by Ed McBain
“I—I didn’t mean him to pass away,” he mumbled.
The police stenographer looked up. “To what?”
“To pass away,” a uniformed cop repeated, whispering.
“What?” the stenographer asked again.
“He didn’t mean him to pass away!” the cop shouted.
The cop’s voice echoed in the silent room. The stenographer bent his head and began scribbling in his pad.
“Next case,” the Chief of Detectives said.
Stevie walked off the stage, his mind curiously blank, his feet strangely leaden. He followed the cop to the door, and then walked with him to the elevator. They were both silent as the doors closed.
“You picked an important one for your first one,” the cop said.
“He shouldn’t have died on me,” Stevie answered.
“You shouldn’t have stabbed him,” the cop said.
He tried to remember what Skinner had said to him before the line-up, but the noise of the elevator was loud in his ears, and he couldn’t think clearly. He could only remember the word “neighbors” as the elevator dropped to the basement to join them.
VICIOUS CIRCLE
The whole thing was almost too easy. I had the lock open in about ten seconds, and all I used was a nail file. I stepped inside out of the cold, closed the door gently behind me, stood quietly with my back to it. I didn’t hurry. I eased the .45 out of my coat pocket and checked the clip. Then I shoved the clip home. It made a small click in the darkness of the foyer.
The house branched out from the foyer, one half leading to the kitchen area, the other to the living room and the bedrooms. I knew the house by heart because Mr. Williams had gone over the floor plan with me a hundred times.
“This is a big one, Manny,” he’d said. “A real big one. You do this one right, and you’re in. What I mean, in.”
I felt good about that. He’d picked me for the gig, and I knew it was an important one. He could have picked one of the punks, but he wanted it done right, and so he came to Manny Cole. And this would be the one. After this one, I’d be in the upper crust, one of the wheels. It had to be done right.
The living room was dark, just the way Mr. Williams had said it would be. I released the .45’s safety with my thumb and stepped onto the thick pile rug that led off the foyer. From the back of the house, trickling under the narrow crack of a bedroom door, amber light spilled onto the rug in a thin, warm wash. I moved through the living room slowly, past the spinet against one wall, past the big picture window with the drawn drapes. I walked straight to the radio-phono combination, fumbled with its dials for a few seconds, and then turned it on full blast.
A jump tune blared into the room, shattering the silence of the house. I tuned the station in more clearly, listening to the high screech of a trumpet beating out a bop chorus. The door to the bedroom popped open, and Gallagher came out.
He was in his undershirt and shorts, blue-striped shorts that hugged his fat middle. He waddled forward with a surprised look on his face, and his stubby fingers reached for a light switch. There was a small click, and then the living room was filled with light. He looked worse with the light on him.
There was lipstick on his face, and I knew why, but that didn’t concern me at the moment. Only Gallagher concerned me. His blue eyes were opened wide, embedded deep in the fleshy folds of his face. His mouth flapped open when he saw the .45 in my fist, and I thought he’d spit out his teeth. Then his face paled, and he began to shake, and the fat shivered all over him.
“Who … who are you?” he asked.
I chuckled a little. “Mr. Williams sent me,” I said.
“Williams!” The word came like an explosion, and his face turned a shade paler. He knew what was coming.
“Mr. Williams doesn’t like the way you’ve been doing things,” I said.
Gallagher wet his lips. “What doesn’t he like?”
“Lots of things,” I told him. “The fur heist the other night, for example. He doesn’t like people who do things like that.”
“Those furs were mine,” Gallagher shouted over the blast of the trumpet. “Bart knew that.”
I shook my head. “Mr. Williams says they were his.”
The music stopped and an announcer began talking. His voice sounded strange in the quiet room.
“So … so … what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to kill you, Gallagher.”
“For God’s sake, kid, you can’t.…”
“As soon as the music starts again,” I told him. “If you’ve got a religion, pray.”
“Look, kid, for the love of—”
“Gallagher, this is a job, like picking up garbage or shining shoes. Just like that. I’m deaf as far as you’re concerned. Understand? I can’t hear anything. I’m deaf.”
The music started then, and panic whipped across Gallagher’s face. He saw my eyes tighten, and he turned to run toward the bedroom, and that’s when I cut loose. I fired low, with the barrel tilted so that the slug would rip upward.
The first one caught him just above the kidneys, spun him around, and slammed him into the wall. He didn’t seem to know whether he should reach for the blood, or whether he should cover the rest of him. And while he was deciding, I pumped two more slugs into him. They tore into his face, nearly ripping his head off.
He fell to the floor, and the fat wiggled for a second before it was still.
I looked down at him just long enough to see the red puddle forming under his head. Then I turned away.
“Come on out,” I said.
There was a soft whimper in the bedroom, but no movement.
“Come on, come on.”
I heard bare feet padding on the rug, and then she was standing in the doorway. She’d thrown a robe around her, and she’d done it pretty quickly because she was still fastening the belt at the waist. The robe belonged to Gallagher, apparently, and it didn’t help much to cover her. The initials RG were over the pocket, but the pocket was nowhere near where it should have been. It hung far to the right of her rounded shoulders.
She had hair like a bed of charcoal, and it hung over one eye. Her lips had a fresh-kissed look, the way they can look only when the lipstick has been bruised into the flesh. Her eyes might have been smoldering a few minutes ago, but they were scared now. Her lips opened a little, and her eyes dropped quickly to the .45, and then over to Gallagher. She took a deep breath, and then stepped back a pace.
She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me with that frightened-animal look in her eyes, wide and brown and she kept backing away, moving toward the bed. She almost tripped on a pile of silk stockings and underwear on the floor. She looked down quickly, caught her balance, and then started to pull the robe closed over her breasts.
She hesitated for a moment, swallowed hard, and then caught her hand in mid-motion.
“A fat slob like Gallagher,” I said. I shook my head. “I can’t get over it.”
She was staring at me. “You’re … you’re just a kid,” she said.
“Shut up!”
“Look, I … I don’t know Gallagher from a hole in the wall. I was just here, you understand? I got a call, that’s all, and I came. It’s a job, like you told Gallagher. A … a business.”
“Sure,” I said. I grinned and took a step closer to her. “You scared, baby?”
“N—n—no.”
“You should be. You should be damned scared.”
“Kid, please. I’ll do whatever you say. Anything. Anything at all, kid. Only …”
“Only what?”
“Only … Anything you say.”
“You want to get out of this alive?” I asked. “Is that it?”
She smiled and took a step closer to me, confident of herself now, confident of her body and what it would get her.
The smile was still on her face when I fired. I made it clean and quick. A fast one that caught her right over the bridge of her nose. She was dead before she hit the r
ug. Quickly, silently, I left the apartment.
Betty didn’t understand. Nothing I said mattered. She sat with the open paper in front of her and a coffee cup in her right hand. The steam from the coffee rose up and swirled around her nose. She didn’t understand, and she didn’t like it. Her mouth told me that.
“You look lousy when you’ve got a puss on,” I told her.
“Then I’m going to look lousy for a long time,” she said. She was blond, almost nineteen, with her hair cropped close to the oval of her face, She had green eyes that were blazing at me now, and tiny white teeth that were exposed when she pulled back her lips in a snarl. Her folks had split up when she was seventeen, and she’d taken a job downtown, and she rented her own pad. She was my girl, you know, and she was a real pretty piece, except when she was angry like now.
“Look, baby—” I said.
“Don’t ‘baby’ me, Manny. Just don’t.”
“Well, what the hell do you want?” I was beginning to get a little sore, too. I mean, what the hell! Enough is enough.
“You know what I want,” she snapped.
“I don’t know, and I’m not going to guess.”
Her face got soft, the way I liked to see it, and her voice softened to match it.
“When’s it going to end, Manny?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The anger flared in her again. “You know damn well what I’m talking about!”
“All right, I know, and it’s never going to end. All right?”
“Who are you going to kill next?”
“Nobody,” I said. “I’m not going to ever kill anybody. I ain’t killed anybody so far. Just you remember that.”
She slapped the newspaper with the back of her hand. “This Gallagher, and the girl—”
“I don’t know anything about this Gallagher. And I don’t know anything about his damned whore.”
Betty looked at me across the table, and she shook her head slowly. “You’re a fool, Manny. You really are a fool.”
I got up, shoving my chair back so hard that it fell over. “I don’t have to take this kind of crap. I’ll be damned if I have to take it.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“None of your damn business!”
“To your friends? To your big Mr. Williams?”
“Oh, can it and sell it,” I told her. I slammed the door behind me and walked down to the ’48 Chevy parked at the curb. I yanked open the door, nearly ripping off the loose handle, and climbed in behind the wheel. What the hell could you do with a woman like Betty? She didn’t understand that I’d be driving a Caddy in a few years, that we’d have the best, everything. She didn’t understand that I was sick of Brokesville, that I wanted to be up there where I could wallow in the stuff. Or maybe she thought it was an easy pull, like walking up to some guy and saying, “Man, I want the big time, you know? Lay it on me.”
Sure, just like that.
Damn it, you had to fight for everything you got in this world. There was always another guy waiting to step on you if you let him. I wasn’t going to let him. Mr. Williams liked me. He’d given me the Gallagher kill when there were a dozen punks slavering at the lips for it. You could bet on that, all right.
So she rode me for it. She didn’t understand this was all for both of us—that Manny Cole would be a big man soon, almost like Mr. Williams.
I turned on the ignition, started the bus, and pulled away from the curb. She’d see. When the loot began pouring in, she’d change her tune pretty damn quick. As soon as the loot began pouring in.
Turk was riding high when I found him. He looked at me glassy-eyed for a few seconds, and then he said, “Hey, Cole. How’s it, man?”
I remembered when Turk had been a top boy in the organization. I remembered how I’d gotten close to him first, just to get near Mr. Williams. He wasn’t so top now.
“What’s the word, Turk?” I asked.
“I hear you ventilated Gallagher nice,” he said. “Real nice.”
I looked around over my shoulder. “Hey, man,” I said, “get off that. Cool it fast.”
“Sure, Cole, sure.” The dreamy look came back into his eyes again. He’d been main-lining it for a long time now. I felt sorry for the big slob. He’d been a good man long ago. Before he hit the skids and before he met heroin. Now he was getting slop details, rustling chicks for the big boys when they wanted them, stuff like that. He had a double-tread of puncture marks on his arms and was starting the second tread on his legs. This was the guy I’d looked up to a few years back.
“Where is everybody?” I asked.
“Huh? What was that, Cole?” The glassy eyes opened, sunken deep in the once-full face.
“The boys. Where?”
“Oh, yeah. Down at Julie’s, I think. Yeah, Julie’s got a game going.”
“Thanks, Turk.”
“Not at all,” he said politely. He coughed then and added, “You got a fin, Cole? I can get a couple caps for a fin, and I ain’t been fixed since the Ice Age.”
I dug into my wallet, opened it. I didn’t let Turk see that all I had was a fin and a deuce. I pulled out the fin and laid it on him. “Here, man,” I said. “Blow your skull.”
“Well, thanks, Cole. Thanks a million. Hey, thanks.”
I left him staring down at the fin, and hopped into the Chevy, heading for Julie’s dump. Julie was close to the top, and he’d started out the way I had. Mr. Williams liked him, too, but since I’d come around, Julie wasn’t getting many of the big jobs any more. I figured Julie for maybe another year or two, and then good-by. You had to stay on your toes all the time, and Julie had dropped his guard when he’d let me squeeze my way in. So, Julie was on the way out.
I parked the car between Second and Third and walked down to Julie’s. He still wasn’t living big, but he hadn’t played it right. He was from nowhere, Julie, and I wondered how he’d ever got so close to the top in the first place. I rapped on the door, saw Cappy’s eye appear in a crack the width of a dime.
“Oh, Cole,” he said.
The door swung wide, and I stepped into the room. “Hello, Cappy. How’s it going?”
“Comme ci comme ça,” he said, pulling his face into a grimace.
“Where’s the game?” I asked.
“In the bedroom. You playing?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said casually. “Any action?”
Cappy shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I ain’t playing,” he said. He slumped down into a chair near the door, and I headed for the bedroom. When I walked in, the guys at the table, both sitting and standing, looked up.
“Hey, Cole! Look, guys! It’s the big kid himself.”
“How goes it, man? Give us all the cool jive, mister.”
“Hear you punched some holes last night!”
“Nice work, Cole.”
That’s the way the talk was drifting until Julie cut in.
“We playing cards or greeting punks?” he asked.
The boys all shut up, as if Julie had clamped a big hand over all their mouths. I looked at him across the table. He was holding his cards out in a tight fan, and his black brows were pulled together over beady brown eyes. He had a thin, curving nose and a cigar pointed up from his lips, tilting so that it almost touched his nose. He didn’t look at me. He kept staring at his hand while the boys waited for me to say something.
“What was that, Julie?” I asked.
“You heard me, Cole. You’re disrupting the game.”
“Seems you’re the only one I’m disrupting, Julie.”
He looked up then, his brows lifted. Slowly and carefully, he put his card fan down on the table. “Yeah,” he said, “maybe it’s only me you’re disrupting.”
“Well, you know what you can do about it, Julie.”
“And what’s that, Cole?”
“You can shove it up your—”
He backed away from the table so fast that I didn’t know he’d moved for
a second. He walked around the players quickly and rammed a big hand at me, wrapping it in the lapels of my jacket.
He brought his other hand back across his chest and then sideways, catching me across the face with his knuckles. My head bounced back, and then his forward slap caught me on the other cheek.
That was all I needed.
I brought my balled fist forward in a short, chopping jab to Julie’s gut. He was surprised, all right. He was so surprised that he dropped my jacket and was reaching under his armpit when my other fist looped up and exploded on the point of his jaw. His lips flew open and the cigar flopped out of his mouth. He still had his hand on the bunny-in-the-hutch, so I picked up my knee fast and rammed it into his groin. He folded over like a jackknife, and I brought my fist down on the back of his neck hard, hard enough to crack a couple of vertebrae. He pitched forward like a drunken sailor, kissed the floor with his face, and then sprawled out without a care in the world. Julie was out.
I kicked him in the ribs to make sure, wanting to break a few, but figuring maybe Mr. Williams wouldn’t like the way I’d roughed him up.
“Get this crud out of here,” I said. “How can you play with that stink in here?”
The boys laughed it up, and then one of them dragged him out of the bedroom. I sat down at the card table and played a few hands, just to let them know I could sit in Julie’s chair any day. When I lost the deuce, I left.
The word came from Mr. Williams two days later. It came down through Turk, and for a minute I thought Turk was just hopped and talking through the top of his skull. I figured that Turk would never dream that up, though, no matter how wigged he was, so I went up to see Mr. Williams fast.
He was sitting behind a big desk. He had blond hair, and blond eyebrows, and pale blue eyes that pinned you to the wall.
“Hello, Manny,” he said. “Pull up a chair.”
I sat down, and my eyes ran over the hand-tailoreds he was wearing, and over the glistening pinky-ring, the manicured nails. He was the top. King of the hill. I watched him light a cigarette with a thin, rolled-gold lighter.
“A little trouble, Manny,” he said.