I stood between them, Lansky at my left, Christie at my right. Lansky was obviously unarmed and Christie wasn’t the type.
“You’re understaffed tonight, Meyer,” I said. “Two of your best boys are missing.”
The sharp, dark eyes tensed; otherwise, his weak-chinned homely face gave an impression of unconcern.
“And what two boys would those be?” he asked blandly.
“The two boys that were with you at the Biltmore, last time we spoke.”
“You’re mistaken. Those two had the weekend off. They didn’t make this trip.”
I smiled pleasantly. “Are you sure? Maybe I didn’t describe them well enough. There’s one with a bad toupee and a cheesy little mustache, although you might not recognize him now because I shot off one of his ears and, well, put three or four rounds in his face.”
Lansky’s eyes tightened even more, but otherwise his countenance didn’t change; Christie’s mouth was open, and he was trembling-that old witness-box flop sweat was starting in again.
“The other one has a scar, kind of shaped like a lightning bolt, on his left cheek, I think it’s his left cheek, with a kind of round face, oh, and a new touch-there’s a hole in his forehead…about here.”
Lansky nodded once. “I believe I do know who you’re referring to.”
“You should. You sent them to whack me out tonight.”
He shook his head no; gestured gently with an open hand. “You’re mistaken. I believe what you’re saying-I believe they did what you say they did, and that you did what you say you did. But I didn’t send them. Did you, Harold?”
Christie reacted as indignantly as if he’d been slapped. “Certainly not!”
I looked at them, one at a time, and laughed. “Why the hell don’t I believe you, fellas? A couple of standup citizens like you.”
Lansky sat forward; his manner was reasonable. He didn’t seem frightened, unlike Christie, who looked on the verge of wetting his pants. “Mr. Heller, why in the world would I want to have you killed? Before tonight, at least, you’ve done nothing to offend me.”
“He’s insane,” Christie said. “He insists on trying to put the blame for Harry’s death on me!”
“Well, I certainly had no part in Sir Harry’s death,” Lansky said flatly.
“I think you did,” I said. “I think Harold here asked you to send two of your strong-arm boys…specifically, my uninvited, now-deceased guests this evening…to help convince Harry to change his mind about blocking your mutual efforts to bring casinos into the Bahamas. But Oakes was a tough old bird, and he put up a fight and got himself killed-after which your two boys improvised that voodoo routine, to confuse the issue.”
“Mr. Heller,” Lansky said, shaking his head, smiling like a disappointed parent, “you’re the one who’s confused.”
“Oh really?”
“Really. If I wanted to put gambling into the Bahamas, Harry Oakes couldn’t have stood in my way.”
I was holding the nine-millimeter on him, but his calm, hard eyes were equally on me, and similarly deadly. And what he was saying echoed things Freddie de Marigny had told me in his jail cell….
“Gambling already is legal here,” Lansky said. “Merely suspended for the duration of the war. The law does forbid Bahamian residents from gambling, which is fine.” He might have been delivering a lecture on traffic safety at a junior high school. “The point is to get tourist trade. But with the war on, Mr. Heller, there are no tourists to speak of.”
“Which means,” Christie said edgily, bitterly, “there is no rush whatsoever to put casinos into the Bahamas!”
“Harold’s right,” Lansky said. “This doesn’t become a pressing issue until after war’s end…and even then, Sir Harry couldn’t have stood in my way. He would’ve had to be on the Executive Council to consider gaming license applications-and he wasn’t. He was a powerful man, yes-but he didn’t wield any power with Bay Street. He was an outsider, and he liked it that way.
“Heller,” Christie said earnestly, “Harry didn’t give a damn about gambling in the Bahamas-he didn’t care about the Bahamas anymore! He was gearing up to move to Mexico City-surely, you knew that….”
“No matter what either of you say,” I said, gun tight in my hand, “the two assassins who killed Sir Harry Oakes were your men, Lansky! The same two men that the dead Lyford Cay caretaker saw that night, the same two men I shot the shit out of about a fucking hour ago!”
Lansky may have been worried now; he could see that I was wound a little taut.
“Mr. Heller-if those two were responsible for Sir Harry’s death, it wasn’t at my say-so. It was some…free-lance assignment they picked up.”
Christie seemed to settle back in his chair, trying to disappear into it.
I turned the gun on him. “Then you hired them…you knew them, through your friend, here-”
“Heller,” Christie said desperately, “I had nothing to do with Harry’s death! I loved the man!”
“Mr. Heller,” Lansky said, and he risked leaning out and putting his hand on my wrist-not the wrist of the hand with the gun in it, but my wrist. “I’m a Jew.”
I looked at him like he was nuts.
“You’re a Jew, aren’t you, Heller?”
“Well…yeah. I suppose.”
“You suppose! It’s not something you have to think about, man! You think that evil bastard Hitler would take time to think about it?”
The homely little man actually seemed upset. Finally.
“What the hell are you babbling about, Lansky?”
When he spoke, he bit off each word, like a telegram he was dictating. “Do you really think I’d knowingly get in bed with a bunch of goddamn fucking Nazis, just to make a buck?”
It was like cold water had been thrown on me. “Nazis?”
Christie was glaring at Lansky.
I looked from one to the other. “What the hell do you mean-Nazis?”
Lansky let go of my wrist. “I’ve already said too much. You got balls, Mr. Heller, and brains, but right now you need the latter more than the former.”
A sick feeling was growing in the pit of my stomach.
Lansky stood. He put his hand on my shoulder and whispered, “Go. Go now, and this is just an honest misunderstanding. Stay, and…well, you’re either going to have to kill everyone here, or wind up with me mad at you. And we don’t either one of us want either one of those things, do we?”
Christie was sitting there like a toad in a suit, sweat and desperation all over his face. I might have to talk to him again-but I didn’t want Lansky around. Suddenly I knew that Lansky was damn near an innocent bystander in all this.
Suddenly I knew how big a mistake I’d made.
We were frozen there for what seemed like forever and was probably thirty seconds. Lansky stood looking patient, Christie sat looking distressed and me, I probably had the same green pallor as when I’d climbed down the building bathed in that pale green light.
“You gentlemen must have business to do,” I said, backing up, gun in hand, but lowered. “If you’ll excuse me.”
“This time I will,” Lansky said. “Why don’t you just use the door this time?”
I did.
27
It was approaching two o’clock a.m. when I returned to Hog Island. I’d gone to Dirty Dick’s to think and drink; I held myself to two rum punches, but didn’t hold back on the thinking. Despite the several hours I’d been gone, Daniel was waiting for me at Prince George Wharf, with the little motor launch. He had seemed nervous bringing me over, muttering about the bad storm, even though by the time we made the trip, the storm was a memory. Heading back to Hog Island, in the wee hours, under a black starless moonless sky, even the sea had settled down. Calm again.
So were my nerves. The rum had done it. And the thinking.
The cottage was dark. I flicked on the light: no sign of Fleming, whose “tidying up” had been limited to removing the two dead bodies. Otherwise, the scattered glass from the broken doors and window, slivers and shards and jagged chunks, the shot-up sheets and blankets and mattress, scattered shell casings, the holes the.45s had punched in the walls, even the glistening pools of blood here and there, not dry yet thanks to the humidity, were testimony to what had happened here, a few short hours ago.