“Talk to me.”
“It’s Meeks. What’s up?”
“Your number, but hopefully not my money. I just got a lead, through a friend of Mickey’s. LAPD did a routine ballistics run-through on that jazz club shootout you were in. That hotshot coroner Layman examined the report on the Side 196
Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The pills they took out of that rat guy you told me about. It looked familiar, so he checked back. Bullets from your gun matched the pills they took out of Gene Niles. LAPD makes you for the Niles snuff, and they’re out to get you in force.
Shoot to kill. And I hate to mention it, but you owe me a lot of money.”
Buzz sighed. “Johnny, you’re a rich man.”
“What?”
Buzz said, “Meet me here tomorrow at noon,” and hung up. He dialed an East LA number and got, “Quien? Quien es?”
“Speak English, Chico, it’s Meeks.”
“Buzz! My Padrone!”
“I’m changin’ my order, Chico. No thirty-thirty, make it a sawed-off.”
“.12 gauge, Padrone?”
“Bigger, Chico. The biggest you got.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The shotgun was a .10 gauge pump with a foot-long barrel. The slugs held triple-aught buckshot. The five rounds in the breech were enough to turn Mickey Cohen’s haberdashery and the dope summit personnel into dog food. Buzz was carrying the weapon in a venetian blind container covered with Christmas wrapping paper.
His U-Drive clunker was at the curb a half block south of Sunset. The haberdashery lot was packed with Jew canoes and guinea gunboats; one sentry was stationed by the front door shooing away customers; the man by the back door looked half asleep, sitting in a chair catching a full blast of late-morning sun. Two neutral triggers accounted for–Dudley and the fourth man had to be inside with the action.
Buzz waved at the guy up on the corner–his prepaid accomplice recruited from a wine bar. The guy walked into the lot looking furtive, trying Caddy and Lincoln door handles, skirting the last row of cars by the fence. Buzz eased up slowly, waiting for the sentry to take note and pounce.
It took the sunbird almost half a minute to stir, get wise and tread over, a hand inside his jacket pocket. Buzz ran full speed, fat lightning on sneakered feet.
The sentry turned around at the last second; Buzz swung the Christmas box in his face and knocked him against the hood of a ’49 Continental. The man pulled his gun; Buzz kneed him in the nards, popped his nose with a flat palm and watched the .45 auto hit the blacktop. Another knee spear put him down and keening; Buzz kicked the gun away, whipped off the box and used the butt of his sawed-off to beat him quiet.
The accomplice was gone; the sentry was bleeding at the mouth and nose, deep off in dreamland–maybe for keeps. Buzz pocketed the loose cannon, walked over to the back door and let himself in.
Laughter and hail-fellow dialogue booming; a short corridor lined with dressing rooms. Buzz inched up to a curtain, pulled a corner back and looked.
The summit was in full swing. Mickey Cohen and Jack Dragna were glad-handing each other, standing by a table laid out with cold cuts, bottles of beer and liquor. Davey Goldman, Mo Jahelka and Dudley Smith were knocking back highballs; a line of Dragna humps was standing by the front window curtains.
Johnny Stompanato was nowhere to be seen because Johnny Stompanato was probably halfway to Pedro by now, hoping a certain fat man survived the morning. Over by the left wall, the real business was happening: two Mex National types counting a suitcase full of money while one Mickey guy and one Jack guy taste-tested the white-brown powder stuffed into reinforced paper bags in another suitcase. Their smiles said the stuff tasted good.
Buzz pulled the curtain aside and joined the party, sliding a round into the chamber to get some attention. The noise caused heads to turn, drinks and plates of food to drop; Dudley Smith smiled; Jack Dragna eyed the barrel. Buzz saw a cop type by the Mexes. Twenty to one he and Dudley were the only ones heeled; Dud was much too smart to try something. Mickey Cohen looked hurt. He said, “As God is my witness I will do you worse than I did the guy who did Hooky Rothman.”