7

I turned off Laurel Canyon Boulevard, drove to the one-lane asphalt drive leading uphill to Jimmy Violet’s home.

On the way I’d been worrying the knot of perplexity which had started growing when Bingo Kestel first slipped into my Cad outside the Beverly Hills Hotel.

I am not unacquainted with hoods. On the contrary, because my business is crime and criminals, the law and lawbreakers, hardly a day passes when I don’t have some kind of contact with cons or ex-cons, gun-toters or musclemen. But I couldn’t think of a solitary reason why Jimmy Violet would—all of a sudden—be interested in me.

It was that suddenness which perplexed me.

In the last month I hadn’t been on a case which, even by a pretty good stretch of imagination, could be considered as in the area of Jimmy Violet’s interests. Those interests were primarily such enterprises as gambling, extortion, prostitution, and “legitimate” investments into which he’d poured hot money. And the only case I was on at the moment was the job Mrs. Halstead had hired me to do.

Any connection between the Halsteads and Jimmy Violet struck me as extraordinarily unlikely. But the timing intrigued me more than a little. I’d taken the Halstead case late last night, and Jimmy’s boys had braced me before noon today. It seemed an odd coincidence. And I’m a guy very leery of coincidences.

When I’d been talking to Bingo about Jimmy Violet’s lake, it had not been just a play on words. The guy actually did own a lake. It wasn’t anything like Lake Superior, but it was a respectable little body of water for a man-made job, approximately seventy-five by a hundred yards. Violet’s house sat on an artificial island in the middle of the lake and could be reached only by the road I was on. Unless you wanted to climb a ten-foot-high fence and swim in—or maybe wade; I didn’t know how deep the water was.

I didn’t particularly want to know, either. If the lake was deep enough, there were probably already some guys down there tied to anvils. Jimmy wasn’t known as a particularly forgiving fellow. It was said he didn’t stay mad at a guy long, though, since he held no ill will for the dead.

The road ran out over the water to the roughly circular island, actually more like the end of a small peninsula including the road. From the air I imagine the picture would have been much like half of a dumbbell, which seemed appropriate, since there were usually half a dozen dumbbells on the premises. You couldn’t just drive out to see the dumbbells, though. First you had to pass through a heavy gate made out of what appeared to be two-inch steel pipes. And to accomplish that, you had to get the approval of a guy at the gate, a guy named Fleck who looked like Gargantua, and who appeared to be made out of four-inch steel pipes.

Fleck, at any rate, was the boy who used to be on the gate. Yes, he still was. Opening and closing it probably taxed all his creative powers to the utmost, but at least he was good at it. You might almost say of him that he was that most fortunate of men, one who had found his niche. Of course, presumably his duty was not merely to open and close the gate for invited visitors, but to kill anybody who wasn’t invited.

He’d lumbered into view from behind a green hedge near the gate’s pipes and stood on massive legs, his thick arms dangling at his sides. His resemblance to the Missing Link was remarkable. His head sort of came to a point in front, between his little red eyes, and his chin looked like something Samson might have slain the Philistines with. At the end of his dangling right arm, like a toy in the huge hand, was a large gun, which he seemed to dangle toward me as I got out of the Cad and walked to the gate.

“Hello, Fleck,” I said agreeably. “Open up.”

“I remember you,” he said. “Don’t I?”

“Man, if you don’t know, how would I know? Shell Scott, I was here a couple years ago.”

“Couple years.” He shook his head.

I knew what he was thinking. Couple years, he was thinking. How long is that?

He’d heard my name though—recently. If Jimmy had been expecting me and the boys he would have told Fleck.

“Yeah,” Fleck said finally. “Jimmy says …”

He stopped and looked carefully at my Cad. Then he looked behind it. Then he looked all around. Clearly, no boys were anywhere about. Finally he looked way up in the air.

“Fleck,” I said, “are you looking for Stub and Bingo and Little Phil?”

He fixed the red eyes on me again. “Well, yeah, I was.”

“They’ll be along later. Open up.”

“Well …”

“I had quite a talk with Bingo. Open up. Didn’t Jimmy tell you I was coming out?”

“Yeah, but … But …”

“Well, O.K., if you don’t want me to see Jimmy. See if I care,” I said. Sometimes it helped to talk to him like that.

He shook his head. Then he opened the gate.

I climbed into the Cad again and drove past Fleck, who was still shaking his head, and on up the asphalt drive, which curved in front of the house and ended at a wooden two-car garage, which was past the house and near the water’s edge. The garage door was open and two Cadillac sedans were visible. I braked to a stop a few yards behind them.

On my left was a small strip of grass growing from the edge of the asphalt down to the water, and on my right was the home of Jimmy Violet. It was a two-story brick and wood job, very attractive on the outside. Inside, it was a dump. At least it had been the last time I was here.

On that occasion I’d called upon Jimmy Violet at my own request, trying to get information about the lad I’d tagged on the grand larceny rap. I hadn’t got any info; and I had found Jimmy Violet a nauseating host, but we’d each learned to know the other a little better. We’d each learned we loathed the other.

The place was a dump not because it hadn’t originally been rather tastefully furnished, but because there was dust and all kinds of slop around. Jimmy wasn’t married—I understood he had once been years before—and lived in the house with some of his hoodlum associates, none of whom was any more neat and tidy than Jimmy himself.

I walked to the front door, but it opened before I reached it. The guy looking out at me—and at the emptiness behind me—with an expression of vast suspicion was one I hadn’t seen before. He was tall and broad shouldered, with a sharp chin and ledges of bone over his eyes, but I didn’t know who he was.

He knew who I was, though. At least he did after looking me over, checking the white hair and brows, giving me the head-to-toe perusal.

“You’re Scott, huh?” he said.

“That’s right.”

He didn’t ask about my three recent companions. “O.K. Come on in.”

I walked past him and turned.

He said, “I suppose you got a gun on you.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll take it.”

“You’ll play hell.”

The chin slid forward slowly and his brows lowered.

I said, “Jimmy wanted to see me, remember. I didn’t have to come out here.”

“You didn’t have to? What …” He let it trail off.

“I suppose you’re wondering,” I said, “about Bingo and Stub and Little Phil. The sooner you escort me to mine host, the sooner I can tell him about them.”

“What about them?”

“I’ll tell Jimmy.”

He chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment, then shrugged. “Come on,” he said.

We walked down a carpeted hallway toward the back of the house and stopped before heavy double doors on our left. My escort knocked twice, then went on in, leaving me outside. After about a minute he opened the door and motioned me in. I suppose he had to explain to Jimmy that I’d arrived without company and presumably armed to the teeth.

Jimmy Violet wasn’t alone in the big room, which was some kind of den with a polished mahogany bar against the right wall. Two other guys—beside my escort—were sitting in upholstered chairs drinking beer from bottles.

Jimmy slouched on a gray couch across the room from me, legs crossed and one hand behind his head. He didn’t get up when I came in.

“Hello, Jimmy,” I said. “You wanted to see me?”

“Where the hell’s Stub and Bingo and Phil?”

No Hello, no How are ya, no nothing. No graciousness at all. You could almost tell by looking at the creep. He was what you might find in a cemetery at Full Moon, near a newly-opened grave. Tall, rangy, cadaverous, he had the look of mortuaries, winding sheets, and shrouds. In his own way, he was just as cute as Fleck out at the gate.

He was an inch or two taller than I am and weighed maybe two hundred pounds, but he looked wasted, as if he’d been a heavier man but was sickening of a disease. His eyes were dark, dull, with sparse brows above them; and his hair, black streaked with gray, was thin and limp and lay flat on his round skull. His lips were fat, cupidlike, but not rosy; they were a kind of pinkish-gray, not quite as ashen as his face. I guess his nose was the only reasonably nice thing about that face, a bit long maybe, but straight and possessed of only two nostrils.

There was an empty overstuffed chair a few feet from the couch on which Jimmy Violet lounged, so I walked toward it.

“Mind if I sit down?” I said.

“I asked you a question.”

“I heard you. Mind if I sit down?”

“Ah, go ahead and sit. Sit on your head if you feel like it.”

The guy who’d brought me in here had walked over to stand near the two men already in the room. I turned the chair a little so it not only faced Jimmy Violet but afforded me a view of the three other men, and sat.

“Where the hell’s the boys?” Jimmy asked.

I grinned. “What’s the matter, you think I shot them?”

“You bastard, don’t give me no lip—”

I interrupted him. “Don’t call me names, Jimmy. I get upset when creeps call me names. And I’m more than a little upset already.”

“I don’t give a gahdamn what you are,” he said. “I asked you—”

“Stow it. You wanted me to come out here. O.K., I’m here. Tell me what you’ve got in mind, and maybe I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. “O.K. It won’t take long. I figure you got enough sense to know a word to the wise when you hear it. So here’s the word. Lay off the Halstead thing. Just drop it. I’ll see you don’t lose no money about it; that’s on the one hand. On the other, well, guys get killed every day making dumb mistakes.”

It really jarred me. Not the threat—that was par for the Jimmy Violet course—but his blunt reference to Halstead. True, I had toyed with the idea that there might be some kind of connection—because I couldn’t think of any ot er reason why Violet would want to see me—but I hadn’t really believed it.

“Halstead?” I said. “The guy who bought it last night?”

“Who else? There some other Halstead?”

“What’s your interest?”

“My interest is, you lay off, you get it? It’s simple. Just forget it. You won’t lose nothing by it—”

“Save your breath.”

“Look, don’t be a jerk. I’m giving you a good out—”

“I said, save your breath.”

The dull dark eyes seemed to get even duller. He took the hand from behind his head, slapped his thigh with it. “I shouldn’t of tried it this way,” he said finally. “That’s what I get for trying to be a nice guy.”

I laughed.

“All right, what’s with the boys?” he said.

“Bingo and Stub and Little Phil are enjoying one of the sights of Hollywood which they seldom see, namely the Hollywood can. The clink, the slammer, the jail. In fact, if you haven’t got a call already; the phone should soon be merrily ring—”

He didn’t let me finish. He uncrossed his legs, leaned forward, started getting to his feet. “You’re lyin’!” he yelled. “You dumb crud, they ain’t in jail. Where they at?”

I closed my eyes, shoved my teeth together, then opened my eyes. “I’m not going to tell you again about the bigmouth, Jimmy. Your boys picked me up and tried to do your bidding, but I managed to tip the fuzz, and the boys are indeed in the can. Temporarily, at least. I hope, of course, that they get electrocuted or something infinitely worse, but they’re being booked, mugged, and printed, at least.”

He stalked over the carpet, stopped before me and leaned down, his face a couple of feet from mine. “You dumb sonofabitch,” he yelled. “Who the hell you think you are? You stinking son—”

That was all he said for a while.

I got him on his nice nose. Well, reasonably nice. Before I got him on it, that is. It was practically the same situation as when I’d popped Bingo in my Cad: I wasn’t able to get set, get any real leverage or power into the blow. But I did my very best, and threw my left arm up, turning my body and pressing with my left foot against the floor in front of my chair; and all in all it was a fairly satisfactory operation.

My knuckles covered his nose and upper lip and made a surprisingly loud and meaty sound when they landed. He did not quite do a back flip. But his head snapped back and he traveled about nine feet, arms flailing, before he fell with a thump to the floor at the end of the couch where he’d been sitting.

All three of the guys on my right were reaching, two of them for their hips and one for the gun under his coat, but while I may not be the most brilliant fellow under the heavens only an idiot could have failed to anticipate that development. So I was a little ahead of them.

As soon as I’d clobbered Jimmy with my left hand, I’d grabbed the Colt Special in my right and flipped it out to cover the three men.

One of them—the tall broad-shouldered guy who’d met me at the door—almost didn’t stop, almost yanked out his heater anyway. But he decided against it at the last moment. Just as my finger was tightening on the .38’s trigger.

Then he relaxed.

“You don’t know how close you came to it,” I said.

He licked his lips but didn’t say anything, pulling his eyes from my gun to look at Jimmy Violet.

Jimmy was still on the floor, but he wasn’t unconscious.

Well, maybe I hadn’t knocked him clear out, but I’d done his nose no good, and the event had given me a lot of satisfaction. Even if I did seem to be losing my punch. I’d had enough of his bigmouth to begin with. And I guess you know, ever since Bingo slid into my Cad I’d been itching to hit somebody. Most important, however, I do not cotton to guys who send me invitations at gunpoint.

I glanced at the door on my right and partly behind me. It was still closed, and nobody else had come into the room. If anybody had, I presume I would by that time have been shot in the skull. But all was—for the moment—under control, so I turned most of my attention to Jimmy Violet.

His legs were moving, and he was clawing with his fingers at the carpet. In a few more seconds he managed to sit up. Blood from his already swollen nose smeared his mouth and chin. It was pretty messy, but at least it gave his face a little color.

He was so mad he wasn’t thinking straight. Or else he wasn’t seeing straight, and couldn’t see the gun in my hand. He sat there on his duff and reached under his coat and grabbed a small revolver. He had it out of the shoulder holster when I let one go right past his ear.

The blast of the shot was loud in the room, and his ears, if not his eyes, must have told him he was embarking on the wrong course. I didn’t even have to tell him to drop the gun; he let go of it while his hand was still moving and the small chrome-plated pretty—a lady’s gun, I would have called it—bounced across the floor toward me.

It was quiet.

I glanced at the three men.

Jimmy pushed a hand over his mouth, then leaned forward and spat on the carpet. Slowly he got to his feet.

And the phone rang.

It was on the bar top, behind the three men. I walked over there and answered it.

A high-pitched voice said, “Gimme Jimmy, quick.”

“O.K. Who’s this?”

“Bingo. Get Jimmy … who’s talkin’?”

“He’ll tell you,” I said. “At least, I imagine he will.”

“Is—is it Scott? It can’t be. Crud, it can’t be.”

I looked at Jimmy Violet and pointed to the phone, then put it down and moved back to my easy chair.

“Yeah,” he growled into the mouthpiece. “Yeah, this is Jimmy.” He listened a moment. “Yeah, it was, all right. Yeah, so he’s nuts. Sure he’s nuts, who’s arguing? Yeah … yeah … huh. Right … I’ll see you here, then. You sure did a fine job, sweetheart. I can really count on you, can’t I? Well, hurry it up.”

Jimmy put the phone back on the hook, wiped his nose gently with a handkerchief, then glared at me. “Blow,” he said. “We got no more to talk about.”

“I hope you don’t have any idea it might be fun to let one of your boys shoot me on the way out. You just talked to Bingo. So you must know—or can guess—that six thousand cops are aware that I’m now calling on Jimmy Violet. They’d love to get something on you. Especially a murder rap.”

He glared at me some more. “It’d almost be worth it.”

“But you know better, don’t you, Jimmy?”

He stared at me for a few moments longer, then looked at his three men. Slowly he nodded. He was telling them they couldn’t kill me, even if they got the chance. Not right now anyway.

It changed the situation enough that I stopped covering the men with my gun. But I didn’t put it away, just let it rest on my thigh.

“Tell me, Jimmy,” I said. “What’s your interest in George Halstead? One of your boys poop him?”

“Don’t be a jerk. I got no more to say to you.”

Well, maybe he’d said enough. But I hadn’t. There was one more thing I wanted to tell Jimmy Violet.

“All right,” I said. “But listen to this, you spook, and listen with both your big ears. If you ever send any more of your paid muzzlers after me, I’ll come here again. Only I won’t just bust you in the hook, James, I’ll wipe you out.”

The gaze he laid upon me combined the best of Dracula bending over a fair neck and Wolf Man with the scent of boiling blood in his nostrils, but he spoke gently. “I don’t believe,” he said, “I shall invite you again.” He was quite grand at that moment, I had to admit.

I got up and walked to the door, not watching the door, however. The boys didn’t twitch. I went out into the hall and waited ten seconds, then peeked back into the room. The four of them stood in a huddle, jabbering. But they weren’t coming after me.

So I said, “That’s the stuff,” and left.

I drove to the gate with my left hand on the steering wheel and my right hand holding the Colt just out of sight below the door. But there was no trouble.

Gargantua swung the gate open, and even smiled at me as I drove through.

I put my gun away and headed for Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills.