Charcoal Joe (24 page)

Sitting in my dinette watching the darkness gather on the street and in the sky, I was reminded, as I often am at twilight, of the miracle of being a man. For me the journey was nearly over. All I had to do was give Joe's money to Jasmine and cross my fingers about Roberts, Redd.

The phone ringing did not surprise me. I turned my head to look at it on the kitchen counter but stayed in my chair at the eight-sided table.

It rang thirteen times and then stopped.

A minute went by and the caller tried again. Thirteen more rings and then the hang-up. That was a clear message, whether it was meant to be or not, so when the racket started up again I raised the receiver to my ear and said nothing.

“Rawlins?” a man with a deep voice said.

I maintained the silence.

“Don't get me mad, man,” the caller warned.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Hold on.”

The phone banged down and there was a powwow of men's voices in the background. The wait was about half a minute. I used that time to take a few deep breaths.

“Why haven't I heard from you, Mr. Rawlins?” Eugene Stapleton asked.

“I told you I'd call when I got something.”

“What you got so far?” His tone was both light and deadly.

“Tom Willow, a prison guard, stole the money and the jewels. He must have had a partner because by the time I got there he was dead and the money was gone.”

“You don't say.”

“The story about the murder should have been in the late edition. If not it'll be in the morning paper.”

“Well then,” he said, as ho-hum as a spider spinning his web. “I guess I better pack my bags and head for the hills, huh? Maybe I can get a job as a dishwasher in Columbus or a stevedore down on the Galveston docks.”

I believed that he had considered these professions recently…but something had changed.

“I don't know what to tell you, Mr. Stapleton.”

“No? Then let me tell you something. I got your partner right in the next room.”

It's rare for me to be caught off-guard about intelligence when on a job. I'm the detective. I know what happened and who was involved. My job is looking for the right skeleton key for the locked door before me; but not that night on the phone with the Cinch. What partner could he have meant, Saul or Whisper?

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm saying that you got the diamonds and I have the girl who can change them into cash.”

Irena Król. Either he figured out where she lived or she came to him with a desperate scheme to get enough money to disappear from a world tainted by her love of Tom Willow. Maybe Joe had called her and made some demand and she ran to Stapleton—the lesser of two great evils.

“Mr. Rawlins.”

“What, Gene?”

“You can't get anything near the value of those stones. People are looking for them and there's no nigger fence in the world that could sell them. I got the bank teller. You got the passbook.”

My first thought was to say yes and make a meeting with the man. He'd go there and I'd go to Jackson Blue's while Melvin Suggs kept the appointment.

“She told me all about you two,” Stapleton said when I hesitated.

“Oh?”

“She told me about how you were lovers and that you got her to betray Tom Willow. You must have put some serious voodoo on her.”

I couldn't go to Melvin. If he confiscated the money I'd have both the mob and Charcoal Joe after me.

I couldn't go to Mouse either; not with two million dollars under the table. Raymond was about to retire and that temptation might have overwhelmed even his love of Charcoal Joe. I had no desire to get involved in that kind of war.

“What do you suggest?” I asked.

“Why don't you come over here and we'll talk about it?”

“Why don't I just drive off a cliff and get it over with?”

The gangster chuckled.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Gimme the phone number where you're at.”

“Why?”

“Because I have an idea that will cover all the bases, but I'm not gonna stay in this house to wait for another visit with your men. You ask Willomena who she thinks would buy the diamonds and then we all meet at that bank or jeweler's tomorrow afternoon. I'll call later on tonight for the particulars.”

“That's a pretty good plan,” he said, impressed. “We split the money in the room and go our separate ways.”

“That's the gist of it.”

“Damn,” he said and then, after a full minute of silence, “Okay.”

I was hoping that Melvin was at work but no one answered his office line. So I called his home.

“Hello,” he said in a voice a full octave lower than was his norm. He didn't sound sleepy.

“That Mary keepin' you up, Melvin?”

“You know I love you, Easy, but this callin' every day has got to stop.”

“The gun work out?”

“Yeah. It killed the men down at the beach house and only his prints were on it, on the bullets too. The prosecutor dropped the charges against your client.”

“That must look pretty good on some report somewhere,” I speculated.

“It'd look better if I had the man who killed Willow. It'd be a month-long vacation in Bimini if I could find that money.”

“Can't help you there,” I said. “But you could do me a good turn.”

I heard a kissing sound and a satisfied feminine hum over the line.

“What, Easy?” an impatient Melvin said.

Once I had the address I went to the safe at the WRENS-L offices and withdrew six thousand dollars of my money. I also took a very special, unregistered .25 revolver and a powerful, steel-jacketed flashlight that Saul kept in his closet.

I considered calling Fearless but he'd done enough.

I thought about waiting until morning and going to see Joe but this, I felt, would ultimately put me at cross-purposes with him.

The second stop was the Torrance Arms Hotel on Wilshire a few blocks east of Western.

It was nine minutes after nine by the clock on the wall when I walked into the main lobby of the small hotel.

A pretty young Asian woman looked up from the registration desk. The tilt of her head and shoulders asked if I had a question, but before I could approach her a man said, “Mr. Rawlins?”

Five-eight at the height of his manhood, he was skinny everywhere except his stomach, which bulged out over the beltline. When buying his suit off the rack he had to decide whether he wanted the shoulders to fit or the jacket to button.

He decided that the open-sports-coat look best suited him.

White and blue-eyed, to match his lapis lazuli–colored suit, the man moved with the necessary arrogance that all policemen donned before going out in a world that both hated and feared them.

“Yes,” I said. “Officer Smiley?”

“Follow me.”

We walked up three flights of stairs to the fourth floor of the Torrance. The hall wanted to be fancy but the carpeting was thin and the teal walls needed a new coat of paint.

At the end of the hall was suite 401A. Officer Smiley knocked twice and then twice again.

Another detective, this one taller with more substance to him, opened the door. He wore a red polo shirt and blue jeans. The only way you could tell his affiliation was the badge dangling from the front of his belt and the gun in the clip-holster on his side.

He was standing in a small room made for entertaining. There was a dining table where the cops had been playing dominoes and a portable bar stocked with quart bottles of scotch, rye, and vodka.

“This him?” the new man asked.

Ignoring his partner, Detective Smiley pointed at a door to the left and said, “He's in there.”

I walked up to the closed, cream-colored door, considered a moment, and then decided to knock.

“Come in.”

Gregory Chalmers was sitting on a single bed wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of white painter's pants. He was leaning against the wall at the head of the bed watching a small television against the opposite wall.

There was a rerun of an episode in the series
The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp
playing. Wyatt and another man were facing each other at the denouement of all TV westerns, the showdown.

Seeing me sat Gregory up straight. He crawled on his hands and knees to the foot of the bed and turned off the TV.

Then he stood on bare feet and asked, “What are you doing here?”

I was so concentrated on my mission that I hadn't thought about how the mob lieutenant would react to seeing me. Less than a week ago he'd planned to kill me, and then, through guile and sheer luck, I capsized his entire life.

“I'd like five minutes to talk,” I said. “If I had ten I'd kick your ass too.”

He was the same blocky man that had me hog-tied and nearly slaughtered, but there was something different about him.

“Can I have a seat?” I asked, waving toward a blond chair that sat before a plain pine desk.

He lowered back down to the mattress and I pulled out the chair. He was watching me closely because we both knew that I wasn't kidding about the extra five minutes.

“Okay,” he said, “talk.”

“I want to know where you think the Cinch would be holed up with two or more.”

Gregory broke out into a grin, then closed his mouth and shook his head.

“No?” I said.

“Look, man,” he said. “I might talk to the cops about a thing or two if it means getting out from under serious felony charges. But why the fuck would I help you?”

That's when I realized what was different.

“You shaved off your mustache, huh?”

The quick switch of subject confused the bad man.

“You think a bare lip and some white clothes is a disguise?” I asked.

“They made me wear this shit” was his reply. “Said that if I ran, that I'd stand out in the crowd.”

“Three thousand dollars,” I said.

“What?”

“Three thousand and another three if the Cinch is where you tell me.”

“Bullshit.” His sneer was that of a man who used his lip hair for punctuation.

I reached into the right-hand jacket pocket of my gray suit and pulled out a stack of sixty fifty-dollar bills, fanning myself with them.

His square face froze like that of some exotic cat that had seen a multicolored bird land on a branch just above. He licked the bare lip and began to nod.

“Okay,” he said.

“I know what you're thinking, Greg. You think you'll give me the address of some old apartment or the house of a girlfriend you don't like anymore. Maybe you'll send me to the back room of some pool hall or bar where your friends would beat me to death just for being stupid.”

He squinted at the glare of the truth.

“But know this,” I continued. “If I don't find Stapleton by the end of the night I'll call suite 401A and tell Officer Smiley that you have a nest egg somewhere in this room. You and I both know what that fat-gut cop'll do.”

Greg's eyes opened wide looking for a way around the threat.

“But if I find what I need I'll be back tomorrow, at the latest the day after, and give you another three.”

After a long silence he said, “You know grabbing you like we did it wasn't personal, right?”

The address Greg gave me was on Oxnard Street a few blocks down from Sepulveda Boulevard. That was in Sherman Oaks, an upscale neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. The two-story house bordered a large park. Greg said that Eugene liked it that way so he'd have a quick exit if things went south.

“He's got a gun stashed at the bottom of an oak not thirty feet from the back fence,” said the man who once was going to murder me. “So if he has to jump out of bed and run quick he'll have a piece waiting.”

The back fence was wood and high but the gate was only secured by a simple iron latch.

If Stapleton still had his way there'd be two men with him; one for the back door and the other for the front. There was a stand of bamboo that partly blocked the gate.

Greg really got into the description once the money was in his hands.

I drove past the house at a little after ten that night. There was a single light on upstairs and a man on the front porch. The sentinel was sitting in shadow but I knew where he was by the now-and-then glow of his cigarette.

I drove three blocks down, stopping at a corner phone booth. There I dropped a dime and dialed some numbers.

“Yeah?” he answered.

“Mr. Stapleton.”

“Tomorrow at four,” he said. “There's a bank called Teller's a block and half up from Wilshire on Beverly Boulevard. It's after business hours but the guard will let us in.”

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I want business hours. I want bank guards and loan officers all around the place. You know I'm not goin' into any closed vaults after hours with a man like you.”

“I can't get in touch with him now.”

“I'll call you at ten tomorrow morning. Make it work.”

Before I could hang up a car horn blared.

“Where are you?” Stapleton asked.

“On the street. At a pay phone.” After a moment had passed I said, “Ten o'clock in the morning,” and then hung up.

After our brief conversation I took a drive over to Coldwater Canyon to check out the real estate. I needed to move soon, and I had to let Stapleton settle down after my ultimatum. I was pretty sure that the house I reconnoitered was his hideout; mostly because of the half-hidden guard and the dark Lincoln parked at the curb in front of the house.

At a few minutes before one in the morning I was moving through the dark trees of the park behind the Cinch's hideaway. I wondered yet again about Mama Jo's latest elixir.

The chemical impact of the tea was finished, but the memory of being able to concentrate on one thing while leaving other thoughts and concerns behind had somehow changed the way I experienced the world.

This was not necessarily a good thing. The only thought in my head was Stapleton and Irena. They both knew about the diamonds and he was using her to get at me. I had to do something about that, and if that something meant going into a white neighborhood and facing three armed men, then that was what I was going to do.

Other concerns, like good sense and safety, took a backseat.

Using the squat pocketknife, I teased the iron latch on the back gate open. Crouching down, I moved silently behind the bamboo and then across the yard, watching the back door as I went.

There was no guard outside and none that I could see through the glass of the back door—which was locked. Maybe the Cinch only had one man to help him.

There was a path down one side of the house that led to the foot of the stairs to the porch.

What I had going for me was that the sentry on the front door didn't use the porch light, thinking that he could see anyone coming from the street while they couldn't see him. But with smoking so much a second nature, he forgot that there was light there too.

I took the chance of peeking around the corner because I didn't think he'd see my dark face in the gloom. I'll never know if my supposition was accurate because the guard was asleep in his heavy redwood chair. He was slumped backward and snoring softly. I backed away and took off my shoes.

The plan was simple, if flawed. I gripped the lantern-end of my long-handled flashlight, tiptoed quickly up the stairs, and hit the guard as hard as I could on the pate of his head.

He slumped down a little more and I hoped that he wasn't dead.

I left my shoes where they were and tried the front door. I figured that the door was either unlocked or the sentry had the key in his pocket.

It was unlocked and I walked into an entry hall that led to a living room and then to the kitchen. In my right hand, gloved ever since I entered the park, I carried the long-barreled .25 pistol. I chose this weapon because it was unregistered and made the least noise of all my guns. I found a small lamp on a table and took the chance of turning it on.

It was a well-appointed kitchen with copper pots hanging from the wall, and a drain board filled with the supper dishes all clean and lemon-smelling. On the dining table there was an eight-ounce brown glass bottle with a white cloth next to it. I sniffed at the cap, felt a moment of dizziness, and put the sweet-smelling chloroform back down.

I tried to remember the week before on the first Monday in May, when I was happy and expectant, almost married, and innocent again.

Irena was in the house somewhere, most likely. So was Eugene Stapleton.

There was a Fisher AM/FM radio sitting on a window ledge next to the dining table. Across from there was a pantry door that opened into a room just large enough for a man to hide in.

Without giving it too much thought I turned on the radio and went into the pantry, leaving the door only slightly ajar.

“I Was Doing All Right,” by Dexter Gordon, was playing on the radio. It surprised me that Stapleton was a fan of black jazz.

There came the thumping sound of half a dozen barefoot footsteps and then, “Ira?” It was Eugene Stapleton calling from outside the kitchen, probably the living room.

A few more steps but then they stopped. I could see the table and lamp clearly. I wondered if Stapleton had worked out my simpleminded strategy; if he would shoot through the yellow door and end my career right there.

Then he appeared, stark naked, reaching for the radio.

“Ira,” he called out and I threw open the pantry door, pointing my pistol at his chest. He was very hairy with a powerful physique.

“Hold it right there, Cinch,” I said boldly.

On TV shows like westerns this always seemed to work. All you had to do was point the gun at an unarmed man and demand he surrender; he grumbles, puts his hands in the air, and you go home to a pot roast and the plaudits of lovers and friends.

But TV did not take into account forty-plus years of substance abuse and psychological trauma.

Eugene Stapleton's eyes opened wider than seemed possible and his face glowed red. He reached over to a shelf on his right and grabbed an honest-to-God meat cleaver.

Then he roared.

I don't mean that he cried or screamed or hollered. That man roared like a lion that hadn't eaten in a week.

But I had the gun. I was the man in charge.

Stapleton kept bellowing as he moved toward me. I shot him because of the sound, which was frightening down to the core of my being. I pulled the trigger four times, fell down to the left, and saw the cleaver dig deep into the doorway just behind where my head had been a second before.

Stapleton, bleeding from four wounds to his torso, tried to pull the small ax out of the doorjamb. The first pull almost succeeded but then his strength drained away. He fell to his knees and I got to my feet.

Stapleton looked up at me and with labored breath said, “Where did you come from?” He ran his right hand over his hair, streaking it with blood, then fell sideways onto the multicolored linoleum floor.