Gat Heat (7 page)

Bingo straightened up, rubbing the side of his face. “Where'd they all come from?” he said wonderingly.

The officer who'd pulled the door open was a detective sergeant, and I handed him the Colt .45.

“Here's Kestel's gun,” I said. “He was—”

Bingo didn't let me finish. “Gun?” he said. “It ain't my gun. I ain't got no gun. Gun, you crazy? What would I be doing with a
gun?
Why, Scott and me, we was just takin' a drive. Then you guys started beatin' me up.”

I looked at the sergeant and he looked at me. Neither of us said anything. There was no need. That was Kestel's story and he'd stick with it. And it was eight to five he'd be on the streets again an hour after he was booked. Hoods have expensive lawyers. And the hoods' expensive lawyers have read, with delight, all of our omniscient Supreme Court's decisions defining and clarifying the rights of hoods.

“Why don't you confess, Bingo?” I asked him. “Hell, it can't do you any harm.”

“Confess what? I didn't do nothin'. Here we are, takin' a little ride and cops come out of the bushes. You beat me up.
Everybody
shoves me around—”

“You want me to sock you again, Bingo?”

He shut up.

I got out of the car and went back toward the Lincoln, A lieutenant named Dan Peterson, a gray-haired detective working out of the Hollywood Division, was standing before Stub Corey and the pudgy-faced driver with the hook nose and speaking to them as I walked up next to him.

I'd heard the refrain before. So, undoubtedly, had Stub and the other hood.

“—that you have the right to remain silent,” he was telling them politely. “Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to the presence of an attorney to assist you prior to questioning and to be with you during questioning, if you so desire. If you cannot afford an attorney you have the right to have an attorney appointed for you prior to questioning. Do you understand these rights?”

Corey smiled, exposing the hole in his row of teeth. “What?” he said. “Would you say that again, officer?”

Peterson's jaw muscles bulged slightly, but he said, “Will you voluntarily answer my questions?”

“Why should I do that? You some kind of nut or something, officer?”

Peterson looked up at the sky, then stepped back, turned his head and nodded to me.

“Thanks, Dan,” I said. “Spread my very large thanks around among the boys, will you?”

He smiled. “Stub Corey and Little Phil here,” he said. “Who's the other guy?”

“Lester Kestel.”

“Old Bingo, huh? What was going on?”

“He had a .45 in my gut. The boys were escorting me out to see Jimmy Violet.”

“What for?”

“Nobody told me. I'll probably ask Jimmy after a while. I suppose you got Corey's silenced pistol. That should count as at least a misdemeanor—”

“Pistol, yeah,” he interrupted. “No silencer on it, though.”

He showed me the gun. There were grooves around the barrel's end, but the bulky cylindrical silencer wasn't on the gun.

I swore—knowing we'd probably never be able to prove he'd ever had a silencer. Possession of which is a felony and thus illegal. Even today. And he just might have a permit to carry the heater.

I said, “It's probably around here, somewhere close. Stub must've had time to give it a toss before you grabbed him.”

Peterson called over a uniformed patrolman, told him what to look for. He found it in a minute and a half. Stub Corey of course expressed great amazement when shown the silencer. “What in the world,” he said, “is dat?”

Lieutenant Peterson quietly screwed “dat” over the bore of the gun he personally had taken from Stub Corey.

“I wouldn't of believed it if I hadn't seen it,” Stub said, once again showing us the empty space in his grin.

I took a step toward him. “Stub,” I said, “I think you need a tooth out on the other side. In the interest of harmony, balance, and beauty—”

Lieutenant Peterson grabbed my balled fist in his hands. “Easy, Scott. You want to get us all tossed in jail?”

“Yeah, that's right,” I said. “At least I got to hit Bingo.” I paused. “I just hope he doesn't sign a complaint. Hell, let me hit Stub, and they can both sign complaints.”

“Be a good fellow, Scott,” he said wearily. “We got enough troubles. O.K.?”

“O.K.” I sighed. “Well, here's what happened.”

I told him and then followed the gang down to the Hollywood jail and told it again to a stenographer. I signed the statement, jawed five minutes, and left. It was my guess that I was getting out of jail about half an hour before Stub Corey, Little Phil, and Bingo.

But even half an hour, I figured, would give me time to get to Jimmy Violet's hoodlum sanctuary before his boys were sprung.

7

I turned off Laurel Canyon Boulevard, drove to the one-lane asphalt drive leading uphill to Jimmy Violet's home.

On the way I'd been worrying the knot of perplexity which had started growing when Bingo Kestel first slipped into my Cad outside the Beverly Hills Hotel.

I am not unacquainted with hoods. On the contrary, because my business is crime and criminals, the law and lawbreakers, hardly a day passes when I don't have some kind of contact with cons or ex-cons, gun-toters or musclemen. But I couldn't think of a solitary reason why Jimmy Violet would—all of a sudden—be interested in me.

It was that suddenness which perplexed me.

In the last month I hadn't been on a case which, even by a pretty good stretch of imagination, could be considered as in the area of Jimmy Violet's interests. Those interests were primarily such enterprises as gambling, extortion, prostitution, and “legitimate” investments into which he'd poured hot money. And the only case I was on at the moment was the job Mrs. Halstead had hired me to do.

Any connection between the Halsteads and Jimmy Violet struck me as extraordinarily unlikely. But the timing intrigued me more than a little. I'd taken the Halstead case late last night, and Jimmy's boys had braced me before noon today. It seemed an odd coincidence. And I'm a guy very leery of coincidences.

When I'd been talking to Bingo about Jimmy Violet's lake, it had not been just a play on words. The guy actually did own a lake. It wasn't anything like Lake Superior, but it was a respectable little body of water for a man-made job, approximately seventy-five by a hundred yards. Violet's house sat on an artificial island in the middle of the lake and could be reached only by the road I was on. Unless you wanted to climb a ten-foot-high fence and swim in—or maybe wade; I didn't know how deep the water was.

I didn't particularly want to know, either. If the lake was deep enough, there were probably already some guys down there tied to anvils. Jimmy wasn't known as a particularly forgiving fellow. It was said he didn't stay mad at a guy long, though, since he held no ill will for the dead.

The road ran out over the water to the roughly circular island, actually more like the end of a small peninsula including the road. From the air I imagine the picture would have been much like half of a dumbbell, which seemed appropriate, since there were usually half a dozen dumbbells on the premises. You couldn't just drive out to see the dumbbells, though. First you had to pass through a heavy gate made out of what appeared to be two-inch steel pipes. And to accomplish that, you had to get the approval of a guy at the gate, a guy named Fleck who looked like Gargantua, and who appeared to be made out of four-inch steel pipes.

Fleck, at any rate, was the boy who used to be on the gate. Yes, he still was. Opening and closing it probably taxed all his creative powers to the utmost, but at least he was good at it. You might almost say of him that he was that most fortunate of men, one who had found his niche. Of course, presumably his duty was not merely to open and close the gate for invited visitors, but to kill anybody who wasn't invited.

He'd lumbered into view from behind a green hedge near the gate's pipes and stood on massive legs, his thick arms dangling at his sides. His resemblance to the Missing Link was remarkable. His head sort of came to a point in front, between his little red eyes, and his chin looked like something Samson might have slain the Philistines with. At the end of his dangling right arm, like a toy in the huge hand, was a large gun, which he seemed to dangle toward me as I got out of the Cad and walked to the gate.

“Hello, Fleck,” I said agreeably. “Open up.”

“I remember you,” he said. “Don't I?”

“Man, if you don't know, how would
I
know? Shell Scott, I was here a couple years ago.”

“Couple years.” He shook his head.

I knew what he was thinking.
Couple years
, he was thinking.
How long is that?

He'd heard my name though—recently. If Jimmy had been expecting me and the boys he would have told Fleck.

“Yeah,” Fleck said finally. “Jimmy says …”

He stopped and looked carefully at my Cad. Then he looked behind it. Then he looked all around. Clearly, no boys were anywhere about. Finally he looked way up in the air.

“Fleck,” I said, “are you looking for Stub and Bingo and Little Phil?”

He fixed the red eyes on me again. “Well, yeah, I was.”

“They'll be along later. Open up.”

“Well …”

“I had quite a talk with Bingo. Open up. Didn't Jimmy tell you I was coming out?”

“Yeah, but … But …”

“Well, O.K., if you don't want me to see Jimmy. See if I care,” I said. Sometimes it helped to talk to him like that.

He shook his head. Then he opened the gate.

I climbed into the Cad again and drove past Fleck, who was still shaking his head, and on up the asphalt drive, which curved in front of the house and ended at a wooden two-car garage, which was past the house and near the water's edge. The garage door was open and two Cadillac sedans were visible. I braked to a stop a few yards behind them.

On my left was a small strip of grass growing from the edge of the asphalt down to the water, and on my right was the home of Jimmy Violet. It was a two-story brick and wood job, very attractive on the outside. Inside, it was a dump. At least it had been the last time I was here.

On that occasion I'd called upon Jimmy Violet at my own request, trying to get information about the lad I'd tagged on the grand larceny rap. I hadn't got any info; and I had found Jimmy Violet a nauseating host, but we'd each learned to know the other a little better. We'd each learned we loathed the other.

The place was a dump not because it hadn't originally been rather tastefully furnished, but because there was dust and all kinds of slop around. Jimmy wasn't married—I understood he had once been years before—and lived in the house with some of his hoodlum associates, none of whom was any more neat and tidy than Jimmy himself.

I walked to the front door, but it opened before I reached it. The guy looking out at me—and at the emptiness behind me—with an expression of vast suspicion was one I hadn't seen before. He was tall and broad shouldered, with a sharp chin and ledges of bone over his eyes, but I didn't know who he was.

He knew who I was, though. At least he did after looking me over, checking the white hair and brows, giving me the head-to-toe perusal.

“You're Scott, huh?” he said.

“That's right.”

He didn't ask about my three recent companions. “O.K. Come on in.”

I walked past him and turned.

He said, “I suppose you got a gun on you.”

“Yeah.”

“I'll take it.”

“You'll play hell.”

The chin slid forward slowly and his brows lowered.

I said, “Jimmy wanted to see
me
, remember. I didn't have to come out here.”

“You didn't have to? What …” He let it trail off.

“I suppose you're wondering,” I said, “about Bingo and Stub and Little Phil. The sooner you escort me to mine host, the sooner I can tell him about them.”

“What about them?”

“I'll tell Jimmy.”

He chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment, then shrugged. “Come on,” he said.

We walked down a carpeted hallway toward the back of the house and stopped before heavy double doors on our left. My escort knocked twice, then went on in, leaving me outside. After about a minute he opened the door and motioned me in. I suppose he had to explain to Jimmy that I'd arrived without company and presumably armed to the teeth.

Jimmy Violet wasn't alone in the big room, which was some kind of den with a polished mahogany bar against the right wall. Two other guys—beside my escort—were sitting in upholstered chairs drinking beer from bottles.

Jimmy slouched on a gray couch across the room from me, legs crossed and one hand behind his head. He didn't get up when I came in.

“Hello, Jimmy,” I said. “You wanted to see me?”

“Where the hell's Stub and Bingo and Phil?”

No Hello, no How are ya, no nothing. No graciousness at all. You could almost tell by looking at the creep. He was what you might find in a cemetery at Full Moon, near a newly-opened grave. Tall, rangy, cadaverous, he had the look of mortuaries, winding sheets, and shrouds. In his own way, he was just as cute as Fleck out at the gate.

He was an inch or two taller than I am and weighed maybe two hundred pounds, but he looked wasted, as if he'd been a heavier man but was sickening of a disease. His eyes were dark, dull, with sparse brows above them; and his hair, black streaked with gray, was thin and limp and lay flat on his round skull. His lips were fat, cupidlike, but not rosy; they were a kind of pinkish-gray, not quite as ashen as his face. I guess his nose was the only reasonably nice thing about that face, a bit long maybe, but straight and possessed of only two nostrils.