“Who was that?”
“Some detective with a Mexican name.”
“Gonzales,” I said.
She looked at me. “That’s right.” She frowned slightly. “I didn’t like him at all.”
That was a new angle. One that didn’t fit in. Jack with a friend on the force. I handed Helen a cigarette, lit it and sat back with mine.
It took a good hour to reach the place and at first glance it didn’t seem worth the ride. From the highway the road weaved out onto a sand spit and in the shadows you could see the parked cars and occasionally couples in them. Here and there along the road the lights of the car picked up the glint of beer cans and empty bottles. I gave the cabbie an extra five and told him to wait and when we went down the gravel path, he pulled it under the trees and switched off his lights.
Gulley’s was a huge shack built on the sand with a porch extending out over the water. There wasn’t a speck of paint on the weather-racked framework and over the whole place the smell of fish hung like a blanket. It looked like a creep joint until you turned the corner and got a peek at the nice modern dock setup he had and the new addition on the side that probably made the place the yacht club’s slumming section. If it didn’t have anything else it had atmosphere. We were right on the tip of the peninsular that jutted out from the mainland and like the sign said, it was the last chance for the boats to fill up with the bottled stuff before heading out to deep water.
I told Helen to stick in the shadows of the hedge row that ran around the place while I took a look around, and though she didn’t like it, she melted back into the brush. I could see a couple of figures on the porch, but they were talking too low for me to hear what was going on. Behind the bar that ran across the main room inside, a flat-faced fat guy leaned over reading the paper with his ears pinned inside a headset. Twice he reached back, frowning and fiddled with a radio under the counter. When the phone rang he scowled again, slipped off the headset and said, “Gulley speaking. Yeah. Okay. So-long.”
When he went back to his paper I crouched down under the rows of windows and eased around the side. The sand was a thick carpet that silenced all noise and the gentle lapping of the water against the docks covered any other racket I could make. I was glad to have it that way too. There were guys spotted around the place that you couldn’t see until you looked hard and they were just lounging. Two were by the building and the other two at the foot of the docks, edgy birds who lit occasional cigarettes and shifted around as they smoked them. One of them said something and a pair of them swung around to watch the twin beams of a car coming up the highway. I looked too, saw them turn in a long arc then cut straight for the shack.
One of the boys started walking my way, his feet squeaking in the dry sand. I dropped back around the corner of the building, watched while he pulled a bottle out from under the brush, then started back the way I had come.
The car door slammed. A pair of voices mixed in an argument and another one cut them off. When I heard it I could feel my lips peel back and I knew that if I had a knife in my fist and Mark Renzo passed by me in the dark, whatever he had for supper would spill all over the ground. There was another voice, swearing at something. Johnny. Nice, gentle Johnny who was going to cripple me for life.
I wasn’t worrying about Helen because she wouldn’t be sticking her neck out. I was hoping hard that my cabbie wasn’t reading any paper by his dome light and when I heard the boys reach the porch and go in, I let my breath out hardly realizing that my chest hurt from holding it in so long.
You could hear their hellos from inside, muffled sounds that were barely audible. I had maybe a minute to do what I had to do and didn’t waste any time doing it. I scuttled back under the window that was at one end of the bar, had time to see Gulley shaking hands with Renzo over by the door, watched him close and lock it and while they were still far enough away not to notice the movement, slid the window up an inch and flattened against the wall.
They did what I expected they’d do. I heard Gulley invite them to the bar for a drink and set out the glasses. Renzo said, “Good stuff.”
“Only the best. You know that.”
Johnny said, “Sure. You treat your best customers right.”
Bottle and glasses clinked again for another round. Then the headset that was under the bar started clicking. I took a quick look, watched Gulley pick it up, slap one earpiece against his head and jot something down on a pad.
Renzo said, “She getting in without trouble?”
Gulley set the headset down and leaned across the bar. He looked soft, but he’d been around a long time and not even Renzo was playing any games with him. “Look,” he said, “You got your end of the racket. Keep out of mine. You know?”
“Getting tough, Gulley?”
I could almost hear Gulley smile. “Yeah. Yeah, in case you want to know. You damn well better blow off to them city lads, not me.”
“Ease off,” Renzo told him. He didn’t sound rough any more. “Heard a load was due in tonight.”
“You hear too damn much.”
“It didn’t come easy. I put out a bundle for the information. You know why?” Gulley didn’t say anything. Renzo said, “I’ll tell you why. I need that stuff. You know why?”
“Tough. Too bad. You know. What you want is already paid for and is being delivered. You ought to get your head out of your whoosis.”
“Gulley...” Johnny said really quiet. “We ain’t kidding. We need that stuff. The big boys are getting jumpy. They think we pulled a fast one. They don’t like it. They don’t like it so bad maybe they’ll send a crew down here to straighten everything out and you may get straightened too.”
Inside Gulley’s feet were nervous on the floorboards. He passed in front of me once, his hands busy wiping glasses. “You guys are nuts. Carboy paid for this load. So I should stand in the middle?”
“Maybe it’s better than standing in front of us,” Johnny said.
“You got rocks. Phil’s out of the local stuff now. He’s got a pretty big outfit.”
“Just peanuts, Gulley, just peanuts.”
“Not any more. He’s moving in since you dumped the big deal.”
Gulley’s feet stopped moving. His voice had a whisper in it. “So you were big once. Now I see you sliding. The big boys are going for bargains and they don’t like who can’t deliver, especially when it’s been paid for. That was one big load. It was special. So you dumped it. Phil’s smart enough to pick it up from there and now he may be top dog. I’m not in the middle. Not without an answer to Phil and he’ll need a good one.”
“Vetter s in town, Gulley!” Renzo almost spat the word out. “You know how he is? He ain’t a gang you bust up. He’s got a nasty habit of killing people. Like always, he’s moving in. So we pay you for the stuff and deliver what we lost. We make it look good and you tell Phil it was Vetter. He’ll believe that.”
I could hear Gulley breathing hard. “Jerks, you guys,” he said. There was a hiss in his words. “I should string it on Vetter. Man, you’re plain nuts. I seen that guy operate before. Who the hell you think edged into that Frisco deal? Who got Morgan in El Paso while he was packing a half a million in cash and another half in powder. So a chowderhead hauls him in to cream some local fish and the guy walks awav with the town. Who the hell is that guy?”
Johnny’s laugh was bitter. Sharp. Gulley had said it all and it was like a knife sticking in and being twisted. “I’d like to meet him. Seems like he was a buddy of Jack Cooley. You remember Jack Cooley, Gulley? You were in on that. Cooley got off with your kick too. Maybe Vetter would like to know about that.”