Jimmy the Stick (28 page)

“Hell, no, I ain't going to that joint. Who the fuck knows what happens there.”

Cloninger smiled.

Spence said, “Then we'll take it back to my place.”

Chink continued to bluster, but he knew Spence was right. Remote as it was, the little airport was still too public. Spence directed Chink's guys to load all the crates into the back of Dr. Cloninger's ambulance and then into the trunk of the Duesenberg. It took a bit of juggling to figure out how to fit everything in, what with Spence's trunk and suitcases to deal with too. Chink told the guys to put one of the crates in the Model A truck.

Spence shook his head. “That one stays with me.”

Chink looked at his four bruisers, then at Spence, Cloninger, Oh Boy, and me. He smiled and said, “Suppose I say different. What are you gonna do about it?”

I pulled the Detective Special out of my coat pocket and jammed the muzzle into Chink's ear.

Before I could pull the trigger, Spence said, “Don't kill him,” and produced the .45 from under his coat. “Put the trunk and the suitcases in his truck. The rest go in the ambulance and the car.”

The four guys hesitated until Chink gave his OK, and I let him go. Chink rubbed his ear and said, “Jesus fuck, I thought we was all friends here.” He got in the Model A.

Dr. Cloninger's ambulance left first. I sat in the jump seat facing Spence. He poured a stiff scotch and sat heavily back on the seat, legs sprawled out like he'd never stand again. He motioned me to close the glass to the front seat.

“OK,” he said, “I'm completely exhausted, but I've got to say something. The story about the oil fields, that was true. We do have wells coming in and I needed to see to them.”

“And while you were there,” I said, “you made a side trip to Mexico to pick up what looks to be a hell of a lot of heroin.”

“And morphine and cocaine. Do you have any idea how much all this stuff is worth now?”

“I've heard it's hard times for hopheads.”

“It's not like the old days,” he said, “when you could send a pretty girl to Europe with an empty steamer trunk, and nobody would look inside it when she came back. Last summer, they had held a big international convention to tighten up controls on the manufacture of all the hard stuff. That's what's makes it worth the risk now. The profits are unbelievable, twice as much as they were a year ago. Cloninger knows all about it. He knows the right people in German pharmaceutical companies. They're still willing to sell to him.”

Spence could tell I was skeptical.

“It's like booze. The real profit comes in when you cut it, and we're able to cut it more than twice as much as anyone else because of what Cloninger can do.

“Hell, I've tried it once or twice myself, it's not like anything you've ever experienced, really blows off the top of your skull. If we realize what I expect to from this one shipment, we'll never have to touch it again. This is a one-shot deal. We move our profits into Pennyweight Petroleum, and we're back in the oil business.”

He launched straight into his salesman's pitch. “I wanted to tell you about it from the beginning but Catherine and Cloninger said no, and if anything went wrong, you wouldn't be involved.”

“So that was all malarkey about kidnappers. You were worried about Chink.”

“Hell, no. You saw what Flora was like that first night. After she heard about the Lindbergh baby, I couldn't leave without another man in the house. She'd have been in hysterics. That's why I had Dixie do whatever he had to do to spring you.”

“Yeah, I'll bet you did.”

“Christ, it got to me, too. When I first heard about the kidnapping, it shook me to the core. If something like that could happen to the Lindberghs, then the whole world's gone crazy. But we've been working on this deal for almost a year, and we had too much money invested to back out. I was the only one who could bring the stuff back, but I couldn't leave my family unprotected. You're the only person I trust. That's God's truth.”

“Why bring Chink in?”

“Distribution in New York. We've got some well-heeled clients here and in New York, with Cloninger's practices. But Chink runs the biggest operation in the city. We had to have him.”

“And he demanded a piece of the action.”

“Of course.”

“So what's next?”

“Well, the deal is that we test and weigh the material in Cloninger's place, then calculate exactly how much we have available for sale when he finishes cutting and boosting the original goods. Chink gets twelve percent of that, then he can buy as much as he wants from us wholesale.”

“But Chink wants his cut tonight.”

“He'll listen to reason.”

“I think Chink wants it all. Did you know he'd be bringing along four guys? And don't forget Sammy Spats. He's waiting at your house.”

Spence drank and said, “Shit, shit, shit.”

The lights shone brightly around the house and the Pierce-Arrow was still parked by the front doors. I wondered how Flora and her buddies reacted to the beating Spats had laid on Titus. But there was no time for that after Spence and I got out of the car. Chink's guys unloaded the trunk. Spence tapped on the driver's window and said something to Oh Boy, who nodded and drove off toward the garage. As I went inside, I tried to decide between knucks and gun. Given the strange way Chink was acting, things were bound to go south. By the time I had the knucks on, it was too late to change.

Chink's guys brought in the two large crates from the trunk. I followed them in and saw that Catherine Pennyweight and Flora had been tied to the two heavy high-backed chairs. Sammy Spatola and Cameron Rivers were standing behind them.

It looked like Spats had done a quick job on the older woman. Her arms and neck were tied to the chair. Spats had taken much more care with Flora. Ropes were tight around her legs, arms, and torso. Her blouse was unbuttoned, revealing a torn silk slip, and her skirt was pushed up around her thighs. Her hair was loose around her flushed face, and she'd obviously been crying. When she saw her husband, she screamed. “Walter! He attacked me!”

Spats was adjusting his fly as we came in. A dull-eyed smirk was smeared across his ugly face. Cameron Rivers grabbed a fistful of Flora's hair, and pulled her head back. Her own face twisted into an ugly sneer and there was a smudge of white powder on her upper lip. The whole scene had a phony, staged feeling that didn't make any sense unless it was meant to turn Spence into an uncontrollably angry husband. If that was the purpose, it didn't work. He stayed calm.

Chink did not stay calm. I guess he was mad about the business at the airport because he spun around and tried to hit me. I blocked him with the cane, smacked his nose with my knucks, and he stumbled backward and fell when his heels caught at the thick edge of a rug. He was bleeding like hell, and yelled for Spats to shoot me. Spats shoved Cameron aside and pulled out his .45 and aimed it at me over Flora's shoulder.

Cloninger huddled by a crate, leaving Spence on his own in the middle of the big room.

Flora screamed, “Walter!” He started toward her but stopped when Spats turned the pistol on him.

“Stop it,” Spence yelled. “Get away from her. This is crazy. What the hell's going on? We made a deal. We've still got a deal if everybody will just simmer down.”

Mrs. Pennyweight croaked. “This wasn't supposed to happen.” There was a red welt on the side of her head where Sammy Spats had pistol-whipped her. He backhanded her again with the barrel of the gun.

Spence tried to stay cool. “We've got five million dollars here, and you've left most of the stuff in the cars. What the fuck are you up to? If we can't take it to Cloninger's place, at least move it into the house.”

“No,” Chink said as he got to his feet. “First we get everybody here, where I can see 'em.” He was trying to sound smart and dangerous. “Where's the kid?”

“Upstairs,” Catherine Pennyweight said, her voice just above a whisper.

“O'Naille, get him.”

One of the four drunken thugs stumbled up the stairs, and disappeared down the hall. We could hear doors banging open, and objects being thrown around. He came back to the second-floor balcony and said, “There's nobody here.”

Chink headed up the stairs himself and said, “Look again.”

As the Mick turned around, I heard the flat crack of a pistol shot and he collapsed. His legs folded, and the back of his head bounced off the railing as he landed in a heap.

The three remaining thugs panicked and ran outside, with Spence right behind them. No matter what Spats had done to his wife, Spence wasn't going to let anyone drive away with his goods. At the sound of the shot, Flora yelled again even louder and jerked against the ropes that held her. She kicked back hard enough that the tall chair hit Cameron Rivers in the face. Spatola tried to shove her away but he hit the chair and knocked it over on its side. Flora wailed. By then, I was moving too.

Caught halfway up the stairs, Chink froze. But I wasn't worried about him. Spatola was the one with a gun in his hand, and right then his attention was divided between the bleeding Mick above him and the screaming woman on the floor.

I heard the big boom of Spence's .45 outside, then his voice loud and angry, as Chink's guys hightailed it to the woods.

I gimped to the far end of the hall and the servants' stairs. The only place for me to get an angle on Spats was behind him on the second-floor balcony.

Right then, it didn't really matter what Chink, Spats, and Cameron were up to. Maybe they'd planned to take their cut as agreed and then changed their minds and decided to hijack the whole package. But what was going on? Sammy said that there was only Mrs. Pennyweight and the kid. Maybe he didn't know about the household staff. Maybe they were lying low, hiding in their rooms on the third floor, or in the garage with Dietz. If little Ethan was really gone, I had to assume that Connie Nix had figured a way to sneak him into the reading room.

But I couldn't worry about that. First, I had to shoot Sammy Spats.

I was slow going up the stairs. I could have climbed to the third floor to see if Connie and the baby were there, but there was no time. On the second floor, the stairs opened at the far end of the hall, past the room I'd been using. The shot that had nailed Chink's thug came from somewhere back here. I could smell the gun smoke. When I reached the other end of the hall, I could see the moaning Mick, alive but unmoving on the balcony.

And there were voices downstairs. Spence and Chink, I thought. Fine, let them hash it out while I look around. The doors to the bedrooms were all open. As I edged past Mrs. Pennyweight's suite, I could see that her closets had been opened, clothes thrown on the floor, mattresses overturned. The crib that had held little Ethan stood empty by the fireplace, with no sign of Connie Nix or the boy.

So who shot Chink's thug?

Maybe Connie had Ethan here and was trying to get him to the third floor when the guy showed up and she shot him. No, that was a pistol shot, not a rifle, but it might have come from Dietz's little .22. Where was the groundskeeper? No sign of him up here, nor of anyone else. But what the hell, anybody who shot one of Chink's guys was on my side.

I shed my overcoat, pulled out the Detective Special, and cocked it as quietly as I could. I kept my back against the wall as I moved forward to the end of the short hall and the balcony.

The voices grew louder, Spats saying, “Put it down or I'll kill her, I swear I will.”

He sounded like he was right below me. To get a look at him, I'd have to make my way around the guy who'd been shot. I might be seen but I was counting on Spats having his back to me.

The next voice came from Cloninger: “I can promise you a threefold increase over the best that those ham-fisted ape chemists of yours can put together.”

Then Spence. “And don't forget that as long as the merchandise is here, it's safe. We've got the cops in our pocket.”

Chink said, “But as long as the stuff is
here
, it ain't making any money. And that's what I need.”

Well, hell, what to do? If Spats hadn't moved since I last saw him, he'd be right behind Flora's chair. Probably had his gun on her. I'd be shooting almost directly down, with a slight angle toward the woman tied to that chair. Where should I aim? Tom Mix would shoot the gun out of Sammy's hand. But I wasn't Tom Mix. So where should I aim? Right at the top of his head. Then he's dead.

Could I still do this? I wasn't on a dirt road in the sticks, with guys coming at me out of the night. Like hell I wasn't. Nothing had really changed.

I leaned my stick against the wall and measured the distance across the balcony to the rail. I didn't hurry and I didn't hesitate. Two quick steps forward, half step to the left around the wounded Mick and the puddle of blood beneath him, one more short step, and I'd be at the railing.

One step, second step, then the side step, the short step, and I was against the railing. There they were. Chink sweating at the foot of the stairs, Cloninger close to him. Couldn't see Cameron Rivers. Spence was standing behind the crates, his pistol lying on one of the boxes, exactly where he put it when Spats threatened to shoot his wife.

She was on the floor. The chair was still on its side, and the rope seemed tighter around her neck. Her face was bright pink, her hair a mess, the blouse pulled open. She'd twisted around and she saw me as I aimed at Spats. He was leaning over her and staring at her tits, with the .45 inches from her head. The angle was wrong. I'd be shooting right at Flora from where I was. Even if I got Spats dead center, the bullet might go through him and into her.

I had to get to the other side of the bleeding thug's body.

I backed away from the balcony rail, making sure I kept my feet out of the blood, and got to the other side. The angle wasn't perfect but was good enough. At least I had a clear shot at Spats's right shoulder and head. The body was a better target, farther away from the terrified woman near his feet. I steadied myself against the railing, took a two-handed grip, and fired twice.