Stolen Away

“Can you scare them, men like that?”

“When you put a gun in their mouth, you can.”

“But would the police do that?”

“Evalyn, I am the police.”

It was a little before four when I took the stairs at the rear of the hotel down to the floor below, the eighth, where Means said I’d find the two Maxes. I figured there would be body-guards posted, who’d take me where I wanted to go, one way or the other, particularly with a beer war in progress. I took a deep breath and withdrew the nine millimeter, and hid it behind me before I pushed open the door marked “8”-I knew there’d be muscle to deal with. No way around it….

Only the hall was empty.

For a moment, I was confused; then, slowly, like a heat rash, disgust spread over me.

Had Gaston Means done it again? Sent me, like Evalyn to El Paso, on another wild goose chase? I holstered the nine millimeter and slowly, pointlessly I was sure, prowled the hall.

Then I noticed a door, room 824, on which hung a sign that said “Old Heidelberg.” The lettering was Germanic and I was clearly looking at the logotype of a brand name of beer. Or anyway, “near beer.”

But, again, there were no men posted outside the door. I got the gun out, held it behind me and knocked. There was no answer, so I tried again, and finally the door cracked open and a pasty pockmarked face looked at me past a night-latch chain, skeptically, with eyes blacker and deader than a well-done steak.

“What?” he asked. The single word conveyed both menace and distrust.

“Police,” I said. “I have a warrant.”

The black, dead eyes narrowed and I slipped my toe in the cracked door and shouldered it open, popping the night latch.

My host backed up. He was heavyset and short but with a thin man’s face; his lips were the color of raw liver and his hair was cropped, white and ungreased, and as dead looking as his eyes. He wore a light-brown, expensively tailored suit with a white shirt, the dark-brown silk tie loose around a loosened collar, suit coat open. He didn’t seem to be armed.

“Let’s see the warrant,” he said doubtfully, and loudly, as if trying to warn somebody in the next room.

“It’s right here,” I said, and showed him the nine millimeter; it felt a little unsteady in my hand, but not so you’d notice.

“Shit,” he said, making a three-syllable word of it, rolling the dead black eyes. He put his hands slowly, grudgingly, up.

Shutting the door behind me with my heel, I took in a vast living room appointed in plush modern furniture, in various shades of green, from pastel lime to money-color.

He was shaking a little, but mostly he looked coldly, quietly pissed-off. “How did you get past Louie and Sal?” he wondered.

“I didn’t see Louie,” I said, patting him down with one hand, confirming his lack of hardware, almost choking on his pungent after-shave lotion, “and I didn’t see Sal.”

That confused him a little. “What about Vinnie?”

“I didn’t see Vinnie, either.”

“That’s impossible.”

“This is America. Anything is possible. You Hassel or Greenberg?” It sounded like a Jewish fairy tale.

He licked his liver lips. “Hassel. Maxie’s in the office.”

“Let’s go say hello.”

He led me through the endless living room-a wet bar in one corner was stocked better than a Rush Street speak, and against one wall leaned several fancy pigskin bags of golf clubs. We moved through a bedroom to a closed door, which Hassel grudgingly opened, glancing back unhappily at me.

He went in first, the nose of my nine millimeter in his back, as I followed him into the adjoining, smaller bedroom which had been converted into an office with several desks and filing cabinets. A big fleshy man in his shirtsleeves and suspenders, his suit coat draped over the back of his swivel chair, was hunkered over a ledger book at a rolltop desk against the far left wall, on which an Old Heidelberg neon sign, unlit, mingled with various black- and-white business-related photos. The man at the desk had shiny black hair and a big flat head.

“Maxie,” Hassel said, tentatively.

Maxie waved at him impatiently, without looking back. “Just a minute, just a minute.”

“Maxie…”

Maxie sighed, pushed away from the desk, and without looking at us, said, “Where’s the fuckin’ money go?’ Then he turned and blinked twice, as if that was all the sight deserved, his partner with his hands in the air and a stranger with an automatic pointed in both their general directions. “What the hell’s this about?”

“Put your hands on your knees,” I said.

Maxie’s eyes were dark and mournful, his mouth a thin cold line in a face that was puttylike, unlined, unused, as if no emotions had left their tracks. As he slowly lowered his hands toward his knees, one hand lingered near the right-hand pocket of the draped-on-the-chair suit coat, a pocket with a revolver-size lump in it.

“You could die in that chair,” I pointed out.

Maxie blinked again, swallowed and put his hands on his knees.

I moved slowly over there, my back to a wall so I could keep my eyes on both Maxes, and flipped the suit coat off the chair; it dropped to the floor with a clunk. Lucky for us all, his coat didn’t go off.

“Is this a rubout?” Maxie asked, like he was asking the time.

“Not necessarily,” I said, moving back near the doorway, just inside of which I’d left his partner. “We’re just going to talk.”

“If the Dutchman sent you,” he said reasonably, “you’re working the wrong side of the street. We pay real dough. And we can protect you.”

“Listen to Maxie,” Hassel advised, with a nervous sidelong glance.

They didn’t seem to see the inherent fallacy of telling a guy holding a gun on them that they could “protect” him.

“The Dutchman didn’t send me,” I said. “A rich lady from Washington, D.C., did. Named McLean.”

The two men exchanged glances. I couldn’t read anything in it. God knows I tried.

“You fellas look smart enough to know Gaston Means can’t be trusted,” I said.

Maxie Greenberg nodded thoughtfully.

“That bastard lies when he prays,” Hassel confirmed.

“You boys need a new man in the middle,” I said. Which was where I was, keeping the gun on them both, Hassel with his mitts up, Greenberg hands on knees. “I’ll give you the money, you give me the kid.”

Hassel gave me another sidelong nervous glance.

Eyes boring into me like a sniper sighting a victim, Maxie said, “Who are you?”

“A guy looking to make a few bucks and put a kid back in his own crib.”

“What makes you think we got Lindy’s kid?” Hassel said.

“I don’t remember mentioning Lindy’s kid,” I said.

A loud banging out in the other room scared shit out of me; I damn near started firing.

“That’s the door,” Hassel said, flatly. “The one you come in.”

The banging continued, and a voice said, “Boss, it’s Vinnie! It’s Vinnie, boss! Let me in.”

Hassel smiled smugly. “Well, there’s our boy Vinnie. I better let him in, don’t you think?”

“If he’s your boy,” I said, “why doesn’t he have a key?”

“Somebody might take it off him,” Maxie said.

“You gotta be named ‘Max’ to get a key,” Hassel said.

Private club.

“Boss!” the voice called.

“We don’t answer it,” fat Maxie said with the faintest of smiles on his thin lips, “he’ll bust it down.”

I took Hassel by the arm; it was fleshy but there was muscle under there. “Get rid of him. No need to get cute-we’re going to make a straight business deal, here. Fewer faces that see me, the better.”

He looked at me with those black dead eyes, and nodded.