Devlin shook his head ruefully as though he and Ross had been arguing over nothing more consequential than cracking eggs. Then, with an undulating roll of fat folds, he turned and grinned at the three of them.
‘Looks like the pleasure will have to be all mine.’
He pulled a familiar-looking Police Positive from his holster.
‘Y’know, Collins, I think I’ll do the girl first – just for the pleasure of seeing the look on your face.’
With the same surprising nimbleness Tom had marked in him before, Devlin was across the room in an instant, grabbing Fay and dragging her towards the center of the room until, eventually, he heeded her scream of pain and saw she could go no further for being cuffed to the table.
Ignoring Tom’s cry to let her go, Devlin swore under his breath and pulled at the table roughly, knocking Tom back against the wall with a clout of his forearm when he tried to get between them. With a leer of delight, his eyes on Tom all the while, Devlin was raising the gun to Fay’s temple when a roar of engine noise breached the night and a sweep of light broke across the crest of the hill above them. Devlin let go of the table, pushed Fay back and ran towards the window, head down, in a waddling, rolling motion. A convoy of powerful vehicles, as many as five or six, was racing down the incline towards the house, sweeping to a halt outside, the dim interior ablaze now with the light from their headlamps. Tom pulled Fay down beside him, feeling the shudders ripple through her as he pulled her head and shoulders into his chest, whispering he knew not what to try to calm her.
Outside, the sound of doors slamming, feet shuffling, weapons rattling and being readied. Inside, Devlin was struggling to restrain Ross, trying to stop him from loosing off with the gun.
‘No, Mikey. Go easy. Don’t let them see the iron,’ Devlin whispered furiously at him, holding his gun arm down. ‘Leave it to me, would you? I outrank them all. I’ll just go get rid of ’em.’
But it was a confidence Ross did not share. ‘Are you fuckin’ crazy?’ he screamed at Devlin. So panicked now, he’d forgotten who was usually in charge. ‘They ain’t no goddamn cops. Just look at the motors they come in.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘What he said – Collins, there,’ Ross said, whipping his head round to nod quickly towards Tom, and wiping his spit-flecked lips with the back of his hand. ‘It’s Cornero’s boys. He says he called Cornero, told him we were here.’
For the first time ever, Tom saw a flush of real consternation on Al Devlin’s face as he turned and stared bitterly across the room at him. It took every ounce of courage in his soul to crack a bitter grin back at him.
‘You better believe it, Devlin,’ Tom said. ‘Your time is up.’
As if by way of confirmation, the lower pane of glass in the window nearest Ross shattered as a bullet whipped through the room. Everyone tried to get closer to the floor except Ross, and Fay, who could only crouch beside the table, trapped there by the cuff. Tom reached across her, lifting the table leg an inch, and slipped the cuff out from under it, freeing her arm and pushing her flat on the floor beside Sullivan, shielding her body with his own as two more shots thumped into the woodwork.
No one moved a muscle in the ringing silence that followed. Then a voice from outside the broke the stillness. A voice rich in authority, with an underlay of menace.
Tony Cornero. In person. ‘We know you’re in there, Ross,’ he shouted, ‘Now, you come on out and nobody gets hurt. You hear me?’
In the silence that followed, Tom risked raising his head. Devlin had retreated a few feet to the stone chimney stack, his gaze on the ceiling, thinking through his options, or the odds. Ross was crouching by the window, the stove his only cover, breathing hard, his eyes flicking over and back to Devlin for guidance, but too jittery now to wait any longer.
‘You’re the one’s gonna get hurt, y’wop bastard,’ Ross roared out. ‘You won’t take me without a fight. Not now, not never. I don’t give a goddamn how many you are.’
‘Don’t even think about it, Ross,’ Cornero replied, gruffer now. Impatient. ‘And the same goes for that crooked shitbag boss’a yours. We know you’re in there, too, Devlin. Your boy Billy got real helpful once we hurt him. So, tell you what. I’ll let you live if you muzzle up that mad dog of yours and hand him over. What you say? Give up Ross and walk out alive.’
Even as he was saying it, Ross was panicking, eyes wider than ever fixed on Devlin, clearly believing his old confederate and mentor more than capable of selling him out.
‘You know that’s not going to happen, Cornero,’ Devlin called back, his voice a high, reedy contrast to the others. He crept close to Ross, his enormous belly brushing the floor yet not impeding his progress, and whispered something in his ear, enveloping him in a fold of fat in the process. Ross reared back, disgusted by his smell or touch – it was impossible to tell. But he didn’t appear to be listening too hard anyway. Devlin darted a malign glance towards Tom and the others.
‘If you’re wanting a deal,’ he shouted out again, ‘you should know we got your pal Collins in here. With his movie whore, and a bull from the detective squad. You fire another shot, Cornero, and they die. You want to be responsible for that? Even Santa Monica ain’t gonna give you refuge if they think you killed a cop. You’ll have every patrolman in the state of California out gunning for you.’
The silence in which that information was digested lasted a long three seconds, punctuated eventually by Cornero’s honking, goose-like laugh.
‘I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’ve got Tom Mix and the Queen of Sheba in there with you. I only came for Ross. But y’know, if it comes to it, one dead cop or two ain’t gonna make a lot’a difference – in case you’re forgetting you still are one, you fat fuck. I’ll take my chances.’
A clatter of firearms being raised and cocked underlined the threat for him, then a brief silence ached by before his voice rang out again.
‘Give them a taste, boys. Show ’em we mean business.’
An instant later, it was as if the room was erupting from within. First came the handgun and rifle fire, then the terrifying staccato chatter of what could only be a Thompson machine gun thumping great gouts of wood and sprays of glass from the walls and windows and the roof beams above. A hurricane lamp was blasted off a shelf and crashed to the floor, bursting into a pool of flaming oil at the far end of the room. Tom did everything he could to cover Fay, arm and shoulder shielding her head, his back and legs barricading the length of her body, a hand clasped in hers around her belly, whispering hope into her ear as much, in truth, for his own comfort as for hers. The onslaught roused Sullivan to a kind of consciousness where he lay, hugging his head in his arms, seeking to make his giant frame as small as possible, a massive ball of humanity curled beside them. Tom steeled himself for the hit that must come any second, but then, sudden as it began, the barrage ceased.
Tom raised his head, looked round, saw Devlin flat, or as flat as he could be, to the floor, uninjured, and Ross apparently the same. It had been as Cornero said: a taste. They’d been aiming high.
Again Cornero shouted, ‘This is your last chance, Ross. Throw any irons you got out ahead of you, then come out with your hands where we can see ’em.’
‘Are you seriously gonna get us all killed here, Devlin?’ Tom whispered with ferocity, nothing left to lose now.
‘You maybe, but not me,’ Devlin snarled. But before he could do anything about it, Ross, pinned by the window, raised himself up on his haunches, weapon poised, preparing to fire. Outside, they were ready for him. As soon as his gun breached the window, a shot came in reply, the slug spinning a jagged hunk of wood from the frame hard into Ross’s temple, just behind his right eye. He leapt back, cursing wildly, stumbling against the wall, rubbing madly at the wound with the heel of his gun hand. Seeing the blood there, he emitted a strange keening wail, low at first but gaining a strength and shrillness that drowned out all of Devlin’s attempts to calm him from th
e cover of the chimney stack.
‘Get down, Mikey. Don’t be crazy. They’ll nail you quick as they see you.’
Cornero’s voice followed on hard from outside, full of fury now. ‘I told you not to try that. You get no more chances. Throw your goddamn weapons out. Or you die. All of you.’
But Ross was beyond hearing, beyond reason, as, gun aloft in one hand and fumbling in his pocket with the other, he made a dash across the open floor to the chimney stack, a look of frenzy on his face, eyes fixed on Devlin.
‘You do what you want, Al,’ he muttered furiously. ‘We’re done for anyhow if we stop here. I’m gonna take my chances.’
Tom felt Fay’s grip tighten on his. Devlin blanched and reared back as Ross pulled the grenade from his pocket and held it up just inches from his face.
‘Where the fuck you get that?’ Devlin whispered frantically. He didn’t get an answer, only his outstretched hand palmed off as Ross stumbled onwards to the door.
‘I’ll give ’em a taste of this, Al. Then go for the Packard. You follow if you want.’ Ross lumbered towards the door, pulling the pin from the grenade with his gun hand. Devlin could only stare balefully after him as he crouched down, opened the door a crack and called out again.
‘Hey, you out there, it’s me, Ross. Don’t shoot, I’m coming out.’
‘Throw your iron out first.’
It was enough for Ross to get his bearings. He swung the door open and rose up under cover of it, his black greatcoat billowing, his gun hand out straight, firing, the other back behind him like a knuckleballer about to pitch. From the dark outside came a ragged volley of shots. Ross stopped in his tracks as if he hit an invisible wall as he took a slug to the middle of the chest. Two more sent him toppling back through the doorway, his face a mask of almost childish surprise, twisting and falling.
Tom saw panic strike Devlin’s soul at precisely the same moment it struck his. Out of Ross’s hand, the black metal ball tumbled and spun back into the room, hitting the floorboards with an unearthly thud as the thin zinc lever pinged from the pineapple top like a sprung watch cog, the cast-iron casing skidding and rumbling into the center of the room, the sputtering fuse a breath-halting harbinger of the horror coiled inside.
Time slowed to the pace of a childhood prayer. He knew he had five or six heartbeats left at most. Beside him, Fay was already on her feet, gesticulating, shouting, willing him to see what she saw, as she reached for the far side of the table
Holy Mary …
and he understood at once, was one in mind and body with her as
mother of God …
together they lifted, thrust, tilted the massive slab of wood up and over,
pray for us sinners …
its knot-hard iron weight missing Sullivan’s skull by a hairsbreadth as it
now and at the hour …
crashed on its side and, after it, two bodies diving, twisting, arm in arm
of our death …
over the rough oak edge in a rolling, desperate lunge.
Ame—
FORTY-SIX
‘Where are they now?’
It wasn’t the the only thing Sullivan demanded to be told when he opened his eyes. But it was close enough to it.
Having learned from Tom with his first, hoarse-throated inquiry that all three had escaped the blast with nothing more than cuts and bruises, his second, directed with a bitter scowl at Cornero who was standing behind, was barely audible in the muffled world of sound that Tom now inhabited. It went entirely ignored in any case. Sullivan’s third inquiry, delivered as he heaved himself upright from the slump in which he’d been left since being dragged out into the night air, was this one: the whereabouts of Ross and Devlin.
Tom understood it as much by reading his lips as by hearing. Before he could reply, he felt a steely hand grip his shoulder and Cornero stepped in front of him to supply the answer.
‘They got away.’
‘The both of them?’ Sullivan glared at Cornero with a furrowing of the brow that wedded shock, disbelief and anger. Cornero replied with the heels of his hands and his best Italian shrug, apparently just as perplexed himself.
‘Into the night, like ghosts. We have no good idea how.’
Tom said nothing.
‘But I saw it with my own eyes. He went down, the gren—’ Sullivan broke off, pushing gray hair back off his brow, clenching his eyes shut as if determined to dredge the moment up from memory. ‘Didn’t he?’
‘Down, sure. But not out, detective,’ Cornero said, brushing his hands free of nothing and turning to walk away. ‘Don’t rightly know how. But they vanished. You don’t believe me, ask your pal here. Thin air. Ain’t that right, Collins?’
Almost the first thing Tom had seen when he came round, his sight resolving slowly from post-blast blur into a pin-sharp shock of recognition, was Devlin, tattered and bloodied, a bloated man-whale in moonlight, being dragged across the dust-blown lot and hauled into an open touring car.
How he himself had got to be outside, or came to be propped up beside Fay on the chromed footplate of a big Hispano-Suiza, attended by a gorilla-sized goon with a first-aid box, he had no idea. Fay, he was relieved to see, had suffered not a scratch beyond a ragged wound across her left shoulder that the goon was dabbing at, gentle as a junior nurse, with a wad of white cotton. Tom reached out a hand and took hers, and she turned and spoke to him but he couldn’t hear a word. He tried to say so, but his own voice was so damped he simply stopped. Something thick and god-sized had inserted itself between his hearing and the outside world. He knew then that Fay was suffering the same from the way she was pointing to her ears and laughing, and crying, without seeming to notice she was doing either. So he bent and cupped her perfect face in his hands, smeared the dirt and dust from her cheeks with a wipe of his thumbs, and kissed her and held her to him so hard the goon had to turn away, all bashful.
Tom walked back towards the house, surprised to find it still intact. Not collapsed or burned or anything else he might have expected, though an eight-foot gap had been blown through the wall at the front. It was through this that Devlin, leaking blood, nearly every stitch of clothing blown from him, was hauled on his back from the dark interior, two big goons pulling on each of his pink shredded legs, his big arms flailing, his eyes wide with pain or terror, unable to scream for the gag rammed hard in his mouth. Getting his unwilling, corpulent enormity into the waiting car took Cornero’s muscle boys a mammoth effort, a mesmerizing thrash of fists and boots and remorseless intent, a muted shadow play of grunting and cursing that ended with the roar of a motor, a kick-up of dust, and a sense of screaming yet to come.
It was then that Cornero strolled back across the lot and drew Tom aside, a comradely arm around his shoulder, an inquiry as to his wellness. Tom indicated he was having trouble with his hearing. Cornero grinned a big grin, then pushed his face hard up against Tom’s ear to be certain he understood, and explained to him in an exaggerated drawl exactly how things would have to be. How things could only be, if he wished his beautiful girl to make it through another day on earth. And, more imminently, if he wanted his detective pal to make it to the dawn of this one.
There could be no other way. No discussion. No negotiation. No recalcitrance or reluctance. No word of what had happened on this night to Devlin and Ross could ever be disclosed or discussed. Not to the detective squad. Not to the studios. Not to the newspapers. Not to any other ears. Silence was the price, and all that was required. It was for Tom to make it happen, and make sure it stayed that way. Or the cost would be their lives. A simple deal. All three or none. And that was how it had to be.
Silence. Silence. Silence.
FORTY-SEVEN
Tom knew Sullivan had been itching to tell him something since they met, two hours before, to attend Bill Taylor’s funeral service together. But whatever it was, he hadn’t found the moment. Arriving downtown, they were repulsed by the vast crowd gathered at St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral, ga
wping in their thousands, heaving and swelling outside the great Gothic facade on Olive and spilling deep into the formal paths and flower beds of Pershing Square opposite. Even with a phalanx of patrolmen pushing back the throng, the limousines of the invited mourners struggled to make it to the cathedral steps without adding to the body count.
Satisfied by now that the whole world really was going mad, Sullivan suggested an alternative way in. They worked their way round the crowd to a side passage where, badge in hand, he secured them entry via the vestry door. From there they made their way out through the packed chancel, past the closed casket that appeared to float on a sea of extravagant wreaths and a bier bedecked with roses, up a side aisle to where, eventually, some of the less esteemed members of the congregation took pity on Sullivan’s limp and cane, and shuffled in to make room for two more on their pew.
Up front, everyone who was anyone in the colony was present. Valentino. Doug and Mary. Swanson and Mickey Neilan. Wally Reid and the DeMilles. There was no sign of Zukor, who was probably back in New York by now, though the Laskys and Charlie Eyton were present, the latter scowling as he spotted Tom across the nave. Mrs Ivers, in midnight-blue, had persuaded Leon Mazaroff to break cover. As the minutes passed, the hubbub from the crowd outside got louder, the moment of crisis coming when Mabel Normand arrived, veiled in deepest mourning and unable to proceed without support from her lady companion and a police officer. Such was the press to catch a glimpse of her, the police cordon split and a section of the crowd surged up the church steps. Only the quick thinking of two officers, who heaved the great cathedral doors shut behind her, prevented inundation by the mob.
Not until after the litanies were intoned, the ceremony concluded, the haunting strains of Handel’s Largo died away and the coffin was shouldered up the aisle and back out to the waiting hearse and clamoring crowd, did Sullivan pull a newspaper from his coat pocket.
‘I’m guessing you didn’t see this?’ Sullivan said, pushing the rolled-up paper into Tom’s hands.
The Long Silence Page 27
