The Erection Set

“Car blew up,” he said. “That nutty little Jansen kid what’s always stealing rides in cars saw the keys in that one and was gonna ride to school. It blew all apart when he started it. Gee, we tried to tell him and everything ...”

Then I felt a little sick too.

The other kid said abstractedly, “He just got outa reform school for the same thing.”

I rolled the window up and sat there a moment.

“Dog ... ?”

“It was supposed to have been me,” I said.

Her sob was a futile cry that caught in her throat.

“He’s the last one out there. After him there won’t be anymore.”

“Who?” Sharon whispered.

“The worst one of all.” I was all tight again. “Damn, there’s so much more to do, too.”

I dropped Sharon off outside the Barrin plant. She gave me a wistful little smile, pulled the collar up on her coat and walked through the rain toward the building. The S. C. Cable Productions trucks were still lined up on the west side, but all the activity had moved indoors and the canvas canopies were down except for the one over the area where a few of the crew were surrounding the coffee urns. I circled the complex twice before I spotted Hobis sitting in a parked car, stopped opposite him and waved him in beside me.

“Any action?” I asked.

“Just a little accident with a car downtown.” He grinned at me, his lips tight over clenched teeth. “I sent The Chopper over to check it out. Either you’re on the ball or your luck’s running strong.”

“What did he get?”

“It was that rented heap of yours, all right. Somebody used one of the new plastics with a heat-sensitized detonator wired to the exhaust. Easy to slap on and takes about five seconds to activate. A real pro job. I don’t think the local cops even know how it happened yet. Sure tore that kid all to hell. What was the bit there?”

“He was trying to steal the car. I had left the keys in it.”

Hobis shrugged and lit the stub of a cigar he took out of his pocket. “Scratch one potential con. Who did it?”

“Arnold Bell.”

He nodded without looking up until he had the butt lit, then took a couple of deep drags on it. “Old Bell’s diversifying. He used to specialize in that little .22 of his. Figure how he ran you down?”

“The city isn’t all that big,” I said.

“Uh-huh. But it still makes it a big job. You think he’s working alone?”

“He didn’t start off that way.”

“Maybe he rang in some locals.”

“Not Arnold Bell. The solo speed is the way he likes it. Now the big pot is all his if he makes the hit.”

“As long as he was paid in advance,” Hobis said.

I cut around the corner and headed back toward the factory again. Hobis’s tone of voice had sounded a little strange and I looked at him, the question in my eyes.

Hobis said, “I called New York this morning. The whole European scene blew wide apart.”

My hands went tight around the steering wheel. “How?”

“Some of Le Fleur’s boys went after The Turk and threw a couple of slugs in his belly. The Turk thought he was dying and blew the whistle on the big man. The fuzz moved in and nailed all his records and put enough heat on some of the lower echelon so that they started talking too.” He took another drag on the cigar and tossed the butt out the side window. “Would have made quite a package, only while he was being held in custody a twenty-year-old cousin of a guy Le Fleur had eliminated walked in with press credentials and popped his eyes out with a Luger. When the boiler blows, she really blows fast, doesn’t she?”

“That gets the Guido brothers off the hook then.”

“Kiddo,” Hobis told me, “you’ve been away much too long. Over there they’d just call it quits and start over again when the storm dies down, but here you pay for mistakes or errors in judgment. It teaches others a lesson about being careful when they’re using mob money to finance an operation.” He let out a grunt that passed for a laugh and added,

“You got something to say, haven’t you?”

So I told him about the casket.

“To each his own,” he said when I finished. “Where do we go from here?”

“Nothing changes. Just keep the plant covered.”

“Your dough, buddy. Lousy action, but good pay.”

I let him out beside the car he was working from, pulled away behind a pair of trucks making sure nobody was behind me and called Leyland Hunter from a gas station on the outskirts of town.

It was Saturday morning and I was to meet with the family at noon. Two hours later there was a special meeting of the new board of directors in the main office of the building and I was expected to be in attendance.