McHugh, page 5
“Oh, yeah?” It was a weak retort.
“That’s the way it figures, chum. You’re chief of security at this plant Meaning you’re in charge of gate guards. The FBI and two or three of the secret services handle all the personnel clearances. This I know.” McHugh swallowed a good part of his drink, saw by the expression on Lowell’s face that he was scoring. “I’ll give you this much. When Stover didn’t show, they sent you out to see why. He wasn’t around to explain. Enter briefcase boys, exit you. But you’re still doing the hound dog bit. How come?”
“There a law against it?”
“There’s one against murder,” McHugh said coldly.
“Hey! Now justa—“ Lowell started to get up.
McHugh reached out and shoved him down in the chair. “Shut up and listen. If I was to bring up this same line of thought with Kline or the FBI, you might just get your fanny sweated. As of the moment, you’re the only person we know was near Nadine Andersen’s place when Nuss was knocked off. How’s that grab you?”
Lowell’s face turned lobster-red, and he grabbed across the table for McHugh. “Listen, fella,” he shouted. “You better not go around sayin’ I put the blade in the hood. I’m an old man, but I can still pound the crap outta you!”
McHugh jabbed a finger into the hollow spot at the top of Lowell’s breastbone. The stocky man fell back in the chair. McHugh filled his glass again, smiled and said, “Drink up. I don’t think you did the kill. If I did you’d be on your way downtown now. Likewise, I don’t think you’d like to be ordered off the case, which is the best you can look forward to.”
“Well…Lowell growled.
“Let’s have it.”
Lowell glowered at him. “Okay. But you try to cut me out on this and we’ll tangle, boy.” He gulped his drink. “Actually, I don’t give a damn about Stover. You know who Dexter Orland is? Yeah, I see you do. Well, Orland looks like he’s interested in Stover. I got things I’d like to find out from Orland.”
“Such as?” McHugh was remembering the session with Kline and Murrell, when the names of the ex-racketeer and assorted underworld characters had come up in the questioning of Nadine.
Lowell bunched his meaty hands on the table and said, “It goes back about twenty-five years. I was a sheriff’s detective down in L.A. County then, and Orland had it made big. He was a tall dog, and he lifted his leg wherever he felt like it.
“I’m cutting this to the bone, but anyway one day comes along an armored car that’s carrying a load of gold. I mean bars of it. It gets itself blown off the road in the middle of nowhere, and four guys make off with better than four hundred grand, closer to four hundred and fifty. Eight hundred pounds of the stuff, give or take a little. We got the gunsels a couple of days later, but that’s all we got. And we knew that every one of them worked for Orland one time or another. That’s it.”
“You couldn’t tie Orland in?”
“Hell, no,” Lowell snorted. “He was fishing off Santa Catalina when it happened. Our vice squad captain was along and so was a deputy district attorney. Orland never stuck his own neck out, friend. He was too big for that.”
“The guys who did the heist wouldn’t talk?”
“They came in the hard way. Feet first and leaking.” Lowell scowled in disgust. “Oh, Orland got plenty of heat. But in those days he could take plenty. If he hadn’t got hot and plugged a guy in front of witnesses a while after that, he’d probably still be up top.”
“He’s not on his way back up?”
“Could be. But he’s sure starting from scratch. When he made the rock hockey club, his outfit fell apart. The hired help got to fighting over the pieces. One way and another, he wound up without a cryin’ dime.”
“Except for a fortune in gold that he might not have had in the first place.”
Lowell got another cigarette going. This time he did all right with the match. “He had it, or at least he knows where it went. Like I say, in those days, nothing happened unless Orland said it should happen. Guys who thought otherwise turned up dead. Or sometimes they never turned up.”
“Johnny Stover would have been seven or eight years old at the time,” McHugh said. “You think he was one of the mob?”
“Oh, crap,” Lowell retorted. “All I know is Orland is living like a guy who had money, and he shouldn’t have money. I don’t even know there’s been any contact between him and Stover. But some hard guys who look like they could be tied tight with Orland have been sniffing around Stover. So I sniff, too.”
“So what? You’re not a cop any more.”
“That case was never closed. McHugh, I didn’t take a dime’s worth of juice, never from anybody, understand. A lot of the guys who did are rich, and I’m like you say, a glorified gate guard.” He mashed his cigarette out, took a deep swallow of his drink. “Okay. I’d get a little satisfaction out of recovering that loot. And a lot out of the ten per cent reward that’s still standing for it.”
“Now,” McHugh said, “You are talking my language. He splashed the last of the second bottle into their glasses. ‘One for the road.”
Chapter 5
McHugh waited backstage, perspiring in the reflected heat of the floodlamps, while Gabrielle Risdon ribbed the sponsor in the closing commercial and the theme came up. It was a live show, and he could remember similarly peaceful places. Anzio and Salerno. Then the studio house lights were up, people were moving from the theater seats and the little girl with a bounce to her walk and glossy brown hair in a shoulder-length bob was picking her way through the tangle of cables to the wings. McHugh saw a thin man with horn-rimmed glasses and a headset intercept her and point in his direction.
“McHugh? Hi.” The hand she gave him was dry, in spite of the hot hour she’d spent in front of the cameras. “Come on along while I scrape the goop off.”
There was a cubicle of a dressing room. Gabrielle disappeared behind a folding screen, and there was a brief rustling. The cocktail gown she’d worn in the show flew over the top and landed on the floor. She popped out in a close-fitting dressing gown, vanished through a door. Water ran for perhaps thirty seconds and she was back, pulling a red knit suit from a wardrobe hanger. McHugh stood back against a wall, where there seemed less danger of being run down.
“Two minutes, fifty-two seconds,” he said in honest admiration when she had finished applying lipstick to the pouting mouth. “You could make a fortune giving a course in it”
She laughed, showing small white teeth. “1 can shave that some when I’m alone. Who are you, McHugh?
“An investigator, more or less. Make it less. Just a guy who wants to find another guy.”
“A newspaper friend said you run a saloon. Sometimes. He hinted you’re some kind of high-level trouble shooter and wanted to know what was up.”
“Tell him anything?” McHugh had nothing in particular against newspapers, but saw no point to them messing around with Stover’s disappearance and tying it in to the Nuss kill.
“I said you might have something like a beautiful friendship in mind.”
McHugh grinned. “It’s a pleasant thought.”
She looked him up and down with black eyes that sparkled. “You like your women tall.”
“I like my women.”
“My friend mentioned a regal-type blonde mistress. I think there was lust or envy or something in his voice. Now that we have that settled, what do we do?
“I’d like to talk to you about Stover, and see the film you shot and didn’t use.”
“Right here. We can run it off in the lab projector.” She took a can of film from a drawer in her dressing table and led the way down a flight of stairs and through a maze of corridors to a small room. It was fitted with a motion picture projector, a dozen comfortable chairs and a screen. Gabrielle threaded the film into the machine, focused on the screen and said, “Got any questions first, or do you want to sit through this mess?”
McHugh settled into a chair. “Run it first, I guess. I’m just stumbling around at this point, anyway.”
“We shot this over five or six months. The idea was to show how much goes into restoring an old car. She started the projector and took the chair beside him.
The film had sound and color. It opened with a shot of cars winding along the Skyline Boulevard and cutting down a narrow, winding road and onto the grounds of a white-fenced farm. A black Deusenberg convertible led the parade. There was a maroon and black Auburn Speedster; a Packard town car with liveried chauffeur and footman; a T-model Ford with brass radiator and brass headlights; an electric car that looked like a goldfish bowl on wheels; a fire engine with hard rubber tires and Dalmatian dog riding beside the driver; and a purple Stanley Steamer touring car that left a plume of purple steam in its wake. A tow truck brought up the rear, pulling the Pierce-Arrow phaeton. The phaeton looked pretty bad to McHugh.
The cavalcade stopped by a rambling barn, and people milled around and converged on the Pierce as the driver got out of the tow truck. McHugh saw it was Stover, liberally smeared with grease. He was laughing into the camera as he unhitched the towbar, got behind the wheel of the car and started the engine. There was a large cloud of black smoke mixed with blue smoke and some horrible noise. Then Stover was talking with Gabrielle, showing her photos of the car when it was new and saying he planned to make it look the same way before he was finished. The camera moved into the barn, and the actors went along. Stover was explaining how the job would be done and inviting them all to come back in a few weeks.
“Time passes, with a great spending of money,” Gabrielle muttered.
The next sequence showed the car completely dismantled and spread out on the concrete floor of the barn. There was some commentary on how each part was cleaned up and inspected and replaced, with a lot of them being built in Stover’s machine shop. The aluminum body, stripped of paint, was blocked up on horses. The immense motor swung from a chain falls, and the frame lay on the floor nearby.
“…This machine was put together to last,” Stover was saying. “The frame rails are eighteen inches high and seven inches wide at their largest point, and the cross members are of iron pipe up to five inches in diameter…”
There was a final sequence of the assembly, of a dozen coats of paint being applied and of the car purring up the steep hills of San Francisco in high gear and sliding into the ramp of the Fairmont Hotel with Stover at the wheel and Gabrielle beside him.
The screen went dark as she cut the projector off. “That’s it. The rest we were going to do live.” She started the film on rewind. “McHugh, I could cheerfully kill your Johnny Stover.”
“Understandable. You were set to go a week ago tonight with it, right?”
“Yes. And you know what? If he pops up a week from now or three months from now, I’ll still have to do it. Be sweet and bright and act as though he were a lovely person, because my producer has a two-thousand-dollar ulcer in that reel of film. God—talk about whoring.”
McHugh stretched in the chair. “Other than the show you planned to do, have you had any other contact with Stover, Gabrielle?”
The black eyes turned cool, and he said, “I don’t mean to be personal, but it is important. We don’t know if he disappeared of his own volition or if something happened to him. I can tell you this, in confidence. He was doing some work on defense projects and the Federal authorities are concerned. And there has been a killing we feel is connected to the case. Any possible lead has to be checked out.”
He saw the white teeth nibble the full lip, heard a soft, quick intake of breath. “The gangster who was killed in that girl’s apartment…?”
“That’s right.”
“I see….There’s no reason I shouldn’t answer your question anyway, McHugh. Our relationship was pleasant, but it was business. In all, I suppose we met a couple of dozen times to discuss the film and script. Stover didn’t know how long it would take him to reach a certain point; there was trouble with parts for the car one time, and another he had to leave the city for several days. We went to dinner, or out after the show a few times. He tried to sleep with me, but nothing came of it.”
McHugh felt he had met another blank wall. “So your only connection was the car. I understand he bought it from you in the first place.”
‘That’s right. I was eating at a drive-in one day and he parked alongside in that black Deuse you saw in the film. He introduced himself and said he was a collector and wanted to buy the Arrow. I was in a mood to sell. Five miles to a gallon of gas and a sick motor were breaking me up in business. It also takes up two parking spaces and needs a football field to turn around in.”
“You’re a little girl. Why’d you ever take such a monster on?”
She grinned. “McHugh, I’m in show business. I need attention, and attention costs money. My show’s strictly a low-budget production, and I’ve got hot network competition. Face it—I’m working for coffee and cakes and my puss on a picture tube, and maybe in a couple of years I’ll make the grade. I couldn’t afford a polar bear to lead around on a leash, but I could pay a hundred bucks for a monstrosity that would turn heads. I even got to like the beast.”
“Uh-huh. Where’d you get it?”
“From some boy at San Jose State. I don’t remember his name.”
“Doesn’t matter, I guess.” He stood. “You’ve been very kind to give me so much time, when you must be tired after the production. Could I buy you a nightcap?”
Gabrielle slid the reel of film into its can. “If you’ll take me to your saloon. My friend said it’s a strange place, or the customers are strange. What did he call it—The Door?”
“The Door,” he said quietly. “Come on. See for yourself.”
The Door was jammed, with drinkers standing two and three deep at the bar and every table filled. Three bartenders were on duty, along with a pair of cocktail waitresses. A graying man was playing honky-tonk piano.
McHugh ran a practiced eye over the crowd, guessed there were about a hundred and twenty-five people. He spotted about a dozen regulars immediately as he pushed an aisle for them up to the nearest cocktail waitress station.
Benny, the regular head bartender, looked up from the row of iced glasses into which he was pouring liquor freehand. He made a fast pass over them with a soda bottle as he said, “Jeez, Mac, I was hopin’ you’d show. We got a theater crowd and a bunch of slummers all at once. No Loris, George didn’t show and the creeps the union sent over couldn’t mix cement. I spend half my time seein they don’t tap the till.”
“It figures. Who’s George?”
“The new relief man. You wanta work?”
“I want a drink. So does the lady here.” He swung around to Gabrielle. “Stingers okay?”
She nodded. McHugh said, “Make a pitcherful. We’ll move in on somebody.”
“Reminds me. Guy back near the piano been waiting.” Benny reached over to the back bar and flipped a card at McHugh. “Left this.”
McHugh took the card. Engraved on it was a small black hawk, diving, talons extended. He slipped it into a pocket, wondering what Bud Chapman had in mind, and said, “Send the girl over.”
He took Gabrielle’s hand and towed her through the crowd. The piano, as much of it as could be heard over the tangle of voices, was bad enough to be good. The man pounded the keyboard with the sure nonchalance of a cat house professor, the stub of a cigar clenched in his teeth.
“I thought the studio was chaos,” Gabrielle yelled in his ear as they detoured around a knot of women in furs and expensive gowns. “This is a madhouse!”
He grinned at her as they broke into the clear. He spotted the corner table where the chubby man sat with the dark-haired woman. There were empty chairs. Chapman saw him coming and stood, pulling a chair back as he said, “Hi, Mac. Meet Dolores.”
The woman was young, McHugh guessed about twenty-one, and she was Mexican—a lot of Spanish blood and not much Indian, judging from the almost ivory complexion and the delicate bone formation. She wore a black dress that had obviously not come from Mexico. It was high-necked, but did nothing to conceal the lush fullness of her bosom. She gave McHugh a hand that was firm and smooth and showed him magnificently white teeth as he greeted her in rapid Spanish and introduced Gabrielle.
“You just cost me a round of drinks, Mr. McHugh,” she said. “Fly-boy bet me you’d speak Spanish before you spoke English.”
McHugh smiled and said, “Don’t pay. It was a sure thing.” The cocktail girl arrived with a pitcher of stingers and glasses. As she was pouring the drinks, McHugh met Bud Chapman’s eyes and asked him in Slovenian, “Anything urgent?”
Chapman blinked his eyes, which McHugh knew was a sure sign he was puzzled. In the same language he replied, “You asked me to the party.”
“The hell,” McHugh muttered. The drinks were on the table, and he told the waitress to keep them coming and put them on the house tab.
He sipped his and waited for a decent interval to pass so he could gracefully leave the table and have some quick words with Bud Chapman.
Chapman was about his own size, but gave the impression of being almost fat. He was not fat at all; it was just that he was built straight up and down and wide and his face was round. The business card with the diving hawk insignia was known in Cairo and Palermo and Valencia and Oslo and Mexico City and Munich and Melbourne and a hundred other cities of the world. But Chapman was a transportation specialist; he could arrange for a junk in the Formosa Strait or a burro in Mexico or an oxcart in Normandy if the price was right, but his principal business was flying. Flying anything anywhere at any time and to hell with international boundaries.
He had acquired a variety of airplanes in one way or another. Most of them were still being looked for by the rightful owners, including a factory-fresh two-seater jet fighter which could do well over six hundred miles an hour. Chapman had simply shown up at the assembly plant with forged military credentials, raised hell because the plane he was supposed to ferry hadn’t been fueled, supervised the fueling and taken off like a scalded cat.
