Boldt (18 page)

“And while we're on the subject of telephones, what about all that crap you put in at the hotel?”

“Well, it won't be in there now, will it?” I tell him.

“You're damn right,” Draper says. “You're damn right.”

Murdock takes a cigarette out and lights up.

“What did you find in Styles's apartment?” Draper asks, sarcastically. “An armory?”

“Yeah,” I tell him, “he even had a couple of tanks.”

“Christ,” Murdock says. “You think he'd have his gear there with him?”

“Who cares?” Draper says. “The fact is, the word is, he's clean, and don't think I'd let it go at that if I didn't believe it because the consequences for me would not be good for my ass.”

“So now we leave Styles alone,” Murdock says.

“So now you leave Styles alone,” Draper agrees.

“Unlike what you told us to do earlier,” I say to him.

There is a pause before Draper says, “That's right.”

There is a silence which is broken when Murdock says, “Well, I guess that takes care of everything. I don't know about you Roy, but I think we're due an hour or so off.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Your hours off are when your brother's been and gone,” Draper snaps.

“Yeah,” I say again, and Murdock and me turn around and walk out of Draper's office.

“And another thing,” Draper calls after us as we walk down the corridor. “Murdock, you can drag your ass out of the Chandler Hotel. I'm not signing any bills you send in from there.”

“Don't worry,” Murdock calls back. “I can afford it myself on the kickbacks I make.”

On the way down Murdock says to me, “Why don't you go on to Clark's and I'll join you a little later after I've checked out that number.”

“I got a better idea,” I tell Murdock. “You go ahead and I'll meet you at Moses's later than a little later.”

“What have you got cooking?”

“Nothing much. Just some chewing gum to stick on Styles's heel. I'll see you later.”

Jack Fleming is sitting behind the desk in his box of an office and on his desk is a bottle with about an inch of bourbon in the bottom of it. Also on the table are Jack's feet and his shoes neatly placed together next to the bourbon bottle. The office smells of whiskey and of Jack's feet.

“Hi, Boldt,” Jack says when he realizes who it is calling on him. “Boldt. Well, well.”

I sit down on the straight-back chair on my side of the desk and look at Jack. He's quite a lot younger than I am but what was once a baby face is streaked with booze lines. His shirt is dirty and his suit has never been cleaned in all the years since he bought it which if I remember right was just before he was screwed by the Department and made the scapegoat for a corruption scare blown up by a smart reporter on the
Globe
. But Jack got off lightly compared to what happened to the smart reporter. Jack served a term and they fixed him up with a kickback and a license to operate privately. At least the kickback was big enough for Jack to soak himself in bourbon and soften him up enough so he wouldn't feel up to biting the balls off the people who screwed him.

“Hello, Jack,” I say to him. “Business must be good.” Jack looks at me.

“The feet,” I say. “You're resting the feet. Must be doing plenty of legwork.”

Jack shakes a little with laughter but no sound comes out. When he's finished shaking he says, “Yeah, that's right. You got it in one.”

“So I guess it's a waste of time me coming to see you.”

“Business?” Jack says.

I nod.

“I may be able to accommodate you,” he says. “Or at least one of my many operatives may.”

We look at each other.

“Well,” I say, lighting up a cigarette, “first you got to sober up.”

“You think I've been drinking?”

I throw my match on the floor.

“You ever want to get even with the Department?” I ask him.

He spreads his hands. “Well, maybe if I'd got an atom bomb, I could have done something,” he says. “But you know how it was. Somebody had to go. They saw I was okay when I went out.”

“You hate the bastards. Particularly Draper.”

Jack doesn't say anything for a moment then he says, “So maybe you're right, maybe I do, but why're you raking all that up? What's that to do with why you've come to see me? What's me and the Department got to do with anything?”

I blow smoke across the table and reply, “What I've come to ask you to do will help to screw Draper.”

Jack looks at me. “Why should you be interested in that?” he says. “You do your deals and you make your money. You're one of the lucky ones.”

I don't say anything. Then Jack snaps his fingers.

“I get it,” he says. “I'm just beginning to get it. They need somebody else to heap the shit on, and now it's your turn and you want me to help.”

He gives his soundless laugh again.

I shake my head. “No, it's not that,” I say. “It's not Draper I want. He's incidental. I just thought if you knew he was going to be screwed as well you'd snap to it and be interested.”

“Sure,” he says. “I do a favor for you; it involves embarrassing Mr. Draper. Mr. Draper finds out and I'm just full of laughs at the way things work out.”

I shake my head again.

“Nobody'll know anything about you, Jack,” I tell him. “And that's because you're good. You always were, you still are, if you leave that stuff alone.”

Jack looks at the bottle.

“Okay,” he says. “You may as well tell me what I'm going to turn down. It'll pass the time.”

“You know, of course, who Albert Styles is?” I ask him.

Jack leans farther back in his seat.

“It gets better,” he says.

“He's in town for a couple of days. Seeing his ex-wife and kid. A social visit.”

Jack doesn't say anything.

“And that being so, all I want you to do is follow him around here and there wherever he goes and report those things to me.”

There is silence for a moment or two.

“I know I'm not awfully bright,” he says, “but why can't you do that? Or somebody else in the department?”

I don't answer him.

“You answered it,” he says. “They don't want to because Mr. Florian wouldn't want them to.”

I still don't answer him.

“So,” Jack says, “all you want me to do is follow number one on the Hit Parade against the wishes of Draper and Florian.”

“That's right,” I say to him.

He sighs and reaches for the bottle but I lean forward quickly and lift it off the table. Jack shrugs and settles back in his seat again.

“And the thing about it is,” I say to him, “you're going to do it.”

“I'm going to do it.”

“Yes, because the day after tomorrow I'm going to get Styles in such a way that Draper and Florian won't be able to do a thing about it except maybe try and have me taken out in two or three years' time. Apart from that, you don't really care what happens to yourself because you're beyond that kind of self-respect. I've got five hundred dollars in my pocket just for you putting your feet in your shoes, and there's another five hundred to come in a couple of days' time. That'll buy you a lot of bourbon except during the couple of days you're working for me.”

There is a long silence and eventually Jack says, “Okay, I'll do it. You got a deal. What do I care?” I take out the envelope with the money in it that I picked up from my apartment on the way over. Jack looks at the envelope. I put the bottle down next to it.

“Who's Styles coming for?”

I shake my head. “Don't you worry about that,” I tell him. “All I want from you is where Styles goes all day.”

Then I go on to tell him where Styles is staying and who he's staying with and the address of Styles's wife. Then I describe Lesley to him and ask him if he's got anybody reliable to put on her at a moment's notice.

“Tony Copeland. He does work for me from time to time.”

“I know him. He's good. But if we have to use him, just tell him about the girl, nothing else.”

“Sure,” he says.

I get up. “Well there you go,” I tell him. “You start tonight; we'll be around him some of the time but don't take any notice of that. Just call me at Sammy's tomorrow at eleven.”

I stretch out my arm, take hold of the doorknob and open the door.

“Well,” Jack says, “thanks for dropping by. I hadn't made any plans for the rest of my life anyway.”

I go out and close the door behind me.

Clark's is pretty full considering it's early evening, but then Clark's is pretty full most hours of the day. Murdock isn't there when I arrive so I go and sit at a table on the raised part at the far end and it's not long after I've sat down that I'm joined by Agnes and Marcia.

“Hello, Mr. Boldt,” Agnes says. “You going to buy us working girls a drink?”

“I'll buy you a drink,” I tell her. “But you're hardly working girls. Working girls usually dislike what they do.”

“Yeah, we're just lucky I guess,” Marcia says.

A waiter comes and takes the order.

“Where's Moses?” I ask them.

“He's busy,” Agnes says.

“So early in the evening?”

“It's never too early for Moses,” Marcia replies.

“Yeah,” I say.

“You should try it sometime,” Agnes says. “You might surprise yourself.”

“The day I get to that I'll shoot it off,” I tell her.

“You never can tell,” Agnes says. “There'd always be us to ease you into it. Now that couldn't be bad, could it?”

“That part'd be okay.”

“Then why not try that part now? Whoever you're waiting for can wait for you. It only need take as long as you want it to.”

I shake my head.

“You never stop trying, do you?” I say. “You know if I go with you, then five minutes later you're helping Moses stuff his cock up my ass.”

“Or maybe in your mouth,” Marcia says.

“But seriously,” Agnes says. “Moses is busy.”

“I've never known Moses to tire himself out.”

“Come on,” Marcia says. “Moses'd never try it on with you. Not with a cop.”

“Moses'd try it on with anybody, even a cop. Moses isn't scared of anybody.” Agnes is just about to give me an answer to that one, too, when Murdock walks through the far door.

“In any case my company's just arrived,” I tell them.

“So we see,” Marcia says. “Why not ask him what he's doing for the next half hour.”

“On second thought, don't bother,” Agnes says.

“Yeah,” I say, “now piss off. I've got my own business to discuss.”

“Sure,” Agnes says. “Don't stay away too long. There are too few characters left in the world today.”

The girls get up and move down to the lower level and start mingling with the customers. Murdock gets a drink at the bar then comes up the steps and joins me at the table.

“I traced the number,” Murdock says.

“And?”

“An apartment on Sternwood Avenue.”

“And?”

“No subscriber listed or unlisted. The last person to hold that number vacated that apartment almost a year ago. A guy called Sherman used to have a small bar in the block but he gave it up and left town. Which would seem to indicate that apartment is empty.”

“That's what it would indicate,” I say to Murdock. “And that being the case, let's go take a look.”

We get up and Murdock says, “You in your own car?”

I nod.

“We'd better go in that then.”

“We'd better,” I say, and we leave the atmosphere of Clark's to its occupants.

The apartments on Sternwood Avenue are like a thousand others—

flat, faceless, the only indication that life exists beyond the brickwork being the lights dotted about the blank-looking walls.

Murdock and me sit in the car and look at the apartments.

“Apartment 28,” Murdock says.

“So, since you traced it, what do you suggest we do? If your suspicions about Styles are right, we don't go and ask the janitor. He's just as likely to be paid off as anybody else if there's a contact in that apartment.”

“Yeah, well let's establish which apartment it is first,” Murdock says. “I'll go take a look on my own.”

He gets out of the car, crosses the street and disappears into the brightly lit lobby of Sternwood Apartments. When he's out of sight, I look up into the night sky and watch the stars trying to sparkle through the city's evening haze. When I've done that for a while, I just sit there and watch the lobby of Sternwood Apartments and after five minutes or so a guy walks out into the night. This guy sort of catches my attention because he doesn't look the kind of guy to live in a place like Sternwood Apartments; he's a young guy dressed the way young studs dress—leather jacket, collar turned up, brown cowboy boots. Maybe he's running a visiting service, but I watch him walk to the end of the block and go into the bar on the corner. That must be the bar the previous occupant of the apartment sold out and it's not a stud's bar. But, Christ, maybe the guy just wants a drink to wash out his mouth. All the same, I keep my eyes on the bar for the few minutes it takes until I'm aware that Murdock is approaching the car. He gets in and says, “Well, it's occupied all right. You see a guy just come out in a leather jacket and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“That's the occupant.”

“He make you?”

“He never saw me. I was outside the apartment door moving by slow, and I heard the T.V. When I heard it snap off, I legged it down to the other end of the corridor around the corner then when he'd closed the door I took a peek just as he hit the stairs.”