Lost Among the Angels (A Mercy Allcutt Book)

by Duncan, Alice

  Nevertheless, I decided to be a good sport about it. Smiling sweetly, I said, “Barbara-Ann and I can walk.”

  “Walk where?” demanded Ernie ferociously.

  “Why, to Mr. Li’s apartment building, of course.”

  A fulminating silence ensued. Mr. Bigelow, still gripping Mr. Li tightly, grinned at Ernie, who finally said, “Aw, hell,” and opened the back door. “Get in, Mercy.” Frowning at Barbara-Ann, he said, “You. Get in the front seat.” He directed his last statement to Mr. Bigelow. “Li can sit between Mercy and me. You got any cuffs?”

  “Do we need them?”

  “I don’t want him to try anything funny.”

  Mr. Li shook his head violently. “No cuffs. No funny business. No escape. They kill me if I escape.”

  “That’s true,” muttered Ernie. “Okay, I guess we don’t need cuffs. Shove him in after Mercy. And you,” he growled at me, “don’t you try anything funny, either. You’ve pulled enough fool stunts for one day.”

  “I don’t like your tone, Ernie Templeton.”

  “To hell with my damned tone. Get in the damned car.” He opened the door in a manner that assured me he wasn’t being polite, and I got in the car.

  Barbara-Ann, who had remained silent during the preceding incidents, slid into the front seat after Mr. Bigelow, who had opened the door for her much more gently than Ernie had opened the door for me. Oh, well. It wasn’t my fault if my employer was touchy.

  Mr. Bigelow drove us the two blocks to Mr. Li’s apartment building on Yale before anyone spoke again. Then it was Ernie, and his speech was directed at me. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you’ll consent to stay in the car while we take care of this, is there?”

  “No, there is not.”

  “Figured. All right. Let me get Li out, and then you can get out.”

  “Is my mother in there?” Barbara-Ann asked in a small voice.

  “We’ll soon find out,” said Mr. Bigelow.

  I took the girl’s hand, and we followed the three men into the building. Barbara-Ann’s grip was tighter than it had been, but that was the only evidence of emotional intensity she displayed as we walked up a dismal staircase to the second floor. The corridor here wasn’t as depressing as the one on the first floor, being well-lighted and hung with Chinese pictures. A faint scent of sandalwood hung in the air, too, which gave the place an exotic atmosphere.

  Ernie and Mr. Bigelow marched Mr. Li to apartment number eight, and Mr. Li fumbled in his pocket for the key, which he had trouble inserting into the lock. Ernie eventually took it from him and unlocked the door, then shoved Mr. Li inside and followed. I made sure Barbara-Ann and I were hot on his heels, because I didn’t want to be left out in the hallway and miss any of the action. I inadvertently bumped Ernie’s heel with the toe of my shoe, and he glowered at me. I pretended not to notice.

  The apartment was austere, with little by way of furniture, and that shabby. There was a couch and a chair and a table upon which resided some sort of shrine, I guess, in which it was evident that Mr. Li burned incense. For someone in so questionable a profession as drug dealing, this indication of some sort of religious feeling seemed odd to me, although I didn’t have time to think much about it

  “All right, Li, where is she?”

  Mr. Bigelow didn’t have to ask twice. And, as it turned out, Mr. Li didn’t have to answer. As soon as we were all inside the apartment, loud noises began to emanate from behind a closed door to our right.

  “Watch ’em, Ernie.” And, as Ernie shoved Barbara-Ann and me away from the door, and Mr. Li cowered behind Ernie, Mr. Bigelow hurried to the door, stepped aside, and with his gun drawn, threw it open. I didn’t notice until then that Ernie had a firm grip on Mr. Li’s arm, so cowering was about all the poor man could do.

  “Well, I’ll be.” Sticking his gun in its holster, a shoulder model I never did get to see clearly, Mr. Bigelow put his fists on his hips, and smiled at whatever the room contained.

  I heard more noises, including muffled human sounds, as if someone were trying to speak but had something covering his or her mouth. Barbara-Ann suddenly yanked herself free from my grip, ran to the door, and disappeared into the room. Instantly, her cry of “Ma!” rang out. Also instantly, tears filled my eyes. I blinked them back, praying Ernie hadn’t noticed this evidence of feminine weakness on my part. They didn’t prevent me from rushing into the room, where I saw Barbara-Ann Houser, her arms thrown around a woman gagged and tied to a chair.

  “Go ahead, kid. You can untie her,” Mr. Bigelow said. Barbara-Ann hopped off her mother’s lap and started working first on the gag.

  Ernie and Mr. Li joined Mr. Bigelow and me in watching the touching scene of reunification between mother and child. I clasped my hands to my bosom and tried to keep from crying. When I glanced at Ernie, I saw definite signs of disenchantment, and that evidence of his cold-heartedness drove any compulsion to weep away. “How can you be so callous?” I whispered harshly.

  “Wait till the kid gets the gag out,” he advised, sounding more cynical even than usual.

  At that moment, the gag fell away, and I was forced to acknowledge that Ernie had a point, even though I didn’t want to. Acknowledge his point, I mean.

  As Barbara-Ann stood beside the chair, watching, the woman I presumed to be Babs Houser pinned Han Li with a perfectly hateful frown, and started screaming. “You God damned son of a bitch! You dirty, rotten Chink!” And she went on in that vein until Ernie threatened to replace the gag.

  I, naturally, was shocked and outraged that a woman should use such terrible language in front of her child. I had anticipated an emotional and heartwarming exchange of endearments between mother and daughter. Which demonstrated once again how little I knew of the world.

  As she screamed and hollered, Barbara-Ann and Mr. Bigelow were working on her bonds. Mrs. Houser was what is colloquially known as a mess. Her blond hair was dirty and straggled around her shoulders; her makeup, which I presume had been slathered on her face two Saturdays prior, was smudged and streaked; her stockings had ladders as wide as my hand, her clothes were crumpled and sweat-stained; and she looked as if she’d not enjoyed her captivity one little bit.

  Mr. Bigelow had to use a knife at one point to get her legs untied, and then he had to rescue Mr. Li, since Babs surged from her chair and launched herself at him. Ernie didn’t release Mr. Li, so it was up to Barbara-Ann and me to wrestle the woman to a standstill. Any urge to cry I had experienced had by that time vanished entirely, and I was on the verge of asking Barbara-Ann why she’d wanted this harridan back in the first place.

  Recognizing that impulse to be unfair, and after peace had more or less been restored, I asked, “Would you care for water, Mrs. Houser?”

  She stared at me as if I were a hydra-headed monster. “Who the hell are you?”

  Oddly enough, it was Barbara-Ann who leapt to defend me. “She’s my friend, Ma. She’s Ernie’s secretary, Miss Allcutt, and she gave me twenty bucks today.”

  “Twenty bucks?” Mrs. Houser’s hostility vanished, and she took my hand and shook it. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Is that what was in that envelope?” Ernie whispered in my ear.

  I nodded and spoke to Mrs. Houser. “You’re welcome. Would you care for some water?” I figured she must be thirsty after having had that gag in her mouth for so long.

  “Naw. I just want to get the hell out of here.” She turned like a cyclone on Mr. Bigelow. “So are you going to arrest that son of a bitch, or what?” She jerked her head at Mr. Li, who swallowed.

  “Let’s go down to the station and talk about it,” Mr. Bigelow suggested, then turned to Ernie. “You coming, too?”

  Eyeing me with an expression of frustration, Ernie hesitated before saying, “I guess I’d better. And I suppose we’ll have to take these two along.”

  “My baby’s coming with me,” said Babs, belatedly throwing her arms around her daughter. “And you can’t stop her, Ernie Templeton.” I don’t
know what history she and he had, but it evidently didn’t conjure up pleasant memories.

  “I just said they were going with us,” he snarled.

  It took Babs a few minutes to get her legs working properly. She claimed she’d been tied to the chair, with only very few time-outs for personal hygiene purposes, for over a week. Since she’d disappeared two Saturdays before, I guess she wasn’t lying, although I have to admit that my opinion of her wasn’t the highest. It seemed to me that she was setting a very poor example for her child, both with her language and with her choice of associates.

  Speaking of which, as we headed down the stairs, she said, “Where’s Matty? Did he go to you guys?” She sounded hopeful and, at the same time, doubtful, as if she understood Mr. Bumpas’s character too well to believe that he’d done anything so noble.

  “He’s skipped,” said Ernie brutally.

  “Skipped?” she screeched. “You’re kidding!”

  “You know I’m not. And you ought to have expected it.”

  Through gritted teeth, she muttered, “Son of a bitch.”

  On the drive to the police station, she and Barbara-Ann sat in the front seat, and Ernie and I flanked Mr. Li, as we had done on the way to his apartment. I was looking forward to this, since I’d never been to a police station before. New experiences were piling up in my life, and I vowed to use them as well as I could. I was pleased to see that Mrs. Houser put her arm around Barbara-Ann in the automobile.

  Once we got to the police station, Mr. Bigelow and Ernie took custody of Mr. Li, and I walked with Barbara-Ann and Babs. “Your captivity must have been a terrible ordeal for you, Mrs. Houser,” I said by way of getting to know her.

  “It was rough, all right.”

  “Did he feed you, Ma?” Barbara-Ann asked.

  “Yeah. Noodles. If I never see another noodle, it’ll be too soon for me.”

  “My goodness, is that all he gave you?”

  She shrugged, from which I deduced Barbara-Ann had picked up the gesture from her mother. “It’s all he ate. I guess Chinks eat a lot of noodles. They weren’t bad, but too many noodles is too many noodles, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, indeed.” I shook my head. “Poor Barbara-Ann was very worried about you.”

  “Was you, sweetie?” She stooped to give her daughter a quick hug. “Thanks, doll.”

  The urge to give her a lecture on the proper care and feeding of children warred with the knowledge that I had no experience of my own in that regard. That, coupled with my desire not to be perceived as a prig, made me hold my tongue, although I did feel compelled to say, “Mr. Templeton had your water turned on so that Barbara-Ann could bathe.”

  “Ernie did that?” She glared at Ernie’s back, since the three men preceded us into the building. “I’ll be damned.”

  I didn’t doubt it for a moment, but I wished she’d kept her prediction to herself. It was then I decided I’d best not talk to her further, since I didn’t want to hear any more bad language issue from a woman’s lips. And there, if one were needed, was another example of how protected I’d been all my life. From magazine articles I’d read, I’d learned that your average flapper took pride in using as much bad language as she could as often as she could, but until that day, I’d managed to avoid listening to any of them do it.

  We entered a big room full of desks and people. Mr. Bigelow handed Mr. Li to another policeman and told him to put him in “holding,” whatever that was. Then he threaded his way through the crowded room to an empty desk, where he pulled a chair out for Babs. Ernie hauled up another one for me, which I gave to Barbara-Ann. With a frown for me, Ernie snabbled another chair and shoved it at me. I sat, and dug my pad and pencil out of my handbag.

  Babs eyed me slantways. “What’s that for?” She gestured at my pad.

  “I’m only going to take a few notes,” I told her with what I hoped was a winning smile.

  “How come?” Her tone dripped with misgiving.

  My goodness, but the woman had a suspicious streak! If she didn’t hang out with hoodlums, she might find that the whole world wasn’t against her. “Just for my own reference. I’m not going to publish them or anything.”

  “Publish them? Huh?”

  “Never mind that,” Mr. Bigelow said sharply. “Forget Miss Allcutt. You’re here to answer some questions, Babs.”

  She sneered at him. “Yeah? Well, we’ll see. I don’t believe you about Matty. He ain’t skipped. He was going to get money to bail me out.”

  “Yeah?” said Mr. Bigelow in his turn. “How do you figure that, Babs? Matty’s skipped, see?”

  “Huh. I don’t believe you.”

  “You’d better believe me, because I’m about all you have now. Why was Li holding you, and who was he holding you for?”

  Mr. Bigelow must have seen me wince at his grammatical construction, because he glanced questioningly at me for a second. I only smiled, and silently commanded myself not to be so cursedly prim and proper.

  “First you tell me where Matty is,” Babs said.

  “He’s gone, I tell you. His pad’s empty, and he’s flown, sugar puss, so you’d better cooperate.”

  “Empty?”

  “Empty.”

  Babs pinched her lips tightly together, thereby making quite a spectacle of herself, because a tiny bit of lipstick remained from when she’d last painted her mouth, and when she crinkled her lips like that, pink lines radiated in all directions. It was an odd effect, and I couldn’t help staring. Fortunately, she didn’t notice.

  At last, she said, “Aw, hell. I still don’t believe you about Matty, but the bum didn’t pay up, so I guess I can’t depend on him.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Ernie interposed.

  Babs glared at him, and he subsided, sitting on a corner of Mr. Bigelow’s desk, folding his arms across his chest, and observing Babs with his hat set to one side. He looked the very image of a motion-picture tough guy. I was impressed.

  “Okay,” Babs said then, her tone softer than it had been. I guess she’d realized she had no other option. “There’s this guy, see, this man named Carpetti. He’s running drugs up from Mexico, and Matty thought he’d get a bite of the action.” At the name Carpetti, Ernie and Mr. Bigelow exchanged a significant glance. It was clear to me that they’d heard the name before.

  “I thought Matty was strictly booze,” Mr. Bigelow interrupted.

  “Yeah, well, he decided he wanted a piece of the drug action, see?”

  “Good old Matty,” muttered Ernie. Babs shot him another hateful glance.

  “Anyways, see, Matty likes the horses, and he gambled away some of the money he was supposed to give Carpetti, and Carpetti nabbed me. They’ve been using Li’s shop for the deals, see, and Carpetti’s goons made Li hold me. Matty was supposed to come up with the money in exchange for me.” Her eyebrows formed a deep V over her nose. “The bum never come. I thought they was gonna bump me off.”

  “They probably would have if Matty hadn’t paid up by the time the next deal was supposed to happen,” Mr. Bigelow commented. “Do you know when that’s going to be? Li said in a couple of days. Is he telling the truth?”

  Again she shrugged. “I guess. That’s what I heard, anyhow. Li told me Carpetti and his goons are supposed to come to his shop on Thursday at noon. If Matty hadn’t paid up by then …” She shuddered, and I felt rather sorry for her, even if she had brought this misery on herself. “Well, he didn’t say, but I got the picture. They was gonna bump me off.” She reached out for Barbara-Ann, who took her hand and squeezed it. The image of Barbara-Ann left alone in the world because her mother consorted with low felons made my heart squeeze painfully.

  That, however, was irrelevant. Ernie and Mr. Bigelow again exchanged a glance. “So,” said Mr. Bigelow. “We’ve got to figure out what to do by Thursday.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Ernie. “We need some kind of sting.”

  “That would work. Got any ideas?”

  Risking censu
re, but profoundly eager to understand everything, I said, “What’s a sting?”

  Both men looked at me, and I sensed annoyance in both faces. Nevertheless, I lifted my chin and persisted. “Perhaps I can help if I know what you’re talking about.”

  “You?” Babs laughed. “What could you do?”

  “Not a damned thing,” said Ernie in a deadly voice.

  “Wait a minute, Ernie,” said Mr. Bigelow, putting a hand on his shoulder and eyeing me with a speculative gleam in his eye. “Maybe we can use her.”

  Ernie’s head whipped around so fast, I feared for his neck. “The hell you say!”

  “Wait a minute. Let’s talk about this.”

  When Ernie opened his mouth and appeared ready to explode, Mr. Bigelow went on, “Hold on a minute, Ernie. Let me get something.” He fished around in his desk drawer and withdrew one of those broadsides you find hanging on walls in post offices. “Is this Carpetti?” He showed the broadside to Babs, who squinted hard.

  “I … I’m not sure. I don’t think I ever seen the guy. If you ask Matty … oh, yeah. I forgot. The creep ran out on me.” She sucked in a gallon or two of air, which was tainted with the smoke of about a million cigars and cigarettes being puffed on by the minions of the Los Angeles Police Department. “I swear to God, I hope the drug guys skewer him. And if they don’t, I will.”

  “Hmm.” Mr. Bigelow was clearly disappointed. “Maybe I’ll show Li.” And without explanation, he rose from his chair and went to speak to a uniformed officer. The officer nodded and walked away, and Mr. Bigelow rejoined us. “Li will be here in a minute,” he announced.

  “Maybe I’ll skewer him, too,” muttered Babs.

  “Did he treat you badly?” I made sure to sound sympathetic.

  Shrug. “I guess not, except that he kept me tied up. He’s scared of Carpetti, too. I’d still like to skewer him.”

  “Wait till we get Carpetti before you do that, okay?” Mr. Bigelow’s request was jocular, but his voice wasn’t.