I didn’t feel like excusing myself and I kicked the heel of his shoe. He looked around. “Out,” I said, and they buttoned up and got out. I picked up the phone on the bedside table. It was past two in the morning. Scarpa answered on the first ring. “Yeah,” he said.
“Where do you want him?” I said.
“Where are you?”
“Santa Monica.”
He thought a moment. “There’s a little park, just south of the pier, called Crescent or something. Right by the end of Pico, where it meets the water. Half an hour.”
He hung up, and I went out to find Metz. He was at the front door, ready to go.
I’d spoken too soon. He had the hat, too.
We walked outside without a word. He nodded when he saw my car. “Nice ride,” he said.
“There’s a story behind it,” I told him. “Tell you on the way. You know a place called Franco’s, down by the pier?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t like bars.”
I swung out the driveway and headed for Lincoln Boulevard. “It’s a decent little shack, for after hours.”
“I don’t give a goddamn. You run the Valley, why’re you driving this wreck?”
“Long story, Billy. Long story, but I don’t mind telling.”
“I mind listening. Look, let’s just pull into the first place we see.”
“You’re a jumpy fella, Billy. You should sniff less and drink more. We’re going to Franco’s.”
“I don’t need to go to Franco’s. What, the house give you a percentage?”
“It’s a good place to talk.”
“We’re talking now.”
“I want you to meet an associate of mine.”
“Aw, hell,” he said disgustedly, “you’re one of Scarpa’s boys,” and slipped his hand into his jacket.
You’d expect a powder hound to be quick, and he was, but quick doesn’t mean good, and I had a hold on his right wrist by the time he’d got a hold on his iron. We were on Lincoln by then, doing maybe forty. I eased it up past fifty. I didn’t want anybody getting giddy and jumping out. I could tell he had his finger on the trigger, but I wouldn’t let him draw, so his finger wasn’t much good to him unless he felt like shooting a chunk off his hip. I jammed my thumb in between the tendons in his wrist and started working it around. He let out a thin noise between his teeth. “I never broke a guy’s wrist this way,” I said. “Want me to try?”
He backhanded me a few times lefty in the face. It wasn’t worth writing down in my diary. “You’re a jumpy fella, Billy,” I said again. “Let go the gun.”
“You want to cool me, dad, you’ll have to work for it,” he hissed. He tried kicking me.
“He wants to talk, Billy.”
“Sure, talk. That’s why the old heap. You leave it in a field somewhere and me in the trunk.”
“Let go the gun, Billy,” I said, working my thumb around. He let go, and I pulled his gun out and leveled it at his knee. “He wants to talk. That means I can’t kill you, but he won’t mind a little hole in your leg. So simmer down.”
“I know his talk.”
I sighed. “Scarpa doesn’t kill punks like you himself. He doesn’t mow his own lawn, either. Why don’t you use that thing under your hat? You set up shop on Scarpa’s patch. You must’ve known it was coming one day, a talk or a bullet. If it was a bullet, I’d give it to you now and save myself some aggravation. So it’s talk, and you ought to be glad you’re getting a chance to.”
He made me a brief recommendation.
“Manners, Billy,” I said, and tapped him in the mouth with his gun. “Turn around and face me with your back to the door and your hands on your knees.” He repeated his recommendation, then did what I said. “And if you start feeling frisky, remember I don’t need the gun to make you wish you were playing dress-up in some other town.”
I put his gun down in my lap and finally shifted into third. He made another recommendation. I was beginning to worry. For a guy who thought he was about to be killed, Metz was more petulant than anything else, like someone was trying to take his scooter away. I said, “You really have been tampering with yourself, haven’t you, Billy? Listen. When we get there, try and straighten up. Don’t talk to him like you’re talking to me.”
He was trying to get his hat level on his head again.
I said. “Billy. I’m serious. Don’t talk to Scarpa like this.”
“I talk like I want to,” he said.
“Jesus. All right. Sure,” I said. “Talk like you want to to Lenny Scarpa. I won’t have to learn any new tricks. I already know how to use a shovel.”
Scarpa’s car was a dark green Maserati with wire-spoke wheels. It looked fast, and it must have been, because he was waiting in it when we pulled up. The park was on a little grassy bluff overlooking the sea. You could see the pier, half a mile up the beach, the minarets on the ballroom still lit up, even that late. I heard they’d turned it into a roller rink. In the daytime you wouldn’t be able to see the sand for the colored umbrellas, but it was empty now and black, and the black waves moved over it and back again like the shuttle of a loom. “Don’t open your door,” I told Metz. “Crawl out mine, so I can cover you.” He did what I said, holding his hat steady with one hand, and then I walked him around to the front of Scarpa’s car, where we had a little privacy from the houses behind. “Lenny,” I said, “this is Mr. William R. Metz, formerly of Paramount, currently doing business at 1625 Marine.”
Scarpa looked him over, then lifted the hat off Metz’s head, holding it with two fingers.
“No,” he said, and tossed it away.
Metz went on staring into Scarpa’s face.
“Hello, Billy,” Scarpa said. “You know who I am.”
“I know who you think you are,” Metz said.
“You didn’t tell me he was C’d to the eyes,” Scarpa said to me.
“Did I need to?”
“I guess not. Okay, Billy. Listen, all right?”
“I’m not hurting you any,” Metz said.
“Billy. Santa Monica’s my town. You can’t do like this in my town. You can’t come into my store, and spread out your merchandise on my counter, and start selling. All right? So that’s done, but I’ll tell you what might happen. You managed to pry off a nice little bit of my business. I like a guy who goes after what he wants. I like him better if he can get it. Long’s he’s not too crazy. Long’s he can be told. I can always use a good salesman in my store, Billy. Movie people buy from me, sure, but they’d like it a lot better buying from one of their own. So that could be nice for me, and I could make it nice for you, too. Better supply than you got right now, fewer worries. More business. Things go well, I could set you up in a shop of your own.”
“I already got my own shop.”
“No. Ten minutes ago you did. Now you don’t. Billy, are you listening?”
“What else’ve I got to do, dad? You talk more’n your gorilla.”
“He saw your gun, right?” Scarpa asked me.
“It’s his gun,” I said.
“If it’s his gun, he ought to know what it does.”
“It doesn’t do a damn thing,” Metz said. He’d stopped blinking and his eyes were steady as glass eyes. “Not here in the middle of all these houses, it doesn’t, and I’m not worried about anything else you can do to me here. And I’ll worry about what you do tomorrow tomorrow. You’re telling me you want a war? Okay. It’s war.”
Scarpa was shaking his head.
“Billy — ” I said.
“Less mouth,” Scarpa told me. He turned back to Metz. “You got the wrong map, son, and no light to read it by.”
“Your town,” Metz said. “You coming around and telling me this is your town. Listen, ginzo. My people’ve been here since before they paved the roads. When they built that pier, my great-grand-uncle had six and a quarter percent of it. My father was Sandy Metz and if they had movies wherever you come from, you been looking at his costumes since you first stole a nickel for a ticket. We were in Hollywood before there was any such thing. Now, I don’t know what your town is. Chicago, maybe, or Palermo, but it isn’t here. It isn’t here. This is my town. And
