Twenty minutes out of San Diego, Hickey had realized that chartering a plane might’ve got him home faster. Yet he wasn’t about to backtrack. Besides, the fog was soupy enough so he might’ve wasted the morning finding a plane, even a charter. Had he been called to stand still for an instant, he might’ve turned to ashes. Movement felt like his only salvation.
As he neared LA, the fog broke. Again he thought about flying. But the nearest airport to his place was an hour off, on the south shore, out highway 50. Anyway, it might be closed on account of the storm. And he’d risk losing hours if he cut across the city to the LA airport or passed the highway 99 merge and tried one of the airports in Burbank or Ventura.
So he jumped red lights through LA and Hollywood, rolled through stop signs. He clocked eighty topping the hill past Griffith Park. Through the groves of the San Fernando Valley and up and down the Grapevine’s switchbacks, past fire-blackened hills and a half dozen wrecked and abandoned cars, he kept the hand throttle wide open and panned the horizon for cruisers. He only had to back the speed down twice. One patrol car lay hidden behind a boulder, the other in a cluster of oaks. Hickey’s gaze felt so intense he could’ve spotted them through a ridge of granite. His brain seemed supercharged, as though he’d made up for years of lost sleep, only it kept firing arbitrarily until the San Joaquin Valley, when the explosions of fear and anger had quieted enough to let him reason.
He didn’t figure the kidnappers to be Angelo Paoli’s boys. Not a chance they could’ve gotten up north so fast, at night anyway. Charlie Schwartz might’ve sent some punks directly after lunch. Except, from all Hickey’d seen of the man, Charlie didn’t think that fast. It was hardly brains that’d made him top dog. Meanness was Charlie’s weapon.
More likely they were hired guns, out of San Francisco or maybe from around the lake. If they were locals, that’d make them fellow employees of his, since his neighbor and boss Harry Poverman had his fist around the Tahoe action.
He thought of pulling over and calling Poverman but nixed the idea. That’d be like a burglar ringing the doorbell. He sped on until his gas ran dry. From a Sinclair station in Bakersfield, he phoned Leo at the office and got lucky.
“Another minute, I was gone,” Leo said. “Got any news?”
“Claire told you, right?”
“Sure. I hopped in the Packard and blazed up to the motel, just in time to miss you. Had to pay the tab before they’d give me the stuff you left behind.”
“I paid it up front.”
“Well, she stiffed us. Where you at?”
“Bakersfield.”
“You’re making time, all right. Tom, don’t lose your head, will you?”
“Anything happens to her and the kid, I’m done.” Hickey wanted to explain how it felt, that if he lost Wendy his soul would flee, leaving nothing but the carcass, the withered heart and vanquished mind. But he choked on the first word.
“Don’t think about losing her, Tom. Think about next year, you and Wendy on a second honeymoon, taking the kid on a whirlygig at the Pike. Think about how that lousy valley you’re passing through stinks like fertilizer. Think about revenge or anything you please except losing her.”
Hickey opened his mouth, found it mute. The second attempt he managed a sigh; the third time he forced words out. “Claire read you the note?”
“Yeah, when I called her back. She’s staying put at your place, in case the punks call. Look, you’re doing like they say, getting outta town. They’re liable to cut her loose soon as they find out, which they’re gonna in about a half hour.”
“How’s that?”
“I’m meeting Schwartz at that fish place.”
“And saying what?”
“Haven’t rehearsed it. One thing, I’ll tell him you backed off, let Cynthia fry if she’s gotta.”
“Yeah? Only problem I see is the ten times better odds it’s Angelo had her grabbed, judging from the guys that shot up your house last night.”
“That could’ve been Silva on his own. My guess is you dented his pride. He wasn’t shooting to hit you, the way he binged it off the ground.”
“The ground where I was lying low, behind your car.”
“Yeah, why’d you pick my car?”
“Don’t,” Hickey mumbled. “I’ve got no heart for wisecracks right now.”
“Tom, you’ll get her back. I’m not gonna snooze anymore down here than you will up there, till she’s back home.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
“You wanta know how I figure it’s Charlie?”
“Yeah. Make it quick.”
“First off, since the war, he’s been frothing over one or the other of the Tucker sisters. Both threw him over. Sousa, like you said, was probably two-timing Mickey Cohen, double-dealing with Angelo.
“Mickey gets wise and tells Schwartz, Go ahead, knock off Sousa, and Schwartz decides to burn the place with Johnny in it. All he’s gotta do is pin the fire on Cynthia, he gets the last laugh all around. The two-timer’s rubbed out. One Tucker sister’s a widow and the other’s busting rocks.”
If Hickey’d felt able to stand still another minute, he’d have asked his partner, If Charlie’s as vindictive as all that, how come he’s never popped me for wasting Donny Katoulis? In 1942, Hickey’d finished Katoulis, Charlie’s best gunman and pal. Maybe all these years, Hickey thought, Charlie’s been waiting for the perfect opportunity. Or he’d written Hickey into this whole arson deal. Maybe Charlie was shrewder than he seemed.
“Or maybe you’re just wishing, Leo. You want it to be Schwartz and Cohen. If you could pin the fire on Mickey, you’d be dancing with glee. Mickey and Schwartz weren’t teamed up, I guess you wouldn’t be so damned sure.”
The operator came on, squawking for another fifty cents. Hickey plunked in the quarters, though he only had a few words left. “Tell Schwartz, without Wendy I’m a goner. And if that’s what I am, so is he.”
“Yeah, Tom. I’ll talk sense to the lard-ass.”