The sound of an engine starting up in the recesses of the warehouse reverberated and Manlis turned to see a cement truck come rumbling down a platform, its huge mixer churning.
“You’re going first class, Lips,” Big Boy said, working his voice up above the grinding of the cement mixer, patting Manlis’s shoulder. “But before you go, let’s get you presentable . . . you’re dirty, Lips! You need a bath.”
Lips knew what that meant and it chilled him. “Not the bath, Big Boy! Not the bath . . .”
And Flattop and Itchy and the others moved toward him; they were on him, and though he struggled, though he squirmed, Lips felt himself lifted, carried, and set down upright inside something, something wooden, like a coffin. A crate—a wooden crate . . .
The truck rumbled into position and halted; the mixer tipped—and as Lips knew it would, cement began to splatter down on him, more a shower than a bath, really. The cement was thick, pouring out like ice cream; it was cold like ice cream.
His mind flashed on hot afternoons on the West Side; kids splashing in the spray of a fire hydrant. You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream.
Lips Manlis began to scream.
Breathless was watching; something close to pity was in her eyes. Finally he’d evoked an emotion other than contempt in her. He laughed, and screamed, and the men above smiled down on him.
Pat had followed the “cops” in the blue sedan to the warehouse, and along the way filled Tracy in.
“Radio for some real cops to check out the Club Ritz,” Tracy said. “You stick with that car and let me know where you land. And then I’ll be right there.”
Well, they’d landed and Patton circled around back of the dockside warehouse; it was in a largely unlit industrial district near the riverfront and he had to move carefully and slowly, so as not to disturb any rubbish cans or send any cats yowling into the night.
Wrist radio to his lips, he whispered his location to Sam Catchem.
“We’ll be right there,” Catchem’s voice said. “Don’t make a move till you got backup, boy.”
“Don’t worry,” Patton said.
But Patton’s curiosity got the better of him. He found a window he could get in and he was raising it carefully, hoping Tracy would be pleased with his initiative, not irritated with him, and the world caved in on him.
His derby had been crushed, and to a lesser degree so had his skull; but Patton didn’t know that. He lay crumpled by the trash cans, no more conscious than the cans were.
Itchy and Flattop were nailing the lid on the wooden crate. The sound of it was like gunshots.
“You’re sure that thing’s airtight?” Big Boy said. “If the water gets in, that cement won’t set, and then Lips’ll come floating back up to haunt us.”
“Sure I’m sure, boss,” Itchy said, digging his fingernails into the back of his neck. “The water ain’t gettin’ in, and Lips ain’t gettin’ out!”
Itchy’s weasellike laugh echoed in the massive warehouse.
The sound of it made Breathless shudder; she was cowering over by the car, trying to disappear into the dark fur she was swaddled in. She didn’t look so brave, or so cocky, or so bored, now.
Big Boy walked over to her. “Wonderin’ why you’re here?”
She nodded; tried to keep her chin up and managed, but tremblingly.
“Everything that Manlis owned is mine now,” Big Boy said. “Understood? Everything.”
She smiled slowly. Then she nodded. “Understood.”
He pawed the fur she was wearing. “What is this, some kind of dyed dog?” He pulled it off her shoulders contemptuously. “My women wear mink, or they wear nothin’.”
“As it happens,” she said sultrily, her confidence back, “I look good either way.”
Big Boy smiled. He liked that. He dropped a few walnut shells into his topcoat pocket and offered her his arm regally and she took it.
They were heading for Big Boy’s sedan when from the dark recesses of the warehouse, Mumbles appeared. The sleepy-looking blond hoodlum approached Big Boy deferentially.
“Trazpalwzsnooppinrowdoutther,” Mumbles said.
“What did he say?” Itchy asked.
“Did you take care of him?” Big Boy asked Mumbles, ignoring Itchy’s question.
Mumbles nodded.
“Kill him?” Big Boy asked.
Mumbles shook his head no.
Mumbles murmured a few more words of explanation, which no one but Big Boy understood.
Then there was silence.
Big Boy crushed a walnut in one huge fist; the sound cracked in the room, and the shells fell to the floor as Big Boy popped the nuts in his mouth and began to chew fiercely. He glanced down at the shells, considering picking them up, when he noticed a spatter of cement on his shoe. He pointed to it absently and Mumbles said, “Surboss,” knelt and wiped the shoe off with his handkerchief.
Meanwhile, Flattop and Itchy were in the process of wrapping the cement-packed crate in heavy chains.
Big Boy patted Mumbles on the head, as if the little hoodlum were a much-loved pooch, then again began moving toward his own parked sedan. He turned to Itchy. “Take a look around outside, ’fore we fade.”
Itchy nodded dutifully and walked into the darkness of the warehouse.
Big Boy put a paternal hand on Flattop’s shoulder. “You and Itchy can come back in the launch in a day or so,” he told the gunman, “and hook onto those chains and take Lips underwater water-skiin’. Then give him a burial at sea.”
“Why not do it now?” one of the fake cops asked. “All of this activity’s gonna flush Tracy outta his rathole,” Big Boy said. “His dim-bulb assistant’s outside right now, sleeping with the garbage. Best, tonight, we all go about our own business.”
Another of the fake cops, who seemed confused by all this, pointed a thumb at the wood-and-cement coffin, which by now was wrapped up in more chains than Houdini doing a death-defying stunt. “What are you gonna do with him in the meantime?”
“Keep him in cold storage,” Big Boy said matter-of-factly.
Flattop laughed at that, and his laugh was like high-pitched obnoxious tommy-gun fire. The fake cops exchanged uneasy, bewildered glances.
“You boys from outta town don’t quite know how I do things,” Big Boy said understandingly. “Let’s just say I don’t like people who cross me. Like Lips, there. You cross me, the floor can drop right out under ya. It’s a good object lesson for you new fellas.”
Big Boy withdrew another walnut, cracked it, and looked toward Mumbles, who was standing by a support beam. The gangster nodded at the sulky blond hoodlum, who released a concealed lever and a trapdoor beneath the wooden crate opened and dropped the late Lips Manlis, cement coffin and all, twenty feet into the dark river, where it was deep enough to conceal the cargo, but not so deep that it couldn’t be retrieved.
The splash jumped up through the open trapdoor, and the fake cops jumped back as the water dampened the floor, diluting some of the wet-cement spillage.
“Clean up and get out,” Big Boy told the stunned fake cops, who were taking all this in with popping eyes. “Then cover up that trapdoor with crates.”
Itchy reappeared like a ghost materializing. “Coast is clear now, boss,” he said, tucking his silenced revolver back under his dark topcoat somewhere. “I, uh . . . ran into a beat cop who was lookin’ a little too interested.”
Big Boy’s eyebrows knit. “Yeah?”
Itchy paled suddenly. “Had to plug ’im, boss.”
Big Boy’s face darkened and he drew back his hand as if to slap the man; but then he only patted Itchy on the face, almost affectionately.
“You mean well,” he said benevolently. “But killin’ cops ain’t smart.”
Itchy gestured nervously. “The body’s out of sight. Stowed it behind some barrels out back.”
“There’s a dead cop out there?” one of the fake cops said, eyes wide. His two brothers in blue were similarly wide-eyed.
<
br /> “Yeah, a dead cop,” Itchy sneered, as if to say, Wanna make somethin’ of it?
“When you’re done in here,” Big Boy told the uniformed trio, “throw the late John Law over the side of the dock. Nevermind the cement overcoat. Shake a leg.”
Another of the “cops” said, “What if his body floats up on shore someplace?”
“Then,” Big Boy said, tossing more walnuts into his mouth, “it’ll give that flatfoot Tracy something to think about.”
And Big Boy’s laughter echoed through the warehouse as he moved with Breathless toward his dark sedan, with Flattop, Mumbles, and Itchy trailing after him, the grotesque courtiers of a grotesque king.
They were sitting in the booth Tess had saved, Tracy and Tess on one side, and the Kid—after reluctantly washing his face and hands in the john, at Tracy’s insistence—on the other. The trio had the place to themselves—just them and the good-natured, heavyset counterman/manager/chef, Mike, who was at work behind the shiny counter.
Tracy was amused and touched by the way the Kid was polishing off Mike’s Blue Plate Special. Amused because the boy’s table manners were right out of Genghis Khan’s Book of Etiquette; and touched to see the pitiful eagerness the hungry child brought to the task.
He could tell Tess felt the same way. She’d started to comment on the Kid’s uncouth approach—and Tracy couldn’t blame her: he’d never seen anybody eat mashed potatoes with his hands before—but she’d softened. She seemed sad, barely poking at her own Blue Plate Special. Tracy wasn’t doing much better with his chili.
“What do you call this stuff?” the Kid asked.
“Meat loaf,” Tracy said.
“It’s kinda like fancy hamburger, ain’t it?”
“Isn’t it,” Tess corrected gently.
The boy nodded at her, as if she were merely agreeing with him. He took a big swig of milk and thereafter wore a moist white mustache.
“You got a name, junior?” Tracy asked. The detective was breaking up crackers to drop in his chili; with what was going on across from him, it was a lapse he figured Tess would grant him.
“Don’t have one, ’xactly,” he said, unconcerned. He was carving up his meat loaf with his fork and spearing pieces one at at a time, more or less following Tess’s example.
“So what do they call you?” Tracy asked.
“ ‘Kid,’ ” he said, shrugging. “Just ‘Kid.’ ”
“What’s the name your mother and father gave you?”
The Kid snorted a laugh. “What mother and father?”
“Do you mean you have no mother or father?” Tess asked, ever gentle.
“If I did,” he said, “I never knew ’em.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did they pass away?”
“More like passed through,” he said, and gulped some more milk. “I don’t remember ever being with nobody but Steve.”
“Why didn’t you leave that brute?” Tess asked.
“I tried a few times,” he said. “But he catched me and beat me silly. Besides, bad as Steve was, I usually had some kinda roof over me, and food now and then.”
“But he beat you,” Tess said, incredulously.
“Sure,” the boy said. “But nobody else ever did. With Steve around, I was safe. And Steve hardly ever walloped me real bad, ’cause without me, where was his next meal comin’ from? A kid riding the rails needs somebody lookin’ after him.”
Tracy was studying the boy. “You feel bad about Steve going to jail?”
“No, sir. Not really. It was gettin’ worse lately. Steve was drinking heavy and that’s when he’d really whup me. So Steve can rot in blazes, far as I’m concerned. Excuse me, ma’am. Shouldn’ta cursed.”
Tess only smiled, in a melancholy way.
“What happens at this Juvenile Detention hall?” the boy asked.
“You’ll get square meals,” Tracy said, “and a bed and a roof and clean clothes and you’ll be in out of the cold.”
“Jail, you mean.”
“Not exactly,” Tracy said. “I’ll see what I can do for you. I’ll call the Welfare Department. The local orphanage isn’t a bad place.”
“Orphanage!”
“Settle down, son. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can get you in a nice foster home. I’ll pull some strings.”
“Well, I like travelin’ around.”
Tracy shook his head, no. “You need friends your age, and you need school.”
“School!”
“Sorry, pal. It’s the law.”
“Jeez. I was better off with Steve the Tramp.” He shook his head and went back to wolfing his meat loaf.
A few moments later, Tracy’s two-way spoke; it was Pat—he’d seen three uniformed cops go into the Club Ritz where Tracy had him staking out the place. Pat seemed suspicious, and it did sound a little kinky. Tracy told Pat to keep an eye on the situation, call for backup, and keep him posted.
“Jeez,” the boy said, looking at the two-way with big eyes, “that thing really is a radio.”
“Beats two tin cans and a string.” Tracy grinned.
The boy polished off his plate before either Tracy or Tess were half finished.
“Thanks, mister,” he said to Tracy. His manners extended that far, anyway. The boy’s eyes shifted from Tracy’s chili and then back to Tess’s Blue Plate Special, like a dog waiting for scraps.
“You still hungry?” Tracy said, amazed, lifting a spoon of chili.
“No, but the more I eat now, the less hungry I’ll be later.”
Tracy had a feeling the boy knew hunger intimately.
“How about some ice cream?” Tess asked.
“I had that once!” the Kid said.
“Ever hear the old expression,” Tracy asked. “You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream?”
“No,” the Kid said, “but I’ll scream, if you want me to. If that’ll do the trick.”
“Not necessary,” Tracy said. He called over to the counterman, saying, “Mike, fix this kid up with a couple of scoops of . . . what do you want, junior? They got vanilla and strawberry and chocolate.”
“Gee,” the boy said, pretending to ponder. “I can’t make up my mind. Maybe I oughta try a scoop of each one of them.”
Tracy smiled and nodded to Mike, who fixed the boy up.
Tracy was just starting a piece of apple pie when the Kid was scraping his spoon on the bottom of what had been a humongous bowl of ice cream. Despite this manful effort to get every last melted drop of his dessert, the boy finally looked full. Tess was sipping coffee.
“Are you guys married?” the Kid asked them.
“No,” Tess said, and looked down at her own piece of pie.
Tracy cleared his throat and looked at the boy sharply.
“What’s the matter, Tracy?” the Kid asked. “Did I touch a sore spot or somethin’?”
“First of all, it’s Mr. Tracy, or Detective Tracy—got that?”
“Yeah, yeah. Mr. Tracy. Detective Tracy.”
“Second of all, mind your own business,” Tracy advised, shifting in his seat.
Tess smiled faintly.
So did the Kid. His face wore memories of the food he’d just eaten—various shades of ice cream mingling with brown gravy smudges. His face looked like an abstract painting.
Tracy was about to introduce him to the world of napkins when Sam Catchem’s voice jumped out of the two-way.
“Tracy, something’s up down at the Southside Warehouse, on the riverfront. Better get down there.”
“What’s going on?”
“To tell you the truth, Tracy, we don’t exactly know. Pat called in and asked us to send some backup, ’cause he saw some suspicious lookin’ cops take Lips Manlis inside that warehouse . . .”
“I know all about that. I told him to call it in.”
“Well that’s fine, and he did, and we’re on our way over now—but when I try to check back in with Pat, I can’t raise him.”
“He may not be able
to respond without giving away his surveillance position.”
“Yeah, sure, but then we had a call from a uniform cop patrolling the area, who also saw suspicious vehicles heading into that warehouse, and now we can’t raise him, either.”
“I’m on my way,” Tracy said hurriedly, and slid out of the booth, tossing some dollar bills and coins on the table; both the Kid and Tess were looking at him widened.
“Got to go,” Tracy said.
“What about the eating machine?” Tess asked, nodding pointedly toward the boy.
“Next stop,” the boy said with glum sarcasm, “Juvenile Hall.”
“It’s awfully late for that,” Tess said. Her eyes beseeched Tracy to give the boy a reprieve.
“Take him to my place, then,” Tracy said impatiently. He put a key on the table. “I’ll arrange something with the orphanage tomorrow.” He was half out the door. “I’ll radio for a squad car to pick you two up.”
Tess blew him a kiss and Tracy blew her one back. The Kid made a face at such mush, even as he eyed the money Tracy left.
“Touch that,” Tess said without looking at the boy, “and I’ll break your arm.”
The boy made a disgusted face, but withdrew his hand.
“I don’t like dames,” he said.
“Good,” Tess said. “Neither do I.”
But Tracy was already out the door, where he walked quickly to his car, which he’d left at Mike’s earlier that day in anticipation of his dinner date with Tess. He wasn’t wearing a gun—normally, even off-duty he wore his shoulder holster—but it hadn’t seemed necessary for a trip to the Civic Opera House earlier this evening, a century ago.
He drove with one hand and reached over to pop the glove box with the other, grabbing the spare .38 within and slipping the gun into his topcoat pocket. Something at the back of his neck was tingling. Had Pat stumbled onto something big? If so, Tracy only hoped his zealous little partner would have sense enough to wait for the cavalry.
The industrial area along the riverfront was a maze of narrow streets, with the occasional pools of street-lamp light mere drops in a dark ocean. But Pat’s directions had been good, and Tracy saw the squad car parked in the alleyway where Pat said it would be, and pulled over himself, and walked toward the Front Street warehouses, one of which would bear the number Pat had given him. He had the gun in his hand in his topcoat pocket. The rain had never come tonight, but yesterday’s wetness remained.
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