“That’s Healy,” Sam said. “Peter Healy. Pete Healy. As in ‘Pete’s gonna shit.’”
I looked up from the picture and Rose was showing that smile of his that had nothing in it that smiles are supposed to have.
“I don’t move on just a guess, Kid,” he said. “You oughta know that by now. And I aint been sitting on my hands these last few days. While they been checking us out I been checking them out. This Healy’s got a rep. He’s a comer, a hardass. Got his start on the loading docks in New Orleans but the word is he killed a guy and took off to Fort Worth. Got in with the Carlson bunch. Then he moved over to the Burke outfit in Dallas. Went on his own over a year ago and took a gorilla named Parker with him. Parker used to do muscle and clip-work for Burke. Six-four, two-seventy they say, scares everybody shitless. Healy was already getting a piece of most of the slots in both Tarrant and Dallas County. Now he owns all the machines up there.”
“The Fort Worth and Dallas outfits are afraid he’s getting too ambitious,” Sam said. “Afraid he might start moving in on their gambling clubs, maybe the cathouses.”
“Those Dallas guys are pussies in cowboy hats,” Rose said. “Too scared to put the fucker in his place—six feet under.”
“Healy keeps beating them to the punch,” Sam said. “He popped Lou Morgan, Carlson’s main muscle—and I mean he did it. Went up to Morgan in some little sandwich joint and boom-boom, two times in the head and walked out cool as could be. Broad daylight, a dozen people in there, and nobody saw a thing. The Parker guy’s a piece of work too. He took down two of Burke’s biggest palookas in an alley fight. Bit one’s nose and ear off. Broke the other one’s back.”
“It’s getting close to a fucken war up there,” Rose said. “A month ago one of Healy’s biggest joints burned down. Next day three of Burke’s best boys vanish. A week later one of them pops up in White Rock Lake. They drag the lake and bring up a car with the other two guys in it. All three had a bullet behind the ear. Persons unknown, the cops said, but the outfits know who it was.”
“With so much going on up there,” I said, “why would Healy start trouble with us by moving his machines down here?”
“That was Ragsdale’s doing,” Sam said. “Willie Rags contracted the slots from Healy and told him he was going to put them in Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, all over the oil patch. But then he got ambitious. Thought he’d impress Healy by getting some of them into Galveston County.”
“So Healy’s big mistake was dealing with Ragsdale,” I said.
“No, that was only his first mistake,” Rose said. “His second mistake was thinking the slots still belonged to him. Then he hit my guys…that was his big fucken mistake.”
“I guess I’m off to Dallas,” I said.
“I want it done yesterday,” Rose said. He took two envelopes out of his top drawer and tossed them to me. One contained expense money, the other a city map of Dallas with exact directions to Healy’s office and to his home, and map markings showing the locations of several of his favorite restaurants and bars.
“Parker too,” Rose said.
“We talked to the Fort Worth and Dallas outfits an hour ago,” Sam said. “We’ll be settling our thing with Healy but we’ll be doing them a hell of a favor too—Healy out of their hair and their hands clean, nothing to hide from the cops. But they want Parker out too, and to show their appreciation they ponied up a big advance on a contract to buy all their machines from us from now on.”
“The least they can do,” I said.
“You and your partners will get a bonus on this one,” Sam said with a grin. “The least we can do.”
I stared at Rose. He almost smiled—then looked at his watch.
I got going.
The phone rang and rang before somebody finally picked up. A woman. “Jesus…what?” she said.
“Sheila?” I said.
There was a moment’s hesitation, and then, in barely above a whisper: “Who’s this?” One of those who never knew when one beau might call while she was with another.
“Let me talk to LQ,” I said.
“Huh? Say, who is this?” I could tell by her voice she was half in the bag. “You know what time it is? Do I know you?”
“Just put him on the phone, will you, sugar? It’s real important.”
The softer tone and the “sugar” did the trick. “Well…he’s sleeping pretty hard right now.”
“He’s passed out, you mean?”
“I don’t know if I’d say that. Just he’s sleeping pretty hard and it’d take a while to wake him, I think. Say, now, don’t I know you…?”
“How about Brando?”
“Who?”
“Ray.”
“Oh…Just a minute, I’ll go look.”
The phone clunked down and then I heard her voice at a distance but couldn’t make out what she was saying. After a minute somebody picked up the phone and coughed and said, “Yeah?” Brando.
“It’s me. Tell me how to get there. We got work.”
He gave me directions to Sheila’s house and then said, “Where we headed?”
I gave him a rundown on what happened to our men in Dickinson and what the job was. “I’m on the way to the ferry right now,” I said. “See you in about three hours. Be sure the Dodge is gassed.”
“It’s gassed already. Listen, me and LQ aint got but pistols. If we gonna need—”
“I already saw Richardson and got two Remington pumps with buckshot loads,” I said. Richardson was a graybeard who ran a hardware store in town but his real business was guns. He could get you any kind you wanted in almost any quantity. He even made after-hours deals at his home—his attic was an arsenal. He did a lucrative trade with Maceo men.
“Pumps,” Brando said. “Outstanding.”
“Be ready, both of you.”
The Dodge was parked at the curb in front of the house. I pulled up behind it and snapped off the radio in the middle of “Limehouse Blues.” It was close to four o’clock. The moon had set behind the pines but there were only a few thin clouds and the stars were thick and bright. There was an old Ford coupe in the driveway. The living room window showed light behind the curtain. I gunned the engine a couple of times and somebody pulled the curtain aside just enough to peek out and then let it fall back. Then the house went dark and the front door opened and LQ and Brando came out with their bags. The women stepped out with them and there was a lot of hugging and kissing and patting of asses while I locked up the Terraplane.
I put my valise in the trunk of the Dodge and got in the backseat. LQ and Brando came over and put their Gladstones in the truck too. There was a smaller bag with the pickup money and LQ jammed it under the front seat.
“You drive,” he told Brando, and settled himself by the shotgun window. Brando went around and got behind the wheel and cranked up the motor.
“Too bad that Terraplane seats only two inside,” Brando said. “I’d like to drive that honey to Dallas.”
“We took that honey to Dallas I’d be driving and you’d be the one riding in the rumble seat,” LQ said.
“Drive this,” Brando said, jacking his fist. He got us rolling. The radio started blaring “Stardust” and he turned the volume down.