“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:
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.”
