Shakedown (10 page)

“I’ll phone.”

I got up and stretched and decided I was hungry. I ate at Mike Hartoun’s, shish-kebab and pilaff and madzoon: Armenian food and good.

Then I came back to the office and went through the accounts receivable. Everything there was dead but it wouldn’t hurt to make one more try. I sent out some strong letters. Then I went through the records I didn’t want to leave behind, including some pay-offs that might prove embarrassing to explain. I made a big stack of these and put them in a cardboard box to carry to the incinerator.

There was a chance I’d get rooked all around in this deal coming up, but it was a small chance and I wanted to be ready to leave as soon as I had the money. Charles Adam Roland had cut his expectations to a hundred and fifty thousand and that was still a lot of money—for one man.

I went through my bills and I made out some checks. It would be silly to jeopardize the kind of life I intended to have in the future for some penny ante bill I didn’t pay. Lots of these collection agencies were national and it’s amazing the amount of routine investigation they’ll put into a small account.

I took the letters out to the mail drop and then came back for the records. The incinerator chute is at the far end of the hall, and I was there unloading the papers in bundles the opening could handle when I saw the big boy coming up the hall toward my office. It was Manny Rodriguez and he had the look of a cop who’s about to make a pick-up. It wasn’t until that second that I remembered the bloody handkerchief in my jacket pocket.

I had it out and concealed by a handful of papers as Manny saw me and started my way. I dropped it in the chute and slammed the door and reached for another handful of papers as Manny came to a stop a few feet away.

“Moving?” Manny asked.

I shook my head. “Just burning old bills. What’s on your mind, Manny?”

“McGill wants to see you. I’m to bring you in.”

“What does he want to see me about?”

“He didn’t say. Let’s go, Puma.”

“E
ASY, MANNY,” I SAID
. “This isn’t a police state, yet.”

He looked at me coolly. “Are you resisting arrest? I’m armed, you know.”

“Am I being arrested?”

“You’re being picked up for questioning. Are you going to resist that?”

“No. Have I time to get rid of the rest of this?”

He nodded, leaned back against the wall and lighted a cigarette. I took my time with the papers, trying to figure what McGill would want. They couldn’t have found Deutscher; it didn’t seem likely. Manny wouldn’t have come here alone.

McGill’s face was stone when Manny and I came into his office. I was on the other side of the fence again, and McGill was letting me know it.

“Sit down,” he said to me. And to Manny, “I won’t need you further.”

Manny’s face was as cold as McGill’s when he went out. The captain waited until Manny had closed the door before turning back to me.

“What’s going on, Puma?”

“I don’t follow you, Captain. You’ll have to make the question more specific.”

“What I should do is throw you in the can and let you sweat for a while. You know, Puma, the only reason I’ve been easy on you so far is because I had so much regard for your father.”

“Cops killed my father,” I said.

“During a—a riot. And the officer who fired the shot is no longer with the Department. I wasn’t speaking for the others, anyway. I said
I
admired your father.”

I made no comment.

“You must have been a great disappointment to him.”

I said nothing.

He paused. “And now Rickett thinks he’s being framed.”

I gave the captain my steady, honest glance. “By me?”

“By you or Deutscher. We haven’t been able to get hold of Deutscher this morning. Know where he is?”

I shook my head. “Why should I, Captain? He’s no friend of mine.”

“You’ve been seeing enough of him, lately. You worked with him on that Condor case, I hear.”

“You’re not running your section on rumours, are you, Captain?”

“Well, did you work with Deutscher on the Condor case?”

I shook my head. “Not for a minute. It was a messy, dirty deal, and I wouldn’t have had a part in it if Deutscher had asked me to. But he never even approached me on it.”

“That isn’t what Deutscher said.”

“If he said anything else, he’s a liar. And I’ll tell him to his face, in front of you, Captain.” I shook my head sadly. “I used to think the old man was punchy when he talked about police persecution. I see his point now.”

The captain’s smile was right out of the deep freeze. “Do you think we’ve been persecuting you?”

“Haven’t you? How about Manny? Just because he’s soft on some Mexican whore, he comes gunning for me because he thinks I knew where she was. Deutscher told me she was dead; I passed the information along to Manny, like a legitimate operative. He comes back to me swinging. How was I to know that Deutscher got his information from some quack and the quack was lying?”

“All right. We’ll say you’re clean, there. Now do you want to talk about Moose Jelko?”

I stared at him. I wondered how closely I’d been watched. How did they know about that fight unless they’d followed me? And if they were watching me, had they watched me walk into Deutscher’s this morning?

I said calmly, “How did you hear about him? Got a man on me, Captain?”

He didn’t answer.

I said, “Moose is a punch drunk bum, and he was annoyed because I was checking a friend of his. Moose was also very drunk that night.”

“I see. Who were you checking?”

“Manny knows,” I said. “I met him there—Little Phil.”

“Checking him for whom?”

“For Jennings, for Rickett’s attorney.”

Silence, and then, “What did you learn?”

“Just as much as Manny did, nothing. I learned something else though, but not from Little Phil.”

McGill nodded, waiting.

I took a breath. “This last Rickett episode looked like a frame to me, just like it does to you, Captain. I think Rickett is the killer, all right, but he was probably drugged or influenced under alcohol to go up there and get Target. But that doesn’t bring me into it, does it?”

“Not unless you were involved in the Condor case and you claim you weren’t. Have you any better suspects, Puma?”

“One,” I said. “A name given to me by Deutscher, though the bastard probably won’t admit it, with all the lying he’s already done about me. And it’s a name I should be protecting.”

McGill stared at me. “Do you mean Jennings, by any chance?”

I nodded.

“But why?”

“Ask Deutscher. Why didn’t Deutscher get the job investigating Little Phil? He’d worked for Jennings on the Condor case. My guess is that Deutscher was leery of this one and suggested my name to Jennings, hoping to stay clear of it. Jennings, I heard, has been playing the ponies. And Jennings handles all of Rickett’s money. And Jennings probably knows the inside of the Condor case. What a sweet set-up for a guy tapping the till. Then he puts me on it to see if I can find a leak. If I can’t, he might assume the police can’t. So Rickett goes to the gas chamber, leaving no relatives.”

McGill took a deep breath. “You think there’s a tie-up between Jennings and this Little Phil?”

“There must be a tie-up between the person who framed Rickett and Little Phil. If it’s Jennings—” I shrugged.

McGill was thoughtful. “And you don’t know where Deutscher is?”

I shook my head. “A couple days ago, he told me he was going up to ’Frisco for a week. But how can you tell with a liar like him?”

“’Frisco, eh? He didn’t say why?”

“He said something about Josie Gonzales being up there. He had a yen, you know, for Josie. He lived with her for quite a while after that Condor case.”

“This is all new to me,” McGill said. “These are things the Department likes to know about, Joe.”

“I’m not working for the department,” I reminded him.

“Nor with us, the way it looks.”

“I can’t be
with
you when you’re
against
me,” I explained. “I’ve got just as much pride as my old man had. And I’m not an informer.”

“What makes you think we’re working against you?”

“You put a man on me, didn’t you? How else would you know about Moose Jelko?”

“We didn’t have a man on you. If you read the gossip columns, you’d know where we got the Jelko story. It made all of them.”

“All right, sir,” I said. “I apologize.”

They hadn’t had a man on me. That was the important thing.

“There’s a possibility,” McGill said, “that I owe you an apology too, Joe. If this tip on Jennings proves to be sound, I may owe you more than that.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Captain,” I told him. “But Jennings does. One day’s pay with expenses. So don’t tell him I’m giving you any leads.”

McGill smiled for the first time. “Oh, you bastard. All right, Joe. Take off. We’re going to get along, aren’t we?”

I smiled at him. “I hope so. It’s more important to me than it is to you, sir.”

I stood up and he threw the last question. “You’re not sure, are you, that Josie Gonzales is in ’Frisco?”

I shook my head. “It’s another of Deutscher’s stories.”

“I see. All right, Joe. Luck.”

I’d walked in as “Puma” and out as “Joe” but his attitude didn’t fool me. He was still incorruptible McGill,
all
cop.

But it hadn’t exactly been a wasted trip. They’d be looking for Deutscher in ’Frisco and spending their time on Jennings in town. And the captain might begin to wonder about Manny’s regard for Josie.

Rodriguez was standing in the hallway when I went through. He didn’t even look at me. He’d been my one friend in the Department, but I wouldn’t need friends in the Department much longer. Not in this town.

I went back to the office and cleaned up the rest of the records. The incinerator wouldn’t be lighted until tomorrow morning, but even though some of the records might incriminate me, I doubted if anyone could make a jury-proof case out of them. And there was no reason for the law to be checking my records now.

And then I thought of the handkerchief, but it wasn’t incriminating until they found some more blood to match up with it. And that too would burn with the records in the morning.

Even if they should suspect me of killing Deutscher, I wouldn’t be here for questioning. Unless they should find him soon. And there wasn’t any reason why they should now if they assumed he was still in ’Frisco.

The furniture in the office wasn’t worth worrying about and it would look bad if I tried to sell it, once I knew the Clifford pitch was going through. That was a loss I could absorb.

I went home after cleaning out all the files and started to get ready for a shower when I saw the Cad pull up in front. I went to the door to wait. Charles Adam Roland was in navy blue today, a soft flannel suit, beautifully draped and cut. The shirt was white oxford, the tie a silver and blue striped bow.

My shirt was off and he noticed that. “Didn’t interrupt anything, I hope?”

“Just a shower. How are things breaking?”

“You’re coming up for dinner tonight. You’re the investigator Jean hired, remember. We’re pretending Jean is thinking of putting some money into this scheme.”

“And she hired me to check her own father?”

He nodded, smiling. “That’s the big angle in all con games, as you know. Suspicion between the inside man and the roper. With the inside man finally winning out in the mark’s confidence.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said. “The idea is, as I see it, that though I could find nothing wrong with your firm, I’m still suspicious.”

He nodded. “Unreasonably so.” He tried to make the next remark sound casual. It would have if I hadn’t been expecting it. “You haven’t seen Deutscher, have you?”

I shook my head. “Not today.”

Roland looked faintly worried. “We had an appointment. I hope nothing—” He didn’t finish.

I said easily, “Almost anything could happen to Deutscher. He’s double-crossed so many people, I’m surprised he’s stayed out of the hospital this long.”

Roland chewed at one corner of his mouth. “Deutscher—? Really? Well, at any rate he’s solid with the law.”

“They’re looking for him right now,” I said, “and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they put him away for a spell.”

Roland really looked worried, now. “You’re serious?”

“I’ve never been more serious. How an operator of your calibre ever trusted that slob is beyond me.”

Roland smiled. “I get it. You two had a fight about something.”

I shook my head and sat down on the davenport and started to take my shoes off.

Roland said, “Dinner’s at seven. Remember, I’ve options on this stuff so even if Miss Clifford should check that, we’d be clean. The uranium angle is purely speculative but so is the whole business world. All we have to do is play it straight.” He paused. “And steer clear from any violence. You’ve had two fights so far, one with a police officer. We can’t afford that kind of temper, Puma.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m a cringing violet from here in.”

“Fine. And tonight you’re an opinionated, right wing, smug private eye suspicious of all cultured people.”

I nodded and made a circle of my thumb and forefinger. “I’ll make you proud of me.”

“I’m sure you will. Well, see you at seven.”

He waved in his jaunty way and left me. I wondered how jaunty he’d be when he learned Deutscher was dead. Or that I knew he and Deutscher had planned their steal at Playa del Rey last night. Even that probably would only stop him for a second. Words were his business, and poise and the big front.

I took my shower and shaved. The lip had gone down; it was hardly noticeable now. I put on my shorts and a pair of socks and pulled the bed down out of the wall. I lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure all the angles in the deal and where I was likely to get hooked.

Then I got up and found a huge, detailed map of L.A. in the bureau. I checked all the roads leading to Playa del Rey. My best bet, I decided, would be to take the Coast Boulevard out, after getting the boodle. Going back on Culver Boulevard would be the expected maneuver, and that’s the way the police would come if Roland should be silly enough to call the law—after I robbed him. And then I remembered there was no phone in the place. He couldn’t phone for the law and anything else would take too much time.