The Red Storm

by Grant Bywaters

  “I might be.”

  “I’m Jack Stein,” he said, as if I should have recognized the name. When I said nothing, he continued. “I’m looking for Devland as well. If you happen to find him, you’d be wise to let me in on it. I’m staying at the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side, room three oh eight.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said, with little intention of doing that.

  The man left, and I squandered the rest of the day trying to locate Devland. I tried a few ex-boxer pals I knew and local contacts that were still around, but got nothing for my trouble, so I packed it in for the night. I shot some stick at the billiard hall, and lost coin to some young ringer who claimed he hardly played, yet manipulated the table like a pro.

  The next day proved to be more lucrative. I got a tip-off that Devland’s alleged bookie was making his rounds on 123rd in Harlem. He’d been revealed to me by a baby-faced pubescent that favored playing the numbers over going to school.

  “Dis is da cat dey always send to dis area,” he said.

  The kid pointed at a squat man dressed in a frayed secondhand suit. He looked like what you would get if a human mingled with a ferret, and somehow was able to engender offspring.

  His nose was abnormally long and so were his ears, which stuck out from a brown hat. In his right hand was a black horsehide briefcase which he carried as if he were delivering banking credentials.

  I waited for the man on the outside steps of a high-rise he had entered. A cigarette later, he came out. I took the position I always took when confronting someone. Keeping my arms raised up, I pretended I was fiddling with the pinkie ring on my left hand. I never kept my feet planted, but shifted them every few seconds.

  “You do the books for Devland?” I asked.

  “I know nobody of that name,” he said, eluding eye contact with me.

  “Are you sure? I got dope that you are working for Devland.”

  The man grimaced. “Look here, I work for a stock brokerage, not for no one named Devland.”

  “What firm?” I asked.

  “Walter Jenkins and Company.”

  “Never heard of them, and if you are a stockbroker, you’re one of the ugliest ones I’ve ever seen.”

  I wanted to get a rise out of him, and it worked. The man wrenched into his coat, and the reflective glare of a stiletto flashed into view. Given that my arms were already up and my feet not planted, I reacted quickly and grabbed the rodent’s wrist before he could remove his weaponry.

  “No need pulling your toothpick out. I got some dough, and want to play the numbers,” I said.

  “That so?” he said. “How much you got?”

  I let go of his wrist and said, “A sawbuck.”

  The rodent didn’t look amused. “Fine, I’ll take it if it will get you to scram. I don’t like you.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “What are your numbers?”

  “What are the least picked ones?” I asked.

  “Around here, any kind of unlucky ones.”

  “All right, put me down for three sixes.”

  He smirked. “Are you being cute, or are you some satanic loon?”

  “Neither. I just figure not many be playin’ them numbers, and I don’t like splittin’ my winnings.”

  He shrugged, and opened his briefcase and took the numbers down. Upon my handing the cash over to him, he gave me a receipt from the “policy book.”

  “I’m figuring you know how it works. It’ll be in paper tomorrow under the local track scores,” he said. “There will be three races goin’ on today.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  The man gave me a pungent look, shut his briefcase, and left. I let him go a few blocks before I shadowed him in my lift. He kept his hideous head down and scarcely looked behind him, which made the job of pursuing him easier. I had tailed enough people to be comfortable doing it, but still retained a healthy amount of edge. It was that edge that kept me on my feet. Like those times when your quarry turns around from the direction they were going and walks right past you, sometimes even bumping into you. I drafted far enough back from the bookie while using other vehicles as concealment that it would’ve been hard for him to distinguish me from everyday traffic.

  He got into a parked 1933 Dodge 5W Coupe, and maneuvered it onto 116th Street. I kept two cars between us as he stayed on 116th past Park Avenue, where he pulled off into a service station. Propelling past the station and into the lot next to it, I rotated the car around and parked so that it pointed back out to the main street.

  I took out a street map as I waited, and got a rough outline on where he was headed. The bookie came off as a no-nonsense character, so there would be no casual driving with him. He would take the fastest route to where he was going, avoiding side streets and detours.

  As I went over possible routes he’d take, the coupe pulled passed me. I allowed two cars to go before pointing the radiator of the heap back onto 116th. Keeping my distance and using the two cars as cover, I followed, paying close attention to the traffic signals ahead of me.

  The light went yellow on Third Avenue after the coupe narrowly bypassed it. Two machines in front of me braked for the red, but I wasn’t worried. The pedestal post light on Second Avenue had been blazing green for a long cycle of time, and went amber prior to the coupe arriving at it. It looked at first like he was going to run it, but he thought twice when a sanitation truck tugged in front of him. He hit his brakes hard and stopped a hair away from being part of the truck’s load.

  I got a green light and stayed behind the two cars as they caught up with the bookie a little ways past Second.

  The coupe stayed on 116th to the river, and took the East River Drive down to the Lower East Side and Orchard Street.

  On Orchard, he steered into the back of a brick building whose sign read “Walter Jenkins & Company.” I went past the building, down the road, turned around and parked kitty-corner to the building.

  Orchard had not changed much. It was still a poverty-stricken slum full of immigrants fresh off the boat. Low-rise tenements made of disintegrated bricks housed many of them in rooms the size of a telephone booth.

  I entered through the front of the building, and found an aged, gray-haired man sitting at a desk in the back. He wore a dress shirt with suspenders that hitched up his pants to about his armpits.

  He was gawking at a nudie-girl-type book but stowed it away under the business section of the daily paper as soon as he heard the entrance bell.

  “I don’t do business with you folks,” he said to me.

  “It don’t look like you can afford to be picky,” I said. “Are you Walter Jenkins”

  “That’s the name on the plaque, or can’t you read?”

  “I can read just fine,” I said.

  “Then you should’ve been able to read the sign at the front that says ‘No Coloreds Allowed’.”

  “Yes, and I can also read you pretty good, too,” I said. “Like I was saying, it don’t look like you can be stingy as far as who you want eatin’ at your table. I’m guessing that business has not been so good for you after the stock market crash. Found yourself in a lot of debt and litigation. Am I right so far?”

  Jenkins didn’t say anything. He just sat back in his chair and looked bored.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. I’ll also take it as a yes that you became a subsidiary to an illegal numbers racket and you’re in contact with a man named Devland.”

  Jenkins gave away a slight glimpse of tension in his weary face at the comment.

  “I don’t know anyone named Devland,” he said.

  Starting to lose what patience I had with him, I said, “Don’t be a clown. There’s been a stack of you brokers that have thrown in with the syndicates to get out of the financial jam you birds got into on Black Tuesday.”

  Jenkins stayed buttoned up. I might as well have had dialogue with the wall behind him.

  “All right, I’ve wasted enough of my time on you,�
� I said. I stepped to the back door. Jenkins didn’t protest. He went back to looking at his nudie book with indifference.

  I opened the back door to the “boiler room.” Inside were three men. An overweight man in a suit waiting to burst at the seams, counted money over a table. The bookie I had shadowed stood just behind him. To the right of the fat man was a bruiser who looked like the Michelin Man, and like his only skill in life was giving folks the full Broderick.

  “This is a restricted area,” Fats said. “Lam out!”

  “You Devland?” I asked.

  The man elevated his head up from counting the Michigan roll he had in front of him.

  “That’s the colored I was telling you about,” the Rodent said.

  “You did an A-one job having him follow you here,” the man said, and turned to me. “I’m Devland. What’s this about?”

  “I just wanted to know how the operation is running these days with Mallon going down south on you.”

  Taut lines intersected Devland’s encompassing face. “Who the hell are you?”

  I told him.

  “Who’re you foolin’?” he demanded. “They ain’t no such thing as a colored private detective. Now, you better start telling me who you really are, and who you’re workin’ for!”

  “Why should I tell you? I already know who you’re working for,” I said.

  Devland’s fat face flushed with redness. “I ain’t workin’ for nobody. Mallon is nothing more than a partner, and he’s hardly even that.”

  “So you approved of Mallon’s side project?” I asked.

  “That’s his business.”

  “Get off it. He’s spending a lot of your jack on this, and with the amount of competition you have, you can’t afford it. The jobbies with the deeper pockets will run you out the same way they did with the boys in Harlem.”

  “You seem to think you know a lot about this,” Devland said.

  “Why shouldn’t I? I used to be chummy with a few Harlem numbers runners before the wops and the rest of you losers took it over. But that’s to be expected. The only thing you boys are good at is finding easy targets and giving them a bum’s rush out of their own rackets.”

  Devland’s plump fists were clenched as he stuck his chest out like a bantam rooster. “Perhaps we do it better. Ever thought of that?”

  “You seem to think so. But all of you birds draw too much attention to yourselves. You start actin’ like you’re big shots. But it always ends the same way, with the works blowing up in your face.”

  Devland grinned, the kind of Cheshire smile that something he knew but I didn’t was about to ensue. Sure enough, two colossal hairy arms that were the circumference of utility poles enfolded me from behind.

  Devland stepped back and retrieved his half-burning cigar from a bronze bulldog ashtray.

  “Back when you could own niggers, they use to brand them. I think it’s time to start doin’ it again,” he said. “Grab his arm, Mike.”

  The bruiser rumbled over to me and nearly wrenched my right arm out of its socket. I tried to resist, but the immense arms that were my prison constrained me tighter.

  Devland puffed on his cigar so that the tip was cherry red, and drove it into the back of my hand.

  The smell of my own burning flesh and the acute pain sent me into a blind rage I had only experienced a few times in my life.

  I smashed my foot into my captor’s ankle with enough force that his grip weakened, and I tore free.

  I went straight for Devland and aimed my fists at his chubby body. It cushioned my hands and I made short work of him as his legs buckled and he toppled down.

  No sooner did he fall, Mike and the bookie rushed me. I rocked back on my feet from their blows, and hit Mike with a straight right that about sent his nose into the back of his head. He didn’t drop right away, so I kept hitting his body until he did.

  The bookie backed off and tried to pull out his knife again. I clubbed at him and knocked his tool out of his hand. Enraged, he swung a fist at me that missed me by about a foot. I countered it with an uppercut to his chin that could have propelled him into the ceiling.

  The hairy-armed giant that had held on to me came at me fast and grappled me to the ground. He tried to use his elephant weight to crush me and then attempted to tie me up in a submission hold. He didn’t figure that it’s a lot easier to get out of a hold than apply one. Wiggling around to better my position, I freed up my right hand, and started pounding it on the soft spot of his face. I kept at it until he grunted and tried to tie my arm up, which left me with an opening. Escaping, I got to my feet before he could. I kicked and stomped on him until he flattened onto the floor and didn’t move.

  Standing over him, breathing hard, my legs and body felt shaky. I could barely stand. My vision went blurry, and when it came back, I was propped up against the retaining wall behind the building. My clothes were saturated in sweat and blood while my knuckles were raw and swollen.

  I stumbled to my machine, and with shaky hands drove away. By some means, I got back to my room. I washed up, changed my clothes, and cleaned and bandaged the burn on my hand.

  I sat on the bed smoking, and called the Carlyle Hotel and asked for room 308. The phone rang several times. I about hung up when a tired voice answered the line.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is this Jack Stein?” I asked.

  “Who is this?”

  “I’m the one that was looking for Devland. You told me to call you if I found him. You can figure that since I’m calling, that means I have.”

  Stein was now alert. “That so?”

  “Yes. I’ll give you the address if you tell me what you want with Devland.”

  A short pause before he said, “It’s no big deal, just some business about fixed numbers.”

  “I think it’s about more than fixed numbers, but I’ll take it,” I said, and gave him the address on Orchard Street.

  “If this is legit, I won’t forget you giving it to me.”

  I put the phone on the hook, filled a bucket of ice, and stuck my hands into it until the swelling went down. My knuckles had held up to the beating without fracturing primarily because they had been broken and rebroken to the point they were now nothing but calcified knobs of reinforced bone.

  This kind of callus conditioning went as far back as the days when the planter would take the strongest of us younger workers and beat us into being prizefighters. It was an easy racket for planters to make side money. Every afternoon he’d have us fight each other until sundown, while he stood to the side with a switch and caned anyone that fell over from injury or exhaustion.

  But them days weren’t all bad. You learned to like working the ten-hour days in the fields, the same way you learned to like fighting until you were torn up raw. I didn’t have any real boxing skills then, which is what caused what little looks I had to be beaten off me. It was not until Harlan Odell, a big man that used to spar with Jack Johnson, came along and taught us all he knew. I’d spend many of my days talking with him. He educated me on the science aspect of boxing, how to avoid being hit, and how there was more to the sport than just throwing fists around.

  The one piece of advice I remember the most was him telling me, “You got to get out of these fields, son. Make your way to a big city or else you’re going to waste your talent here until they ain’t nothing left to show for it.”

  I took his advice, but no doubt Odell, had he lived, would be disappointed with how things worked out with me.

  Brushing these recollections aside, I took my hands out of the bucket and went to bed. I slept roughly twelve hours.

  CHAPTER 11

  The morning paper had several articles of interest. The first article was the results from the local horse track. The numbers came from the last dollar of the pari-mutuel total of three races. First was a three-race total of $98.33. Second was a four-race total of $121.66, and the third eight-race total was $166.03, making the winning number 816.

  The secon
d article read:

  Four men were found shot at Walter Jenkins & Company. Police responded to a report of gunfire at the business site. They arrived to find four men who had been heavily beaten and shot in the back room of the establishment. Police suspect stockbroker Walter Jenkins may be involved, and his whereabouts are unknown at this time. Police say Jenkins has had shady dealings since his business went bankrupt after the stock market crash in 1929. There have been allegations that Jenkins was implicated in the trading of fraudulent stocks, and dealings with crime syndicates …

  I discarded the paper and changed. My hands were sore, but after a few exercises, I got improved movement out of them.

  The drive to the mansion Mallon’s parents had owned before their deaths took little over an hour. The mansion was near Huntington Harbor in Long Island, and it looked like a castle. It was of French chateau design, with red-clay, tile-hipped roofs, circular towers that had conical grooves, and elongated brick chimneys.

  A giant wrought-iron gate prevented me from entering the property. I parked the car on the side of the street and walked to the gate. A hundred yards just inside the entry, a tall colored man trimmed bushes with a pair of gardening shears. I yelled for him to come over.

  “What do you need, mister?” he said.

  “How long you been the groundskeeper here?”

  “Been workin’ this property going on fifteen years.”

  “That would mean you were around when the Mallons lived here,” I said.

  The man’s expression lost its warmth. “Say, what’s this about, mister?”

  I handed him my card.

  “I can’t read so good,” he said.

  “That’s okay. It just says my name is William Fletcher, and that I’m a private detective from New Orleans.”

  “Orleans is a good city. Got family there. Them French folks are pretty decent to us coloreds.”

  “Yes, I suppose they are,” I said, and changed the conversation back to the business at hand. “Did you know the Mallons well?”

  “Not too well. Ruth would be the one to talk to.”

  “Who’s Ruth?”

  “Ruth was the nanny for that boy the Mallons had.”