Shakedown (3 page)

He stood up. “All right. You still don’t trust me, eh, Joe?”

I shrugged. “You’re solid. With the police and with a lot of big names in this town. I’m not. I’m the logical stooge. You’re always covered.”

He stood there, looking down at me, saying nothing.

I stood up and went with him to the door. There he asked, “How long will it take you to decide?”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said.

“Good enough. Joe, never ventured, never gained. You’re not going to get any big money until you start thinking big. And then you can hire some stooges of your own.”

That was his exit line.

I put the empty bottles in the case and went to the window to watch his Plymouth drive off. I wanted to be sure he was gone. Then I got out the phone book and looked up Miss Jean Roland.

She answered the phone. I said, “I don’t know if you know me. My name is Joseph Puma.”

“I’ve seen you around, Joe. Are you joining our little group?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “My ethical standards are so high, and—”

She chuckled. “That’s what I’ve heard. Where can I meet you?”

“It wouldn’t be wise to come there?”

“Willi’s due back any minute. It wouldn’t be wise.”

“Willy—?”

“Willi with an ‘i,’” she explained. “Miss Willi Clifford. Cute?”

“In that case, we could meet at my office. It would take me a few minutes to get down there.”

“You’re home?”

“That’s right.”

“Give me the address and consider me on the way.”

I gave her the address and checked the liquor supply. I opened the windows to get the smell of Deutscher’s cigar out of the place. Then I changed my shirt.

She came in one of those new big Chrysler convertibles. She wore a quilted skirt and one of those off-the-shoulder peasant blouses, no stockings and handwoven leather sandals. She had her wheat-colored hair in a horse’s tail, a fashion of the moment.

She looked about seventeen years old, the village virgin. She was a long way from that, if one can believe rumours. She came into my little rat-trap and looked around.

“The penalty for my honesty,” I said. “What would you like to drink?”

She sat on the rattan davenport and the quilted skirt spread in a semi-circle. “Anything containing alcohol. What have you?”

“Bourbon, Scotch, beer. Ginger ale, seltzer, water.”

“Scotch and water will do. Do you like that Deutscher? Do you trust him?”

I was on the way to the kitchenette when she asked that, and I stopped to turn and look at her. Trap? I asked, “Don’t you?”

She shook her head. “Those pompous slobs always grate on me. To tell you the truth, Joe, I’m not sure I trust Dad either. If you get into this, we’re going to need to keep an eye on both of them.”

“I see. You trust me though?”

She smiled. “So far. Deutscher wasn’t my idea. Dad invited himself into the situation and then brought Mr. Deutscher in later. That’s when I started screaming for you.”

“And where’d you hear about me?”

“From Alan Templeton, for one.”

Templeton was one of the big producers and I’d pulled his daughter out of a mess.

“You heard from the right man,” I said.

“And then, of course,” she added quietly, “I’ve seen you around, and I kind of like your looks.”

“I’ll mix the drink,” I said.

She chuckled. She had the damndest chuckle, throaty and almost suggestive—if such a thing can be. There was some tremble in me as I mixed the drinks.

I brought a pair of them back and handed her one. I said, “Tell me about Willi Clifford.”

“She’s a beautiful girl. She’s in love with me. If she thought I was in love with you, she’d hate you.”

My drink wobbled in my hand. I looked seriously at the floor. “Why should she think you’re in love with me?”

“So she can hate you. So when you give your report on the Nevada Investment Company, she won’t believe it. She’ll want to invest in anything you don’t approve of.”

“That’s not very reasonable.”

“Most Lesbians aren’t.”

“I see. In other words, I’m the heavy. And your lover.”

She nodded, watching me. “Bad role?”

I looked at her directly. “I guess I can handle it. Who handles the money?”

“Dad. Which is one of the weak points from our view. You see, originally, I was going to try and pull a simple little blackmail scheme on Willi’s papa. My dad pointed out the crudity of that, and also the danger of fighting a man as important as Ames Clifford.”

“You mean, you were going to use the Lesbian angle for blackmail? But your dad prefers some con man’s game, I suppose?”

“That about sums it up. Of course, there’s this: because she is the way she is, she likes
me,
not my dad. He’s going to have to do a selling job. But because she is what she is, she also would shun publicity if things went sour. That’s a help.”

“Definitely,” I said. “Your dad’s got the right approach.”

“He would have; it’s his business. But, Joe—he’s so damned clever. And so is Deutscher. We’re more direct, aren’t we? We’re no angels, but we’re not clever.”

“Maybe we won’t have to be,” I said. “You’re holding the aces. Your attraction to Willi is the basis of the whole con and they need you.”

And I need you.
I thought. There’d never been a time since I was thirteen that I didn’t need a woman. And I’d never had one with all the attractions this woman offered. I took a deep breath. “But nobody really needs me, in this.”

“Mix us another drink,” she said, “and we’ll talk about that.”

I mixed another drink and put some Fats Waller on the record player and went over to close the Venetian blinds against the glare of the day.

Three drinks later, I locked the door and pulled the bed out of the closet. Vintage: fine. Better than the rumours.

Quiet in the warm room. Relaxed, holding hands. She said softly, “That’s your ace, your attraction for me.”

“That’s one ace,” I agreed. “Very few hands are won with one ace.”

“You don’t trust me, Joe?”

“If I come in, I’ll have to trust you. And I’m coming in.”

“Good. I feel better about it now. I suppose I should get dressed and get out of here. Willi will be worrying.”

“Tell her you were with me. We might as well start the worm boring.”

“I’ll think about it.” She sat up and looked down at me thoughtfully. “One of the things I heard about you is that you’re woman-crazy. Is it true?”

“It has been up to now. I think you could keep me busy.”

She smiled and leaned over to kiss me. “We’re going to get along, aren’t we?”

“I’m sure of that.”

“And after we get our cut of this boodle, couldn’t we take a vacation? Say—Palm Springs?”

Typical woman’s reaction. Now she thought she had a lease on me. I said, “When we get the boodle, right.”

“You think I’m a tramp, don’t you?”

I shook my head, smiling at her.

“Well, I am. It doesn’t matter what you think. But, Joe, if we get what Papa thinks we can out of this pitch, we can live high.” She was dressed now and she sat down on the edge of the bed. “If I could only trust that pair, Papa and Deutscher. We’ll watch them, won’t we?”-

I nodded.
And you, too, I’ll watch,
I thought.

She left and I went in to take a shower. She’d left her dad’s address with me, and I was to go over and see him to get my briefing.

I knew the man by reputation only. He was considered one of the slickest operators in the big con. He would be playing the inside man in this, which meant he’d probably handle the money. And if he was getting out of town after the pitch anyway, what was to prevent him from getting out before the money was split? Nothing. Nothing but the ever-watching eye of Joe Puma. That would be some pair to watch, Deutscher and Charles Adam Roland. I still was leary about the whole set-up.

The bathroom was full of steam, and I opened the rear window and looked out at the geraniums the landlady had bordering the rear yard. I thought of McGill’s remark about the rats and the geraniums and laughed. The trouble with McGill: he was just too slow for a fast town. The rats didn’t bother me.

I phoned the number Jean had given me and got a luxury hotel in Santa Monica. I asked for Charles Adam Roland and luckily caught him in.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Glad you’re with us, Mr. Puma. I’ll be in Hollywood around seven tonight. How about dinner at the Monterey Plaza, and we can talk it all over?”

“In the lobby at seven,” I promised.

I made the bed and rolled it back into the closet. Then I phoned Jennings and told him about my visit to Little Phil.

He asked, “How did the law learn about Rickett being there?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Jennings. They have all kinds of sources for their information. That Little Phil would be a tough nut to crack, though.”

“You sound like you don’t want the case,” he said. “What’s happened, Puma?”

“Nothing. I hate to waste a client’s money. I want you to know that I haven’t the police department’s resources and they’re already working on the Little Phil angle.”

“But they’re not working for me,” he answered. “They don’t report to me when they learn anything.”

“No,” I agreed, “they don’t. The detective who’s on it is a friend of mine, though. I’ll keep in touch with him and also check this Little Phil’s background, if you want.”

“I want. Stay with it, Puma.”

Well, why not? I got paid for my time, not results. Since I’d learned that Josie was dead, I had no personal interest in Little Phil. But Jennings was an influential man and I always like to stay on the right side of them. And if Deutscher was right about Jennings, the less I learned, the better he’d like it.

I went to my office, but there was nothing there but a few bills and some ads. I got out my checkbook and studied my financial position, deducting the bills, and decided the bills could wait.

Deutscher had said you have to think big to make the big money. I’d never seen any really big money in this racket, but this looked like the chance for it. If we could trust Roland, it would be split four ways. If we could trust Roland
and
Deutscher. Hell, why not go all the way and admit I trusted nobody but myself?

Think big, Joe Puma. How can you cut it down to a one-way split? Or, at most, two? None of the others were in a position to run to the law if I robbed them. And only Deutscher would be inclined to go for a gun. Con men avoid violence like the plague, and Charles Adam Roland was king of the con men.

Deutscher was the one I really feared. At dinner, I’d sound out Roland on his feeling regarding Deutscher. And there was another angle, the mark, herself. Willi Clifford might be a Lesbian all the way, or she might be bi-sexual. I mustn’t overlook that angle, not with the community property law in California. I wouldn’t mind marrying that kind of money.

Across the hall, the clatter of the typewriters was loud in the Gardaluck Music Company. Nice little racket they had, swindling amateur songwriters. Words to your music or music to your words, and we publish the song—at your expense. And both the partners drove Cadillacs. And on the floor below a reading fee literary agency and their typewriters were even busier, milking the clients, leading on the hopeless literary hopefuls at so much a thousand words for criticism and revision.

Only suckers played it the honest way, guys like my old man. He’d been a union organizer, working for peanuts, and been killed by cops in the Arranbee Aircraft strike. Sure, the locals all over town had his picture up now. He was a martyr, a saint. But he was dead and he’d died broke. I wouldn’t mind dying broke, but I sure as hell didn’t mean to live that way’.

I went to the window and looked out at the traffic on Selma. It was almost five o’clock, and the traffic was getting heavier by the second.

Working stiffs going home to a meatless meal and a gala evening in front of the mortgaged television set. Fun, fun, fun! Why didn’t the jerks get wise? A town loaded with suckers, and these guys beat their brains out over a machine or a drafting board or a bookkeeper’s ledger. And the bookies and the cultists and the con men spent more over a bar in one night than these working stiffs made in a week. Time-payment boys fighting their way to the cheap funeral of seventy-five dollars and no hidden charges. Rats there were under the geraniums, but mice too. A hell of a lot more mice.

But not for Joe Puma, not for any man with enough guts to decide what he wanted and then go and get it any damned way he could. Money, I wanted and now I had a chance for the big wad. Maybe Deutscher and Roland could out-think me, but they sure as hell wouldn’t out-muscle me. Use the weapons you have, Joe Puma, to get what you want.

What I had was a body men admired and women loved to touch. It had taken me through four years at a football college and three years with the Rams. It had seemed to make Jean Roland happy, and Jean was the inside track to Willi Clifford. My ace.

From behind me somebody said, “Watching the sunset?”

I turned, startled to find Sergeant Manny Rodriguez grinning at me from the doorway. “Hello,” I said. “You must have rubber heels.”

“Sure, a regular gum-shoe.” He sat down in my customer’s chair and leaned back. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a package of cigarettes, offering one to me.

I shook my head. “Just finished one. What’s new, Manny?”

“Not enough,” he said. “McGill isn’t happy. He’s got Rickett as cold as a D.A. would want but he’s still fretting. It doesn’t look clean enough to him.”

“What does he care? A conviction’s a conviction, isn’t it?”

“Not to Captain McGill, incorruptible Captain Enoch McGill. He thinks it all goes back to that Bea Condor case. And that case is still a thorn in his side.”

I had to be careful. I said easily, “Well, Rickett was the man he wanted in that one. Now he’s got him cold.”

“Cold enough for a conviction,” Manny admitted, “but not clean enough for McGill’s conscience. He smells a frame.”

I said nothing.

Manny tilted his hat back and considered his cigarette. “I’ve been trying to find Josie Gonzales. Seen her?”

“She’s dead,” I said.

Manny turned to stare at me. “You’re sure?”