But Lench, his wet white body dripping water onto the heavy rug, caught them at the front door.
He said thickly, “Take your choice, Carter.”
“Is there a choice?”
“It can work both ways, you know, Carter.”
“You wouldn’t be warning me, Gus, would you?” Carter asked, almost gently.
“People get too big for their pants, Carter,” Lench said. “They lose touch. They don’t know how many people they have left in the orgaization.”
Carter leaned against the wall. “Since you force my hand, Mr. Lench, I’ll put it this way. You, my greedy friend, may live another twelve hours, or even as much as thirty-six hours if you stay and fight it out. If you run like a rabbit, it may take my people a year to find you. If you want another year—run.”
Something inside Lench seemed to collapse. He looked vaguely around the hall, as though weighing his possessions. He said in a smaller voice, “It isn’t smart, Carter. These wars. They hurt business. Compromise—”
“No war, Lench.” Carter stared meaningfully at Lench’s sagging abdomen. “Just a little more worm food.”
He opened the door. Before Lawrence left he had a fraction of a second in which to wink at Lench. He saw the little gesture light a fire of hope in Lench. Then Lawrence followed Carter out to the black sedan beside which the driver stood patiently waiting.
Lochard sat in front with the driver. Carter rode in silence for a few moments. Then he said, “That girl he married. Dancer, wasn’t she?”
“Swimmer first. But the work was too hard. She picked Lench.”
“She amused me at first, but she has no conversation. A bit humiliating to be drowned by a woman.”
Lawrence saw then how they had worked it. He said, “How did you know?”
“Perfume. She put her arms around my neck from behind and dragged me down. She drenches herself in perfume, or hadn’t you noticed? Has it in her hair.”
“I’ve noticed,” Lawrence said.
Carter maintained himself in two adjoining suites in a midtown apartment hotel. He ordered hot rum for himself, scotch and water for Lawrence Hask.
He set the rum on his desk blotter, screened the wall safe with his big body as he opened it. He took out bills, a sheaf of them, turned and counted them out on the corner of the desk.
“For you, Hask. Five thousand. Part of that is for using your head. The rest is for giving me all you know about Lench’s routine, his habits and his people. This may become very messy. It will hurt business. It will attract unfavorable attention to our business affairs.
“Our tame politicians and the police on our payroll will have to show signs of activity. Route men will be picked up and fined. Newspapers will sprout scare headlines. Police will smash the stitching machines. Then a master headline will say ‘Numbers Ring Smashed.’ After that we can go back to work. I know. I’ve seen it before.”
Lawrence picked up the money, folded it once and put it in his bill clip.
He said, “Lench is all set to go on his own. He’s been relocating the printers and stitchers and he’s been making new friends. He wangled gun permits for most of his route men and he has a big trouble fund to pay them heavy to stay with him. He has sleeping quarters at his office, and he won’t stick his head out into fresh air until you’re cooked. I’ll write you out every pertinent address.”
“Wait until I order dinner sent up. Tomorrow I’ll change the master ticket design. I’m always prepared to do that. I’ll send boys around to tell all the customers that the combine isn’t honoring any old tickets sold starting tomorrow. That’ll cut into his sales badly.”
“But how will you get Lench himself?”
Carter shrugged. “The same way as always. Buy somebody close to him and guarantee their way out of the country. A nice chance for someone to retire.”
“Not this time,” Hask said slowly.
“What do you mean by that?”
“He has his defenses laid out so that nobody will get close enough. He knows your methods. He has one of those jailhouse items where it will ring a bell if you try to go into his office with a gun. He’ll only have one man in his office at a time. He controls the door lock from his desk. And he keeps a gun in his hand until this trouble is over. He told me his plans once.”
“What would you suggest, young man?”
“I winked at him as we left. He thinks I have something under my hat. Money will bring him out. So I case your layout, get your safe combination. If I do it right, I can go back to him in secret, explain that I’m living here now, clear him and some of his harder boys through downstairs. You’ll have to be out. He’ll open the safe himself.”
“So what?”
“Set gun. Your safe sits fairly low. Rig a double-barrel in there and it ought to catch him at throat level. So a man gets killed robbing your apartment. You’re having dinner at a club when it happens.”
Carter said, “Hask, you have a quite extraordinary talent for this business.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Lawrence Hask sat slouched in the chair across the desk from Lench. His throat was tight and his lips were dry, but he tried to look amused. Lench sat behind the desk, the heavy revolver aimed directly at Larry’s face, Lench’s finger on the trigger. “Why should I believe anything you say? You crossed me!”
“You just think I crossed you, Gus. I’m working for myself, and my best bet is through you. I thought you were smarter than Carter, but that thing you tried to pull at your pool is tops for stupidity in my book.”
“Swimming accident? The cops would swallow it.”
“They might. But Carter kicking off at your place would be just a little too rich for the blood of some of his people. They knew he could swim. Besides, that dopey little wife you bought last year marked his throat with her fingernails. And he recognized her perfume. Sure, she can swim. But she had a little panic all her own. Carter dies in your pool and his people clean his safe. My way is better.”
Lench said uncertainly, “Your way?”
“I’m living there now, at Carter’s invitation. He sent me down here to cross you up. I’m supposed to pretend to play along with you and suck you into a trap. He has at least three hundred thousand in that wall safe of his. I got a peek at it. Nice dirty old hundreds and five hundreds. Nothing too big so it has to be discounted. I am supposed to tell you that next Friday night Carter will be going out for a big evening. I’ll say I’m going out, but I won’t go. I’ll stay in the hotel and sap the two he leaves there at all times. I can do that easily enough.
“Then I am supposed to tell you that eleven o’clock is a good time. Bring a few boys and call up from the desk and I’ll clear you with the desk. I give you a fake safe combination. When you arrive there’s a reception party and you all get gunned for trying to rob the apartment.”
Lench swallowed hard. He said, “Thanks, Larry. Thanks for telling me. But have you got a plan?”
“Carter is going out, but he’s coming back at ten-thirty with a few extra boys. So you come at ten. You can be waiting. And instead of giving you the fake combination, I’ll give you the McCoy. For twenty-five percent.”
“Ten,” Lench said.
“Isn’t this a good time not to argue, Gus?”
“Okay. Ten o’clock on Friday night. A quarter cut for you. And I leave fast and leave a hoppie to blast Carter.”
“Or do it yourself to make sure it’s done.”
Carter, standing near the bedroom windows, said, “I’ve moved the money to a box and the set gun is rigged, all but the trigger string. Did he believe you?”
“Of course. I told him you were fixing the frame for midnight, so he’s coming at eleven. That’ll give you plenty of time to clear out.”
“If the set gun kills Lench, Hask, what will his men do to you?”
“I’ll tell Lench that I’d better watch the hall. When I hear the set gun go off, I’ll run for it. I’ll have a good chance.”
“I often wonder about
you, Hask. You have a—an educated way of speaking.”
“Is that important?”
“No. No, I guess it isn’t. Who do you think Lench will bring with him?”
“Hoagie Chance, Shenk, Ullister and probably Murphy. They all have legal permits and they’re the least likely to cross him.”
“And Lench will open the safe himself?”
“You should have seen his eyes when I mentioned the money. Like a kid with his nose flat against the toyland window.”
“Day after tomorrow is Friday. I’ll clear out by ten-thirty, leaving you here, with Lochard and Mains on the floor, apparently sapped, as window dressing.”
“That ought to do it,” Hask said, keeping his voice calm.
Lawrence Hask sat slouched in the armchair, a drink in his hand. He tried to keep from looking at the clock. It was five to ten. Carter was dressing. Lochard and Mains were playing an aimless gin game at the big table. Heckle and Donovan, the two men Carter was taking with him, were in the next room watching the video.
Every time Larry took a deep breath, his throat seemed to knot and it was hard to exhale. Small tremors ran up and down his spine. A year and a month.
The phone was at his elbow. Carter came out of his bedroom just as the phone rang. Larry took it.
He listened, said, “Just a moment, please.” He made his eyes wide, cupped his hand over the mouthpiece, said, “Lench and four men. He’s trying to cross me by coming early.”
Carter frowned. He jerked a thumb at Lochard, who went in and got the other two men away from the video program.
Carter said heavily, “Okay, we’ll play it his way. On your face over there, Lochard. Remember, you’re out. Mains, you drop in that doorway there. Make it good. Clear them to come up, Hask. Heckle and Donovan, you come into the bedroom with me.”
Hask spoke briefly into the phone and hung up. He went to the bedroom door and said, “He’s no dummy. Better shut the door completely.”
Lochard lay still. Larry went over to him, slipping the sap from his hip pocket. He said, “Turn your head just a little this way, Lochard.”
The lead ball, leather-wrapped, made very little sound as it thudded behind Lochard’s ear. He made a small sighing sound. Hask crossed the room quickly and struck Mains. Mains began to struggle weakly. He hit him again, with careful precision.
Moments later there was a knock at the door. Hask opened it. Hoagie Chance came in fast, ramming a revolver muzzle with such force against Hask’s middle that it knocked the wind out of him.
“Against the wall, friend,” Hoagie said. He moved to one side of the door. Murph came next, took his station on the other side of the door. Then Lench came in, his face pallid with strain, a cigar in one hand, flat automatic in the other. The automatic had a long, tubular silencer screwed to the barrel.
Lench bent and held the glowing end of his cigar near the back of Lochard’s hand. Lochard didn’t stir.
“Good boy,” Lench said to Hask. “Our friend is out?”
This was when it had to be. Hask jerked his thumb several times toward the bedroom door and said, “Left some time ago, Gus.”
Gus said loudly, “We’ll see about that safe.” He motioned to Murph and Chance. They moved, up on their toes, toward the bedroom door.
Chance put out a gloved hand, closed it gently over the bedroom doorknob, then gave a sudden twist, opening the door, slamming it back with his foot as he went in.
The double slam of the shot sounded as Chance went in. He didn’t falter in his rush, merely leaned further and further off balance, landing on his face, skidding on the bedroom throw rug. Shenk and Ullister had come in from the hall, closing the door behind them. Shenk carried a .45 Colt, army model. When Heckle appeared inside the room, standing near the body of Chance, Shenk fired once. The heavy slug doubled Heckle, dropped him back across Chance’s body.
Carter moved quickly into the doorway, aiming carefully at Lawrence Hask, his face calm, his hand steady and deliberate. Ullister, Shenk and Murph fired almost as one man. The slug from Carter’s gun entered the wall an inch from Hask’s left ear. The powdered plaster stung his cheek and neck. As Carter fell to his knees, driven back by the impact, he fired wildly. Murph had been standing sideways. The slug tore through him. He moved two weak steps to one side, lowered himself delicately to the rug and was still.
Donovan appeared beyond Carter’s body, his hands held high, saying hoarsely, “Okay, okay. Enough.”
Lench’s automatic made a small sound, no louder than a book dropped flat against a rug. Donovan’s hands sagged. The dark hole had appeared just beside the left nostril. He stood for a moment and fell heavily, full length, his head slamming the hardwood floor.
Lench, his fat lip lifted away from his teeth, stepped to Lochard, aimed and fired. Lochard’s head moved slightly with the impact. He walked lightly over to Mains, fired again.
“Don’t move!” Lench said to Hask.
He went to the safe, spun the dial, his thick, gloved hands trembling. He missed, tried again. Hask heard the tumblers click. He closed his eyes. The blast seemed almost to lift the ceiling of the room. Lench’s pudgy doll-body lay on its back in front of the safe.
Ullister stepped around the body, glanced into the safe. “Time to move,” he said to Shenk.
Shenk yanked the door open and they raced into the hall. Other doors had opened and people peered out fearfully.
Lawrence Hask counted slowly to five, ran into the hall and yelled, “Stop those men!”
The fire door was slowly closing behind the two. He heard their feet on the stairs. He raced to the fire door, hauled it open, pulled it shut, went quickly up two flights. The little wedge of wood still held the tenth-floor fire door open.
He pocketed the wedge, walked down to the bend in the corridor. The service elevator operator looked at him with frightened eyes. “Mister, I heard shots coming up the shaft. I don’t like this.”
Hask tried a calm smile. “Do I look like a killer?”
“Mister, you run around with those smart money boys on eight. I’m stopping with you at the main lobby.”
Hask held the bill where the man could see the denomination. “Suit yourself, friend,” Larry said casually.
“Mister, you go right to the basement.” The man grinned nervously.
Lawrence Hask walked four blocks, took a subway downtown, phoned her from a drugstore, met her twenty minutes later in a cheap restaurant.
In the harsh light she looked older.
Her voice masked by the noise in the restaurant, she said, “Why did you save him? Why did you? It was a deal. Gus was going to give me my freedom if it went through.”
“You have your freedom, baby. Gus is dead.”
He watched the slow waves of shock, and then the deadly satisfaction.
“And thanks for helping me make sure that he got it,” he said.
“Larry,” she said. “You and I, we …”
He stood up slowly, put coffee money on the table. He said, with an enormous weariness in his voice, “My name isn’t Larry and there never was any ‘you and I’ ” …
Ray Logan lay in the hot bright sun of the beach at Acapulco. Sally was beside him.
“Darn it, Ray!” she said. “What made you think I’d wait for a year?”
“You waited, didn’t you?” he asked teasingly.
“But not patiently. And I was so afraid, darling, that you were going to New York to do something foolish about that kid brother of yours.”
He shut his eyes against the sun and it shone red through his eyelids. He said sleepily, “Roger inherited all the craziness in the family. He wanted big thrills and so he started that stupid little numbers racket in New York. The trouble was, the opposition didn’t know he was doing it as a sort of game and that he was going to fold it up after six months and write a book about it.
“Yes, Sally, I did go to New York and I found out which organization had removed Roger. It’s a big organization. I haunted the p
olice and the District Attorney’s office and finally they admitted that they not only didn’t have enough evidence to go on, but they had no chance of getting the evidence.
“The big guns of the group were a man named Lench and a man named Carter. I fooled around for a long time, wondering what to do, and then suddenly I didn’t have to do anything at all.”
“Why, darling?”
“Oh, Mr. Lench got annoyed at Mr. Carter, or the reverse, and they settled their argument by shooting each other and various other people who worked with them.”
Later they swam together in the warm and restless sea, and he wondered if the hot sun would bake away the memories, or if the blue sea would wash them away—and yet he knew that fragments of that year would be always with him, and that no man can take his own vengeance without staining some secret place in his heart.
Even Up the Odds
Old Angelo Manini has fired me maybe twenty times and each time all it amounts to is I get a night off from working behind the bar at the Spot Tavern on River Street, which is the joint Angelo has owned for years.
Always it is the same old reason he fires me and the same old reason he hires me back. You see, he gets to reading these magazines on how to run a bar and the first thing I know he is around measuring what is left in bottles and glaring at me and then I am fired and he goes behind the bar. Sure, he can make the drinks, but the Spot Tavern is always loaded with characters spoiling with an urge for fisticuffs and desirous of not paying for drinks.
Angelo is a little old guy with a gray mustache and a nose that twitches and a way of talking very large. Anyway, always he fires me and the neighborhood hears that he is behind the bar and all the characters come around and talk rough to him and he gives away two free drinks for every one paid for, as he is usually nervous of anybody who acts like they want to hit him. Then he begins to think how he would rather be in the back room drinking that red wine and playing some screwy card game with some old guys who come in just to play that game with him. The next day he comes to see me and at twelve noon sharp I am wrapping on the apron and once again Johnny Pepper, which is me, is at the old stand, with that junior baseball bat handy to reach, prepared to handle the business.
More Good Old Stuff Page 26