They had been droning on about financing, television the bug-eyed monster, new money being welcome practically all through the industry now, the bankers who actually financed operations at the studio, and unless I had heard it completely wrong, one of them had said or intimated that a “Mr. Rio” had become one of the Magna backers.
Apparently it had been Feldspen. He blinked at me in surprise and said, “I was discussing with Theodore the fortunate investment, by Mr. Louis Rio, of a sizable sum of money in Magna.”
“I thought I heard something crazy like that. Nobody else has called Lou Rio Mr. for years.”
“Why ... do you know him?”
“Know him? Not so long ago I did my best to send him to San Quentin. He's one of the two biggest racketeers on the West Coast. Between him and Nick Colossus, they might steal California.”
The two hoods I had mentioned in the same breath, like garlic with halitosis, were quite often mentioned in the same breath by others familiar with the local crime picture, because they were certainly the two biggest mobsters in Southern California, at least, and perhaps in the entire state. It seemed especially natural for me to speak of them at the same time because both of them would cheerfully have sawed open my throat with old hacksaw blades.
Feldspen and Valentine were speaking almost simultaneously, Valentine saying, “You can't be serious,” and Harry ejaculating, “Preposterous!”
“I'm serious. You've never even heard of the crumb?”
“Not in any—derogatory way,” Feldspen said. “What did you mean, you tried to send him to prison?”
I gave them some of the background, and telling them brought it all vividly back to me. Vividly and uncomfortably. To have one of those guys unhappy with you was bad enough, but to wind up with both of them snarling at you was tantamount to suicide. I had earned the snarls of both several months ago when I had appeared before a California State Senate Committee investigating crime in Los Angeles. During that appearance I had named Lou Rio and Nick Colossus as the dangerous hoodlums I truly felt them to be, and had gone into as great and specific detail about them as I could, including my opinion that, since it was well and widely known that they hated each other, it would be the best thing for California since the Gold Rush if they would simply kill either themselves or each other. Naturally neither of them had felt any warmer toward me after that, and they'd been quite cool before then.
It was true enough, though, that these two biggest of local mobsters hated each other, and this hate of the bosses extended down as if by osmosis to their followers, their lieutenants and strong-arm boys. Consequently L.A. was always on the verge of an old-time gang war, like the Chicago days in the early twenties, but the war had never really been declared, or even gone much beyond sniping. But the potential was there.
I finished my explanation to Feldspen and Valentine by saying, “Nothing much came of my appearance before the committee. At least nothing happened to Rio. One result of my testimony was that, after some good police work and a trial, a couple of Rio's boys were sent to Folsom.”
Feldspen said, “It must not be the same Rio. It must be a different —”
I interrupted him. “Lou Rio is five-ten, stocky, big head on him, thin brown hair, forty-five years old but the way he lives has taken ten years off his life and put them on his face. Ugly as sin but eyes like a saint's —”
This time Feldspen interrupted me. “Yes. Yes.” He sighed, looking shocked. “With that description there's no doubt it's the same man.” He paused. “Then—he's a criminal.”
“And how he's a criminal.”
I filled them in on part of Rio's record; all of it would have taken half the day. And none of it pleasant. Lou Rio was, despite his commanding position in the local rackets, among the lowest of those low forms of life. He had come out here from the east about twelve years ago, been smitten by the climate and sights—especially the Hollywood lovelies, because he could not resist a well turned ankle or fanny—and opportunities for fast bucks—and stayed. An ex-pug with one mangled eyebrow, he'd come up in the rackets the hard way, battling for every inch he got, and he was still belligerent, angry, stupid, always ready and even anxious to take a poke at somebody, anybody. It was as if he generated inside himself the poison which kept him continually irritated and angry and sick, like a snake that insists on biting itself.
Not likeable, not jolly, he was a do-badder with cirrhosis of the conscience, and his heart was in the wrong place. Always for the overdog, that was Lou Rio, and now he was the overdog. In two words, he was a slob's slob.
“I'm shocked,” Feldspen said. “He seemed, well, rather unpolished. But not criminal. We had lunch in the Velvet Room only yesterday.”
The Velvet Room was the Studio Commissary, a fine place to eat if you wanted to eyeball movie stars and lovely lasses. The food was lousy. I said to Feldspen, “You mean he was here? On the lot?”
He nodded. “Yes. He's here a good deal. Likes the atmosphere, he says.”
“I'll bet. I know what Lou Rio likes, and it's not the Velvet Room's soggy egg sandwiches....” I stopped. “Harry,” I said, “doesn't it now strike you as more than passing strange that a bigtime hoodlum buys into Magna and then, of a sudden, some anonymous hoodlum attempts to blackmail Magna?”
“I hadn't thought of it. Not previously knowing about Mr. Rio. But it does seem odd.”
“It doesn't have to mean anything,” I said. “You were talking about the movie business needing money. Well, the successful crooks need investments, legitimate spots into which they can sink their illegitimate bucks. So a place like Magna, with the movie business in a bit of trouble and welcoming outside money, is made to order for ready-money slobs like Rio. Probably that's all it is. But with Rio and blackmail so close, it sure smells.”
Valentine said wonderingly, “Wouldn't it be the most unique situation if the blackmailer were investing his blackmail profits in the studio?”
“Yeah, but extremely good business—from Rio's point of view. And pretty neat, at that. Getting the illegitimate money from the legitimate business in which he then invests the illegitimate money has a kind of criminal poetry to it. But it seems too neat for a simple mugg like Rio.” I thought a minute, then asked, “How much loot did he drop into the kitty?”
Valentine said, “I don't know. Quite a lot, I understand.”
Feldspen said, “Several million. I don't know the exact amount myself.” He paused. “The bankers really own the place, you know, Shell. I'm head of the studio, but I'm still just a salaried employee.” I wondered what he was getting at. He hesitated and went on with a wry smile. “It would be difficult, for example, for me to order Mr. Rio off the lot, or discharge him. He is one of my employers.”
That made it nice, I thought. Get a couple more crooks into Magna and it would start turning out nothing but films glorifying Billy the Kid, Dillinger, Al Capone—and Mr. Louis Rio.
Valentine had been thinking about something. Now he looked toward Feldspen, digging at his index finger with that busy thumbnail. I noticed he had actually drawn blood at one spot. He said, “Harry, I wonder if Mr. Rio's interest in Suez’ career has any added significance now.”
Feldspen shook his head silently, but I asked Ted, “What do you mean by that?”
“Ever since Mr. Rio became associated with the studio, he has pressed us to give Suez bigger and better parts. He tried to have us give the Messalina part to her instead of Miss James, for example. I think he ... ah, has a personal interest in her. She's an extremely beautiful girl.”
“You mean he's hot for this Suez?”
“That's—about as good a way to put it as any.” He smiled that handsome smile again and added, “None of the heat is radiated upon him in turn, however. At least I feel reasonably sure of that.”
I hadn't met Suez, but even without meeting her I was pleased that she seemed not to like Lou Rio. Anybody who didn't like Rio was that much over on my side. We jawed for another ten minutes and then, bec
ause it was already four in the afternoon and I wanted to talk with all of the stars in question, I told them I'd get to work and see them later in the day. Not until then did we settle my fee. Harry simply named a figure which even under the circumstances was a fabulous amount, and I told him O.K. and left.
Valentine had told me that Howdy, Stranger retakes were being wrapped up on Sound Stage Three, and that's where I headed.
Only there was a delay. My walk took me back near where I'd parked and thus fairly close to the gate where I'd talked with the thin-faced, big-mouthed guard. I glanced that way and saw a shiny black Rolls Royce parked there. The only guy I know who drives around in a Rolls is Lou Rio.
Feldspen had told me Rio spent a lot of time here, so I squinted toward the car, making sure. Yeah, it was Rio. He didn't drive himself but sat up front with the driver. I changed my course and walked toward the gate as the driver got out and started chinning with the guard.
I honestly didn't go over there to shoot Rio, or sock him, or engage in any kind of violent activity except maybe some pointed conversation. All I wanted to do was talk to the man, sound him out, try to satisfy myself about whether or not he might have had anything to do with the blackmail pitch. I thought that, even though we heartily disliked each other, we could trade a few words like normal uncivilized adults. I thought he'd be able to control himself. But, of course, muggs in the rackets have never learned to control themselves—which is one reason why they are muggs in the rackets.
When he spotted me walking toward the Rolls, Rio leaned over and spoke to his driver. Then the glare of sun on windshield blocked my view of him for a moment. The next time I got a look at him he was climbing out of the car. All three men went into the gatehouse and disappeared from my sight. When I reached the little wooden house and stepped through the door myself, Rio was waiting for me, arms folded across his thick chest.
It wasn't just his chest that was thick; he was pretty thick all over. Or rather he was thick, and there was nothing pretty about it. Rio was just thick, thick, thick. He was going to fat a bit now, at forty-five, but the fighter's muscles were still there under the flabby layer, though probably a bit too elastic this year.
I stopped in front of him and he grinned. “Well, what about this? Scott, the righteous fink. Rio's glad to see your ugly face.”
“Let's keep it impersonal, shall we, Rio?”
He kept grinning. It was a wide face, and he grinned with his jaws clamped together, flesh bunching around his mouth and in a rubbery fold beneath his chin. The nostrils in his scythe-like nose flared widely. And above that compelling, eyecatching nose were his big, gentle eyes.
Those big, soft eyes didn't look as if they could be the eyes of a brutal man. You would expect the owner of those eyes to feed stray dogs and cats and buy Girl Scout Cookies. Those eyes would belong to keepers of canaries, to writers of odes and sonnets, not to Louis Rio. But belong to him they did. Maybe they were what Lou might have been, the evidence of good once in him. No matter, all they did for him now was to make the rest of him look harder, more brutal, more ugly.
He said finally, “You know you're gonna pay plenty for blabbing against Rio, don't you? A man like Rio's got to keep up his prestige, keep up his rep.” He liked to speak of himself in the third person; that way he could say more wonderful things about himself without seeming too immodest.
I said, “That's not why I came over here.”
“Don't make no difference why you come over, Scott. Glad you did. Several things Rio's been wanting to tell you.”
“I can guess. There's something I want to tell you, too. There's a rumble, Rio, that an operator's putting the squeeze on a few of the Magna family. I'm now part of the family.”
“What squeeze?”
I went on without answering him, but kept watching his face for any unusual reaction. “Naturally I'm now nearly as interested as those getting the bite put on them. So, as my first official act —”
He interrupted me. “What in hell are you running off at the mouth about? You talking about somebody on the shake here in the studio?”
He acted as if that were a blow to his personal prestige. Naturally he would feel that way, now that he had his own money in Magna—if he weren't just acting, period. Rio was still thinking—or pretending to think—about my previous remarks. He looked to his left, at the driver of his Rolls, and said, “You know anything about any shakedown, Ganny?”
I followed his gaze. I had been interested solely in Rio, and as a result had paid no attention to the driver. But I paid some attention to him now. It was hard to do otherwise.
Hoodlums, mobsters, men on the turf, men of the so-called “underworld,” are remarkably imaginative in at least one way. That's in their choice of nicknames or “monickers” for themselves and their buddies. The number of a hood's police-blotter aliases may reach twenty, thirty or more, but usually the monicker sticks. And almost invariably the monicker is bestowed because it neatly sums up some facet of the individual's personality or appearance, character or history. The full monicker of the man Rio had called Ganny was Gangrene. And it just about summed the man up.
I had seen him several times before, and always with a shudder. No more gangrenous-appearing individual had ever stalked down the pike. Today he was wearing a black suit that looked as if he'd won it on a punchboard, a pink tie over a dark blue shirt, pointed black shoes and dark glasses, and he looked the way Death might have looked when young. Even in Hollywood this guy was unbelievable, but he was true. He was overdone, an almost comic exaggeration, a burlesque—but there was nothing funny about him, not a thing. Unless you think death rattles are funny, just a different kind of laughter.
No, this boy was about as bad as they come. He was mean, he was evil. Forget the clothes, the trappings, and take a look at the man, at the face.
There was a lot of hair, black and straight, matted with too much thick grease, parted on the side and combed straight back in two lopsided wings. The forehead was high and white and his eyes were like black ice cubes. The nose was thin, the nostrils pinched. The lips were thin and pale, pressed together. I didn't know if he had any teeth, because I'd never seen him smile. His lips seemed sewn together, like a corpse's. Tall, thin, bony, he looked ill. He looked abscessed. He looked mouldy.
I had thought before, after the first time I'd seen him, that if I had led a very mean, wasted, dissolute, evil and cruel life, and were dying of thirst in the middle of the Sahara Desert, just at the moment of death I might see something like him—reaching for me.
He said to Rio, barely parting his lips, and still not showing any teeth, or even gums, “News to me, boss.”
Then Gangrene looked at me. The gate guard stood behind him, grinning slightly at me. It was the kind of grin which expresses no great amount of admiration, an insulting grin in fact. Gangrene said, “You lucky you still alive after what you done atta hearings.”
His English wasn't quite Harvard or Oxford. It wasn't quite English. In his brain, Broca's convolution was not very convoluted but he made himself understood, one way or another.
“Yah,” he said again, “you lucky you alive.”
I ignored him and turned back to Rio.
He'd moved a little. I didn't know why, not then, but he'd stepped closer to the front of the gatehouse and I had to turn to my left in order to face him. He said, “What's this shake? Who's getting it?
I shook my head. “That's all the news I've got today, Rio.”
There was a slightly twisted, right look on his face. He said, “I hear from Ham and Jake the Caddy.” They were the two men I'd helped send to prison with my talk before the Committee. “They don't like it up there at college.”
“That's because they graduated last time with F's. So they flunked in again. Fortunately for people.” The college he referred to was Folsom, where they would spend their next several birthdays without cakes.
“Asked me to send their greetings,” Rio went on.
I was goi
ng to make a fitting reply, but there wasn't time. It happened so suddenly that I was caught flat-footed. We were fairly well hidden inside the gatehouse here, but I just hadn't expected physical trouble from Rio today. Not here, anyway. I should have known better.
He just hauled off without warning and launched his left fist at my face. My reflexes are not only fast to begin with, but well trained, so even caught by surprise I managed to get out of the way of his fist. His thumb bounced along my cheek but didn't do any damage. I'd even started my own right fist driving forward automatically toward Rio's gut when I heard Gangrene grunt behind me.
I knew what that meant, knew far too late, and there was just too much for me to do. I tried to stop my fist and jerk my head aside at the same time, trying to turn, but I didn't even get a good start. My reflexes aren't nearly that good.
It must have been a sap, but it felt like a jagged half-ton rock when it landed. The blow wasn't solid, but it was solid enough. If it had landed the way Gangrene must have meant it to, I'd have been out on my way down. As it was, the world just dimmed and didn't go black.
My knees stopped working, but I could still see everything near me through the sudden grayish fog, and I saw the wide grin in Rio's wide face as he slammed his fist at me again. This one got me on the way down. It landed on the side of my jaw and jarred me, but for just a moment it made the world brighter.
I landed hard but without pain. And then my arms were stretched out in front of me, hands pressing against the floor, but I couldn't feel them. I raised my head, straining, aching with the desire to get up, get to my feet before another blow fell. I pushed against the floor, pushed with all my strength, but somehow it got closer.
I did manage to pull my head up on my neck. And just in time. Just in time to see Lou Rio's big foot coming toward my face. It seemed to take quite a while, just as it seemed that I had been pushing against the floor for a long time, and I could still see quite clearly in that unnatural brightness.
Slab Happy (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 3
