I looked down at the group. I felt a little like Mussolini. Maybe I should have folded my arms.
"Me you know," I said. "From my right, Hawk, Vinnie Morris, Chollo, Bobby Horse, Tedy Sapp and Bernard J. Fortunato."
The quartet looked as if they thought that The Preacher and his crew might be preferable. Luther Barnes spoke first.
"Could we have full names, please?" he said.
"Certainly," I said. "Hawk, your full name, please?"
"Hawk."
"Thank you. Chollo?"
"Chollo."
"Thank you."
Barnes was not amused.
"I just think we have a right to know who we're paying all this money to," he said.
"You're paying it to me," I said.
Roscoe, wearing a panama hat, probably felt the need to say something official sounding.
"I feel there should be some legal foundation for this venture," he said.
I stared at him.
"This group has no legal foundation. It's a group of professional thugs, hired by you."
The group was quiet.
Then Henry Brown said, "I'm a businessman, and, a goddamned good one. In all the years of business I never hired a man I didn't know his background."
"Good for you," I said.
"Damn it," he said, "that's no answer."
Sitting on the porch, Chollo took out a handgun and casually shot a small branch off a tree to my right. He did it again, and then again, chopping the branch back further with each shot.
"I am a simple peasant, senor," Chollo said in his stage Mexican accent. "That is all I have for background."
The gunshots lingered, resonating in the hard dry heat. Our employers looked at the tree limb. When they looked back at Chollo the gun was out of sight. Chollo smiled pleasantly. No one had anything to say for a time until the successful businessman spoke again, somewhat more softly.
"They won't know we're involved, will they?"
"They probably will," I said. "They seem to know a lot."
"But might they retaliate?"
"We'll protect you," I said.
"Seven of you?"
"Not all of us at once," I said. "We try to be fair."
Luther said, "I don't think you realize how serious this is."
I snapped.
"Goddamn it, you hired a bunch of thugs to come out and protect you, and we get here, and good heavens, we seem to be thugs, and now you're all in a goddamned twidget about it. You can let us find out who killed Lou Buckman's husband, and clean out the Dell, or you can live with what you've got. We'll just find out who killed her husband. And go home."
"I can't pay all of you," Lou Buckman said.
Hawk grinned at her.
"No charge," he said, and looked at the other men. Vinnie nodded first. Then Chollo nodded, and Bobby Horse, and Sapp, and, after a pause, while I could almost see him thinking it over, Bernard J. Fortunato.
"So," I said, "there it is. You want us to clean up the Dell say so. You don't, beat it."
"If you stay and help her they'll think we are involved anyway," Luther said. "They know everything that goes on in this town. They probably know we're here."
"Not my problem," I said.
"Unless we pay you."
"Like you told me you would," I said.
The attorney turned to his associates. I thought that the level of self-satisfaction in the group had declined a bit.
"He's got us over a barrel," the lawyer said. "We'll have to pay him."
The mayor said, "Another way to put that, I suppose, is that we are living up to our end of the deal."
"Whatever," Luther said brusquely. "I'm good for my share."
"The bank is prepared to pay you, as well," Brown said.
No one spoke. I looked back at my crew. They showed nothing.
Then Tedy Sapp said, "There goes the Dell."
Chapter 39
LATE IN THE afternoon, I sat in Dean Walker's office, enjoying the a/c. One of his patrol cops was at a desk up front doing paperwork, with a translucent Bic ballpoint.
"You know the Dell collects protection money from town businesses," I said.
"Know it, yes; prove it, no."
"Do they have a regular collection schedule?"
"Every Thursday."
"So why not catch them doing it and bust them?"
The patrol cop stopped writing for a moment, then continued.
"Several reasons," Walker said.
He had his feet up on the corner of his desk, dark leather cowboy boots gleaming in the sun that filtered in through the tinted windows in the front.
"One," Walker said. "They do it privately, in somebody's office with the door closed. Two, even if I arrested somebody, there'd be no witnesses, and I couldn't hold them. Three, there's forty of them and five of us."
I nodded.
"I didn't know you knew Lou Buckman from L.A.," I said.
Walker didn't register anything, but he took a moment to answer.
"You've been investigating," he said.
"You lived in her neighborhood."
"I did," Walker said.
"And you were a cop there," I said.
"Un-huh."
"L.A. or Santa Monica?"
"L.A. I was a detective. Ramparts Division."
"So how'd you end up here?" I said.
Walker shrugged.
"It was time to stop being a big city cop," he said. "Hell it was time to stop being a cop altogether, but I didn't know how to do anything else."
"Well at least you've reduced the scale," I said. "The Buckmans have anything to do with you coming here?"
"They had a little business out here summers. They mentioned there was an opening."
"Perfect," I said. "Did they mention the Dell?"
"When I took this job the Dell was just a bunch of stumblebums squatting in the old mining shacks. They didn't turn into a problem until The Preacher showed up."
"You happen to remember Lou Buckman's maiden name?" I said.
"Allard," he said. "Mary Lou Allard."
"Nice woman," I said.
He nodded.
"Nice woman."
"You know Mark Ratliff in L.A., too?"
"Yep."
"You know how he ended up here in the same town as two of his neighbors in Santa Monica?"
"Must have heard about it from Lou and Steve," Walker said. "Like me."
"And he wanted to get out of the Hollywood rat race?" I said.
Walker smiled.
"He was trailing the other rats by considerable," Walker said.
"What kind of guy is he?"
Walker shrugged again.
"Hollywood guy," Walker said.
"I heard he had a fling with Lou."
Walker's face hardened. I could see the lines deepen on either side of his mouth.
"That's a fucking lie," he said.
I nodded.
"The best kind," I said.
"He was shagging around after her at a couple of parties we went to. But she brushed him off. Stevie was going to punch his lights out."
"We?"
"We what?"
"You said `we' went to a couple of parties. You married?"
"Divorced."
"Grounds?" I said.
"She knows, and I know," Walker said. "You don't need to."
"What is your ex-wife's name?" I said.
"Same answer."
I nodded.
"When you've got one that works, may as well stay with it."
"I'm sick of talking to you, pal," Walker said. "Beat it."
Arguing with him about that didn't lead anywhere. The patrol cop was still concentrating on his report sheet so hard that I wondered, as I left, whether it might begin to smolder.
Chapter 40
WENT BACK to the house. On the front porch Hawk and Tedy Sapp were doing push-ups. It looked like an interesting contest, since both of them appeared able to do push-ups forever.
Bernard J. Fortunato had drinks set up on the table on the porch. There was Scotch and vodka and soda and tonic, a cooking pot full of ice, and some lemons sliced in wedges and a large soup bowl of peanuts. There were no napkins, but he had put out a number of neatly folded paper towels. Vinnie was drinking Scotch on the rocks. Chollo and Bobby Horse each had vodka and tonic.