Chapter Twelve
“Not bad for a substitute, huh?” Tracy asked.
“Pipe down, will you?” I told her irritably.
Tracy Dean was a substitute and she knew it. On top of that, she didn’t mind. Not as long as we both admitted it out front, she had told me long ago. Still, afterward I always felt bad, guilty. It wasn’t fair to Tracy. Not that we didn’t have a genuine affection for each other, because we did. Our arrangement would never have worked without that. I simply felt guilty because that wasn’t the only reason I went to her.
Tracy couldn’t have given a shit less what my real reasons were. She just enjoyed sex, and she enjoyed having sex with me. She was an energetic little brunette of about twenty-four with round little tits, a perfectly shaped little ass, and a little-girl face, all of which served her well in her chosen fields of endeavor. She was a model and an actress, although the only epics she’d starred in to date were a shade on the blue side, and the only modeling she’d done was her hands, for gloves.
Still, she had a lot of ambition, and a lot of patience to go with it.
We’d met because she was a fight fan and had attended a title fight at the garden for which I had fought a bout on the undercard. She had come to my dressing room afterward to introduce herself, and we just took it from there. On a subsequent night, I got a little too drunk, and it wasn’t very hard for her to figure out from things I’d said what my feelings for my sister-in-law were.
So that’s where we stood. We were friends and occasional lovers, with no illusions about why we slept together.
“Must have been a rough one tonight,” she observed from my mood.
I looked over at her on her side of her bed and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“Oh, that’s okay. It comes with the territory,” she assured me. “You want a drink, or some coffee?”
“Coffee.”
“’Kay.”
She bounced off the bed and into the little kitchenette of her tiny Christopher Street apartment.
“Was it?” she called out.
“Was it what?” I asked.
“Rough.”
I thought back to that moment when Julie and I were alone in her apartment with absolutely no danger of being discovered by Benny or anyone.
“Yeah, it was a rough one,” I told her.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” she said, and she genuinely was. Tracy liked for her friends to be happy, and when they weren’t, she was sorry.
“Forget it.”
“How’s Benny? I heard about what happened.”
“Benny’s okay,” I assured her. “I got him a good lawyer, and he’s going to be okay.” I hoped.
“That’s good. I was real sorry to hear about Eddie Waters, but I didn’t for a minute believe that Benny killed him.”
“Benny’ll appreciate that.”
She brought two cups of coffee to the bed, handed me one and sat Indian fashion on the bed with the other one.
“You gonna play the great detective now?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean, Jack. You’ve wanted to be Lew Archer for a long time, and now’s your chance. This has all the drama you’d ever want because you’re personally involved.”
I was about to retort, but she didn’t give me a chance.
“Don’t yell at me,” she told me, raising one hand like a traffic cop. “Think about it. I’m an actress, remember? I know what a sense of the dramatic you have.”
Leave it to little Tracy to lay it all on the table. Okay, so okay, damnit, the whole situation did appeal to my sense of the dramatic, and although I saw myself as more of a middleweight Mike Hammer, she was right about that, too.
“You’re right.”
“I know I’m right, but that doesn’t mean you have to feel guilty about it. If you didn’t have that sense of the dramatic, you might just sit tight and do nothing. You’d never forgive yourself for that if Benny didn’t get off.”
I sipped the coffee—she made the worst coffee I’d ever tasted—and said, “What makes you so smart, little girl?”
“Hey,” she said, frowning, “it’s the girls with big tits that have small brains, remember?”
I put my coffee cup down and reached out to fondle her left breast. It was small, but round and firm, with large, penny-brown areola and nipple.
“They may not be big—” I began, but she rolled her eyes upward and said, “Please, God, get me a man who’ll love me for my mind.”
I pinched her nipple, and she squealed and almost scalded us both with her coffee.
I jumped off the bed and started to get dressed.
“Where you going?” she demanded.
“You said it yourself,” I warned her. “I’m going out to play detective.”
I got one leg into my pants, then started doing a dance trying to get the other one in and ended up falling on my ass. She peered down at me from the bed and said in her worst Bogie imitation, “What’s the matter, shamus, get off on the wrong foot?”
Chapter Thirteen
Knock Wood Lee made book for a living, but he ran some girls on the side for extra cash. I placed my out-of-town bets with him, and he always paid off promptly when he lost. He also seemed to have his fingers into almost everything that went on south of Times Square. If you needed information, and it wasn’t going to hurt him personally, he’d give it to you—sometimes for a price, sometimes for a favor, and sometimes for nothing. You could never tell with Wood.
Wood’s bottom lady was a China doll named Tiger Lee. She had long, black hair parted down the center and a nice little body with more tits than you’d usually find on a Chinese girl.
When I knocked on the door of Wood’s Chelsea loft, it was Lee who answered.
“Welcome, Mr. Jacoby,” she greeted me in heavily accented English. That was her “John” voice. Lee was born and raised in Brooklyn and at best had limited command of the Chinese language; but she had learned long ago that the “Johns” loved that singsong Oriental accent when they were in the sack with a Chinese girl, so she used it. She could turn it on and off, like a faucet.
Her days of hooking for a living were over, however, and at the ripe old age of twenty-six she had become Knock Wood Lee’s lady.
In spite of the presence of the name Lee in both of their names, they were not related by marriage or in any other way. I called her Lee, and him Wood, to avoid confusion, and I suspect others did the same.
“Is Wood here, Lee?” I asked her.
“Inside. You are welcome, as always.” She bowed, and I returned the bow, then she said, “Jesus, I wish we’d seen your face before we paid off. You sure you won that fight?”
I touched my stitches and said, “That’s what they tell me. I don’t remember a thing after the first punch.”
“Yours or his?” she asked, and took me to see Wood.
Wood’s businesses—book, girls, games, whatever—were all conducted elsewhere. This was his home, and he took the concept of home as a man’s castle very seriously.
Wood jumped up out of his chair when he saw me, hand extended.
“Ah, my good friend, how are you?” he asked.
Wood was only twenty-four, about an inch taller than Tiger Lee’s five three. He held a black belt in both karate and judo, however, so his size—or lack of same—was hardly a liability. By the time he was twenty he was a successful bookie in Chinatown, where he was born, and since then he had expanded his horizons. He had longish, black hair and a quick, infectious smile.
He was also extremely dangerous when crossed.
“Beer?” he asked as we sat.
“Sure.”
“Lee?”
“I’ll get it,” she said, and went off to do just that.
Wood’s real name was Nok Woo Lee, but that just sort of automatically translated into Knock Wood. Rumor had it that Tiger Lee’s real name was Anna Lee, but nobody knew for sure.
Lee ca
me back with three ice-cold Beck’s and passed them out. She took a ladylike pull from her own bottle and sat down on the arm of Wood’s big, leather chair.
“Sorry I missed your fight,” Wood told me. “I heard you won, but to look at you—”
“I think I’m getting tired of hearing that,” I told him, surprised at myself because I really was getting annoyed at all the remarks concerning the condition of my face.
Wood put up one hand and said, “Oops, excuse me, sorry. Is this a social visit?”
“No,” I answered, and took a long pull on my beer. “Have you heard about Eddie Waters?”
“I saw something in the papers,” he answered, and I realized that I hadn’t seen a newspaper that day. I made a mental note to pick one up when I left Wood’s.
As far as Wood’s reaction to the death of Eddie Waters, it was just about what I expected. Wood and Eddie had never been the best of friends.
“I am more distressed by the fact that they have arrested your brother for murder,” he said honestly.
“Well, I appreciate that.”
“Have you engaged an attorney for him?”
“I have—or rather, his wife has. I recommended Hector Delgado.”
He nodded, saying, “Good choice. He’s an excellent man.” He disposed of half of his beer and asked, “If you have that caliber of man working for you, what is it you want of me?”
“I need a different kind of help from you, Wood. I’d like you to tell me if you know anything about a contract being put out on Eddie Waters.”
“A contract? You think it was a professional hit?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Wood. I’m asking.”
He drank the remainder of the beer and passed the empty to Lee. She still had half of hers left. I had about a third left and swirled it in the bottle while I waited for Wood to answer.
Wood leaned forward and asked, “Did you get your license, Jack?”
“I got it.”
“You gonna work on this?”
“I intend to.”
Shaking his head, he told me. “Murder is police business, you know?”
“So I’ve been told, but Ben is my brother.”
He looked at me a moment, then leaned back in his chair and said, “I haven’t heard anything about a contract having been put out on Eddie Waters. As far as I’m concerned, he was far too small-time for anybody to bother.”
I let the remark pass.
“Wood, have you heard anything that might give me a lead?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
I waited for more, but that was all that was forthcoming, so I asked, “Will you let me know if you do?”
This was one of the times, if you watched closely, you realized that Tiger Lee was around for much more than just decorative purposes, or fetching beer. Wood looked up at her and she gave him an almost imperceptible nod.
“All right, I’ll keep my ears open,” he agreed. By “ears” he meant much more than just the two attached to his own head. He was talking about the ears attached to his street people.
“You realize that the, uh, scene of the crime is a little out of my backyard, don’t you?” he added.
“Just a little,” I admitted, “but I’m sure that all of your ears don’t go deaf once they pass Forty-second Street.”
Lee giggled, which was the first audible sound she’d made since bringing out the beer.
“Another beer before you go?” Wood asked, signaling that my “audience” was about over.
I looked down at the bottle I held in my hand, still one-third full, and said, “No more for me, thanks,” and put the bottle down on a handy tabletop.
“Lee will show you to the door, Miles. I’ll be in touch if I come up with anything you can use.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said, standing up. Lee slid off the arm of his chair and smoothed her dress over her thighs. She saw where my eyes were and smiled at me. As far as I could tell it was a genuine smile, but it could have been the one she used on her Johns. When she was hooking, she had been extremely good at her work.
Or so I heard.
“This way, Mr. Jacoby,” she said, and I started to follow her, which was a pleasant task, indeed. Before we cleared the doorway, Wood called out my name.
“Yeah?”
“It is my humble opinion that you are getting in over your head. Take that for what it’s worth, huh?”
I looked at him for a long moment, wondering if he might know more than he was telling, then said, “Sure, thanks.”
Just what I needed, a vote of confidence.
Chapter Fourteen
When I got back to Eddie’s office, Missy was gone, but she’d left me a short note.
Dear Jack,
Don’t forget, I get triple time for this.
Missy
The note was a reference to the fact that Eddie always paid her triple time for performance above and beyond, and I guess she figured that this applied. The note was pinned by a paperweight to the top of a high stack of file folders. Next to it was a smaller stack. The higher of the two was marked “Active,” the smaller “Inactive.” I was going to have to wade through each one of them, but not before I read the copy of the Daily News I’d bought on the way over from Wood’s place.
Eddie got page five, about four paragraphs’ worth, with an accompanying photo of Benny trying to hide his face. The article called Eddie “a small-time private investigator” and Benny “an ex-boxer who was now managing his younger brother’s career.” It told how Benny had “allegedly” beaten Eddie Waters to death during an argument, apparently using nothing but the “tools of his former trade.”
I remembered telling Hocus that I was the fighter in the family and that I didn’t think that Benny even knew how to fight. I guess he knew now that was just so much bullshit, or he might have known it all along. Either way, I’d hear about it sooner or later.
I dropped the paper in the wastebasket and then considered my options at that particular moment. I could sit back and examine my own feelings about Benny Jacoby and Eddie Waters, what their relationship was and what the outcome could have been, or I could begin working my way through the folders piled up in front of me and studiously avoid wondering if my brother really could have killed Eddie Waters.
I opened the top folder and began to read.
After three hours I had the folders sorted into three piles. The first was a pile of folders that I had discarded, the second the ones that could be checked by phone, and the third were the ones that I would check personally.
A look at my watch showed that it was now after eleven, too late to do any telephone checks. I wished I could put back the folders I didn’t want; but I wasn’t all that sure where they went, and I might have just made a bigger mess for Missy to clean up.
I shut the desk lamp and sat there in the dark for a few moments, thinking about Julie and thinking about Benny and Eddie, but always careful to keep them apart in my mind.
I decided that in the morning I’d go down to the morgue to see if I could help Missy make arrangements for picking up Eddie’s body. It may seem morbid, but I also wanted to see Eddie’s body. I wanted to see what my brother was supposed to have done to him. After that I’d see if Missy would do some of the telephone checks for me while I made the personal visits. There were a few rough cases that Eddie had been working on that could have resulted in his death. There were also some dissatisfied customers, but whether they were unhappy enough with his services to want him dead remained to be seen.
It was almost midnight when I left the office, but I still didn’t want to go home. I was feeling terribly lonely all of a sudden, and there was no one to talk to. My brother was in jail, my best friend was dead, Packy’s was closed, and I didn’t dare go and see Julie. I suppose I could have gone to see Tracy again, but as much as she claimed not to be bothered by acting as a substitute, twice in one day might be taxing her feelings a bit.
It was one of those nights that brought home what a
small number of friends I really had.
When I stepped out of the building and onto the street, all of a sudden I had more people paying attention to me then I cared to count.
There are considerably fewer rules for street fighting than there are for prizefighting. In fact, there is just one rule for street fighting, which every kid who grows up on the streets of New York learns very well, and that is that there are no rules. So when the first bozo rushed me, I gave him a swift kick in the balls. An act like that inside the ring would have won me a quick trip to the shower, but all I got at that particular moment was a satisfying jolt all the way up my right leg.
I didn’t stop to enjoy it, though, because the man on the ground had not come alone. In fact, the second man had been right behind him and had to do a little dance step to avoid tripping over his partner. While he was concentrating on that, I threw a stiff left jab and followed that with a wicked right that put him down for the count.
I had no way of knowing just how many of them there were, but I sensed movement behind me and turned in time to get hit over the left eye with something, some object. I felt my stitches go and the blood run down my face as I hit the concrete. My fighter’s instinct kept me going when I should have been knocked out. I rolled when I hit the pavement and kept rolling, still unaware of how many opponents I was dealing with. There were at least three, one of which I knew I’d knocked cold and another who’d be pissing blood for the next few days. I had to keep moving so that the third man couldn’t hit me again with whatever it was he’d hit me with the first time.
When I hit the building I staggered to my feet, keeping my back against it, and tried to see through the blood that was covering my face. They weren’t coming after me, however. I saw all three of them now, two dragging one, and one of them still crouched over clutching his balls with one hand. I stayed on my feet as long as they were in sight, and it wasn’t until they turned a corner that I allowed myself to slide down, back still against the wall, to a seated position.
Eye in the Ring Page 5