Stolen Away (27 page)

“Can you scare them, men like that?”

“When you put a gun in their mouth, you can.”

“But would the police do that?”

“Evalyn, I am the police.”

It was a little before four when I took the stairs at the rear of the hotel down to the floor below, the eighth, where Means said I’d find the two Maxes. I figured there would be body-guards posted, who’d take me where I wanted to go, one way or the other, particularly with a beer war in progress. I took a deep breath and withdrew the nine millimeter, and hid it behind me before I pushed open the door marked “8”—I knew there’d be muscle to deal with. No way around it….

Only the hall was empty.

For a moment, I was confused; then, slowly, like a heat rash, disgust spread over me.

Had Gaston Means done it again? Sent me, like Evalyn to El Paso, on another wild goose chase? I holstered the nine millimeter and slowly, pointlessly I was sure, prowled the hall.

Then I noticed a door, room 824, on which hung a sign that said “Old Heidelberg.” The lettering was Germanic and I was clearly looking at the logotype of a brand name of beer. Or anyway, “near beer.”

But, again, there were no men posted outside the door. I got the gun out, held it behind me and knocked. There was no answer, so I tried again, and finally the door cracked open and a pasty pockmarked face looked at me past a night-latch chain, skeptically, with eyes blacker and deader than a well-done steak.

“What?” he asked. The single word conveyed both menace and distrust.

“Police,” I said. “I have a warrant.”

The black, dead eyes narrowed and I slipped my toe in the cracked door and shouldered it open, popping the night latch.

My host backed up. He was heavyset and short but with a thin man’s face; his lips were the color of raw liver and his hair was cropped, white and ungreased, and as dead looking as his eyes. He wore a light-brown, expensively tailored suit with a white shirt, the dark-brown silk tie loose around a loosened collar, suit coat open. He didn’t seem to be armed.

“Let’s see the warrant,” he said doubtfully, and loudly, as if trying to warn somebody in the next room.

“It’s right here,” I said, and showed him the nine millimeter; it felt a little unsteady in my hand, but not so you’d notice.

“Shit,” he said, making a three-syllable word of it, rolling the dead black eyes. He put his hands slowly, grudgingly, up.

Shutting the door behind me with my heel, I took in a vast living room appointed in plush modern furniture, in various shades of green, from pastel lime to money-color.

He was shaking a little, but mostly he looked coldly, quietly pissed-off. “How did you get past Louie and Sal?” he wondered.

“I didn’t see Louie,” I said, patting him down with one hand, confirming his lack of hardware, almost choking on his pungent after-shave lotion, “and I didn’t see Sal.”

That confused him a little. “What about Vinnie?”

“I didn’t see Vinnie, either.”

“That’s impossible.”

“This is America. Anything is possible. You Hassel or Greenberg?” It sounded like a Jewish fairy tale.

He licked his liver lips. “Hassel. Maxie’s in the office.”

“Let’s go say hello.”

He led me through the endless living room—a wet bar in one corner was stocked better than a Rush Street speak, and against one wall leaned several fancy pigskin bags of golf clubs. We moved through a bedroom to a closed door, which Hassel grudgingly opened, glancing back unhappily at me.

He went in first, the nose of my nine millimeter in his back, as I followed him into the adjoining, smaller bedroom which had been converted into an office with several desks and filing cabinets. A big fleshy man in his shirtsleeves and suspenders, his suit coat draped over the back of his swivel chair, was hunkered over a ledger book at a rolltop desk against the far left wall, on which an Old Heidelberg neon sign, unlit, mingled with various black-and-white business-related photos. The man at the desk had shiny black hair and a big flat head.

“Maxie,” Hassel said, tentatively.

Maxie waved at him impatiently, without looking back. “Just a minute, just a minute.”

“Maxie…”

Maxie sighed, pushed away from the desk, and without looking at us, said, “Where’s the fuckin’ money
go
?’ Then he turned and blinked twice, as if that was all the sight deserved, his partner with his hands in the air and a stranger with an automatic pointed in both their general directions. “What the hell’s this about?”

“Put your hands on your knees,” I said.

Maxie’s eyes were dark and mournful, his mouth a thin cold line in a face that was puttylike, unlined, unused, as if no emotions had left their tracks. As he slowly lowered his hands toward his knees, one hand lingered near the right-hand pocket of the draped-on-the-chair suit coat, a pocket with a revolver-size lump in it.

“You could die in that chair,” I pointed out.

Maxie blinked again, swallowed and put his hands on his knees.

I moved slowly over there, my back to a wall so I could keep my eyes on both Maxes, and flipped the suit coat off the chair; it dropped to the floor with a clunk. Lucky for us all, his coat didn’t go off.

“Is this a rubout?” Maxie asked, like he was asking the time.

“Not necessarily,” I said, moving back near the doorway, just inside of which I’d left his partner. “We’re just going to talk.”

“If the Dutchman sent you,” he said reasonably, “you’re working the wrong side of the street. We pay
real
dough. And we can protect you.”

“Listen to Maxie,” Hassel advised, with a nervous sidelong glance.

They didn’t seem to see the inherent fallacy of telling a guy holding a gun on them that they could “protect” him.

“The Dutchman didn’t send me,” I said. “A rich lady from Washington, D.C., did. Named McLean.”

The two men exchanged glances. I couldn’t read anything in it. God knows I tried.

“You fellas look smart enough to know Gaston Means can’t be trusted,” I said.

Maxie Greenberg nodded thoughtfully.

“That bastard lies when he prays,” Hassel confirmed.

“You boys need a new man in the middle,” I said. Which was where I was, keeping the gun on them both, Hassel with his mitts up, Greenberg hands on knees. “I’ll give you the money, you give me the kid.”

Hassel gave me another sidelong nervous glance.

Eyes boring into me like a sniper sighting a victim, Maxie said, “Who are you?”

“A guy looking to make a few bucks and put a kid back in his own crib.”

“What makes you think we got Lindy’s kid?” Hassel said.

“I don’t remember mentioning Lindy’s kid,” I said.

A loud banging out in the other room scared shit out of me; I damn near started firing.

“That’s the door,” Hassel said, flatly. “The one you come in.”

The banging continued, and a voice said, “Boss, it’s Vinnie! It’s Vinnie, boss! Let me in.”

Hassel smiled smugly. “Well, there’s our boy Vinnie. I better let him in, don’t you think?”

“If he’s your boy,” I said, “why doesn’t he have a key?”

“Somebody might take it off him,” Maxie said.

“You gotta be named ‘Max’ to get a key,” Hassel said.

Private club.

“Boss!”
the voice called.

“We don’t answer it,” fat Maxie said with the faintest of smiles on his thin lips, “he’ll bust it down.”

I took Hassel by the arm; it was fleshy but there was muscle under there. “Get rid of him. No need to get cute—we’re going to make a straight business deal, here. Fewer faces that see me, the better.”

He looked at me with those black dead eyes, and nodded.

I went over to Maxie, and stood just to his left, between several wooden four-drawer filing cabinets and the corner of the wall the desk was up against.

“If this is business,” Maxie said, hands on his knees, his head tilted to one side in a gesture of reasonableness, “why have any guns at all?”

“I like negotiating from a position of strength.”

There was the garbled sound of conversation out in the living room, then the sound of running, the sound of furniture being knocked over. Maxie started to move, started to rise, but I swung into his gut with the nine millimeter, knocking the wind out of him, sitting him back down, sending him in his chair rattling back against the desk.

And the gunshots started.

They were muffled shots, silenced shots, WHUP! WHUP! WHUP! WHUP!, but they were gunshots all right. Some of them were happening in the connecting room, and Maxie, still doubled over, glanced at me with round accusing eyes and I ducked down and flattened back against the wall, using the wooden filing cabinets for cover, and saw Maxie drop his hand toward that coat on the floor, fumbling for the gun in that coat pocket, getting it in hand, a .38 Police Special, sitting on the edge of his chair and looking up toward the doorway, at something and somebody I couldn’t see, looking as if he were about to rise his fat ass up out of that chair, only he never did.

He sat back in the chair, leaning back like a man getting a close shave, but this was no close shave: he was getting bullets pumped into him, into his chest, into his neck, into his face, the top of his head erupting and spattering the Old Heidelberg neon, his legs and feet tap-dancing while the silenced bullets softly sang.

Then the gunshots stopped and left him sitting with his head back and emptying out, blood dripping on the carpeted floor like red rain. Cordite stench scorched the air, gun smoke mixing with blood mist.

And I was cowering against the wall, in the corner made by the wall and the wooden filing cabinet. Unseen, I thought. They didn’t know I was here—did they?

“Phil,” a voice called from the other room. It was a whiny voice, high-pitched. Then, closer: “I did mine.”

“Mine’s done, too, Jimmy.” This voice was a baritone with gravel in it.

The nine millimeter was tight in my hand; my breath was sucked in hard, my heart pounding in my ears. I moved my head, my shoulders carefully, oh so slowly, forward, just barely glancing a sliver’s worth around the edge of the filing cabinet.

I could see them, one standing over by, and the other in, the doorway: the one inside the room must have killed Greenberg; he was wearing a brown topcoat and hat, was average in size and build, but his face was distinctive—as flat as a jockey’s ass, no cheekbones at all, eyes tiny, slitted, oriental-looking. The other guy, the one in the doorway, Hassel’s dispatcher, wore a mustard-color tweedy-looking topcoat and was small; his face was round and his nose pug and his eyes round and bright and cheerful.

These were not faces I would forget.

Neither would I forget their guns, though I couldn’t actually see them: they were big automatics, mostly hidden by fuzzy white towels that had been wrapped turbanlike around the barrels and over the muzzles; both towels, around the nose of each gun, were on fire, orange flames flittering on the scorched area around the nose of each automatic. Neither man seemed to notice.

They were talking softly, laughing lightly as they moved into the outer suite.

I waited ten seconds, then carefully stepped past Maxie, who was draped back across the desk, bloody gray matter seeping out his skull onto the ledger book; well, Eliot said the guy had brains.

I moved quickly, quietly, across the room, the nine millimeter in hand. Slowly, I stalked after the torpedoes, but as I was coming out of the office into the adjoining bedroom, I damn near tripped over Hassel, who was on the floor, his face turned to one side, his dead eyes even deader now, his head cracked open like a melon draining its seeds and pulp.

That stopped me a second. And by the time I was out in the living room, they were almost to the door.

“Police!” I called, and shot at them, specifically at their backs. That’s the best place to shoot a man, after all.

But that goddamn living room stretched out forever, and I missed one guy, and only winged the other, the cheerful one, but he wasn’t so cheerful now, yowling like a dog that got its tail stepped on, mustard-color topcoat splotched with ketchup-red, and the other one, the flat-faced fucker, turned and shot at me, no towel on the gun anymore, a big humongous Army Colt, and the room exploded with noise.

I dropped to the floor, and behind me a pigskin golf bag took a slug like a man and clattered on top of me, pinning me, but I squeezed off three more, as they were bolting out the door, my slugs chewing up wood and plaster.

And they were gone.

For perhaps two seconds, I considered pursuing them.

Then I got out from under the golf clubs, stepped past the still-smoldering burnt towels they’d discarded along the way; the makeshift silencers had been effective—the gunshots had obviously attracted no attention outside the suite itself, although these latest, louder ones no doubt would. I had to get the hell out.

In the hall, gun still in hand, I met no one. Later, I learned that Hassel, Greenberg and Waxey Gordon had rented out the entire eighth floor, which explained why no one had reacted to the gunshots yet. As for Louie, Sal and Vinnie, and any other bodyguards, they were either deceased or paid off; maybe that had actually been Vinnie’s voice, in the hall, as he played Judas for an unspecified number of gold coins.

I could have stuck and talked to the local cops. After all, I could describe the gunmen who shot Greenberg and Hassel. But I didn’t give a fuck who shot Greenberg and Hassel—who were, after all, just victims of this goddamn beer war; maybe Lindy’s kid was now another (inadvertent) victim of that war.

And I wasn’t about to become the next victim, either, which is what I would be if I went around identifying and testifying against mob torpedoes. Mrs. Heller’s little boy didn’t get to be a cop because he was stupid.

Yes, they’d seen me, but I was nobody out east, nobody they’d know, or ever recognize.

Eliot was right: it was time to go home.

All of these thoughts took approximately three seconds, as I rushed toward the door to the rear stairs and went up them, two at a time, my gun still in hand; I didn’t slip it into its holster till just before I went through the door to the ninth floor, where I found a wet-eyed, nearly hysterical Evalyn waiting breathlessly.