I swung my right fist, following through awkwardly because there wasn’t much room in the front seat of the car. My hand went through the spokes of the steering wheel. The man leaned down on it. The woman bit my left wrist, almost making me drop the gun. Then the man grabbed for it. I got my right hand loose and hit him in the side of the neck. His eyes clouded, but he held on. The woman bit me again. I’m human. I bleed. The man pried the gun out of my fingers. I clubbed the side of his neck again. His mouth opened. Red saliva drooled. He dropped the Magnum. The woman grabbed it. I started to turn around.
She had opened her mouth to scream. She was probably wailing like a tormented soul. I heard nothing. Something moved over my head.
It came down and split my skull into two hemispheres of pain. I tried to put the hemispheres back together, but somehow they wouldn’t fit. I was still trying when I fell into the hole which had opened up below the floor of the car and the snow.
Chapter Six
IN THE very center of the earth there is a block of ice. Inside the block of ice a tiny man lives. His vocation is trying to keep warm. His avocation is trying to break out of the block of ice by batting it with his head. The ice is five hundred feet thick and he hasn’t a very hard head. If that isn’t bad enough, two tree trunks grow out of the man’s chest, pinning him down. I wouldn’t trade places with that man for anything in the world. But then I don’t have to. His name is Chester Drum.
The tree trunks moved. That wasn’t fair. It was inconsistent with their nature as tree trunks. It added a new dimension of difficulty to the problems of the tiny man in the block of ice: he had to think. He opened his eyes a little way and saw that the tree trunks had changed into legs. The legs wore heavy shoes and the shoes were on his chest. The legs, as legs will, were wearing trousers.
A voice said in Spanish, “Murder is different. You didn’t say murder. I don’t want anything to do with murder. I didn’t figure on murder. I won’t be a part of murder.”
The man speaking had a one-track mind, but I was on his side. It took some figuring, but I decided the object of the murder, if any, would be me.
Another voice said, “He left you out there to die.”
First voice: “Murder is different. I don’t want anything to do with murder.”
Second voice: “If we didn’t find you, you’d have frozen to death.”
First voice: “My wife found me.”
Second voice: “I had to stay with the man. Is he conscious?”
First voice: “No, I don’t think so.”
A woman’s voice: “Julio, Julio. Ramon is right, unless this of the twenty-five thousand dollars means nothing to you. Don’t you wish your share of the money?”
The first voice, which belonged to Julio, came from the back of the car. The car was moving. I could tell because the crankshaft kept banging the small of my back. Julio’s legs were planted on my chest. The second voice, which belonged to Ramon, came from the direction of the driver s seat. The woman’s voice, which belonged to Julio’s wife, came from the other side of the front seat.
“My head hurts,” Julio complained.
“Did the bleeding stop?” his wife asked.
“I think so. But it hurts. I need a doctor.”
“No. I can take care of you. Your head keeps you from thinking straight, Julio. It is most necessary that we kill this man, Julio.”
“No,” said Julio stubbornly. “Let the man go.”
“Y pues?” his wife asked. “What then?”
“Then we go home.”
“Just like that,” said his wife, mocking him.
“We’re almost out of gas,” Ramon, the driver, said.
Julio said bitterly, “You. It was your idea. I wish you had never come to me with your idea. This is not my fight. I am not of the Parana Republic. I am Puerto Rican.”
“Qué hombre,” Julio’s wife said with bitter sarcasm. Her hand came up over the top of the front seat of the car. It was holding the envelope with Mrs. Caballero’s twenty-five thousand dollars. It was steady as a rock. “For this you said you would do anything. Anything, you said. Fool. Oh, you great fool. It has nothing to do with the Parana Republic. It has to do with the money.”
“I wish,” Julio said, “I had never met Ramon. I wish he had not known where to find us in New York. I wish he had forgotten I existed. I wish I had never sailed in the Nicaraguan merchant marine and met him there.”
Julio’s wife waved the envelope. “You wish! You should be thankful when Ramon needed help in this of the money he thought of you.”
“We have only enough gas to take us home,” Ramon observed.
“We can’t stop for gas,” Julio’s wife said.
“Your wife is right,” Ramon told Julio. “It has nothing to do with the Republic.” Julio’s legs shifted on my chest. I flexed the muscles of my left arm. I was making real progress. I was almost strong enough to make a fist. “They killed this man Caballero. This teacher. I saw them kill him. They dropped his body into the river wrapped in an anchor chain. They took the Mistral out a little way to do it.”
Julio only groaned.
“Drive home,” Julio’s wife said. “It is dangerous to stay out. We cannot stop for gas.”
“We can kill him,” Ramon suggested. I did not like Ramon.
Julio’s wife said, “No. Not now. Not until Julio sees what must be done. We cannot fight among ourselves. We can hide the man in our apartment until Julio sees what must be done.
“Julio is weak,” Ramon said, probably with a sneer.
“Then be thankful he has a strong wife.”
“The two of you,” Julio said. “The two of you.”
“Shut up,” his wife told him. “Try to think. God gave you a brain. Use it.”
“Murder,” said Julio. “To pretend kidnaping is bad enough. But murder.”
“Look out!” Julio’s wife cried.
The car skidded. Ramon grunted. I was aware of his weight shifting in the front seat. He pulled us out of the skid.
Julio said, “He is conscious.”
I must have tensed when we went into the skid. Julio leaned forward. His legs became heavy. I opened my eyes. Julio was staring down at me bleakly between his knees.
“Watch him,” Ramon said.
Julio nodded. Julio had a gun. He watched me.
No one said anything for a while.
“We’re almost there,” Ramon said finally.
Julio’s wife asked, “How’s the gas?”
“Basta. Enough.”
My strength was returning. My head ached fiercely. Pain seeped from it in dull slow waves throbbing down my spine. I thought if my life depended on it I might be able to clobber my way out of a paper bag, provided the bag was wringing wet.
Pretty soon there were street lights. I could see the alternate glow and shadow from the floor of the car. We drove straight and then turned. We turned again. In the detective stories you read the trussed up, blindfolded hero can deduce with mathematical certainty from the number of turns where he is being taken. I thought we were back in New York. It seemed a pretty good guess under the circumstances. It was the only guess I had.
We turned again. Julio’s wife smoked a cigarette. She was a cool one. She moved her weight in the front seat of the car, sitting closer to Ramon. Julio’s face was ugly. A muscle worked in his jaw.
In a few minutes Ramon patted the brake. We pulled over to the curb. Julio’s wife opened her door and got out. “Nobody’s coming,” she said.
Ramon went out into the snow too. The weight of Julio’s legs left my chest. I tried sitting up. My vision blurred for a moment, then cleared. Ramon was pointing my Magnum at me. Julio held his own automatic. They were both outside.
“Out,” Ramon said in English.
I got to my feet and staggered, bending at the waist from the car. Julio’s wife was there to support my weight. Julio jammed his shoulder under my other arm. We walked that way across the sidewalk through the snow, Ramon fo
llowing us.
It was a run-down tenement neighborhood which the Puerto Ricans had taken over from the Negroes who had taken it over from the Italians when it was already pretty far gone. We went up a small flight of outside steps into an unlit hall which smelled of garbage and tomcats and stale urine. Julio bore my weight up some more stairs into a hall with a single bare light bulb in the ceiling. The apartment doors were big black narrow rectangles, like scabby coffins standing on end. The walls were scabby too, the paint peeling away in large uneven strips. A woman laughed behind one of the closed doors. A man shouted and there was a smacking sound and the woman’s laughter ended abruptly.
“Hurry up,” Ramon said.
“You try dragging him,” Julio complained.
We reached a door. Julio’s wife fumbled for a key. “That’s funny,” she said. “The door isn’t locked.”
“You forgot to lock it,” Ramon said.
“No. I locked it.”
“Just open the door,” Ramon said.
She turned the handle and pushed the door in. She went inside first, then Julio and me, then Ramon. I felt stronger now. Not good, but stronger. If they meant to kill me here, which did not seem likely, I thought I could make a fight of it. Ramon closed the door, and locked it. There was a click and a sudden flood of harsh white light as Julio’s wife found the wall switch.
Sometimes if I have a bad night and sleep won’t come and I can’t even drink myself to sleep, I get to think of it. I will never forget anything about that room. I have had nightmares about it. It was a large kitchen with a white icebox and an old gas range in one corner. There were a table and four chairs and a unit of unpainted pine shelving which stored canned goods and boxes. There was a television set, the only new thing in the room, set against one wall. In front of it, making the big kitchen into a kind of parlor as well, was a shapeless, undignified old sofa wearing a tattered slipcover torn along its upper seam.
A man had been sitting in the sofa. He got up. His motions did not seem particularly swift, but no one had time to shoot him. He was the biggest man I have ever seen outside of a circus sideshow. He was big all over. He was between six and a half and seven feet tall. Everything about him was outsized. His head was almost as big as a basketball. He had slicked-back black hair and an enormous jutting brow over alert, incongruously mild blue eyes. His nose was huge and jutting too, high-bridged like the upside-down prow of a racing sloop. His lips were large and fleshy. His jaw was not quite as large as a poke bonnet, which it resembled. His shoulders were three feet across. His upper arms were as big around as most people’s thighs. He wore a turtleneck sweater.
In a hand the size of an eight-ounce boxing glove he held a revolver. It looked very small, but it was big enough. Threaded to the muzzle of the revolver was a flaring tube as long as the bore.
He shot Ramon first. The bullet took Ramon under the jaw. It made a very small hole but the big man had fired from his waist, and going out the back the bullet almost took the top of Ramon’s head off. The big man shot Julio before Ramon hit the floor. The tube on his revolver was a silencer. The gun went pfft once and Ramon was dead. It went pfft again and Julio threw his arms up and spun and fell face down.
Julio’s wife screamed. This tenement had heard screams before, but not screams like that. I thought it would bring help, but knew the help would come too late. I had time to take one step toward the big man, then he pulled the trigger. Julio’s wife went on screaming. The gun made a clicking noise. The big man pulled the trigger again. Click. There were no holes in me anywhere. I was still alive.
Julio’s wife opened the door. She rushed out into the hall, screaming. The big man hurled his revolver at me. It jarred the wall and went off, the silencer dropping away, with an explosive roar. I sprang for one of the kitchen chairs. Light on his feet, the big man came at me. I hefted the chair and slammed it down over his head. That’s the part I remember. It’s the part I dream about. The chair flew to pieces. All I had left in my right hand was a leg and a supporting strut.
The big man moved back half a foot and shook his head. I hit him with the chair leg. I held it in both hands and swung it like a baseball bat. I kept on swinging. Maybe I was still weak from the sapping I’d taken. But the chair had broken apart, hadn’t it? I hit him again. He caught the chair leg and twisted. I drove the edge of my hand against his neck. He was panting. At least I had made him do that. I let go of the chair leg. He flung it aside. There were noises outside in the hall. Doors opening. More screaming.
He moved his right fist about six inches. He did not seem to put much effort behind it. He didn’t have to.
The next thing I knew I was looking at a black rubber overshoe and the trouser leg of a police uniform.
He wasn’t the only cop in the place, but it took me a while to see anything above or beyond his trouser leg. When he saw me blink my eyes he crouched and passed something in front of my nose. It made me gag and made tears spring to my eyes.
He said, “You better?’ It was a rhetorical question. Before I could answer he said, “Sergeant out in the hall wants to see you if you are.”
I sat up. It took more doing than breaking the chair over the big man’s head. No one rushed over with sympathy and solicitude. No one offered a hand or a kind word. No one would have cared if instead of sitting up I had expired and earned a sheet like the ones covering Ramon and Julio.
“The big guy,” I said. “You get him?”
“It jives,” the cop said.
“What?”
“In the hall they’re talking about a big guy.”
The camera cops had finished their work and were packing their equipment. The positions of the bodies, mine included, had been chalked. When the basket boys came they could go right ahead and pick up the pieces.
I climbed to my feet and used the kitchen table for support. Out in the hall, Julio’s wife was crying bitterly, steadily. I staggered over to the sink and splashed cold water on my face. Cupping my hands, I drank some. Then I went outside.
A uniformed patrolman wearing the stripes of a sergeant on his overcoat was squatting like a baseball catcher in front of Julio’s wife. She sat with her back against the hallway wall with a semicircle of tenants hemming her there. She had drawn her knees up and her slumping chin was almost touching them. She was a chubby brunette with a round face and a flat nose. She was crying. The sergeant couldn’t get a word out of her.
When he saw me he stood up, taking something carefully and with reverence from the inside pocket of his coat. It was the Manila envelope. From the way it bulged no one had emptied it.
“Lady says this belongs to you, mister. She don’t want any part of it.”
“I was delivering it, yes.”
“Can you prove that?”
“No. The bills aren’t marked.”
He scowled. He had done a lot of scowling in his day. His face fell right into it: the furrowed forehead, the elongated lips, the eyes like slits.
“What were you delivering it for?” he said finally.
I thought it was a stupid question. Maybe the way I felt if he asked me my name I would have thought it a stupid question. But the point was, the homicide squad would arrive pretty soon and ask the same question all over again, only better. I told him that.
He didn’t like it. But just then, like the marines, the homicide boys came trooping up the stairs in the nick of time. There were three of them. When they came down the hall under the single bare electric light, I recognized the man in front. He was tall, with wide slumping shoulders and a sad long-nosed face. His sad face had looked more at home in the morgue.
“Well, hello there, Lieutenant Grundy,” the sergeant said, saluting. “I haven’t seen you in a while, sir. How are things over at Homicide West, sir?”
“They’re still considering your transfer, Sergeant,” Grundy said. “They’ll let you know. What happened here?”
The sergeant told Grundy what he knew. It wasn’t much. One of the Puerto
Rican tenants had phoned for the police. There were two dead men inside, one of them the crying woman’s husbands. There was talk of a big man who had got away. There were twenty-five thousand dollars. “And there’s this guy out here, Lieutenant. He was in a fight, maybe with the big guy.”
Grundy looked at me for the first time. He smiled. It was the saddest smile I have ever seen. “Well, if it isn’t the shamus,” he said. “You sure have got a nose for homicide, Drum. Why don’t you try and tell me about it like the nice, cooperative fellow you are?”
I told him, all right. I told him everything in my most forthright, earnest attitude. I had to. This time they could run me in as a material witness.
“But you didn’t call the police at any time?” he asked when I had finished.
“No, Lieutenant. We were afraid to. In case they had Caballero.”
“But they didn’t?”
“I already told you I overheard them say Caballero was murdered aboard the Parana Lines S.S. Mistral.”
“What about the big guy? Could you give us a make on him?”
I thought of the way he had fired twice getting up out of the sofa, killing two men. I thought of how I hadn’t been able to dent his skin with a chair leg. “You bet I could identify him,” I said.
Grundy grunted and leaned over the woman. He surprised me by being both persuasive and patient. After a while he got her to tell him about the big man in the turtleneck sweater. He thanked her and turned back to me and took off his hat and scratched his head. “It looks like you’re telling the truth this time,” he said grudgingly.
“Listen,” I said. “The dead man—the one named Ramon, not the woman’s husband—saw them kill Caballero on the Mistral. Doesn’t it figure that the big guy is off the Mistral too?”
Grundy shrugged. “If he is, he’s way out of my league. I couldn’t touch him there.”
Murder Is My Dish Page 5