Any Woman He Wanted

by Harry Whittington

  I glanced at Ernie. He was staring at the floor.

  I left the building without even checking the assignments on my desk and walked over to the Greek’s. It was only ten in the morning, but Doc Yerrgsted was in his favorite booth in the rear.

  He stared up at me over his glass. “Well. Ten A.M. When a man drinks before noon, Ballard, his problem has become bigger than he is.”

  “Hell, I’m taking the day off.”

  “Are you? You can do that when it pleases you, can you?”

  “Why not? You do.”

  “I’m farther down the road than you are, my boy. You come in for a drink at ten, but I must have my first drink before I can bear to put my poor, sore feet down on the floor. You have a career left to you but I have only this booth in the Greek’s bar.”

  The Greek came over. He looked as if he had not slept. His hand on the tray trembled. He put a drink before me. “On the house, Mike.”

  “How are things, Greek?”

  “Who can complain? This is a fine country. The finest in the world.”

  I gestured toward him with my drink. “Sure it is.”

  “Sure it is,” he said. His face was cold. He turned and walked away.

  “Poor Greek,” Doc said.

  “What’s eating him?”

  “Never ask, Ballard. Remember what I once told you about Moses. He let things trouble him and wound up with forty years in the desert. He asked questions to which there was only one answer—and never found the promised land.”

  “Booze is the only answer,” I said. “And the hell with you, Doc.”

  I had lunch at the Greek’s. He insisted on making me a filet mignon. I told him I never ate that heavily in the middle of the day, but he said a man who drinks a lot should eat a lot.

  “You can get beriberi, heart damage from drinking and never eating,” Doc said. “This is a medical fact. Beriberi doesn’t occur only among the underfed Chinese, Ballard. It happens right here among people who drink all the time and never eat.”

  “Always take the advice of a fool,” I told him.

  He nodded. “It’s starting. That wisdom. It must have been like this for Moses—the slow sure beginning of wisdom.”

  “Oh, for hell’s sake.”

  The Greek pulled up a chair. “Mike. I got a small worry. You mind I trouble you?”

  “No. Go ahead. You can’t hurt this steak after what you did to it in the kitchen.”

  “The steak is on the house, my friend. My trouble is that I have been threatened twice. I must pay off for protection of my business—or my life is endangered.”

  “Hell. Why don’t you pay?”

  The Greek shook his head. “Twenty-four years I have been here in this country. I don’t believe I must pay anything.”

  “It’s your life.”

  “I got to live with myself. I should snivel and beg from these punks the right to stay in my own business?”

  I glanced at Doc Yerrgsted. “You ought to start on the Greek, Doc. It’s taking him longer than it ever took Moses to get even a little bit smart.”

  “This man is right. You know he’s right,” Doc said. He sat up straighten “And you are a cop.”

  “The police,” the Greek said. “I asked for protection. Twice. They promised. But nothing.”

  “You want me to try to jack them up?”

  The Greek stared at me, then smiled, nodding. He snapped his fingers and a waiter came running with a telephone, plugged it in.

  “Use my phone,” he said.

  “On the house, of course?” I said. I dialed police headquarter, asked for Neal Burgess. “Neal, I dropped in at the Greek’s.”

  “I’ll bet you did.”

  “Put it in my folder. But in the meantime, he says he’s asked for police protection and hasn’t got it. There’s no stake-out here.”

  “We’re rushed, Ballard. You know that. We’re doing the best we can.”

  ‘Aren’t you going to send a stake-out?”

  His voice was rasping. He was a man pushed. “Dammit, Mike—are you telling me my job?”

  “No, sir. Simply confirming a report”

  “Of course we’re sending protection. As soon as we can. We have a schedule, Ballard.”

  “I hope these hoods are on the same schedule—”

  “Damn it, Ballard. I’ll take care of it. Now, why don’t you get back to work?”

  “I think I’ll just stay here until your stake-out shows up, Neal. Okay?”

  He didn’t speak. He just slammed down the receiver. I hung up, too.

  “You’re going to stay?” The Greek leaned forward, showing a little color in his face.

  “Why not? As long as your liquor holds out, I couldn’t do better.”

  “Them punks swore they’d be here today. They warned me not to call the police. If I don’t pay, they wreck my place.” His fearful gaze moved across his huge, framed paintings, the deep, tinted mirrors, the expensive white gleam of his tables, the glowing polish of his bar. “How can this happen, Ballard?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we’ll find out.”

  He offered to furnish me with more bourbon, but I told him I could exist on coffee. “After all, Greek” I told him, “I’m on duty. A cop shouldn’t drink on duty.”

  At four the telephone rang. It was for Yerrgsted. His office was calling. He had not reported in today and several matters required his attention and signature.

  He laughed into the phone. “The hell with you. I’m with Moses and the Greek, and about to witness the parting of the Red Sea, and I wouldn’t miss this for a million kronen.” He let the receiver strike its cradle loudly.

  It had never occurred to me before that a bar quieted down so completely between four and five o’clock. The afternoon breaks are over, and the before dinner drinking has yet to begin. The bartender was alone, polishing glasses. Only one waiter was on duty and he was reading a newspaper near the kitchen doors.

  We three—Doc, The Greek and I—sat in the booth, none of us saying much.

  I was on my second pot of coffee. I had put sugar in my cup and was reaching for the cream when the Greek coughed. There was nothing spectacular or new about this signal, but it was effective. He got up, pushing back in his chair, staring toward the front door.

  The boys had arrived for their protection money.

  I sat there, waiting, until they’d had plenty of time to get well inside the thick doors. I found myself sweating.

  I glanced at Doc. He took a deep, long pull at his whiskey, the ice clinking in his glass. I had never seen him look calmer.

  I put the cream pitcher on the tabletop, slid my hand under my coat to ease the Police Positive from its shoulder holster.

  The gun was in my hand when I stepped out of the booth.

  There were two of them, both with hands covering guns in jacket pockets. The Greek was trembling and looked as if he were about to fall.

  I saw the faces of the hoods. They were wild, desperate, as if they were either hopped up, or expected resistance. Their consciences were on their faces. I could have stopped the show by pressing the trigger of the Police Positive—I wanted to do it for the Greek and found my finger frozen.

  There were only two of them, but one was Jerry Marlowe.

  17

  These was no sound in that dim room except the clink of ice in Doc Yerrgsted’s glass. Doc kept swirling the cubes. A moment ago the Greek had been panting, but abruptly he was silent, as if he had stopped breathing at all. The whisper of drying cloth on goblets as the bartender worked behind the bar was silenced.

  I stood staring at Jerry Marlowe. I don’t know what went through my mind—perhaps nothing at all—perhaps a last faint fleeting thought that I was a fool to wait. I had learned the fast hard facts about Jerry from the men in the know—men he had dealt with over the past years. The gamblers, the racketeers. I had learned something from Jerry himself when he wanted to fight me beside Tom Flynn’s pool. But, perhaps, far down in
my mind, where I could not instantly reach it, was the thought of Carolyn.

  I tried to press that trigger and could not do it.

  Jerry faced me squarely across the room. The tables gleamed whitely beside him, the indirect lighting put his face in shadow, but I could see his eyes as though we stood in metallic sunlight, and his eyes were raging, partly with dope, partly with hatred.

  The hood with him moved to one side, drawing his gun, and my finger tightened then without hesitation.

  He fired first—and missed. I held my gun steady, pressing the trigger coldly, knowing I would not miss, and I didn’t. I had been a cop too long, and I had long ago forgotten to be afraid of punks like him. I could hit a man like him as I could drill a dummy on a police range. And that was all I did.

  The hood was moving forward. The impact of the bullet stopped him, turned him slightly, knocked him off balance. But he was on the needle, sure of himself and his gun. He took two long steps toward me before he knew he was dead. Then he listed slightly, sagged in the knees, toppled against a table and sprawled on the floor. He did not move.

  I jerked my gaze up to Jerry. A professional hood would have thrown in the rag right there, called it quits. A pro knows when to work and when to call it a day. But Jerry was no pro. Not yet

  He had pulled his gun free from his jacket pocket. I yelled at him as he fired. They must have had some sort of plan, because the bright, sick, lemon-colored flame from his gun ignored me completely—I doubt Jerry had really even seen me—he aimed at the Greek.

  Spyrous Papolous was knocked against the gleaming bar. Twenty-four years ago he had come here to keep a date with this bullet. The Greek was a courageous gentleman. He grabbed at the wound in his chest, collapsed, but did not emit a sound. I wasted a full moment, staring in horror at the little man crumpled on the floor-gaudy shirt, sleeve garters and bald spot like a monk’s cap.

  When I recovered, Jerry had spun around and was racing toward the doors. An early five-o’clock drinker had pushed through those doors, unaware of the excitement. Three gunshots would be muffled outside the Greek’s air-conditioned, thick-walled saloon. They would not sound real. Whoever heard of gunfire in the Greek’s place?

  But he was inside the door, and when he saw what was happening, he turned to stone. He stepped away from the thick glass doors, standing pressed against the wall, not even breathing.

  Jerry snagged the door before its oil pressure allowed it to close. He swivel-hipped between door and jamb, on his way to the street.

  I had a split second to shoot him in the back and did not. I went between the tables, leaping over the fallen body of the hood. As I slammed through the door, I heard a patrolman’s shrill whistle from across Lafayette Street.

  Jerry and his friend had parked a Jaguar in the reserved zone directly in front of the Greek’s sidewalk awning. There was a black-haired girl at the wheel of the Jag. I saw her reach over, open the door for Jerry.

  The uniformed cop was racing across the street, blasting away at his whistle. Cars had bucked to a stop both ways, and he came running through the snag-toothed path they cleared.

  Jerry slid into the Jag, half crouching, bringing his gun up to fire at the cop in the street.

  The cop had not yet thought of his gun. His hand stabbed down to his belted holster.

  I said, “Jerry—” as I fired.

  My voice reached him. He was turning his head as my gun exploded. He was looking over his shoulder at me when my bullet ripped into him. At that range, I couldn’t have missed, any more than Jerry could have missed the cop in the street.

  Jerry’s body was thrown on top of the girl in the Jag. She began to scream, trying to fight her way out from under him.

  A police car skidded into the curb behind the Jag. The black-haired girl turned, saw the cruiser. She stopped trying to push Jerry’s body from her and fought at the gears. All she could think of now was that she had to get out of there.

  Ernie Gault leaped from one side of the black police Plymouth, a uniformed cop jumped out the other side. The two uniformed patrolmen converged on the Jag, grabbing at the girl, wresting her hands from the gear lever. One of them reached over her and twisted off the ignition key.

  In the silence the girl went insane with her screaming. As one of the patrolmen put his shoulder under Jerry, lifting him, she began to fight, scratching and striking at anything in reach. As she leaped up in the seat of the Jag I saw she was wearing a baggy sweater and slim jims and knew where I had seen her before.

  I walked slowly to the curb. Ernie was the first to notice I was there.

  “I got here as soon as I could, Mike. You got to believe that.”

  “Sure,” I said. I was staring at Jerry’s black-haired chick. It was Jackie Palmer, the girl on the air mattress, the babe who painted her toenails in Carolyn’s sunroom.

  “My God.” Ernie Gault’s whisper was shocked, awed. “This is the dame that was in Climonte’s store the day he was killed.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “And very likely the same two boys were with her that day, too. Only we’ll never know unless we can make her tell us.”

  Ernie watched her fighting the cops, cursing them, spitting into their faces.

  “We’ll make her talk this time,” he said. “We can make her talk all we want to.”

  He moved around the Jag. The two young cops were in trouble trying to quiet the black-haired Palmer chick. They were trying to be halfway gentle with her, and she was taking advantage of it. When they pulled her out of the car, she began kicking at them, aiming her pointed toes at masculine vital spots. Yelling, screaming, cursing and kicking, she almost spun free.

  As she turned around, she came full face to Ernie, and for the first time I saw Ernie Gault forget to be the mild little gentleman.

  He said, “Shut up, you bitch,” and when Jackie screamed at him, he clipped her across the jaw, neatly, precisely and expertly.

  Things quieted down then. Jackie’s eyes rolled upward in their sockets and she sagged, stunned, out cold.

  18

  By the time Ernie and I got to the headquarters interrogation room, the black-haired chick was alive and kicking again. There was one chair in the room and they told her over and over to sit in it. But she was everywhere, all over that room, when we got there. Two detectives, a uniformed cop and a matron were making efforts to control her. The matron was present so there could never be any kick-back on what happened to Jackie Palmer during the questioning. She seemed more interested than effective. Neal Burgess had been summoned from his home and leaned against a wall, looking ill.

  The girl was raging around the room, snarling and cursing, when Ernie and I came in.

  “Stupid bastards,” she screamed. “All of you. I want to get out of here! Do you hear me? I want to get out of here right now. You can’t keep me here. I’m afraid of this place.”

  She thrust her splayed fingers into her wildly disheveled hair, yanking at it.

  “What kind of deal is this, Ballard? Ernie?” Neal stared at us.

  “She’s hopped up,” Ernie said. “She’s on the needle.”

  “You lie!” the girl screamed. “That’s another rotten filthy lie. You wait till my people get through with you dirty rotten liars.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Just wait.”

  At the sound of my voice, the girl stopped, tense. Her hands were knotted in her hair. Her shoulders were straight and she poised a moment on her toes.

  She turned slowly, looking up at me.

  “You know me, Ballard,” she said.

  “I know you.”

  “You better tell that to these flunkeys, these overpaid garbage men.”

  “What do you want me to tell them?”

  She breathed rapidly, her lips parted. “You better tell them who I am. You better tell them what my friends are going to do to them.”

  “Maybe you’d better tell them, Jackie”

  “What’s the matter with you?” she screamed. “You
know they can’t keep me here in this dirty place. You know I’m a friend of Morgan Carmichael’s. I’m a friend of his father’s, too. And my own father will fix all of you. And if he can’t do it, he’ll get Fred Carmichael to do it. You can’t keep me in this vile place. I’m afraid in this place.”

  This chick didn’t look afraid. She looked more vicious than frightened. Her hands were clenched into tense claws. Her mouth was twisted and rouge was streaked across her cheek where she had dragged her hand. The pupils of her eyes were pinpoints and even when she glared at me her eyes did not really focus.

  “You better help me, Ballard.” Her voice rose into a keening wail. “They killed Jerry. And now they’re trying to keep me in this place. Mr. Fred Carmichael and Mayor Bibb—they’re going to break all these dirty men— and they’ll get you, too, if you don’t help me.”

  “Sure.” I took a step toward her. “The Mayor and Fred Carmichael. They’re going to fix the Greek, too, huh?”

  She shook her head wildly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about”

  I took another step. She turned her head, looking around as if trying to find a place to run. “Sit down, Jackie,” I said.

  She shook her head, but took a backward step, sat down hard on the straight chair.

  “Damn you. They’ll fix you, too, Ballard.”

  “You let me worry about that, Jackie. Right now I’m worried about a little Greek. Never did a soul a bad thing in his life. He may be bleeding to death. Maybe he’s dead already.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “You were there, baby. You would have done it if you could have. And for what? For kicks?”

  “I don’t know anything about it. I want to get out of here. I’m no tramp you people can push around. I know people and I know what they can do to you.”

  “Sure, you know everybody, Jackie. Only they aren’t going to help you. When this needle wears off, you won’t care about the people you know. The only soul you’ll really give a damn about is the one who can give you a fix—and I’ll tell you now when you’re going to get that next fix, baby. You want to know when?”