Death Is My Comrade

by Stephen Marlowe

  On the sidewalk I lit a cigarette, fumbled for the ring of keys in my pocket and followed Allen across the gravel. He could hear me, of course. I made myself even more obvious by whistling. The attendant’s shack, next to one of those glass-walled outdoor phone booths, was shut for the night. It was one of those lots where you pay in advance and can leave your car all night.

  Allen went down the aisle between two rows of cars. He stopped at a four-or five-year-old Buick and unlocked the door. I fumbled with my keys at the door of a Volkswagen next to it. Suddenly I stiffened. Volkswagens don’t have door locks on the passenger side. If Allen knew that, he’d realize something was wrong, and I wouldn’t get a chance to take him when he was off his guard, crouching to enter the Buick. He rolled down the window of his car before climbing in. It was a hot night, with the sun just now setting.

  “Damn,” I said, and straightened my back and started to turn. Allen was aware of me now. That was all right, I wanted him to be. “Damn this lock,” I said.

  Allen stood less than a yard from me, half-crouched to get into his car. As I turned all the way around he looked at the Volkswagen and the ring of keys in my hand, said, “What the hell,” backed out pivoting and swung his big right fist. I leaned against the partially open door of his car. His fist hit its edge. While he howled I yanked out the Magnum and rotated the cylinder one click, putting a round under the hammer.

  “Stick up?” he said, sucking his torn knuckles and watching me warily.

  “Not tonight, Mr. Allen.”

  It was the name that did it. The name meant I knew. He pivoted again in a blur and dived across the front seat of the Buick, clawing at the glove compartment. I did two things. I flicked my cigarette after him and it struck the window on the passenger side of the Buick and showered sparks in his face. And I opened the door all the way and shoved the sole of my shoe against his rear. His head struck the window hard. His left hand jabbed at the button of the glove compartment, but missed.

  I said: “Try it again and you’re dead.”

  He didn’t try it again.

  “Back out of there slowly. When you do, I’m going to shut the door. You’re going to lean against it with your hands on the roof. Got it?”

  He didn’t say anything, didn’t move.

  “I’d just as soon kill you as spit on you,” I said. “If you think I’m kidding, try something. But you’d be making your last mistake. Now move.”

  He moved. He backed out of the car as I’d told him to. I could smell his sour sweat.

  Then he started to turn, swinging the right hand again. I might have expected that; I hadn’t shown him yet he had anything to lose.

  I blocked his fist with my left arm, the ring of keys jangling. He ducked his head and charged me. I took one step back with my left foot and slammed the barrel of the Magnum against the side of his head.

  That drove him to his knees. He shook his head and glared up at me.

  “On your feet, Allen. Turn around. Hands on the roof of your car.”

  This time he did it, but he was rocky. He swayed.

  “Where are they?” I said.

  He told me to do something as unpleasant as it was impossible. Though I had hurt him, I still hadn’t showed him he had anything to lose. He had me and the Magnum to worry about here, sure; but he had a kidnaping rap hanging over his head. I heard street sounds, but no crunching of gravel, no other sound at all in the parking lot. I stiffened the fingers of my left hand and extended the thumb at right angles to them, tightening the ridge of muscle on the edge of my palm. I chopped with it at his side, striking for the kidney. His broad back moved to the right and he went halfway down again, one knee scraping gravel. He started to shout. I shoved his face against the car door and the noise he made became a whimper. But then his back stiffened. He had it in mind to turn and take his chances with the gun.

  “Don’t do it, dead man,” I said. Then I told him softly, matter-of-factly: “That was a judo chop, dead man. I’m an expert at it. A little higher and I could break a rib. A little harder and I could rupture a kidney. You’d cry every time you went to the john. A little higher and a little harder and they’d be trying to take bone splinters out of your lung. Now, where are they?”

  He said nothing.

  “We’ll take them one at a time,” I said. “First, a little higher.”

  I used the judo chop on his floating rib. It drove him to both knees. He gasped and clutched his side. Kneeling there, he retched. This is the part I don’t like to tell, but it is part of what happened. I had to break him, fast and completely. As he retched, I tasted bitterness in my own throat. Working him over, knowing I could do everything I said I could do, I tried to picture Marianne waiting and not knowing, tried to get a mind’s eye view of what it was like when they’d hit Mrs. Gower and taken the twins. That helped a little: I could do what I had to do. But I did not enjoy it.

  “That was the rib,” I said, still matter-of-factly. “Shall we try for the kidney?”

  “Jesus, you’re crazy!” he said hoarsely. “You’re a crazy man. You’ll kill me.” He tried to get up. He was still clutching his side. He collapsed to his knees again.

  “On your feet.”

  His right hand scrabbled at the door handle of the Buick. He drew himself up. In the half-light of dusk his T-shirt was gray with sweat.

  “Here goes the kidney.”

  “No. Jesus, wait.”

  “Your name Allen?”

  “Al—Bock.”

  “How many in on the snatch?”

  “Me and a friend. Two of us.”

  “Working for who?”

  “I don’t know.” He started to turn his head and cried: “I swear to God I don’t. Leo, he knows. I swear it. My rib,” he added. “You busted it. My rib!”

  He winced, and I waited. He expected me to use the judo chop again.

  “You supposed to contact Leo?”

  He didn’t answer. I waited silently, and he flinched. “No. Just go there.”

  “Where?”

  He said no word, but he made a sound in his throat. Close up, he looked younger than I’d thought—in his early twenties. I had scared him. It wasn’t just the busted rib, and it wasn’t just knowing I could do what I said I could do. It was the way I’d done it, matter-of-factly, as if I put in an eight-hour day five days a week busting ribs and rupturing kidneys.

  I said again: “Here goes the kidney.”

  He started to cry.

  “All right, Al. Where?”

  “Place on Custer Street.” The broad back shuddered. “Just leave me alone, mister.”

  “Leo’s there—with the kids?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are they all right?”

  “Yeah, they’re all right.”

  “What were you going to do with them?”

  “Back,” he said quickly, earnestly. “Take them right back!”

  They were like hell going to take them right back, I thought. But that still didn’t make me feel like a hero. I felt weary. I hated myself a little then. And I wasn’t finished with Al yet. I asked him for the address on Custer Street, and got it. Then I said: “Let’s have your car keys.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “Just hold the keys out on your hand and don’t turn around. That’s what you’re going to do.”

  He did it. I took the keys with my left hand and at the same time reversed the Magnum in my right and slugged him behind the ear with it. He made a sound like, “Gnaa,” and his knees buckled. I caught him as he fell.

  Opening the rear door of the Buick, I wrestled his dead weight inside. I used my necktie on his wrists, binding them behind his back; used his belt on his ankles. I left him on the floor in the rear of the Buick, then punched open the glove compartment, took a look at the .45 automatic in there and decided to leave it alone. I put the Magnum in my pocket and gave Al Bock another look. He lay face down. He was breathing deeply and slowly. Deciding he would keep, I walked across the
gravel to the outdoor phone booth, put my dime in and dialed Marianne’s number.

  Mrs. Gower answered the phone. “Yes?”

  “Drum, Mrs. Gower.”

  “Thank God. Did you get them?”

  “Not yet. I’m going to.”

  “Mrs. Baker’s sleeping, the poor thing. She started in drinking. The doctor didn’t discourage her. He put something in her whisky.”

  “Let me speak to Jack.”

  “He isn’t here. After you left the kidnapers called back. Mr. Morley said he was you. Then he made another call, and after that he left.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “I don’t know. He just left, told me not to worry.”

  “Do you know who he talked to?”

  “A—a Mr. Pappy?”

  That would be Pappy Piersall, I thought, which meant that Jack and Pappy were off gum-shoeing on their own. But what could they do? Where could they start?

  I said: “If he checks back with you, tell him it’s 327 Custer Street. Tell him I’ll be driving a green Buick, four or five years old. It will be parked out front. The twins are there. Have you got that? 327 Guster Street.”

  “Yes, sir. Should I call the police?”

  “No. Don’t call them and don’t tell Dr. Nickerson. Just Jack Morley.” When we were this close I didn’t want the cops converging on Custer Street with their sirens wailing, or in their shiny black cars, or even on foot by twos and threes. Sure, it would have been nice to know Jack Morley was backstopping me; but all Custer Street could smell cop a mile off. It was that kind of neighborhood.

  And I had Al Bock. Remove my jacket and shirt, get the letter from his pants pocket, and I would be Al Bock. Leo was waiting for me.

  “Just Jack Morley. I understand, Mr. Drum. Good luck.”

  I went back to the Buick. Al Bock hadn’t stirred. I took the envelope from his pocket, took off my jacket and shirt and tucked the Magnum in my belt. I looked down at Al Bock before getting behind the wheel of the Buick.

  “Whatever they paid you,” I said out loud, “it wasn’t enough.”

  Chapter Ten

  You can spend twenty years in Washington, drawing your paycheck every week and earning your government pension, and—if you’re lucky—never get closer to Custer Street than the Marine Barracks off South Carolina Avenue, or Garfield Park, or the big Naval Gun Factory on the Anacostia River.

  If you’re not lucky, if you’re forced into intimacy with Custer Street, then the street you know is one of cobblestones and greasy-spoon restaurants and fifty-cents-a-flop hotels and dingy bars where the beer you smell on the floor is last years’ and boarding houses where sharp-eyed, tight-lipped men spend their nights dreaming how to turn a crooked buck.

  When I got there in the Buick, darkness had softened the lines of the old clapboard houses along Custer Street. I found number 327, a two-story frame building like most of its neighbors. It stood next to a bar and grill from which raw rock’n’roll music tainted the already tainted night. I parked in front and took one more look at Al Bock. He was still out. I went across the sidewalk wearing a T-shirt and slacks and carrying Ilya’s letter.

  Number 327 Custer Street had a small porch. An enormously fat woman sat on the stoop in front of it, gross legs sprawled in front of her, plump hands waving the hem of her skirt lazily over her thighs. She grinned a dimpled, moon-faced grin at me. She had two punched and empty beer cans on her lap.

  “Leo?” I said.

  She shrugged mountainously. Her voice was a high, childlike treble. “In back, waiting for you.”

  I nodded and started up the stoop.

  “Hey, you’re not Al.”

  “I’m a friend of Al’s. Leo’s expecting me.”

  “Can I come back and have a beer with you boys? I’m clean out. It’s hot. Leo said—”

  “Later.”

  “Where’s Al? He’s cute. He knows how to treat Mindy.”

  “He had a date,” I said.

  “Well, you say hello to Leo for me.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said, and went up the stoop past her. As I opened the hall door I heard a car pulling up, then a sudden swell in the blaring rock’n’roll music as the bar-and-grill door opened. Then there was the sound of a car door shutting, and Mindy’s voice raised querulously. Night sounds, all of them familiar on Custer Street. There’s nothing in any of it for you, I told myself; you’re jumpy.

  Inside, the vestibule was lit by a single naked bulb. I left the inner door open, and the light threw my elongated shadow dimly down the hall ahead of me.

  The hall smelled of stale air and the detritus of too many lives spent too wearily in the skid row morass of Custer Street. Just past the vestibule were two doors, one on either side. At the far end of the hall, a single door. That would be Leo’s.

  I went there, took a deep breath and knocked.

  Silence for three seconds. I could hear Mindy’s childlike treble outside. She was getting loud.

  Then, from inside the door: “Al? Christ, it took you long enough. You get it?”

  “Umm.”

  I heard lock tumblers fall. I stood at arm’s length from the door; I didn’t want light from inside Leo’s apartment striking my face. The door opened four inches. A head on a level with my shoulder blocked the light inside.

  “I told you,” Leo said. “I told you it would be a cinch. An easy grand for each of us. Come on in.”

  He started to open the door. I let my right hand drop toward the butt of the Magnum.

  Just then Mindy shouted from the vestibule: “Leo! Hey, Leo! There’s a man here wants to see you.”

  I thought she meant me. I was to learn differently. Then two things happened at once. I pulled the Magnum clear of my belt and Leo opened the door wide.

  He was a wiry little man, shirtless, with a ruff of dry brown hair on his head and none on his bare chest. Light streamed past him from inside the apartment. “Who is—” he began. Then his jaw dropped. “You ain’t Al!”

  I moved a shoulder toward the door but, standing back away from it, I had too much distance to cover. Leo’s face disappeared and the door slammed. I rapped on it with the butt of the Magnum.

  Just once. It was too quiet inside. Instinct made me flatten myself against the wall.

  “Leo!” Mindy called again.

  Then four jagged holes exploded in the wood of the door and four shots rang out. Mindy screamed.

  On the other side of Leo’s door footsteps pounded, going away. I was still standing with my back to the wall, facing the vestibule. Mindy’s girth appeared there. Her arm moved and light flooded the hall. Behind Mindy’s shoulder a head appeared, shaggily gray-haired.

  Footsteps pounding away, a car stopping in the darkness outside—I had an eerie sense of déjà vue, as if Friday night’s phony rape scene were starting all over again. Because the face I saw behind Mindy was Semyon Laschenko’s.

  He was sweating from either heat or anxiety or both. Mopping his forehead with a handkerchief, sucking at his clipped gray moustache, he said: “Drum? Is it really you, Mr. Drum?”

  Instead of answering him I whirled, stepped back, tucked the Magnum in my belt, grasped the doorframe on both sides and kicked flat-footed at the door, just below the knob. It splintered and gave, the bolt taking a jagged section of doorframe with it.

  I lunged inside after it, found myself in an untidy living room furnished the way you’d expect a living room on Custer Street to be furnished—cracked linoleum on the floor, a pair of beat-up wing chairs—one of them holding last week’s laundry—a sagging red plush sofa, a metal-topped table with a bottle of rye on it.

  Two doorways led off the living room. One was dark, and from it I heard the sound of a baby crying. I went there, fumbled for the light switch and found it. On an unmade bed, wearing only diapers, their plump little legs kicking at air, their faces red with infant anger, the twins were bawling lustily.

  I got a foolish grin on my face. It wouldn’t go away. I said: “
Okay, so cry your silly little lungs out.” Dutifully, the twins obeyed. After all, I was their godfather.

  Then I heard a shot. It came from somewhere behind the house on Custer Street. That would be Leo, but who the hell was he shooting at?

  I followed my Magnum toward the other, lighted, doorway that led off the living room. It took me through a small kitchen to an open window that looked out on the back alley paralleling Custer Street. Leo had gone out this way. I climbed over the sill, let myself drop to the ground, and landed on a screen that Leo had kicked out of the window.

  “You-all better hold it right there, mister,” a voice said.

  The southern drawl was unmistakable. The voice belonged to Pappy Piersall.

  “Hold it yourself, Pappy,” I called out.

  Except for the rectangle of light coming from the window, it was very dark in the alley. I could just make out the backs of houses or garages across it.

  “Chester?” Pappy said. “Ah’ll be dipped in—”

  What Pappy Piersall would be dipped in would have remained a matter of conjecture, except that I knew Pappy, because just then two shots rang out and orange flame seared the night a few yards to my left. A slug whined by my face and thudded into the clapboard behind me. Crouching, I darted out of the swath of light coming from the window. I heard a click, then another, very close. Then an oath, not Pappy’s voice. Something moved in the darkness ahead of me. That would be Leo, with an empty gun in his hand.

  For an instant more I peered at blackness; then light dazzled my eyes. Someone had a flashlight. The light darted away, lifted, dipped, and there was Leo, crouching, bare-chested and sweating, slamming an ammo clip into the butt of a Luger. He swung the big automatic toward me. I shot it out of his hand with the Magnum. He howled, and his fingers blossomed red. He clawed at his pants pocket with his left hand and a knife magically appeared there, the blade snicking out in the same fluid, continuous motion.

  “He’s got a shiv!” Pappy warned me unnecessarily.