The Case of the Bouncing Betty

by Michael Avallone

  Number One galvanized. His body shifted, his right shoulder unfurled and his hard-knuckled hand flashed across his father’s fat face in a ringing slap. Tommy Chin took it unflinchingly but his head bowed forward and his roly-poly girth shook silently. “Shame on the House of Chin,” he murmured into his chest.

  But Bim Caesar was of different stock. He came from a long line of Italian ancestors where the father is the honored man of the family. His face purpled in sudden fury.

  He cursed and took a beefy step forward and brought his two-ringed right hand up in a short, murderous arc. Number One fell across the table, slammed down into a chair and took it to the floor with him.

  “Bully for you, Bim,” I said. “Murder’s okay, dope’s okay, clip joints are fine but being nasty to one’s father is absolutely unpardonable. Bully for you, Bim.”

  He was breathing hard and I was pushing him. The thousand and one delights he had pictured for himself with the dope deal had all gone up in smoke before his eyes and he was mad. And he didn’t know how to take it.

  Number One staggered to his feet, his plastered down hair showing one greased lock tumbling down his forehead. A lower, parallel line of blood trickled slowly from his left nostril. But he kept his mouth closed and said nothing. Only his eyes showed how he felt. And those eyes hated Bim Caesar. I would dearly have loved to hand him a Samurai sword at that moment just to see what he would do with it.

  But I didn’t have a Samurai sword. I didn’t have nothing. Nothing but a roomful of trouble in the form of a disappointed mob leader and his gun-carrying co-workers.

  “Don’t ever hit your old man while I’m around. A son should have more respect for his father. Now forget it. You make me lose my head. But I still wanta talk business. This stuff–can you get your hands on more? You can’t tell me your source is dead.”

  “It’s possible to come to terms.” Number One padded at the blood from his nose with a dainty kerchief. “A freighter will dock next week. Ostensibly, an oil freighter. But its cargo is such that we may still become rich men. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Good.” Bim Caesar purred. “Very good. Now you talk sense. Now I know how we both stand. Now we take care of our friend here.”

  I was the center of attention again. Bucky clucked in his throat.

  “Let me have him, Bim. They’ll never recognize him when I finish with him.”

  “Halfies,” Lon chortled, making it sound like a dirty word. “Halfies, Bucky. Don’t cut me out of this.”

  Bim Caesar chuckled.

  “Momma mia, you’re popular, Noon.”

  “I make friends wherever I go,” I said drily.

  While Bim Caesar was thinking it over, I thought fast. The door was locked, I had no gun and there were seven of them. But I had one break. They wouldn’t try anything here. They couldn’t. I warmed myself with that notion as small as it was. They’d have to take me out of here and arrange their party elsewhere. It didn’t give me much hope but the hope of time. And when you’ve got that, you’ve got something.

  But Bim Caesar was jerking his head toward the curtained alcove.

  “Where does that go?” he asked Number One.

  “The office. Beyond that is a staircase that leads up to the roof.”

  “The roof?” Bim Caesar’s gimlet eyes fastened on me. “How about some fresh air, shamus? You look kinda pale to me. The sun oughta do you a lotta good.”

  “I’ll bet.” I tried to fight a feeling of panic that suddenly grabbed my heart and made it stop beating. “If you don’t mind, I’ll sit this one out. I’m no sun worshipper.”

  Bim Caesar shook his head. “That’s the trouble with you city boys. Too much night life. Well, we’re all gonna go up on the roof. You’re coming too, Noon. Fact is, you’re the guest of honor.”

  “Ain’t it the truth.” I stared at him. “Better make it look good, Bim. I’m not the suicide type. They can say anything they want about me but I’m not the suicide type. I’d rather drink myself to death.”

  Me and my big mouth. Bim Caesar laughed and laughed and laughed.

  “This’ll kill you, big mouth. But you give me the idea that makes it even better. Velvet, bring a bottle.” His eyes glittered like marbles. “You come here, get drunk, go up on the roof for some fresh air so you’ll feel better. And you fall off. Who’s gonna blame the management for that?”

  “You were right the first time. Me and my big mouth.” I thought fast. “What about her?” I indicated Lois Hunt and her sleepy head.

  “Forget about her. She leaves when we do. But we’re all leaving one at a time while Lon and Bucky help you do the dive. They can cross over the roofs for a getaway. I tell you it’s perfect.”

  “Don’t tell me. I already know.”

  Bucky rammed a .38 into my spine harder than necessary.

  “Come on. Get moving. I can hardly wait.”

  I could have. I could have waited all year. But not them. Bucky was pushing me ahead of him toward the curtained entrance. The tinkle of the beads on the curtain as we swept through them sounded like a funeral dirge. My funeral dirge.

  I started up the rickety staircase with the seven of them bringing up the rear. I never felt deader in my life.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The sun was low in the Manhattan sky. It was a beautiful fall day. There was a cool rippling breeze on the roof. It hit our faces as soon as we emerged on the tarred floor. The late afternoon was autumnal beauty, the purples mixed with the light blues. The sort of scene that makes many a poet return to his desk with the wonder still in his eyes.

  But I didn’t feel like writing any poetry or singing love songs. I was on the last mile and too damn busy being scared and thinking of how to get out from under to appreciate Mother Nature.

  The seven men behind me were as silent and as deadly as a firing squad. Only Bucky’s .38 rammed into my backbone kept me firmly planted in the awful present. Pretty soon, I’d be a man with a past. The rooftops spread around us started to swim before my eyes. I fought off the feeling.

  Bucky hissed. “Okay. Hold it.”

  They fanned out around me like a football team going into a huddle. I could see every one of them now. Their backs were to the door leading down into the restaurant. I turned slowly. That put my back to the street but the rim of the roof’s parapet was still a good twenty feet away.

  The good breeze licked at their faces, whipped a few ties into the wind. But I didn’t like their faces. Any of them. Bim Caesar must have re-lighted his cigar. The bright gleam of the glowing tip looked hellish as he sucked on the wet end.

  Tommy Chin and Number One looked pleased. And Lon and Bucky could hardly contain themselves. They all wore corresponding grins that had something to do with what kind of men they were, everything to do with what bastards they were.

  Lon tilted the bottle in his hand significantly.

  “You ought to be grateful, cowboy. This way you’ll get a break. You’ll die drunk. You’ll never know what hit you.”

  Bim Caesar guffawed and they all chimed in. Bim stopped laughing and they did too. His tiny eyes tried to bore into mine, tried to find fear. The show of terror he so dearly wanted to see.

  “Any last requests, Noon? You’re entitled.”

  “Sure,” I flipped with a flippancy I was far from feeling. “Give me a gun. I’d like to shoot every mother’s son of you right in your tracks.”

  Bim’s face froze and his cigar swung to one side of his mouth.

  “Bottle feed the bastard, Lon. Hand him the bottle. And keep clear of him.” His voice broke big rocks into little ones. “One crummy false move, Noon, and you’ll get it right here.” The gun in his hand was pointed right at my belt buckle.

  Lon handed me the bottle with an elongated continuation of his leer. I took it from him with a shrug. I looked at the bottle, then looked at them. They all watched me with fascination as if they were a bunch of scientists trying to register for posterity the last few reactions of a man who was
going to die horribly within a very few minutes.

  I can’t say what I felt or how I felt. After thirty odd years of rushing toward destruction and always seeming to get out of the way just in time, it looked like Bingo for me. My number was coming up on the board at last. The Grim Reaper and all those bum jokes about curtains were coming home to roost in one down-at-the-heels private investigator. I was almost kaput, just about finished. The end of the line.

  I felt crazy. Funny. There was no way out really. I had a choice between the fall to the sidewalk or making a sudden break and getting shot down like a dog. I liked the last proposition slightly better. It was faster anyway. And I would go down in the best tradition since time began. Like a warrior–fighting. But I needed a minute to think about it. I took a short drink.

  “More,” Bim Caesar prodded. “Much more. That was only a teaser.”

  “Give me time, Caesar. I’m nervous.”

  Cuba sneered. “I’ll say you are.”

  I grinned. “What else do you say?”

  “Huh?” His expression was startled.

  “Forget it.”

  “Come on,” Bim Caesar growled. “Quit stalling.”

  “Let me mark him up, Boss,” Bucky pleaded.

  “Go ahead, Bim,” I said. “Let him mark me up. I’d like to hit him just once if he gets in close enough. That way I’ll die happy.”

  “Shut up,” Bim fairly screamed. “Everybody stop talkin’. You, Noon. Drink or we’ll force it down your gut the hard way.”

  With death so close, I could afford to be funny.

  “You can’t blame me for trying, can you, Bim? And while we’re on the subject, aren’t you anxious to hear what I had to tell Hadley after I left you this morning?”

  He began a prodigious scowl but it finally gave away to a fairly confident smile.

  “No good, crum. The dodge won’t work. You wouldn’t be waiting to the last minute to tell me a thing like that. You musta just thought of it.”

  I shrugged. “Suit yourself, big shot.” I tilted the bottle up again and took another nip. I had to admit I felt better already. Whiskey sure dazzles the doldrums out of you sometimes.

  But Bim was wary and my easy manner upset the very natural thinking in him that told him I should be begging him for mercy and I wasn’t. His Black Hand mentality wouldn’t let him rest.

  “Sure, Noon. I’m feeling soft in the head too. What did you tell Hadley?”

  I rolled the bottle in my hands.

  “When I die, you’ll be the first guy he looks up. And not because he’s interested in your vase collection. I told him how much you liked me. A cop like Hadley is good at that kind of arithmetic and he does know what a lousy temper you’ve got.”

  Bim Caesar’s tiny eyes flashed. His cigar rotated viciously.

  “Crum! You give me your word you no mention me to the cops. Thought you were on the level about your damn code. I trusted you.”

  Whiskey and all, I smiled.

  “About my code, Bim. There’s a subtle difference. You knew you could trust me. I knew I couldn’t trust you. So shove me off this roof and be damned. Hadley’ll descend on you like an avenging angel as soon as the report comes in. He knows I’m not the suicide type either.”

  His smile was awful.

  “Thanks, crum. Thanks for the tip. So what? He knows. So now I know I need a good alibi for the time of your death. I’ll get one. What the hell can he do about a good alibi? There’s what you call a subtle difference there too–I mean about what he knows and what he can do about it. Know what I mean?” He laughed, enjoying himself now. “Have another drink. A good long one. It’ll be your last one–maybe.”

  End of one perfectly good stall. But I’d bought some time. How much time? And for what?

  Number One stirred uncomfortably.

  “Can’t we get this over with? This man is very dangerous.”

  Bim Caesar frowned again. “Seven against one? We got the odds, sucker.”

  Tommy Chin shook his fat head. He looked at me not unkindly.

  “Mr. Noon is our enemy but he is a brave man. Brave men are always dangerous. He will be missed.”

  “Jesus Christ, Boss–” Lon began impatiently.

  “You’re right, Lon.” Bim cocked his gun. The click closed the last door in my face. “All the way down, Noon.”

  “I’d had it. I drank. Long and hard. Then I dropped the bottle. It rolled away from my feet, whatever was left in it washing out on the tarred roof. I weaved away from them unsteadily. I made a show of trying to keep erect as if I was just starting to get caught up by the drinks. They eyed me eagerly then Bim jerked his head and Lon and Bucky moved forward.

  “Go,” I said. I held out my hand and pushed away from them. “You don’t have to throw me off! I’ll do it myself! What chance have I got to get away–?” I blurted the last out, turned and ducked for the parapet of the roof. The sound of my voice and the suddenness of the move and the abrupt chucking of putting up a good front had the effect I’d counted on. The one I’d hoped for anyway.

  They didn’t want to shoot. It would have spoiled everything. And I’d banked also on the bursting surprise in all their faces at my suddenly breaking out with the white feather.

  I had a precious second to reach the parapet of the roof without being stopped, one more precious second for them to decide whether or not I was kidding and shoot anyway. And one last precious second to wonder whether or not I had accurately remembered what the front of the building looked like. The building I had known for seven years.

  The drinks helped too. I never could have done it cold sober. I had gone as far as I could. There was no turning back now. It was death at either end.

  A great roar went up and feet started to clatter behind me as I stepped out into space.

  The street rushed up to meet me.

  The neon sign.

  The one that had been winking on and off through my windows for years. A big, cumbersome affair jutting squarely out from the third floor of CHIN’S CHOP SUEY PALACE. A square bit of metal and neon lighting that was Chin’s only advertisement.

  I knew it was there all right. It had to be.

  What I didn’t know was exactly how far to the left or right it was to my suicidal death drop.

  Believe me, doing a stunt like Dick Talmadge used to do in all those old Hollywood chapter serials was as far from my mind as Democracy is to a Commie. But the time had come. Like so many other things you finally have to do, that you normally wouldn’t, I was banking my life on my ability to pull off a stunt that would have credited a circus aerialist. And I didn’t have the training for it. Only the guts.

  For one teetering instant, the dizzy panorama of the hard New York pavement hung below my plummeting feet. But I wasn’t looking at it. The sign was all I cared about. No more than twelve feet below the roof’s parapet and just a yard to my left.

  My arms windmilled and I twisted and came down like a rock on the ten inch width of the sign’s top. I started to fall forward into space. I flailed desperately for a handhold. The creak and groan and strain of my one hundred and eighty pounds spurred me into action like a crazy man. I flung my arm around the long bar that forty-five degree-angled the sign into the front of the building. The bar slammed into my ribs hard.

  I was safe–my fall temporarily checked but I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I needed a window real bad before I became a clay pigeon for the marksman just above my head.

  There was one just a bit to my right. I scrambled across the top of the sign before it gave away completely. Braces and joints whined in protest as old age began to assert itself. Before I could panic altogether, I was off the top of the sign, flattened against the stone of the building like a squashed water bug, staking everything on a three inch ledge that shelved off into space. I inched toward the window, gripped a cornice with terrible concentration, edged forward until I could find the window sill and shoved upward. The rising grate of it riding up was like the opening chorus of The
Stars And Stripes Forever. I could have yelled at the top of my lungs with the sense of elation that dynamited my insides.

  I stuck a leg across the sill and fell into the room like a drowning man reaching the spar that he needs to stay afloat. My heart was hammering with the symphony of escape from death.

  But there was no time for patting myself on the back. I had work to do. The party wasn’t over yet. I got moving.

  I staggered, ran, almost without direction until I righted myself. I bulleted toward the beaded curtain on the alcove, whipped through it, found the door that the rickety staircase to the roof housed and slammed it shut just as pounding feet started to murder the staircase. I swung the chain lock and got out of the way.

  Gunfire opened up as if on signal. The door shivered and danced under a pounding hail of lead but it held. I raced back into the main dining room. I had a bad second or two searching the floor for the long-barreled .32. I hadn’t remembered anyone picking it up. I found it and felt ten percent better. Out past the kitchen, they started to slam the door down. It wouldn’t hold up much longer. I had to hurry.

  I thudded across the dining room to Lois Hunt. She was still as out as the first electric light but I had to change all that. Her head was still cushioned by her shapely arms. I lifted her, hurled her back against her chair so that her face was raised to the ceiling. Poor kid. She’d had a rough day. But it was going to get a helluva lot rougher.

  I found a decanter of water, sloshed it full into her face. I took her by the shoulders and shook her until her head looked like it was going to roll off. Her eyes fluttered and her breathing stalled, came in gasps. I flicked my open hand across her face. Once, twice, three times. Again. Ringing slaps each one of them.

  “Lois,” I yelled. “Wake up. Come on, honey. Pull yourself together. It’s me, Noon. Lois–Lois.”

  Her eyes reeled open. She looked at me through a haze. “What’s up–where am I–”