Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 14 (19 page)

He sneered at me; natty as he was, that mustache could use a trim. “You open it—slowly. Show me everything that’s in there, one item at a time…make a pile on the floor.”

“Okay.” I pretended to be trying to juggle the bag into a workable position. I gave him a frustrated look, saying, “Can I put the bag down?”

Sighing with impatience, he nodded.

I crouched and unzipped the duffel bag; he was watching me carefully, the gun poised to blow me away at the slightest sign of treachery. My hand found the .32 and I fired it up at him through some newspapers and the canvas of the bag itself, which muffled the sound almost as well as a silencer, and the son of a bitch never had time to realize what had happened, much less squeeze the trigger of the .38.

He just stood there for a moment, with the little blue hole in the middle of his forehead, like a third eye, and his other two eyes weren’t seeing any better than the new one; reflexes severed, his body flopped like a stringless puppet right about where I was supposed to pile the notebooks and tapes. The splash of blood and brains on the wooden wall behind him would have looked fine in a frame at Fischetti’s penthouse.

Jackie had an astonished expression—not as astonished as that dead mustached fucker, but astonished enough. He fell at her feet, so I shoved him aside to get at that pocket-knife, and flipped it open and started cutting her loose— the guy had played fair, providing a nice sharp blade, and I was able to free her within a minute…though that minute seemed like an eternity, since I couldn’t be sure the shot…however muffled…might not have carried well enough for the partner to hear.

With the ropes in a pile at her bare feet, Jackie stood—she weaved for a moment, put a hand to her head; she seemed groggy.

“You okay?” I said, slipping an arm around her waist. I’d already retrieved the .38 from my late host, the .32 consigned to a jacket pocket. “Can you make it, baby?”

She nodded, tugging her sleeve down over the bruises and tracks, and I went to that control box and found a switch in the OFF position labeled HOUSE LIGHTS, and another in the ON that said MASTER GIMMICK; I hit both switches, and when I walked her out of there, occasional bare work bulbs unmasked the mysterious corridor of Aladdin’s Castle as unpainted plywood. With my arm still around her waist, we moved down a sloping ramp that I seemed to remember would take us out.

The exit awaiting us was one of those big rolling barrels, so awkward to navigate without falling comically ass over teakettle; but it wasn’t rolling now. Before we could duck through it into the night, I paused, kissed her forehead, looked into those dazed-looking brown eyes, and said, “His partner’s out there, somewhere.”

She nodded. “Yes—he’s smaller.”

“Round face, also has a mustache.”

“Yes! They just showed up at the apartment…came into the den and grabbed me. I don’t know how they got in….”

“That can wait. But here’s the plan.”

I told her that right behind Aladdin’s Castle—separated by one knee-high fence and another somewhat higher one—was a parking lot; beyond that parking lot, and another fence, Western Avenue, along which my Olds was parked, in front of the quiet clapboard houses of the residential neighborhood in Aladdin’s backyard. I would go out first—to see if I drew any fire (but I didn’t say that)—and when I signaled her, she would join me, we would duck around the side of the building, and she was to climb the fences first as I covered her with the .38.

“Got it?”

She nodded; but she seemed woozy.

“Jackie, you have to get ahold of yourself.”

She nodded again, more assuredly. Then she touched my face and looked up at me with a longing expression. “You really do care about me, don’t you?”

It sounded childish—and both absurd and slurred—yet it was so tender my heart broke, a little. She was another man’s wife…and I suspected that man had sent her here to die.

“You know I do,” I said, and I kissed her—a short, sweet kiss.

Then, .38 in hand, I ran through the barrel, and exited into the crisp, somewhat breezy night; I was on a platform that, if I followed it to some stairs, would present another round of adventures in the other wing of the castle. I would pass on that privilege.

I slowly scanned the landscape—the thickness of trees surrounding the lagoon, empty benches, the idle railroad, the empty expanse of paved midway, curving around the lagoon at left and right. The tower of the Pair-O-Chutes adjacent to the castle seemed to me an unlikely spot for a sniper—no elevator went up there, after all, only those dangling chains (whose chutes and harnesses were in storage), and I doubted my round-faced adversary was hanging up there by a chain or two, waiting to get a good shot off.

I looked at the castle’s next-door neighbor on the other side—could someone be up in one of those ferris wheel cars?

I hopped off the platform, motioning for Jackie—waiting on the other side of the barrel—to stay put. Moving as silently as possible, I stepped out into the castle’s lawn, one slow step at a time, listening for any sound that might give movement away.

Nothing.

Nothing but the wind rustling the tarps and rattling the shutters of Riverview in hibernation, the scaffolding of various roller coasters whining and creaking; and the occasional honking car horn and other late-night traffic sounds of the nearby streets.

Where was the son of a bitch? Had he heard the shot and panicked and fled? Had he positioned himself elsewhere in the park—was he roving the midway, to see if I’d enlisted backup, despite warnings to the contrary?

If he’d seen me, he’d had plenty of opportunity to take a potshot.

I turned toward the barrel—which was positioned as if at the end of one of the giant Aladdin’s sleeves—and waved at Jackie to join me, which she did. At my direction, she took the lead, as we ducked around the side of the castle, and I moved in circles, gun fanned out, trying to be ready whatever direction the shit might fly from.

We were approaching the first, shorter fence, when the shot split the night open, a gun blossoming orange from just behind the castle building, across the fence—near the damn parking lot! The bastard had anticipated my move, was waiting for me.

I caught a glimpse of him, his pale round face like a mustached moon in the night, as he ran right at us, his dark suitcoat flapping, his hat flying off, and I yanked Jackie down off the fence, onto the grass, another round blasting, the bullet flying over us as the little man charged toward us.

I took her hand and almost dragged her away from that fence, back toward the park. Our pursuer had to climb that smaller fence and that would slow him down. Then I turned back toward where he was coming, with Jackie in front of me, and without taking time to aim threw two shots in his general direction, just to give him something to think about.

Then we ran again, Jackie stumbling, but I pulled her along as we fled down the midway, cutting to the right, in front of Aladdin’s, then rounding the lagoon, heading down the midway, back toward the looming roller coaster scaffolding and the front gates.

But Jackie wasn’t making it—she seemed about to collapse, sweating, tottering, and finally I had to duck with her between two shuttered stalls, a Skee-Ball and a penny arcade, and I knelt at the mouth of the little grassy alleyway, while she leaned against the side of the stall, next to me. I was watching the midway for our pursuer, but also sneaking side glances at my fading companion.

“I’m…sorry,” she whispered, out of breath.

“Shhh,” I said, .38 poised.

“They…they gave me a fix.”

“What?”

“Be…before you got here…so they…could handle me better…didn’t want one…didn’t need one….”

I knew I should keep my eyes on that midway, but I turned to her, and she looked terrible—ghostly white, perspiration pearling her forehead, despite the breeze. “Christ, Jackie—had you already shot up?”

She nodded, swallowed, her breath heaving; she seemed dizzy, as if about to pass out.

Had she overdosed? Surely that would have taken more immediate effect; but perhaps not—perhaps what she’d been put through…and was being put through…had taxed her system, her heart….

And who the hell knew
what
they’d slammed into her?

“I’ll get you out of here,” I said to her.

She summoned a weak little smile. “I’ll be…all right. I’ll be…all right.”

“I’m getting you help, baby.” And I didn’t mean just tonight.

“I’ll be fine…just let me…let me catch my breath.”

I heard movement and snapped my attention back to the midway and saw him—my round-faced assassin.

He wasn’t running—he was prowling, staying low, fanning his gun out now, as if it were a flashlight in the darkness, walking close to the trees, not on the midway itself, rather on the grass, behind the benches, near the train tracks.

If he would just keep coming, keep that same pace and direction, stepping into that shaft of moonlight, I could get a good shot at the son of a bitch….

The night cracked, like a whip, and the bullet stood the little assassin up straight, as if he were coming to startled attention—and then dropped him on his face.

From in back of the fallen assassin, Tim O’Conner came into view, his expression as stunned as if he had been the one who’d been shot…not the one doing the shooting.

I left her propped against the side of the booth, whispered, “Stay put, baby,” and she nodded, as I scooted out into the midway, .38 in hand.

I wasn’t sure whether Tim had seen me or not—I guessed not, because he seemed in a sort of trance as—
damn!
—he fired again, his revolver belching orange as he shot down into the figure already sprawled across the little train tracks.

“This is for Bill Drury, you lousy cocksucker,” he said, and then he put one in the back of the dead assassin’s skull; the sound was like a ripe melon hitting cement.

O’Conner stood there, his revolver limp at his side now, the acrid smell of cordite heavy in the air.

“Are you all right?” I asked him.

He blinked, swallowed, looked up at me with that stunned puss. “Are
you?
I heard the gunshot, and came running.”

Tim’s job had been to scope out the park, even as I was entering it, and take care of any sniper in the woodpile, or shut down any other sort of trap that might have been laid for me; after that, he was to position himself on the other side of the lagoon, close enough to Aladdin’s to maneuver himself no matter what took place. Shooting one of Bill Drury’s two assassins in the back was his own idea.

O’Conner seemed almost embarrassed, as he nodded down at what he’d done. “Jeez, Nate…I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” I said. “You through?”

O’Conner nodded, and I kneeled over the corpse, turning it over just enough to get at the guy’s wallet. I flipped it open and the metal of a badge caught the moonlight and winked at me.

“What the hell,” O’Conner said, leaning down. “Is he a cop?”

I nodded, reading the ID card. “Calumet City. I bet his dead partner’s got the same kind of tin in his wallet.”

This made an awful sort of sense: Tubbo Gilbert—the State’s Attorney’s investigator running for sheriff—did business with crooked cops all around Cook County, and the state for that matter. The Calumet City P.D. was a handy place to recruit a pair of contract killers whose faces would be unknown in Chicago.

O’Conner was saying, “His partner is dead, too?”

Distant sirens announced we had outworn our welcome at Riverview—the gunshots and the lights of Aladdin’s Castle had attracted neighborhood attention.

“Fill ya in later,” I said, trotting over to where I’d left Jackie, but she wasn’t leaning against the stall now—she lay prone on the ground.

“Shit!” Kneeling over her, I saw awful signs: the brown eyes were open and empty, a trail of spittle ran down her cheek. And she was motionless.

O’Conner was right there. “What is it? What’s wrong with her?”

I was trying to find a pulse. “I think she’s overdosed—help me with her! We have to get her to a hospital!”

He was bending beside her now, taking a closer look, touching her throat. “Nate—I don’t think…”

“Help me carry her!”

O’Conner’s hand gripped my shoulder. “Nate! She’s dead! We have to get out of here, unless you want to explain all of this—maybe to the State Attorney’s investigators? Leave her!”

I could have knocked his teeth down his throat for that, except for one thing: he was right.

She was dead.

“No helping her,” I said.

“What?”

“No helping her—not now.”

I kissed her forehead, and O’Conner and I went over a fence behind Spooktown, cutting through a parking lot over to Western Avenue. Blinking through tears, I was heading south on Western when the two police cars came zooming north, sirens screaming like riders on the Silver Rash.

We took a morning flight—six hours from Chicago to Mexico City on Mexicana Airlines—and rented a Jeep for the drive to Acapulco. My companion—a certain model and aspiring actress named Vera—was a cooing delight, her enthusiasm for the trip and bubbly personality going a long way toward rescuing me from the funk I’d been in for the last several days.

Arrangements for the trip had been simple; no passports were needed—just tourist cards, furnished through my travel agent—and I had press credentials, supplied by Drew Pearson, who had paved the way for me with the Associated Press office in Mexico City. As for Senator Kefauver, he made calls to the embassy in Mexico City, to arrange for a Narcotics Bureau agent stationed there to transfer temporarily to the consulate office at Acapulco. It seemed bureau director Harry W. Anslinger— unlike J. Edgar—was backing up the Crime Committee, all the way.

What I had in mind—and in due time I’ll let you in on it—would benefit both Senator Kefauver and my perennial journalistic employer Pearson, meaning I could hit them both up for paychecks and expense accounts.

Even in a funk, I looked after business.

But I had been depressed, no question, sick with sadness and shame. I had not managed to rescue Jackie Payne, though perhaps she was past rescuing: a girl who could go back to the likes of Rocco Fischetti, for drugs and show biz, might well have been past salvation. In time I would see that, but in the days—and, at times, during the weeks and months and even years ahead—I would suffer a gut-wrenching guilt thinking about abandoning that overdosed beauty queen in the grass at Riverview.

The worst of it would come late at night, when I convinced myself she may not really have been dead, and I had left her there, to die in the cold, fleeing to cover my own ass….

Other than remorse, however, repercussions for the carnage at the park never came. I never knew exactly how it was done— although I could easily guess who accomplished it—but the deaths of Jackie and those two Calumet City cops were covered up in a fashion both imaginative and thorough.

Jackie’s body was found in Lincoln Park, and the papers reported the tragic demise of a Miss Chicago turned showgirl turned drug addict. Hal Davis at the
News
uncovered her connection to Rocco, but no one came forward with the information that she and he were married. She was merely a “former flame” of the notorious Northside gambling boss. Her holy-roller parents saw to it she got a “Christian” burial back in Kankakee, and for about three days she achieved one of her goals: Jackie Payne was in the limelight, a star of sorts, albeit the tabloid variety.

The two cops were found in a ditch along the roadside in that stark industrial stretch north of Calumet City, in the shadow of a grain elevator. The chief of police pledged an around-the-clock search for the prime suspects, a stolen-car ring the brave detective duo had been closing in on; their records as cops were immaculate and they were buried as heroes with full honors. Their deaths were a further indication, said the press, of the peril faced by honest cops like these late Calumet City heroes and Chicago’s own William Drury.

Only a few spoilsports in the press—Lee Mortimer for one—pointed out that Calumet City was an Outfit stronghold of wide-open gambling, prostitution, and narcotics, a state of affairs only possible with police cooperation. “Putting their names in the same sentence as Bill Drury,” Mortimer wrote, “is a kind of blasphemy.”

I couldn’t help but admire the ability of Captain Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert to stage-manage these deaths, when he had to deal with whatever officers happened to catch the call out to Riverview. Impressive. Of course, as chief investigator of the State’s Attorney’s office for these many years, he had developed remarkable clout on all levels of state and local law enforcement.

Somebody needed to do something about the son of a bitch, but as Drury’s friend and “partner” (not really an accurate designation, but that’s how the press termed our business relationship) I would have been a prime suspect should a public-minded citizen put a bullet in Tubbo’s beer-keg head.

Anyway, I had other fish to catch.

Vera and I, enjoying the warm wind stirred up by the open-air vehicle, tooled across a mere dozen or so mountain ridges along the superhighway thoughtfully provided by President Alemán, who’d been pumping Acapulco as a tourist spot. I was in sunglasses, a straw porkpie, a blue-and-tan Hawaiian aloha shirt, chino shorts, and sandals; I’d given my reddish brown hair a blond rinse. Vera was in a pale yellow shirt with flaring collar and cuffs, knotted at her midriff above canary yellow shorts; she too was in sandals and wore sunglasses. She had her hair ponytailed back and it was streaming behind her.

“I’ve been in Mexico lots of times,” Vera the Texas girl said, eyes as wide as Orphan Annie’s, “but this is something else.”

My busty companion was right. The drive to Acapulco displayed itself in green breeze-stirred grass on rolling land that occasionally jutted rock and even grew terrifying precipices above tan beaches flecked with foamy white; sleepy little communities of houses and huts of pastel stucco and tile roofs; snarls of coral vine and fields of bougainvillea, mango clumps and banana trees and tropical flowers; boats with sails of white and pea green on a sapphire sea glimpsed beyond piers and wharves with silver nets drying in the sun. I could identify with the latter—I was fishing, too, remember?

But for the fringes of beach and a flat grassy patch just big enough for a landing field, Acapulco itself was an up and down affair—a land-locked harbor of cliffs and promontories and white-gold beaches, a tropical paradise of orchids and coconut palms and parrots. Radiating out of the unpretentious plaza, with its nondescript church, were humble residential streets, while on the heights above perched the seasonal villas of the well-to-do, like pastel stairsteps climbing the hills. Between the two worlds of everyday locals and wealthy foreigners—spread out on their different levels—pockets of shantytown, like fungus, infested hillsides.

La Mirador was the first of the luxury hotels built in Acapulco, back in the early thirties, followed by maybe a dozen more; some of the shiny highrise hotels had mob investors—Moe Dalitz, from Cleveland, for one—who’d got in on the ground floor, back when Repeal was around the corner. Like Havana and Vegas, Acapulco was the kind of resort area mobsters loved—for business and pleasure.

Built on Quebrada Cliffs, La Mirador was no highrise, rather a rambling affair, rich with patios and terraces, and very open, starting with a lobby that had no walls. The beach—though it was late afternoon when we arrived—was scattered with sunbathers, taking in the declining sun, and swimmers, splashing in the foam; Vera and I saw this from a terrace above, the yellow and red and blue of beach umbrellas like polka dots on the creamy sand. Our room, however, opened onto the swimming pool area, which overlooked a magnificent waterview, white waves emerging from the vivid blue Pacific to crash on enormous ragged rocks.

We’d arrived after the daily siesta, just in time for cocktail hour. We didn’t even change our clothes—the atmosphere was almost pretentiously casual; resorts like this, after all, were where the international set came to lounge in open-neck shirts and shorts and sandals. There wasn’t a coat or tie to be seen in the entire Mirador bar.

Which, as bars went, was an unusual one, hewed in the side of a cliff. We sat in our booth, as if in an opera box in a theater, watching the stage the lack of a wall presented, providing a full view of the setting sun using its entire paintbox to color the sky as waves dashed against the rocks a hundred and fifty feet below.

Vera had a
coco loco
(coconut milk, gin, and ice) and I sipped rum out of hollowed-out pineapple, a treat called a
pie-eye.
We also both popped quinine capsules, as a precaution against malaria…a real must in my case, since I still had recurrences from Guadalcanal.

Vera’s face had a wide-eyed, youthful innocence, as she drank in not only the gin but the magnificent sunset, and I dared to hope the almost Miss California’s ambition to make it in show business wouldn’t destroy her, as it had the late Miss Chicago.

Throughout, I’d been wearing my sunglasses, but soon my doing so would seem affected and might attract attention—the opposite of my intention. The blond hair, the dark glasses, the typically touristy clothing, and the context of La Mirador and Acapulco itself would keep me—I hoped—from being made by Charley and Rocco Fischetti, who were also staying in this hotel.

In fact, they too were in the Mirador bar, at this very moment, sharing a booth with two Latin dolls who I figured to be showgirls in the hotel’s nightclub, La Perla. In short-sleeve linen sportshirts, slacks, and the tans they’d developed, the two brothers were ignoring the dying sunset and the twinkling harbor lights coming alive. Charley, smoking a cigarette in a holder (like his adversary Lee Mortimer!), seemed to be enjoying himself, chatting up his date; Rocco sat sullenly, a cigar going, the smoke bothering the girl beside him, not that he gave a shit.

The way the booths angled around, I had a good view of them from across the room—and my dark glasses allowed me to gawk without seeming to. Neither Charley nor Rocco (nor their showgirls, for that matter) seemed ever to glance at us, which meant they’d been distracted when we came in, because every other normal man in the bar had noticed bosomy Vera.

Which was another reason to slip out of there.

I drove her over to La Riviera Hotel, a newer hotel with a nice layout, all roof garden and terrace; the food was a fancied-up but tasty version of Mexican, and—despite the business nature of our trip—we found ourselves flirting and acting like honeymooners. Vera could do that to you.

When we got back, I checked the bar and the Fischettis were not present—which was no surprise. They would almost certainly be in the nightclub, which provided a great view of the Mirador’s main attraction: the famed local boys who took heroic dives into the shallow inlet from the hotel’s high rocky cliff, risking their lives—nightly…four shows.

Vera and I caught the ten-fifteen show from a little spot of our own on the rocky hillside, below the balustrade that was down several sets of steps from the parking lot. We sat on the grass, hand in hand, watching as the boy—bearing a torch, and guided by newspapers set afire and adrift below—hurled himself forty feet into a breaker. Then he climbed the opposite, higher cliff, diving a good hundred feet into a narrow ravine lined with jagged rocks.

This went on for a while, and later the boys came around up on the balustrade, where tourists were watching, to collect coins and sometimes even paper money. Vera urged me to go up there and give them something, which I did—a buck—and Vera squealed at my generosity and gave me a big kiss.

She had her hand in my hair, looking at me like I was as beautiful a man as she was a woman—deluded girl—and she said, “I think I like you blond.”

“Thanks. Maybe you oughta try it.”

“Like Jean Harlow?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Maybe I will.”

We necked there on the hillside for quite a while; it was overwhelmingly romantic—I don’t think I’ll ever forget it, not the glimmering ocean in the moonlight, the crashing waves against the jagged rocks, or that incredible blow job.

That night we had room service bring us several
coco locos
and
pie-eyes,
and in our simply but nicely appointed room, the drapes to the pool area shut tight thank you, we drank and played pretend honeymoon and when we woke up the next morning, it was approaching eleven. Both of us felt remarkably good, considering how much we’d had to drink last night. We showered—one at time, which I feel showed remarkable restraint—and I got dressed in another aloha shirt, shorts, and my sandals, getting the Speed Graphic out of my suitcase.

“How do I look?” Vera asked, spreading her arms.

She was in a bikini, a couple of blue scraps that together might have comprised a decent handkerchief.

“Even my tongue is stiff,” I said.

That made her ooze delight, and she came over and hugged me and kissed me and put her Pepsodenty tongue in my mouth.

“Not now,” I said, incredibly enough. “We have work to do.”

I was registered under the name Joe Samuels. The hotel management had been alerted to the fact that I was a pinup photographer, and (we’d been told ahead of time) they had no objection to my taking photographs of my model, around the pool, down on the beach, anywhere around the hotel, in fact.

“You really think my picture will be in the papers?” she asked, batting her lashes over those big hazel orbs.

“Oh yeah. This will make Miss California look like a footnote in your portfolio.”

“You know, I can splash around in the pool, and lose my top. I can make it seem real natural.”

I savored the image for a moment or two, then said, “That I can’t get in the papers, sugar. You understand, this man…these men…they can be vicious.”

“But they do like girls.”

“I wouldn’t say they like them exactly. They like fucking them—and, later, they like batting them around.”

She was nodding. For all her cartoony sexiness, this was not a dumb girl.

“Nate, I understand—they’re dangerous. But you’re right there with me. My protector.”

That gave me a twinge. I hadn’t been much of a protector for somebody else, where the Fischettis had been concerned….

I peeked around the closed curtain, onto the pool area. Bright, sunny, beautiful—just another day in paradise. Beyond the little fence at the far end of the pool, enormous waves threw themselves on massive rocks, followed by massive waves throwing themselves on enormous rocks. Just for variety.

And out on that patio area around the pool—two of several dozen hotel guests either sitting around the water or down splashing in it—were Charley and Rocco Fischetti, in deck chairs.

I released the curtain, backed away, saying to Vera, “We just got lucky.”

“Really?”

“They’re out there—right now.”