by Ed McBain
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Dave, you shouldn’t have hit him. What the hell are you going to—”
“Shut up!” Dave said, unused to the words, smiling because they were new to his tongue. “This is my goddamned class and I’ll handle it however the hell I want to. Now get your kids out of here!”
“What?” Rourke asked. “What?”
He turned his back on Rourke, and then walked to Carlton and picked up the homemade brass knucks. He tossed them on his palm, and he was aware of Sanchez’s gaze upon him, and of Rourke leaving the room with his kids. He did not pay any attention to Rourke. He returned Sanchez’s gaze, and then he said, “We’ll take care of Carlton, don’t worry. We’ll have him sent where he belongs. If”—he paused—“if you’re willing to tell the principal what you just told … the court.”
“I’ll tell him,” Sanchez said. He looked at the brass knucks on Dave’s palm. “Thank you, Mr. Kemp,” he added. “He could have—”
Dave smiled. “No,” he said. “No. Thank you, Sanchez,” and Sanchez smiled back, even though he did not fully understand.
THE BEATINGS
August was a shimmering canopy of heat, August was the open mouth of a blast furnace, August was a hot cliché, all the hot clichés, and the city wore August like a soiled flannel shirt.
And in August, the bars were serving tall Tom Collinses or gin and tonics to polite society who drank to chase the heat. No one on the Bowery drank to chase the heat. Winter and summer were twin seasons on the Bowery, merged together in a heavy fog of persistent memories. You drank to squash the memories, but the drink only strengthened them.
And in the brotherhood of wine, you somehow began to feel a sense of real brotherhood. Everything else was gone then. Your Trina was gone, and your agency was gone, and your life was gone—all poured down the sink like a bottle of sour wine. The others had nothing, either. The others were only faces at first, but the faces began to take on meaning after a while, the members of your exclusive fraternity, the cast of the living dead. These were your brothers. Louse-infected, bearded, rumpled, sweating, empty hulks of men, they were nonetheless your brothers. The world above Fourteenth Street was a fantasy. The Bowery was your life, and its inhabitants were your friends and neighbors.
If your name is Matt Cordell, there’s something inside you that makes you a part of your friends and neighbors.
My name is Matt Cordell.
My friend and neighbor owned a very bloody face. My friend and neighbor was called Angelo, and he tried to talk but his lips were puffed and bleeding, and the teeth in the front of his mouth had been knocked out. He had never looked pretty, Angelo, but his face was almost unrecognizable now, and the words that trailed from his ruptured mouth were indistinct and blurred.
“Who did it?” I asked. I was only another face in the ring of faces surrounding Angelo. The faces were immersed in an alcoholic haze, but the sight of Angelo was evaporating the stupor. We crowded around him like bettors in a floating crap game. He shook his head and drops of blood splashed to the sidewalk.
“Don’t know,” he mumbled. “Didn’t see. Couldn’t …”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Danny asked. Danny was tall and thin, a wino who’d been on the Bowery for as long as I could remember. The rumble had it that Danny used to be a professor of history in a swank upstate girls’ college until he’d got into some kind of trouble. Danny did not like violence. His dislike showed in the sharp angle of his shaggy brows, the tight line of his mouth.
“Didn’t see who,” Angelo mumbled. He shook his head. “Just like that. Fast.”
“Were you carrying money?” I asked.
Angelo tried to smile, but his broken mouth wouldn’t let him. “Money? Me? No, Matt. No money.”
“A jug then? Did you have a jug on you?”
“No.”
“Then why would anyone—” Danny started.
“I don’t know,” Angelo said, puzzled. “I got hit on the back of the head, and then I was down.…”
“Like what happened to Fritzie,” Farvo said. Farvo was a fat man who blinked a lot. He blinked because he was trying to shut out the sight of a wife who’d shot herself in the head while he watched. We all knew why he blinked, and so we never mentioned it. Men can become good neighbors when their common mortar is despair.
“And Diego got it like that, too,” Marty said. “Just like that, with nobody around. It’s crazy, that’s all.”
“Do you think the cops, maybe?” Danny asked.
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Why should it be the cops? They’ve got no reason for wholesale beatings. This is about the sixth guy in a week.”
“The cops are good at this kind of thing,” Farvo said, blinking.
“Only when they’ve got a reason.”
“Cops don’t need no reason,” Marty said.
No one answered him. We got Angelo to his feet, and we took him to the Professor. The Professor had once been a chemist, until he’d begun sampling the drugs he’d handled. He still knew how to dress a cut. He’d helped me once, and he helped Angelo now, and when he was through with his bandages, he asked, “What are we going to do, Matt?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“This is a community, you know,” he said. “It may be the world’s worst community, and maybe its citizens are all pigs, but that’s no reason to turn it into a slaughterhouse.”
“No,” I said.
“You ever run into anything like this before? You used to run a detective agency. Did you ever …”
“No, nothing exactly like it,” I said.
“So what are we going to do?”
“Keep our eyes open,” I said. “We’ll find whoever’s responsible.”
“You’d think he’d leave us alone,” the Professor said sadly. “You’d think we got enough troubles.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Our troubles got bigger. Farvo turned up the next night. Farvo wasn’t blinking, and he’d never blink again. Farvo had been beaten to death.
I started the way I had to start, in the streets. I kept my eyes open and my ears open, and the August sun didn’t help my job because the August sun was very hot. When a shirt is dirty, it sticks like glue. When your soles are thin, the pavement scorches up through them. When you need a haircut, your hair mats to your forehead, clinging and damp. I took to the streets, and I thought of gin and tonics and fancy restaurant-bars. I talked to Fritzie first.
Fritzie’s arm was still in a cast. Fritzie’s face had not been hurt too badly, except for the bridge of his nose, which was still swollen. The back of his head carried a large patch, and you could see the bald spot surrounding it where the doctors had shaved his hair to get at the cut.
“Farvo’s dead,” I told him. “Did you know that?”
“Yeah,” Fritzie said. “I heard.”
“We figure the same guy who’d been doing the rest. You think so?”
“It could be,” Fritzie said.
“Did you get a look at the guy?”
“No,” Fritzie said.
“Where’d it happen?”
“On Houston. I’d made a big kill, Matt. Six bits from some society guy and his broad. You shoulda seen this broad, Matt, diamond clips in her hair, and her bubs all spilling out the front of her dress. It was her got him to give me the six bits.”
“Go ahead, Fritzie.”
“I got a jug, you know? Some cheap stuff, but what the hell, all wine tastes the same.”
“So?”
“So I killed the jug, and I was walking down Houston, and that’s when the El fell down.”
“Did you see who hit you?”
“I told you. No. I got hit on the back of the head.” Fritzie’s hand went up to the patch, his fingers touching it gingerly.
“What happened then?”
“I fell down, and the son of a bitch kicked me in the face. That’s how I got this nose. It’s a
wonder it didn’t come out the hole in the back of my head.” Fritzie shook his head forlornly.
“Then what?”
“Then nothing, as far as I’m concerned. That was all she wrote, Matt. I blacked out. When I come to, I see my arm there next to my side, but it’s pointing up in the wrong direction, as if it was glued on wrong at the elbow. Matt, it hurt like a bastard.”
“What’d you do?”
“I went to the clinic. They said I had a compound fracture. They set it for me. It was no picnic, man.”
“You have any money on you?”
“Hell, no,” Fritzie said. He paused and touched his patch again. “What you think, Matt?”
“Jesus,” I said. “I don’t know.”
Detective-Lieutenant Thomas Randazzo was a good-looking man in a brown tweed suit. The uniformed cop led me into his office, and Randazzo rose, smiled, and offered me his hand, which I took.
“Cordell, huh?” he said.
“Yes,” I told him.
“What’s on your mind, Cordell?”
“A man named Gino Farvo was beaten to death a few nights ago,” I said. “I was wondering.…”
“We’re working on it now,” Randazzo said, still smiling pleasantly.
“Have you got anything yet?”
“Why?” he said.
“I’m working on it, too.”
“You?” Randazzo’s eyebrows quirked in smiling curiosity.
“Yes,” I said. “Me.”
“I thought your license had been yanked.”
“I’m working on it as a private citizen.”
“Maybe you’d better leave it to us,” Randazzo said politely.
“I’m interested in it,” I said. “These men are my friends. These men …”
“What do you mean, these men?”
“Farvo isn’t the first,” I said. “He just happens to be the most.”
“Oh, I see.” Randazzo paused. “So naturally, you’re interested.”
“Yes,” I said.
Randazzo smiled. “Forget it, Cordell. We’ll take care of it.”
“I’d rather.…”
“Cordell, you’ve had enough headaches with the police department. No, look, seriously, I’m not trying to be a smart guy. I know all about that time with your license.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Nothing. She wants to play around with … what was his name? Garth, yes, that’s okay with me. But I know what it must have done to you. So you beat him with a .45, and we yanked your license. I don’t make judgments. Maybe you did the right thing. But …”
“That’s all water under the bridge,” I said.
“Water under the bridge,” he said. “Fine and good, Cordell. Don’t mess in this, please. I appreciate your offer of help, no, honestly, I really do. But you’ve had enough to do with cops. You’ve had enough to last you a lifetime.” He paused. “Why don’t you get out of the Bowery, Cordell?”
“I like the Bowery,” I said.
“Have you ever tried to get your license back?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“That’s my business. Randazzo, have you got any leads on this Farvo thing? Anything at all? Anything I can.…”
Randazzo shook his head. “I’m sorry, Cordell. I don’t want you in this.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You understand? It’s for your own good.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t be sore at me. I’m just …”
“I’m not sore at you.”
“No?”
“No. I’m sore at whoever killed Farvo.”
I talked to Diego, who had been beaten very badly a few weeks back. Diego had been the first, and we hadn’t thought too much about it at the time, until the beatings took on the look of an epidemic. Diego was from Puerto Rico, and he didn’t talk English too well. The scars on his face had healed by this time, but whoever had beaten him had left scars deep in his eyes that time would never remove.
“Why you both’ me, Matt?” he asked. “I know notheeng. I swear.”
“Farvo was killed,” I said.
“So? So thees is Farvo. Me, I am not killed. Matt, I do not wann another beatin’. Leave me out, Matt.”
“Diego,” I said, “I’m trying to piece together …”
“I don’t care what you tryn’ to do. I don’ wann more trouble, Matt.”
“Look, you stupid bastard, what makes you think this is the end?”
“Huh?” Diego asked.
“You going to stay inside all day and all night? You never going to come up for air? What makes you think you’re safe? What makes you think you won’t get another beating some night when you’re lushed up and roaming the streets. You might be Farvo next time.”
“No,” Diego said, shaking his head. “Matt, I don’ know notheeng anyway. E’en I want to help you, I can’t.”
“You didn’t see who hit you?”
“No.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I don’ remember.”
“Diego, if you know something, you’d better tell me. You’d damn well better tell me, or you’ll get another beating, right this minute, and this time you won’t be so lucky.”
Diego tried to smile. “Oh, come on, Matt. Don’ talk like that, man.”
“What do you say, Diego?”
He must have seen something in my eyes. He looked at me quickly, and then ducked his head.
“I dinn see nobody, Matt,” he said.
“Were you struck from behind?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
“Somethin’ hard. I don’ know what. Hard like a rock.”
“A gun?”
“I don’ know.”
“What happened then?”
“I fell down.”
“Unconscious?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“He grab me under the arms an’ pull me off the sidewalk. Then he kick me.”
“He put you down and kicked you?”
“I don’ know. It’s hard to remember, Matt. He drag me, an’ then I get a kick. An’ then I get another kick. An’ then he starrs hittin’ me on the face, an’ kickin’ me all the time.”
“He kept kicking you and hitting you?”
“Like he have ten arms, Matt. All over me. Hard.” Diego shook his head, remembering.
“Did he say anything to you?”
“No. Yes, wait a minute. Yes, he say somethin’.”
“What did he say?”
“He say, ‘Come on, bum,’ and then he laugh.”
“What did his voice sound like?”
“Well, it wass high first, an’ then it get low later.”
“He spoke twice?” I asked.
“Yes. Yes, I thin’ so. Twice, or maybe more. It’s hard to remember. He wass hit me all thees time.”
“What did he say the second time?”
“He say, ‘I got him.’”
“And his voice was lower you say?”
“Yes, lower. Lower than the first time.”
“‘I got him.’ Is that what he said? When was this?”
“When he starr hittin’ me in the face.”
“Did he steal anything from you?”
“I got notheeng to steal, Matt,” Diego said.
“I figured,” I said. “Were you lushed when he got you?”
Diego smiled. “Sure,” he said.
There were no further beatings for three weeks. This wasn’t hard to work out. Whoever had killed Farvo apparently realized the heat was on. In three weeks, the cops would have lost their interest. In three weeks, Farvo would be just another grave with wilted flowers, Farvo would be just another name in the Open File. So for three weeks, the community that was the Bowery lived its normal life. For three weeks, my friends and neighbors went unmolested. But we waited. We waited because we knew the beater would strike again, as soon as things cooled down. Once a
pattern is established, it’s difficult to break.
I waited along with the rest, but I waited harder. I waited by walking the streets at night. I walked down all the dark streets, staying away from the brightly lighted areas. I walked with a simulated roll in my step. Sometimes I sang loudly, the way a drunk will sing when he’s on a happy toot. I lurched along crazily, and I grabbed at brick walls for support, and I hoped someone would hit me on the back of the head, but no one did. It’s not fun being bait. It’s not fun when you know a fractured skull can be in the cards. And suspecting what I now suspected, it was even less fun. But I set myself up as a target, and I did my heavy drinking during the day so that I could be cold sober while play-acting the drunk at night.
For three weeks, nothing happened.
The hottest day of the year came at the tail end of August, as if summer were making a last bid for recognition before autumn piled in. It was a bitch of a day, and even liquor couldn’t kill the pain of the heat. The night wasn’t any better. The night closed in like a damp blanket, smothering the city with darkness. There wasn’t a breeze blowing. The heat lay on the roof tops, baked in the bricks, shimmered on the asphalt. The heat was a plague that hovered over the city, a life-choking thing that stuck in the nostrils and suffocated the throat.
I started at ten.
I put on my drunken walk, and I staggered up the streets, stopping to panhandle every now and then, making it look legit in case I was being tailed. I didn’t think whoever’d killed Farvo was the tailing kind of killer, but I played it safe anyway. The heat made me want to scream. It crawled up my back and under my armpits and into my crotch. It left me dry and tired, and it made me wish I was really drunk instead of just playing at it.
I didn’t hit pay dirt until twelve-thirty.
The street was very dark. It lay like a black night stick between the buildings, dark and straight and silent. There was no one on the street. I looked down it, and then I huddled against the wall for a second, like a drunk trying to clear his head, and then I started down it, walking crazily, stumbling once or twice. I passed an alleyway between the buildings, and I stopped against the wall just past the alleyway, hoping to draw something out of the black opening. I drew nothing.