The Girl in the Cockpit

by Michael Avallone

  We were speaking in fits and starts, in stage whispers—and it was somehow ludicrous, the entire setup. The red lighting, the weird atmosphere, the marred walls and splintered furnishings and that hi-fi still playing on eternally as if it would never end.

  And all that clamor and disturbance beyond the walls of the room was already peeling and fading off into the distance. It was fair to suppose that someone must have called the cops and that a siren would be keening soon enough. But there was still an odd silence of some kind, in which I could hear Terry Ricco's hoarse, strained breathing. Her knockout body was as tapered and magnificent as ever. Her bad case of the shakes only made it more so. She was quivering like a belly dancer having an ecstatic time of things. An inner undulation.

  But it wasn't ecstasy, of course. It was the galloping horrors.

  The very worst kind. Who could ever hate her enough to throw a bomb at her? Or have someone else do it for him?

  As preoccupied as she had been with the more pleasant features of life, I could see her glazed staring eyes holding these questions up to the light to look at. It would never have been easy for her to comprehend.

  Fun and games was her bag; not terror and death.

  Her golden head rested on my shoulder as we sat waiting on the shredded couch, both of us trying to think straight, collect our nerve-ends together and sort things out. I don't know what we were waiting for exactly, but it was a very special time. There in a dim, red room, surrounded with the choices of her life and the selections of my own. And through it all clung the deadly fragrance of that blasting grenade and the near might-have-been of it all.

  "Who could have done it? . . . Some crazy kids in the neighborhood? Ed, what's this old world coming to?" She was moaning low, like a record.

  "I don't know," I said. "But I'd forget about Black Panthers or youth gangs like your brother Johnny heads——Uh uh. This isn't them. I'd say it was sort of open season on Riccos, wouldn't you?"

  Her face was still burrowed against my shoulder. "What do you mean?"

  "Your father was killed a week ago. Now somebody tries to renovate your apartment—with you in it. They must have known you were home. Since a bomb was used, instead of a gun or a knife, well—"

  " 'Well'? Go on." Her voice was ragged now, close to hysteria, again.

  "It's a terror tactic, from where I sit. Maybe the idea wasn't to kill you. Though the odds against not being killed are staggering. Still, it might only have hurt you—disfigured you. You know what I mean?"

  "Don't," she begged, in a whimper that was a far cry from the man-eater of only ten minutes before. "Don't say it. Don't even think it! I'll start screaming if I believed a thing like that."

  "I won't say it," I said. "But you can't run away from it anymore, Terry. It's not going to disappear because you want it to. You need police protection until you check out all your friends and enemies and see who doesn't like you anymore. If you don't do it, I will. I sort of have an idea where to look first. Especially since you told me about yourself and Frankie Conroy."

  At that, she pushed away from me and fell against the back of the couch, staring up at her blasted ceiling. Her total profile, from her face down that marvelous breast-line and long legs, made the whole scene more ridiculous than ever, considering all that happened.

  "What's he got to do with it?" she asked in a dull, faint voice, not looking at me. "He's got no reason to want to hurt me."

  "He sure hasn't," I agreed, trying to find my crumpled cigarettes somewhere in my rumpled suit, "but Bella Baldwin has. By her feminine standards, she'd drive a truck over you if she could, and then back up and drive over you again. A hand grenade might be just her sort of speed. You never can tell about women, can you?"

  "Oh, Ed." Her sigh was a change of subject, a deep gust from her inner soul which made her impeccable breasts dance. "What a funky guy you are. We could have been dead, you know that?"

  "Sans doute, mademoiselle."

  "Don't be sarcastic. Let's ball. Right now. Without waiting."

  "No dice. I'm not in the business of grabbing moments and living for today, anymore. If I were your age, I'd feel differently. Fact is, I was your age once and I felt the same way. "Nobody ever was so hungry."

  I lit a Camel, offered her one and waited.

  As I said, she was quite a girl. She turned at that, staring at me with that little girl-big woman sultriness that made her tick. The grenade almost forgotten. Latent terror and uncertainty still shone from her face. She took the butt.

  "You're going to walk away from me, you mean? Without taking what I want to give you? But, Jee-zus, Ed—I like you. I can hire you to protect me, can't I? I'm loaded—I'd give you the best fee you ever got."

  "Again, I'm flattered, Terry. But it won't work. I can't put in twenty-four hours a day with you, which is the kind of around-the-clock protection you'll need. But cheer up . . . lots of handsome guys in the police department. You might draw a real winner for a bodyguard. Maybe two or three. Or four. I'm not in your league, Theresa Ricco."

  She should have gotten mad at that. She should have slapped me or spit on me. But she didn't. She just shook her delightful head dumbly, and slowly and carefully murmured, "You're a bastard, you know it?"

  "Who me?"

  "Yes, you. A guy's crazy or queer or impotent to pass me up."

  "Okay. I'm crazy."

  "Thank God. I didn't expect you to be any of the other two."

  We both laughed at that. A trifle uneasily but warmly. Like friends.

  "I'll get you yet, you know," she promised, wetting her lower lip with that pink tongue of hers. "There's no hurry."

  "We'll see about that." I stood up, once more surveying the carnage of the apartment. It was incredible but there had come no siren in the night, no knocking on the apartment door. The phone had not even rung, and, once again, old Manhattan had scored another victory for the lawless. How many ghosts of how many victims would have cried out in despair? What a city!

  "Now, you call the cops as soon as I step out that door. And don't wait until morning. Get me? I don't want to read about you in the papers. You've got too much to live for—obviously."

  "All right. I will. But——" Suddenly, she looked all contrite and helpless again. The little-girl bit. I frowned, wondering what she was up to now. "Ed—there is something you ought to know. Don't get mad, but yesterday didn't seem the right time to tell you."

  "Tell me what?"

  "That gun that Johnny pulled on you. The one you took away from him. You still have it?"

  Something stirred in the detective mind I still own. It's a constant.

  "It's in a desk in my apartment. What about it?"

  Terry Ricco stared up into my eyes, as oblivious of her own nudity as ever. She was a remarkable young woman, in spite of everything.

  '1 don't know. But Johnny hid that gun. When the cops were all in a sweat looking for a .45 that killed dear old Dad. You get the picture? I didn't want to say anything. He's my kid brother, no matter what. But it could be the gun that was used in the shooting."

  I stared at her, feeling about two degrees colder toward her.

  "You putting me on, Terry? Do you realize what you're saying?"

  She shrugged. A silly gesture, considering her physical state at the time. "No skin off my nose. The cops want a .45. Johnny didn't tell them about the one in the junkyard all these years. And he stashed it because he wanted to use it on you, you stupid stud. Okay. But suppose, just suppose, the gun had been used on Giovanni Ricco and Johnny never even stopped to think about that. I'm telling you straight. Johnny has got to know more about that gun than he's been telling."

  "All right. I'll ask him. But you're quite a girl."

  "You haven't seemed to notice." She was almost pouting. Christ!

  "I'm noticing now."

  "Progress. Maybe next time you might even put your hand on my knee or something." She widened her thighs so I could see something.

  "Maybe next time I'll
put you over my knee and paddle the hell out of you." It was getting impossible to keep up with her.

  "If you ever do anything as cornball as that," she said, with sheer, glowing hunger shining out of her eyes, "I swear I'll kill you. Don't you go square on me, Ed. I'm starting to get hung on you."

  "Don't forget to call the cops," I said to her once more, heading for the door. "Particularly if you want to hang on to your lease. This may be the only apartment in town ever done up with a hand grenade. I don't know what kind of crazy parties you've thrown here but tonight must have been a first, even for you."

  She got the last word in, as usual. With spite and malice on.

  "It was," she said very quietly. "I've never been turned down before. I got to admit I don't like the feeling. Not a bit."

  "You'll live——"

  "It's not my idea of living. I'm not dead yet, Noon baby."

  I left her that wasteful way, sitting like a silent, lovely statue, a witch or a nymph, rising from the red-illuminated, wrecked and esoterically screwy setting of that pad on Sixty-Fifth Street. When I hit the night air, the sidewalk was so deserted as to be a mockery of time and place. The whole damn neighborhood was sleeping and the notion that a grenade had exploded a mere half hour before, was really absurd. Kid stuff, a fairy tale.

  I didn't even see a beat cop on patrol.

  I looked back at the only window the grenade could have been flung through. It would be an easy shot. The draped glass, now showing the shattered gaping opening, was but a few walking steps in from the trimmed green hedge. It was useless to look for footprints. The hard-caked earth below the window was almost cement-hardened—it had been a cool night. Besides, that Sherlock Holmes routine is no help to an operator like me. I don't have a police lab to work with. My kind of clues are very seldom of solid form. They more or less take the shape of the sort of tip that Terry Ricco had finally given me about her brother—and that .45 that was kept a secret from Monks and his men.

  I took another cab back to my own apartment. My expenses were soaring.

  Again, my mind was filled with thoughts and images of Terry Ricco. The thoughts were all twisted, confused and unclear. The images were all shapely, vivid and very plain. I had to agree with one thing that bitter Johnny Ricco had declared about his sister: "All the way."

  "The Girl in the Cockpit," Johnny claimed that was what she wanted to be. I knew what he meant now. Beyond the shadow of a doubt.

  Terry Ricco filled that bill, on all counts.

  Like the way she filled out her clothes.

  Like the way she filled out her skin.

  She could have led armies the way she looked. Easy.

  Armies of panting men, young or old. Kings and commoners, cops and robbers.

  That was for sure. Damn sure.

  What wasn't for sure, was exactly where she fitted into the big picture: of the junkyard, The Blue Lady, her father's murder and her kid brother's vengeance.

  That was what really bothered me about Terry Ricco.

  Real saint or real sinner?

  Angel or devil?

  Simple swinger or complex murderess?

  Time, as the saying goes, was the only thing that would tell.

  Time—which we were all running out of.

  It's getting much later than anyone thinks.

  Look at your own clocks.

  GUN

  Back in the apartment once more, tired and somehow whipped by all that had happened in the space of an evening, I called my answering service to see if there had been any calls. Melissa Mercer had phoned twice up until midnight, left no messages, and I kicked myself mentally for not calling her. One of the heaviest penalties of the love relationship was that somebody always worries. Women's Lib would lecture us both on the subject. Me for being thoughtless, Melissa for putting herself in the position of she-who-waits-by-the-phone. I looked at my watch, saw it was nearly two and gambled. I had a feeling I had spoiled whatever sleep she might have had already. So I called her as quick as I could, slowly undressing as I did. Besides, she might have some information that might be worth thinking about before morning.

  I don't know what everybody else was doing at that shank of the evening but I was fairly certain that Johnny and his Hawks were bedded down for the night, Terry Ricco had to be talking to the police and Frankie Conroy and Bella Baldwin were probably comparing notes in some love nest somewhere in Manhattan, Mike Monks had to be pounding his ear, too.

  It's only silly private detectives who lose a lot of necessary sleep. An occupational hazard that hadn't changed very much in twenty years of eye-ing. I didn't even want to guess what Carlo Fargo might be doing.

  Melissa's smooth, liquid voice hopped on the second ring. My mood dropped fifty points. She'd been worried, all right. A whole lot.

  "I'm a bastard," I said, without trying to be funny.

  "You are," she agreed, sighing. "I wish you'd let me live there or you lived here. Two can live cheaper than one, you know. And it's a lot easier on the personality. This way is just no fun at all."

  "A lot happened. Can I tell you about it at the office?"

  "Why don't you let me come over? I'm not going to get back to sleep anyway. We could talk it over and—oh, damn you, I'm in the mood. I've been that way so long now, about you, I want to get my head examined. And, besides, I got all the dope on the Riccos and—do I need any more excuses or reasons . . . or are you too tired?"

  Suddenly, her face was in front of me, with all the rest of the natural wonders that went with it. I was tired but I missed her. And I didn't stop to ask myself if my failure to take what Terry Ricco offered had anything to do with my change of heart.

  This was Melissa.

  "You should have married Sidney Poitier when he asked you," I said happily. "Come ahead. I'm putting the coffee on now."

  A kiss and an infectious chuckle came over the line.

  "Sidney is beautiful," she laughed, "but he's not you."

  "Then I'm sorry for him. Hurry up."

  "Give me twenty minutes. I love you."

  "I feel sorry for you too. But ditto."

  While I finished getting out of my work clothes and slipping into a worn brown robe and slippers, I went to the desk drawer that held Johnny Ricco's Army .45. It was easy enough to check. As I had noticed yesterday before I put it away, one slug had been fired and the clip held all the remaining cartridges. I'd unloaded the next slug from the firing position in the chamber and restored it to the clip that always rides in the butt. Johnny had fired the one shot I knew about, down in the hallway of the building, but it would take a ballistics expert to tell me if the gun had been fired before that. Since the .45 is an automatic weapon, Johnny's poor marksmanship had propelled the next bullet into the firing chamber, so the gun would have been ready if I hadn't de-armed it. Not even the safety latch was worth taking a chance on with a slug in line with the firing pin. Army .45s were very tricky things, as I remembered.

  I also remembered Terry Ricco's damaging piece of testimony about Johnny and the gun—hiding it from the cops, keeping it for himself. If it was the gun that killed his old man, it was going to look mighty bad on Judgment Day. Sure, Johnny was a wild, vengeful rebel of a kid—but was he more than that? Terry hadn't gotten along with old Giovanni, but how would a dropout kind of son set with a man who had built a fortune with his bare hands? Maybe Melissa Mercer was bringing the answer to that very question. I hoped so, anyway.

  I put the old Army souvenir away once more. My own Colt was in its leather bed and harness contraption slung over the nearest chair. It always paid to have it close by. I led a very strange life for a grown man who should have known better.

  Then I went into the kitchen, which is more of a cubicle than a real place to cook, and brewed a pot of coffee. I was thinking about grenades. They certainly weren't that easy to lay your hands on, and if the jealous Bella Baldwin had used one as her way of scaring Terry Ricco off her dream man, Frankie Conroy, it was certainly doing it the
hard way. And if it wasn't Bella, was a Johnny Ricco capable of trying to blow his sister into the next world just so he could be the sole heir to a fortune in junkyard gold? Somehow, that didn't wash. As tough as the Hawks and Johnny were, I couldn't see them trying a stunt like that. Not for profit or spite or even just plain kicks. Grenade-tossing is the act of a terrorist or a screwball—or a Frankie Conroy? Yeah, Gangsters are up to such tricks but not even a Conroy struck me as a bomb-thrower. Particularly, when the girl on the end of the bomb was a one-in-a-million doll like Terry Ricco—whom the aforementioned Mr. Conroy just might be setting up heavy housekeeping with?

  It was a pain, all around. The worst kind of case. A family affair with relatives all over the place. And these are murder for the man in the middle. The man hired to find all the answers.

  That little old private eye——me.

  Melissa had her own key to my pad so there was no problem about answering the door. So I went on into the bedroom, made myself comfortable and fired up a quiet cigarette. The coffee could take care of itself; one of those electirc jobs where the red light goes on to show it's done and you don't ever have to worry about unplugging it until you're ready. Come to think of it, Melissa had bought it for me, as part of her campaign to make me start living like a member of the human race. I'm very bad on some things. Folksy stuff, actually.

  On some other things, I'm downright terrible.

  Like relaxing my guard and taking some things for granted.

  I only knew how stupid I was when I heard the heavier footfalls sounding in the other room. And that was enough to make me spring up from bed, sudden alarm bells going off in my brain. But then it was too late. For anything but a try at putting a good face on things. And not easy to do. I'd been had in my own backyard. But good.

  Fargo was standing in the center of my living room, looming like the large, oversized gorilla he was, nearly resplendent in a white trenchcoat and a Borsalino rammed down over his forehead. And he was leering at me with unalloyed pleasure and malice, because he had a real hammerlock on Melissa Mercer's right arm, bending it behind her back in a way that said one-peep-out-of-you-and-I'll-break-it-in-half. Melissa was wearing her familiar checkered topcoat with the high collar that made her look like a million bucks but her eyes were two sorry pools of fear and disgust with herself for not being able to cry out. I stood on the threshold of the bedroom door, feeling foolish, but also so goddamned helpless, I wanted to scream. My .45 still hung over that nearest chair and Johnny Ricco's Army job was still in the center drawer of the desk. The room, lighted only from the floor lamp next to the long sofa, was all too remindful of a stage for a one-act play. Big Carlo showed me his left hand all of a sudden. It was holding a .32 snub-nosed pistol so small it looked like a toy in his hairy paw. And Melissa was writhing against him, holding back a whimper of agony. I stepped into the room, raising my hands in a slow arc, not wanting to set Big Brain into action. Or set him off.