Everybody Had A Gun (10 page)

Phil Samson is a big, husky guy with iron-gray hair, a clean-shaven pink face and a jaw like the business end of a sledge hammer. He is, first of all my very good friend, and secondly, a hard-working, honest, and efficient cop. More specifically, he's captain of the Los Angeles Homicide Division.

Right now he wasn't too happy. I'd told him I wanted to talk to Ozzie York, which was all right, but I'd also said I wanted to talk to him alone, which wasn't so all right. We'd been going around and around for ten minutes.

He mangled the end of a black, unlighted cigar. "Damn it, Shell. You're not a Homicide man. You're just a lousy private snoop."

I grinned at him. "Not so lousy."

"Why you gotta see this guy alone?"

"Talk. Maybe he'll be more at ease with me if there's nobody else in the room. Maybe nothing. But I might get something—and it's not as if I were taking him for a walk. He's right there at the felony jail, isn't he?"

"Yeah. Lincoln Heights."

Ozzie had been taken, after futile interrogation at Homicide, to what is now called the Main Jail in Los Angeles. It's the old Lincoln Heights Jail, and not many people call it the Main Jail. To most of the old-timers, Samson included, it's still Lincoln Heights.

"Well, Sam?" I asked. "Can't hurt anybody. Maybe I'll get something. All in the interests of justice, Captain, sir."

He jerked the cigar out of his wide mouth, growled, "Go to hell, Shell, sir," and stuck the cigar back in. He sat quietly, frowning for a moment, and I didn't say anything. Finally he looked at me.

"All right, Shell. I'll send Lieutenant Rawlins over with you. Make it snappy. And let me know if you get anything."

"I will if he'll let me."

"Huh? If who'll let you?"

"Ozzie. I might have to make promises."

Sam's pink face got pinker. "You—"he started to shout. Then he dug out a wooden match, ripped it along the underside of his desk, and puffed vigorously on his cigar. He fixed his brown eyes on me through a curtain of choking smoke. "Go on. Get the hell out." He added sweetly, "You will be kind enough to drop in and say hello after a while, won't you? Just for fun?"

"Knock it off, you old walrus. Yeah, I'll drop in. Just for fun."

I got up and Sam said, "But, Shell. Better make out that damned crime report before you get out of here. I want that in the files in case you get killed."

I grinned at him and went out. Across the hall I dictated the crime report on this morning's gun waving by Ozzie to a cute little gal, then walked back into the hall just as Lieutenant Rawlins came out of Sam's office.

"Come on, Shell," he said cheerfully. "I've got the assignment of my life. I get to take you to jail."

Rawlins took me in a radio car out to Lincoln Heights and we went up to the jail. A jailer brought Ozzie out of his cell and I gave Rawlins my gun, then went with Ozzie into one of the interrogation rooms on the felony floor. Rawlins waited outside and said to me as we went in, "Get me the winner of the sixth at Hollywood, genius."

"Sure thing," I told him. Then Ozzie and I were inside and the banter stopped.

We sat in hard-bottomed wooden chairs on opposite sides of a pine desk and Ozzie asked, "What is this?"

"Talk, Ozzie. Information. From you to me."

I knew I couldn't slap him around, and it probably wouldn't do much good anyway, so I went off on another angle. "Ozzie, you wouldn't talk this morning, but if you want to make one smart play in your life, give me the whole thing. Give me the straight copy. I know most of it anyway."

His lip curled and he kept right on not having anything to say to me. Maybe he thought I was bluffing.

"O. K.," I said. "How do you like this? One, Sader sent you and your partner to kill me. Marty Sader of the Pit on Seventh. I've just had a talk with him."

He frowned at me and I went on, "Two, you're in with Marty on the kill of Lobo, and—"

His jaw dropped open and all of a sudden I realized that explained why he couldn't talk to me up to now. If he spilled that Marty had sent him after me, it would come out that he was tied into last night's murder. Probably he'd been one of the two men who'd lugged Lobo out of Sader's place after closing.

I followed it up. "I know that, Ozzie, but nobody else does yet. Nobody of any importance to you so far. As long as I do know, you might as well fill me in."

His lip curled and he stayed shut up. It was like that for five minutes. He still wasn't talking, and finally I made up my mind I'd have to play.

I said, "O.K., Ozzie, here's a deal for you. You're in plenty of trouble right now. You're an ex-con and you waved a gun at me this morning. Just for you to have a gun on you is a felony. So you're stuck already with a felony rap for possession of a deadly weapon. But you're in deeper than that if I press charges against you for assault with a deadly weapon. At your arraignment in a couple of days, no matter how you plead, you're sunk. Particularly if I press charges against you. Give a listen to this: spill to me and I won't press any charges against you for waving that rod. Also nothing you tell me goes to the cops. You'll be in better shape than you're in now."

He squinted at me, opened his mouth, and shut it. Then he shook his head. "I dunno. What good's that do me?"

"You get me off your neck for that play in my office. That's something. You need all the help you can get. Any load I'll take off your back is pure gravy."

"I'll be outta here in no time." He gave me a sneer, but it was a weak one.

I laughed in his face. "Remember, I won't spill anything you tell me. Maybe you know me, Ozzie. If I make a deal with you, I'll stick to it even if it gags me. Christ knows I don't like making any kind of deals with you. But if I make it, I'll stick to it."

"What's the deal now?"

"I don't press charges; I don't spill anything you tell me to the cops. That means I'm sticking my neck out if I bury any info. But that's the deal. Don't forget I know most of it anyway—Sader, you, Lobo, the rest of it."

He sucked on his upper lip. "What you want to know?"

"Just verification. I know that you—skip that—somebody shot at me. I know you and your pal, the tall thin one, were supposed to pick me up. But what then? Were you taking me to Sader? Or were you just supposed to lose me?"

"No charges? You drop it?"

"That's right. But one thing, Ozzie. That's all I promise. No charges and what you tell me doesn't go to the cops. Anything else, or anything the cops get out of you, that's not my worry. I'm a private detective, which is practically the same thing as saying a private citizen. I carry no weight at all with the cops or anybody else. You're not a popular guy with the authorities, and the Deputy D.A. may go right ahead and draw up and issue a complaint against you. He undoubtedly will. But you're a goddam fool if you don't take advantage of everything you can get. Including anything you get from me."

He nodded, sucking on his lip. Then he said, "What the hell. Look at it like this. Suppose—" he squinted up his eyes and ridges grew in his narrow forehead. He was thinking. "Suppose you was supposed to go for a—a ride, say, with me and my friend. And you just kept on goin', sort of got disappeared."

He paused and looked at me. I nodded, and he went on, "Then that'd make everybody happy, huh? That's all I know about it. I didn't even see Sader—just supposing this."

"Sure. Well, supposing, then what? Maybe you go back to see Sader?"

He sighed. "I make a phone call. I don't see Sader at all. I don't know he's got anything to do with anything."

"Call where?"

He sucked strenuously on his lip, then wiped the back of one small hand across his mouth. He reached over and scratched his sleeve, not looking at me. Finally he said, "Hollywood three-two-two-seven."

'That Sader?"

"I dunno."

"What were you supposed to tell the other end?"

He squirmed uneasily without answering.

I said sharply, "You'd better loosen your lip, Ozzie. And give it to me straight."

He sighed. "I'm supposed to say, 'I delivered the flowers.'"

"Delivered the—that all?"

"Yeah. So help me."

"O. K., whose number's that?"

"You got me. I'm finished. I don't know nothing' else. Keep your end up now."

"Christ, you've told me nothing yet." Actually I'd got most of what I lacked on this deal from Iris, but I'd been hoping Ozzie could make the view plainer. "O.K.," I said. "Another thing. What's between Marty Sader and Collier Breed?"

"You gotta ask?"

I had as good an idea as most people who brush up against the rackets, but I wanted it straight. "Just clear it up, Ozzie. You've got to balance this if you still want that deal."

"Nothin' much to it. Breed's just a bastard wants all the gravy. Somebody gets a good deal started in what Breed thinks is his territory and he's gotta get his damn fat fingers in the pot. What else? Him and the big boys behind him."

"What big boys?"

Shrimpy lifted his head up and peered down his nose at me. "Good Christ. How long you been living? Who the hell you think I mean?"

I guess he was right. He didn't have to give me names.

Maybe they didn't have names this far down the line, but he meant the smart, smooth-talking "businessmen" that Senator Kefauver and the income-tax boys were after. I left it there.

"Sader's got a good deal?"

"Hand over fist."

"That does it, Ozzie. Nothing else?"

He shook his head.

"O.K. Who's at that phone number, and I'll take off."

"I told you all I know."

I got up. "All right, Ozzie. If you don't know, you don't know. But better you should tell me if you do. I can get it out of the police files, but it might start people wondering."

He swore softly and expertly. "Yeah. Christ Well, it's a dame's place. Sader's dame—one of those mistress things. Me, I couldn't never afford nothing like that. Name's Kitty Green. And that's all I know. Don't even know where she lives—but Sader pays the rent. Now stop messin' with me."

I said, "O.K., Ozzie, you got your deal," and went out.

I wanted to make a phone call, but first there was something else I might as well do while the chance was handy. On the ride back to City Hall I told Rawlins what I wanted.

"Here's what I'd like. I got a good look this afternoon at half a dozen men who work for Collier Breed—at least, I think they do. And two who work for Marty Sader. Just for hell I'd like a peek at any pictures you've got of guys you know are thick with Sader or Breed."

I had the feeling I'd be seeing one or more of those goons again, and the more I knew about them, the better. I wanted what I could get on those boys.

Rawlins said, "You get me that sixth race?"

I shook my head. "You know what I did? I forgot all about that. Play number seven."

He grinned. "You know I don't play the ponies. You get anything else?"

"I'm not sure. But—uh—I'm not going to press charges."

He frowned. "Huh? And you the guy that started all this?"

"Wait a minute, Rawlins. Don't pop your top. I didn't start this; Ozzie did. Or somebody behind him. I told him I wasn't pressing charges—something I couldn't do if I were a cop. And act your age. I also told him that anything else that messed him up was his worry. You know damn well he's going up, charges or no charges. I told the guy as much."

He glared at me for a moment without speaking, and to change the subject I said, "This picture deal. That too much of a job? Won't take too long, will it?"

His face relaxed and he grinned. He didn't say anything, just kept grinning.

I thought I knew why. I know a lot of the officers in the department well, and with one or two exceptions—among which Rawlins wasn't included—we got along like buddies. I'd learned a lot about the functioning of the Los Angeles Police Department, and one of those things was that the place was efficient as hell.

This time wasn't any different. At the City Hall we went inside and I suddenly discovered we weren't headed for the Records and Identification Division. I asked Rawlins, "You lost? Don't we go to the 'I' room?"

"Not this time, Scott. We go to the Intelligence Division."

I lifted an eyebrow at him, but kept quiet. In Intelligence, I sat down behind an empty desk while Rawlins walked off. I lit a cigarette, but before I could really settle down to smoking the thing, Rawlins was back, still grinning.

"Naw," he said, "it won't take long."

He tossed two neat packs of small photos onto the desk in front of me. He tapped the thick one and said, "Breed."

Then he tapped the thin stack and said, "Sader."

"Oh, you're cute," I said. "Don't look so damn smug, Rawlins."

He grinned.

"How come so handy?" I asked him. "You can't have all the tough boys in town cross-indexed like this."

He sat down opposite me. "Well, maybe not quite that good. But since the Lobo homicide. . ."

"You like Sader?"

"Could be. He's stepping on Breed's toes, it looks like. You can't be sure, but he's a funny one."

"I like him, too," I said. "I like him better than you. I think the bastard had me shot at"

He frowned. "Look here, Shell. You got anything for us, give. You're getting one hell of a lot of co-operation here. I saw that report on you this morning, and you told Russo you didn't have any idea who let fly at you."

"I didn't." I deliberated about spilling the whole deal so far, but what could I tell him? That a girl had sung a song in my ear? I didn't have any reason to doubt the story Iris had told me, but I wondered what Detective Lieutenant Rawlins of the L. A. Homicide Division would think of it. Of course, there was Ozzie's dope, too, but damn it, I'd made a deal with the punk. He'd given fair trade for it, but I sort of wished I hadn't got tied up in it now. Sure, now that I had the dope I wanted.

Rawlins was looking at me. I said, "Fact. I didn't know it was Sader. Possibly it wasn't. Look, Rawlins, you know how I work. I blunder around and get knocked on the head and make faces. Right now I've got a headful of ideas, but nothing you'd call proof. I'll get back in here later some time, tonight probably, and give you all I can—if I've got anything."