He didn’t look at me. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
“Then tell me this, at least. Let’s say for the sake of argument, Shoulders brought you the money because you could get it washed in Chicago through Buster Wortman, the Outfit’s man in this part of the world.”
“Nothing I can tell you.”
“Then why is it you think Chicago sent me? If they did the laundering, why would they think there’s something being held back from them?”
He still wasn’t meeting my eyes. “This is all pointless speculation. Jack Carr out at the Coral Court coulda snatched it before Shoulders even got there! As far as anybody knows, that worm Carl Hall buried it. I got it on good authority he had mud on a pair of his trousers!”
I’d seen that mud myself, of course.
“So go get yourself a shovel, Heller,” he went on, pouring himself another glass of Scotch. “And start digging.” His upper lip curled. “Knock yourself out!”
This was going nowhere. Maybe later I could shove my nine mil in his yap, for the good old-fashioned Chicago lie detector test. But for now I’d take my leave.
When I was at the door, he said, “Hey, Heller!”
I glanced back. He was holding up his left hand with the diamond on it. “This baby is six carats, and it’s not boosted. It was a gift. You know who from?”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the picture of Leo Brothers.
Sucker-punched, I shut the door behind me, sighing, shaking my head. Something poked me in the back. Something hard. Hard as metal.
Metal.
A voice rasped, “Take the fire exit.”
It was right in front of me. I shoved the push bar and then we were in an alley alongside the building enveloped in a warm night and a darkness that swallowed shadows; and the neons of DeBaliviere Street seemed a world away at the other end.
Someone was waiting for us and grabbed my arm as I stepped through. The newcomer was a burly blond guy of maybe thirty-five in a black-and-white bowling shirt and jeans; he seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place him, though that wasn’t my biggest concern at the moment. He came around behind me and gripped both my arms. The guy who’d stuck the gun in my back was in front of me now — he was the bouncer in the yellow jacket and Aloha shirt, taking my nine millimeter out from under my left shoulder. He tossed it and it skittered away on the alley brick. The only good news was he stuck his own gun, a .38 with a four-inch barrel, in his waistband. The bad news was his fingers came back as a fist that he buried in my stomach.
I didn’t puke — I hadn’t eaten for a while. But he drove all of the wind out of me and incidentally it hurt like hell.
“I don’t care where you came from,” the Aloha-sporting thug said, “just as long as you go back there. Anywhere but St. Louis.”
I nodded. Then I kneed him in the balls, or tried to; he saw it coming and mostly blocked it, but he twisted doing so and lost his balance.
“Hey!” a voice called from the end of the alley.
A bizarre figure came trundling down, clothes flapping on him like a thousand flags, a big man, tall, with a tiny head. I kicked the stumbling Aloha shirt guy in the side, hard as I could manage, even as I tried to twist away from the burly blond behind me.
Then Barney Baker was on top of us, and he plucked the blond’s grip off my arm like a cartoon giant picking a daisy. He yanked the blond by the forearm and the guy let loose of me and Barney pushed him against the side of the building and did the belly-busting routine he was known to use when he was “organizing” reluctant potential union members — shoving his massive middle and all the weight that went with it into his prey.
“Gonna leave my pal alone? In future? Gonna do that for me, huh, you little prick?”
“Yes, sir! Yes, sir!”
The Aloha shirt was running away already, heading for the mouth of the alley.
Barney flung the blond by the arm and seemed to propel him halfway to the street before the guy’s feet got working and then he was out the mouth of the alley, too.
“Nate,” Barney said, a big grin on the front of his little head, his hand on my shoulder, “what’s the idea of not letting me know you were in town?”
Chapter Thirteen
A waitress in an orange uniform with a white apron and cap set the basket of hamburgers and a second one of onion rings in front of Barney Baker, who already had a bottle of beer going. And I had the glass of Coke I’d ordered. I was against the wall in a half-booth with Barney in a chair opposite me — he still couldn’t fit into one of the orange upholstered booths proper. Hovering behind us was a cartoon mural of customers rushing from all directions to get into the Parkmoor.
Which was a restaurant across the street from the Tic Toc and a block up DeBaliviere. As we’d approached, I wondered if a Midwestern twister had, Oz-style, lifted up the Tudor-style brick cottage and dropped it in the midst of the street’s gaudy neon-lit businesses and onto a big, mostly empty parking lot.
Parkmoor drive-ins with dine-in service were spotted around St. Louis — their owner was the inventor of the tray carhops attached to car windows — and this branch stayed open a few hours after the drive-in service had ended, to handle the late-night crowd after an evening of strippers, cocktails and back-room gambling. Earlier the Parkmoor on DeBaliviere catered to after-school teens from nearby Soldan High and grown-ups stopping in after golf or tennis, and anybody on their way to or from the zoo or the Muny outdoor theater.
Barney and I were just two of perhaps a dozen patrons, none teenagers, who were looking for something to soak up the booze they’d consumed. Or top it off with a bottle of beer, like Barney. And hamburgers and onion rings. Pat Boone was singing “April Love,” despite it being August, on a jukebox whose selections and volume were designed not to offend. The bedraggled adults in booths and at tables were like predictions of how the town’s teens would turn out.
If that blow to my stomach hadn’t made me lose my appetite, watching Barney eat would have.
“You just happened along?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” he admitted, taking a bite of hamburger that reduced the sandwich by a fourth. He chewed and swallowed, either polite or considering his answer; he had a paper napkin tucked bib-style in his sport shirt under his suit jacket. “I was on my way to see Joe. I just stumbled onto those two, roughing you up.”
“One of them was Joe’s bouncer. Didn’t you recognize him?”
“Sure.” He reduced the burger to half of its former self. Chewed. Swallowed. “But I never liked him. Look, I saw some poor asshole getting the shit beat out of him, and then it turned out to be my friend Nate Heller, so I was happy to lend a hand.”
He’d lent a belly, really, bumping that blond up against the wall.
I sipped my Coke through a straw like I was Archie and he was Jughead — or Moose. “Why were you dropping by Joe’s?”
“Well, now there’s a coincidence.” He dipped an onion ring into a puddle of ketchup. “I’d only just heard you were in town, asking questions, and thought I’d give Joe the ol’ heads up.”
“Which turned out not to be necessary,” I said. “Since I was already there.”
“Right.” Chewed and swallowed half an onion ring. “But how was I to know that?”
I leaned on my elbow and smiled. “Now let me tell you what really just happened.”
“What really happened,” he said, with a shrug, and bit into another ketchup-dripping onion ring, “really happened.”