“The difference is, suppose he’s a jealous type. Niccoli isn’t your average ex-beau-he’s a goddamn thug. Is it true he smacked you around?”
She was putting on her other nylon, fastening it, smoothing it; this kind of thing could get boring in an hour or two. “That’s why I walked out on him. I warned him and he said he wouldn’t do it again, and then a week later, he did it again.”
“Has he bothered you? Confronted you in public? Called you on the phone?”
“No. It’s over. He knows it, and I know it…now you know it. Okay, Nate? Do I ask you questions about your ex-wife?”
Didi didn’t know my wife wasn’t officially my ex, yet; nor that I was still hoping to rekindle those flames. She thought I was a great guy, unaware that I was a heel who would never marry another actress, but would gladly sleep with one.
“Let’s drop it,” I said.
“What a wonderful idea.” She stood, easing her slip down over her nyloned legs, and was shimmying into her casual light-blue dress when the doorbell rang. Staying in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills, incidentally, was the only time I can recall a hotel room having a doorbell.
“I’m not expecting company,” I told her, “but stay in here, would you? And keep mum?”
“I need ut my make-up on-”
The bell rang again-pretty damn insistent.
I got my nine millimeter out of the suitcase, stuffed it in my waistband, slipped on my sportjacket and covered it. “Just sit down-there’s some magazines by the bed. We don’t need to advertise.”
She saw the common sense of that, and nodded. No alarm had registered in her eyes at the sight of the weapon; but then she’d been Niccoli’s girl, hadn’t she?
I shut her in there and went to answer the door.
I’d barely cracked the thing open when the two guys came barging in, the first one in brushing past me, the second slamming the door.
I hadn’t even had a chance to say, “Hey!” when the badge in the wallet was thrust in my face.
“Lieutenant Delbert Potts,” he said, putting the wallet away. He was right on top of me and his breath was terrible: it smelled like anchovies taste. “L.A. vice squad. This is my partner, Sergeant Rudy Johnson.”
Potts was a heavy-set character in an off-the-rack brown suit that looked slept in; hatless, he had greasy reddish-blond hair and his drink-reddened face had a rubbery softness. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose as misshapen as a blob of putty somebody had stuck there carelessly, his lips thick and plump and vaguely obscene.
Johnson was thin and dark-both his features and his physique-and his navy suit looked tailored. He wore a black snapbrim that had set him back a few bucks.
“Fancy digs, Mr. Heller,” Potts said, prowling the place, his thick-lipped smile conveying disgust. He had a slurry voice-he reminded me of a loathsome Arthur Godfrey, if that wasn’t redundant.
“I do some work for the hotel,” I said. “They treat me right when I’m out here.”
“You goin’ back to Chicago soon?” Johnson asked, right next to me. He had a reedy voice and his eyes seemed sleepy unless you noticed the sharpness under the half-lids.
“Not right away.”
I’d never met this pair, yet they knew my name and knew I was from Chicago. And they hadn’t taken me up on my offer to sit down.
“You might re-consider,” Potts said. He was over at the wet bar, checking out the brands.
“Help yourself,” I said.
“We’re on duty,” Johnson said.
“Fellas-what’s this about?”
Potts wandered back over to me and thumped me on the chest with a thick finger. “You stopped by Mickey Cohen’s today.”
“That’s right. He wanted me to do a job for him-I turned him down.”
The bloodshot eyes tightened. “You turned him down? Are you sure?”
“I have a real good memory, Lieutenant. I remember damn near everything that happened to me, all day.”
“Funny#8221; That awful breath was warm in my face-fishy smell. “You wouldn’t kid a kidder, would you?”
Backing away, I said, “Fellas-make your point.”
Potts kept moving in on me, his breath in my face, like a foul furnace, his finger thumping at my chest. “You and your partner…Rubinski…you shouldn’t be so thick with that little kike.”
“Which little kike?”
Johnson said, “Mickey Cohen.”
I looked from one to the other. “I already told you guys-I turned him down. I’m not working for him.”
Potts asked, “What job did he want you for?”
“That’s confidential.”
He swung his fist into my belly-I did not see it coming, nor did I expect a slob like him to have such power. I dropped to my knees and thought about puking on the oriental carpet-I also thought about the gun in my waistband.
Slowly, I got to my feet. And when I did, the nine millimeter was in my hand.
“Get the fuck out of my room,” I said.
Both men backed away, alarm widening their seen-it-all eyes. Potts blurted, “You can be arrested for-”
“This is licensed, and you clowns barged into my room and committed assault on me.”
Potts had his hands up; he seemed nervous but he might have been faking, while he looked for an opening. “I shouldn’ta swung on ya. I apologize-now, put the piece away.”
“No.” I motioned toward the door with the Browning. “You’re about to go, gents…but first-here’s everything you need to know: I’m not working for Cohen, and neither is Fred.”
The two exchanged glances, Johnson shaking his head.
“Why don’t you put that away,” Pott said, with a want-some-candy-little-girl smile, “and we’ll just talk.”
“We have talked. Leave.”
I pressed forward and the two backed up-toward the door.
“You better be tellin’ the truth,” Potts said, anger swimming in his rheumy eyes.
I opened the door for them. “What the hell have you been eating, Potts? Your breath smells like hell.”
The cop’s blotchy face reddened, but his partner let out a sharp, single laugh. “Sardine sandwiches-it’s all he eats on stakeouts.”
That tiny moment of humanity between Johnson and me ended the interview; then they were out the door, and I shut and nightlatched it. I watched them through the window as they moved through the hotel’s garden-like grounds, Potts taking the lead, clearly pissed-off, the flowering shrubs around him doing nothing to soothe him.
In the bedroom, Didi was stretched out on the bed, on her back, head to one side, fast asleep.
I sat nex gentsher, on the edge of the bed, and this woke her with a start. “What? Oh…I must’ve dropped off. What was that about, anyway?”
“The Welcome Wagon,” I said. “Come on, let’s get an early supper.”
And I took her to the Polo Lounge, where she chattered on and on about the picture she was working (with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans) and I said not much. I was thinking about those two bent cops, and how I’d pulled a gun on them.
No retaliation followed my encounter with the two vice squad boys. They had made their point, and I mine. But I did take some precautionary measures: for two days I tailed the bastards, and (with my Speed Graphic, the divorce dick’s best friend) got two rolls of film on them receiving pay-offs, frequently in the parking lot of their favorite coffee shop, Googie’s, on Sunset at Crescent Heights. I had no intention of using these for blackmail purposes-I just wanted some ammunition, other than the nine millimeter variety, with which to deal with these bent sons of bitches. On the other hand, I had taken to wearing my shoulder-holstered nine millimeter, in case things got interesting.
And for over a week, things weren’t interesting-things were nicely dull. I had run into Cohen at Sherry’s several times and he was friendly-and always in the company of a rugged-looking, ruggedly handsome investigator from the Attorney General’s office, sandy-haired Harry Cooper…which rhymed with Gary Cooper, who the dick was just as tall as.