I shook my head. “California and Wisconsin — but quick.”
“Inside four hours. We’re even, Meeks.”
“Take the nightgown home to the wife, Kirby. She’ll find a use for it.”
“Fuck you, Meeks.”
“Adios, Lieutenant.”
~ * ~
I settled in, the lights off, figuring if Mo Hornbeck and Gretchen Rae were some kind of partners, he would be by to dump the stiffs, or she would be, or someone would drop in to say hello. I sat in a chair by the front door, the lamp in my hand ready to swing if it came to that kind of play. Danger juice was keeping me edgy; my brain fluids were roiling, trying to figure a way out of the parlay—my two benefactors hiring me to glom one woman for their exclusive use, two corpses thrown in. As hard as I brainstormed, I couldn’t think up squat. With half an hour to kill before I called Kirby Falwell, I gave up and tried the Other Guy Routine.
The Other Guy Routine dates back to my days as a youth in Oklahoma, when my old man would beat the shit out of my old lady, and I’d haul a mattress out into the scrub woods so I wouldn’t have to listen. I’d set my armadillo traps down, and every once in a while I’d hear a snap-squeak as some stupid ‘dillo ate my bait and got his spine crunched for his trouble. When I finally fell asleep, I’d usually wake up to screeches — men hurting women — always just wind playing havoc with the scrub pines. I’d start thinking then: ways to get the old man off the old lady’s back without consulting my brother Fud — in the Texas Pen for armed robbery and grievous aggravated assault. I knew I didn’t have the guts to confront Pop myself, so I started thinking about other people just to get him off my mind. And that always let me develop a play: some church woman conned into dropping off a pie and religious tracts to calm the old man down; steering some local slick who thought Mom was a beauty in her direction, knowing Pop was a coward with other men and would love up the old girl for weeks and weeks just to keep her. That last play stood all of us good at the end — it was right before the old lady caught typhus. She took to bed with a fever, and the old man got in with her to keep her warm. He caught it himself— and died — sixteen days after she did. Under the circumstances, you have to believe there was nothing but love between them — right up to curtains.
So the Other Guy Routine gets you out of the hole and makes some other poor fuck feel good in the process. I worked it in niggertown as a cop: let some pathetic grasshopper slide, send him a Mickey fruit basket at Christmas, get him to snitch a horse pusher and skim 5 percent full of yuletide cheer. The only trouble with it this time is that I was locked on the horns of a jumbo dilemma: Mickey, Howard — two patrons, only one woman. And claiming failure with either man was against my religion.
I gave up thinking and called Kirby Falwell at the Sheriff’s Bureau. His two-state Teletype yielded heat:
The floor stiff was Fritz Steinkamp, Chicago-Milwaukee gunsel, one conviction for attempted murder, currently on parole and believed to be a Jerry Katzenbach torpedo. Mr. Heart Attack was Voyteck Kirnipaski, three-time loser, also a known Katzenbach associate, his falls for extortion and grand larceny — specifically stock swindles. The picture getting a little less hazy, I called Howard Hughes at his flop at the Bel Air Hotel. Two rings, hang up, three rings — so he’d know it’s not some gossip columnist.
“Yes?”
“Howard, you been in Milwaukee the past few years?”
“I was in Milwaukee in the spring of’47. Why?”
“Any chance you went to a whorehouse that specialized in girls made up like movie stars?”
Howard sighed. “Buzz, you know my alleged propensity in that department. Is this about Gretchen Rae?”
“Yeah. Did you?”
“Yes. I was entertaining some colleagues from the Pentagon. We had a party with several young women. My date looked just like Jean Arthur, only a bit more . . . endowed. Jean broke my heart, Buzz. You know that.”
“Yeah. Did the high brass get looped and start talking shop around the girls?”
“Yes, I suppose so. What does this —”
“Howard, what did you and Gretchen Rae talk about — besides your sex fantasies?”
“Well, Gretchy seemed to be interested in business — stock mergers, the little companies I’ve been buying up, that sort of thing. Also politics. My Pentagon chums have told me about Korea heating up, implying lots of aircraft business. Gretchy seemed interested in that, too. A smart girl always interests herself in her lovers’ endeavors, Buzz. You know that. Have you got leads on her?”
“I surely have. Boss, how have you managed to stay alive and rich so long?”
“I trust the right people, Buzz. Do you believe that?”
“I surely do.”
~ * ~
I gave my sitting-in-the-dark stakeout another three hours, then raided the icebox for energy and took the Other Guy Routine on the road, a mitzvah for Mickey in case I had to play an angle to shoot Gretchen Rae to Howard — his very own teenage murderess. First I wrapped up Fritz Steinkamp in three windows’ worth of chintz curtains and hauled him out to my car; next I mummified Voyteck Kirnipaski in a bedspread and wedged him into the trunk between Fritz and my spare tire. Then it was a routine wipe of my own possible prints, lights off, and a drive out to Topanga Canyon, to the chemical debris dump operated by the Hughes Tool Company —a reservoir bubbling with caustic agents adjacent to a day camp for underprivileged kids: a Howard tax dodge. I dumped Fritz and Voyteck into the cauldron and listened to them snap, crackle, and pop like Kellogg’s Rice Krispies. Then, just after midnight, I drove to the Strip to look for Mickey and his minions.
They weren’t at the Trocadero, the Mocambo, or the La Rue; they weren’t at Sherry’s or Dave’s Blue Room. I called the DMV night information line, played cop, and got a read on Mo Hornbeck’s wheels —1946 tan Dodge Coupe, CAL-4986-J, 896¼ Moonglow Vista, South Pasadena — then took the Arroyo Seco over the hill to the address, a block of bungalow courts.
At the left side tail end of a stucco streamline job was 896V4 — rounded handrails and oblong louvers fronting tiny windows strictly for show. No lights were burning; Hornbeck’s Dodge was not in the carport at the rear. Maybe Gretchen Rae was inside, armed with stuffed animals, negligee garrotes, stew pots, and frying pans — and that suddenly made me not give a fuck whether the world laid, prayed, stayed, or strayed. I kicked the door in, flipped on a wall light, and got knocked flat on my ass by a big furry mother with big, shiny, razor-white teeth.
It was a Doberman, sleek black muscle out for blood — mine. The dog snapped at my shoulder and got a snootful of Hart, Schaffner & Marx worsted; he snapped at my face and got an awkwardly thrown Meeks right jab that caused him to flinch momentarily. I dug in my pocket for my Arkansas toad stabber, popped the button, and flailed with it; I grazed the beast’s paws and snout — and he still kept snapping and snarling.
Giving the fucker a stationary target was the only way. I put my left arm over my eyes and tried to stay supine; Rex the Wonder Dog went for my big, fat, juicy elbow. I hooked my shiv up at his gut, jammed it in, and yanked forward. Entrails dropped all over me; Rex vomited blood in my face and died with a snap-gurgle.
I kicked the day’s third corpse off of me, stumbled to the bathroom, rummaged through the medicine cabinet, and found witch hazel. I doused my elbow bite and the blood-oozing teeth marks on my knuckles. Deep breathing, I splashed sink water on my face, looked in the mirror, and saw a middle-aged fat man, terrified and pissed to his drawers, in deep, deep shit without a depth gauge. I held the gaze, thinking it wasn’t me for long seconds. Then I smashed the image with the witch hazel bottle and eyeballed the rest of the bungalow.
The larger of the two bedrooms had to be Gretchen Rae’s. It was all girlish gewgaws: pandas and arcade Kewpie dolls, pinups of matinee idols and college pennants on the walls. Kitchen appliances still in their boxes were stacked on the dresser; publicity glossies of RKO pretty boys littered the bedspread.
The other bed
room reeked of VapoRub and liniment and sweat and flatulence — bare walls, the floor space almost completely taken up by a sagging Murphy bed. There was a medicine bottle on the nightstand — Dr. Revelle prescribing Demerol for Mr. Hornbeck — and checking under the pillow got me a .38 Police Special. I flipped the cylinder, extracted four of the shells, and stuck the gun in my waistband, then went back to the living room and picked up the dog, gingerly, so as not to drench myself in his gore. I noticed that it was a female; that a tag on its collar read janet. That hit me as the funniest thing since vaudeville, and I started laughing wildly, shock coming on. I spotted an Abercrombie & Fitch dog bed in the corner, dumped Janet in it, doused the lights in the room, found a couch, and collapsed. I was heading into some sort of weird heebie-jeebie haze when wood creaking, a choked “Oh my God!” and hot yellow glare jolted me to my feet.
“Oh Janet, no!”
Mo Hornbeck beelined for the dead dog, not even noticing me. I stuck out my leg and tripped him; he hit the floor almost snout to snout with Janet. And I was right there, gun at his head, snarling like the psycho Okie killer I could have been. “Boy, you’re gonna blab on you, Gretchen Rae, and them bodies on Mariposa. You’re gonna spill on her and Howard Hughes, and I mean now.”
Hornbeck found some balls quicksville, averting his eyes from the dog, latching them onto me. “Fuck you, Meeks.”
“Fuck you” was acceptable from a ranking sheriff’s dick in my debt, but not from a statch raper hoodlum. I opened the .38s cylinder and showed Hornbeck the two rounds, then spun it and put the muzzle to his head. “Talk. Now.”
Hornbeck said, “Fuck you, Meeks”; I pulled the trigger; he gasped and looked at the dog, turning purple at the temples, red at the cheeks. Seeing myself in a cell next to Fud, the Meeks boys playing pinochle sideways through the bars, I popped off another shot, the hammer clicking on an empty chamber. Hornbeck bit at the carpet to stanch his tremors, going deep purple, then subsiding into shades of crimson, pink, death’s-head white. Finally he spat dust and dog hair and gasped, “The pills by my bed and the bottle in the cupboard.”
I obeyed, and the two of us sat on the porch like good buddies and killed the remains of the jug — Old Overholt Bonded. Hornbeck blasted Demerol pills along with the juice, flew to cloud nine, and told me the saddest goddamn story I’d ever heard.
~ * ~
Gretchen Rae Shoftel was his daughter. Mom hit the road shortly after she was born, hightailing it to parts unknown with a Schlitz Brewery driver rumored to be double-digit hung, like the human equivalent of Mickey Cohen Jr.; he raised Gretch as best he could, nursing a bad case of the hots for her, ashamed of it until he picked up scads of unrelated skinny: that his wife was servicing the entire Schlitz night shift during the time his little girl was conceived. On general principles he stayed hands-off, taking his lust out on girls from the greenhorn hooker camps up in Green Bay and Saint Paul.
Gretchy grew up strange, ashamed of her old man — a gang stooge and occasional killer. She took her old lady’s maiden name and buried her head in books, loving arithmetic tricks, figures, calculations — stuff that proved she was smart. She also took up with a rough South Milwaukee crowd. One crazy Polack boyfriend beat her silly every night for a week straight when she was fifteen. Mo found out, put the kid in cement skates, and dumped him in Lake Michigan. Father and daughter were happily reunited by the revenge.
Mo moved up in Jerry Katzenbach’s organization; Gretch got a bundle together tricking the hotel bars in Chicago. Mo installed Gretchen Rae as sixteen-year-old pit boss of a swank whorehouse: movie-star surrogates, the rooms bugged to pick up gangland and political skinny that might prove valuable to Jerry K. Gretch got friendly with stock swindler Voyteck Kirnipaski; she just happened to be listening through a vent one night when Howard Hughes and a cadre of Army three-stars were cavorting with Jean Arthur, Lupe Velez, and Carole Lombard, greenhorn versions. Gretch picked up lots of juicy Wall Street gossip, and realized that this could be the start of something big. Mo contracted stomach cancer about that time and got the word: half a decade tops — enjoy life while you can. Cash skimmed off Jerry Katzenbach’s books provided class-A treatment. Mo held his own against the Big C. Jerry K. got bum press for his whorehouse, kiboshed it, and banished Mo to the Coast, where Mickey Cohen welcomed him with open arms, using his juice to get Mo’s two statch-rape indiscretions plea-bargained to bubbkis.
Back in Milwaukee, Gretchen Rae audited business classes at Marquette, and hauled Voyteck Kirnipaski’s ashes for free when she learned he was working for Jerry K. and was dissatisfied with the pay. Then Mo had a relapse and came back to Milwaukee on a visit; Voyteck Kirnipaski skipped town with a bundle of Katzenbach’s money so he could bankroll stock swindles in L.A.; Gretchen Rae, always reading the papers with an eye toward political repercussions, put her overheard dope from Howard and the high brass together with whispers on the Korea situation and decided to get more info from the man himself. Mo took some lung shots of his little girl and mailed them to Big How; he bit; Gretchy glommed leads that the on-the-lam and hotly pursued Voyteck was hanging out at Scrivner’s Drive-in, and, wanting to enlist his aid in possible squeeze plays, got a job there. Mickey Cohen’s crush on her put a monkey wrench into things — but she thought, somehow, that the little big man could be tapped for juice. She became his consort concurrent with Howard, father and daughter pretending to be strangers at Mickey’s nightclub get-togethers. Then, at a Santa Monica motel, she located Voyteck, terrified that Katzenbach triggers were right behind him. Mo gave her the key to Mickey’s Mariposa Street hideout; she ensconced Voyteck there, moving back and forth between Howard’s fuck pad, pumping information subtly and pumping Kirnipaski blatantly — attempting to lure him into her web of schemes. She was making progress when Fritz Steinkamp made the scene. And damned if Gretchy didn’t rise to the occasion and throttle, scald, and frying pan him to death. She attempted to soothe the terrified Voyteck afterward, but he went into cardiac arrest: the volatile combo of a murder attempt, a murder, and a murderess’s tongue. Gretchen Rae panicked and took off with Voyteck’s pilfered cash — and was currently trying to unload “secret insider” prospectuses on Hughes stock to a list of potential customers Kirnipaski had compiled. The girl was holed up someplace — Mo didn’t know where — and tomorrow she would be calling at the homes and offices of her last wave of potential “clients.”
Somewhere in the course of the story I started liking Mo almost as much as I liked Gretchen Rae. I still couldn’t see anyway out of the mess, but I was curious about one thing: the girly gewgaws, the appliances, all the squarejohn homey stuff Gretchy had glommed. When Mo finished his tale, I said, “What’s with all the clothes and gadgets and stuffed animals?”
Morris Hornbeck, worm bait inside six months, just sighed. “Lost time, Meeks. The father-and-daughter act someplace safe, the shtick we shoulda played years ago. But that’s tap city, now.”
I pointed to the dead dog, its paws starting to curl with rigor mortis like it was going to be begging biscuits for eternity. “Maybe not. You sure ain’t gonna have a trusty mascot, but you might get a little taste of the rest.”
~ * ~
Morris went to his bedroom and passed out. I laid down on the homey dreambed, holding a stuffed panda, the lights off to ensure some good brainwork. Straight manipulation of Mickey and Howard fell by the wayside quick, so I shifted to the Other Guy Routine and made a snag.
Sid Weinberg.
RKO line producer.
Filthy-rich purveyor of monster cheapies, drive-in circuit turkeys that raked in the cash.
A valuable RKO mainstay—his pictures never flopped. Howard kissed his ass, worshiped his dollars-and-cents approach to moviemaking, and gave him carte blanche at the studio.
“I’d rather lose my you-know-what than lose Sid Weinberg.”
Mickey Cohen was indebted to Sid Weinberg, the owner of the Blue Lagoon Saloon, where Mickey was allowed to perform his atrocious comedy routines w
ithout cops hanging around — Sid had LAPD connections.
The Mick: “I’d be without a pot to piss in without Sid. I’d have to buy my own nightclub, and that’s no fun — it’s like buying your own baseball team so you can play yourself.”
Sid Weinberg was a widower, a man with two grown daughters who patronized him as a buffoon. He often spoke of his desire to find himself a live-in housekeeper to do light dusting and toss him a little on the side. About fifteen years ago, he was known to be in love with a dazzling blond starlet named Glenda Jensen, who hotfooted it off into the sunset one day, never to be seen again. I’d seen pictures of Glenda; she looked suspiciously like my favorite teenage killer. At eight tomorrow night Sid Weinberg was throwing a party to ballyhoo Bride of the Surf Monster. I was to provide security. Mickey Cohen and Howard Hughes would be guests.
I fell asleep on the thought, and dreamed that benevolent dead dogs were riding me up to heaven, my pockets full of other guys’ money.
~ * ~
In the morning we took off after the prodigal daughter. I drove, Mo Hornbeck gave directions — where he figured Gretchen Rae would be, based on their last conversation — a panicky talk two days ago; the girl afraid of phone taps; Mo saying he would let the evidence chill, then dispose of it.
The Best American Noir of the Century Page 37
