by Jerry eBooks
The detective I knew best, Harry Denuth, looked at the other one, John Something-or-other, and nodded. “Five dollars against the check.”
I grinned, because that evened the odds again, and rolled. The first die spun quickly, and subsided with a four showing; the other kept on turning for a second, and I said quickly: “Five to two I make it.”
Harry yelled: “Taken.” The die came up three.
I peeled ten bucks off my roll, and fluttered it to the table. I had lost, but that was just as well; now they had to ask me to sit down and have a beer. They did, and I did; with the foam still wet on my lip, I said: “You boys here on duty or pleasure?”
They looked at each other again, and. then Harry said: “You got plenty of publicity this summer, Van. You ought to do well through the winter.” I am chief cop of the Racing Commission during the season, and run a private agency through the year.
“So-so,” I said. I was frankness itself. “As a matter of fact, the kind of publicity I get doesn’t bring the kind of clients I like. Did you notice that little wart I was eating with?”
The city doesn’t hire its cops for their Thespian activities. I knew now that they had been in that restaurant for the sole purpose of watching the little man—and me.
“Who is he?” Harry asked.
“You have me there,” I said. “He walked into my office cold, waved enough cash to show he was important, and took me out to lunch to make a proposition. I didn’t like it, and that’s that.”
“You wouldn’t think a face like that could be unknown,” John said.
“Far as I know, I never saw him or his picture,” I said. I yelled at a passing bus-boy. He came over, carrying one of these three-partitioned trays. I said: “Harry, five bucks there’s an odd number of knives in that tray.” I was trying to delay the conversation enough to get them restive. That way they might pop out with some info’ about the little man who was so free with his five-grand offers.
Harry twitched in his seat. “All right,” he said indifferently. “You’re the loser so far.”
We sat there counting those silly, knives while the little brown man got up and went by us. He stopped and said: “I’ll call your office around five.”
Once again I saw that look flash between the cops. The little man got out, and John said clumsily: “I have to run. So long, Harry—so long, Chief.”
“So long,” I said. I was still counting knives, but out of the corner of my eye I saw John trail off past the plate-glass window, shadowing my little brown fellow. When they were out of sight, I said: “Forty-three. I win.”
Harry said: “O.K.”
I gave the bus-boy a quarter, and picked up one of the five-dollar bills. “A beer, Harry?”
“No. You have one. I have to wait for a phone-call, anyway.” He was about to be subtle; after a minute he started: “So you’re only getting N.G. propositions these days?”
“Oh, now. We do some business. We get a big play from employers who want us to find out if their employees are gambling.”
Harry laughed, and said: “You’re a fine one to come to, for that.”
A waiter came up, and bent over Harry solicitously. The cop got up, and hurried to a phone-booth. When he came back, I said: “Where did John say my little brown man holed up?”
Harry looked surprised, and then sheepish. Finally he said: “In an apartment-house on the North Side.”
I didn’t ask for the address. I said: “You wouldn’t like to tell me the name?”
Harry said: “You know who he is. But if you want to be kittenish, it’s Giuseppi Lamba.”
I whistled. “So that’s who he is! I never saw a picture of him, that I can remember. The King of the Fences!”
“Yeah,” Harry said, reaching for his hat. “The richest known crook who never saw the inside of a pen’.”
“Well,” I defended myself, “after all, he’s neither a racing man nor a gambler. They’re the only people I’d be sure to know.”
“That’s right,” Harry said. At the door, he added clumsily: “Good thing you didn’t tie in with him. Er—just what was it he wanted?”
“You don’t really think I’d tell you, Harry?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said sadly. He went on out, still looking sad.
I GOT up, and strolled down to the Palace Bar. Joe Lavery, my head assistant, was waiting in a booth there, studying form sheets. I sat down, and he said: “Who d’ya like in the fourth?”
“I don’t like anybody at the winter tracks; but off-hand, Dandelion is about eighteen per cent better than any other pony in the race.” I had two hundred on him.
Joe said: “O.K.,” and signaled to Mike the Guinzer, at the end of the bar. The bookie came over, and Joe handed him ten bucks. “Dandelion across the board, Mike.”
Mike made a note. I said: “Mike, did you know Seppi Lamba was in town?”
“Naw! What’s he doin’ here? I remember, the time he was on trial, I followed—”
I didn’t listen. When Mike went away, Joe said: “Elizabeth said a horrid-lookin’ little egg was in waving five grand. Was that Lamba?”
“Yeah.”
“Want you to straighten a rap?”
“No,” I said; and for the first time put his proposition in words to a third party. “All he wants me to do is go South with him and lay a lot of money as his agent on the Border Derby. He claims he has inside info’, and could clean up, only he wants me to come along as a guaranty the bookies pay up. Says my reputation’d attend to that.”
“Golly,” Joe said, “that’s an easy way to make five thousand.”
“Too easy,” I told him. “I turned him down.”
“You’re a sucker,” Joe said.
“I’m a live sucker, anyway,” I pointed out. “Joe, take the South Side, and nose around. I’ll take the North. See if you can get any idea of why Lamba is here. I don’t believe a word he says. And the city cops trailed him to an apartment, not a hotel. That means something—find out what.”
“O.K., Chief. How long do I stay with it?”
“Till five. Meet me at the office then.”
I started out. I talked to every bookie and stool-pigeon I knew on the North Side, and all I got was a pair of aching feet, and the stench of stale cigarette smoke on my clothes.
WHEN I got back to my office at about five-forty-five, Elizabeth, my secretary, was sitting in the outer office, and as always that tickled me just a little; she looked so out of place in a dick’s plant. I said: “Hiya, Betty!”
She said: “My name is Elizabeth. You’re to call North 9432.”
“Any business while I was out?”
“Mr. Hiram Podaqualos of the Low Hi markets wanted to know was his cashier honest. She isn’t; she’s lost two hundred dollars with Japh Cohen in the last week.”
“You know my methods, Watson. Send Mr. Low Hi the info’, with a bill for fifty.” I went into my own office, slipped off my shoes, and was reaching for the phone when it rang. Elizabeth said: “Here’s the number you were supposed to call.” I said: “Hello, this is G. T. Van Eyck. You call my office?” A guttural voice said: “Yeah. I’m callin’ for a friend. I don’t know no more than I’m tellin’ you: if you throw in with Lamba, you get the works. On account of my friend knows you don’t scare easy, he’ll put five hundred in your lap tomorrow.”
I said: “Thanks. If you tell me who this is calling, it’ll save the bother of tracing the call.”
“I’m calling from a pool-room on the Nort’ Side. Only I’ll be out of here before you could get here. I’m just a transient, see?”
“I see.” I rang off and chewed my lip. If this were three years ago, or some other city, it would look like the beginning of a gang war. But there was nothing like that in our town, no organized gangs—not the kind that could put out good cash for a whim, anyway.
Joe Lavery came in, and looked at my stocking-feet. “Me too, Van,” he said, slipping his shoes. “I got nothing for you. The name gets just as
much interest as any other tabloid hero.”
“Yeah?”
Joe nodded. “I’m shot,” he said moodily. “I’m getting too old to walk all over half a city in a day. Say, would Harry Denuth be on this thing?”
I sat up and stopped rubbing my feet. “He would. He trailed me when I went to lunch with Lamba. Why?”
“I saw his cruiser parked in front of a Chink laundry on South Park Boulevard, in the 1700 block. He was no place in sight; but when that John Edgelite that trails with him saw me, he streaked into the laundry and hunched over the counter so I wouldn’t see him.”
“I figured Lamba was on the South Side,” I said, “because Denuth told me he was on the North.”
THEN Elizabeth flashed the buzzer, and I had to dive for my shoes. Joe got out in his stocking-feet, carrying his shoes in his hands; I pulled the switch on the dictagraph for all hands to listen in, and then released the buzzer. The door opened, and Mr. Lamba entered.
He opened with: “You’ve changed your mind, Mr. Van Eyck?”
I said: “No. I still don’t do things I don’t understand.”
“But I have been more than precise with you, Mr. Van Eyck. I wish to place a good deal of money on this outsider horse, Pomonok, in the Border Derby next week. I do not wish to have it known that I am putting the money down, lest the odds be disturbed. Therefore I must use an agent, a commissionaire. You are the ideal person for the job, because you are known to be a wild gambler, and your placing a thousand dollars on the nose of a long shot would not be considered unusual. Also, because no one in racing or gambling circles would dare welsh on the famous Chief Van Eyck.”
“And by the same token,” I said, “everything I do is gossiped about on the tracks. I may be a wild gambler, but I’m lucky. Also, I’m considered amusing, good news. All the people I bet with would talk about it. It would soon be apparent that I was laying down more dough than I could possibly have.”
“That is my risk. The sum to be bet is fifty thousand dollars. I stand to win a million, at twenty to one.”
“No sir,” I said. “Not I. Sorry, old man; come back when you have something else to sell.”
“But why, Mr. Van Eyck? Surely you could use five thousand dollars for—”
“Because you’re lying, of course,” I said. “And get out. I don’t like fences!”
He slammed the door so hard that the glass nearly broke. Joe said through the office phone: “There goes five grand.”
Through the same open switch, Elizabeth said: “And here go I. It’s nearly six.”
“How about supper with me?” I asked.
“I’m going out with a man who still has his figure,” she said. Her switch snapped shut.
“Come out to the house with me,” Joe said. “The Frau’s having chicken and dumplings.”
“O.K.,” I said. “I’ll be at the hotel in twenty minutes, Joe. I want to wash up and change my shirt.” An afternoon of leaning against cigar-cases in pool-rooms had made me want a bath.
But halfway to the hotel I remembered that when I dressed that morning, I had put on my last shirt. I looked at the calendar, and it was Thursday, which meant that my fresh wash wouldn’t be over from the Chinaman’s till morning. So I parked the car, and walked up a side-street to Harry Leong’s, who has done my washing for five years . . .
It’s luck that makes a good dick; I wouldn’t hire an operative who wasn’t a successful gambler. Here came a piece of Van Eyck luck, call it good or bad.
Because when I reached for the doorknob of Leong’s laundry, a man sidled out of the shadows, and something hard bored into my left kidney. This mugg said: “We told you to lay off Lamba, Chief. Why commit suicide?”
I stood perfectly still, even leaning back against the gun a little, and said: “Who are you, the inquiring reporter?”
“You can’t name what difference that makes, Chief,” he said respectfully, “on account of, it’s the gun that’s calling the turn.” The respect proved he was a local boy or a race-track one. My reputation is confined to those spheres.
I FOUND that when I moved my hips a little, the muzzle moved with them. So I started to say something like, “It’s too bad—” or, “Why didn’t you—” and made a complete turn, coming around to face him, and leaning against the gat till I was halfway around.
The gun was naturally thrown to one side, and the bullet even missed my coat-flap.
I saw a somewhat toothless face, and socked it on a chin whose stubble burnt my knuckles. The gun made a clattering noise some place in the dusk, and the mugg made a thudding one as he hit at my feet. I leaned down, rapped his head against the pavement, hit his chin again for luck, and then went over him for further weapons. There were none.
I skinned my hand worse in feeling around on the dirty paving for his gun, got it, and put it in my pocket. Then I held him up by his armpits, and used his grayish handkerchief to clean some blood from the corner of his mouth. Afterward I walked him back to my car, and left him handcuffed to the doorhandle on the right side.
Then I wiped my knuckles on my own handkerchief, and went back to the laundry. Leong was behind the counter, and in the back room I could see his wife giving supper to their four children; a perfect picture of Oriental domesticity, if you’ll pardon the language.
I said: “How’re things going, Harry?”
“Pletty good, Chlief. Hokay.”
I made it sound like a joke. “Well, if you ever need a private detective, Harry, remember I’m your friend.”
He took it like a joke. “That’s light. Yessuh, I lemember.” So I paid for my shirts and went back to the car. Alphonse Awfulface was just coming to. “You didn’t have to hit me so hard. Chief,” he complained.
“I wouldn’t have had to hit you at all, pal, if you hadn’t tried to hold me up.” I didn’t ask him any questions, but drove around to the street behind my apartment hotel. It’s a nice building, with the garage in the cellar; I drove down the ramp.
“Get the freight elevator down here,” I told the garage man. When it came, I unhitched Alphonse and took him up the back way to my room. No one saw us come up.
“O.K., pal, start talking,” I said to Alphonse. “What’s the idea?”
“Well, cheest’ Chief, I hadn’t had anything to eat in a couple of days, an’ you looked like you had money, an’—”
I let him ramble on in that vein till he was out of breath. Then I said: “All right, start talking. Why did you stick me up?”
He looked a little bewildered and very tired. “You don’t know how it is to be in a strange town and nothin’ to eat. You—” He went all through a second time. When he stopped, I repeated my question.
The fourth time he just didn’t have the ambition to go through with it again. I asked him, but he couldn’t do it.
It was then that the doorbell rang. I said: “The manager must have sent for the cops.” I knew it was Joe Lavery.
He said: “You gotta cover me up. You can’t afford to let no cops in on this any more than we can.”
I let Joe ring again, and asked: “Who’s we?”
“We got plenty of money behind us. You should ’a’ come in wit’ us; these monkeys can lay the potatoes on the line for anything they want, and they want you.” He was talking very fast.
I made a move toward the door. “What monkeys?”
WHILE he crouched in the chair and licked his lips, the doorbell rang again. I had my hand on the knob when he screeched: “The Chinkies. The tong!”
I grinned and let Joe in. I said: “Mr. Lavery of my staff, meet Alphonse Awfulface. He tried to hold me up. It seems his employers are Chinese.”
Joe took one look at the mugg, and shucked his coat, keeping his hat on. He took a sap out of his hip pocket. “Want I should work on him, Van?”
“Why not? He talks real pretty when he wants to.”
Joe told me later he got the technique he used, from a movie. First he pulled down all the shades; then he picked up the phone, call
ed his house, and told his wife we’d be busy about an hour, and not to hold supper. Then he went into the bathroom, turned on all the taps so the water made a lot of noise, and then he turned on the radio full blast. He took his own handcuffs out of his coat, which he had hung on a chair, and fastened Alphonse’s ankles together.
Then he took a straight chair and set it in front of the easy chair the poor mugg was huddled in. He bent Alphonse’s knees over the back of the chair, and took off the little egg’s shoes. There was a hole in one of the socks.
Joe swung the sap near one of Alphonse’s feet, and said: “What was it you wanted to know, Chief?”
“Who the tong is, and what the devil they want to kill me for.”
Joe said: “O.K., you heard the Chief.” He was so tough he almost scared me.
WE were shouting over the noise of the radio and the water. Alphonse screamed: “O.K., O.K., Mr. Lavery! O.K.!” I went into the bathroom, and grinned when I saw that Joe—who has his own home and has to buy coal—had only turned on the cold water. Joe switched off the radio, and the mugg said: “This guy Lamba’s got the profits from the tong’s gambling-game. They heard he hired you to bodyguard him, and they got me and some other guys to push you away.”
“This tong’s in New York?” I asked. “Yeah. The Lee Chow Far Business Men’s Association.”
I nodded at Joe, and he went over and put his coat on. I unlocked my handcuffs and took them off; Joe took his off the ankles. I said: “I’m turning you loose. Go back and tell these China boys that I didn’t throw in with Lamba. I’m a crook, but not that bad. Tell them to hire a good detective agency to get their dough back.”
“Why not the cops?” Joe asked. “Because the Chinese lottery is just as illegal as any other. All right, Al, scram.”
He mumbled, “Cheest, Chief! Well—t’anks!” and broke the track record getting out of there . . . The phone started ringing again.
I said: “I suppose the management wants to complain about the radio now.” But when I picked it up, Inspector Adam Wellwater of the police’s homicide squad said: “Don’t leave your room, Van. John Edgelite was just shot and killed, and Harry Denuth is in City Hospital, maybe croaking. Before Harry passed out, he told the harness bull who found him, to see you.”