* * *
The fire was going well. After playing its stack of records, the phonograph was quiet. They had put away the steak sandwiches and the beers and had started in on the fifth of Cobbs Creek. Horn drank sparingly, but Mad Crow worked his glass like a man trying to slake a thirst.
“Not going to bury her here,” he said moodily, looking into the fire. “This shitty town wasn’t for her. It messed her up, and then it killed her.”
“She was getting a handle on this place,” Horn said. “She surprised me, the way she picked up things. You could be proud of her, Indian. Not just the cab driving, making money. But she had given herself something to do—finding out who killed Rose. Nobody asked her to do that. And she was making progress. I just feel bad that….” He couldn’t bring himself to say the rest.
But Mad Crow knew. “You feel responsible, huh? Like you steered her in that direction, even if you didn’t mean to. Well, don’t. I’ve got just as much reason to feel that way. Who do you think got her that cabby’s job?”
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the crackling of the fire and the whish of rain and wind in the trees outside. Mad Crow, sitting on the couch, finished another glass of whisky, then closed his eyes. He seemed to sway a little where he sat.
Horn pushed lightly on his shoulder and tilted Mad Crow over onto his side, then lifted his feet onto the couch. He heard a mutter.
“What?”
“Carson. The one who asked for Cassie.”
“That’s right. We know he wouldn’t use his real—”
“Kit Carson,” Mad Crow said heavily, eyes closed. “The scout. And Indian killer. Our man has a sense of humor.”
Soon he slept.
Horn could not. His head buzzed with unanswered questions, all against the backdrop of Cassie’s face in death. He needed to purge his brain of the questions and, especially, the face.
Putting on his work shoes and an old pair of dungarees, he donned his GI poncho, grabbed the pick and shovel, and headed out to the drainage ditch. The runoff from uphill was backing up around the impacted branch and beginning to course out onto the road in three separate, mud-colored streams. The road would be washed out by tonight.
He dug away at the mud around the big branch with the pick, then scooped it out with the shovel as the rain patted loudly on the hood of his poncho. He worked that way for half an hour, grunting loudly, muscles burning, his vision narrowed by the hood, his hearing obscured by the pattering of the rain.
Then, a different sound, a loud thwack. Looking up, he saw Mad Crow attacking the limb with the ax from the tool shed, swinging it in great arcs, hardly waiting for the blade to bite in before wrenching it loose and raising it again. Unprotected by any rain gear, Mad Crow was already soaked. Something approaching madness lit up his eyes.
“Not going to bury her here,” he grunted in time to the strokes as wood chips flew. “Someplace in the hills back home.” Pause. Swing. “Not in this shit-eating town.”
He swung the ax several more times, grunting loudly with each blow, then stood there, gasping. Horn took the ax from him and began working on the same spot. The chips flew in a new rhythm. When he tired, they swapped off again, and soon the giant limb was mortally wounded. A final dozen strokes from Mad Crow, and the ax rang on concrete. The limb was severed. “Come on,” Mad Crow wheezed.
He bent and grabbed the upper half of the limb at the severed place. Horn took hold of the stump of a smaller branch nearby. Together, sloshing in mud, they wrenched the limb free of the mud and muck and flung it sideways out of the ditch. Then, with twin shouts, they repeated the labor on the other one. A few minutes’ work with the shovel, and now the ditch was open. The muddy water coursed freely down it, through the culvert under the road, and into the creek bed beyond. Miles away, it would darken the ocean.
“We done good, huh?” Mad Crow gasped, chest heaving. He raised his face to the sky. His eyes glistened, and Horn could not tell if it was solely from the rain.
“Let’s get inside,” he said. They crossed the road and made it to the cabin. It was late afternoon, and the storm was hastening the darkness. On the porch, Horn wrenched off his boots, then his pants and shirt, and went inside, where he found two blankets. He wrapped himself in one and held out the other. Mad Crow, still out in the rain at the foot of the steps, had already shucked off all his clothes, which lay there in a muddy puddle. His ponytail, black and shiny, was plastered to his right shoulder. Coming up the steps, he took the blanket and folded it around himself.
“You making some kind of bad joke?” he said. “Handing me a blanket? I feel deeply insulted.” His words were slow and slurred, and Horn noted that Mad Crow was now finally, seriously drunk. Lucky you didn’t decapitate somebody with that ax, he thought.
“Shut up,” he said. “It’s not a Navajo or anything like that. It’s a plain old Montgomery Ward.”
Inside, Mad Crow fell onto the couch. “Got to call her mother,” he said faintly. For a while he breathed deeply, then he muttered something.
“What?”
“I thought maybe she killed Rose.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Just for a little while,” he mumbled. “Crossed my mind, is all. Thought hey, that wild-ass niece of mine, she could have gotten crazy enough, drunk enough…. You know what I mean?”
“No.”
“I thought bad of her. And I got to live with that.”
“Go to sleep, Indian.”
Finally, Mad Crow slept. Horn fed the fire until it blazed busily again. He locked the door, found the Colt, checked the cylinder, and positioned the gun close by. Then, blanket around him, he lay down in front of the fire and closed his eyes.
When he awoke, it was just before first light. Mad Crow was gone. So were one of Horn’s shirts and a pair of trousers. A little long in the leg and tight in the shoulder, he thought, but I guess they’ll do.
A scrap of paper by the telephone bore a three-word note in the Indian’s scrawl.
DEAL ME IN
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Over the next two days the storm exhausted itself, leaving the ground sodden and the sky sullen, the color of a dirty slate roof. Spare raindrops fell like stragglers behind an army that had moved on to other battles.
On the morning of the second day, Horn and Mad Crow stood on a train platform at Union Station as workers unloaded a large wooden crate from a baggage cart and muscled it aboard a freight car. The crate was seven feet long and four feet high and deep, its contents handwritten on a bill of lading stapled to the lid, along with its destination—South Dakota. They waited around, smoking and saying little, until the train pulled out in a hiss of steam. Then they walked to their cars in the lot.
“What’s on your mind?” Mad Crow asked.
Horn realized he’d been staring up at the terminal’s tower, a modern-day reproduction of a mission bell tower from the days of Spanish California.
“Oh, just remembered Cassie picked me up here once. It was that time we came out to your place and rode for a while.”
“I remember. That was a good day,” Mad Crow said. “Listen, what are you up to right now?”
“Well, I thought I’d ask a certain lady out for a drink,” Horn said. Cassie had left him with a piece of unfinished business. It may be nothing, but he needed to see if there was anything in Madge’s memory that could help him.
“I’m going to the club early,” Mad Crow said. “Got a few things to do, paperwork and such. You, uh, want to come along?”
Mad Crow wasn’t the sort who asked for favors. Horn could see his friend wanted company. “Sure,” he said. “The lady can wait. I’ll follow you.”
It was still well shy of noon, hours before opening time, when they pulled into the asphalt lot in front of the casino, but some of the boys were already busy out front.
“What’s going on?” Horn asked.
“They’re taking down the sign,” Mad Crow said. “It’s the Mick’s ide
a. Neon is too flashy, he says. Draws too much attention. We want to fit in quietly, he says. So we’re putting up something artistic and hand-painted—”
He pointed to an eight-foot-square sign leaning against the front of the building. Done in reds and greens, it bore the words Mad Crow Casino in a lettering that appeared to be formed out of sticks. “Look Indian enough to you?”
“Don’t ask me.”
Mickey Cohen, Mad Crow’s silent but intrusive partner, was an expert in such matters as publicity and dealing with the law. Mad Crow quietly loathed the man. But after his last partner met a violent end and authorities in this unincorporated corner of Los Angeles County began demanding more of a slice under the table, Mad Crow reluctantly allowed the gangster to buy a minority interest in the casino. So far, it had been an arrangement that benefitted both sides. But Horn knew Cohen, and he wondered how long the honeymoon would last.
They climbed the stairs to Mad Crow’s office, where they looked down on the bar and poker tables. Lula, Mad Crow’s secretary, brought in some ledgers and a handful of phone messages and placed them in front of him. Her eyes looked red and swollen, her appearance in somber contrast to the perky cowgirl outfit she wore. “I’m just so sorry about Cassie,” she said. “Everybody is.”
“Thanks, Sugar,” he said as she left. Thumbing quickly through the message slips, he separated one and handed it to Horn. “This one’s for you.”
The note read Miss Turner called, followed by a number in the FItzroy telephone exchange. The Wilshire district. Alden Richwine might have an FI number, but he certainly wasn’t a Miss Turner.
“Mind if I use this?” Horn asked, picking up the receiver and dialing the number.
“Hello.” A well-bred voice. He couldn’t quite place it. Then he did.
“I’m trying to reach Miss Turner,” he said. “Miss Peggy Jean Turner, I believe it is.”
“This is she,” said Eden Lamont. “You have a good memory.”
“Just for certain things. Now you take Peggy Jean Turner—how am I going to forget a name like that?”
“Please,” she said. “If it were that memorable, believe me, everyone would still be calling me P.J.”
“That’s even better. And think how that would look in lights.”
“I’m on a sort of errand,” she said, the banter gone from her tone. “For Jay. I’m supposed to call and invite you to come see him.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “And you’re doing the honors because Jay and me, we’re not as close as we used to be. He’s afraid I might still be peeved at him. ”
“That’s right. I’m supposed to invite you to come up to his apartment at the Biltmore this afternoon at three, if you’re not busy….” Her voice trailed off, as if leaving something unsaid.
“All right. Tell him—”
“But when I spoke to you,” she said carefully, “you told me you would rather not come up to his room. In fact, you were rather emphatic. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” he said. “What else did I say?”
“You said it would be much better if you met in a public place. And then you thought of the pool. Do you know the pool?”
“At the Biltmore? Uh… Isn’t it downstairs?”
“Yes. Down from the lobby. It’s a very popular place. There are always people there, swimming and relaxing. So, when I realized that you couldn’t be persuaded otherwise, I agreed. And we decided that you would see Jay at the pool at three.”
“Good. Do you mind if I ask why—”
“Maybe some other time.”
“All right, then. Will you be there?”
“It’s very likely.”
“Thanks, P.J.”
He hung up. “Who’s P.J.?” Mad Crow asked.
Horn explained.
“Damn,” Mad Crow said, adding an exaggerated whistle. “First Doll Winter, now one of the Goldwyn Girls. Ain’t you the Errol Flynn?”
“I’m really something,” Horn agreed. He described the invitation from Lombard, and the unspoken warning from Eden. “You interested?”
Mad Crow sat forward in his swivel chair, making it squeak in protest. “I am more than interested,” he said. After days of lugubriousness, his face was now animated. Horn saw the old grin, the one that could mean anything from jollity to serious trouble. “Remember what I said? I’m in the game. But we should go prepared.”
“No guns, Indian.”
“Of course not. You still have those brass knucks you told me about?”
“I don’t walk around with them. They’re at home.”
“A teddible pity,” Mad Crow said in a phony British accent. “Here.” He opened a drawer and drew out two rolls of poker chips, tightly wrapped in paper, tossing one to Horn. “For insurance. You like to go collecting with these sometimes, right?”
“If it’s a bad neighborhood. At least poker chips won’t get me arrested.”
“In these circumstances, I’d say the Biltmore is a bad neighborhood.”
* * *
They walked through the Biltmore’s ornate, Spanish-revival lobby, with its high-beamed ceiling. In anticipation of their genteel surroundings, Mad Crow had changed into a dressier outfit at the club. He now wore a western-style suit of gray gabardine, the jacket adorned in muted, dark-gray embroidery around the pockets and shoulders. He had even traded in his usual fedora for a flashier Stetson in matching gray. Horn wore his usual nondescript outfit of slacks, tweed sport jacket, and hat. As they crossed the lobby, it was Mad Crow who drew the gaze of several guests. He obviously enjoyed the attention.
They took a flight of stairs down to the pool area.
The swimming pool was in a grotto of pale blue tile that covered floor, walls, and ceiling. Walls and floor and the occasional square columns were accented with more colorful hand-painted tiles that depicted Greco-Roman deities in oceanic settings. Doors led to a steam bath and exercise room. The air was still and humid, and the splashing of a few swimmers reverberated off the tiles.
There was no sign of Eden Lamont, but they quickly spotted Jay Lombard. He lay on a wooden deck chair against the wall on the opposite side of the pool. On the adjacent deck chair lay Willie Apples.
They walked around the pool and approached the two. Lombard lay with his eyes closed, his hair wet as if he had just emerged from a swim. He was wrapped in a voluminous white bathrobe. Willie Apples’ jacket was draped over the back of his chair, but he was otherwise fully dressed. He raised his eyes from a comic book he held in his lap and watched them approach, expressionless except for his usual knitted brow.
Lombard heard their footsteps and opened his eyes. “Mister Horn,” he said. His tone was wary, for he had quickly seen and recognized Horn’s companion.
“Mister Lombard. You remember my friend, Joseph Mad Crow.”
“How are you doing?” Mad Crow said.
“The invitation was for you,” Lombard said to Horn.
“I know,” Horn said. “But me and Joseph, we’re doing things together these days. Hard to separate us, I guess you’d say.”
Lombard weighed this, as if confronted with a sudden change of his opponent’s courtroom tactics. Then he quickly reached a decision.
“You’re both welcome,” he said with a thin smile. “Won’t you have a seat?” He sat up and reached over for a small glass-topped table that stood nearby, pulling it closer. Horn and Mad Crow fetched a couple of small upright chairs and placed them by the table.
“Drink?” Lombard asked. He waved to a pool attendant. “The bar doesn’t usually deliver drinks down here, but if you’re nice to the help, they’ll make an exception.”
“Ginger ale would be fine for me,” Horn said.
“And me,” Mad Crow said.
“Two ginger ales for my guests,” Lombard told the attendant. “A gin and tonic for me, and a pineapple juice for Willie.” He pulled a cigar and lighter from a pocket of his bathrobe and went through the slow ritual of lighting up. He seemed in no hurry to begin t
he conversation.
“Where’s Eden?” Horn asked.
“She’s around,” Lombard said, reclining again. His slight frame took up little space on the slatted surface of the chair. “She may honor us with her presence later.” There was a slight edge to his voice.
“So why are we here?”
“I heard about Cassie Montag,” Lombard said. “I know you were friends, and also that she was a relative of Mister Mad Crow. I’ve had my differences with both of you, but I want you to know I’m very sorry.”
“Thank you,” Horn said, glancing at Mad Crow. “We appreciate that.”
“When we first met, you asked me about Rose Galen,” Lombard said to Horn.
“And you lied to me and turned your boy loose on me.”
“You abused my hospitality,” Lombard said mildly. “I didn’t feel I owed you the truth, and I asked Willie to make the point forcefully.”
“How’s he doing, by the way?” Horn looked over toward Willie, who continued to study his comic book.
“Oh, he’s fine. You’re the one who looks a bit the worse for wear. Willie follows no particular rule book when he fights. He’s a great improviser.”
“I’ll remember that next time,” Horn said.
“Good. Willie is eager for a return match. I tell him to be patient.”
Horn surreptitiously studied Willie, looking for fresh wounds. He saw nothing obvious, but that didn’t prove anything.
Mad Crow stirred in his chair. “One of the reasons we’re here,” he said, “is to check up on old Willie. Has he had any exercise lately? Besides driving the fancy car, I mean.”
“No,” Lombard said with some emphasis. “He has not.”
“So, you’re sorry about Cassie,” Mad Crow said. “And you want us to know Willie has been behaving himself. Is that the reason for this get-together?”
“That, and a few other things,” Lombard said as the drinks arrived. To his left, against the wall, sat a fancy brass canister filled almost to the top with fine white sand. Pulling it slightly closer, he tapped the cigar ash off into the container.
He turned to Horn. “As I mentioned, I didn’t choose to tell you everything about Rose Galen when you first approached me. I’m feeling more obliging now. What do you want to know?”
While I Disappear Page 29
