Fever City (41 page)

‘What's wrong with him?'

I make a drinking motion into the torchlight. Someone swears, and they haul Barnsley away, his heels dragging in the dirt. I stride towards the hotel, Feds forming an honour guard all the way into the lobby, most of them cradling tommy guns. I'm frisked next to the porter's desk in plain sight of an old man in a Stetson peering at me through cigar smoke.

‘What's the matter, you never seen police brutality before?' One of the Fed's pulls the .38 Chief's Special carefully out of my jacket pocket, as though someone's told him it just might go boom.

The old cowboy draws his cigar slowly out of his mouth and shakes his head sadly. ‘The problem with you, stranger,' he says, speaking with a pleasant Texas drawl, ‘is you don't recognize your friends from your enemies.'

To hell with sermons, it's too late even for midnight mass. ‘Who needs either when you've got clients and criminals?'

He nods and two gorillas grab me from behind, frog-marching me towards the servants' quarters. I turn back to the old man. ‘So which one are you?'

‘Why, stranger, I'm just a poor bystander hoping he's not going to witness an unfortunate accident . . . '

I'm shoved along a narrow corridor, staff looking away quickly as we pass. ‘Who the hell was that, Sam Houston?'

‘He owns this hotel . . . ' A hard thump in the back. ‘So show some respect, dumbass.'

We cross a large kitchen, the smell of charred steak and coffee reminding me how long it's been since I last ate. Two green swing doors stand at the end, their portholes glittering with treasure beyond. I'm pushed through them, into a ballroom lit with crystal chandeliers, gold-leaf ceilings and statues of ancient soldiers balancing candles on their spears. The doors slowly flap shut behind me, my escort staying on the other side. In the middle of the room is a small, circular table, where J. Edgar Hoover and Johnny Roselli are staring at me. Old Man Bannister sits with his back to me. Schiller nervously waves me over. I start to cross the dance floor, slipping and almost falling on the polished wood.

J. Edgar Hoover glares at me. ‘Have you been drinking?'

‘Never on the job . . . '

There is the crooked squeak of a wheelchair as Old Man Bannister rotates himself towards me. ‘No need to worry then, Mr. Atlas . . . '

‘Alston . . . '

‘Mr. Alston, because you're no longer on the job. You're fired.'

‘Best news I've heard all day.' I nod to the bottle of Dimple Haig sitting in the centre of the table, then go to pour myself a drink. Roselli snatches the bottle away. I tut-tut sadly. ‘That's not like the famous Robin Hood of Beverly Hills . . . '

It gets awful quiet awful fast. The legs of Roselli's chair screech as he pushes away from the table.

I go to block his punch to my stomach but at the last second Roselli pulls back and kicks me hard in the shin. My knee crumples fast. I try to straighten. Too late. The toe of his shoe catches me under the chin. I stagger backwards into a service table and knock it over, slapping the floor with an unholy whack, the echo reverberating through my head.

‘That was for Lily, you crumb.'

'Lay off.' Schiller shouts, stepping between me and Roselli.

I rub my aching chin, cheap boot polish coming off on my hand. I get to my feet. ‘Who the hell is Lily?'

Roselli pulls out a 4-inch Colt Python. Schiller grabs his wrist in one of his baseball-mitt hands and squeezes. ‘You know the rules. No weapons inside the hotel.'

Roselli lets out a whine like a steel girder struggling through a wood chipper and drops the gun, the revolver pointing right at him when it clatters to the floor. He dances away in fright. ‘Fuck me—that could have gone off.'

'What do you think we'll make of that ten years hence . . . ' the Old Man says. ‘The hand of Providence . . . ' He rolls right up to Roselli, leaning out of his chair. ‘Or a tragic missed opportunity?'

‘Now look, you dirty old man . . . '

‘This is no time for squabbles.' Hoover says, slapping the table. ‘It's late and I have breakfast with Bing Crosby at the Diamond Club.' He turns to me. ‘You're the one who found the body of the boy?'

‘The body of
a
boy.'

Schiller grimaces and shakes his head at me. Hoover looks from him back to me. ‘You're a forensic pathologist?'

‘You know the answer to that.'

‘Then leave it to the medical examiners to determine whose remains they are. In the meantime, I want you to know that the DA has spoken to me about bringing charges against you . . . ' He smiles. ‘That's right, Alston. Fraud. Extortion. Grand Theft Auto. Obstruction of Justice.'

It's not the certainty in his voice that makes me go weak in the legs. It's the vanity. He is the Oracle. He sees the future and he knows it. ‘None of those charges will stick . . . '

‘What about Reckless Endangerment with regards to a minor? McKesson came out of Juvenile Court. You know he'll go after you.'

‘That is, unless . . . '

I turn to the Old Man. Shakedown time. The Bannister Way. ‘Unless what . . . ?'

‘You swear an affidavit testifying that the remains are those of my son, Ronald Bannister.'

‘And if I don't . . . ?'

‘That question is cockeyed, Atlas. If you do, I'll use whatever influence I have to help you avoid prosecution.'

‘We won't be able to save your license to practice as a private investigator in the State of California, but we should be able to stop you becoming an inmate in one of this state's penitentiaries.'

‘Some choice . . . '

‘Our choice. We're being kind here, Alston, we don't need you.'

I turn from Hoover back to the Old Man. ‘Why are you going along with this crap? You know that's not Ronnie lying in City Morgue.'

‘Because, Mr. Atlas, I always require an edge . . . '

‘So that's all the boy ever was to you, an ace in the hole?'

‘Business is business. If Kennedy's camp believes that the child entombed in the Bannister mausoleum is Ronnie, they will still require my cooperative silence. After all, a corpse is evidence. And evidence can talk, even from the grave. And if Nixon's people believe that dead child is Ronnie, they too will continue to seek my assistance . . . ‘

‘But if either of them suspect that the remains aren't Ronnie's, your influence is gone.'

‘Not gone, but . . . diminished.'

‘You've got your politicians figured out, but what about him?' I say, pointing at Roselli. ‘He was the one blackmailing you. He was the one who switched bodies.'

‘Wait a minute.' Roselli rises, wrathful; and hurt. ‘A shakedown is fair game—but body snatching? That's not my style.'

Schiller to the rescue, pushing Roselli back into his chair. ‘Take it easy . . . '

‘So who planted the body?'

Roselli roars the answer. ‘Operation 40, you dumb fuck.'

‘We had Operation 40 under surveillance for months and had even successfully infiltrated Hidalgo into the organization, and then you came along and ruined everything.' Hoover sighs sadly. ‘I had expected more from a man like you . . . ' He reaches into his jacket, pulls out a document and slides it across the table towards me. Everyone stares at it.

‘What's that?'

‘The affidavit.'

‘But it has to be sworn, and notarized and—'

‘We'll tend to that later . . . '

I stare down at the paper. It's like a magic mirror. You see whatever you want in it. I saw a lifeboat. ‘What about Ronnie? Don't any of you wonder what really happened to him? Don't any of you even care . . . ?'

A shiver goes through the room. Schiller crosses himself. Even Roselli fingers something around his throat.

Hoover clears his throat, breaking the spell of Guilt. ‘The Bureau will look into all matters pertaining to the kidnapping. Including your own personal conduct, Alston.' The pen he hands me is moist and warm from his hand. I look up at Schiller. He turns away.

I sign.

Silence.

When I finally look up from my signature, all three of them are staring at me. I toss the pen down on the table. ‘Look at you, sitting all together, smug and happy. Just who the hell do you think you are?'

‘I'll tell you who we are. We're the people always in the middle, the people who put their petty grievances aside and learn how to work together. Who are we, Mr. Atlas? We're America . . . '

Hoover nods to Schiller. ‘Take him back home. Make sure he stays there.' He looks at his watch, turns to Roselli. ‘Where the devil is Hastings, I have Crosby at eight . . . '

‘Hastings . . . ?'

Roselli stares at me for a long moment. ‘What's he to you?'

I've almost blown it. I talk fast. ‘I need to question him, about when he saw the nanny. Him and Morris.'

‘Forget it, Alston. You're not talking to anyone anymore. You're through as a private investigator. Take him away, Sergeant.'

‘Yes, sir.' Schiller grabs my elbow and escorts me across the dance floor and out of the ballroom, walking so close it's like we're in a three-legged race. There's no force in the big man's grip: it's as though I'm supporting him. He whispers curses as we march through the lobby and down the steps, past the machine-gun-toting Feds. ‘You nearly got us killed back there.'

‘Quit your bellyaching. They wanted something, I gave it to them.'

‘I'll tell you one thing, you were right about them switching the bodies . . . ' Schiller looks back at the hotel with nervous uncertainty. ‘And did you see their faces when you opened your mouth about Hastings?'

‘What do they care about Hastings?'

‘He was Roselli's inside man at the Bannister Estate . . . ' I freeze so fast I nearly pull Schiller over. ‘He was in on the scam from the start.'

‘Who told you that?'

‘Roselli.'

‘And you believe him?'

‘Who do you believe? Hastings?'

The rasp of the hotel's gravel underfoot fills the long silence between us as we walk back to the cars. This is the last sound Tommy ever heard. The stutter and crunch of an unsteady surface about to give way. ‘I just hope . . . ' Schiller's voice wavers. He stops and looks at me. Even at night, I can feel the colossal weight of his huge body's shadow obliterating everything in its path. ‘I just hope they don't think, you know? That they have to get rid of us . . . '

‘Are you nuts?'

‘Well, we are witnesses . . . '

‘Accomplices, more like it. Why, the way those bastards made me—'

It comes without warning, the way it always did in the Pacific, when you'd be following a jungle trail, mistaking it at first for the sound of water on stone, the darting repetition almost birdlike, until it wakes you out of your trance of suffering, and you focus back to why you're there—to kill or be killed; the hollow pop defining itself for what it was: the fast, indiscriminate sting of death, Schiller bending his great mass towards the earth, the muzzle flash folding itself back into the camouflage of night.

I cradle Schiller in my arms, the soft murmur of his blood pulsing through my fingers. ‘Jesus, Mary and fucking Joseph, I'm hit, Nick.'

There are sounds of running across the paddock, the lightning blaze and stutter response of the Fed's tommy guns and the distant squeal of brakes. I hear the twist of bullets hitting wood; the lisping twang of ricochet. Then it's over. They shot at us. And they got away. Again. ‘Hold on, Gus, help is on the way.'

‘Jesus, Nick,' he says, ‘it's like my mother always said . . . '

Blood eddies from him, haemorrhaging now in hard, accelerating spasms. ‘What did she say, Gus?'

‘She said . . . She said—'

Already the torrent is slowing. ‘Hold on, for Christ's sake, the doctors are coming . . . Gus?'

‘Nick? It's like Ma always said . . . '

We are in a pool of life; a great man's force abandoning him—leaving him slick and wet like he was at birth, the natural warmth of his blood already running cool in the night air. ‘Gus? Talk to me. What did your ma say, Gus . . . ?'

‘Life . . . ' He wheezes the word, his voice transformed, thin and squeezed from quickly-diminishing lungs. ‘It's . . . '

There is the tremor of his legs, as though struggling to rise against gravity one last time, and then Schiller goes limp in my arms.

I
hope you don't mind,' Ruby says, handing the suitcase to Hastings, ‘I helped myself to a tip.' He pulls his hat down low over his eyes to escape Hastings's stare. ‘Lighten up, buddy, I'm just kidding.' He hands something to Hastings. ‘Compliments of the house.' Hastings ignores the ticket and it flutters to the floor. Leon picks it up, reading aloud, painfully enunciating every syllable of the final word: ‘Girls, girls, girls . . . Come ride the . . . carousel?' He looks up at Ruby. ‘Sounds very imperialistic.'

Ruby frowns at him. ‘What the hell are you, a commie?'

‘I'm a Marxist but not a Leninist-Marxist.'

Ruby bumps into boxes as he backs away, yanking open the elevator cage door. ‘Screwy!' The door springs shut, nearly trapping his hand. ‘The both of you . . . ' he shouts, his head disappearing past the floor. ‘Crazier than a pair of snakes on fire.'

Leon gives a long, hollow laugh. ‘That's the problem with being a spy,' he says, to no one in particular. ‘You end up believing half the things you only pretend to believe.'

Hastings stares at him. ‘That's not just a problem with spies . . . ' He places the case on top of an overturned box, snaps it open and is greeted by multiple portraits of McKinley and Cleveland.