Leo arrived at the seafood mart twenty minutes early. He walked around back, past the sportfishing dock, and up to the yacht club, where the sun-wrinkled dolls who noticed him either crimped their noses, disappointed again, or practiced the coquettish smile they figured to use on richer, younger guys.
He strolled out past the day sailors and small cabin cruisers rigged with marlin gear, to the longer sloops and schooners that he and Tom used to mutually admire, especially when they’d owned the Chris Craft dealership together—the reason they’d both given up the LAPD and moved south. In 1935, sure the depression was about to lift, they’d bought the dealership cheap. Summer of 1936, they’d sold out even cheaper.
Leo stood gazing at a white Newporter, about forty feet, plenty big enough for himself and Vi. Maybe they could swing a trade with some old salt finally ready to forsake the sea. Their house for the boat, straight across. They could sail through the islands off British Columbia. Visit Magda in Seattle, Una in Berkeley. Follow the gray whales south. Drift around the cape into the Sea of Cortez. Or cut across Panama.
After he leaned on Charlie Schwartz.
He strode back up the dock, along the wharf past the sportfishers, turned into the patio behind the seafood mart. He took the first seat inside the gate. The waitress swept over haughtily, dressed like a flamenco dancer.
“I’m meeting Charlie Schwartz,” Leo said.
He suspected she muttered, “Lo siento mucho,” as she ushered him across the patio, into the corner closest to the yacht club. He sat down, checked the menu, ordered a sweet rum drink called a mai tai, and wondered if the doctor who’d hounded him into giving up cigarettes could be a quack.
When his mai tai arrived, he swilled the top half and was sipping when Charlie and the freckled brothers showed. All three were in shirtsleeves with open collars. Leo slipped his jacket onto the back of the chair. A sudden breeze tickled his ribs, damp from sweating.
“Mr. Weiss,” Charlie said cordially.
Leo rose, shook hands. Charlie used the finger-pinch grip, like most guys trying to keep their edge.
“These here are my protégés,” Charlie said, pronouncing the last word as if there were a hyphen between each syllable. “The brothers McNees.” They nodded glumly and perched on the two end seats across from Leo. Schwartz took the seat between them. “Mr. Weiss, we got something to talk about? You bring an apology from your pal Tom?”
“Not exactly.”
“That’s a shame. I had one coming. Then, maybe you’re thinking, at our age it’s time to make new friends outta old foes. That it?”
“Yeah. You’re a mind reader.” Leo tapped the menu. “Any recommendations?”
“Clams. Nothing but clams. Perfect with the sissy punch you’re drinking. Clams it is?”
“Sure.”
Schwartz nudged the skinny brother, who got up slowly and meandered across the patio on a line to intercept the waitress. Leo raised a finger and crooked it at Schwartz. The gangster leaned closer.
“Now that we’re friends,” Leo whispered, “you wanta tell me who grabbed Tom’s wife and where they got her?”
Schwartz leaned back, wrinkled his brow. “Tom’s wife? The dimwitted gal? When’d this happen?”
“Sometime after Tom and you talked.”
“Who grabbed her?”
Over the rim of his mai tai, Leo stared daggers into the gangster’s smoky eyes, thinking there ought to be something different, if you looked close enough, between the eyes of humans and those of a ghoul.
“They asking for ransom or what?”
“Just to get him outta town, Charlie. Who’d want him outta their hair, do you think?”
“Angelo Paoli, could be. I heard Tom was trying to hang the Sousa fire on Angelo.”
“Damn, Charlie, you’re confusing me here. Way I understood, Tom was trying to hang the fire on you. Matter of fact, that’s why I figured we oughta be pals, you and me, on account of then I could do your chum Mickey Cohen a favor, and in turn you’d see that Cynthia gets sprung and Tom’s wife shows up at home by tonight.”
The gangster had clenched his jaw so tight it made his jowls tremble. “Supposing I had the power to fix all this crap—this whatever you could do for Mr. Cohen’d have to be a whopper.”
“Yeah. That’s the kind I mean.”
“Spill it, then.”
“The Guns for Israel scam. There’s a guy on the Herald knows all about the phony stories. The ship sailing. The ship sinking. This guy, there’s a little voice in the back of his head shouting he’s gotta pass the truth on. If the cops don’t want it, and the FBI don’t, he gives it to the newsreels, Life magazine, Mr. Ben Gurion. No way he’s gonna let Mickey off the hook on this one. The guy’s a fanatic, I hear. Thinks God’s talking to him, saying, ‘Clip ten million off my people, you burn for it.’” Leo smiled, thinking he could hear the gangster’s teeth gnash.
“That so? Gimme a name.”
“Yeah, I will. You know when.”
Schwartz bunched his fists together, braced his elbows on the table, leaned his chin on the fists. “Listen up. I get around, hear things. Nothing you’d like better than to watch me and Mickey take a fall. How about that?”
“I might’ve said that once or twice. Blowing off steam, is all, Charlie.” He offered an ingenuous smile.
“Okay, now let’s suppose it’s like you say and Guns for Israel wasn’t exactly on the level. How come you’d sell out this fanatic, and the Holy Land to boot, for one stinking goy?”
“You oughta know. Hey, I’ve got my excuses, same as you. Twenty years we been best pals, Tom and me.”
“So, when he hears you been playing games with Mickey, and Mickey had to send a couple boys to squeeze this fanatic’s name outta you before they cooked you on a spit, he’ll send flowers. I bet he’ll send a truckful.”
Leo sat panting through his nose. He lifted the drink, gave himself a double dose. “What’s the advantage in knocking me off? Why would Mickey wanta do it the hard way? Why not just spring the two girls and pin the fire on some other chump, if the cops need a fall guy? Pin it on Angelo, say.”
“On account of Mickey ain’t got Hickey’s wife, and I ain’t got her, and maybe can’t anybody spring the Cynthia dame, if the cops are holding her dead to rights. That’s why.” Charlie whipped his head around to the rail and spat onto the dock, a step in front of a prim tourist zeroing her camera at a pelican. “Mr. Weiss, you oughta give me the name of this fanatic, save a lot of grief. Suppose, before Mickey hears you’re trying to pin a bum wrap on him and sends for you—suppose before that you get lost or fall over dead or something? Now Mickey’s gotta slap around every pinhead that works for the Herald to figure which one’s spreading lies about him.”
“That’s a lot of slapping,” Leo said.
Charlie’s boy and the waitress crossed the patio, each of them carrying two plates of clams. The boy was in the rear, his eyes beaming down on the waitress’s prancing hips.
When the plate landed in front of him, Leo picked up his fork, pricked a clam, grimaced, and stabbed the thing. Slowly he lifted and placed it on his tongue. He rolled it around his mouth a minute, finally bit, and swallowed. His face crimped in revulsion.
“Hey, Charlie,” he said. “Want my clams?”
“I got plenty.”
“Put ’em in the bait bucket where they belong, then.” Leo heaved himself up, slipped into his coat. “Oh, yeah, I got a message from Tom. He says, without the girl, his life comes to a screeching halt, and so does yours.”
“Hey, pigface, how is it I’m getting blamed for everything?”
“Pigface?” Faster than the eye, Leo snatched up a fork and pronged the gangster’s neck, on the jugular vein. Charlie only sat frozen, sneering, while the skinny boy wedged between the table and the patio rail, jumped behind Leo, and got him by the throat. He wrenched the old man up and out the dockside gate, kneed him around to the alley alongside the seafood mart and a drydock. He shoved Leo’s face down onto a stack of cardboard that was slimy and reeked of fish guts. A cat yowled and squirted out from between layers of cardboard.
By the time Leo rolled over, the redhead was turning the corner, out of the alley. “Hey,” Leo called after him. “This mean you’re picking up the tab?”
He dragged himself up and around the fish mart to his car, worrying about which hotel in LA he should check into, and where he might sequester Vi, and if some innocent folks that worked for the LA Herald were about to get squashed by Mickey Cohen.