“Where would he start?”
“At the Warehouse, I suppose,” Tucker said slowly. “He’s a feisty little guy. He’s had things his own way for the last thirty years. He hates pornographers more than I do, if that’s possible. And if Baruch and his merry crew get their hands on him—”
Shayne said quickly, “I have to go now. A guy I just hit is starting to sit up.”
“Shayne! What did you mean, Baruch may not have anything to sell? Shayne…”
Shayne hung up and stepped out of the car. The black had rolled over and brought one knee up. The second man was still out.
Shayne kicked the black in the head, then again in the side, staving in two of the short ribs at the bottom of the ribcage. The big man fell back on the grass.
“My name is Shayne. I’m the guy you were trying to blow up a minute ago. Can you understand me?”
“I hear you.”
He groped for his gun. Finding it gone, he swiveled on one hip, trying to tangle legs with Shayne and bring him down. But his movements were slow. Shayne stepped back, then forward, and kicked him even harder in the same place. Clearly, it hurt. He gave an almost feminine cry.
Stooping, Shayne rolled him off the curb into the roadway. When he tried to grab the bumper of one of the cars, Shayne kneed him in the small of the back.
“Car come along here, I’m going to get hurt.” the man said.
“Not much traffic this time of night,” Shayne said. “Chances are you’ll be O.K. I’m going to ask you some questions, Page, and we’re going to stay out in the open until you give me the answers. Then I’ll give you ten dollars for bus fare, because I know you’ll want to leave town. Who’s paying you to blow up people?”
“Don’t know the cat’s name.”
Shayne kicked him in the neck. A car came around the corner with a sweep of headlights, swerved violently, missing the prostrate figure by less than a foot, and came to rest against the opposite curb.
A young man yelled at Shayne, “What’s going on?”
“Move along,” Shayne said without raising his voice. “This doesn’t concern you.”
The black raised his head. “You broke my ribs.” He saved himself another kick by going no further with his complaint. The young driver restarted his stalled motor and drove off quickly.
“Answer the question,” Shayne said patiently. “Who paid you?”
“Frankie Capp. Never again. That dude is bad luck.”
“This whole thing has been bush,” Shayne said. “You can’t kill anybody with that amount of plastic. You’d just blow a hole through the floor and break my feet.”
“Yeah, and then he said to carry you out to the island.”
“Did you plan to bandage me, or let me bleed?”
Slowly and painfully, Page came over far enough so he could look up at Shayne. “Make it a hundred. I couldn’t come back to this town.”
“Because of Capp? Forget it. Capp won’t be around.”
“Capp won’t be around?” Page said in amazement. “You’re dreaming, man. He’ll live longer than anybody.”
“Did he tell you to search my car?”
“For eight cans of film.”
“What cans of film?”
“What cans? He didn’t tell me what cans. Frankie Capp?”
The second man sat up and shook his head. Shayne showed him one of the guns. He stood up heavily, stared at Shayne and started to lumber away. Shayne shot him in the leg.
He swung the gun toward Page, who held up both hands, palms outward. Shayne took out the photograph of Gretchen Tucker and moved it in front of his eyes.
“Does she look familiar?”
The black opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head. Still patient, Shayne explained the seriousness of the situation. Page was in trouble with Capp for failing to mangle Shayne, in trouble legally for planting a bomb in a car. Shayne sometimes cut corners himself, but this time he and the police were on the same side, and if Page thought jail might be the best and safest place, Shayne asked him to remember that Capp had friends and associates among the prisoners in most jails. When the black’s lips remained clamped, Shayne had his operator cut in on the police band, and a patrol car was on the scene in less than five minutes.
CHAPTER 9
He called Tim Rourke while he was driving, opening the microphone and hanging it on the dashboard. Rourke took the call in the News morgue.
“Not much in the clips, Mike,” he reported. “But I had a minute with Jake Johnson, who’s been writing backgrounders for twenty years, and I picked up one or two bits. Jake’s heard rumors that Tucker has had meetings with some of those nutty right-wing billionaires in Texas. You know the ones, who won’t eat salad with Russian or French dressing. The aerospace people, the ex-Chiefs of Staff. It’s been kept very quiet, because the candidates they back openly usually have trouble on election day.”
“He’s mainly looking for money?”
“At this stage, mainly money. That’s one thing. The other is that there was a hitch about lining up some of the pols behind Tucker’s nomination, because of some scurrilous phone calls. A female voice. The wife, maybe? There were a couple of weeks delay until he could straighten it out. All right, what’s been happening in the real world, while I’ve been inside getting dust up my nose?”
“Does a Chicago congressman named Barnett Pomeroy mean anything to you?”
“It’s a fair-sized name,” Rourke said thoughtfully. “I don’t connect it with any of this. If you want to hold on, I’ll get out the envelopes.”
Shayne was driving north on Miami Avenue, through light traffic, heading for the Modern Motel, where an actress named Maureen, from Los Angeles, had lived when she was working on Baruch’s sub rosa project. It was a next step, but if she had checked out, Shayne intended to stop for the night and let people sleep.
Rourke came back. “What I thought. A lot of newsprint here, but it’s drab stuff. He’s in his eighth term, and as long as he stays on good terms with the Chicago organization, he can have a ninth. Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which is a key slot.” He was turning over clippings as he talked. “You don’t want any of this. Will he give such-and-such a bill a favorable report, and so on. Nothing.”
“He and Tucker were pushing each other in a parking lot tonight. Come up with a quick theory.”
“Any bill Tucker wants to introduce has to go through Pomeroy’s committee. If Pomeroy decides to sit on it, it’s dead. So Tucker shouldn’t be pushing him in a parking lot. I know a guy in Washington who won’t mind being waked up. He might know something. I’ll call him. Anything else?”
“Something even vaguer. Los Angeles has been mentioned. ‘Some Los Angeles guys are in town.’ That’s a quote. From some rival outfit, apparently. I didn’t have time to go into it, but the Warehouse people are taking it seriously. Sawed-off shotguns. Extra security. What do you think?”
“Pussy Rizzo!” Rourke exclaimed. “Absolutely. The nickname explains itself. He looks the way people who make stag films ought to look. Pockmarked. Thin platinum wristwatch. He dates back. I can see why they’re getting the guns out.”
“Who’s he after?”
“Tucker had him on the stand for two days, and wiped him out. What Tucker did, he subpoenaed all Pussy’s pictures, all the negatives, all the prints in circulation, and then he accidentally lost them.”
“Accidentally?”
“They got misrouted somewhere, and you don’t think a United States congressman would deliberately lie about it, do you? Of course everybody knows what happened — they went through the shredder. Pussy figures the loss at a half million. He was talking about suing but that was before he asked the advice of a lawyer. Without product he’s finished. In some circles it’s considered a triumph for the forces of decency. My paper ran a long editorial commending Tucker for finding extralegal ways to take care of such lice. If Pussy’s in town, tell your client to make sure who it is before he answers the door.”