by P. N. Elrod
Maxwell’s errand runner came in, holding the arm of a thinner, slightly older man. He was stooped over, like a fighter guarding his belly, and had a sizable shiner forming around his left eye.
What the hell?
It was Doc.
They must have grabbed him at the raid. Worked him over a bit, too, to judge by his faltering walk. I didn’t think he was in shape to treat himself, much less another, but any port in a storm.
“Doctor, your services are required,” said Maxwell, gesturing him toward the table.
Doc squinted against the light. Took in me first. Mouth wide. “Son of a bitch. I thought you were—”
“Can it,” I snapped. “You were drunk and made a mistake.”
He scowled. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Next he’d be asking me how I’d got off the yacht alive. Best to change the subject. I pointed at Opal. He squinted again, rubbed his good eye, and came closer.
“Sweet Jesus, what’d you do to her?”
“She caught a forty-five. She’s bleeding bad.”
“No shit.” He tsked over her.
“You sober enough to work?”
“Yes, unfortunately. I do better drunk. Now get outta my way.” He went to the sink, started running the hot water, and soaped up his hands. They were trembling.
I turned to Maxwell. “Get him a drink. He’s no good to her if he’s got the shakes.”
Calloway stepped forward. “Listen, you punk—”
But that was as far as Maxwell let him get. “Another time, Lieutenant.”
A quiet order from him sent a man off to play waiter. The rest stared at Maxwell, astonished. Calloway stared at me, still murderous. He didn’t know exactly what was up, what I’d done, but he didn’t like it. I’d let too much show, but didn’t care.
“Clear out, the rest of you,” said Maxwell. “Give the man some room. Lieutenant, please come upstairs with me.”
“But what about—” He gestured in my direction.
“I’m sticking here,” I said, ready to give a push where it was needed.
“He’ll be fine,” answered Maxwell in a gratifyingly normal tone. “I’m sure his concern for Miss Opal will be sufficient to keep him from wandering off, and there will be a man here on watch. Come along, Mr. Sullivan is not very patient.”
The mention of Sullivan’s name had its own special influence. Calloway holstered his gun and went quietly with the rest.
“My, but don’t you have a way with people,” said Doc, witnessing their exodus out of the corner of his eye as he scrubbed. We were alone except for one man left behind on guard. I could take care of him easily enough and bolt now if I wanted, but didn’t see much advantage to it at the moment.
“It’s just a knack. What about getting her to a hospital?”
“Fine with me, but not yet. She’s likely in too tender a condition for moving around. Lemme get a look-see first.”
“Got your bag?”
“Nope. Just have to make do with what’s on hand. Not much difference between a kitchen and a surgery, though, the tools for cuttin’ are just a sight bigger.”
Another man came back with a couple of bottles of booze. Doc ordered a triple whiskey, neat. I poured it out, then had to hold the glass so he could keep his hands clean while he drank. He took in a sizable jolt, squeezed his eyes shut in reaction, and shook his head.
“Hoo now, but ain’t that the cheap stuff? Thought they’da drunk up all the deer piss left over from before Repeal. Okay, put the rest here.” He held his hands out from the running tap. I dumped the glassful over them. Doc scrubbed in it, then held his hands high, inspecting them. “Lorda mercy, any germ alive after a shower of that rotgut gets my respect. Now, let’s see what’s wrong with the little gal.”
I took away the top towel and pulled open Opal’s stained blouse. He studied the damage. The hole looked too big, too ragged.
Still bleeding.
“Huh. She got lucky. Missed her lung. Might have some bone fragments. Have to clean her up some first. Not just a bullet in there, might be some fabric inside from her clothes when it punched in.”
“What about getting her to a hospital?” I asked.
“Not just yet. Bleeding’s not too bad now, but she don’t need any more moving around if we can help it. You start opening drawers and let me see what I got to work with.”
Me and the other guy did so while the third watched. Doc picked out what he wanted and had us dump them into the pot of boiling water. From his choice of instruments I was very glad Opal was out cold. Just looking at the things made me go queasy.
“Could use some tweezers,” he said. “Rubbing alcohol, sterile dressings, blankets, a pillow.”
I turned to the man. Pushed. He went off to search.
Doc hadn’t missed what I’d done. “Y’know, my granny used to do what you do,” he muttered, barely moving his lips. “But then she was older’n God an’ a lot more strict, so folks did what she told just to avoid her fussing at ’em. But somethin’s different about you. Ain’t natural for a punk kid like yourself to get those kind of men to tuck in their tails so easy.”
“No need for you to worry about it.”
“Maybe not, but you just keep doing what you’re doing and maybe we can get out of this alive. ’Less you’re on their side.” He gave me a narrow look.
“I’m on my side, but I’m all for getting out of this alive. They take you as a hostage?”
“S’pose they did, for all the good it’ll do ’em. Angela’s a spunky gal, she won’t lose any sleep if something happens to me so long as she keeps her daddy’s organization solid and running.”
“She’s crazy.”
“Pragmatic’s the word, my boy. Oh, she’ll spit and holler when they hold a gun to my head, but she won’t give an inch to Sullivan. When the smoke settles she’ll shoot a dozen of his men to get even, then give me a beautiful funeral.”
“If we both get out of here with Opal, no one has to die.”
“Suits me even better. I’d sure like to get a lot more drinkin’ time in before I check out.”
The man came back, arms full with a white bundle. “Don’t have no blankets here, just tablecloths.”
“Bring ’em over,” I said. I tucked them around Opal, then stood back, watching, feeling drained and helpless now that I was out of things to do for her.
“You’re wanted upstairs,” the man told me as I went to the sink to wash the blood from my hands. It was all over my coat, especially the sleeve.
“Doc?”
He waved me off. “Go on. I don’t need someone breathin’ down my neck the whole time. You can’t do nothing here.”
But I probably could do something upstairs. Once I got to Sullivan I could have an ambulance, doctors, and maybe even some cops not on the take swooping in like the marines. They’d find the whole nest of roaches asleep and ready to cart away.
I left Doc and his guard and was guided out of the kitchen and through a darkened dining area where the chairs were stacked on the tables. Deserted stage for the band, empty dance floor, the kind of opulent decor that only vice money can afford, it should have been filled with lights, music, and laughter, but not even the ghost of a past customer stirred the place. I was glad when we left it behind.
Upstairs was more of the same, with carpeting so thick and soft a hummingbird would have sunk in up to its beak. Some of the crowd from the kitchen had congregated in the hall, smoking and talking low. They stopped doing both when I came into view. Everyone watched as we walked between them toward a door paneled with fancy wood inlay at the far end. There was a brass sign stuck to it with the word MANAGER cut into the metal in curving script letters. My escort opened the door and motioned me in first, then kept close behind, an armed shadow, ready for trouble if I even thought about stepping out of line.
It was the room where Kyler had died. A big place, designed to impress the peasants. Lots of money in the trimmings, but not enough to take the
bloodstains out of the pricey carpet. Dried out and gone dark, they were still where he’d dropped.
Maxwell stood attentively next to the vast desk at the far end, hands loose at his sides, looking on everyone with apparently benign interest. Calloway, Baker, and the two other uniforms were in front and turned as I came in. The man seated behind it didn’t bother to get up.
“That’s close enough,” he said when I was still a good thirty feet from them. He looked at Calloway, who must have given him an earful about me while I was busy downstairs. “Satisfied?”
Calloway licked his lips, staring at me with intense hate. A glimmer of the rage he’d shown before at the shooting lurked in his face, and he was aiming it in my direction. “Blindfold him. Put a sack over his head.”
“Later. I like to see a man’s face when I talk. Helps me to know when he’s trying to lie.”
“You Sullivan?” I asked, already knowing the answer this time.
“That I am.” His accent was more of Boston than of Ireland, but that didn’t mean anything. The Irish gangs had had a firm hold all over the East Coast for years, what with their rum-running during Prohibition. Hell, some of them were even starting to put on respectable airs and sending their kids off to places like Yale and Harvard to learn polo. Sullivan looked to be one such example of the coming generation; he was younger than I expected, early thirties. His conservative and costly suit draped a stocky but solid frame, topped by brown hair with a red cast to it. The stockiness extended to a square face with a cheerfully pleasant expression, and he was probably handsome to the girls except for those hard eyes. They were flat as paint. I couldn’t read a thing from his expression, a natural-born poker player. He gave me a long, careful looking over. If he was trying to make me uncomfortable, he was already too late. I was way past being either intimidated or impressed by his kind, all I could feel was a weary disgust. Just when you think all the roaches are gone, another one turns up.
“Fleming, is it?” he asked, also already knowing the answer, if I could tell anything by his tone and self-assured manner. If I thought of him as a cockroach, then he must have pegged me for a dung beetle. This was going to be interesting.
I nodded once. Calloway kept watching, damn him. If I so much as winked, he’d probably plug me one. Didn’t matter. I was too far away from him and Sullivan to do anything fancy. Just have to wait for the right moment when it came.
Sullivan indicated his pet cop. “The lieutenant here says you’re working for the Pacos.”
“I was just looking after Opal.” There, not exactly a clear answer, but not really lying, he could take it any way he liked.
“Didn’t do too well at it, did you?”
“Out of my control.”
“Why were you two at the hotel in the first place?”
“Everyone scattered after the raid. We were to wait there for Angela to call us so we could meet up with her someplace else.”
“And did she?”
“Yeah. Told us to lay low until she could send someone for us, only your stooges got there first.”
“And who do you think is behind the hit?”
I had a very good idea and hated it, but wasn’t about to say anything. The situation was dangerous enough. Shook my head. “The Pacos have a lot of enemies. Maybe some smaller bunch wants a cut of their pie. Maybe the hit was meant for Calloway, and Opal and I were just unlucky to be there. Anyone at the hotel who was wise to the situation had plenty of time to call for friends to come over and get a job organized. Calloway and his boys weren’t exactly subtle.”
“Calloway seems to think it was the Pacos.”
“Making a hit on their most valuable asset? Oh, sure, that makes lots of sense. They need Opal to decode the account books for ’em. Without her, they’re useless.”
“Maybe they didn’t want her coming back to work for me again.”
“Could be. Of course, you could have done it yourself to cripple the Paco operation.”
He went even more frozen-faced for a moment, then chuckled.
“Maybe I did. But she’s back with us now, so it’s all under the bridge.”
I threw a quick glance at Calloway, who was looking at Sullivan and trying to keep from showing anything but a blank face at my latest suggestion. Apparently there wasn’t a whole lot of trust built up between either of them yet. Fine with me; I could play the divide-and-conquer game. Let him wonder if his new boss set him up.
Sullivan arranged his face to display the smile of a reasonable man. “What I need now are the books Opal took away to little Angela. Oh, and don’t think any of us are fooled by her scam. We all know Big Frankie’s not the man he once was.”
“Angela’s just as dangerous. More so.”
“That’s why we want her out. She’s too flashy. She draws attention into areas we would rather have go unnoticed.”
That was for damn sure. “And you want the books in exchange for . . . ”
“I don’t buy back my own stolen property, Fleming. But I am willing to return Doc to her, if she chooses to be sensible.”
“What makes him so valuable?”
“He’s been with Big Frankie for years, practically another father to Angela. I’m not above using her sentiment against her.”
Gave him a nod. This wasn’t the time to tell him he was following the wrong trail with that ploy.
“Doc’s other value is that he knows where all the bodies are, so to speak. I’m figuring a little persuasion and he’ll be too glad to tell us all of the Pacos’ hiding places, then I send my boys in to smoke ’em out one by one. The books are bound to be somewhere in the rubble.”
“Not a good idea, Mr. Sullivan.”
Brows high. “Oh?”
“It’d take too long and you’d lose a lot of soldiers. Operations like that are expensive and make noise. It draws the kind of attention you say you don’t like. This ain’t the same wide-open town Big Al ran a few years back. You make enough of a stink and the reform crowd gets ants in their pants and starts putting on the pressure to the politicians. You may have a lot of them in pocket, but not all. They’d have to do something. Then there’s the federal side of things. Nasty bunch of Boy Scouts is what I hear about ’em, and they can play tough and dirty as anyone. And don’t forget the tax people. You won’t want them checking up on your income records any more than Capone did, and all that and more would just be for starters. I’m thinking the bosses who sent you here would prefer you to go completely unnoticed by any of that crowd.”
Elbows on the desk, he clasped his hands together and rested his chin on them, amused. “Got it all figured, have you?”
“It’s pretty obvious.”
“Then how would you recommend I get my books back without drawing all this disaster and grief down on my head?”
I was hoping he’d ask. “Let me get them for you.”
That made everyone laugh except Calloway.
Sullivan recovered first. “And how do you plan to do that?”
“I talk with Angela, feed her a line about you setting up a hit on me and Opal—she’ll be thinking that anyway because of you being behind the dance-studio raid—then tell her she needs to scram before Doc spills his guts. She’s stubborn, but not stupid, she’ll find some hole Doc doesn’t know about and take me along. She’ll have the books with her, so—”
“You know a lot for some punk who just started working for her,” said Calloway.
“It only makes sense. Without them, her whole business is crippled, so she’s gonna keep ’em tight as her own skin.”
“And you think she’ll just hand them over to you?” asked Sullivan.
“She’ll raise a royal ruckus—unless I can promise her some additional compensation besides Doc’s safe return. I can talk her into it, but she’ll want money.”
“I don’t buy back my own—”
“I heard you the first time, but you’re gonna have to bend a bit on that point. You gotta give her something so she thinks she’s s
aved face and come out ahead on the deal.”
“Bend how far?”
“Give Angela enough so she can take Big Frankie off to some sanitarium to get his head shrunk. I heard Switzerland has good doctors for that kind of thing.”
He gave a snort and derisive shake of his head.
“Her father is what all this is about,” I said. “What she wants from the Paco territories is money to get him well again—which probably ain’t gonna happen, so you won’t have to worry about him coming back. One or two days at the most and they’re both out of the country, out of your hair, no one gets killed, and the papers and reform groups don’t have anything to kick about because nothing’s happened.”
“Except for me being out of a ton of cash.”
“A week’s receipts for the territory at most. Compare that to a fullblown war—and she’s ready to fight it—and you’ve got yourself a bargain. Think of the expenses saved on funerals alone.”
Calloway sneered, but Sullivan slapped the desk and burst into laughter again. “You got balls coming in like this and telling me how to run things, kid.”
“I’m just making a suggestion or two for everyone’s benefit, Mr. Sullivan.”
“And don’t be pulling that ‘aw, shucks’ routine on me. We both know you’re a smart operator or you wouldn’t have lasted this long in the business.”
I gave a noncommittal shrug.
“What I’m thinking is you’re trying to go into business for yourself. Maybe you’ve figured a cute way of arranging for me to hand over this compensation to Angela, and then it disappears and so do you.”
Shook my head. “How you make the payment is your problem. Work it out with Angela, use your own people. Just give me the chance to convince her and the rest is your game. I want no part of it.”
“I almost believe you. What makes you so special that she’ll listen to you?”
Gave a laugh this time. “Well, she and me . . . we got us a sort of understanding . . . if you know what I mean.”
“The hell you say.” He exchanged a look with Maxwell. “First I’ve heard of it. How ’bout you, Calloway? You know about this?”
