Brett Halliday - Win Some, Lose Some

Simpson continued to twist, fingers laced in his lap, and Downey’s eyebrows approached each other and touched. “What are you trying to tell me? That I can’t bust you right now for possession?”

“No, no. If I knew off the top of my head, would be one thing. I’ll have to make a phone call, and they’ll remember it was Simpson was asking.”

Downey took out three more little envelopes and added them to the pile on Simpson’s knee. He really must want this information. Usually he paid cash out of the informers’ budget. So it couldn’t be regular police business. The police-informer tie is like a marriage. To work, it must go both ways. The cop needs to know what his snitch is up to, to keep him in line. And the reverse is true. For a really solid relationship, the snitch, too, needs a handle.

“Give me a couple of minutes, if I can locate the bastard. He sleeps different places.”

Downey’s expression continued to threaten, telling Soupy that if he tried to evaporate or come back without the information, he was not only going to get arrested, he was going to have the shit kicked out of him for resisting arrest. Part of the cop mystique is getting a chance to bloody your knuckles now and then.

Simpson went out to the office, where his friend was worrying about him.

“Give me a shot of booze,” he said urgently. Turkey got out the bottle and poured. “Heavy stuff in there. I’d like to know what he’s into.”

“I don’t like him coming around.”

“I love it myself.”

He folded himself in the phone booth and took the phone off the hook in case Downey looked out. After a certain amount of time, he went back and told Downey what he wanted to know. There were two regular thieves, Rusty Benjamin and a truck driver named Vaughan. His informant didn’t know if Vaughan was a first name or a last name. They lived in a big trailer park seven or eight miles south of the new interchange, near Leisure City. Apparently the set-up was this. They had their own camper there, and they rented a trailer from the park under a fake name. Whatever they brought back from work, they stuck in this second trailer. The whole point was not to take much at one time, so it didn’t pay a fence to keep in day-to-day touch. As soon as they accumulated a fair-sized load, they notified the buyer, who came with his own vehicle, hooked onto the trailer, and took it away, bringing it back empty the next morning. They got their money through the mail.

All this was true. The one fact Simpson suppressed was that he himself was the link between the guys and their buyer. Downey didn’t need to know that. Downey’s eyebrows moved a fraction of an inch further apart, which meant he was satisfied, even though for once Simpson hadn’t given him a Mafia connection.

He left. He had been gone only a few minutes when Turkey began coughing again. Simpson swept Downey’s envelopes under the mattress, although for all he knew they contained nothing but milk sugar, and was ready for his next guests, who turned out to be Tim Rourke and Mike Shayne, the detective.

Simpson was sort of a friend of these guys, though nobody with his lifestyle could really afford to be friends with anybody. He knew where he was with them. If he didn’t want to do business, he said no, and they accepted it.

“Tim, how’s the crusade?” he said with his big smile. “Larry Canada’s still walking around loose, I’m sorry to see.”

“We’re working on it,” Rourke said.

“You’ll never get that guy. Coffee? Turkey just made a fresh pot. A drink maybe?”

“We have some hot construction equipment we want to unload,” Shayne said. “It has to be moved fast, and you get the whole take. Do you want it?”

“Sure,” Simpson said agreeably, “after you tell me what you’re getting me into. Sit down, fellows. You may be in a big rush, but this is the time of night when I begin to go slow.”

Shayne took the chair. Rourke, too nervous to sit still, continued to circle. If Simpson had been a fox, his ears would be standing straight up, his mustache would be vibrating. He smelled money, and of course he also smelled trouble. If they said this hot load came from Homestead-

“You’re an odds man, Soupy,” Shayne said. “What do you think the odds are we can stop that Everglades link-up?”

“The big four-lane? Too much going for it, man. I admit you’ve surprised me a few times, but even so-well, twenty to one?”

Shayne snorted. “Always nice to talk to you, Soupy. Yeah, I’d say about twenty to one. But we’re trying various things, and maybe we’ll come up with something. This one’s a little far-out. Canada’s Homestead job was hit tonight. I happened to walk in on it.”

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me what you were doing out there?”

“Soupy, some of this it would be healthier not to know. You might be tempted to sell it, and that could get complicated.”

“And unhealthy,” Simpson agreed. “What kind of values are we talking about?”

“To you, a couple of thousand at the most. We want you to put it in the pipeline so we can see where it goes.”

“Like an X-ray,” Rourke explained, “where you inject something and take a series of pictures. Soupy, time’s going by.”

“It can’t wait till morning?”

“It was stolen tonight,” Shayne said. “We want to peddle it tonight.”

“They’re going to wonder why I don’t get rid of it direct.”

“Because you want to keep the connection, keep them satisfied. Cut down the risk. You don’t want to be driving the truck and get stopped for a faulty tail-light.”

Simpson considered. “They might go for that. How would this be? I’ve got the key to an empty storefront. You can unload it there. I’ll call the guys to come pick it up. That’s a round trip of about an hour. Would that fit your schedule?”

“Fine.”

And where did Jack Downey fit into this? Simpson had a fleeting impulse to tell Shayne that somebody else was interested in those two guys, Benjamin and Vaughan. He suppressed it. He had to think of himself, and this was turbulent water.

“You were talking about odds,” he said. “If I do it, what are the odds I’ll get hurt?”

“Four to one.”

That jolted a laugh out of Simpson. “Anybody else would say a hundred, and I wouldn’t believe it. O.K., I’ll do it. Let’s see what you have.”

To Lou DeLuca, Canada’s ambition to make it big in legitimate business was like a whore’s dream of a little house in the suburbs, with a pastel door and a swimming pool. It wasn’t a practical thing. To be practical, the only security was to work with the cops, providing the services the public wanted and needed, and to stay the hell out of the headlines. Dope, bets, women-this was nickel-and-dime stuff to Canada. Sure, but how those nickels and dimes added up!

Canada was always in evidence. When he went anywhere, he was noticed. He gave too many big flashy parties. It tickled him when officers of the medical and bar associations and Chamber of Commerce came on his boat. But at the first sign of bad weather, DeLuca had told him again and again, those would be just the people who wouldn’t be returning his phone calls. They had their own ass to look after.

So Canada had to go. But it had to be done right. An old-fashioned bang-bang would hurt everybody. What most people wanted was peace and tranquillity, no heat, no hassle, an atmosphere in which they could continue to make a modest living without letting the IRS know the details. There were always a few soreheads around, and DeLuca had been working on them. But as for people who would go all the way, he had only a handful. Canada, too, had been neglecting this side of it. Times had changed, he kept saying. Horse-shit. Sometimes there was only one thing to do, when you came down to it-stop talking and shoot.