In fact, the next launch took off in less than five minutes, and we made it, leaving the Lux behind, a fading blue neon-trimmed shape whose searchlight still fanned the dark sea. We sat with a few other couples, who were nuzzling, but we didn’t nuzzle; we sat close, but didn’t nuzzle.
The ride back was rougher; we felt the spray almost constantly, squinting into it, wiping it from our faces occasionally. We had to speak up to be heard over the motor.
“I figured you’d be mad,” she said, mad. “I don’t blame you for being mad. But how could you come out here and endanger me like this…”
I laughed harshly. “It’s a little late for you to be worried about the danger factor, baby. Now why don’t you shut up and I’ll fill you in.”
She gave me an exasperated look, but sighed and shut up and I filled her in. I told her I’d indeed come out here to retrieve her, but that I’d been careful not to tip her hand where her uncle’s interests were concerned-none of which mattered a whit, I said, considering what Siegel had just told me on the deck of the Lux, and filled her in on that, as well.
She, like me, was stunned.
“Do you believe him?” she asked.
I sighed. Shook my head no, not believing I could be saying, “Yes.”
She swallowed. “I do too.”
“Why?” I had reasons for my opinion; what did she have?
“Ben’s a good man, Nate. He’s gone straight. He just couldn’t have done it.”
Oh. She had opinions for her reason.
And she had more: “He’s an honest man.”
“Well, that’s rich.”
“Well, he is! He reminds me…”
“Don’t tell me. Of your Uncle Jim.”
“Well, he does! I’ve spent a lot of time with him this week, in Vegas, at the Flamingo. He works hard. He’s really…a very nice guy. People around him love him. He’s so…dedicated to what he wants. He’s like a…visionary.”
“He’s like a gangster, Peg.”
The boat lurched and I held her, one hand on the padded shoulder of her Eisenhower jacket. She let me. She didn’t seem to like it, but she let me.
“I find him charming, too,” I admitted. “I think I might even like the guy, given half the chance. But he came up the hard way. Don’t ever forget that. He kills people.”
“I don’t believe it. It’s just stories.”
“Well, the stories I’ve heard, and they’re not stories, are that he likes getting into the rough stuff, personally. A boss is supposed to limit himself to ordering hits-he’s supposed to plan ’em out, then get the hell to someplace where his alibi is ironclad. But don’t-call-him-Bugsy went out on a contract personally a few years back; just couldn’t resist, I guess, and went along with the boys to make sure it was done right, and pulled the trigger himself, and he almost went to the gas chamber over it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“The only reason he didn’t is because one witness got shot to death, a guy who happened to be Ben’s brother-in-law, in case you’re wondering why a charming guy like that is divorced. And also there was this hitman turned witness who got pushed out a hotel window at Coney Island a while back. Guy named Abe Reles. Murder Incorporated? Remember that from the papers?”
She folded her arms across her chest; she was squinting, not just from the sea spray that was hitting her, but from inward stubbornness. “He just doesn’t seem like that kind of man to me. And, anyway, I think he’s trying to make a new start of it. You should see this resort he’s building. It’s going to be fabulous. It’s exciting just to be around it, to be any small part of it.”
“Christ, you come out here to see if this guy tried to kill your uncle, and wind up president of his fan club! Did he do anything?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you sleep with him?”
She pulled away from me, glared at me. “How can you ask that?”
“I was gonna ask if he screwed you, but I thought that might be a little on the crude side.”
Working our voices up over the motor like we had to meant some of our nuzzling co-passengers heard an occasional word of ours; several of them were looking at us now and I gave them a big sarcastic insincere smile and they looked away.
She huddled to herself. “You’re terrible. He was a perfect gentleman.”
“You walked out on me.”
“I left word.”
“I ought to throw you off this goddamn boat.”
She made a face at me. “Why don’t you just try?”
“I oughta belt you.”
“You really know how to win a girl back, Heller.”
“I didn’t know I’d lost you.”
“I don’t think you quite have, yet. But keep trying.”
We sat in silence for a while-silence but for the launch’s motor and the boat riding through the whitecaps. And some of our fellow passengers whispering about us. I hadn’t had so much fun on a boat since the landing on Red Beach at Guadalcanal.
Then I said: “The point here is that we both believe Siegel is not who paid those guys in the truck to hit your uncle.”
She nodded.
“For me it’s woman’s intuition,” she said, putting her anger away, if not her poutiness. “What’s your detective’s instinct say?”
I ignored her smart-ass tone, saying, “It’s more than instinct. Siegel laid it out perfect-he’s better off with Jim alive. So, logically, Siegel’s not the guy who hired the hit.”
She was nodding. “And Jake Guzik is.”
“Jake Guzik is. The fat little man has been playing it real cute all along. Pulling me in, Jim’s own security man, and ‘confiding’ in me that the Outfit wasn’t behind it. Guzik even bought off one of my own men, but knew me well enough to know, I’d beat the truth out of the guy, so they were careful to make all contacts by phone and money drops. And he didn’t use Outfit guys for the shooters, but hired a couple of West Side bookies, to further confuse the issue. Then he sends me to Jim with a new, more generous offer, but also sends his two gunmen up the Meyer House fire escape, playing it from both ends. Those greasy thumb prints have been all over this from the beginning. I should’ve figured it. Took Siegel himself to wake me up.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means I’m going to tell your uncle that Guzik is responsible. I’m going to tell him to keep that in mind when entering any new negotiations with him.”
She looked at me with utter disbelief. “You don’t think my uncle would sell out at this point, after hearing…”
The launch lurched.
“I don’t know. 1 still think it’s his best option, but with this new knowledge he can go for more money and warn Guzik that he’ll cooperate with Drury and turn those affidavits over to the feds now, if the Outfit doesn’t pay now and stay away later.”
“Would that work?”
I shrugged, sighed, shook my head. “Hell, I don’t know. Anyway, the stubborn old bastard will probably want to keep fighting.”
She moved closer to me. “Do you blame him?”
I slipped my arm around her. “Not really. But I don’t envy him, either.”
Before too long we were in a warm bed in my room at the Roosevelt Hotel. The days apart, the recriminations, all of it, receded in the distance, like the Lux. Faded away, like a barely remembered bad dream. Now there was only the two of us, naked, in each other’s arms, loving each other, ready to put it all behind us and go home and start over.
It was a little after midnight when the phone rang and the bad dream kicked back in.
“It’s after two o’clock out there,” I said to Bill Drury’s staticky, disembodied voice. “What’s so important it can’t wait? Did you lose another witness?”
I was sitting up in bed; the phone was on the nightstand beside me. Peggy, asleep till the phone rang, was only half-awake, half-listening.
“Worse,” Bill’s voice said tinnily. “I’ve been trying to get you all evening. Didn’t you check for messages when you got in?”
“I was preoccupied, okay?”
There was silence for a few moments; the phone company charges for that, too, but it was Bill’s nickel so I just waited for him to speak up. Which he finally did: