'They probably will,' I said. 'They seem to know a lot.'
'But might they retaliate?'
'We'll protect you,' I said.
'Seven of you?'
'Not all of us at once,' I said. 'We try to be fair.'
Luther said, 'I don't think you realize how serious this is.'
I snapped.
'Goddamn it, you hired a bunch of thugs to come out and protect you, and we get here, and good heavens, we seem to be thugs, and now you're all in a goddamned twidget about it. You can let us find out who killed Lou Buckman's husband, and clean out the Dell, or you can live with what you've got. We'll just find out who killed her husband. And go home.'
'I can't pay all of you,' Lou Buckman said.
Hawk grinned at her.
'No charge,' he said, and looked at the other men. Vinnie nodded first. Then Chollo nodded, and Bobby Horse, and Sapp, and, after a pause, while I could almost see him thinking it over, Bernard J. Fortunato.
'So,' I said, 'there it is. You want us to clean up the Dell say so. You don't, beat it.'
'If you stay and help her they'll think we are involved anyway,' Luther said. 'They know everything that goes on in this town. They probably know we're here.'
'Not my problem,' I said.
'Unless we pay you.'
'Like you told me you would,' I said.
The attorney turned to his associates. I thought that the level of self-satisfaction in the group had declined a bit.
'He's got us over a barrel,' the lawyer said. 'We'll have to pay him.'
The mayor said, 'Another way to put that, I suppose, is that we are living up to our end of the deal.'
'Whatever,' Luther said brusquely. 'I'm good for my share.'
'The bank is prepared to pay you, as well,' Brown said.
No one spoke. I looked back at my crew. They showed nothing.
Then Tedy Sapp said, 'There goes the Dell.'
Chapter 39
LATE IN THE afternoon, I sat in Dean Walker's office, enjoying the a/c. One of his patrol cops was at a desk up front doing paperwork, with a translucent Bic ballpoint.
'You know the Dell collects protection money from town businesses,' I said.
'Know it, yes; prove it, no.'
'Do they have a regular collection schedule?'
'Every Thursday.'
'So why not catch them doing it and bust them?'
The patrol cop stopped writing for a moment, then continued.
'Several reasons,' Walker said.
He had his feet up on the corner of his desk, dark leather cowboy boots gleaming in the sun that filtered in through the tinted windows in the front.
'One,' Walker said. 'They do it privately, in somebody's office with the door closed. Two, even if I arrested somebody, there'd be no witnesses, and I couldn't hold them. Three, there's forty of them and five of us.'
I nodded.
'I didn't know you knew Lou Buckman from L.A.,' I said.
Walker didn't register anything, but he took a moment to answer.
'You've been investigating,' he said.
'You lived in her neighborhood.'
'I did,' Walker said.
'And you were a cop there,' I said.
'Un-huh.'
'L.A. or Santa Monica?'
'L.A. I was a detective. Ramparts Division.'
