Butcher's Moon p-16

by Richard Stark

  “All right,” Parker said. He turned away, walking back toward the exit, and Grofield followed him. I knew it wouldn’t be that easy, Grofield thought, but he didn’t say anything.

  Outside, they walked along with the last stragglers toward the park exit. Grofield said, “What now?”

  “When I was in here,” Parker said, “some local tough boys knew I was here. They tried to find me, to get the money.”

  “So they must have searched after you got away.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you know how to find any of them?”

  “I know the name of their boss,” Parker said. “Lozini.”

  Five

  Adolf Lozini, at the electric wok, said, “The trouble with a lot of people is, they don’t understand about Chinese cooking.”

  The three men standing around the patio gave respectful nods. Their wives were sitting over in the pool area with Mr. Lozini’s wife, talking about racially integrated high schools. The underwater lights were on, making rippling light streaks all around that part of the yard, and the wives in their pink and blue taffeta looked like dowdy mermaids past their prime.

  “The Chinese,” Lozini said, “respect their food, that’s the whole secret. Like it was a person.” He poked at the water chestnuts and celery pieces with a fork, and the three men all nodded once more.

  The three were executives. The one in the bright blue suit and dark green ascot was Frankie Faran, a sometime union officer and also currently manager of the New York Room, a club downtown with live entertainment: two strippers all week, plus a jazz group on weekends. The one sweating in the white turtleneck was Jack Walters, an attorney and an officer in several holding companies. And the one in the black bow tie and bright madras jacket was a former accountant, Nathan Simms by name, who now ran the local policy game and also took care of a number of personal financial matters for Mr. Lozini.

  Although the house in the background was very Northeastern in style, with its steep roof and small double-hung windows and dark shingle siding, the large yard at the rear was completely Southern California, the result of several business trips Lozini had made to Los Angeles a few years ago. Green and amber floodlights glowed on the plane trees and maple trees and the rear wall of the house. The patio was pink slate, the pool was blue and kidney-shaped, the tennis court ran north-south. Stockade fencing enclosed the area, but the ivy that was supposed to have spread over the fencing had mostly died, leaving only straggling remnants climbing upward here and there, like leafy cracks in a rooming-house wall.

  The weather was warm tonight, more suitable to the California yard than the New England house. The watery smell of cooking vegetables hung in the air, mixed with the chatter of the women over by the pool. Lozini smiled at his handiwork, then smiled around in a general way at his guests, and they obediently smiled right back.

  Lozini considered himself a gourmet cook, and there was no one in his circle to contradict him, either through greater knowledge or greater power. Pleased with his own cooking, and pleased as well with the status of power he had finally reached after many years of struggle, Lozini three or four times each week invited guests from among his subordinates and fed them dishes from Italy or Spain or France or China or almost anywhere; he was a gourmet with catholic tastes. It was considered an honor to be invited to a Lozini dinner, and a disaster to go too long without being invited. No one ever refused.

  The vegetables were cooking; too slowly, but Lozini didn’t know that. He smiled paternally at them, stirred them a bit more, and looked up as Harold approached from the house. Harold’s white serving jacket was tailored so carefully that no gun was evident at all; Lozini’s wife didn’t like the look of guns, especially in the house.

  Lozini waited, the wooden spoon in his hand, and his three guests stepped discreetly backward out of the way. Theirs was a world in which it was better not to overhear other people’s conversations.

  Harold arrived. Leaning over the wok, his face in the upward current of thin steam, he said quietly, “Somebody on the phone for you, Mr. Lozini.”

  “Who?”

  ”I don’t know, Mr. Lozini. He won’t give a name.” Lozini frowned. “Why should I talk to him? What does he want?”

  “He said it’s about the guy in the amusement park, Mr. Lozini.”

  Lozini squinted as though it were his own face in the steam, not Harold’s. “What guy in the—” But then he remembered.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Lozini,” Harold said. He wouldn’t know anything about that, of course. “He just said I should tell you—”

  “All right, all right,” Lozini said. He nodded briskly to shut Harold up, and stood squinting toward the house. The heist artist in the amusement park, hiding in there with the loot from an armored-car robbery. Lozini had sent some people in to get him, and they’d failed. That was a couple years ago—and who would want to talk to him about it now, on the phone?

  Harold waited patiently, his face in the steam. The three guests were in a low meaningless conversation to one side. Lozini came to a decision. “All right,” he said, and turned toward the three men. “Nate?”

  Simms, the former accountant, came over with his eyebrows politely raised. “Anything I can do?”

  Lozini handed him the wooden spoon. “Stir this,” he said. “Don’t let it burn.” To Harold he said, “I’ll take it in the cabana.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Lozini.”

  Harold went back to the house, and Lozini marched over to the cabanas, a row of three dressing rooms, each with its own cot and toilet and sink. The one at the end also held a telephone; Lozini went in there, switched on the light, closed the door, sat on the bed, and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Lozini?” The voice was somewhat harsh, but neutral.

  “Speaking,” Lozini said, and heard the click as Harold hung up the kitchen extension.

  “Last time you saw me,” the voice said, “you thought I was a cop named O’Hara. You thought I hurt my head.”

  Lozini got it right away; it was the heistman himself, the one he’d helped hunt down in the amusement park. The bastard had gotten out dressed like a cop, palming himself off as one of Lozini’s tame cops. “You son of a bitch,” Lozini said, squeezing the phone, leaning forward over his knees. He wanted to say that three good men had been killed that time, and that the heister still had to pay for it, but he held himself in check; things like that weren’t said on the phone. “I want to see you again,” Lozini said. He was breathing hard, as though he’d run up a flight of stairs.

  “You owe me some money,” the voice said.

  That one left Lozini with nothing to say at all. He stared at the sink on the opposite wall, speechless. He couldn’t begin to think what the son of a bitch was talking about.

  “Lozini?”

  “Where—” Lozini cleared his throat. “Where are you?”

  “This is a local call. You’ve got my money, I came back for it.”

  “What money, you son of a bitch? I don’t have any of your money, that’s not the score we have to settle.”

  “The money I left behind. You got it and I want it. Do you give it to me easy, or do you give it to me after I make trouble?”

  “I won’t give you anything,” Lozini yelled, “but a one-way ticket!”

  The voice was staying calm. It said, “Do you know a guy named Karns?”

  “What?”

  “He runs things,” the voice said. “Your kind of thing.”

  “No, he doesn’t, that’s— Oh, I know who you mean.” Then Lozini remembered to be mad again, and said, “I don’t care who you know. I’m after your head, and I’ll get it.”

  “Call Karns,” the voice said.

  “I don’t have to call any—”

  “Call him and ask him,” the voice said, “what you should do if you owe some money to a guy named Parker.”

  “You come over here,” Lozini said. “I’ll pay you off, all right.”

 
“Ask Karns,” the voice said. “I’ll call you tomorrow night, tell you where to leave the—”

  “I’m not asking anybody anything!”

  “You’re making a mistake,” the voice said.

  Lozini slammed the phone down. An instant later he regretted that and picked the receiver up again, but the connection was broken. Maybe he could have figured out some way to get the bastard within arm’s reach. Parker, did he say his name was? All right.

  Lozini made a quick call. His really good number-two man, Joe Caliato, had been killed in that amusement park, killed by this same son of a bitch coming around now, looking for money. His replacement, Ted Shevelly, was going to be Grade A some day, but that day hadn’t quite happened yet. Still, he’d be more than good enough for this.

  “Hello?”

  “Ted?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Lozini.”

  “Ted, you remember that trouble at the amusement park, a couple years ago?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The fella that caused it, he says his name is Parker, says he’s in town. Just called me on the phone.”

  “On the level?”

  “I think so. I’d like to meet up with him, you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, sir, sure do.”

  “Think you can find him?”

  “If he’s in town,” Ted Shevelly said, “I can find him.”

  “Good boy.”

  Lozini hung up, and sat brooding at the phone a minute longer. An itch in his brain wanted him to make a long-distance call to Karns, a man he hardly knew at all, but powerful nationally. But what did it matter what Karns said? If this bastard Parker was really under Karns’ protection, he’d come in here openly, with soldiers of his own to back him up. He was a four-flusher, that’s all, a cheap heist artist with a gun in his hand.

  Besides, even if Karns or anybody else said it would be a good idea to give Parker his money back, it wouldn’t do any good. Because Lozini didn’t have the bastard’s money. He’d had that amusement park tossed from one end to the other two years ago, after Parker had gotten away, and there hadn’t been a sign of it. And you can’t give it back if you don’t have it.

  Lozini got to his feet, left the cabana, and walked back over to where his guests were standing around the wok, taking turns stirring the vegetables inside. They were relieved when their host came back to join them.

  “Thanks, fellows,” Lozini said, and took the wooden spoon back from Nate Simms and looked in the wok. The vegetables had mushed down to a kind of wet green mass, a steaming swamp. The steam smelled like mildew.

  Six

  “Very nice library you have here,” Grofield said.

  The girl walking through the stacks ahead of him turned her head to twinkle over her shoulder in his direction. “Well, thank you,” she said, as though he’d told her she had good legs, which she had.

  They went through a section of reading tables, all unoccupied. “You don’t seem to get much of a business,” he said.

  She gave a dramatic sigh and an elaborate shrug. “I suppose it’s all you can expect from a town like this,” she said.

  Oh ho, thought Grofield, one of those. Self-image: a rose growing on a dungheap. A rose worth plucking? “What other attractions are there in a town like this?” he asked.

  “Hardly anything. Here we are.”

  A small alcove held a battered microfilm reader on a table, with a wooden chair in front of it. Smiling at it, Grofield said, “Elegant. Very nice.”

  She smiled broadly in appreciation, and he knew she knew they were artistic soulmates. “You should see the room with the LPs,” she said.

  “Should I?”

  “It’s ghastly.”

  He looked at her, unsure for just a second, but her expression told him she hadn’t after all been suggesting a quiet corner in which they could bump about together. The idea, in fact, hadn’t occurred to her; she was really a very simple straightforward girl, appropriate to the town and the library.

  Out of habit, and not to offend the child’s feelings, he went on with the routine, pitching it slow and simple and without double meanings. “There must be something to do around here after the sun goes down.”

  She pursed her lips to show disgust; all her movements and expressions were a little too heavily done, as though she hadn’t figured out the fine tuning of her personality yet. “Everybody just watches television,” she said.

  He said, “I tell you what. I don’t know if I’ll be tied up with business tonight or not, but give me your phone number and if I can get free I’ll call you. We’ll see what good old Tyler has to offer.”

  “Oh, I can’t tonight,” she said, and this time came on too heavy with the disappointment.

  Just as well, he thought. “Maybe later in the week,” he said.

  “All right. Fine.” Very eager. “You want to write it down?”

  He couldn’t think what she wanted him to write down. “Eh?”

  “My number.”

  “Oh! Of course.” He produced the memo book and ballpoint pen, and stood like a reporter in Front Page. “Fire away.”

  She told him seven numbers and he wrote them down, and she said, “I really am sorry about tonight.”

  “Well, you’re a good-looking girl,” he said. “I could hardly expect you to be free at a moment’s notice. Especially on a Friday night.”

  She twinkled again. “What a sweet thing to say.”

  “I can’t tell a lie in a library,” he said, to make a transition, and looked around, adding, “About the newspapers . . .”

  “Oh, yes!” She became suddenly efficient, but again the effect was too heavy. Pointing with large arm movements, she said, “They’re right there, on those shelves. The newest are on the top, and then the older ones are below. And the indexes are those books on the bottom shelves.”

  “Fine. Thanks a lot.”

  “Well,” she said, and flashed a meaningless smile, and made a couple of awkward hand movements. “I’d better let you get to your work.”

  “See you later.” He gave her a nod and a friendly smile, and waited for her to leave.

  She bounced away, more emphatically than necessary, and Grofield turned his attention to the microfilm files of the Tyler Times-Chronicle, the city’s only remaining morning newspaper. The most recent bound index gave him three references to Lozini himself, and half a dozen promising-sounding references to organized crime. He took the proper boxes of microfilm from the top shelf, lined them up next to the reader, threaded one in the machine, and sat down to start reading.

  Alan Grofield was an actor: always and everywhere, not merely in a play on a stage. Movie background music played in his head as he moved through his life, accenting and heightening everything he did, altering everything to melodrama—even the melodrama. Sometimes he was a bomber pilot, World War Two, bringing the crippled bird home over the Channel, the rest of the crew dead or dying at their posts. Sometimes he was the same pilot, downed in France, being hidden by the beautiful farm girl in the low-ceilinged, dirt-walled basement with the stone archways. Sometimes he was the foreign spy, on his way to the meeting where he would turn over the plans for the new submarine. And always the appropriate music played in his mind, giving him a rhythm to move to, so that he gave an effect of unconscious grace and catlike sinuousness—charged, dynamic and utterly artificial.

  The sound track running through his mind right now, though, was not exactly music. He was in a Dennis O’Keefe movie at the moment, made around 1950; a federal agent, he had volunteered to pretend to be a crook and thus to work his way into the inner circle of the counterfeiting ring. So here he was at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.—the dome of the Capitol would have been visible in the background in the establishing shot showing him trotting up wide stone steps—studying the files on the known members of the gang, preparing himself for the infiltration. And instead of background music, the sound track was filled with the stern tones of an off-screen narrator. “Agent Kil
roy studied the men he would soon—” The rest was fuzzed, the voice without the words but ringing with authority.

  For two hours Agent Kilroy studied the men. Adolf Lozini. Frank Faran. Louis “Dutch” Buenadella. Nathan Simms. John W. Walters. Ernest Dulare. Joseph “Cal” Caliato, from whom much had been expected until his mysterious disappearance two years ago. And the names of businesses, linked with the men. Three Brothers Trucking. Entertainment Enterprises, a vending-machine company. The New York Room, a local nightclub. Ace Beverage Distributors. Each name led to the next, back and forth through five years of local newspapers, until at last a pretty good general layout of the local mob was spread out before him. His notebook was full, his eyes were tired, and his back was sore from bending for so long into the opening of the microfilm reader.

  He got to his feet, put the final microfilm spool back in its box and the box back on its shelf, rubbed his eyes, rubbed his back, pocketed his memo book and pen, and headed for the exit.

  The girl was on the lookout for him, and came tripping out from behind the main desk as he was going by. She gave violent hand signals to attract his attention, and when he stopped she hurried over and whispered, “It turns out I’m free tonight after all.”

  She’d broken her date; headache, no doubt. Feeling vaguely sorry for the young man, and both irritated and guilty toward the girl, Grofield said, “That’s wonderful.”

  “So if you’re free—”

  “I certainly hope I am,” he said, and suddenly realized that although he now had her phone number, he didn’t have her name. “I’ll call you the second I know,” he said. “My name’s Alan, by the way. Alan Green.”

  “Hi, Alan. I’m Dori Neevin.”

  “I’ll call you, Dori.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  He grinned into her big-girl smile, and left the library, and went back to the hotel, where Parker was standing at his room window, looking down at the mayoral banner flapping over the street. He turned when Grofield walked in, and said, “Lozini says no.”