Shakedown

by William Campbell Gault

  They didn’t seemed disturbed by that. Moose climbed into the front seat, and the blond punk started the motor. The car was at least twelve years old, one of the twelve cylinder jobs, but it ran as quietly as an electric fan.

  It was a long ride, all the way to the Coast Highway and then north, toward Malibu. And then, this side of Malibu, we began to climb up a winding road into the hills on the right. This wasn’t exactly well populated country, but there were some big wheels who lived up here. And I did have the thirty-eight.

  At the crest of one of the lower hills, there was a driveway leading into an eucalyptus grove and a low, redwood and stone house sprawled on the bulldozed, flat top. It was one of those houses that look inexpensive and simple until you come to buy or build one. The driveway circled and led around to the immense asphalt parking area at the side of the house.

  They worked it very cute at this point. Moose opened the door on his side and slid out to open the rear door on the same side. He was smiling at me. “Here we are, boss.”

  My attention was on him. I’d have to crouch, to duck through the low door, and neither of my arms would have any working area. It would be a perfect spot to catch a sucker punch, and Moose had the moxie to make it a one punch deal.

  The fink in the front seat was out of my mind entirely. I kept my chin down, and my attention on Moose.

  Keeping my chin down must have tilted my head about right for the man behind the wheel. I heard nothing as the sap caught me right above the left ear. I went down into the void still seeing Moose’s genial grin.

  I came to in a knotty pine den. I was on a leather couch near a huge fieldstone fireplace, and I seemed to be alone in the room. A row of knee-high windows along the far wall revealed the coastline beyond Santa Barbara. This room was evidently on the steep side of the house; there would be a three-hundred-foot drop from those windows into the valley below. My head throbbed steadily and there was a pain running down into my left shoulder.

  Suckered. By a punchy ex-pug, a former club fighter, a nothing. And why? Not because of the fight we’d had. Somebody else was involved in this. Moose couldn’t pay the taxes on a house like this.

  My gun was gone, though the shoulder holster was still there. Somewhere in the house, a radio played, and I heard water running through a pipe. The water stopped, but the radio went on.

  Stay out of trouble … Sure. Not in this town. Too many bastards hunting the angle, looking for a gravy train to climb on. Moose had had just enough Hollywood experience to learn how many ways there are to make a buck in this town.

  My stomach growled, and nausea settled there. I kept my eyes on the calm, sun-bright coast line. Then, slowly, I swung my feet from the couch and sat up. For a while I sat there on the edge of the couch while my vision wavered. I hoped I’d get a chance at that blond punk before too long.

  I stood up finally and went to the windows. I’d been right about the drop; far below I could see the bottom of the valley. This was the buttressed side of the house.

  There was a single door leading to this room, and I guessed the room must be below the general level of the house. I tried the door, just on an off-chance, but it was locked. I went back to the couch as the throbbing started again in my head. I wondered how much time had passed and I wondered what this was all about.

  It was plain enough now that it wasn’t just a talk they wanted. It was information, and they meant to get it. I’d been slugged outside because that particular situation had offered the best opportunity for it. They’d expected me to resist whenever the proposition was voiced. They’d put me in a spot where it wouldn’t be healthy to resist.

  I heard footsteps on what must be stairs on the far side of the door. I lay down on the couch, again, and closed my eyes. I heard the door open and someone say, “He’s still out. That friend of yours hit him too hard, Moose.”

  I opened my eyes and saw the tall, thin man standing there. His hair was gray-black, his eyes a cold blue. He looked down at me without saying a word. It was Jennings, Rickett’s attorney. It was the man who’d hired me for a day.

  I didn’t say anything. He didn’t say anything. Moose said, “He looks all right, now.”

  I said to Moose, “Did you take my gun?”

  He smiled at me and winked at Jennings.

  Jennings said, “Where’s Josie Gonzales?”

  I didn’t say a word.

  Moose asked, “Want me to club him a few times?”

  Jennings shook his head. “Joe will work with us. It’s his neck. What’s the pitch, Joe? Deutscher out of sight, Josie gone. And somebody telling the law that I was mishandling Rickett’s money. Who’s trying to get me, Joe?”

  “The law,” I said, “for framing Rickett, I suppose. What’s it got to do with me?”

  “I’m asking you that.”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s the wrong time to be, Joe.”

  I nodded. “I know it. Deutscher’s the man you want.”

  “And where is he?”

  They didn’t know. … It kept going through my aching head. They didn’t know. …

  I said, “The police are looking for him in ’Frisco.”

  “On whose tip?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He stared at me for seconds. Then, “Maybe you think I’m not in a position to try any rough stuff, but you’re wrong, Joe. If Josie ever ties me to the money that was paid to clear Rickett, and the law comes nosing into his account, I’m in trouble. I’m out of business, and facing a term in jail. I don’t propose to have either of those things happen.”

  “The law must be nosing into the account, already,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Rickett is satisfied with my handling of his money, so they can’t complain. And Rickett will continue to be satisfied with me as long as he knows I’m working on the outside to clear him. He’d overlook a lot to save his neck.”

  “You frame him and then clear him, is that it?”

  Jennings studied me. “I didn’t frame him. Target phoned him, threatened him.”

  “Who suggested that to Target?”

  “I’ll ask you that one, too.”

  “I could guess,” I said. “A prominent man who happens to be standing in this room. If he was framed, he was framed at Little Phil’s, and here you are with Little Phil’s friend. How dumb do you think I am?”

  Moose said quickly, “You got it wrong, Joe. I never saw Mr. Jennings until Little Phil told me he thought Mr. Jennings would know about you. He said you were working for Mr. Jennings.”

  Jennings nodded. “Moose is just a lad who wants to earn a dollar. And wonders where you got all the money to fly so high these days.”

  “I’m not flying high.”

  Moose grinned at me. “If you ain’t rich, you’re the first guy like that who ever got in with that Roland dame.”

  I said nothing.

  Jennings said, “We don’t seem to be getting anywhere. I considered you smarter than that, Puma. I don’t like violence. I’m no sadist. But I intend to have the truth.”

  “I’ve given you all the truth I know,” I said. “If the police find out I’m missing, this is one of the places they’re going to look for me.”

  “Hardly. Very few people even know about this house of mine. I’ll give you twenty minutes, Joe. If you want to talk, holler. If you don’t intend to, Moose and his pal will still be back in twenty minutes.”

  Jennings turned and headed for the door. Moose shook his head. “Get smart, Puma. What’s the point in being stubborn?”

  “I’m telling it straight,” I said. “And remember one thing, Jelko. I’ve got a long memory.”

  He nodded. “Me, too.”

  They went out, and the door closed, and I went back to the windows overlooking the valley. There were climbing geraniums planted along the filled soil here, used to prevent erosion.

  If Jennings hadn’t instigated Target’s threat, who had? Deutscher? No, if Deutscher was going to try blackmail, h
e’d try it directly. And there’d be no other motive for Deutscher; Target’s death wouldn’t help him any. Target had got his payment from me.

  I wondered, now, if Rickett had really killed Target. That he’d been framed into killing him, if he had, I didn’t doubt. But maybe, drunk as he was and probably drugged, someone else had done the actual killing and left Rickett there to take the rap.

  And why had Target phoned me? No wonder Jennings thought I was the key to it; I’d been tied up with Target, Deutscher, Josie, Little Phil and him, one way or another. If anybody knew what was going on, I should.

  Typical Puma luck, on the verge of a really big deal, the biggest of my life, and the hangover of an old one has to throw me off stride. One thing they wouldn’t learn and that was the Clifford pitch. I’d been wrong about their interest in me; it had nothing to do with the Clifford steal. And they wouldn’t learn about it from me.

  There wasn’t any story I could make up that would convince Jennings I was innocent in that Target murder. I’d been there with the law, and he knew it. But maybe, just maybe, I could make a deal with Moose, when he came back. He was a mug, working for wages, and I could offer him that. No grudge he might have for me would be more important than money. He wasn’t that dumb.

  Then minutes went by as I looked out at the valley below. Then I made a search of every bit of furniture in the room, looking for a weapon. There wasn’t anything that even resembled a weapon, no chairs that weren’t upholstered, no table legs, no heavy metal lamps.

  My stomach felt empty; there was some rubber in my knees. I went over to the couch and sat down. I was still sitting there when the door opened and Moose and the blond came in. Moose wasn’t smiling this time, and the blond’s face was blank as a sheet of glass. This was the first time I’d ever seen the blond on his feet, and he wasn’t tall. But he was wide and thick.

  I didn’t get up. I said, “What’s your take in this, Moose?”

  He shook his head. “Save your breath, unless you’ve got something important to say. I’m not for sale.”

  “Why not? Jennings bought you, didn’t he?”

  “Not with money alone. The man’s got influence. What have you got? Nothing.”

  I stood up. “I’ve got plenty coming, big money. Use your head. Jennings will be in the clink within the week. And you can’t get away with this unless you kill me.”

  He smiled, then. “We might do just that. And if we don’t, you aren’t going to call any law.”

  “Get me a phone,” I said, “and I’ll call some law, right now.”

  “Now,” he said. “Now, sure. Now, you’re a man.”

  They were spreading, drifting apart, and I couldn’t watch both of them without turning back and forth. Then Moose came in quickly, and I gave him my attention. I threw a right hand at his chin.

  Moose had been the decoy. He slipped the punch, and my hand was still stretched out when the blond came in from the side. He had the hand in both of his and my arm was suddenly behind me. He was strong. He’d come in like one of the Muscles’ Beach wrestlers, flat-footed and sure, and pain danced up from the elbow to the shoulder.

  I tried to catch his face with the back of my head, but he’d been expecting that. I gasped as he gave my arm a warning twist. There wasn’t a sound but the heavy breathing of the man behind me. Moose stepped in and pumped a right and then a left to my gut.

  He didn’t have all his moxie in either of them, but my breath caught in my throat and a limpness moved through my legs. Left, right, left, right, left, right—pulled punches, but adding up, and the room began to waver.

  My stomach rumbled and then I tasted the bitterness of vomit in my mouth, and I opened my mouth wide to spray the bastard. But he must have known what was happening. He stood back, and the man behind released my arm.

  I took one shaky step toward Moose and the floor came up to meet me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I WOKE TO THE sour smell of vomit and a dim room. The afternoon sun was on the other side of the house, and it must have been low in the sky.

  He hadn’t touched my face, but my stomach was one big ulcer. For minutes after coming to, I lay on the floor, unable to move. I’d get the son-of-a-bitch for this if it took the rest of my life. Both of them. And Jennings, too. A chill moved through me, and I gagged, but my stomach was empty. I moved on all fours toward the couch and crawled up onto it before turning over on my back.

  It hurt to breathe and the exertion of crawling made me breathe heavily for over a minute. There was nothing in my legs; they were like tired rags of flesh.

  I lay there, not thinking, as the room grew dimmer, as the ache in my stomach grew. Then I started to figure what I could use for a weapon, but the room contained nothing.

  And there was only the one way out, that door. It gave me an idea. The switch was near the door so whoever came could turn on the light as soon as he entered the room. But the couch was shielded to some extent by the jutting fireplace. If I turned the couch so that only the bottom end was visible from the doorway. …

  I got up slowly, and swung the couch a bit and then walked over to the doorway to see it from there. Only about six inches of the end of the couch were visible from the doorway. I took off my shoes and laid them on their sides on the couch, and went back to look again. It was perfect.

  And the door swung the right way. I’d be shielded by it. I tried the switch and saw which lights it was wired to and went around the room, disconnecting those lamps on the far side of the doorway. The lamps near the couch and the fireplace I didn’t touch. I wanted those shoes in plain sight.

  I was blowing like a whale after only that much exertion. If they should see me behind the door, and it came to a fight, I’d be lost. Moose had robbed my legs of all their strength. And if I did get out, how far could I go on legs like these? To the nearest house, where I could phone the police? And how far was the nearest house?

  There were no lights in evidence through the bank of windows, but of course the road wasn’t down that way. I tried to remember any houses we passed coming up here. There was one a half mile back that I remembered, but none between that house and this. Though I could have missed some driveways of houses set back in the hills. And then, as I stood there, looking at the door, I realized I had a potential weapon within reach. There was a big, brass doorknob on this side of the door and the set screw that held it was loose.

  The door opened into the room, so whoever came would be pushing on the doorknob and wouldn’t realize this one was off. And when I went out through the door, I’d take the knob on that side along. Not only because it would lock Moose or his partner in the room temporarily, but it would also serve as another weapon. And as evidence that I was here.

  The doorknob was solid and heavy and I cupped it in my hand, and turned off the lights again. I leaned against the wall in the dark room, breathing shallowly, taking all the strain I could off my bruised stomach muscles. My head was throbbing only a little now.

  “Then, on the floor above, I heard footsteps and voices in a quiet conversation. Of the conversation, I heard only the last sentence, and it was, “I’ll go down and see. Wait here.”

  One man was coming down. But the other would be waiting at the top of the steps, and that was almost as bad. I stood away from the wall a few feet where I would be shielded but not hampered by the opening door.

  The footsteps grew louder as they came down, and then there was the rattle of the knob, and I tensed, holding the big part of my weapon cupped in my hand, the smaller end exposed for the blow. I hoped for a clean shot at the temple and the smaller end would do the most damage there.

  The door opened, and the light flashed on. It was Moose, and he said, “Okay, Lenny; he’s over on the couch.” He came into the room and took a step toward the couch.

  The light in front of him outlined him perfectly, and my stockinged feet made no noise as I came from behind the door. But on the steps above, Lenny must have seen me pass the doorway, because he
shouted, “Look out, Moose!”

  Moose turned, but too late. The doorknob caught him right above the ear, and he started to crumple as I turned for the steps. I pulled the door shut behind me, and the outer doorknob was now free in my left hand. And Lenny was racing down the steps before he realized I was the man on the way up.

  He tried. He swung a solid right hand that caught me under the eye, and he managed to slam an elbow to my mouth before I brought up the doorknob from below.

  It caught him on the point of the chin, and he started to sag into me. I twisted up against the wall of the stair well, and clubbed him twice more with the knob in the other hand. He pitched full length down the rest o£ the stairs as I slid past and staggered to the top. My legs were going again, and I stopped a second at the top of the stairs to get my breath.

  I was in an entry hall lighted with the overflow of light from a huge living room beyond. Jennings was walking swiftly across the room from an archway at the far end, heading my way. Even Jennings might be too much for me, now. I was still in the shadow of the entry hall, and I said, “Stay where you are, damn you!”

  He stopped dead, trying to peer out into the darkness of the hall. I held the outer doorknob slightly forward, the shaft pointed toward Jennings. I hoped, in the darkness, it might look like a gun. Evidently it didn’t, because he turned his back to me, and started back the way he’d come. He was probably going for a gun.

  I threw the shaftless doorknob with all my strength at the back of his head, but I was high, way high. It went sailing over his head to crash into the huge mirror above the fireplace at the far end of the room. The heavy glass shivered and splinters sparkled in the brightness of the living room as I headed for the front door to my right.

  Then there was asphalt under my feet and I moved toward the road. I’d hoped a car would be parked in the parking area, but there was none in sight, and I didn’t want to hang around to check the garage. Besides, when a car is in the garage, the keys are very rarely left in it.