by Joe Gores
“Will Dalton did.”
She paused, then sank back like a deflating balloon. All of the alarm and anger were leaking out of her.
“He said that?”
“He didn’t know. Suspected. From the way St. John looked at her… acted with her… more like a suitor than a father.”
“Just like that bloody bastard!” She caught herself again, looked over at him almost slyly. “Of course, that’s just… just Skeffington’s way with any woman. Like a tic, a reflex…”
“Will thought your daughter was unaware of whatever happened to her when she was a child, had blocked it all off…”
The idea seemed to disorient her and please her at the same time. For a giddy moment he thought he had her: there had indeed been something for little Molly to block off. Then she shook her head, almost like a fighter shaking off a punch, and again had control of herself. Lost her. It happened. She heaved a long, somewhat theatrical sigh.
“I’m afraid I have nothing to say about that, Lieutenant.”
“Terms of the alimony payments, maybe? If you talk about something that… might have happened, he can cut you off…”
She stood up. There was an odd dignity in her stance.
“I suppose you think I’m one of these pathetic women who are willing to give up her own future happiness just to stick it to her ex-husband. It’s not that, Lieutenant. The only way I could hurt him, back then, was financially. Nobody would have believed…”
“You hurt him by taking his daughter away from him.”
“He got her back.”
“And now she’s dead.”
A single tear rolled down her left cheek. She smeared it impatiently with the back of her hand.
“Yes, she is. Dead. And still the only way I can hurt him is financially.” Her face puckered up, but no more tears came. “For what he did.”
Dante made an instant decision. Sometimes you had to give something away to get something you needed. She had what he needed, he was sure of it.
“I think he’s mixed up with some very bad people. I think they had something to do with your daughter’s death. I can’t prove it yet. But-”
“Are you saying Skeffington knows they were involved and still has kept on with-with them?”
“If they were involved, I can’t see how he wouldn’t know it. And they’re bad enough he’d be afraid to cut himself loose.”
She started to curse in a low, hoarse voice. It was like the mindless swearing of soldiers under stress. Suddenly she demanded, “You think telling you will help to… to get them? Whoever they are?”
“I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t think that. I wouldn’t have told you what I have if I didn’t need whatever you know to use as leverage on your ex-husband.”
“All right.”
Just like that. In the same low flat tones she had used to curse, she told Dante what she had walked in on that sunny California afternoon so many years before.
“I grabbed her up in my arms, naked as she was, and ran out of the house with her. I can still hear him crying out behind me.” She paused. Her eyes were focused on the past. “Screaming, almost. As a woman screams.” Her eyes came back to Dante. “I never saw him again without a lawyer present. I got uncontested custody, child support, alimony. He got no visitation rights, nothing. It was in the agreement that if I ever told anyone about… about that afternoon, I forfeited all rights to alimony. I would have had nothing to live on…”
“So when Molly was thirteen, you let her-”
“Damn you, I had to! I was afraid of losing her, not the money! Then I lost her anyway. Forever.” Her face tightened, she began slamming her clenched fist on the arm of her chair and chanting through clenched teeth, “Bastard, bastard, bastard…”
Dante said quietly, “Thank you, Ms. Crowley.”
There was no break in her litany. But as he walked out into the searing sunlight like a man leaving the dimness of a terminally ill patient’s sickroom, she called after him. He paused, turned.
“They say that Lou Costello’s radio show that night, Lieutenant, started, ‘Heeyyy, Abbott-I just took a shower wit’ my shirt, socks, and underwear on.’”
They stared at one another in the gloom; then Dante nodded at her, and was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Otto Kreiger was in a cab going down Sixth Street. In those three and a half months, not a move, not a peep, not a whisper, from the vast network of contacts and informants he maintained in the criminal and law enforcement communities, about any moves planned against him. Tiffany’s bodyguard had been reduced to carrying packages for her when she went shopping.
So he canceled the protection. Spic Madrid had been just a warning to keep his nose clean and stay in line. Sent to him from Martin Prince and, he was sure, ancient Enzo Garofano.
But he had been sick with terror-terror reduced to fear, fear to prudence, replaced by ire, elevated to anger, soaring to rage, and finally to full-blown fury. Now he was sending his own message, born of that fury at having been made to feel terror.
Kreiger paid off the cab, crossed the sidewalk where just two hours before old Kreplovski’s tattered carpet had been. Gone now, to line some homeless person’s shelter. He unlocked the street door of the deserted tenement and entered.
Probably as early as tonight homeless fucks would find ways to creep in, but now in daylight and still locked up it was deserted and echoing and shadowy, the stairwells still redolent of decades of cheap cooking and bad wine, not piss.
He paused to get his breath at the third-floor landing, went back to 333 at the end of the hall beside the fire escape.
“Farrow?”
Farrow didn’t answer, which angered him further. A real games player, this boy. He would get his bribe money, all right, but also someday soon would get a couple of knees bent backward for his bad manners.
“Farrow!”
Angry now, he tried to open the door. It stuck badly, just as Farrow had warned. Enraged, Kreiger jammed a shoulder against it to make it open.
Tiny flames spurted from the match heads stuck between the edge of the door and the thin strip of flint paper fixed to the frame. With a whoosh, gas that had been seeping for over an hour from the ruptured kitchen line just inside the door ignited.
The explosion rocked the deserted building. Raptor, wearing a flowing bandido mustache, his bulky PG amp;E repairman’s overalls draped with meaningless but picturesque tools and meters, had to duck back into the rear entryway across the alley to avoid being hit by one of the larger pieces of Kreiger.
He was two blocks away when the first emergency units arrived at the scene. They had received a call about a gas leak four minutes before Kreiger thrust open the door of Mr. Kreplovski’s murdered home.
Dante ended up having a great cheeseburger at a place called Hamburger Hamlet on Doheney Road just above Sunset. They had a sort of sunporch overlooking the street with hanging plants and wicker-like furniture that gave it a sunny, leisurely feel.
As he ate, he tried to visualize St. John’s face when he walked through the door armed with the wonderful new ammunition from the erstwhile Mrs. St. John. He remembered the phone conversation, setting up the meeting through St. John’s executive secretary, with a great deal of almost vindictive relish.
“And what will it be concerning, Mr. Green?”
“Money,” he had chuckled, “lots and lots of money.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Rightly so, young lady, working for a man like that.”
Then he had added, “Three p.m. sharp,” and chuckled again. “Time is money.”
Money was what St. John was all about. He hoped the bastard would have to support his bitter ex-wife for the rest of his days.
At two forty-five, a quarter hour earlier than he had expected, St. John drove his glitteringly restored Maserati Bora coupe between Galaxy Way’s artful emerald plantings in Century City. His briefcase was on the seat beside him, his suit jacket neatly fold
ed on top of it. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, hummed a snatch of “ La donna e mobile ” from Rigoletto. He was superbly satisfied with himself.
Dooley and Valli-sounded like a dance team-had been pathetically eager to sign with his new firm. They had even shaken hands at the end of the lunch. He’d have them working together in no time. Which called for a very personal sort of celebration. A quick stop back at the office for his meeting with the mysterious Mr. Green, an hour of paperwork that would become four hours billable, then a call to Charriti HHope…
He turned down the ramp into the massive echoing concrete garage under the high-rise office building where St. John Associates-Attorneys at Law had their offices. His yearly rent could have housed the homeless of Long Beach, but front was more important in The LaLa than anywhere else on earth.
He slid his card into the slot, the gate went up on the monthly parker lane, and he drove down into the bowels of the building. His reserved floor was a huge low-roofed echoing concrete space filled with almost endless rows of high-priced cars, mostly foreign. The slot with his name on it was only a dozen paces from the elevator; he had been one of the first tenants after the building had been completed.
He parked, took his key from the ignition, then just sat there for a moment, savoring his day. Dooley and Valli would bring other dissatisfied creative people into the new enterprise-creative people were always dissatisfied, always looking for a change. He was well and truly on his way to freedom.
They always said, once in, never out: but it wasn’t as if he was cutting Mr. Prince and his associates out, after all-they would still be silent partners in his very lucrative law firm. But he was branching away from them personally, to make a mint of money they’d never see a dime of. The perfect revenge. Sweet Molly would be proud of her daddy for doing something about her murder. Proud in the way she had been proud only of Dalton.
He opened the door and swung out his elegantly clad legs. A gloved hand touched the snout of a Jennings J-22 pistol to the bridge of his nose and the forefinger convulsed inside the trigger guard.
St. John died happy.
At five minutes to three, Dante drove into the underground garage of St. John’s office building to hear an attendant yelling about some guy shot to death in his car. Goddammit! Without even knowing why, Dante jumped out and flashed his badge-who knew, San Francisco or L.A.-to get a look at the dead man sprawled halfway out of the car with the top of his head missing.
He was standing well clear of the open door of the Maserati when the first units of LAPD’s finest arrived.
“His name is Skeffington St. John,” he told the blunt-faced middle-aged plainclothesman who had beaten the blues to the site. “He’s an attorney in this building who-”
“Who the hell are you?”
Dante showed him some ID. “I was on my way to see him in connection with a case I’m working up in San Francisco.” He suddenly snarled, “Five goddam minutes-”
“Yeah. Tough tit but you gotta suck it.”
Dante explained he thought it was an organized crime caper, thought it might have been a New Jersey hitman named Ucelli who had done it, if they hurried maybe… but cops don’t like their jurisdictional toes stepped on, and who the fuck was he, anyway? Maybe he was tied up some way with the whacker even if he was a cop. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Even after a few calls to Sacramento and San Francisco had confirmed he was some sort of supershit crimebuster from Baghdad by the Bay, it was over an hour before the first bulletins went out to the airports with Ucelli’s description.
What with the paperwork and all, it was the final flight from Burbank that Dante caught to SFO. He spent the flight playing “what if” with himself. What if he had reversed his investigations, gone to St. John first? St. John wouldn’t have been there. Literally out to lunch. Besides, he’d have had nothing new to pry at him with until after his talk with Gloria. But what if he hadn’t had that second cup of coffee…
At Dante’s urging, the FBI finally had called Ucelli’s house in New Jersey. Nobody home. Not Ucelli, not his wife-the kids were grown, the two boys having graduated into the lower rungs of the Mafia like their father before them. Only a Puerto Rican maid whose English seemed to consist of “Not home” and “Leave numero ”
The Feebies would check back, of course, but all they’d get was an injunction from a mob attorney like the one that had recently come through to keep Dante away from Kosta Gounaris. No probable cause to harass Popgun Ucelli, that upright citizen.
But Dante knew. One up the snout with a $75 pistol in. 22 caliber which had been dropped on the floor beside the car. Sprayed with Armor All. No topcoat given to a passerby, but there were no passersby in that garage, and who wore topcoats in L.A. anyway? He had tried to scare St. John with the possibility the mob might come after him; now it had happened.
Driving home on the 101 freeway from SFO, he heard a news report about the “shocking death” of a “prominent attorney” and in a momentary time/space warp thought they were talking about St. John. Relaxed when he heard the man had been blown up in a gas-leak explosion in a slum redevelopment project.
But then he heard the name. Otto Kreiger.
Otto fucking Kreiger? Known associate of Martin Prince in Vegas? Attorney of record for Jack Lenington, recently deceased? Now himself killed in an accident? On the same day St. John was hit down in Los Angeles?
Dante called Homicide right from his car to learn what time it had gone down. Before noon. Possible. Very possible. Lure Kreiger to his death, hop a shuttle to LAX, pop St. John, head out of town. And Tim wasn’t at Homicide. Still at the Kreiger scene. So Tim wasn’t so damn sure it was accidental, either.
But at Clown Alley for a postmortem, he was.
“We figured it could have been some crazy attaching himself to the radical homeless rights outfit that’s been harassing Kreiger, so we wanted to take a real good look. Nothing there.” He gave his huge openmouthed laugh, eyes ashine for the upcoming intake of fat and salt. “And then here you come again with fuckin’ Popgun Ucelli! Popgun, planning an elaborate fake accident for Kreiger? Gimme a fuckin’ break, chief!”
“So somebody else planned it,” said Dante, thinking Raptor. He was getting desperate or punchy, he wasn’t sure which.
“Okay, St. John I might give you-Ucelli’s trademark way of doing business.” Tim pointed his finger at Dante and worked his thumb, bang! bang! “That’s our Eddie. But hell, chief, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve never turned up anything between Kreiger and Gounaris or Atlas Entertainment. St. John was attorney of record for Atlas, not Kreiger.”
“Yeah, Skeffington St. John-who just happened to get his head blown open in L.A. this afternoon. Just enough hours after the gas pipe went up on Sixth Street for the same man to do it. Tim, there has to be a connection.”
Tim broke in with his big belly laugh once again, and slathered on the extra mayonnaise he’d asked for before slamming shut his cheeseburger. He waved greasy fingers in the air.
“Only in your diseased brain, chief.”
Dante had already admitted to himself that Tim was right, but he couldn’t give up that easy. Raptor rode his shoulder like a hooded falcon waiting to swoop on its prey.
“Kreiger was in Vegas along with Gideon Abramson a week before Spic Madrid was hit. Abramson was in Greece in the fifties and staked Gounaris to his first freighter-”
“So what? If the Abramson connection was vital, it’d be his brains on the car seat, not St. John’s. Drink your fuckin’ decaf and go home to Mama, little fella’s had a long day.”
Which, in the end, Dante meekly did.
There was just nothing to tie the two deaths together. But he would take a good long look at Kreiger anyway. See if he was connected with any of the other principals besides the dead Lenington in ways Dante hadn’t uncovered yet. But who were the other principals? He kept going around in circles, learning who was important only after their deaths made them so.
<
br /> When he got home, there was a message from Raptor waiting. The voice was airy, British comedy stuff, actorish-perhaps even an American doing British.
“This is Raptor, old bean. Remember the line from that dreadful Thomas Hardy poem, ‘The Dynasts’? ‘One pairing is as good as another’? Fits quite nicely, don’t you think? Cheers, tallyho, and all that rot.”
PART FIVE
Late Triassic 208 m. y. ago
I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time and times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion…
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die.
Thomas Hardy, “Heredity”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
It is 6:30 a.m. and my car has paused at a Bay Area pedestrian crosswalk, because in California the pedestrian crosswalk is more sacred than the Trinity. So even though I am on my way to San Francisco to kill Otto Kreiger, I honor it.
I am startled by a sudden passage on my right: a jutting beak of white smooth-capped half-oval helmet which in profile extends several inches horizontally above the brows and nose of a passing cyclist. He is followed by a cluster of others on similar lanky many-speeded racing bikes, all in black midthigh racing tights and jerseys of varied bright colors, moving very fast in a bunch, in a silent breath, no jerkiness like walkers or runners because there is no stride, only turning wheels.
A herd of animals in motion, but what animal moves in such fashion? From my childhood comes a memory, almost a shock of recognition. Like most American children, at about six I become besotted with dinosaurs. What now flashes through my mind from those long-ago years is one of the coelurosaurs, the ostrich dinosaurs, named Dromi-ceiomimus brevertertius. Dromiceiomimus, if I remember my Latin correctly, means “emu-mimic”-the emu being an ostrichlike ratite bird of the Australian grasslands.
