just long enough for me to turn things in my favor, but he didn’t try to shoot. I took his gun without even token resistance.
“You’re dead,” he whispered, all astonishment as I backed off, covering him. “Dead . . . oh. Oh, shit.”
Then Coker settled unsteadily into the chair behind the desk. He’d gone abruptly gray-faced.
“You lemme finish!” shouted Rita, surging in like the marines. I put an arm out and kept her from hitting him.
“Never mind, honey, that’s enough for now,” I said, for by then I’d caught the whiff of bloodsmell.
Coker put a hand to his chest. The hole there wasn’t big but was colorful. Red pumped down his white shirtfront. “Damn,” he said. “That hurts like hell. That—”
He bowed his head and kept bowing until he slipped untidily from the chair. His body struggled with a long ugly spasm and made ugly sounds as it fought against inevitability.
I watched without pity, without any emotion at all, remembering what he and his men had done to me and what he’d done to his men. Maybe now I’d be able to forget about that one mug and his burned-down cigarette.
NEVIS was the first to wake out of the spell. He went to Coker and checked him over, slowly straightening. He looked at me, then Rita, who’d gone quiet. He shrugged and sat on the couch. He pulled out a cigarette. His hands were steady.
“Gimme,” said Rita. This time I let her push past. She dropped heavily next to Nevis, who gave her one from his pack and a light. I had to turn away. I wasn’t beyond feeling after all, but this one was of nausea for a memory, not for what lay on the floor.
“What did you think you were doing?” Nevis asked her. “Were you gonna get me next?”
“No—yes—I don’t know. You two were—oh, jeez, Booth, after what he did to Lena how could you hop into bed with him like that?” She got up and came to stand on my right. I put the guns in my coat pockets. Quite a collection I had, including Upshaw’s.
“He was making a deal to stay alive,” I explained. “He had no intention of turning the club over to Shivvey. He was buying time.”
Nevis snorted. “Hell, yes. You stop to ask directions or something? I was running out of ideas.”
That’d be the day, I thought.
She looked up at me. “Really? He was just shooting bull?”
“Yeah, really. I was in the next room over, heard the whole thing.”
“But I was going to—”
“The less said the better, honey.”
She frowned fiercely at the body. “What do I do?”
“Nothing,” said Nevis. “It’s over. You go home.”
“Then what?”
“You go home, you forget about it.”
“Can you?” There was no reproach in her question; she wanted to know what he intended toward her.
He smiled. It was a death’s-head kind of grin on his gaunt face. “You did me a favor. I don’t forget favors. Maybe you were gonna plug me, too, but it didn’t happen, so get out. Me and Fleming got work to do.”
“Work?”
“Cleanup,” I said, nodding down at Coker’s mortal and quite solid remains. They wouldn’t be going anywhere without help.
“Oh.”
“You’ll be all right?”
She took a heavy draw on her cigarette, and my gaze slipped elsewhere for a second, then returned. “I donno. What’s gonna happen to me?”
“Nothing. You go home and have a drink for Lena. You did the right thing for her.”
She had to know that, to believe it. Maybe I could help her out with a mental push and nudge later on if it was necessary, but for now she needed to be sure of the rightness of her action. It would make the nights to come easier.
That’s what I always told myself when I thought about the people I’d killed.
THIS time I made sure that Rita actually boarded the El, then went back to help Nevis. He had a plan, the first part requiring we back Upshaw’s car into the alley. We parked it close to the door, then hauled Coker’s body out, tucking it into the trunk.
Next I drove us to a diner, where Nevis bought a couple cups of coffee and some sandwiches. All of it was for him, and he did not enjoy the coffee to judge by his expression as he drank. He gave me terse directions between bites as he wolfed the sandwiches.
We ended up at a small airport. It seemed closed for the night, but no one challenged us as we went through the gates and up to a cluster of small buildings where lights still shone. They were surmounted by a tower that vaguely reminded me of a lighthouse. I waited in the car while Nevis bolted out and did whatever business was required. I didn’t ask, as it would have made a delay. When you have a body in your trunk, you don’t want things like delays.
It took him just under ten minutes.
“Go
ddamn cops,” he grumbled, climbing into the passenger seat. He now wore a fleece-lined leather jacket over his suit and had pulled on another pair of pants made of heavy wool. It looked bulky but warm.
“Cops?”
“They were here earlier. Told the guy running this place that he should make sure I didn’t try to skip off to Canada in my plane. Told him to put it out of commission and call them if I showed up.”
“Did he?”
“Of course not.” He sounded pained. “We go back a long ways. Besides, the cops don’t pay him, I do. Take us over to that hangar that’s opening up.”
I took us. The hangar was massive, holding several different small planes. The man who had opened the wide doors turned the lights on, gave us a friendly wave, and walked unconcernedly off toward the tall tower. Whether it was on purpose or not, he never once looked back.
Nevis had me park next to one of the planes. I didn’t know much about them, only that they were heavier than air. Given that important fact, I knew I would stick to trains, cars, or my own feet when it came to travel. Nevis concentrated on checking his machine over top to bottom. He made a thorough job of it, his engrossment such that even I could see he was probably a very good pilot. I stayed quiet and out of his way until, satisfied, he motioned for me to open the trunk.
The hangar lights recklessly on, we loaded Coker into the passenger seat of the plane. It was a good-size craft, with space for two more seats in the rear; only those had been removed to make room for a small cargo. I wondered if Nevis missed his days as a rumrunner of select, expensive booze.
We belted Coker in. He kept bowing forward until Nevis found a strap to tie him in place.
“That’ll hold long enough,” he said. “Just until I can get rid of him.”
“You’ll want some weights so he doesn’t float.”
“What? I’m not dumping him in the lake. No need.” He picked Coker’s pockets clean of wallet, keys, and other items—including the little records book.
