Neon Mirage (24 page)

Smiley was smiling, nodding. I didn’t know much about the guy, although Fred had mentioned this “business associate” of Ben’s had a rap sheet as long as a player-piano roll.

“Anyway, I want you to consider getting involved with me on a management level. An executive level.”

“That’s flattering, Ben—but I don’t really want to be doing business with the likes of Jack Dragna or even Mickey Cohen…”

“You won’t be. Those guys are involved in areas wholly outside what you would be. Nate, consider this…”

Glass crashed as gunfire rocked the room, shook Ben like a ragdoll, his right eye flying, nose crushed, and I hit the deck; so did Smiley, who yelped, a bullet nicking his arm. Rapidly, the gunfire, from a carbine, a .30-30 from the sound of it, chewed up Ben and the room, another slug entering from behind his head and turning his face into a mask of blood. Smiley was scrambling across the floor, like a crab, moving past the couch and the dead Siegel and from where I was plastered to the floor; he crawled inside the fireplace. I wish I’d thought of it.

Marble statues shattered; bullets ate patterns in the walls; the dowager in the picture took a slug; so did the nude with the wine glass. Meanwhile, Ben’s head rolled back against the divan as if he finally had found time to rest, but his body danced as more slugs came tearing through the couch behind him, cracking ribs, shearing muscle and organs.

Then silence.

There had been nine shots—a full carbine clip—and I waited, flat on my face on the floor, to see if another clip would follow.

Then Chick, in T-shirt and boxer shorts, was running into the room, a .38 in hand.

“Get down!” I yelled, and he had sense to.

A minute later, though, I moved toward the kid, staying low, and put my hand out. “Give me that—I’m going after them.”

“Who?”

“Whoever killed Ben. Give it to me!”

He did, and I crawled across the room and got up against the wall and edged along till I was next to the windows, that is the yawning place where the window glass had been. I thrust myself into that firing line, .38 held out in two hands, faced the jagged-edged former window, but there was nobody there: just the rose trellis beyond, where the carbine had no doubt been steadied.

I jumped out, feet landing on cement and glass, the latter crunching under my shoes.

I could see a figure moving across the enclosed back patio, by the pool; then he was hopping over the cement fence and into the alley, where a car no doubt waited.

Chick was looking out the window.

“Call Cohen,” I said. “Find out what he wants done, and then call the cops.”

“Why do it that way?”

“Because it’s what Ben would want. Do it!”

I didn’t wait for a response. I ran down to my Ford and got in and started it up. I did not turn on the lights. I sat and waited and watched the intersection of Linden and Whittier to my back. Seconds later a battered green Pontiac—very wrong for Beverly Hills—went lumbering by. In no hurry.

I was in no hurry, either. I did a slow, easy U-turn and turned past the small dividing island onto Whittier, a wooded, winding street, expensively residential. I kept my lights off. The Pontiac was up ahead.

Perhaps two minutes later, they turned right on Wilshire. I kept well back. At times I turned my lights on. Other times I pulled over and parked and waited while they (I could make out at least two shapes in the car) were stopped at a light. Westwood Boulevard was one such stop; Bundy, another. I kept at my quiet pursuit as Wilshire dropped ever so gradually to the ocean, through toney residential districts and blocks of apartment houses and a business district now and then. I kept thinking of that newspaper Ben had been reading, which had wound up bloody in his lap. The paper, given him courtesy of the restaurant’s management, had been stamped:
Good night. Sleep well with our compliments.

I wanted a smoke, but I didn’t have any. We passed a military cemetery at Veteran and Wilshire, an infinity of white crosses; soon we crossed through a sprawling complex of modern wooden buildings, a V.A. hospital. I’d been following the enemy—and I hoped that was who they were, I hoped my instincts about the battered Pontiac were correct—for fifteen minutes, now.

Maybe there were some cigarettes in the glove compartment, yes! Camels, and I didn’t even have to walk a mile for them. I lit one up, sucked the harsh smoke into my lungs. Sweat beaded my forehead. The night was pleasantly warm, rushing in my rolled-down windows, but my eyes were burning.

I got up fairly close behind them, in Santa Monica. Three of them. Three shapes. I checked the .38. Six bullets.

Resting the gun on the seat beside me, I dropped back, kept my distance as they led me from Wilshire to Palisades Beach Road and up Pacific Coast Highway. The world had become strangely desolate, suddenly; the lights of Santa Monica winked in my rear view mirror, civilization bidding me a wry farewell, but to my right was a cliff side, and to my left, not more than five hundred yards, was the water line, waves beating against the shore every twenty seconds or so, sounding distant and yet a roar. That, and the hum of the motor, was all that kept me company on this eerily quiet drive along the coast; oh, and the sight of the red rear lights of the car glowing up ahead. I was driving with my lights on, now, but I was back well enough, and there was some traffic out here to cover me. Not much, though. Not much.

Just past where Sunset Boulevard emptied out, a busy street dissipating down to the middle of nowhere, the Pontiac pulled over, off the road, onto the sandy shoulder. They had another car waiting there. A dark blue Plymouth parked there, newer than what they were driving, which was either stolen or black-market untraceable.

I glided past them, and saw them, bathed in moonlight, one man in a Hawaiian shirt, two others wearing sportjackets, getting out of one car, heading to the other.

Old friends. Small world.

The man who’d been driving was Bud Quinn, formerly a lieutenant with the LAPD, formerly an employee of the late Benjamin Siegel; it was Quinn wearing the Hawaiian shirt, of course. His two riders were boys from out of town who needed a savvy chauffeur like Quinn.

They were from Chicago. West Side boys. Like me.

Well, not quite like me. They were bookies. Name of Davey Finkel and Joseph “Blinkey” Leonard.

And this time they’d pulled off a hit without a hitch.

Almost.

I slowed, threw it in reverse and hit the pedal.

The car had screeched to a stop just next to them, as they froze in their procession toward their nearby second car, and their eyes were wide and white in the night as I leaned out the window and said, “Any of you boys know the way to the V.A. hospital?”

Widow’s-peaked Finkel was just opposite me, and I opened the car door into him, hard, throwing him back, hard, onto the sandy ground. I jumped out, .38 in hand and before I could tell them not to, both Quinn and Blinkey went for guns, Quinn to a .38 stuck in his waistband, Blinkey clawing under his unbuttoned jacket.

Quinn I shot in the head, right above the bridge of his nose and he went back hard in a mist of red and thudded in the sand, his gun in hand, at the ready. Blinkey, having trouble maneuvering his gun from his shoulder holster, thought twice and ran, heading toward the beach and the lapping waves. Finkel was still on his back, but was making a move for his gun; I kicked him in the head and he stopped.

I ran after Blinkey; he had his gun out, now, and was looking back at me, moonlight glinting off the glass of his glasses, and he was shooting back at me, the gunshots sounding strangely hollow in this big empty landscape. We ran in slow motion, the sand under our feet making a mockery of the chase, but when he reached the shoreline, he seemed to pick up speed, feet leaving impressions in the wet sand, foam flicking his ankles, and he was smiling crazily as he looked back at me and aimed and I put a bullet in one of his eyes, glass cracking. His howl could barely be heard over the crash of the surf, and he went splashing back into the sea, his feet on the sand, toes up, his body covered, and then uncovered, and then covered by the tide.

I was walking back toward my car when another shot rang out, and I felt a bullet hit me just above the left temple; it threw me back, on my ass, and blood streamed down into my face, into my left eye. I wasn’t dead or even dying; it had to be just a bad graze, and I was pushing up with one hand when I saw Finkel looming above me, his impressively ugly face a symphony of bushy eyebrows, thick lips, and facial moles, his rotten teeth pulled into a ghastly smile. His head was bleeding some, too, from where I kicked him; he wasn’t dead, either, or dying, and he seemed to take glee in pointing his automatic down at me.

I shot him in the smile and his teeth went away and so did he; he went back, hard, though the sand cushioned the blow, not that it mattered, as now he was dead, or dying, and I struggled to my feet, wiping the blood off my temple and forehead, getting sand in the wound, blinking, the sand under my feet slowing me down as I moved toward my Ford.

I got behind the wheel. Put the gun on the seat beside me. Lit up a cigarette. Sat and smoked and glanced out at the landscape, littered with bodies, turned silver and blue in the moon and starlight.

Then I drove away.

I drove north. By all rights I should have headed back to the city, but I drove north. I was bleeding. Blood was flowing gently, not gushing or anything, just trickling down over my eyebrow into my eye. I held a handkerchief to my head and drove with one hand. The ocean at my left remained a constant, reassuring presence; to my right the cliffs moved gradually back and became hills.

Finally there was a T intersection with a diner and a gas station and a phone booth. I stumbled into the latter, feeling woozy.

I had enough change to put a call through to Fred Rubinski, at home.

“What the hell is it, Nate?” he said thickly. “It’s after midnight…”

“Do you have Cohen’s number?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mickey Cohen’s number. Can you reach Mickey Cohen?”

“Sure, yeah. I suppose. I got his unlisted number in my black book. Why?”

“Call him and give him this.” I read off the pay phone’s number. “Tell him that’s where he can reach me. Tell him to call right away.”

“Okay, but what’s up?”

“They hit Ben Siegel tonight.”

“Jesus!”

“He was sitting on the couch in Virginia Hill’s place and somebody outside the window with a carbine shot him, good and dead.”

“Jesus. Jesus. Where do you fit in?”

“What you don’t know can’t hurt you. But why don’t you get dressed and go over and sniff out the situation. Protect my interests.”

“Well, Christ, Nate, just how do your interests need protecting exactly?”

“Just do it, Fred. Play it by ear.”

“Were you there when it went down?”

“I don’t know yet. That’s one of the things I gotta find out.”

“Oh, brother.” He paused. “You know, you don’t sound so good. Are you all right?”

“I’m on top of the world. Call Cohen.”

I hung up.

I sat down in the booth, my butt inside it, my feet hanging out onto the cinder parking area of the diner. Nobody tried to use the phone, or if they did, saw me sitting there and said the hell with it.

My teeth were chattering, and my head was burning. What was this, a fucking malaria flare-up? Hell of a time. Why wouldn’t my forehead stop bleeding? I didn’t feel so good.

The phone rang.

“This is Heller.”

“This is Mick. What the fuck happened?”

I told him.

“Fuck a duck! You nailed all
three
of ’em?”

“That’s right. So what’s the score? Do I go to the cops, Mick, or do you just clean up after me?”

“Nobody saw it happen? Not a soul?”

“Not a living one.”

“I got to talk to somebody.”

“Who? Dragna?”

“What you don’t know won’t hurt you, pal.”

Where had I heard that before?

The phone clicked dead.

I hung up, sat down and waited some more. I still felt punk; feverish. Was I in shock? Did I have a concussion? Did I still have a screw loose that triggered some kind of ersatz malaria flare-up after a “combat” situation? Totally sane people don’t get mustered out on a Section Eight, after all.

The phone rang.

“You was never there.”

“Never where, Mick?”

“Anywheres. Not at Siegel’s house or the beach, neither. In fact, nothing happened at the beach.”

“If you say so.”

“What was you usin’?”

“A .38 I got from Chick, at Siegel’s house.”

“You’re calling from where, exactly?”

“I don’t know. I’m not exactly a native. Somewhere near Malibu, I suppose.”

I read off the name of the diner and the gas station.

“Toss the piece in the drink,” Cohen advised, meaning the .38.

“Just that easy, huh? Then head back to L.A.?”

“No. Keep driving. Before long you’ll see a motor court. El Camino Motel. Don’t even check in. You’ll find unit seven unlocked.”

“I could use some rest,” I admitted. “But I want to get out of here soon as I can. I got a flight out Sunday morning.”

“Good, ’cause with that wound of yours, you got to duck the cops.”

“But, Mick, I was seen with Ben at that restaurant.”

“Right. So they’re gonna want to talk to you. Fine. Just get out of town before they have a chance.”

“Maybe I ought to just drive back to the city and check in with the cops…”

“You just killed three guys. You left the scene of a shooting. Two shootings. You was with Bugsy Siegel when he was hit. Any of this sound like anything you wanna be tied up with in court? In the papers? Any of this sound good for business?”

“No,” I said.

“No is right. Meantime, we’ll get a doctor for you.”

“I don’t need a doctor,” I said, blinking blood out of my left eye.

“Jack says you got to have a doctor. We got our own guy who don’t report gunshot wounds, you know?”

“It’s just a graze,” I said, but my legs were wobbly.

“Better safe than sorry. Now do it.”

“Okay,” I said, and hung up.

I walked back to the car, feeling shaky, wondering if my judgment was worth a fuck. Was this a set-up? Was I a loose end they were going to tie off?

No. That wasn’t like Cohen at all. He was a straight shooter, and he hated the Capone crowd like poison—and this hit had obviously gone down from the Chicago end, either at the request, or with the complicity of, the east coast Combination.

As I mulled this over, behind the wheel of the Ford, I realized I was feeling better. The gash at the edge of my forehead had clotted over; no more blood in my eye.

I drove easily, but my thoughts were racing. Cohen and Dragna were Ben’s partners. I’d play it their way. If I got tied up with another mob killing this major, I’d never shake the “mob guy” reputation. That was not what A-1 needed right now. That was not what Nate Heller needed, either. I was going to have another mouth to feed, soon.

The motor court was on the right of the highway, with a view of the beach, a dozen stucco cottages lorded over by a neon sign incorporating a clock with the cursive neon letters, el camino motel. I parked in front of unit seven, found it unlocked and went on into the small, clean room with its plaster walls and ranch style furniture. It had a phone, a radio, a shower. This much civilization under one little red-tile roof was comforting to me, about now.

I stripped to my T-shirt and went in the john and threw cold water on my face, looked at my head, where it was grazed, which was scabbing over. I sat on the edge of the bed, still feeling shaken, but better. Better. What had happened on that beach, perhaps forty minutes ago, seemed distant. Unreal.

The lamp by my bedside had a three-way switch; I turned it to its lowest setting and sacked out on the bed, on top of the nubby spread. I felt bone tired but couldn’t seem to doze. I wished I could call Peggy, the nearby phone tempting me; but I didn’t dare. It was two hours later back there, anyway.

I hadn’t even faced yet whether this was something I would tell her about; of course, she’d be glad to hear the men who shot her uncle—two of the three involved, anyway—were gone. I’d probably be a hero to her. Nice to get
something
out of killing three people.

Finally I did doze, but the knock at my door ended that.

I sat up, tasting the film in my mouth, and took the gun off the nightstand and answered the knock.

“I’m the doctor,” the man standing there said. “I presume you’re the patient.”

He was a thin, dryly tan man in his forties, wearing thick-lensed glasses, a yellow short-sleeved sportshirt and tan slacks, and carrying a black medical bag in one hand. He might have stepped off a golf course, but for that bag, and a drowsy air of having been rudely awakened for a house call.

“I’m the patient,” I said, narrowing my eyes, studying him, making way for him as he came in.

I knew him. I knew this guy.

“Why, you’re Nate Heller,” he said, pointing at me, smiling. “Well, small world.” He extended his free hand and I shook it, moving the .38 over into my left hand.

“Dr. Snaden,” I said, gun back in my right hand again. “I’d forgotten you were heading out to California.”

“Gave up my Miami practice, yes. Isn’t this the most amazing coincidence,” he said, shaking his head, heading for the bed, where he opened the medical bag.

“An amazing coincidence,” I said. “I haven’t seen you since Meyer House. Since Jim Ragen died.”

He was sticking a hypodermic into a small bottle, filling it up with clear fluid. “Jim was a fine man. That was a rough one to lose.”

“You know, frankly, Doc, I think you’re wasting your time. I feel fine. It’s just a graze. I’m not bleeding. Why don’t you just go on home and back to bed. Sorry to bother.”

I was standing by the door.

“Nonsense,” he said. “You need something for pain, and for tetanus. I have my instructions.”

I trained the .38 on him. “I bet you do. Now, just get the fuck out of here. You wouldn’t be the first son of a bitch I shot tonight.”

His eyes were big behind the thick lenses. “Mr. Heller—what in the world is wrong?”

“You were Jim Ragen’s doctor in Miami. Christ. I should have known. How stupid could I be? You were a mob doctor down there. You moved there from Chicago, didn’t you? Capone, Nitti, Fischetti, it’s been an Outfit convention in Miami for twenty years. With Jim’s Outfit ties, who else would his Miami physician be but connected?”

“This is foolish.”

“Put the needle in the bag.”

“Mr. Heller…”

“Put. The. Needle. In. The. Fucking. Bag.”

He put the needle in the fucking bag.

“All my precautions,” I said, smiling bitterly, “monitoring who goes in and out of that room. All the investigating trying to figure who could’ve poisoned Jim. Was it in the food? A salve some nurse rubbed on him? Hell, no. It was his own goddamn family doctor.”

He seemed calm, but there was nervousness underneath. “Maybe I
should
leave. Even though it’s clear you’re in shock from your trauma…”

“I heard you were moving your practice out to California. I didn’t think much about it, at the time…but I’m thinking, now. I’m thinking your big-money Miami patients are thinning out—first Nitti up and dies, and then Ricca and the rest go to stir. And I hear a lot of the east coast boys are spending time on the west coast these days…business interests, homes in Palm Springs, and so on. Moving your practice out here starts to make sense.”

“You’re obviously very…disoriented right now, Mr. Heller…”

“This isn’t Cohen’s work, is it? Dragna, then? I don’t know much about him, though I’ve heard he has some east coast ties. So maybe that makes sense, too. But he slipped up sending
you.
You didn’t know it was me who was wounded out here, did you? And whoever sent you didn’t know that the two of us had run into each other before. Christ, did you do Cermak, too? You were one of his doctors. This is a consultation that’s been overdue for about thirteen years, Doc…”

He swallowed. Smiled, in a twitchy way, cracking his parchment tan. Said, “Perhaps I will just go. You’re a very confused man. I do recommend you see a physician tomorrow, as soon as possible.”

“Hey, heal your fuckin’ self, Doc.” I gestured toward the door with the gun. “Now get out of here before I give you the cure to everything…”

He snapped the bag shut, swallowed again, nodded to me, and moved quickly toward the door; as he opened it with one hand, he swung the black bag with savage speed and force and clipped me right on the head, where the wound was.

Gun flying from my fingers, I hit the wood floor on my back with a teeth-rattling thump, blood running down my face, into my eyes, consciousness slipping away…

Something was squeezing my arm.

I opened my eyes; I was still on my back, on the floor. A rubber strap was around my left forearm, tight, my veins standing out like a bas-relief map.

Thin, tan Snaden was leaning over me, looking like a mad scientist, eyes wide and intense behind his thick lenses, sweating, hypo in hand; with his thumb he tested it, and a little squirt of the stuff he intended for me ejaculated prematurely.

I watched this through slitted eyes; his big eyes behind the glasses were looking at my arm, one hand cradling it, as his other hand with the needle descended.

My other arm was free. And I lashed out and latched onto his wrist, gripping as hard as I could; he was surprised, and in the moment his surprise gave me, I brought up my knee and kneed him in the stomach. It sent him back, rattling into some furniture, knocking a chair over, and he hit his head; it stunned him. He wasn’t unconscious, but he was good and goddamned dazed. He was that way when I sank that needle into his own arm, pushing the plunger in all the way, covering his mouth with my hand to stifle his scream.

I don’t know what was in the hypo.

I only know it took him less than three minutes to pass out. He spent those three minutes weeping—“What have you done, oh God, oh God what have you done”—a pitiful pile of humanity on the wooden floor of the motel unit, a sack of flesh full of angular bones tossed up against an upended chair. Only I didn’t pity him. He had killed Jim Ragen and God knows how many others. And he had tried to add me to his list of patients who hadn’t pulled through.

He had some cigarettes in his breast pocket. I took the pack, Camels again, and shook one out and sat on the edge of the bed and smoked it, feeling calm; blood was caked on my face, but it wasn’t running down from the wound any longer. My heartbeat was slowing to normal. I didn’t feel feverish. I didn’t feel woozy.

I felt just fine.

After the smoke, I tested for a pulse in his neck and there was none. I went in and splashed some water on my face, washed the blood off. Then I wiped the room of prints, leaving the .38 in his medical bag; perhaps he’d get tagged for what I’d done on the beach; perhaps this would be written off as suicide. That was up to the cops, and the mob boys who threw the party.

I drove to another motor court, five miles up the highway, and checked in and slept till three the next afternoon. At a nearby diner, where I convinced them to serve me breakfast, I read the papers and Ben’s death was all over them. I wasn’t mentioned in any of the accounts.

Nor was Dr. Snaden’s death reported. Nor was there any mention of two West Side of Chicago bookies and one former LAPD police lieutenant being littered along the beach like so much bloody driftwood.