“I like to ball on my day off,” he grumbled. “Besides, I don’t care for this setup very much. It’s not an official operation, but it’s not unofficial neither. That’s the way people get killed. It also happens to be the way half the crimes around here get solved, which is why I agreed to come down. But if somethin’ don’t happen by 11, I’m gonna split. I got some eatin’ pussy biggr’n the Holland Tunnel layin’ in my bed, so I sure as hell don’t need no cowboys and Indians shit this morning, you dig?”
“Sure, that’s fair enough,” I said.
The waitress hovered around us with the coffee pot but I covered my cup. I’d needed a lot of coffee to brace me, having gone the night without sleep, but another drop and I’d float away. It had been a busy night, which should have ended with the capture of Stanley Vreel, but only began with it. A little before midnight we’d found a telephone and Vreel had called his “confederate” and ordered him to turn Richie loose. Then we drove up to White Plains, Vreel and me in the Camaro and Sondra in the Caddy—I’d transferred the ransom to my own car, because I didn’t trust anybody in the Sadler family anymore—and found Richie where Vreel said we’d find him, in the train station. His hair was mussed and his clothes rumpled but otherwise he looked well treated. He told us all about how this man he’d never seen before forced him into a car and drove him at gunpoint up to a motel where they’d been cooped up all week. His abductor, he said, had a confederate but Richie never saw him—the two conferring only by telephone. When Richie, relating this part of the tale, looked at Vreel, I detected not the faintest indication of collusion between them, and believe me I was studying their expressions microscopically. The whole thing was so convincing I really began to doubt my own hypothesis.
We called the Sadlers and the commissioner and drove back to the city for a reunion at the St. Regis at 3 in the morning. I won’t go into the story Vreel, Sondra, and I had concocted to explain how we managed to get Richie back without paying the ransom, and how I ended up in the picture after the commissioner explicitly ordered me to stay out of it. But it was one of your better yarns and everyone was too happy with the outcome to press for details, at least that night. Vreel was cooler than grandpa’s icehouse, and we backed each other up so persuasively you could have booked our act for a month at The Sands. Later the commissioner would sit on us for a detailed explanation: he never got one, and to this day is still trying to get to the bottom of it, though I can tell you he has some beautiful theories.
Anyway, I spent an hour calling my pals Whittie, Bowen, and Lipsett to make arrangements for that morning’s little interview with Warnell Slakey. They were delighted to be awakened at 4 or 5 in the morning and told me so in colorful terms. Then I went back to my apartment to catch a little shuteye, except the phone rang at 6. It was Sondra.
“I had to do it, Dave,” she said.
“I suppose you did.”
“Vreel could have been telling the truth. I couldn’t afford to take that chance, no matter how slim it was. And neither could you. Richie is, after all, your client.”
“He is that, all right,” I said, feeling little joy in the fact.
“We’re going home tomorrow evening. I thought I might see you before leave.”
“I’ll see you off at the airport.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to be occupied,” I said.
“I thought you’d say that.”
“It happens to be true.”
“Dave...?”
“Please, Sondra. You got your brother back. Now you two can live happily ever after.”
I pressed my ear to the phone hoping against hope that she’d say something to restore what had been broken, but what really was there left for her to say? She’d declared herself loudly and clearly when she pulled the rug out from under me the previous night. “I’ll always love you,” she said, before hanging up.
I got up and took a long walk along the Carl Schurz Park promenade on the East River, watching the tugboats lug garbage and hoping someone would mug me and put me out of my misery. But some days you can’t even find a mugger to work you over. Feeling bluer than ever, I returned to my apartment, showered, shaved, and brewed myself a pot of coffee. All of which helped, but I was still feeling pretty evil when I boarded the bus for Harlem.
At 10:55 Slakey showed up. He was dressed, as always, like Pimp of the Year, sporting a white jumpsuit and high-heeled shoes and a hat with a brim so broad you could have run the Millrose Games around it. As he ducked through a ragged hole in the chickenwire fence he gave the high-sign to someone beyond our line of vision, and I could easily guess who. Then he strolled casually into the yard.
He spotted Mike Amos and greeted him but walked past the game as if Mike weren’t the reason for his visit. He noticed the action in the next court, but gave it wide berth when he recognized Tatum Farmer. He ambled over to another corner to rap with some friends.
After another five minutes or so, Mike Amos’s game ended and he sat down against the fence dabbing the sweat off his face with the tail of his T-shirt. Across the schoolyard, Slakey pretended to be oblivious, but finally waved at Mike and walked over to him. At that same moment, Tatum’s game accelerated and ended. The four players walked off the court, toweled up, and popped open some beer cans. Roy, Detective Pardee, and I got up and paid our check.
Slakey was walking around the yard with Mike, gesturing with his hands. In pantomime it looked friendly enough, but it was not hard to imagine the text of Slakey’s sermon. Mike eventually shrugged and ducked through the fence escorted by Slakey. The kid glanced in our direction and I nodded reassuringly.
We remained inside the coffee shop, waiting. A minute or so later, four men walked past. They were Slakey’s boys. Across the street, Tatum watched them and gave them two or three minutes, then led Dennis, Bo, and Red out into the street. Their group split up, each going his own way, and they trucked innocently down 130th Street, far behind Slakey’s men. We left Georgie’s and strolled along in the same direction.
At St. Nicholas Avenue Slakey’s people turned right, following their boss to 135th Street, where he turned right again. Tatum’s guys trailed raggedly behind, and we lagged behind them. By the time we reached 135th Street, Slakey and company were nowhere to be seen, but about halfway down the block, in front of a dilapidated brownstone walkup, Red Lipsett stood with a grin on his face. He saw us and waved us over. He gestured with his head into some shrubs beside the stoop. We looked down and there was one of Slakey’s yeggs who apparently had been posted as a lookout, sprawled out on his back, out colder than a witch’s tit.
“Whose place is this?” I asked the detective.
“Clarence Meddie, one of Slakey’s friends.”
I looked at Red and he nodded behind him, indicating that he rest of the troop was already inside the building. We went in and huddled at the landing. Dennis Whittie was on the second landing and gestured to us to come up. We tiptoed up a rickety stairway that smelled of wine and urine, then up another flight where Tatum and Bo stood outside a paint-peeled green door with the number 3A. Detective Pardee drew his .38 special and pressed against the door. We crowded around him, straining our ears, but for a minute the dialogue was indistinct. Then the volume began to rise and we heard Slakey say, clear as a bell, “What do you think, I work for nothing?”
“You don’t do nothin’, you don’t get no thin’,” Mike Amos replied arrogantly.
“What you mean, ‘do nothin’? I been negotiating with a dozen coaches, tops in the country. Now I got a chance to introduce you to John Wooden hisself. I worked my ass off to set this up and I want my money.”
“Well, I think you’re full of shit,” Mike said. He was deliberately provoking him, and if I were in the kid’s place I’d have been praying like crazy that my friends were standing on the other side of that door.
“Watch out, boy,” Slake
y said menacingly.
“What you goin’ do, beat it out of me?” said Mike.
“Don’t invite me, nigger; I’m too happy to oblige.”
“Like you obliged Timmie Lee?”
There was a slap and a cry of pain. We automatically started to rush the door, but Pardee held us back with an upraised hand.
“You sayin’ I had anything to do with Timmie Lee?” Slakey said.
“He owed you money, didn’t he?” Mike said, sobbing. “He found out what a bullshit artist you are, and he refused to pay you. So you had him beat up, right?” There was another slap and Mike whimpered.
“Leave him alone, Clarence,” Slakey ordered. Then he said something too low for us to make out.
“You say,” Mike answered, “but everyone knows you done it.”
“Yeah, and I’m still on the street. That should tell you somethin’.”
There was a long pause, then Slakey said, “Look, boy, I’m runnin’ out of patience. The way I see it, you got two choices. You can be a basketball star, or you can shuffle-ass the rest of your life on two busted legs. What’s it gonna be?”
I had to hand it to Mike. He had no idea whether we were standing outside the door or not. Defy Slakey now and in minutes he could be a cripple or even a cadaver. But he said, “Up your ass, Slakey.”
“All right, boys,” Slakey said.
Detective Pardee nodded, and three of us stepped back and hurled ourselves against the door. It burst open in a shower of splinters, revealing a dismally furnished apartment with chintzy furniture and linoleum floors. Mike Amos was seated in a kitchen chair facing us, his arms held by two thugs. Before him stood Slakey and the one called Clarence, a rubber hose poised. They all staggered backwards with surprise, one of the thugs reaching into his belt for a gun. Detective Pardee rushed him and brought the barrel of his gun down viciously across his face. Tatum was next into the room and made straight for Slakey. He caught him in the gut with his head, like a bull, and Slakey doubled over his back with a long groan. They fell into a corner and Tatum laid into him like a madman, cursing him and clobbering him with both fists.
Dennis, Bo, and I hurled ourselves at the other two, while Roy screeched a Rebel yell to spur us on—and took refuge behind a closet door.
Our two brutes recovered quickly from their surprise and traded some solid punches, one of which caught me on the same cheek Manny Ricci had bashed yesterday. That made me mad as hell. I slammed the dude with my elbow, bringing on a red gusher from his nose, while Dennis Whittie kicked him in the groin, which is Dennis’s specialty. The other guy had been efficiently taken care of by Bo Bowen and was doubled up on the floor cowering like a whipped dog.
I looked around for more action, but the fracas had ended much too quickly. The only remaining action was Tatum Farmer kicking Slakey on the floor trying to make him get up and fight some more. Slakey wasn’t having any, which was understandable in view of the fact that a piece of his left ear had been bitten off by Tatum. An ear for a life isn’t exactly how the formula goes, but I think it worked out pretty nicely anyway.
Detective Pardee finally pulled Tatum away, then called the precinct and asked us to leave before the police arrived, because he wanted the credit and vigilante actions don’t sit well with precinct commanders. That was fine, though: we’d gotten our vengeance and Roy Lescade had gotten his story. Hopefully, Slakey would get a jail term.
I looked over to Roy, who was scribbling furiously in his notebook. He gazed at me from under his beetling eyebrows and shook his head disgustedly. “Still using your elbows, Bolt. You haven’t changed a bit.”
Chapter XVII
A husky female voice announced the departure of their flight, and I rose from my seat along with the Sadlers and drifted with them toward the security checkpoint, beyond which visitors were forbidden. Davis Sadler, looking shrunken with worry but happy, shook my hand and I mumbled a platitude to him. I bore him no ill will, though it was his ironclad determination to make something transcendent out of Richie that had warped his son so grotesquely. Davis had made Richie 99 percent perfect, but in my opinion people should be a lot less than that, because the remaining 1 percent is too often monstrous. Give me someone 75 percent okay any day, like Roy Lescade, or even 51, like myself.
Bea Sadler, loaded down with so many purchases she looked like she’d hit the jackpot on Let’s Make a Deal, bestowed a liquor-laden kiss on me. I hate to sound like a male chauvinist pig, but here was a woman who, if you unscrewed her back, would reveal a mainspring, some nuts and bolts, and one or two moving parts, but little else. And I could have wished for something more, because it was for want of a strong mother that Richie’s father had come to dominate him so completely. Oh, Sondra tried to provide the missing feminine influence, but when a sister tries to be a mother she ends up acting more like a wife.
Sondra and Richie both hung back as if they wanted to talk to me privately. I wanted to speak to Richie, but I felt it best not to indulge in sentimentality with Sondra. She looked at me with round, hazy, sad eyes and pouting mouth. I took her hand, squeezed it tenderly, and kissed her on the cheek. Then I gently nudged her toward the metal-detection chamber through which all boarding passengers must pass, and from which there was no return. “I hope you’re not packing a gun,” I said. “They’ll have you arrested as a potential skyjacker.”
“If I was packing one, I know who I’d use it on. Dave, listen—”
“No, you listen. I’m an old-fashioned Southern gentleman, and I was brought up with some pretty antebellum notions about women, such as they fall into two categories: nice girls—the kind you marry—and the other kind.”
“That’s not antebellum, that’s antediluvian,” she sighed.
“Be that as it may, you unfortunately fall into the nice-girl category. I say ‘unfortunately’ because I’m not ready to settle down again, and I don’t feel like using you the other way. Also, you have some growing up to do. So why don’t we leave it at that. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again because of your brother. We’ll look at ourselves then and see. How does that sound?”
“Shitty,” she said, her voice echoing the word in the metal-detection chamber like some awful pronouncement from on high. And it was to echo in my head for weeks.
I turned away.
Richie was standing against the wall and I sidled over to him. He looked at the bandage on my cheek and shook his head. “I heard about Timmie Lee,” he said.
“From whom?”
“From your friend Roy Lescade. He came over to the hotel before we left for the airport. Mr. Bolt, I’d like to send a check to Timmie’s family, maybe start a scholarship fund or something. What do you think?”
“I think that would be fitting and proper.” I took a cigar out of my pocket and lit it. “What did you tell Roy?”
“What you told me to tell him. That I’d had a fight with Vreel over the question of a big loan, and that I’d been in seclusion while you were hammering out a compromise.”
“What did Roy say about that?”
“He said it was just another ho-hum story about a contract squabble. He’s not even going to bother writing it up.”
“He bought it, huh?”
“Sure,” Richie smiled. “I’m very convincing, you know.”
“So I’ve observed. You have honesty credits with Roy, I guess.”
He laughed, but wistfully. “Do I have any with you?”
“Uh uh. They’re all spent. You’ll have to start banking them again.”
I fixed my eyes on his, hoping even at this last moment to secure some kind of concrete confirmation that it was he and no one else who had collaborated with Stanley Vreel. But all I saw was my reflection in the glacial blue of his irises.
“What’s going to happen, Mr. Bolt?”
I shrugged. “What’s going to happen is that Stanley Vreel will soon a
nnounce that his franchise is up for sale. By autumn you’ll be playing under new management, maybe in another city. And maybe for less money.”
I watched his reactions. There were none. He simply said, “I see.”
Yet he lingered even as his parents and Sondra shouted to him to hurry. “Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?” I said.
He fidgeted for a minute, his eyes roving around the terminal, his mouth slightly puckered in thought. Finally he said, “This is going to sound a little flaky, Mr. Bolt, but—have you ever been in analysis?”
“No, why?”
“I was just wondering what it’s like, that’s all.”
“You think you might need it?” My pulse had quickened and I felt a strange, quiet happiness inside.
“Me? Of course not. Haven’t you heard? I’m perfect!” There was a glimmer of mockery in his eyes, self-mockery, perhaps the first such glimmer he’d ever had.
“I think it might be very helpful to you,” I said. “Maybe your recent ‘ordeal’ has made you think about yourself. Analysis might help you see things more clearly.”
“Things that you see about me, you mean?”
“Yes, things that I see about you.”
He picked up his overnight bag. “You’re really a good guy, Mr. Bolt.”
“I’m just your agent,” I said, shaking his hand.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright 1974 by Richard Curtis
ISBN 978-1-4976-0850-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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