The Triple Shot Box (Goodey's Last Stand, Not Sleeping Just Dead & Fighting Back): Three Gritty Crime Novels

by Charles Alverson

  “Mr. Caster.” It was the receptionist of Mickey’s building. She came out onto the sidewalk. “I think you’d better go. Walk east to the corner and circle around to the garage. You’ll be less conspicuous that way.”

  “But—” Harry began.

  “You’d better,” she insisted, still calmly. “The police are bound to have been called, and I shall call them myself in a moment.”

  Like obedient children, Harry and Sandra turned their backs on Ruby and moved to the sidewalk.

  “Mr. Caster,” the receptionist said again, and Harry looked at her quizzically. She glanced down at his hand, and Harry realized that he was still holding the pistol. Hurriedly, he jammed it back into his pocket.

  It was less than fifty yards to the corner, but to Harry and Sandra it seemed like a mile walked on a high wire. At any second they expected to be hailed from behind or headed off by the police. But neither happened, and once around on Sixty-Seventh Street, they stopped near a huge trash receptacle, and Sandra bound his neck with a handkerchief and arranged his coat and shirt so that a minimum of blood showed. His neck had stopped bleeding, but it felt raw and stung like a bad burn.

  “Do I look respectable?” Harry asked.

  “Don’t ask for the impossible.”

  At the parking garage an incurious attendant brought the rented car sliding down the curving ramp to the exit. “Oh, no,” he said when Harry tried to pay him. “Mr. Caster will take care of it. Mr. Caster always pays for his guests.”

  That’s what you think, buddy, Harry said to himself as he started the car.

  “Where are we going?” Sandra asked.

  “Where do you go when the party is over?” Harry asked. “Home.”

  35

  Rizzo was silent on the short ride home, and Injun didn’t dare to speak. When they got to the house, Rizzo jumped out of the car and strode inside, leaving Injun to tell the others what had happened.

  “Angie,” Rizzo called softly. When he got to the top of the stairs, he knew he had to look no further. The lock on Bobby’s door was smashed, and the open door was splintered in several places.

  Rizzo stood in the doorway and felt for the light switch. “Please don’t turn on the light, Carlo,” Angie said. Rizzo edged into the room. He could see her dark silhouette against the side window. As his eyes became accustomed to the dark, Rizzo saw that his wife was sitting on Bobby’s bed with something in her hands. It was Bobby’s hand-muscle builder which he had spent hours squeezing. She was holding it by one red handle, aimlessly twisting and turning it.

  “I broke the door open, Carlo,” she said. “With the hatchet. I’m afraid I made an awful mess of it.”

  “Angie,” Rizzo said, sitting on the bed beside her, “Bobby—”

  “Please don’t say anything, Carlo,” she murmured. “I know. I know. But don’t say it. We’ll talk about it later.”

  They sat in dark silence for a while, and then Rizzo spoke again. “I’m sorry, Angie. I can’t tell you how sorry. I never thought…”

  “I know. Carlo,” she said, putting her hand on his in the dark. “It’s not your fault.”

  They both knew she lied, but the words helped. Rizzo put his arm around his wife’s defeated shoulders.

  “I’ve got to go out again, baby,” he said, “for just a little while. I won’t be long.”

  “No,” said Angie firmly, “you don’t have to go. It’s okay.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After you left. Ruby called from Manhattan. I told him to kill Caster, kill both of them. You don’t have to go, Carlo. It’s all over. Stay with me, please.”

  Rizzo was silent. Ruby kill Caster? He wanted to believe it, but he couldn’t. At the same time, he hoped Ruby hadn’t succeeded. He wanted to kill Caster himself. Rizzo got up and put his hand on Angie’s shoulder.

  “It’s not that, Angie,” he lied. “It’s something else. I have to go.”

  “All right, Carlo,” she said. “Don’t be long; I need you.”

  “I won’t, Angie,” he said. Rizzo left her sitting in the darkness behind him. He didn’t hear her start to cry again.

  Downstairs, in front of the house, Rizzo spoke briefly with Pete, and a small wooden carton was taken from the garage and placed in the back of his car. After strong words to his men, Rizzo got back into his car and peeled away from the curb.

  Several minutes later, Rizzo pulled up at the curb in front of Harry Caster’s house. The house was dark, and he sat in the car staring at it and trying to summon up the intensity of hate he felt for its absent owner. A house was a poor substitute for a man.

  Rizzo got out of the car, opened the back door and took two gasoline-filled soda bottles with cotton wicks from the wooden carton on the floor of the car. He carried them carefully to a spot in the middle of Harry’s badly-kept front lawn some fifteen feet in front of the big picture window.

  Setting the bottles firmly on either side of his wide-spread legs, Rizzo stood looking into the bottomless depths of the big black window. In one corner, he could see himself and the street lamp behind him reflected as if they were the only things left in the world.

  Deliberately, Rizzo reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a pistol, a big .38 with a snub barrel. He half-extended his arm, but at that moment the telephone inside the house began to ring. He let the trigger slack off and stood listening intently, counting thirteen rings before it cut off in mid-ring. When the sound was gone, Rizzo methodically emptied all six chambers into the plate-glass window until all that remained were the corners and a long, cutlass-like shard of glass defying gravity from the upper left corner.

  By the third sharp report, lights were going on all over the block, but Rizzo ignored them as he pocketed his hot pistol and knelt to the bottles. With a cigarette lighter, he ignited both wicks and stood again with a bottle in each hand. Rizzo sent the first bottle in a flickering arc toward the gaping window, but the throw was short. The bottle rebounded from the sill to the wet bushes where it guttered ingloriously. Shifting the other bottle to his right hand, Rizzo hurled it.

  This one was true to the target. It vanished through the window, struck the far wall with a hollow crack and spread a blanket of flame over the wall and the piano below it.

  At the first sign of flames, Rizzo turned without another look and walked back to his car. By that time, several of Harry’s neighbors stood on their porches or front lawns staring at the Caster house and Rizzo. Ignoring them, Rizzo slipped back behind the wheel and started the car.

  “Stop him, John,” said Mrs. Barnett from the safety of her porch across the street. But John Barnett, golf club in hand, remained where he was and watched Rizzo’s car speed down Elgin Street and around the corner.

  When a car pulled up in front of Rizzo’s house, Pete and Injun were ready. But as an old man wearing a heavy lumber jacket got out of the car, they relaxed. Pete walked to the sidewalk to confront him.

  “Evenin’, pop,” he said. “You looking for something?”

  “Carlo Rizzo,” he said, not speaking to Pete but through him. “This is where he lives?”

  “Maybe,” Pete admitted, “but he’s not home right now. Why don’t you come back some other time?”

  “Mrs. Rizzo is here? I have to talk with her.”

  Pete took an exaggerated look at his watch. “It’s late, pop,” he said. “Mrs. Rizzo has had a very bad day, so why don’t you…”

  The old man said deliberately, “I want to see Mrs. Rizzo, and I want to see her right now.”

  Pete wasn’t impressed. “I’ll bet you do,” he said, “but—”

  Angela Rizzo’s voice cut in from the front porch. “Let him pass, Pete. I want to talk to him.”

  “But Mr. Rice said—”

  “I say let Mr. Speranza come in,” she said firmly.

  Speranza began to move his bulky body forward, but Pete was still in his way. “I’ll have to frisk you,” Pete told him, looking the old man stubbornly in the eye.
<
br />   “I am armed,” Speranza told him, returning the look but speaking very softly, “but you won’t search me. If you don’t get out of my way right now, boy, I will kill you.”

  Speranza began moving again, and Pete melted out of the way like a phantom. As the old man passed him on the way to the porch, Pete turned back to Injun. He looked closely for signs of derision on Injun’s dark face.

  Angie met Speranza on the steps.

  “Don Baptiste,” she said, “it was good of you to come.” She reached out for his hands and walked with Speranza into the hallway. “Come, sit down,” she said, leading him toward the dimly lit front room. “Would you like coffee?”

  “Angie,” he said, studying her face in the muted yellow light, “something’s happened. You’ve been crying. It’s not about Gino.”

  Angela looked puzzled. “No, Papa,” she said. “But then you don’t know. Our Bobby was shot and killed this evening on his way to the football stadium.”

  “Your Bobby?” Speranza asked. “But who? Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Angie replied. “He shot Bobby down like an animal.” Tears began to streak down her face again.

  “My dear,” Speranza said, taking Angie in his big arms and pulling her to him.

  “I’m sorry about Gino, Papa,” she said in a muffled voice. “So sorry. I talked with Carmen earlier this evening.”

  “I know,” Speranza said. He patted her shoulder lightly.

  When Angela had stopped crying, she sat back on the couch and dabbed at her eyes with a small handkerchief. She asked: “Do you know this man Harry Caster, Papa?”

  “No,” said Speranza, “but I’m looking for him. That’s why I came here tonight. Where is Carlo?”

  “I don’t know, but I think he’s looking for Caster, too. He left quite a while ago, and I haven’t heard anything.” She paused. “Have you, Papa?” she asked anxiously.

  “No, Angela,” Speranza said gently, “nothing.”

  The telephone in the hallway rang loudly, and Angela jumped back. Her eyes went to Speranza’s face in alarm.

  “I’ll answer it if you like,” Speranza offered, and she nodded. “Hello,” she heard Speranza say, and Angela held her breath as she waited. “No,” he said, “Mr. Rice isn’t here. Can I help you?” Angela stopped consciously listening; she was too busy with thoughts of her own.

  Then she heard the name Bonino and started listening again. But Speranza was speaking very softly. Angela started to get up, but she heard Speranza say goodbye and put down the telephone.

  “What is it?” she asked as Speranza returned to the living room. “Ruby Bonino, one of Gino’s friends, was shot tonight in Manhattan. They found Carlo’s business card in his pocket.”

  “My God,” Angela said, putting her hand to her mouth.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Ruby was following Caster tonight for Carlo,” she explained. “He called tonight right after we heard—heard about Bobby—and I told him to kill Caster.”

  Speranza shook his head. “I must go,” he said, taking Angie’s hand once more. She held on tightly.

  “Don’t, Papa,” she said.

  “I’m an old man, Angie,” Speranza said, putting his other hand on top of hers. “That boy out front probably thought I’d been dead for years. In a way, I suppose I have been. But I’m not dead tonight. Gino is dead, but I am alive and I must do something. It’s been a long time, but I haven’t forgotten. I am still a man.”

  Angie released her grip on his hand. “All right. Papa,” she said meekly, “if you must go.”

  “Yes,” Speranza said, stooping to kiss her forehead gently. “If I see Carlo, I will send him home.”

  “Carlo’s a man, too,” she said, and she lowered her eyes from his face.

  Out front, Pete and Injun were standing in the shadow talking quietly when Speranza came out of the house and got into his car.

  “I wonder what that old fart is up to,” Pete said as Speranza drove away.

  36

  Neither Harry nor Sandra said much on the ride home to Parker’s Landing. The streets of Manhattan were crowded as Harry fought to get to the West Side, but once they got on the Expressway they were virtually alone.

  Harry couldn’t help glancing again and again in the rear-view mirror in search of a persistent set of headlights which would mean that the big youth whom he’d shot on Sixty-Sixth Street hadn’t been alone. But every time he spotted a likely shadow, the lights either turned off at an exit or swept by on the left and disappeared in the dimness ahead. On the other side of the Hudson River, the New Jersey palisades were thinly studded with points of light.

  “How does your neck feel?” Sandra asked, breaking a long chain of silence.

  “It still stings,” Harry said, “but it’s stopped bleeding. I think I’m going to have a very stiff neck in the morning. But I guess I should be grateful that he wasn’t a better shot.”

  “You’d better be sure to see a doctor when we get to Parker’s Landing,” Sandra said. “You could get lockjaw or whatever it is people get from gunshot wounds.”

  “Gunshot wounds,” Harry said. “What a glamorous expression. I’ve had every other ailment you can think of, but I never thought I’d have a gunshot wound. Even in the Army the worst I got was a sprained ankle.”

  Parker’s Landing lay in pre-midnight darkness when Harry slipped off the parkway and into its quiet streets. He quickly threaded his way until they were approaching Sandra’s house. It was the only house on the block still illuminated. Passing the big mansion, Harry pulled around a slight curve in the winding street and stopped the car. He cut the engine and doused the headlights.

  Neither of them spoke for a long time, and then Sandra asked: “What are you going to do?”

  “Go home, I guess,” Harry said, “and change into something a little less gory.”

  “Do you think it’s all over?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose that depends on Rizzo. I have no idea where he is or what he’s doing. For all I know, he’s watching us right now.” Harry looked nervously behind the car. “I don’t even know where Hoerner is.”

  “But can’t you try going back to Chief Beddell? After the shooting this morning and tonight, he’s got to believe you.”

  “He believed me before,” Harry said. “I’m pretty sure of that.”

  “Now he’ll have to do something, won’t he?”

  “That I don’t know,” Harry said. “I just don’t know. I may try him again. What about you? What are you going to do?”

  Sandra smiled wryly. “Go back in there and be the grieving sister. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Will they ask a lot of questions about where you’ve been today?”

  “No,” Sandra said. “They’ll think a lot of questions, but they won’t ask them. In my family, grief is an excuse for any amount of eccentricity. When Great-Aunt Rosaria died, my cousin Ethel, the spinster, jumped on her racing bicycle and rode around the block for nearly six hours. Finally, she got a flat tire, wheeled the bicycle home and came into the house as if she’d been out for a walk.”

  “I guess you’re safe then,” Harry said. He looked at the luminous dial of his watch without meaning to.

  “Harry,” Sandra said, “I don’t want to go in.”

  “Where else would you go?”

  “With you.”

  Harry laughed. “Where’s that? I don’t even know where I’m going, not really. Somewhere out there Rizzo and Hoerner are probably shooting it out, and I feel like I’m about to move into the middle of it. The only reason I came back here was because I didn’t know where else to go. If I was twenty years younger or like Mickey, I’d never have come back at all. You and I would be on a plane to somewhere—anywhere.”

  “Let’s do that,” Sandra said quietly and seriously. She was staring straight ahead.

  “Sandra,” he said, “I can’t—you know—”

  “I know, Harry,” she said. “You don�
��t have to explain. Even if there weren’t Rizzo and Hoerner, there’s Hildy, the girls, et cetera and et cetera. I always knew the reasons why not. But I wanted to ask just in case. Just for the record, as they say.”

  “Sandra,” Harry said, wanting to touch her, “aside from all that, you wouldn’t want to be with me. Not for long. I’m only what you saw when you walked into that waiting room: a middle-aged nobody who’s spent most of his life selling people something they’d be better off without. If Rizzo lets me, I’ll probably spend the rest of my life doing the same thing. You know you want more than that.”

  “What I want,” Sandra said, “is not really the question here. What I can get is. I’m not complaining, Harry, I’m just sorry. And now I’d better go. But first I’m going to tell you something.” Sandra faced Harry in the near dark. Her face was shapes and shades of gray. “You’re not the funny little man you think you are, Harry. You’re much more, and you’ve proved it in a crazy way by standing up to Rizzo. You never should have done it, but in a queer way I’m glad you did. You’re a man, Harry, and that’s a lot.”

  Sandra cracked the door open on her side. “You know where I live. I’ll be there for some time, not exactly waiting for you, but all the same I’ll be there.” She leaned over and lightly kissed Harry’s mouth. “Try to stay out of the way of bullets, hey?”

  “Yeah,” said Harry softly. He watched her until she disappeared around the curve of the street.

  * * *

  When Harry drove onto his block he knew something was wrong. The acrid smell of fire defeated by water invaded the car. And he knew instinctively whose house had burned. Harry pulled up and parked in front of his house. He saw that it hadn’t literally burned down. The house still stood, but the front of it gaped at him like an empty eye socket. Harry got out of the car and leaned against it, surveying the havoc.

  The front yard looked as if the burning house had vomited the contents of the living room out toward the sidewalk. He recognized the charred remnants of the hi-fi, the sodden hulk of the sofa, still smoldering slightly, and the piano listing among the rose beds like a sinking aircraft carrier.