Everybody Had A Gun (6 page)

And maybe not so merrily. It occurred to me that even though I was twenty feet or so from Marty Sader's Pit, I was a long, long way from getting inside. I remembered that the elevator took a long time to get down, and there'd be plenty of opportunity for anybody inside to get ready for me if he had any such desire. I dredged up my memory of what the spot below was like. You didn't even have to turn around in the elevator, just stepped in, rode on down, then stepped straight out into the club, and you were in the main room. There were tables scattered around, a bar along the right wall—probably in front of the locked doors Mia had mentioned—and booths along the near wall on the left and right sides of the elevator. The dressing rooms, office, and whatnot were beyond the velvet-draped left wall, and against the far wall ahead of you was a little platform for a small combo, and the usual small dance floor.

That didn't help me much, and I was still standing in the alley looking at the door to the elevator when I did the first fairly sensible thing I'd done all day. I had a very small thought.

It was obvious that, if Sader had picked up Iris, no matter what his reason, he could have parked her almost anywhere. But the only place I knew where Sader might hang out were his home and here. I'd scratched the home off, and assuming Sader was here—and maybe Iris, too—Marty, the way I had him figured, wouldn't be in the least happy to see me. So then I had my small thought.

I was going back over in my mind all that the nearly hysterical Iris had babbled at me, and I remembered the bit she'd blurted about being locked up. Somewhere in there she'd said she went up the dumb-waiter to someplace. To—Clark's? That was it.

I walked back out of the alley to Seventh Street and took another peek at the cafeteria edging the alley on my left as I came out.

Uh-huh. The sign on the windows said, "Clark's Cafeteria." And right underneath it was Marty Sader's Pit. Looking in through the glass front of the cafeteria, I could even see the right-angle extension jutting out on the left wall and extending to the back of the cafeteria. Part of that space next to the wall might be a storeroom, but I knew at least a six-by-six-foot square of it was taken up by an elevator reached from outside.

There was a little twitch in the bunched nerve and muscle still in the center of my back. Unless Iris was a psychiatric case, she'd sure as hell been locked up down below in the Pit just before she'd come bobbing across the street to my office.

I was feeling fairly pleased with myself when a motion on my left made me jump. The shape I'd been in for the last four hours, just a worm turning would have made me jump. But this was a long black Plymouth sedan turning into the alley a foot on my left.

There were two guys in the front seat and they paid no attention to me. That was O. K. I'd had more than my share of attention today. But I knew I'd seen the guy sitting beside the driver somewhere before. I stopped thinking about dumb-waiters long enough to run the thought down.

Then I remembered where I'd seen his mug: in a newspaper story a month or so back saying he'd been picked up on a suspicion-of-robbery charge, with no subsequent conviction. That wasn't much, but the guy who'd gone bail for him was Collier Breed, the chap with his sticky fat fingers in pies, the boy to see if you wanted into any of the racket gravy around town. I didn't know for sure what the black Plymouth meant, but things were getting complicated. And I had a gruesome feeling that I was industriously working my way into the middle of the complications.

I edged over to my left and watched the car for a minute. It pulled up in front of the elevator where I'd been standing a few minutes before. It stopped, and the guy on the right got out. He pulled a big watch from his pocket, looked at it, then stuffed it back into his pants. He said something to the driver, then crossed his arms and leaned back against the door of the car. Nothing seemed to be happening, so I walked over to the door of Clark's Cafeteria.

Dumb-waiter, Iris had said. That sounded like a kitchen. I looked through the glass window of the cafeteria, past the tables and the long serving line with its steam tables at the right, to a pair of swinging doors in back. As I watched, a man in a white jacket came through the swinging doors and walked behind the steam tables. I said, "Here goes nothing, Scott," and went in. I walked past the sad-looking characters shoving food down their throats, down the length of the serving line, and stopped at the cashier. She'd been busy making change and hadn't seen me.

I leaned over toward her and said, "Say, miss. I'd like to compliment somebody on the food here. Best meal I've had in a month."

She smiled halfheartedly like that was great but I could drop dead if I felt like it. "Thanks," she said listlessly.

"I mean it," I said. "Food never used to be this good here. It's chock-full of downright goodness."

She batted her eyes at me. "New chef," she said. "About the nine hundredth. Tell it to the boss." She nodded vaguely toward the front of the cafeteria.

"Thanks. New cook, huh? How long's this been going on?"

"Couple weeks." She frowned. "I don't remember you, mister."

I grinned at her. "That's too bad. I sure remember you."

"Oh, gowan," she cooed.

I left the gal, waited till she was making change, and walked through the swinging doors in back.

It was a kitchen, all right. It was almost two-thirty P. M. now, and only one man, a cook in a white puffy hat, was in the kitchen. He was stirring a conglomeration in a big metal pot with a long wooden ladle.

He glanced around at me as I came through the doors. "Hey!" he said. "Don't you know you're not supposed to be in here."

I smiled pleasantly at him and said, "You must be new here. I'm making an inspection. I'm Scott, L.A. Bureau of Sanitation. Been a complaint."

So far I was on fairly safe ground. The L.A. Bureau of Sanitation does make inspections of complaints, and I had plenty to complain about, and my name was Scott, and I was making an inspection.

There was one short, bad moment while he stared at me, then glanced around the kitchen, but then he wiped his hands on his not very clean apron and stuck out a paw toward me.

I shook his hand and he said nervously, "Sorry. I only been here a couple weeks. I think everything's all right, I think."

While I shook his hand I glanced slyly at his fingernails to see if they'd pass, then let go of his hand and said, "I'll take a look around. Where's the boss?"

"Out front. Want me to get him?"

"In a minute, maybe. Not yet." I sure hoped it wasn't yet.

I took out a notebook I carry and made doodles with a pencil while I wandered around glaring at the pots and pans. The kitchen ran the entire width of the back of the cafeteria and was about as wide as two or more ordinary rooms. I'd noticed when I first came in that there was a closed door in the kitchen's left wall, which was next to the alley outside, and in the right wall were two little doors about a yard square.

I worked my way over to the little doors, swung them open, and found what I wanted.

"This thing," I said. "What's it for?"

He wiped his hands some more and said nervously, "There's a club down under here. Night club. No kitchen there. Didn't used to be a club. They use this place for what food they serve. Don't serve much. I don't have nothing' to do with that, though. Boss could tell you more."

I nodded. "How about getting him for me?" I didn't care if I never saw the boss, but I wanted to get rid of this guy.

He said, "Sure, sure," and went out.

As soon as his back disappeared I raced clear across the kitchen, yanked open the door leading to the alley outside, left the door open, and jumped back to the food lift. I hoped that open door would make it look as if I'd left.

It was a tight fit, but I got inside the lift, facing in toward the far wall of the kitchen and the open door to the alley, and I couldn't help thinking as I grabbed for the doors to swing them shut that I'd have a hell of a time explaining this to the boss if he should bust in while I was sitting there cross-legged like a yogi and not even contemplating my navel.

But I got the doors shut, pulled the little rope that lowered the dumb-waiter, and was on my way.

I wasn't sure what I'd be getting into down below in the Pit, but I had an idea it wasn't going to be good, and even though I was going down, down, down, I felt as if my stomach were still up there in the kitchen.

Chapter Six

THE LIFT stopped at the bottom of the shaft with a slight jar and an almost inaudible thud that was quieter than the sound of my heart beating in my ears. I pulled the.38 out from under my coat, squeezed it tight in my right hand, and waited a moment, listening.

I couldn't hear a thing. There wasn't even any light snaking through the crack that I could feel in the little doors before my face, so I guessed the room ahead of me was dark. I shoved gently on the doors and there was a faint click as they swung outward. I couldn't see anything. Leaning out, I looked around and saw a thin slice of light spilling from under a door about ten feet straight ahead of me. In the glow, as my eyes got used to the darkness, I could see I was at the edge of a small room undoubtedly at the back of the club. This was where the waiters picked up food that occasional customers might order. And now I knew why the service at the Pit had been so lousy.

I eased my cramped legs outward and down till they touched the floor, then I slid out and straightened up. Soft, rustling conversation reached me like someone talking in a dream. I walked slowly to the door on my right, letting my feet down gently on the floor and shifting my weight carefully as I moved. With my ear pressed against the door, I could hear voices, one deep, rumbling voice and two higher-pitched ones. One of them sounded like a woman. I listened for about a minute but couldn't understand any of the words of conversation. The other high-pitched voice seemed to be doing most of the talking, but it didn't tell me anything.

I'd come this far; I couldn't just stand here. But if there was a canasta game going on inside I was going to look damned silly.

I grabbed the doorknob in my left hand, lifted, and turned the knob. It moved easily and the door cracked without a squeak.

I shoved the door hard, swung it wide, and stepped into the room with the gun solid in my right hand, hunched over like Billy the Kid.

It was a good thing. There wasn't anything like canasta going on and I didn't feel a bit silly any more. I felt relieved and a little scared.

Iris Gordon sat in a chair with her right profile toward me and I could see that her hands were twisted behind her back and taped. She turned her head quickly toward me and opened her mouth, long red hair swirling as she moved. Behind a big, pure-white desk on my right a man was sitting, leaning forward with his chin cupped in his hands, his elbows on the top of the desk. On the far side of the room two men leaned against the wall, casually. Both of them were tall; one was heavy, one thin.

As I busted in, the guy at the desk jerked a little, then started lowering his hands slowly to the desktop. One of the men against the wall, the thin one, spun around fast to his left, his legs spreading wide and his left foot hitting the floor with a solid smack. The motion sent his unbuttoned coat swinging out away from his body, baring a gun nestled against his left arm. As he spun around and crouched, his right hand streaked toward the gun and slapped against it before I could get a word out of my mouth.

He was good. He was better and faster than I am, but I had my .38 already in my fist.

As his palm slapped the gun butt I said, "Watch it." I didn't have to speak loud. The room was so quiet I could hear the dull smack of his hand against the gun metal.

The words dropped into the room and hung there. The guy froze with his hand crossed over his heart. He didn't move. He didn't take his hand away, but it didn't come out full either. I'd flicked the muzzle of the .38 over toward him, ready to squeeze down on the trigger if I had to. But I didn't want any shooting. I still didn't know who the hell I'd be shooting or why.

The man at the desk moved his right hand slowly, out in plain sight with no menace in his movement, and still looking at me he waved his hand a couple of times toward the two men. The tall thin guy relaxed a little and let his hand come away from the gun. Both men held their hands slightly in front of them where I could see them.

So far nobody had said a word except me. For a moment there was a sort of tableau, with the three men motionless and Iris staring at me, and in that moment I thought to myself that I hoped to Christ this caper started making sense pretty soon. In all my L.A. private eyeing I'd never run around so much or stuck my neck out so far without knowing what the score was or who was winning. And here I was throwing down on Marty Sader, calm and quiet behind his big, white desk, two other guys I'd never seen before, and a beautiful girl who'd said maybe twenty frantic words to me.

This way, I thought, lies the booby hatch.

And then Iris was spraying words at me for the second time this topsy-turvy day. Seemed like she couldn't see me without busting out in quivers.

"Shell, Shell, Shell," she said in a gasp like one word. "Oh, Shell, I'm glad." I thought she was going to say, "Glad! Glad! Glad!" but she didn't. She stopped talking and stared at me as if I were her mother.

Sader had his hands flat on the top of the desk now. He looked at me and said disgustedly, "Well—" and added a vulgar monosyllable I never use.

I eased the door shut behind me with my foot and leaned back against the wood. I said, "Hello, Marty."

He inclined his head. "Mr. Scott."

His was the high-spirited voice I'd heard doing most of the talking; I remembered it now. No nervousness about him. Calm. Almost pleasant. He might have been at a cocktail party for all the nervousness he showed.

Marty didn't look particularly formidable except for a solid, square jaw—and his complete calm. Sitting behind the big desk, he looked even less than his five-nine or five-ten. He had black hair that was starting to thin at the top, and it was carefully combed sideways over the pinkish spot. A few flecks of gray dotted his hair and the close-trimmed temples. Brown eyes stared at me from behind rimless glasses. I'd say he was in his late forties, but he was well barbered and looked tanned and in pretty good shape. He was half smiling, and his teeth were so white they almost glowed at me. He wore a black suit and was wearing a black knit tie over a white, long-collared shirt. He really stood out against the white of his desk, a fairly good-looking guy.