by John Roeburt
Who sought respect and affection from people in general because he could never get close to people in particular.
My own platitudes were at least less negative. I’d go down fighting, I was thinking, the next time Five O’Clock or Puggie poked a head inside the door.
At that moment, they did. Both of them. And someone else. I stood there and stared and if my mouth wasn’t on hinges my jaw would have joined my feet on the floor.
What was nagging at the back of my mind stopped nagging. I knew. I had fitted the pieces together, but too late.
Into the room, behind Five O’Clock and Puggie, walked Tad Barrett.
Chapter Eighteen
Ken said, “Mr. Barrett, you’re a sight for sore eyes! Did you bring the police? Never mind what I agreed to pay you. I’m going to double it. That’s right, double it. I was beginning to lose faith in you, but you certainly earned your money. Yes, sir.”
“Shut up,” Five O’Clock growled.
Barrett tugged a pipe out of the pocket of his snowy overcoat and filled the bowl from an oilskin pouch.
“It’s one hell of a night for a ride,” Puggie said, walking to the window and making it transparent with his sleeve.
“We’ll wait. Maybe the snow will let up,” Barrett said. I watched him puffing on his briar contentedly. I figured we had a reprieve as long as the pipe kept going, he was enjoying it so much.
“Who has the pictures?” Ken asked all of us. “I’ll feel better after I burn them. Wait till my wife hears about this, she’ll be delighted. Well, we all can make mistakes.”
“Will someone shut him up?” Five O’Clock said.
My nose clogged again and I could no longer smell Barrett’s pipe smoke. I said, “It had me all mixed up because it was Wompler first. Then it was you, Barrett. It was staring me right in the face all along, only I couldn’t see it. I guess I’m a little too late.”
“Too late,” Barrett agreed.
“When Phyllis Kirk contacted Wompler about the Kincaid papers, he was interested all right. But not because he wanted to run an article in Hush. He figured my brother had taught him all there was to know about blackmail, and this was the real thing. This was big. With the income from this he could retire a rich man. Maybe he had Phyllis Kirk figured wrong, I don’t know. My guess is that he saw her in her apartment and said they could split it down the middle blackmailing a few dozen of our most respected citizens. She was a scientist. She wasn’t buying that. She’d merely thought with an article on the Kincaid stuff, a kind of preview mentioning no names, she could make herself a few bucks. She showed the papers only to prove she was on the inside, and how hot the possibilities were.”
Barrett sat down on the bed and folded his arms, nibbling on his pipe stem and listening. Ken looked like he wanted to ask some questions, but Five O’Clock glared at him and he said nothing. Steffy was listening to my story in big-eyed silence. My horror story.
“So they had a difference of opinion. Probably Wompler overplayed his hand and maybe Phyllis Kirk tried to throw him out. But there were the Kincaid papers, worth a fortune in blackmail, enticing him. So he struggled, killed her accidentally or otherwise, and stole the papers. He was in business.”
Barrett looked more interested. I began to hope my story might be worth another pipe load and wondered if Pop Grujdzak had lost his way in the Brooklyn streets and all that snow. I kept on talking.
“When I first went to visit Wompler he agreed to stop blackmailing Ken almost cheerfully, but he played it cagey about the Kincaid papers, denying everything. When he later changed his mind about blackmailing Ken, I should have realized my brother was…well, blackmailing himself.”
“That,” said Ken, “is incredible and you know it.”
“Just shut up,” I told him. “I didn’t know you from a hole in the wall, Barrett, but like a fool I had to open up and tell you how I thought Wompler knew something about the Kincaid papers and probably had them in his possession. You see, that’s what has been bothering me all the time! Wompler got all hot and bothered in Phyllis Kirk’s apartment and killed her, but he wasn’t big enough or tough enough for the other murders.” I paused to wipe my nose with a flooded handkerchief. “You were the missing link, Barrett. The connection between Ken’s blackmail and the Kincaid papers.”
“You, hunting down blackmail, put me onto the papers. Sure,” said Barrett. He must have known I was just stalling for time, filibustering until Pop Grujdzak could arrive. But he seemed interested. “So what?”
“So this. I laid the whole story in your lap. I even built up the papers and told you how important they were. I was worried about Jo-Anne and wanted you to know exactly what you were after. That was my mistake—but it should have made me realize, later, that you’d taken over from Wompler!”
Barrett puffed and listened.
“Well, I don’t know how you did it. Maybe you had enough on Wompler. Maybe you just strong-armed him, it doesn’t matter. But you took it from there. I’d admitted to you that I didn’t understand the code. Wompler didn’t know that. You did, Barrett. So your boys tortured Jo-Anne for the code, then killed her to shut her mouth. You picked a spot that would throw suspicion on Wompler.”
Barrett nodded. “You should have been a detective,” he said.
“There’s more. When Guido got a rumble on Five O’Clock and Puggie, he called you and left a message for me. He’d been able to learn they were the boys who’d worked on Jo-Anne for you, but the poor slob told you about it because that’s what I’d said he should do. After that, it was easy. You got in touch with Puggie and Five O’Clock and they were waiting for us outside. And still I didn’t get it!”
Neither Puggie nor Five O’Clock bothered to complain that I knew too much. Apparently my fate was no longer the subject of doubt or even polite conversation.
“While I was in the hospital,” I went on, “Steffy here found out all she had to know about the pictures. She returned to Wompler’s to get them after I left the hospital, and I was keeping you informed about it. What the hell, you were a private detective. You could help me. But I was so blind I didn’t get it even after Audrey told me how Wompler had received a phone call, then made one.
“You called him, Barrett. You told him Steffy was on her way over. You let him know where he could reach Five O’Clock and Puggie, and while he probably didn’t like it, he called them and had them come for Steffy. That didn’t figure at first. Why should you care if Steffy collected the pictures? That had nothing to do with the Kincaid papers. But you had noticed she and I were getting pretty chummy. You were worried about what I might have told her…Kerchoo!”
“Sure,” Barrett said. “You had enough information to figure out things, but you were too stupid. Not her. If you were blabbing to her like you were to me, she might guess the score. So I thought it best to bring her here with the rest of you.”
“And get rid of all of us at once.”
“That’s right. Anyone who might lead the police to me.”
“Ken—my brother—he didn’t know about all this…”
“He knew about those pictures,” Barrett said, not trying to justify himself, just explaining what a smart guy he was. “He was on a fake blackmail juggle with Wompler. If the cops started to lean on them, something might come up which could get the police interested enough to chase down that trail. That’s why I have to get rid of this windbag—and his phony pictures too. Then nothing will remain to connect me with the Kincaid stuff. The police will never even know your brother hired me, or sent you to me. My name won’t come up at all.”
“You’re forgetting Wompler.”
“He doesn’t know I’m in on this. Five O’Clock did all the dirty work, and I’m paying him for it.”
I let go a couple of sneezes.
“Bless you,” Steffy said.
I had to keep on stalling. Where the hell was her father? “Barrett,” I said, “Wompler could still shoot off his mouth about those pictures. And probably h
e’s wise to the fact that Ken hired you about the photos—”
“You let me worry about Wompler.”
“And Audrey. Don’t forget the lady wrestler.”
“And Audrey. And anyone else I have to worry about. One thing at a time, Chase.”
I didn’t mention Aunt Emma.
However, I still had one good stall. He would have to listen to this.
I managed to get off a fine burst of laughter, as if something had occurred to me that was highly amusing. The effect was somewhat spoiled by another vigorous sneeze, but I hastened to say, “You think you’re smart, Barrett. Yet actually you’ve bungled badly.”
“That so?”
“Wompler may not know you have him pegged for his part in Ken’s blackmail act—probably he doesn’t know, or you’d be more worried about the possibility of his talking. Unless he had something against you, he would have no reason to mention that phony shakedown—which would only make himself look even worse in the eyes of police, D.A., and jury.” I forced another laugh. “But you’ve forgotten one thing he is sure to mention.”
“What’s that?” Barrett waited tensely.
“You sent an operative to Wompler’s apartment. Both Wompler and Audrey can say a Barrett agency man was the last person seen with Jo-Anne while she was still alive.”
Barrett’s tenseness stayed with him, but only for another moment or two. Then suddenly he was smiling, smiling in a superior, self-satisfied way.
I realized in that instant why he had let me go on talking. He had been listening to me go over the whole affair, especially his part in it, just to check on whether he had forgotten anything—whether I might not be aware of some flaw in his scheme which he had overlooked.
And it seems I had come up with such a flaw. Which was why he was wearing that self-satisfied smirk. His game with me had succeeded. Now he was forewarned, and changed plans accordingly.
“All right, then my name will come up with the police,” he said, thinking aloud. “The police will know from me that I had a man pick up Jo-Anne. I’ll volunteer that information—whether or not Wompler has already told them. I’ll produce the man, too. He’ll say merely that he started to bring her to me—but she broke away from him and fled. After all, he had no power to arrest her.”
“But why was he on her tail at all?”
“Just what the cops will ask,” said Barrett. “My explanation will be legitimate. You had hired me to find the missing papers—maybe locate the missing Jo-Anne in the process. My first step, in view of what you had told me about Wompler, logically was to send a man to his place. And there the man bumped into Jo-Anne—”
“The hell with you,” I said, remembering her.
Puggie had cleared the window pane and was busy looking outside. “Still snowing,” he said. “Hell of a night for a ride.”
“The snow will keep people in, including cops,” Barrett told him. “We’ll have the street to ourselves, so it won’t be so bad. Anyway, we’d better not wait any more. Get the car, boys.”
Five O’Clock nodded happily and went to the door. I wondered how long it would be before he got back. Maybe Pop was outside, I thought. Maybe he had the place staked out with all the law in Brooklyn and was just waiting for someone to poke a head out of the door.
“Let’s wrap this all up,” Barrett said. “I’d like the pictures, Chase.”
I made a production of going through my pockets. I still hadn’t given up entirely on Pop Grujdzak, but if he was lost, he was good and lost. Pop could have been here twice already. I looked at Steffy, who sighed and squeezed my hand. I took the envelope of pictures from the inside pocket of my jacket and handed it to Barrett.
He opened the flap and withdrew the pictures, studying them. “This all of it?” he said, and choked on the last word as Ken lumbered across the room, huge and ungainly, to grasp and claw at him with awkward ineffectiveness.
“You give me those! Let me have those pictures!”
Barrett slapped him on the jaw. Ken rained blows on Barrett’s shoulders and chest with soft fists, clumsy slow-motion blows.
“Ken,” I said. “He’s going to destroy them. He’s going to do what you want anyhow, Ken. Cut it out.”
Ken blubbered. Barrett was catching the soft blows on his open hands now, smiling.
“Hey!” Barrett suddenly roared. One of Ken’s fists had cuffed the bridge of his nose, bringing tears to his eyes. Puggie went rushing across the room. At first, I was going to stop him. But I needed my strength for whatever was to come. My shoulder was throbbing and numb. I was sneezing and sniffling. I stood by and watched Puggie yank at Ken’s arm and spin him around, then bury his left fist in Ken’s soft midsection. Ken leaned over slowly and covered his belly with clasped hands, bowing. The air had made a noise rushing from his lungs and out his mouth, which still hung open and formed a big O. He staggered three steps toward me, still clasping his hands over his belly, then fell heavily. My own brother, but I didn’t try to catch him.
While I was watching Ken trying to suck air back into his lungs, Five O’Clock returned.
“Man, I ain’t never seen such snow,” he said.
“The car has chains?” Barrett wanted to know.
“Snow tires.”
I sneezed. Steffy had gone into the bathroom and returned with a glass of water for Ken, but Puggie took it from her hands and sloshed the contents in Ken’s face.
“I can’t…move…at…all,” Ken gasped.
“Why’d you have to hit him so hard?” Barrett said.
“He didn’t look so soft,” Puggie answered.
They got more water for Ken and let him drink it this time, but he gagged on it. They slapped his face gently, then not so gently, Puggie on one side and Five O’Clock on the other, while Barrett burned the pictures of Steffy and Wompler. They stood him up and walked him back and forth, the soft, hard-looking hugeness of him sagging between them.
“You okay now?” Puggie asked.
“I’m going to throw up. I’ll feel much better if you let me throw up.”
“Hell with that. Choke on it,” Five O’Clock said. “You can walk.” Five O’Clock opened the door for us and demonstrated how his .45 could point at us through the cloth of his coat. Barrett was too smart to pack a gun, but Puggie had one too. All we had, Steffy and me and Ken, were fading hopes. Where was Pop Grujdzak?
Barrett went out first into the hallway, followed by Ken and Steffy, then Puggie, then me. Five O’Clock brought up the rear with his cannon. We trooped down the stairs that way. Auntie didn’t even look up from her magazine when we passed her desk.
You read about those things, how they take you through a crowded bar or something with a gun in your back and no one is wise. I was hoping we’d get the chance to prove truth might be stranger than fiction but less improbable. Hell, I’d attract someone’s attention. I’d make it known we were prisoners. I’d trip a guy or spill his drink or anything. Let them try and shoot at us in a crowded bar like that.
Downstairs, The House That Jack Built was empty.
It smelled of beer and smoke and always would, but there was no one around and the only light in the place was the red, yellow and blue glow from the juke box. We marched by the juke box and along the bar and out through the front door, which did not even tinkle behind us. Mr. Jack must have been Puggie’s brother or Five O’clock’s. The snap lock snicked shut behind us.
We sank to our ankles in the soft snow, which was still falling feather-light and silent. Five O’Clock got behind the wheel of a black four-door Chrysler, three or four years old, waiting at the curb. Barrett told Steffy to climb in beside him, then rounded out the front-seat contingent himself. Ken and I sat in back with Puggie between us holding the .45 on his lap. Puggie leaned over and pressed the little lock studs on my side and Ken’s.
Then Five O’Clock started the car.
I couldn’t see Pop Grujdzak anywhere. Or any other cops.
Nostrand Avenue was deserted.
Chapter Nineteen
Five O’Clock drove the Chrysler with consummate caution, taking his foot off the gas and slowing the big car to a crawl whenever we had to turn on the soft, trackless snow. Up front, you could hear the defroster purring faintly to keep the windshield from fogging over.
I asked, and got, permission to reach for my handkerchief and blow my nose.
“It’s like the old days, ain’t it?” Five O’Clock called over his shoulder to Puggie.
“Just look where you’re driving,” Barrett said, puffing smoke.
“What I mean,” Five O’Clock went right on talking, “you steal a car and a license plate from some other car and rent a garage for a drop, leaving the car there till you need it. You wait and get to hoping it’ll be soon, the ride. Then, before you know, you’re ready. With a three-part package. Man.”
“You sure the Park is best?” Puggie leaned forward and asked his partner.
“Search me. Prospeck Park, that’s what the boss says.”
With them, this was a livelihood. Nothing slipshod about the way they performed their duties. There was obedience and skill and planning. There was care and timing and a deadly lack of emotional involvement. Things had been slow since their youth, when Murder, Inc., had folded its Brooklyn tent and barnstormed all over the country. But now, thanks to Barrett, they were in business again.
“Prospect Park it is,” Barrett said.
“In the old days they used to hide packages down in Flatlands,” Puggie told him. He wasn’t complaining, but offering an item of information.
“It’s built up since then, Puggie. Plenty of houses and people.”
“Yeah, but you could hide the bodies out in the Flatlands dumps.”
“Here, the bodies will be found,” said Barrett. “But we won’t be.”
It was us they were talking about, with the objectivity of businessmen completing a routine transaction. In Barrett there wasn’t even the hint of remorse or conscience. Some folks, they say, are born incapable of those things. Often they behave beyond suspicion, those sick people, until it’s too late. Sometimes they’re good-looking, charming, intelligent. Maybe they liked to pull the wings off flies more than other kids. But boys will be boys. If they served in the Army they made lousy soldiers, complaining and griping all the time about discipline, until they got a taste of combat. They often won medals, then, and were afraid but didn’t go stiff and inadequate with fear like some of their buddies. They felt above the crowd. They were arrogant. Laws didn’t apply to them. They could kill you with an absolute lack of concern if it suited them. They were called psychopathic personalities, P.P.’s, and Barrett was one of them.