Mike looked shaken when he put the phone down. He stared at it as though it were a snake.
“Well,” I said, “where to?”
“Downtown,” he said, and turned toward the door.
Someone knocked and then opened the door. It was Art Shadow, the Western writer.
“I’ve been thinking, Pete,” he said.
Mike looked at him curiously and I introduced them. Then I asked, “What have you been thinking, Art?”
“That Calvano who was killed. He peddled dope.”
“So.”
“Tommy inhaled the hemp at times. This Calvano sell reefers?”
Mike nodded. “That was his big item.”
“I was thinking there could be a connection,” Art said. “Though that’s as far as I could think.”
“We’ve been thinking along those lines ourselves,” Mike said. “You know the name of the guy Lister bought from?”
Art shook his head. Behind his glasses his blue eyes were thoughtful. “Maybe some of the other boys would know, though.”
“Try and get their names, Art,” I said. “Drop in or phone me if you learn anything, won’t you?”
He nodded. “I wired Tommy’s dad. He’s due here this afternoon.”
Someone else to remember Tommy. He’d never mentioned his parents to me.
Nobody said anything for a few seconds and then Mike said, “Let’s go.”
The three of us went down together, and I asked, “Drop you anywhere, Art?”
“Not unless you’re going near the Ridge Club. Do you know where that is?”
“I know,” I said. “It’s not on the way, but we’ll take you there. Placing a bet, Art?”
“Bet? Oh, no, I never bet. I’ve got better things to do than bet on the horses.”
The Lincoln went purring along, nobody saying anything. I was thinking of what a day yesterday had been. No wonder I’d been sick. Just looking back on it now made me sick.
I asked Mike, “Do you know where the Ridge Club is?”
He nodded. “Nick used to have a piece of it.”
A piece of it. A piece of a fighter and a piece of a joint and a piece of a crooner or a play or a corporation. Wasn’t anything whole, any more?
Down Westwood to Pico and stopping in front of the Ridge Club. Art said thanks, and we nodded and I tried to look in to see if I could see a girl reading at the table but the place was too dim.
“May as well take Olympic down,” Mike said. “That’s about the best.”
“You can make those minor decisions,” I said.
He had no answer. He handled the Lincoln with skill and imagination and care, cutting back on Westwood to Olympic. And heading downtown.
I said, “Vicki Lincoln uses marijuana.”
“Vicki—who?”
“Jake’s girl. Jake Schuster’s girl.”
“Oh, that thing. Jake sure picks ‘em, eh?”
I didn’t answer. Purring along, artery after artery, making the green almost every time. There are people who have lived in Los Angeles for years without ever seeing the downtown section. There wasn’t much reason to go down; in the city’s four hundred and fifty square miles, each section has a shopping-center, almost equal to downtown. It was more a collection of shopping-centers than a city.
Right off Central, a lopsided building holding a passport photo shop and a pawnshop and a bar. Two-story building of frame, old and tired.
We went into the photo shop. Art studies, seven for a dollar; burlesque queens all over the place. Practical joke gadgets, and undoubtedly, under the counter, the kind of photos that kept the place going.
The girl was stringy and taut faced, her hennaed hair just this side of orange. The sweater she wore was so tight even her lemon-sized breasts were outlined. Dried up, worn out, and her voice a shrill nasal.
“Pictures, boys?” Her smirk grotesque.
Mike shook his head. “I’m a friend of Al’s, Lily.”
Her eyes seemed to eat him. “Al who?”
“Never mind the sparring, Lily. Who got to him? You’d know.”
“Would I? I don’t know you.” She was backing toward the counter.
“My name is Mike Kersh. I work for Nick Arnold.”
Her hands gripped the counter behind her. “Nick Arnold—” Fear and hate in her voice. “And you ask me who killed Al? Why are you asking me?” Her thin body rigid as rock.
“Nick didn’t kill him or have him killed. Lily—”
A string of profanity came from her lips, and saliva flecked them.
Mike reached out swiftly and his heavy open hand caught her along the jaw.
She took a sideward step, and then her hand went to her cheek and she stared at him, her mouth open.
“Easy, Mike,” I said. “She wants to help. Give her time to believe in us.”
Her eyes came around to me and then grew wider. “I know who you are,” she said. “Your picture was in the paper.”
I nodded. “I had nothing to do with it, Lily.”
Her hand came down from her cheek. “I don’t know anything. You put a hand on me again, I’ll scream. I’ll get the cops.”
“Get ‘em,” Mike said. “Get ‘em, if you want. I’ll show ‘em where you keep the stuff. And the pictures, too. Go ahead, call the cops.”
“Why don’t you leave me alone?” Her hands were back to the counter again. “I don’t know Al’s business. Why don’t you leave me alone?”
I said quietly, “What made you think Nick should know about it?”
“You hit him at Nick’s, didn’t you? Nick didn’t invite him to the party; he just heard about the crap game and went up there. Nick was mad, maybe, because he wasn’t invited. I don’t give a damn. He’s dead now. I don’t give a damn.”
I asked, “Was Tommy Lister one of your customers, Lily?”
“Never heard of him. I never heard of nine-tenths of Al’s customers. He was out all the time. We weren’t married, you know. He’s got a wife. Why don’t you talk to her?”
“Why should I? Al didn’t for five years. Lily, you’re playing it dumb.” Mike’s chin was out. “We’re not the law, you know. We pay for what we want to know.”
“With a slap in the jaw, you pay.”
“So, I’m sorry. You called me names. Did I call you names? We’ll pay, Lily.”
“I haven’t got anything to sell. He said he was going up to Nick’s and coming back with a wad. And then we were going to take a little trip. He’d been promising me a trip for six months, since we came back from Mexico. That’s all I know. That’s every bit of it.”
Mike looked at me and I shrugged.
“The law was here,” she said. “And I didn’t tell them that much.”
Mike took a twenty from his wallet. “Okay. Lily, if you really had something, something that would help, you could take a trip to Paris. Nick wants to know about this. You see any of the boys, tell them Nick is paying for information.”
Her hand came out for the twenty and snatched it. “If I see anybody. I had enough of the boys. But if I see anybody—” She crumpled the twenty in her small hand.
I said, “Did Al come home after the party?”
She nodded.
“Without the wad?”
She nodded.
“What did he say about that?”
“He didn’t have anything to say. He talked like Shorty, here, with his hand. He was good at that.”
“And what time did he leave here next morning?”
“I don’t know. About nine, I guess. I never saw him after that.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No. And I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t hear from him after he left?”
“I said I didn’t.”
“Or about him?”
“Not until the cops came.”
“Thanks, Lily,” I said, and nodded to Mike.
On the sidewalk he said, “I should have bounced her around some. That bag’s not as
dumb as she makes out. There isn’t much about Al she don’t know.”
“I think she was telling the truth,” I said.
“And about bringing back the dough from Nick’s. You knew the guy didn’t make any money up there. You got most of his money.”
“Maybe he didn’t intend to get it that way. Maybe Nick was going to pay him off for something.”
We were walking toward the car and Mike stopped to face me. “Hey, who you working for? That didn’t sound like you were working for Nick.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m working for me. For me and Tommy Lister. I’m not working for Nick, yet, Mike. You want to phone him again?”
He shook his head. “You’ve sure got him sold. You beat me, Worden.”
“That I could probably do, too,” I said. “Dream fighter.”
“I fought,” he said. “Not Mickey Walker, but I fought.” He climbed into the Lincoln from the curb side and slid over behind the wheel.
“Ten bucks a round, you fought,” I said. “Where next?”
“Santa Monica.”
“Then why way down here first? We were right out there.”
“I didn’t want to buck the afternoon traffic downtown.” The Lincoln slid away from the curb. His eyes were on the traffic. “What a sack, back there. What some guys won’t bed down with. Jeez.”
“She wasn’t getting any prize,” I answered. “How about you? Were you ever married, Mike?”
He shook his head. “Came close once when I was a kid. Got out of it.” He pulled up for a light. “I think that Lily’s a liar.”
I said nothing. It seemed as though he didn’t want me to accept anything she’d said for some reason. And Mike’s reasons would be Nick’s reasons; he had no other motivation beyond Nick.
He could certainly handle that Lincoln, and I wondered if Nick had ever been in a business where he needed a getaway car. Mike would have been a boy for that.
Making time, catching the lights right, easing that big black job through holes like a master jock, power under perfect command.
I said, “The ring wasn’t your forte, Mike. You should have been an auto racer.”
“Used to have a Model T with Rajo overheads and Atwater Kent ignition and Stromberg downdraft,” he said, “when I was a punk. Wire wheels, too, and geared up. The old man made me sell it.”
“And sent you into the ring?”
“No, that was my idea. That’s when I met Nick, when I was fighting prelims.”
“Ever get beyond prelims?”
“Some. Semi-windups. I wasn’t bad.”
Nor good, probably. We were getting out of the thicker traffic now, and the Lincoln went singing along. How many fighters drove Lincolns? Or how many auto racers, for that matter?
My mind went back to Lily, beloved of Al Calvano. And that dirty little shop on that defeated street. Smarting under Al’s hand, under Mike’s, under the swinging hand of any mug who passed, trying to point up her only defense with a too tight sweater and some henna for the hair. I’m a woman, she tried to show; have some regard for me, mister.
Vicki Lincoln was a woman, too, technically. I said, “We ought to drop in on Vicki Lincoln, too.”
“Why?”
“She could have been one of Al’s customers.”
“Jake wouldn’t like it if we bothered her.”
I looked over at him. His face was impassive, his eyes straight ahead. I said, “Jake wouldn’t like it? Don’t tell me you worry about Jake. He’s one of Nick’s boys, isn’t he?”
“I guess. He’s got a temper, too, and he’s one of those guys that’s narrow-minded about their women. The less trouble the better, with guys like Jake.”
I said, “I can’t believe she means much to him.”
“Maybe not. We’ll see.”
I had a feeling Mike was steering me as deftly as he was steering the car. It’s easy to underrate gents like Mike, an attitude I intended to avoid.
South of Olympic, all shacks. Mexicans and Negroes in the unpainted, leaning hovels they were permitted to occupy in this free country, this brotherly nation.
All shacks, and over half of them with television antennas on the roofs. And a flashy convertible here and there and some hot rods, too. Wolf packs, the law was calling them a few months back, the rod boys. They are not supposed to display the animosity we instilled in them. Take it and smile, you underpaid, underfed, underprivileged brother of mine. Smile, and stay on your own side of the tracks, unless you come over to pay your taxes.
“Well?” Mike said, and I realized the big car had stopped in front of one of the hovels. “No bouncing, Mike,” I said. He shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“You heard me.” I got out and waited for him to come around from the other side of the car.
He stood next to me a moment as though measuring me. Then he went ahead of me up the worn part of the gray lawn that served as a walk.
A huge and bedraggled palm dominated the yard, one frond broken and dragging, its tip white against the gray lawn. Up onto the slanting porch that held a weathered wicker settee and a rough, redwood, circular table.
A bell button and Mike pressed it, but we couldn’t hear it ring. He knocked on the door; he hammered it.
The man who came to the door was small and thin and olive-skinned. He had large and expressive brown eyes which went back and forth between us.
One gold tooth showed as he said, “Nick Arnold’s men. What do you want with me?”
“Words,” Mike said, and started to walk in.
The man didn’t move. “We can talk on the porch.”
“I don’t want to talk on the porch,” Mike said quietly, and started in again.
I put a hand on his shoulder. I said, “We’ll talk on the porch, Mike.”
He turned to look at the hand, and then his glance came up to mine. “Take your hands off me.”
“On the porch, Mike.”
He slapped at the hand, and I slid it in to grab his collar. I pushed him up against the doorjamb, and his head thumped.
He didn’t swing. He stared at me, and I saw the real Mike Kersh. His voice was an absolute monotone. “Take your hand away. We’ll talk on the porch.”
I took my hand away, and it trembled some. The little man said, “I suppose it’s about Al Calvano.” He said it wearily.
I nodded. “We’d like to know all you can tell us about that.”
We stood right near the doorway, and the little man put one hand on the siding of the house. “There isn’t much I can tell. Al was more competitor than friend. Last time I saw him was the morning he was killed, and we had words that morning. He was over here in my district. He never tried to sell my customers before. One of my customers told me Al said he was going to quit.” The little man paused to look fixedly at Mike. “He said he was going to get some big money.”
I asked, “From where?”
The man shrugged and looked out at the street, and at me.
“You had a fight with him?” Mike said. “The police talked to you?” “They talked to me.” He looked from me to Mike. “Do a lot of business in this neighborhood?” Now he locked at me. And said nothing. “I wondered where they got the money,” I said. He shrugged.
Mike rubbed his hands on his thighs. “If I should find out you were lying, I’d come back. Alone. Nothing more to say?”
“Nothing.”
Mike turned and went down the steps that led from the porch. As far as Mike was concerned I didn’t exist.
The little man said, “Don’t turn your back to him. He has a long memory, I’ve heard.”
“Thanks,” I said, and left him standing there, dealer in dreams for the downtrodden. He still stood there as I climbed into the Lincoln.
The motor was running, and Mike didn’t look at me. When he heard my door slam, he moved the car away from the curb. Silence.
Swinging back toward Olympic, and I said, “The west side station. I’ll see if Hovde’s in.”
He said nothin
g but nodded.
I didn’t give him any conversational openings. But when we climbed out in front of the station, he said, “We’re going to tangle, you and me, sometime, Worden.”
“I’m afraid so, Mike,” I said. “We just don’t get along, do we?”
He didn’t answer. He followed me into the station, followed my exposed and vulnerable back.
Hovde was in a small room near the head of a corridor. He was seated at a desk and there was a uniformed man standing next to the desk, bending over it, and showing Hovde something.
He looked over the uniformed man’s shoulder and his smile was bleak. “What a pleasant surprise.”
He nodded at the uniformed man and the man straightened. He only glanced at us before leaving the room. Hovde covered the thing on his desk with an olive-drab square of cloth.
He looked at me. “You phoned this morning?”
I nodded. “Nick wants me to help find a killer. He talked to you about it, didn’t he?”
“He did. Now he wants to run the police force. This scum sure gets ideas when they get a few bucks, don’t they?”
Mike muttered something.
Hovde’s bleak eyes swung to Mike, and he asked, “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Continue to. All I want to hear out of you is answers to my questions, if I ask you any questions.”
They locked eyes for a moment, like juvenile delinquents, and then Hovde looked at me. “Signed up, eh?”
I shook my head.
He shook his, too. “Buck Rogers. Did you bring your Junior G-Man badge? Could I see it?”
“So it was dumb,” I said. “I guess you’re in no mood for company today, Sergeant.” I turned to go.
“Wait,” he said, and I turned back.
And as I turned back, I saw Mike’s gaze directed at the desk top, and I saw a flash of something that could only be recognition in Mike’s eyes.
I looked at the desk where Hovde had thrown back the square of cloth. There was a knife on the desk, a bone-handled knife with a chip out of the bone. Looked like a hunting-knife.
It was the knife that had been in Tommy’s throat.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HOVDE’S VOICE was low-pitched. “Recognize it, Kersh?” Mike didn’t pause before shaking his head.
Hovde looked at me.
Don't Cry For Me Page 11
