by Anthology
[Illustration]
XI
Somebody somewhere was wishing all the world "a plague on both your houses," and making it stick. Confusion is fun in a comedy--but in the pilot of a plane or an executive of a nation....
Back in his room, Malone put on a fresh shirt, checked the .44 Magnum in his shoulder holster, changed jackets, adjusted his hat to the proper angle, and vanished.
He had, he'd realized, exactly one definite lead. And now he was going to follow up on it. The Government was apparently falling to pieces; so was business and so was the Mafia. Nobody Malone had heard of had gained anything. Except Mike Sand and his truckers. They'd beaten the Mafia, at least.
Sand was worth a chat. Malone had a way to get in to see him, but he had to work fast. Otherwise Sand would very possibly know what Malone was trying to do. And that might easily be dangerous.
He had made his appearance in the darkness beneath one of the bridges at the southwest side of Central Park, in New York. It was hardly Malone's idea of perfect comfort, but it did mean safety; there was very seldom anyone around after dark, and the shadows were thick enough so that his "appearance" would only mean, to the improbable passerby, that he had stepped out into the light.
Now he strolled quietly over to Central Park West, and flagged a taxi heading downtown. He'd expected to run into one of the roving muggers who still made the Park a trap for the unwary--he'd almost looked forward to it, in a way--but nobody appeared. It was unusual, but he didn't have time to wonder about it.
The headquarters for the National Brotherhood of Truckers was east of Greenwich Village, on First Avenue, so Malone had plenty of time to think things out while the cab wended its laborious southeast way. After a few minutes he realized that he would have even more time to think than he'd planned on.
"Lots of traffic for this time of night," he volunteered.
The cabbie, a fiftyish man with a bald, wrinkled head and surprisingly bright blue eyes, nodded without turning his head. "Maybe you think this is bad," he said. "You would not recognize the place an hour earlier, friend. During the real rush hour, I mean. Things are what they call meshuggah, friend. It means crazy."
"How come?" Malone said.
"The subway is on strike since last week," the cabbie said. "The buses are also on strike. This means that everybody is using a car. They can make it faster if they wish to walk, but they use a car. It does not help matters, believe me."
"I can see that," Malone murmured.
"And the cops are not doing much good either," the cabbie went on, "since they went on strike sometime last Tuesday."
Malone nodded, and then did a double-take. "Cops?" he said. "On strike? But that's illegal. They could be arrested."
"You can be funny," the cabbie said. "I am too sad to be funny."
"But--"
"Unless you are from Rhode Island," the cabbie said, "or even farther away, you are deaf, dumb and blind. Everybody in New York knows what is going on by this time. I admit that it is not in the newspapers, but the newspapers do not tell the truth since, as I remember it, the City Council election of 1924, and then it is an accident, due to the major's best friend working in the printing plants."
"But cops can't go on strike," Malone said plaintively.
"This," the cabbie said in a judicious tone, "is true. But they do not give out any parking tickets any more, or any traffic citations either. They are working on bigger things, they say, and besides all this there are not so many cops on the force now. They are spread very thin."
Malone could see what was coming. "Arrests of policemen," he said, "and resignations."
"And investigations," the cabbie said. "Mayor Amalfi is a good Joe and does not want anything in the papers until a real strike comes along, but the word gets out anyhow, as it always does."
"Makes driving tough," Malone said.
"People can make better time on their hands and knees," the cabbie said, "with the cops pulling a strike. They concentrate on big items now, and you can even smoke in the subways if you can find a subway that is running."
Malone stopped to think how much of the city's income depended on parking tickets and small fines, and realized that a "strike" like the one the police were pulling might be very effective indeed. And, unlike the participants in the Boston Police Strike of sixty-odd years before, these cops would have public sentiment on their side--since they were keeping actual crime down.
"How long do they think it's going to last?" Malone said.
"It can be over tomorrow," the cabbie said, "but this is not generally believed in the most influential quarters. Mayor Amalfi and the new Commissioner try to straighten things out all day long, but the way things go straightening them out does no good. Something big is in the wind, friend. I--"
* * * * *
The cab, on Second Avenue and Seventeenth Street, stopped for a traffic light. Malone felt an itch in the back of his mind, as if his prescience were trying to warn him of something; he'd felt it for a little while, he realized, but only now could he pay attention to it.
The door on the driver's side opened suddenly, and so did the door next to Malone. Two young men, obviously in their early twenties, were standing in the openings, holding guns that were plainly intended for immediate use.
The one next to the driver said, in a flat voice: "Don't nobody get wise. That way nobody gets hurt. Give us--"
That was as far as he got.
When the rear door had opened, Malone had had a full second to prepare himself, which was plenty of time. The message from his precognitive powers had come along just in time.
The second gunman thrust his gun into the cab. He seemed almost to be handing it to Malone politely, and this effect was spoiled only by Malone's twist of the gunman's wrist, which must have felt as if he'd put his hand into a loop tied to the axle of a high-speed centrifuge. The gunman let go of the gun and Malone, spurning it, let it drop.
He didn't need it. His other hand had gone into his coat and come out again with the .44 Magnum.
The thug at the front of the car had barely realized what was happening by the time it was all over. Automatic reflexes turned him away from the driver and toward the source of danger, his gun pointing toward Malone. But the reflexes gave out as he found himself staring down a rifled steel tube which, though hardly more than seven-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, must have looked as though a high-speed locomotive might come roaring out of it at any second.
Malone hardly needed to bark: "Drop it!" The revolver hit the seat next to the cabbie.
"Driver," Malone said in a conversational voice, "can you handle a gun?"
"Why, it is better than even that I still can," the cabbie said. "I am in the business myself many years ago, before I see the error of my ways and buy a taxi with the profits I make. It is a high-pay business," he went on, "but very insecure."
The cabbie scooped up the weapon by his side, flipped out the cylinder expertly to check the cartridges, flipped it back in and centered the muzzle on the gunman who'd dropped the revolver.
"It is more than thirty years since I use one of these," he said gently, "but I do not forget how to pull the trigger, and at this range I can hardly miss."
Malone noticed vaguely that he was still holding hands with the second gunman, and that this one was trying to struggle free. Malone shrugged and eased off a bit, at the same time shifting his own aim. The .44 Magnum now pointed at gunman number two, and the cabbie was aiming at gunman number one. The tableau was silent for some seconds.
"Now," Malone said at last, "we wait. Driver, if you would sort of lean against your horn button, we might be able to speed things up a little. The light has turned green."
"The local constables," the cabbie said, "do not bother with stalled cars in traffic these days."
"But," Malone pointed out, "I have a hunch no cop could resist a taxi which is not only stalled and blocking traffic but is also blatting its horn continuously. Strike or no strike," he fin
ished sententiously, "there are things beyond the power of man to ignore."
"Friend," the cabbie said, "you convince me. It is a good move." He sagged slightly against the horn button, keeping the gun centered at all times on the man before him.
The horn began to wail horribly.
The first gunman swallowed nervously. "Hey, now, listen," he said, shouting slightly above the horn. "This wasn't anything. Just a gag, see? A little gag. We was playing a joke. On a friend."
The driver addressed Malone. "Do you ever see either of these boys before?"
"Never," Malone said.
"Nor do I," the cabbie said. He eyed the gunman. "We are not your friend," he said. "Either of us."
"No, no," the gunman said. "Not you. This friend, he ... uh ... owns a taxi, and we thought this was it. It was kind of a joke, see? A friendly joke, that's all. Believe me, the gun's not even loaded. Both of them aren't. Phony bullets, honest. Believe me?"
"Why, naturally I believe you," the cabbie said politely. "I never doubt the word of a stranger, especially such an honest-appearing stranger as you seem to be. And since the gun is loaded with false bullets, as you say, all you have to do is reach over and take it away from me."
There was a short silence.
"A joke," the gunman said feebly. "Honest, just a joke."
"We believe you," Malone assured him grandly. "As a matter of fact, we appreciate the joke so much that we want you to tell it to a panel of twelve citizens, a judge and a couple of lawyers, so they can appreciate it, too. They get little fun out of life and your joke may give them a few moments of happiness. Why hide your light under an alibi?"
The horn continued its dismal wail for a few seconds more before two patrolmen and a sergeant came up on horses. It took somewhat more time than that for Malone to convince the sergeant that he didn't have time to go down to the station to prefer charges. He showed his identification and the police were suitably impressed.
"Lock 'em up for violating the Sullivan Law," he said. "I'm sure they don't have licenses for these lovely little guns of theirs."
"Probably not," the sergeant agreed. "There's been an awful lot of this kind of thing going on lately. But here's an idea: the cabbie here can come on with us."
The top of the cabbie's head turned pale. "That," he said, "is the trouble with being a law-abiding citizen such as I have been for upwards of thirty years. Because I do not want to lose twenty dollars to these young strangers, I lose twenty dollars' worth of time in a precinct station, the air of which is very bad for my asthma."
Malone, taking the hint, dug a twenty out of his pockets, and then added another to it, remembering how much he had spent in Las Vegas, where his money funneled slowly into the pockets of Primo Palveri. The cabbie took the money with haste and politeness and stowed it away.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I am now prepared to spend the entire night signing affidavits, if enough affidavits can be dug up." He looked pleased.
"Mr. Malone," the sergeant said wearily, "people just don't realize what's going on in this town. We never did have half enough cops, and now, with so many men resigning and getting arrested and suspended, we haven't got a quarter enough. People think this strike business is funny, but if we spent any time fiddling around with traffic and parking tickets, we'd never have time to stop even crimes like this, let alone the big jobs. As it is, though, there haven't been a lot of big ones. Every hood in the city's out to make a couple of bucks--but that's it so far, thank God."
Malone nodded. "How about the FBI?" he said. "Want them to come in and help?"
"Mr. Malone," the sergeant said, "the City of New York can take very good care of itself, without outside interference."
Some day, Malone told himself, good old New York City was going to secede from the Union and form a new country entirely. Then it would have a war with New Jersey and probably be wiped right off the map.
Viewing the traffic around him as he hunted for another cab, he wasn't at all sure that that was a bad idea. He began to wish vaguely that he had borrowed one of the policemen's horses.
* * * * *
Malone wasn't in the least worried about arriving at Mike Sand's office late. In the first place, Sand was notorious for sleeping late and working late to make up for it. His work schedule was somewhere around forty-five degrees out of phase with the rest of the world, which made it just about average for the National Brotherhood of Truckers. It had never agitated for a nine-to-five work day. A man driving a truck, after all, worked all sorts of odd hours--and the union officials did the same, maybe just to prove that they were all good truckers at heart.
The sign over the door read:
National Headquarters NATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TRUCKERS Welcome, Brother
Malone pushed at the door and it swung open, revealing a rather dingy-looking foyer. More Good Old Truckers At Heart, he told himself. Mike Sand owned a quasi-palatial mansion in Puerto Rico for winter use, and a two-floor, completely air-conditioned apartment on Fifth Avenue for summer use. But the Headquarters Building looked dingy enough to make truckers conscience-stricken about paying back dues.
Behind the reception desk there was a man whose face was the approximate shape and color of a slightly used waffle. He looked up from his crossword puzzle as Malone came in, apparently trying to decide whether or not this new visitor should be greeted with: "Welcome, Brother!"
Taking pity on his indecision, Malone strode to the desk and said: "Tell Mike Sand he has a visitor."
The waffle-faced man blinked. "Mr. Sand is busy right now," he said. "Who wants to talk to him?"
Malone tried to look steely-eyed and tough. "You pick up the intercom," he said, "and you tell Sand there's a man out here who's in the cloak-and-suit business."
"The what?"
"Tell him this man is worried about a recent shipment of buttons," Malone went on.
"Mister," the waffle-faced man said, "you're nuts."
"So I'm nuts," Malone said. "Make the call."
It was put through. After a few minutes of earnest conversation the man turned to look at Malone again, dizzied wonder in his eyes. "Mr. Sand says go right up," he told the FBI Agent in a shocked voice. "Elevator to the third floor."
Malone went over to the elevator, stepped in and pressed the third-floor button. As the doors closed, the familiar itch of precognition began to assail him again. This time he had nothing else to distract him. He paid very close attention to it as he was carried slowly and creakily upward.
He looked up. There was an escape-hatch in the top of the car. Standing on tiptoe, he managed to lift it aside, grasp the edges of the resulting hole and pull himself up through the hole to the top of the car. He looked back down, memorizing the elevator, and then pulled the hatch shut again. There was a small peephole in it, and Malone put his eye to it and waited.
About twenty seconds later, the car stopped and the doors opened. A little more time passed, and then a gun, closely followed by a man, edged around the door frame.
"What the hell," the man said. "The car's empty!"
Another voice said: "Let's cover the stairway."
Two pairs of footsteps receded rapidly down the hall. Malone, gun in hand, teleported himself back to the previously memorized elevator, tiptoed to the door and looked out. The two men were standing at the far end of the hall, posted at either side of the stairwell and obviously waiting for him to come on up.
Instead, he tiptoed out of the elevator hefting his gun, and came up silently behind the pair. When he was within ten feet he stopped and said, very politely: "Drop the guns, boys."
The guns thudded to the floor and the two men turned round.
"All right," Malone said, smiling into their astonished faces. "Now, let's go on and see Mr. Sand."
[Illustration]
He picked up the guns with his free hand and put them into his coat pockets. Together, the three men went down toward the lighted office at the far end of the hall.
"Open it," Mal
one said as they came to the door. He followed them into the office. Behind a battered, worm-eaten desk in a dingy room sat a very surprised-looking Mike Sand.
He was only about five feet six, but he looked as if weighed over two hundred pounds. He had huge shoulders and a thick neck, and his face was sleepy-looking. He seemed to have lost a lot of fights in his long career; Sand, Malone reflected, was nearing fifty now, and he was beginning to look his age. His short hair, once black, was turning to iron-gray.
He didn't say anything. Malone smiled at him pleasantly. "These boys were carrying deadly weapons," he told Sand in a polite voice. "That's hardly the way to treat a brother." His precognitive warning system wasn't ringing any alarm bells, but he kept his gun trained on the pair of thugs as he walked over to Mike Sand's desk and took the two extra revolvers from his pocket. "You'd better keep these, Sand," he said. "Your boys don't know how to handle them."
Sand grinned sourly, pulled open a desk drawer and swept the guns into it with one motion of his ham-like hand. He didn't look at Malone. "You guys better go downstairs and keep Jerry company," he said. "You can do crossword puzzles together."
"Now, Mike, we--" one of them began.
Mike Sand snorted. "Go on," he said. "Scram."
"But he was supposed to be in the elevator, and we--"
"Scram," Sand said. It sounded like a curse. The two men got out. "Like apes in the trees," Sand said heavily. "Ask for bright boys and what do you get? Everything," he went on dismally, "is going to hell."
* * * * *
That line, Malone reflected, was beginning to have all the persistence of a bass-bourdon. It droned its melancholy way through anything and everything else. He signed deeply, thought about a cigar and lit a cigarette instead. It tasted awful. "About those buttons--" he said.
"I got nothing to do with buttons," Sand said.
"You do with these," Malone said. "A shipment of buttons from the Nevada desert. You grabbed them from Palveri."
"I got nothing to do with it," Sand said.
Malone looked around and found a chair and an ashtray. He grabbed one and sat down in the other. "I'm not from Castelnuovo," he said. "Or Palveri, or any of the Mafia boys. If I were, you'd know it fast enough."