“Nowhere to go, lady.”

  Berkson turned to face Rickler. Right behind him was one of his guards, who must have heard the commotion.

  “What are you doing spying on me?” Rickler demanded, stepping closer.

  “I was looking for the exit.”

  “Bullshit.” He took her roughly by the arm and with his guard, muscled her up the stairs and back to his office. When they passed the open archway, she could see several people had gathered to see what was going on. She didn’t see Claire.

  “Take her back to the office,” Rickler told the guard. “I need to smooth this out.”

  “Okay, Gavin.”

  The guard didn’t manhandle Berkson but stayed on her close to guide her to their destination. Rickler went out on the main floor to assuage the patrons. Berkson listened. “It’s okay folks, just a sneak thief trying to get cute.” She assumed his vacuous smile was once more on display.

  Payton was gone from the office when Berkson was ushered inside. It was well-appointed and included a small couch, comfortable chairs, a wet bar, hi-fi set up with a tape recorder and several pieces of art including a modern art statuette that looked like a twisted part of a jet’s landing gear on a shelf. There was a bathroom she could partly see through an ajar door.

  “Sit down.” The guard indicated the couch.

  Berkson did as instructed. She sat alertly, knees together, hands on them. This way, she reasoned, he would see them shake due to her nervousness. Rickler came in. He closed the door to his back and faced her, taking her measure.

  “Dump out her purse, Tim,” he said.

  The guard took it off her lap and, at the desk, emptied it out by turning it over. The poker chips, her wallet, derringer, lipstick, a comb and a couple of other items not as serious as the gun tumbled onto the blotter on Rickler’s desk.

  Tim, a man with a barrel chest and recessed eyes, picked up the derringer, grinning. “What’d you plan to do with this pop gun, sweetheart?”

  “A single woman can’t be too careful,” she said.

  “The wallet.” Ricker held out his hand and Tim handed it across. Scornfully he tossed the derringer back on the table.

  Rickler snapped the wallet open and, thumbing through the contents, soon extracted her driver’s license. He studied it for a few moments, looking up once from the picture on it to her, then back to the license. “So, Judith Eleanora Berkson, why the hell are you here?”

  “My old man,” she began, concocting a lie just as quick as she could spin it. “He’s running around with this barmaid.”

  “You working for Mosk?” Rickler demanded.

  “What?”

  “Don’t play dumb. The state attorney general and his psalm singers still got their noses in the air about card clubs. You snooping for them, trying to get dirt on me?”

  “No.”

  His eyes narrowing, he stepped forward. “You’re lying. And you’re going to tell me the truth.”

  “Fire!” came a yell from elsewhere.

  “The hell now?” Rickler said as again someone yelled fire, louder this time. “You watch her,” he told Tim and left his office in a trot.

  “I gotta pee,” Berkson said. “You two scare me.”

  “Pee then.”

  She jerked a head toward the bathroom. “Come on,” she pleaded, her leg bouncing up and down. A beat, then, cocking her head, she said softly, “You can watch me.”

  Tim had a hip hitched on the edge of the desk. “Yeah?”

  “I’m your prisoner, aren’t I?”

  He looked toward the office door, which was open.

  “Your boss is taking care of whatever’s going on out there.” She stood up, hiking up her skirt a few inches and reaching her hands under the folds.

  Tim came off the desk leering. “Oh . . . shit.”

  She moved closer to him, turning her face up at him invitingly. He gaped and she shoved him and in the next motion twisted about, scooping up her derringer.

  “Teasing whore,” he growled, leaping for her.

  Operating more from nervousness than reflex, she yelped and hit him twice on the bridge of his nose, causing him to falter. This wasn’t like her bluffing those two nuts at Tolbert’s house. Tim was dangerous. Knowing full well she couldn’t shoot him, she turned and rushed into the bathroom, slamming the door. Fortunately, it had a lock.

  “Get your ass out here,” Tim yelled, jiggling the knob and pounding on the door. This door wasn’t like the one to the office. Three times he rammed his shoulder with his bulk behind it and each time it gave some on the hinges. The third attempt tore it lose though it hung halfway in and halfway out of the doorway. Tim bulled into the bathroom just in time to see Berkson’s lower legs and feet dangling over the toilet through the small sliding glass window there. Leaping across the compact space, he grabbed for her and came away with a handful of the material of her skirt. Bellowing, he roared out of the bathroom as he couldn’t fit through that window.

  “Get back here, goddammit.”

  Outside, head and body aimed toward the ground, Berkson was surprised again when hands were on her from behind. She decided she’d better do some punching and started swinging awkwardly.

  “It’s me, Judy.”

  “Anita!” she said jubilantly. She alighted on the asphalt upright. She had a ragged slit up the side of her skirt where Tim had torn it.

  “Let’s go,” her friend said.

  “Hold up, you two.” One of the parking lot guards peddled up fast on his bike at the same time a car screeched onto the lot—driving straight at the guard. He sought to unholster his weapon and Claire whacked him hard in the jaw, knocking him to the ground. She kicked the gun away. Two other guards were peddling furiously from different directions, converging on the spot.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Ingram shouted from behind the wheel of his station wagon.

  Berkson already had the rear door open. Tim was running toward them too, gun out. Ingram had his .45 in hand and sticking his arm out of the window, shot it into the air. Tim dove for cover. The car roared away, clipping a parked Plymouth Fury on the way off the lot.

  “Wow,” Berkson gulped.

  Claire said, “That was close.”

  “Glad you were here for backup, Harry,” Berkson said.

  “At first he was gonna sneak follow us,” Claire mentioned. “Typical man’s thinking.”

  “But she sussed out what I was planning,” Ingram added. He’d turned off his headlights and was taking back streets. They weren’t being tailed.

  Berkson put her hand on his shoulder. “Either way, glad you were here, Harry.”

  He looked over at Claire. “Partners gotta watch out for each other, don’t they?”

  “You set the fire?” Berkson asked.

  “Shit yeah,” Claire said proudly. “There’s a pantry off the kitchen for snacks and stuff, I was hoping it would give you some kind of distraction.”

  “He’s got my damn driver’s license.”

  “Can’t worry about it now,” Ingram said. Having served his share of papers in Gardena, Ingram was familiar with its side streets. He parked on a darkened avenue and they passed the time guessing song titles from incorrectly remembered lyrics. They then snuck back to the club to retrieve Berkson’s car. Fortunately, there were still a number of vehicles parked on the lot.

  FROM THE kitchen at their home, Claire obtained three white cups and a bottle of chilled sake in the refrigerator. Back in the living room, she poured the rice wine into the cups. Ingram had been drinking the stuff since service in Korea. They had decided it was safer for Judy to stay with them tonight and soon, she returned from the bedroom wearing Claire’s polka dot pajamas. Claire was dressed in her other pajamas. After clinking their cups together in a cheers, the two told Ingram what they’d been through and what Berkson had managed to overhear.

  “The way it sounded,” Claire concluded, “Rickler must have bankrolled that fur robbery like Strummer hinted at and was in partnership with Mose Tolbert.”

  “And Betty too, it sounded like,” Berkson added.

  “This probably wasn’t the first time. Tolbert’s business has four trucks. I guess they use them to move the stolen items around,” Ingram said.

  Claire asked, “You think the manager, what’s his name, is in on the deal?”

  “Chet Horne, you mean? Probably. And a couple of others at the place too, I’d bet.”

  “Including the bookkeeper?” she added.

  Ingram had more of his drink, lifting both eyebrows.

  Claire said, “Betty came to you because she thought Rickler had harmed Tolbert and wanted to know if that was so. But it doesn’t seem she was worried about her own safety.”

  “More about the bottom line,” Berkson observed. “She must help finance some of these heists for her cut of the operation, as Rickler said.”

  Claire and Ingram exchanged a nod. He then said, “If Rickler didn’t go after his crime partner, why did Tolbert disappear?”

  Both women exchanged blank expressions.

  “Anyway, it’s beddy-bye time for all of us,” Claire said, yawning as she rose and finishing her drink. “You know where the blankets and stuff are.”

  Berkson was also on her feet. “Thank you two.”

  “You know we’re not going to let anything happen to you, Judy.” Ingram had halted in the doorway leading to the master bedroom.

  “I know, Harry. But I can’t hide out forever.”

  “We’ll work it out,” he said. “Goodnight.”

  “Night.”

  The guest bedroom of the house, on the opposite end of the hallway to the couple’s bedroom, contained a rollaway bed. When they were discussing the events at the card club, Claire had gone in and unfolded the thing. The bed was already made up with sheets and a blanket, and she’d added a pillow. In the room were a few taped and stacked cardboard boxes in a corner, five framed prints of painting reproductions leaning against the wall and a compact closet behind an accordion door.

  In her dreams that night, Berkson was running away from bike-men who were part wheels with their clothed torsos and heads sprouting from where the handlebars would normally be. She ducked into a Victorian mansion she’d seen in Jane Eyre. Like the twists and turns she and Claire had taken that night to reach her car, she had to get through a maze, the walls moving and reforming at new angles to each other. Eventually she got to a room lined in velvet, a heart-shaped bed in the middle with golden curtains glimmering behind it.

  On the bed, Ingram and Claire were making love. At some point they halted, bodies slick with sweat. Her friend beckoned to Berkson and she joined them happily.

  When she awoke from her dream before light, she’d been blushing. She’d only been able to compose herself after several splashes of cold water on her face.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ingram awoke to Claire propped up on an elbow. Her face close to his, an odd expression on it. “Yes, dear?”

  “I have to tell you something. And I’m taking the coward’s way out, figuring you won’t blow your top with Judy in the house.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “You know about the Morning Bandit gang?”

  A soft knock at the door interrupted them. “I’m going to make us breakfast,” Berkson said from the other side.

  “Thanks, sweetie,” Claire called back. “Let’s eat first,” she said to her boyfriend.

  Getting out of bed, Ingram regarded her evenly. “Sure.”

  She smiled sweetly. He continued to the bathroom.

  The three ate heartily in the nook in the kitchen. Their guest had cooked up link sausage, poached eggs and toast. Coffee too, of course.

  Patting his middle Ingram said, “Gonna have to double up on my workouts, Judy.”

  “Me too,” Claire added, sopping up some yoke with a piece of toast.

  “You two are the best,” Berkson said.

  “I’ll swing by your pad a little later today, Judy, and take a gander.”

  “Thanks, Harry.”

  “You stay around here for today, okay? The neighborhood I mean,” Claire mentioned.

  “Like I said, I can’t hide out forever, Anita. I’ll get another derringer and take my chances. And really, I could move for peace of mind. Better yet, get myself a .38 for real peace of mind.”

  “Damn, Judy, one step at a time,” Ingram interjected. “Both you chicks are getting a might too bloodthirsty, ain’t ya?”

  “You know you like it,” Claire said.

  Ignoring the truth of what she said, he replied, “Anyway, seems to me we might be able to give Mr. Rickler bigger things to worry about.”

  “What, you figure on doing a fire bombing of the club like what happened before?” Claire said. The eager cast to her face suggested she wouldn’t mind making that happen.

  “Nothing that drastic.” To Berkson, he asked, “But lend me your keys, all right?”

  “Sure,” Berkson said.

  They finished eating while continuing to discuss whether it was more than just these heists that Payton was part of with Rickler and Tolbert. Though this probably meant Chet Horne was part of it too, Ingram pointed out.

  “The bug is part of this,” Claire said.

  “Partners spying on each other?” Berkson wondered.

  “Deebeck also being scarce is not a coincidence,” Ingram stated.

  Gulping down the remains of her second cup of coffee, Claire kissed Ingram on the mouth good-bye and Berkson on the cheek. She left as the other two cleaned up the dishes and whatnot.

  “What you guys want for dinner?”

  “Don’t sweat it, we can get some takeout or step over to my joint, the Detour.”

  “Harry, please, I insist. I have a couple more days off, and you two have stuck your necks way out for me.”

  “It’s the other way around, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose it’s mutual. Me and Anita did get a kick out of last night’s escapade.”

  Ingram had heard that kind of talk back in the Army. Greenhorn soldiers would be charged after a firefight, having come away unscathed. But that next time the Reds were shooting at you and the guy you’d gone through basic together with was talking to you and then he wasn’t because his brains had been blown out. A different perspective settled in after that.

  Berkson touched his arm as they stood at the sink. “Smoked turkey legs, yams and green beans.”

  “Sold.”

  “Damn right.”

  After saying good-bye, Ingram went into the garage and grabbed his binoculars. He used them at times when out in the field on a story hunt or not so long ago serving papers to check out the scene. Then, unlocking the gate to the backyard, he departed along the driveway.

  HAVING A morning to lounge around, Berkson went into the living room. She wondered could two women shack up with one man? Even if one of them was white? What would the neighbors say? What would Anita say except punch her in the face? Berkson grinned, amused by her wanton notions. As a way to break the ice on the subject, she might ask Harry if Dapper would be interested in that kind of article—knowing damn well the publisher would be. She’d met him once at a party she went to with Harry and Anita.

  Berkson took a book from the shelf by historian Philip Foner. It chronicled the struggles of the Fur and Leather Workers Union in the 1940s. While currently she wasn’t a member of a manufacturing union, she’d nonetheless lately been considering what it would entail to become a labor organizer. Like Claire’s, Berkson’s lefty parents had introduced her early on to campaigns for equal rights. She tuned the radio to the classical music station. Putting her feet in slippers, also borrowed from Claire, on the coffee table, she started to read.

  About an hour later, the murmuring of voices brought her out of her reading. She looked up to see through the picture window two men in overalls coming up the walk. One of them was smoking. Bookmarking her spot, she got off the couch and went to the door. Neither Ingram nor Claire had told her anything about workmen coming.

  “Yes?” she said after opening the door.

  The men looked startled. One was smoking, a double bandage on his chin.

  “Is Mrs. Ashby in?” the other said.

  “You have the wrong address,” Berkson said.

  “Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” the second one said. “Let’s go,” he said to his companion. He took a long pull on his cigarette and held the smoke in until he was several feet away.

  Berkson watched them walk away quickly. They got in a Dodge panel van marked STARBRITE CARPETING AND SERVICES. After she was sure they had gone, Berkson returned to her book.

  INTENTIONALLY, INGRAM had made it seem there wasn’t much need to be concerned about Rickler knowing where Berkson lived. In actuality, he assumed the card club owner would send at least one of his men to keep watch as he’d want to know if the eavesdropper was working for the church groups. He was not disappointed in his guesswork.

  Berkson’s second floor apartment on East 79th in the Florence-Graham area was not far from where she worked as a tile-cutting machine operator at Millard Tile and Works in Huntington Park. He’d parked his Falcon station wagon down the block and reconnoitered with his binoculars as best he could before approaching her door and going inside. He spotted several white men but they either drove or walked by. Then one pulled up, parked and got out.

  Indoors, crouched down at the side of the window looking down on the street, Ingram watched the white fella who was sitting in the Chrysler Imperial. He’d come to the door and knocked, but he hadn’t answered, and the man returned to his car. Spying on him walking away, Ingram noted the drape of the man’s sport coat on his broad shoulders. The guy sent by Rickler was a bruiser and Ingram needed an advantage over him. The curtains were partly closed, a thin gap between the material. In this way, Ingram could straighten up and move back without being seen. The only way in or out of the apartment was the front door, so sneaking up on the man wasn’t possible. Going out the only door would send the watcher scurrying. Considering what to do, Ingram settled on his plan and stepped out of Berkson’s apartment.