“It’s your case, Cowboy, you tell me.”
“I think you’re covering up for a murderer. Or, at the very least, for somebody who hired the killer.”
“Get this straight, I haven’t laid eyes on Lila Parrish since she walked out of the courtroom after she testified. If she was the Wilensky woman, I didn’t know it. I don’t know why she was killed. And I don’t know why Guilfoyle sent his thugs after you.”
I started pulling the ID’s out of my pocket, flipping them open, and throwing them on the desk in front of him.
“Look at this. Two of these guys are special deputies. Guilfoyle sent cops to kill us.”
“What the hell were you doing down there, anyway?”
“Ione Fisher,” I said. “Ring a bell?”
“Shit,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “She hasn’t seen or heard from Lila in twenty years.”
He flipped through the wallets I had thrown his way.
“You’re a real collector, ain’t you, pal.” He laid them out side by side. “The two deputies are a big blond guy named Pierre Follet and an albino kid. This one?” He held up one of the wallets. “On the run for murder in St. Louis, picture’s in every post office in the country. The other one I don’t recognize but I’ll bet you a year’s salary he’s got a sheet longer than the California coastline.” He picked up the Thompson and slipped it up against his shoulder. “You should never’ve gone down there,” he said.
“Well, thank you,” I told him. “A little late, but thanks a bunch. I’ve got a wounded partner, a busted-up car, and four dead guys, including two cops, on my hands. That ought to be enough to attract the attorney general down here and clean Guilfoyle’s tank. And Moriarity will probably assign me to some hick town they haven’t even named yet.”
“It was a fool’s play by a goddamn pit bull.” He laid the gun down and stared at me with hard eyes. “Now we got to get you out of it.”
“Get me out of what?”
“Look, Guilfoyle may be dumb as a brick but he’s a mobster and he thinks like one. You handed him an alibi when you snatched the ID’s.”
I didn’t get it at first.
“Alibi?”
“Guilfoyle sends two of his cops and two hooligans after you and Ski. You think that was an accident? If all goes well, they dump your car in the Pacific, take you two offshore, and throw you to the sharks. If you knock over a cop or two, he blames the hooligans. You knock off the hooligans, his deputies cop the blame. By now he knows all four of his people are down for keeps. He probably doesn’t know Ski was shot yet. That’s a wrinkle he wasn’t expecting, so his story will probably be his cops and the bad guys killed each other, and leave you out of it.”
“And he thinks we’re going to let him get away with that?”
“Who’s ‘we’?” he said casually. “I had no part in this, Cowboy. And if you think I’m going down to Mendosa and start World War Two because you made a dumb play, you’re crazy.”
“I don’t think you have the guts to take on Guilfoyle,” I snapped. “He’s sitting twenty miles down the road running a hideout for the scum of the earth, he shoots a cop, and you’re sitting here on your goddamn thumb.”
He kicked the office door shut. “I’m going to explain the facts of life to you,” he growled. “So listen up. My guess is Guilfoyle figured you were there snooping around in your off-hours hoping to pick up a couple of rabbits hiding out down there. That’s why they call it ‘Hole-in-the-Wall.’ ”
“So he decides to hit us?”
“It’s the way he operates. He learned from the master-Arnie Riker, ‘the Fisherman.’ That’s what we called him. I had a stoolie named Slim. He tipped me that there were four out-of-town shooters at Riker’s hotel. They were the four who were killed at Grand View. The next day, Slim went missing. A month later, what was left of him after the sharks got finished washed up in Salingo, north of here. There was a bullet hole in the skull. We ID’d Slim from his teeth. That was how Riker took care of stoolies, card cheats, threats, people he didn’t like.”
“Wilma Thompson?”
“Just one of many.”
I pointed to the buzzers on the table. “So, if Guilfoyle’s that bad-now’s your chance to blow the whistle on him. I got the evidence right there.”
“Evidence, hell. I don’t have the authority to give Guilfoyle a parking ticket right now. Why do you think I’m running for governor? If the day comes, Brett Merrill will be attorney general and we’ll clean out Mendosa and a half-dozen other crooked towns like it. We’ll set a fire under the damn legislature and we’ll run the Rolls-Royce assholes who think they run the state out of Sacramento. In the meantime, I’m not throwing my political future in the shit can because you had an attack of stupidity.
“Now. Let’s talk about your future for a minute.”
“Future? My partner’s got a bullet in him, there’ll be a hearing, and…”
“There’s not going to be any damn hearing, Cowboy. Guilfoyle has to take the out I’m gonna give him. That or explain to the attorney general up in Sacramento why two of his half-assed dicks paired up with two wanted felons to ambush a couple of L.A. cops. You think he wants to deal with that?”
“I’ve got my chief to deal with. Jesus, we killed four men tonight.”
“I’ll explain things to your chief.”
“He won’t buy the story.”
“He will the way I explain it.”
“I can’t tell a bald-faced lie to my boss.”
“Listen to me, I’ll tell you what’ll happen if you play this straight. First off, the state patrol’ll get involved. Then there’ll be a hearing and it’ll come out that you and Agassi dusted two cops and their pals, and there you were, a hundred miles off your turf, snooping around, playing some hunch without so much as a warrant. So now you’re on administrative leave without pay, and the attorney general will stick his nose in it, and you’ve already got a rep for doing things your own way… Do I need to paint a picture for you? You lose winning, Cowboy.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
“Guilfoyle’s stupid, but he’s smart enough to work things out. You two were on your way back from dinner in Mendosa. All of a sudden the two cars came outta the fog, you got caught in their cross fire. Guilfoyle’s cops chasin’ Guilfoyle’s thugs. Your partner caught one and you broke for the hospital. Now let’s take a look at your car,” Brodie said.
He got a flashlight from security, and we went around the corner and checked out the Chevy. The left side was crumpled where we sideswiped the chase car, there was a bullet scar across the hood, the left front fender was stove in, one of the headlights was knocked out, the windshield was cracked, the rearview mirror was gone, and there was no back window.
“You can’t drive home in this,” was all he said.
We went back to the emergency office, and he grabbed the phone and dialed a number.
“Jiggs,” he said, “I want you to call Wilbur at home and tell him I got a ‘41 Chevy cabriolet needs a windshield, a rear window, and a rearview mirror. And the left front headlight’s dead. Tell him to forget about the body damage. I’ll need it by 7:00 a.m. If he starts whining tell him he gets double time.” He turned to me and opened his hand.
“Keys,” he said. I tossed them to him and he handed them to security.
“Tell Wilbur the car’s at the hospital. Bergen has the keys. A guy named Bannon, L.A.P.D., will pick it up in the morning. He’s staying at the Breakers.”
“I got a room at Charlie Lefton’s,” I said.
“I’ll take care of that. You think you’d last until morning down there? You’d probably end up getting Charlie whacked.”
He scratched a wooden match to life on his belt buckle and lit another cigarette.
“I’ll get you a room at the Breakers. And don’t worry about being bribed-it’s a trade for the tommy gun.”
When we got to the hotel, he went to the desk, talked to the clerk for a minute or two, and came back with a key.
“Nice room overlooking the ocean,” he said. “You can call your dispatcher and leave your number so they won’t think you deserted the force. Your car’ll be drivable by seven.”
“Why all the favors, Brodie?” I asked.
