affection one usually associates with a grandfather looking at his granddaughter for the first time. His tongue swept his lower lip. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out two old-fashioned glasses. They were dusty, with streaks of dried amber on the bottom.
“Hope you don’t mind a dirty glass,” he said. “My wife’s temperance. Be chancy taking them up to the kitchen to wash them.”
“I’m sure old Jack’ll kill anything that might be lurking in those two glasses.”
He worked the top off the bottle, splashed a generous slug in both glasses, and slid one across the desk to me.
“Here’s to Bucky,” he said, offering his glass. I clinked it and took a sip, trying to avoid a dead fly that floated to the top. Howland took a long whiff of the whiskey, then drained half his glass and let it linger in his mouth for a few seconds and pursed his lips before swallowing it, then leaned his head back, stared at the ceiling, closed his eyes, said, “godamighty damn,” and sighed passionately. He sat back up, stared at the half-full glass, nodded slowly, and said with awe, “The hell with you, Seagram’s Seven.”
He put the top back on the bottle and slid it to me.
“It’s yours,” I said.
His smile was all the thanks I needed. He opened the bottom drawer and slid the bottle under a telephone book.
“What was that lady’s name again?” he asked.
“Her married name was Verna Wilensky. You might have known her as Verna Hicks. Would have been in her mid twenties in 1920. Brown hair, little on the plump side, five-two or five-three. Probably good with numbers; she was in the tax assessor’s office down in L.A.”
I took out the two pictures and showed them to him. The blown-up shot from the newspaper was too grainy and unfocused to be of much use, and the shot from Bones’s lab was grotesque at best. He took a look and then stared at me. “I couldn’t recognize my mother from these,” he said. “That’s a long time ago, son.”
He took the phone book out, flicked through the pages to the h ’s, and ran his finger down the page. “No Hicks listed. And the name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“It narrows the field to none.”
His laugh turned into a cough. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth. “So you wanna know about that night at Grand View, huh? Well, Bucky was sheriff and Brodie was his chief deputy. Bucky and Culhane were good friends. Brodie was a hero in the big war. I think he was born about 1882 or ’83, thereabouts, so he was in his thirties. Bucky was probably sixty although nobody but Buck knew how old he really was. Older’n God.
“Like I said before, the town was wide open back then. Through the years, all the action had attracted the bad element. Arnie Riker ran the criminal side of things. His sidekick was Tony Fontonio. Both of them nasty to the core. Culhane was for facing-off with them, running them out of town; but Bucky was more the live-and-let-live kind. He figured you keep your finger on them, slap ’em in the cooler if they got out of hand, things’d be alright. See, a lot of people were making money off the trade, and Bucky, he had worked the law in places like Tombstone and Silver City. Hell, he was used to dealing with gunslingers, rustlers, back shooters; Riker was a pansy in his book.”
He rambled on, about how Bucky and Culhane controlled the bootlegging to make sure the town got decent hooch during Prohibition; how Culhane hated Riker and Fontonio with a passion; how Riker walked a thin line to keep on the good side of Buck Tallman.
“The trouble came when Riker decided to take a cut of the Grand View House action. You been up there?”
I shook my head.
“Delilah O’Dell owns it. It was in her family. Delilah went to Europe, to the best schools, had it in gold. Then Shamus and Kate O’Dell went down on the Lusitania. Delilah was always a heller. Favored her father in that respect. She came back and opened up a fancy house. I guess you knew that.”
“I heard.”
He took a sip of whiskey, savored it for a minute, and went on.
“A very fancy house. Movie stars came up there, still do. Tom Mix and Buck Jones were regulars. I hear Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn, David Niven, all that bunch still come up for a breather between pictures. There’s a little gambling parlor on the first floor in the back. Poker pots can run as high as a thousand bucks. Delilah runs it like it’s the Ritz. Beautiful women, great food, the best of everything. Some of our leading citizens occasionally slipped through the side door. And still do.”
He stopped and laughed. “Delilah could own this town if she ever threatened to write a book,” he said around a chuckle. “But she’s a classy lady. Would never happen.”
“So what happened that night?”
“It was never proved, but the story went that Riker decided to make a major play. He brings in four tough gunmen headed by a real dangerous hooligan named McGurk, and they go up to Grand View to tell Delilah she has to kick a percentage back to Riker.”
“Riker?” I said. “He’s the one got gas for a murder?”
“Yeah, a year or so later. So anyway, Bucky is upstairs in Delilah’s apartment having a coffee, which he usually does during the evening. His deputy, Andy Sloan, is downstairs, keeping an eye on things, when they come in. Delilah comes to the head of the stairs and wants to know what’s going on, and McGurk tells her to come down and talk. At that point, Bucky enters the picture. He goes down the stairs and gets nose-to-nose with one of McGurk’s boys. I think his name was Red something-or-other, and Buck tells him where to go and how to get there. There’s some back-and-forth, then just like that, Red pulls his pistol and shoots Bucky in the stomach, and all hell breaks loose. There were forty-two bullet holes in the walls, furniture, and the men in the room. Poor old Andy gets his head blown off and he goes down. Only McGurk gets out of the place. He runs into the street with two bullets in him, and here comes Brodie Culhane in his Ford and drops him with a single shot in the eye. Brodie was a Marine marksman in the war, won a bunch of medals. He’s not a flashy shot like Buck, he’s a deadeye. Then Brodie goes into the house, and one of Riker’s guys is still standing. He and Bucky are twenty feet apart on opposite sides of the room, both full of lead. Bam, bam, bam. Brodie and Buck both finish off the last of Riker’s gunmen, but he gets one last shot off and it finishes Buck. According to both Delilah and Culhane, his last words were, ‘Just my luck, killed in a whorehouse.’ And he falls dead. Delilah was the only witness to the gunfight, and Culhane and Delilah are the only ones left when it’s over.”
He lifted his glass, drained the last drop of Black Jack, and licked what was left off his lips.
“And that’s what happened that night at Grand View. Everybody knew Riker was behind it, but no way to prove it.”
I slid his glass over and poured the rest of my drink in his glass.
“I’m driving back to L.A. tonight,” I said. “You finish this.”
“I can’t hit it too hard, myself. I get a little giddy, she’ll catch wise,” he said, taking the bottle out of the drawer. “How about pouring it back in the bottle for me. I got a touch of the palsy.” He opened a jar of Black Crows and offered me one.
“No thanks,” I said, “I never had a taste for licorice.”
“Kills the smell,” he said. “Gladys has a nose like a foxhound.”
I took one, rolled it into my cheek, and let it sit there while I poured half a glass of Jack Daniel’s back in the bottle. He chewed his up and took another.
I took out the makings and offered to roll him a cigarette, but he shook his head. “Had to quit, gave me the cough. But go ahead, I still love the smell.”
“So that was all in the papers,” I said, rolling a butt. “What wasn’t?”
“After it was all over, some rumors started. Riker probably started them but there were enough gossips around to spread the stories. The men on the Hill formed the county council, named Culhane sheriff, and he ran for the office about six months later. His promise was to clean up San Pietro. A lot of people didn’t want to see the town dry up and go legal. The story goin’ ’round was that Bucky was still alive when they both shot that last goon. Then Culhane turned his gun on Buck and finished him off. Anyway, that was all bull, just a story made up by the black hats who knew their days were numbered. The rich boys on the Hill wanted the town cleaned up and Culhane was lined up with them.”
“How about Delilah?”
“Delilah laughs it off. Anyway, with Buck out of the way, Culhane was the man to dance with.”
