Chapter 8

LILA STIRRED HER NAKED BODY ON THE COUCH. She stared up at the tailored gunslick. She made no move to cover her bared breasts or the dark sable exposed at her thighs.

The man found his voice. He said, "What's going on here?"

Lila laughed at him. Her breasts bobbled with her laughter. She said, "Oh, come on now, Jeke. You know what's going on. I admit you don't know how to do it, but you do know it's done between men and women. That's not the way you like it, Jeke, but that's the best way there is."

Jeke's chiseled face darkened. "It won't get you nowhere to hack at me, Lila. What's Big Eddie going to say bout this about you doing this with this guy?"

Lila drew a deep breath. Watching them, Alan , knew who Big Eddie was. Lila had gotten this same defeated look in her face when she'd earlier mentioned her 'gentleman' to him.

Lila's voice was soft. "That's up to you, Jeke."

Jeke shifted his jacket on his shoulders. "You know that Big Eddie won't stand for you doubling him, Lila, not with nobody."

"He won't if he doesn't know about it, Jeke. Why does he have to know about it?"

Jeke waved his arm. "Because I got to tell him. You know that. Suppose I didn't tell him what I seen when I walked in here today?"

"Suppose you didn't, Jeke?"

"Suppose I didn't and he found it out some other way." Jeke shivered visibly at the very idea. He shook his head. "Oh, no, Lila. You know I got to tell him."

"He wouldn't like it if he knew you walked in here and saw me naked, Jeke. You know how funny Big Eddie is. He don't like you looking at me naked."

"Me? Looking at you? Why, you broad, you was humping this guy. I walked in and found you humping this guy. I wasn't sneaking around, seeing you naked."

Lila did not move from the couch. Her voice remained calm, but the steel showed beneath it. "Sure you weren't sneaking around to see me naked, Jeke. I know that. And you know that. But what about Big Eddie? If I tell him you were sneaking around to see me naked, he'll be sore at you, unless you tell him you don't like women, that you like men if he knew you liked other men, Jeke, Big Eddie would be sorer than ever, even sorer than he'd be with me for loving Stew here, because Big Eddie would be shocked at you liking other men. He wouldn't trust you any more."

"You got no reason to tell Big Eddie anything like that!"

"Haven't I, Jeke?"

Jeke hesitated, but his voice lowered slightly. "No. You got no call to tell him."

"But I know it's true, Jeke. I've known it for a long time. When you met some of your queens up here-right here in my house I never said anything. It was the only place you could be safe. I didn't tell Big Eddie."

He exhaled heavily. "No. You didn't tell him. But he might find this out "

"Not if you don't tell him, Jeke. Just like he won't find out about the flits you brought up here unless I tell him. You know Big Eddie. In spite of the fact that he's lived a long time and seen all kinds of things, he's kind of naive, kind of stupid is the word. He thinks men like only women, and women like only men. He'd be mighty upset to find out that somebody he trusts like he trusts you, Jeke, don't like normal things that Big Eddie thinks everybody ought to like."

"Okay. Okay. So I don't tell him what I seen when I walked in here."

"That's a sweet boy, Jeke."

"Get your clothes on," Jeke said.

She laughed at him. "Do I make you sick, seeing me naked like this, Jeke?"

He tilted his sharp-hewn chin. "It just don't do nothing to me, that's all. You seen one pony, you seen 'em all. I see better-looking dolls dancing practically naked in Vegas all the time."

Lila almost flared up at him, but she controlled herself. She had won one small victory and she decided to let it go at that.

"Why should I get dressed?" she said, "If you're going to be a sweet boy and not call Big Eddie."

"But that's it. I'm going to call him."

Watching them, Alan felt his stomach tighten. There was a tension in this room he did not comprehend.

Lila sat up straighter. "Why you going to call him?"

Jeke's dark face reddened. "You know I got to. Any of us catch anybody in this place no matter who it is we got to report it to Big Eddie. I don't say nothing about what the two of youse was doing, still I got to report that he is here."

"Why?"

"Oh, come on now, Lila, you know Big Eddie better than this. Big Eddie is like he's got eyes everywhere. Somebody might of seen this joe come in the grounds, or come in the house. If Big Eddie was to find out that this character was here, and I didn't report it "

He drew the side of his hand across his own throat in a quick, slashing gesture.

After a moment, Lila nodded. "Okay, you got to tell him Stew is here. But you say what you found us doing, and I fix you."

Jeke waved his arm impatiently. "I told you. What you and the guy was doing is between the three of us. In return from past favors from you. But still, I got to tell Big Eddie that the geek is here. You know I got to do that."

Alan found his voice. He said, "Well, I'm sorry to have caused this mix-up. I better blow."

Jeke heeled around, his voice rasping. "You stay where you are."

Big Eddie paced the carpeting of Lila's front room. He was tall and heavy-set and he looked prosperous. His hair was salt and pepper at the temples, graying and wavy, and thick. His brows were dark and his eyes were black. His high forehead and Roman nose was almost aristocratic-looking. But the cigar pulling his heavy-lipped mouth out of shape, the scarf at his throat, his tailored suit, proclaimed him gambler, quick-buck artist.

Fully dressed, with even a scarf about her own throat, Lila sat on the couch and watched Big Eddie pace. Every once in a while she gave him a little-girl smile from under lowered lids.

Jeke sat in a club chair, but he looked as if he were afraid the furnishings were wired to kill. He was less than comfortable. The two hoods who had accompanied Big Eddie into the house stood just inside the living room door. They looked sleepless.

Alan was allowed to stand between where Big Eddie paced and where the guards stood in the doorway.

Big Eddie said, "All right now. I want some answers. Here I am a busy man. You get me up here because we got some character sneaking in here to visit Lila "

"I told you one dozen times, Big Eddie," Lila said. "Stew didn't sneak in here. He come in polite and natural. like you and Freddy and Bugs did. Right in the front door."

"I don't like it you should interrupt me this way, Lila-honey, when I'm talking," Big Eddie said, controlling his impatience. "So he come in through the front door. That still don't tell me what I want to know. Who is he? What does he want here?"

"His name is Stew Miller."

They both looked at Alan, Big Eddie with some displeasure. "So, his name is Miller. What does he want here?"

"Well, my goodness, Big Eddie," Lila said. "If you'd just give me a chance, I could explain all that to you."

"So explain."

"It just ain't important," Lila said. "As you'll see once you know. It's all Jeke's fault for making a big thing out of Stew's visit. Jeke shouldn't have called you away from business, busy as you were and all."

Big Eddie made a sharp, downward gesture. "Jeke done just what he ought to have done. He's a good, loyal boy. I told them that they should call me when you have company up here. Don't you go blaming Jeke. Now what does this Miller want here?"

Lila smiled. "Well, you're going to feel all foolish-"

"So let me feel foolish."

"Stew is a boy that knew Ira back east "

"Back east? Ira was in charge of this territory out here for many years. This here boy don't look that old "

"He was a runner, a kid, back east when Ira was there." From her own fertile imagination Lila added embroidery. "He knew Ira's folks. He stopped by to see me because he was a friend to Ira, and Ira's folks, and he wanted to get in out here."

"He should not of come to you if he wanted to work for me," Big Eddie declared, glaring at Alan, but not yet addressing him. "Worst possible mistake."

Lila jumped up. Her face was pale. "Sure, it was his worst mistake. But how was he to know? How was he to know that you, Big Eddie, keep me like a virtuous prisoner right here in my own home that Ira built for me?"

Big Eddie waved his hand. "You know I do that just for your own good, your own protection."

"Yah!" She yelled at him suddenly. "For my own protection? For yours. You're scared to let anybody near me in solitude away from you or the boys. You're afraid of what I might say about you."

Big Eddie walked close to her. His fists were clenched hams against his legs, but his voice was the soft calm of logic "And what could I fear you'd say about me?"

Lila retreated, her voice lowering slightly. "Well, you know. We don't 'have to talk about it. You're scared of what I'll say of how Ira died. How he was killed and who ordered him killed."

Alan watched them. He moved his gaze to the hoods at the doorway. Freddy and Bugs stared with unconcealed curiosity at Lila and Big Eddie. They expected fireworks.

Alan's heartbeat increased. If there was a chance for him to clear out alive, this looked like the moment, while all interest was focused on the embattled pair.

Then his gaze struck against Jeke's.

Jeke was not watching Big Eddie and Lila. He was peering at Alan, and he was not blinking.

Something had happened to Jeke's face, and heart sinking, Alan saw that the hood had finally recognized him.

It was as if he could see into the thin man's mind. Jeke was remembering coming into D & T's Los Angeles office, entering the cubicle where Alan pounded out his TV scripts. He was seeing the way-he had advised Alan to forget the murder of Ira Festish. Only Alan had not forgotten. Alan had persisted. And Alan was here, humping Ira's widow, and talking to her, and using a fictitious name.

Jeke licked at his mouth. Jeke's eyes looked ill. Jeke saw there was a great deal more he had to say to Big Eddie.

Alan sagged, knowing he could not escape with Jeke watching him. Jeke was Big Eddie's loyal cohort.

"Is that what you think?" Big Eddie was saying to Lila. "How can you think that, Lila?"

"It's easy." Her voice rode over Big Eddie's shrilly.

"It's not true," Big Eddie said. "I want to protect you, Lila. From the vicious world that you don't really understand, no matter how wise you think you are, no matter how Ira mistreated you when he was alive "

"Ira treated me like a lady!" she screamed.

"Ira treated you like a whore," Big Eddie said sadly. "But you was too young, too innocent, to understand. And naturally, you done what he forced you to do because you was afraid of him "

"I wasn't never afraid of Ira! It's you I'm scared of. You and your crazy ideas!"

"What crazy ideas? I was raised by a good mother, that made me go to church. And I know what is right "

"Sure, robbing suckers, and killing people that get in your way, that's right "

"That just shows you know nothing of religion. What I do in business ain't got no relation to religion. I respect my mother, and I respect all women. And I know that men have got evil minds, and they are wild to rape poor, defenseless women. I want to protect you from men like that. That's the only reason I don't want people like this here Stew Miller coming in here alone. Sure, you're a good, pure woman, but he's got an evil mind. AH men have got evil minds."

"His name ain't Stew Miller," Jeke croaked, from the club chair.

For a moment, there was a charged silence and then both Lila and Big Eddie heeled around to gaze at Jeke.

Jeke looked ill.

Alan lifted his gaze and saw Lila staring at him. He could not hold her eyes, and his own sagged away.

"What you saying, Jeke?" Big Eddie demanded.

Jeke's face grayed out. "His name ain't Stew Miller. He ain't from back East. At least he wasn't no runner that knew Ira and Ira's people back there. His name is Alan Taylor. He's that TV writer guy that you sent me to call on when they was doing a TV show on how Ira was killed."

Big Eddie drew a deep breath into his barrel-like chest and he held it, staring at Alan.

But Alan wasn't looking at Big Eddie. He was watching Lila's face. It was as if somebody had struck her across the eyes. She peered at him as if she could not believe he would betray her like this.

Her damaged eyes moved over his face. It was as if she were saying, we had a good time, the kind of time I've not had with a man since Ira was killed, I was good to you, and I gave you all of me there was to give, and you're a fink. You're like Big Eddie and all the other finks in this world.

Alan wanted to say he was sorry to Lila, but he was afraid to say anything.

He saw in Big Eddie's steak-fed face that his life hung by a thread. It didn't seem to matter whether Big Eddie's hoods killed him, or he was executed by the law. Either way, time had run out for him. Still, if he could stay alive, there was always an unlikely chance he could clear himself of the murder charge.

Alan shivered, even doubting this. Nothing was going to work out right in this nightmare world into which he had been catapulted. No matter what he tried to do, he was shoved deeper and deeper into its labyrinths. The time in the jail when Sevidge and Renner would believe nothing he said, looked like the good old days, compared to this moment on this lower level where Big Eddie and his three hoods surrounded him, their faces void of any human compassion.

"Taylor?" Big Eddie tested the name on his tongue. He made a face. He peered at Alan. "Your name Taylor?"

Alan nodded.

"You ain't Steve Miller, from back east?"

"His name is Alan Taylor, all right," Jeke said. "I was sure I'd seen him somewhere. But there was so much jazzing around it took me all this time to figure it. He's Taylor. I went to see him that time, like you told me. I warned him away from the Ira Festish murder."

"Looks like you don't take kind, well-meant advice, Taylor," Big Eddie said.

Jeke said, "And that ain't all, boss."

"What else?" Big Eddie said without moving his gaze from Alan's face.

"Taylor is wanted for murder."

"What?" Big Eddie said it, shocked.

"That's right, boss," Jeke persisted. "He's the guy that got away from the cops on a bicycle a girl's bicycle."

"Yeah. I read that." Big Eddie laughed deeply in his chest. But there was no mirth in his laughter, at least none to be shared by Alan. "So this is the joe that got away from the cops." He leaned closer to Alan. He smelled of wine and cigars and cheap perfume. "What are you doing up here?"

Alan shook his head.

Jeke said, "This here is going to take some thinking, boss."

Big Eddie straightened. "Why?"

"Because why else would this character come up here when he was wanted by the police, hiding? He figured he'd hide up here, and that you'd protect him."

"From the cops? Me? He some kind of a nut?" Big Eddie said.

"That's it, boss. Don't you see? Remember, in that TV show this guy wrote? He had it that Ira was bumped off by a rival gambler, and that the gambler took over the territory after Ira was dead."

Lila laughed suddenly. "Yeah. I saw that. It was right too, Mr. Taylor "

"You shut up!" Big Eddie back-handed Lila across the face. She went sprawling back on the divan. She fell with her skirt high.

Big Eddie yelled at her. "Pull down your dress!"

Lila pulled down her dress to her knees, sitting up. The imprint of Big Eddie's paw was livid across her cheeks.

Big Eddie turned his back on her. "So what does that give him a right to come up here thinking I'll protect him?"

Jeke said, "Maybe he knows more than he let on that day I talked to him, boss. Maybe he thinks you'd be scared to turn him over to the cops."

"Yeah?" Big Eddie said. "Well, that's what we'll do. As soon as we've worked him over good, we'll turn him over to the cops."

Lila screeched at them. "I hope you do. And when you do I hope he tells on you. How you had Ira killed. How you took over his territory and his woman, and everything that was his. You posing as his best friend all the time, you finking hypocrite."

Big Eddie spoke smoothly. "I was Ira's best friend, Lila. You're wrong to think I had anything in this world to do with his demise. Why, the biggest flowers at Ira's funeral was from me. Personal. Just because the big boys decided I was to take over his territory out here--somebody had to run it after Ira was dead, Lila. Even you ought to understand that."

"I understand a lot more than you think I do, you fink."

"You're upset, Lila. I had nothing to do with Ira's death. I got his territory only because I was next in line."

"You got his wife, too," Lila raged at him. "Were you next in line there, too?"

Big Eddie looked pained. "Why, you know better than that, Lila. I respect womanhood. I wanted to protect Ira's widow."

"Ira was a man! Ira at least married me!"

"Why, Lila, you know I'd marry you. If I was free. But as long as my wife remains alive back east, you know I can't marry you. Would you want me kicked out of the church?"

Lila fell sobbing on the couch. Big Eddie stared at her a moment and then returned his attention to Alan.

"You want to tell me why you came here?"

Alan dampened his lips. Coming here had been like a shot in the dark, the hope that perhaps he might find who had framed him for Sherarn's murder. He saw that he had blundered into the solution of the Ira Festish murder, but that the truth had never been buried very deeply, even from the police. The police would have arrested Big Eddie for that murder, but legally, Big Eddie's hands were clean. He had not been within three hundred miles when Ira was killed. He had not pulled the trigger.

Alan sweated. He couldn't say this. He couldn't even let Big Eddie think he suspected it. Anyhow, Big Eddie had not killed old Sheram, framing Alan Taylor for the murder. It was not Big Eddie's kind of action.

Alan shook his head.

"I'm waiting," Big Eddie said. "And I ain't known far and near as a patient man. What are you doing out here?"

Alan said. "It's partly as Jeke says. I am hiding. I am running from the cops. But I just happened in here. How did I know it had anything to do with you?"

Big Eddie was not amused. "Some coincidence. You wrote about Ira's death. You just happened to come here to hide."

"That's the. truth," Alan lied. He felt as if he were wearing a polygraph that was lighting up brilliantly, tilt.

"It might be," Jeke said. "It just might be."

"But what if it ain't?" Big Eddie said. "I don't think he ought to get to the cops," Jeke said.

Big Eddie smiled. "Now you're making my kind of sense. If he knows more than he should, or if he don't, either way, once you boys work him over, he'll be scared to go to the cops, and he'll know better than to come around up here again."

Lila sat up. "Why don't you just let him go? He ain't hurt you."

"You stay out of this," Big Eddie said. "A woman like you. You don't understand about business. It's business that we show this guy what can happen to him, he ever mentions our name to the fuzz. Right, Jeke? You boys take him out of here. Work him over so he knows never to come near me or my Lila again."

Bugs and Freddy came forward from the doorway now. Alan sweated. He wanted to break and run toward those French windows. But he knew better. Big Eddie's boys would react faster than the police had in that alley, and they would shoot straighter.-likely they'd had more practice with firearms than the cops.

Alan's gaze touched at Lila's tear-stained face. She gave him a brief, stunning smile. He saw she had forgiven him for telling her his name was Stew Miller. He had lied to her, but the results had been nice, for both of them. She forgave him. And she was sorry about what was going to happen to him at the hands of Big Eddie's hoods but then, something like this had been happening to all her friends, ever since Ira died.

Freddy walked on one side of Alan, and the garlic-scented Bugs was close on the other. Jeke followed, and they did not speak until they entered a basement room which had been made over into a soundproof gymnasium.

Jeke closed the door after them. They stopped and for a moment they looked at Alan. Jeke slipped on a pair of brass knuckles.

Big Freddy came at him first, swiftly and angling in, a man who was calm, professional, thorough. Bugs lunged in as Alan turned to meet Freddy's attack.

He could feel the sweat falling along his ribs. It was icy cold. He didn't know how to protect himself from these professional thugs. He thought of all the fight scenes he had written for those damned TV shows, and the way the good guy always emerged victorious. Crap. It was so much crap. Good guys finished dead, almost as that great philosopher stated it.

There was no sense in yelling, or speaking at all. This would please them. They would get a boot from knowing they hurt him, and no one would hear his screaming, not from this sound proofed room.

There was no time to think, no time to set himself. They came at him like animals of prey, like clawed beasts coming in for the kill. He felt Freddy's fist catch him beside his head and then Bugs grunted, sinking his fist wrist deep under Alan's belt. The smell of garlic was the only thing that remained in Alan's consciousness.

He shoved them, running toward that door, burning with the pain in his groin and in his temple. Still, only half alive, he almost made it to the door. But Bugs caught him and yanked him back and he could feel himself overwhelmed by the smell of garlic. He was drowning in it.

The fists caught him in the side, in the kidney, in the groin, the solar plexus, the side of the head. He had never realized there were so many zones of agony. He staggered and went down to his knees, striking the floor hard. But they went on beating him, and when he was helpless to strike back, Jeke stepped forward and began hitting him in the face with the brass knuckles.

It didn't take very long, it just seemed a kind of bloody eternity. Alan tasted the salt in his own blood, the saltiness that came from the sea, where every living thing began.

Then it was as if he were drowning in that salt-tasting sea. And the sun was on the sea.

He never lost consciousness. This would have been too easy. After a while, he stopped feeling the individual blows. He knew they were hitting him.

They went on working him over, even when there was no longer any pleasure left in it for them.

He sank from his knees to the floor, and his blood smeared the polished surface, and he thought he could see his reflection in it, but this didn't make sense, because his eyes were battered and swollen shut.

Nothing made sense. He was being carried. He was a sack of potatoes across somebody's shoulder. Potatoes and garlic. He could still smell the garlic.

Then there was the sound of an automobile. The engine was smooth and distant, and he was aware he was riding in the car. He could see nothing. The ride, too, was eternal. It was like the sea coming in upon the shore and washing out again, now and forever. It went on even when you tired of watching it, even when God must have tired of watching it. The tide. The engine, the waves, the sound it made on the shore.

Alan lay still. The car bumped, but it took the bumps nicely, and it was a quiet engine. After eternity ended, the car stopped and hands caught him. He was dragged roughly from the floor of the car and his head struck the metal stripping on the door base, and struck the stones of some smelly alley. He did not move. He heard the car going away, like the receding waves from the shore.

For a long time, he remained unmoving. His brain sank in darkness, and light washed across it, and then there was darkness again.

He opened his eyes and looked up into her face.

Her? He forgot the pain, because Nora was bending over him and he could see her dimly. Only when he tried to speak her name, he saw that it was not Nora at all, it was Connice ... But it was not Connice after all. The twisted mouth belonged to Lila.

Alan forced his eyes wider and stared up into the face of an ancient crone. She bent closer over him, her breath hot with the stench of wine and antiquity. Her lined cheeks were sunken, her mouth toothless, her eyes already dead.

He saw he was in an alley somewhere, and he could hear cars racing past nearby, some busy thoroughfare at the end of the alley. Nearer were the stacks of garbage cans, the refuse of poverty. Big Eddie's thugs had worked him over and then transported him as far as they could across Los Angeles from the home in Beverly Hills and dumped him in an alley.

He stirred, trying to speak.

The old witch lunged upward when he moved, terrorized when she realized he wasn't dead. He saw she'd meant to steal anything from him she could find.

She screamed. Her screams rattled the cans in the alley.

"No," Alan said. "Don't scream. Police. You'll bring the police."

She backed away, screaming louder.

Alan forced himself to his feet. She was shaking with the horror that wracked her body. She screamed only every other try, her vocal chords almost paralyzed.

Alan saw in her rutted face how battered and nearly dead he looked. He leaned against the wall, trying to gather enough strength to move. He had to get out of there before her screams brought people, police.

He shoved past her, staggering along the alley. In the impossible distance, he saw the corner and the wide busy street. It was too far. He could not make it. He could not even think of a reason why he should make it. Big Eddie had fixed him. Where could he go, looking like this?

He toppled, almost falling at the end of the alley. He leaned against a building and watched the cars race past. Their swift movement nauseated him.

He looked around. This was a tattered rim of the sprawling city. The stores were rundown, most of them closed, webbed with dust. He saw this was partly in his favor. The people down here had seen battered men before.

A taxi was perched in a for-hire zone across the alley. The driver slumped under the wheel.

He stared at Alan's battered face, shocked, revulsed. "Good Lord what happened to you?"

"It's a long story," Alan said. He toppled into the back seat. "You wouldn't want to hear it."

"You get rolled in that alley?"

Alan nodded. This was a good story. He hoped the cab driver believed it. The driver said, "They worked you over. You're lucky to be alive."

"Yeah," Alan said. "I stink with luck."

He sank back against the seat, afraid he was going to pass out.

The driver's voice brought him out of it. "You want me to run you to the nearest police station, mister?"

"No ... Oh, no." Alan forced his voice to conceal his panic. He tried to think clearly. His mind wheeled and skidded like bats in a dark cave. He said, "No. Take me to " he paused, remembering Connice's address. She hated him. She had every right. He had no right at all to go near her like this, and yet he was too beat to think of anything else. He gave the cabbie her address and sank back, his eyes closed.

The car rattled west across town to Culver City. The cabbie stopped the car. Alan bit back his sickness. The driver said, "Here you are, mister."

Alan thanked him. He felt in his pocket, found a ten-dollar bill that one of Big Eddie's thugs had pushed there the sucker's eating money. The code of the gamblers, never leave a sucker broke. "Keep it," he said.

The driver looked at the ten-dollar bill. "Tell you what, mister. I'll get word to the cops. They'll be out here to see you. Maybe they can find the gays that worked you over."

Alan staggered. He sank to his knees on the walk. The cabbie stared at him as Alan dissolved into helpless laughter.