Anything But Saintly

by Richard Deming

  Our F.B.I. instructor demonstrated this technique in the classroom by having one of the class members cover him with an unloaded gun. He suddenly fell sideways and drew his own gun, also unloaded. His gun clicked before the man covering him realized what had happened. However, the instructor happened to be the fastest draw in the F.B.I. Later, when he had each of us try our luck against him, we all managed to draw and squeeze the trigger before he did, but I got the uncomfortable feeling that he was co-operating in order to give us confidence, and in an actual situation every one of us would have ended up full of holes.

  I tried to steel myself to test the technique now, but with the big bore of that automatic centered on me, I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. Particularly since my momentary hesitation caused the man’s eyes to narrow warningly.

  I put my hands on top of my head and leaned back against the left front car fender, hoping that with my gun pressed against the fender, it might again be overlooked.

  The two men who had let us in now joined the group. One was a gaunt, narrow-shouldered man, also about forty, with a flat, somewhat stupid face. He wore unpressed slacks, a dirty cloth jacket and a holstered revolver on his right hip. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but I couldn’t quite place what. He looked a little worried.

  The other man was built like a barrel, with wide shoulders, a huge chest and a magnificently bulging stomach. He had a round head with a bulbous, red-veined nose and black, ropelike eyebrows which went straight across his forehead without any division between them. This one I recognized. He was Whisky Joe Glapa, a professional strong-arm man who at some time or other had worked for practically every racketeer in town. I hadn’t known that he was currently one of Little Artie’s boys, if it was Little Artie who had arranged this deal.

  Whisky Joe said, “He clean?”

  The bulky man said, “I shook him down in the car, but I want to go over him again. Cover him.”

  Whisky Joe drew a thirty-eight caliber revolver from beneath his arm and aimed it at me, standing to one side so that his partner wouldn’t be between us when he shook me down.

  The bulky man thrust his automatic into a shoulder holster and went through the routine of patting me beneath the arms, then running his hands all the way down my body, including my legs to the knees.

  I had very little hope of his missing my gun a second time, but he seemed to be a master of inefficiency. His fingers patted within a half inch of the hip holster, but he didn’t have enough sense to make me stand away from the fender so that he could get his hands around me. I have to concede that the spot where I carry my gun isn’t common, but I’m sure any cop would have found it on the first shakedown. This clown managed to miss it twice.

  “Okay,” he said, backing up and drawing his gun again. “You can drop your arms, copper.”

  I took my hands from the top of my head and let them drop to my sides.

  The gaunt man wearing the holster said, “Copper? What kind of a deal you got me involved in, Ray?”

  The bulky man said, “Why should you worry? You get five hundred bucks just for taking a walk. You better take off now, Veech. Stay away at least an hour.”

  Veech is short for Vichek, which is Polish for Vincent. The name suddenly caused me to recognize the gaunt man.

  “You’re Vichek Czekanski,” I said to him.

  He looked at me in surprise. Still leaning against the fender, I crossed my feet and casually hooked thumbs in my belt. No one made any objection.

  “I went to grammar school with your kid brother, Stash,” I said. “Don’t you remember me?”

  He examined my face doubtfully. “That was eighteen, twenty years ago,” he said. “You would of been just a kid.”

  “Uh-huh. Mateusz Rudowski.”

  His surprise grew. “I’ll be damned. Little Matt Rudowski. I ain’t seen you since you was ten. How the devil you recognize me?”

  It was because he wore the same stupid expression he had at twenty, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I said, “You haven’t changed much.”

  “You sure have,” he said, looking me up and down. “You put on a lot of muscle.”

  “I hate to break up this old home week,” the bulky man called Ray interrupted. “But we got work to do. Veech, take off.”

  I was in no hurry. In order to delay things as long as possible, I said before Veech could answer, “Why are you wearing a gun right out in the open like that, Vichek?”

  “I got a permit. I’m the night watchman here.”

  I frowned at him. “You let jokers like these use your place as a slaughterhouse?”

  “Ray’s my brother-in-law,” he said apologetically. Then he did a double take. “Slaughterhouse? What you got in mind to do, Ray?”

  The bulky man said, “Keep him covered,” took Veech by the arm and hustled him toward a street door next to the big sliding door.

  Whisky Joe Glapa kept both his gun and a watchful eye on me. I shifted the thumbs hooked in my belt slightly sideways.

  At the door Vichek Czekanski was protesting, “This guy’s from my old neighborhood, Ray. What you planning to do?”

  “Get out of here,” Ray said. Drawing open a bolt, he pushed the watchman outside. “And stay away a full hour.” Pulling shut the door again, he slammed home the bolt and strode back to us.

  “Think you can trust him?” Whisky Joe asked in a worried tone. “Suppose he goes chicken and yells cop?”

  “He won’t yell cop,” the bulky man assured him. “And he won’t talk later. If he gives me any argument, I’ll threaten to tell my sister I paid him five hundred bucks. That’ll clam him up. She lets him keep two dollars a week out of his salary. You bring all the necessary stuff?”

  “Uh-huh,” Whisky Joe said. “A five-gallon bucket, fifty pounds of plaster of Paris—it’s over in the corner by the water spigot.”

  “How about the boat?”

  “It’s anchored right in front of the warehouse.”

  “Then we might as well get it over with,” the bulky man said, and leveled his gun at me.

  I was about to take the outside chance of testing the F.B.I. technique, when Whisky Joe deferred the necessity of it at that precise moment.

  “Not here,” he said. “I got papers spread on the floor over in the corner. Follow me.”

  Reholstering his gun, so that I was now covered only by one gun, he walked toward a rear corner of the room. The bulky man gestured with his automatic for me to follow.

  Once we reached that far corner, I knew it would all be over. With Whisky Joe’s back to us, this was the last opportunity I was going to have. Despite the F.B.I. instructor’s exhibition, I knew I’d never be able to draw and outshoot my opponent unless I could somehow get my hand on my gun butt before he suspected my intention. In desperation I put on a rather silly act.

  Straightening away from the fender, I touched a knuckle of my left hand to my nostrils, then looked down at it.

  “That whack on the head started my nose bleeding,” I said.

  The bulky man gave me a cold grin. “In a minute a little nosebleed won’t make no difference. It’ll be coming out several places.”

  Unhurriedly I pushed back my coattail to reach in the direction of my hip pocket. I hoped he would think I was reaching for a handkerchief. Apparently he did, for though his expression indicated he didn’t like me making such motions without permission, it didn’t make him suspicious enough to fire.

  My hand closed over my gun butt. I took a deep breath, wondering if it were going to be my last. Then I swept out the gun, pulling back the hammer as I drew. At the same time I threw myself downward and sidewise. I had my gun pointed at him and was squeezing the trigger as I fell. His automatic roared first, my gun a micro-second later.

  It didn’t work, I thought with a vast sense of resentment at the F.B.I. I hit the floor vaguely puzzled that I hadn’t felt the impact of his bullet. Rolling, I bounced to my feet and swung to pump out another shot.

&nb
sp; I relaxed my finger on the trigger in the nick of time. A second shot wasn’t necessary. The bulky man’s rosebud of a mouth was formed into a surprised pout and blood was gushing from the center of his chest. His gun muzzle drooped downward. He toppled forward slowly, like the last bowling pin of a sloppy but lucky strike.

  I spun toward Whisky Joe, then relaxed again.

  The F.B.I. technique had worked after all. The bulky man had fired before I had, but as our instructor had told us, he hadn’t shifted the position of his gun. The shot had passed over my head and had caught Whisky Joe Glapa squarely in the back. He lay face down, unmoving.

  CHAPTER 16

  Both men were dead when I examined them. I walked over to the corner where Whisky Joe Glapa had been heading. Beneath a water spigot there was a large bucket. Next to it, leaning against the wall, was a bag labeled: Plaster of Paris—50 lbs. Newspapers had been spread over an area of about six feet by six feet in the corner.

  It didn’t take much imagination to deduce what Whisky Joe and the bulky Ray had planned. They had intended to plant my feet in plaster of Paris in order to anchor my body firmly to the bottom of the river. This is an ancient device originated during the bootleg gang wars of the twenties, but its age doesn’t make it old-fashioned. Modern mobsters still use it because no one has come up with a quicker, simpler or more effective way to dispose of embarrassing corpses without a lot of elaborate equipment.

  It sent a cold chill along my spine just to look at the preparations which had been made for me.

  Near the front of the building there was a small office with a glass panel at the top of the door. Through the glass I could see a phone on a desk, but the door was locked. I went outside to hunt for Vichek Czekanski.

  I found him seated on an iron mooring post at the river edge, contemplatively smoking a pipe. The street lights along Front Street cast only a dim glow that far; apparently he assumed I was his brother-in-law until I was right on top of him. He looked surprised when he recognized me and saw the gun in my hand.

  Motioning him to his feet, I said, “Turn around, Vichek. Hands on top of head.”

  He looked offended but he didn’t give me any argument. His pipe was in his right hand when he rose to his feet. Clamping it between his teeth, he put his hands atop his head and turned his back. Removing his pistol from its holster, I dropped it into one of my side pockets and checked him for additional weapons. I did a more thorough job than the bulky man had, but he wasn’t carrying anything else.

  “Okay,” I said. “You can drop your hands and turn this way.”

  Letting his arms fall to his sides, he faced me. “You didn’t have to take my gun,” he said aggrievedly. “I’m not in on whatever Ray is up to.”

  “You just think you weren’t,” I told him. “When a private citizen sits idly by and makes no attempt to prevent the murder of a cop, he’s an accessory.”

  “I made an attempt,” he protested. “You heard me beef to Ray.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “And I suppose you were sitting out here trying to get up energy enough to run to a phone and report my predicament to headquarters.”

  He took his pipe from his mouth, knocked it out and dropped it into a jacket pocket. “You don’t look very dead to me. They must of let you go.”

  I motioned toward Front Street with my gun muzzle. “Let’s go back to the warehouse,” I suggested.

  I walked behind him, keeping him covered. He pushed through the small door next to the truck entrance. I followed him in, closed and bolted the door behind me. Vichek gazed wide eyed at the two bodies lying on the floor.

  “Jeepers,” he said. “They dead?”

  “Uh-huh. And you’re an accessory to attempted murder. Know what the rap is for that?”

  He turned to face me. He had paled and his thin lips trembled. “I didn’t have nothing to do with this, Matt. It was all Ray and his partner.”

  “You were accepting five hundred bucks for letting them use the warehouse.”

  “I didn’t know what for. I thought they probably just wanted to lean on some guy a little. Somebody in the racket who had stepped out of line. I didn’t know they planned to burn no cop.”

  “What racket?” I asked.

  He looked disconcerted. “Ray had something to do with policy. I been letting him store the slips in here. They come in by boat.”

  “Your employer is going to be pleased to learn how you use his warehouse,” I said. “Who owns this place?”

  “Phoenix Wire,” he said reluctantly. “They have to know about it?”

  That was such a stupid question, I didn’t feel it deserved an answer. As it seemed unlikely that the Phoenix Wire Company had been involved in the murder plan, I shifted the course of my questioning.

  “What was your brother-in-law’s name?” I asked.

  “Ray Zek.”

  “Who’d he work for?”

  Vichek shrugged. “He never said. Who runs policy around here?”

  “A number of people in different areas,” I said. “You ever hear him mention Art Nowak?”

  “Little Artie? I don’t think so. I’d remember that, because I know Artie from the old neighborhood. He never mentioned nobody. Ray wasn’t one to talk about his business.”

  “Where’d he live?”

  “In an apartment at Franklin and Garrison.”

  That was in the sixth district, where I also lived. The uptown area was a middle-class residential district with a largely independent vote and was relatively free of rackets. At least no one powerful politician controlled it. So Ray Zek’s place of residence didn’t make me any wiser. He could have been working for any of a dozen racketeers in town.

  “You know where Whisky Joe lived?” I asked.

  “The other guy? I didn’t even know that was his name. Ray just called him Joe.”

  “Okay,” I said. “How’d this setup come about? When did your brother-in-law first contact you?”

  “He phoned here about twelve-thirty. There’s a phone in the office. The place is locked at night, but I got a key. All he said was he needed a little privacy to work a guy over, and there’d be five hundred in it for me if he could use the warehouse. He said a guy named Joe would be along first, and to let him in and he’d be along later. Joe showed up about twenty minutes later and carried in a bucket and a sack of plaster of Paris. He left his car outside. He asked if I had any old newspapers around. I found him some and he spread them over in the corner.”

  It must have been about a quarter of twelve when I left Jake Stark, I thought. Forty-five minutes later, plans for my murder were being put into effect, and forty minutes after that Jake’s phone call to me had come. It hardly seemed likely to me that Stark had arranged things on his own, since he wasn’t big enough in the rackets to be hiring professional killers. I suspected that if Jake had decided on his own to put me out of the way, his speed would have been to wait in the alley behind my apartment house and personally put a bullet in me. It seemed much more logical that Jake had discussed matters with Artie and Artie had ordered the murder.

  I said, “Didn’t Whisky Joe’s preparations cause you to suspect he and your brother-in-law had murder in mind?”

  Vichek shook his head. “Honest to God, it never occurred to me until you and Ray got here.”

  With my gun I motioned toward the door to the office. “Get out your key and open that.”

  Preceding me, he brought out a key ring and unlocked the door. I let him enter ahead of me.

  “Can’t you give me a break, Matt?” he asked. “I got a couple of kids.”

  “You’d like to hide behind them, huh?”

  He examined me doubtfully.

  “Guys like you make me sick,” I said roughly. “You’re hired to protect the warehouse and you let a policy racketeer use it for everything from storing policy slips to murder. When you get caught, you throw your kids at the cops.”

  “You can’t say I was in on the murder plan,” he protested. “I didn’t
even know about it until Ray showed up with you.”

  “You’re the watchman here. You were wearing a gun. If you were too yellow to use it, you could have gotten to a phone and called headquarters. But you sat down on a mooring post smoking your pipe and waiting for these hoods to finish the job.”

  “Hell, Matt, he was my brother-in-law. You can’t expect a guy to yell cop on his own brother-in-law.”

  “I guess not, when there’s five hundred bucks in it,” I said dryly. “Sit down over there where I can watch you.”

  I pointed to a wooden chair in the far corner. Sitting in it, he took out his empty pipe and nervously began sucking on it. I seated myself behind the desk, laid my gun next to the phone and dialed headquarters.

  When the desk answered, I said, “This is Sergeant Rudd of Vice. I’ve got a couple of dead bodies at the Phoenix Wire Company warehouse on Front Street. Send me a radio car and the meat wagon. Better inform Homicide too.”

  “These are homicides?” the desk man asked.

  “Uh-huh. Justifiable. Suspects killed by a police officer during the commission of a crime.”

  “Any emergency situation?”

  “Everything’s under control. I’m holding one live suspect. I want the radio car as soon as possible, though. I want to turn over my suspect, because I’ve got somewhere to go.”

  “Roger,” the desk man said. “I’ll have one there in a couple of minutes.”

  Hanging up, I ordered Vichek to his feet and back out into the main part of the warehouse. Unbolting the front door, I left it open so that the light flowing through it could act as a directional beacon for the radio car. Then we waited.

  It only took a few minutes for the squad car to arrive. Two uniformed policemen stepped inside.

  Flashing my badge, I said, “Rudd of Vice, Gambling and Narcotics.” Then I pointed to Vichek Czekanski. “Put some cuffs on this guy.”

  He would have been cuffed when they got there if I had been carrying a set with me. But I never carry handcuffs off duty. I had told Ray Zek a lie about not wearing a gun off duty. St. Cecilia detectives are required to carry a gun at all times unless specifically excused for some reason such as disability. But they aren’t required to carry handcuffs except on duty.