“Where’s Dahlmus?” I said to Rat Face, ignoring the clown who was holding his pistol in both hands and aiming it at me.
Still no comment.
The clown giggled some more. His pupils were as wide as dollar pancakes, his hands shaking with anticipation. His trigger finger started twitching. I ignored the quiet one and turned on the clown. He was sweating. He bounced to my right and aimed straight at my face just as Big Redd moved silently through the door behind him, bowie knife in hand. Before the redhead could get his shot off, Redd said, “Hey.”
The gunman whirled and as he did, Redd’s knife flashed in a downward arc. The astonished gangster saw his own hand, still holding the gun, fall to the floor. Before he could scream, Redd stepped up and jammed the knife in an upward arc under his ribs to the hilt. Air rushed out of the wired freak. Redd slammed his foot into the dying man’s chest and shoved him across the room. He crashed over Lefton’s desk and ended in a heap in the corner. It all happened in the space of four or five seconds.
I swung the gun back on the lean one, who was so startled by the swiftness of Redd’s attack he was rooted on the spot. He stared at the severed hand on the floor, with his mouth half open.
“He was squeezing the trigger on you,” Redd said, nodding toward the dead man. He walked over, cleaned the knife on the dead man’s shirt, and sheathed it. He pointed a forefinger back and forth between his own eyes and then at the corpse in the corner.
“Wired,” he said. “You can’t hesitate.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Call the captain to come on down.” And to Rat Face, “Get rid of your heater or the same thing’ll happen to you.”
He opened his suit jacket, reached under his arm with two fingers, jiggled a. 45 loose from its shoulder holster, and dropped it on the floor.
“Turn around and grab that wall.”
Redd’s walkie-talkie crackled to life. “Clear,” he said. “One dead, one under control. They killed Charlie Lefton.”
“What’s your name?” I asked Rat Face.
“Earl,” he blurted, turning and leaning forward on both hands. He knew the drill. I frisked him, lifting his wallet and a push-button knife. I backed up about five feet and reached out with my foot and dragged a chair over, picked up his gun and threw it on the desk. I sat down backward on the chair and let my gun hand rest on the back of the chair while I rifled through his wallet with my left. His license said his name was Earl Hirshman, that he was from Boston, thirty-two years old, five-seven, and weighed a hundred and thirty-five pounds. An ID identified him as a deputy sheriff in Pacifico County. A business card identified him as an “associate” with the law firm of Brophy, Myers, and Ragsdale. An associate, I assumed, was a private eye with a licensed gun. He had two one-hundred- dollar bills and four ones in the money pocket of the wallet.
I replaced the items, dropped the wallet on the table by my elbow, and pressed the button on the knife. A six-inch blade shot out. Both sides of the blade were honed to a razor’s edge and the point was as sharp as a needle’s. I put the point on the table and pressed the blade back into the handle and laid it beside the wallet.
“Okay, Earl, turn around, sit down, and rest your hands on top of your head.”
He did as he was told.
“Very good,” I said. “We’re going to play one question. I’d ask you two but I doubt you and your dead pal there know why you were sent to kill Charlie Lefton. So I’m just going to ask you the one question. Who’s paying the bills for this?”
His answer was a blank stare.
“We’ll pull down the shades and swing that overhead light in your face when the captain gets here,” I said to Earl. “Then he’ll do whatever he does to get the conversation going.”
Nothing. He had about as much expression on his face as a tree trunk.
“I feel compelled to tell you that Culhane and Lefton served in the Marines together,” I said. “They were both wounded, but Lefton managed to carry Culhane back to the medics. Think about that while we wait for him to get here.”
The story was partly true. Lefton had carried my boss, Moriarity, to safety, not Culhane.
Nothing changed in his expression but his tongue sneaked out and dampened his lips.
Outside, the headlights of Culhane’s car flooded the road as he roared up to the fishing camp. A second car pulled in behind him. Culhane jumped out of the car and ran toward us. Then he saw Charlie Lefton lying on the dock. Redd had stopped to pull him out. Culhane’s lips began to twitch with anger. He turned around, said something to Rusty which I couldn’t hear, and Rusty opened the trunk of the Packard and brought him back a blanket. Culhane spread it over Lefton’s body, took one of Lefton’s hands from under the blanket, held it, and said something to Charlie Lefton’s corpse.
He looked up at the office as an insane expression crossed his face. He stood, came up on the motel walk, and slammed through the door. He looked at Hirshman, then at me. Then he saw the severed hand and the body in the corner.
“A little slow, huh?” he said to Redd, who answered him by holding up a thumb and forefinger about a quarter-inch apart.
“Dahlmus?” Culhane asked.
I shrugged. “He’s not here.”
Two other cops joined us. Culhane told one of them to go to one of the rooms and bring back a blanket. He covered the dead man after relieving him of his wallet.
“Name’s Leo Groover,” Culhane said. “Baltimore.”
He threw the wallet on the table with the rest of the assorted weapons and IDs. Then he walked over, grabbed a handful of Hirshman’s shirt, dragged him to his feet, and hit him with a right cross that hurt my jaw. Hirshman flew halfway across the room and ended up on his back. He spit blood and looked up at Culhane with fear in his eyes.
“Back-shooting son of a bitch,” Culhane said, and grabbed him again, dragging him to his feet.
“Easy,” I said. “He’s the only witness we have left.”
“I’m not gonna kill him,” Culhane said. “But I am going to hurt him some more.” He hit Hirshman again, this time an uppercut. Hirshman went down and rolled over on his stomach. Culhane grabbed the back of his suit coat, jerked him up, and slammed him against the wall.
Hirshman stared at him through dazed eyes. His jaw was askew and he was bleeding from the mouth.
“Easy, Brodie,” I said. “He’s got a lot of talking to do.”
“I haven’t heard a peep out of the dirty little coward yet.”
He closed in on Hirshman, his face a foot from the killer’s.
“We’re going outside where there’s more room,” he hissed in Hirshman’s face, spun him around, and shoved him out the door.
We followed Culhane and Hirshman down the walkway, where Culhane kicked him and sent him spinning down the steps.
Rusty, Max, and three or four other policemen watched from twenty feet away and said nothing. Hirshman scrambled to his hands and knees, started to crawl frantically away from Culhane. Culhane turned to me and held out his hand.
“Gimme your piece,” he said.
I looked at him with surprise, and he reached inside my jacket and pulled out the Luger. “I said gimme your damn gun,” he said.
He walked slowly behind Hirshman. The mobster crawled up the embankment. As he reached the top, Culhane fired a shot. I jumped. The ground erupted an inch or two in front of Hirshman, who whirled over on his back.
“Jesus, don’t kill me,” he pleaded.
“Well, how about that,” Culhane said. “It talks.”
Earl looked at me and all he got was a dead stare.
“I’m not going to kill you, you useless little shit,” Culhane said in a low, cold tone. “I’m gonna take off your kneecaps. They’ll have to push you to the gas chamber in a wheelchair.”
Earl was breathing hard but still silent.
