They nodded in unison. I had barely glanced at the boys when we were introduced, as you do when you meet a whole group of strangers all at once, but now I looked them over a little more carefully in an attempt to appraise Stub’s judgment in choosing confidants. They all seemed like nice clean kids of at least average intelligence, but one I regarded a little thoughtfully.
He was the boy Stub had designated as Buddy Tipp, and I hadn’t recognized him with my first cursory glance when we were introduced. But now I realized he was the blond boy who had come from the back room of Sam Polito’s barbershop the previous evening.
He was down at the opposite end of the table, too far away for me to see his eye pupils, and there was nothing in his manner to indicate he might be a junkie. But I had been certain he was having the shakes when he peered from between the drapes the night before, and I wasn’t very enthusiastic about having a heroin addict know the details of my investigation.
It was too late to screen him out, however. I merely asked, “Just what do you have in mind, Stub?”
“There’s eight of us, see. And I figured we’d sound out maybe a couple more of the older fellows who we’re sure can keep their mouths shut. That’ll give us ten guys to do log work and tailing, or whatever else you want us to do. We all know this neighborhood backwards and forwards. We can get to people you couldn’t even find, pick up rumors you wouldn’t hear in a million years, and in general pick up more information than you could possibly find on your own. Then too, Buzz Thurmond is used to seeing us around, but he’d get suspicious if he caught you poking into his business. What do you think?”
I said slowly, “I’ve looked up the records of both Buzz Thurmond and this Limpy Alfred character who supervises the Gravediggers. They’re both pretty tough boys. I don’t think I’d want to be responsible for putting you youngsters in a position where either one would get sore at you.”
The kid Stub had introduced as Dave O’Brien, a lean redhead of about sixteen who sat directly across from me, gave a cynical chuckle. “We’ve got sixty members, mister. Even Buzz Thurmond ain’t going to lay a hand on a Purple Pelican.”
“You seem to accept it as at least a possibility that he laid a hand on Bart Meyers,” I remarked.
The redheaded kid frowned. “Not openly, he didn’t. And if anything happened to some of us after we tangled with Buzz, the club wouldn’t need any more proof even if he framed it to look like somebody else’s work. He’d be cooked.”
“That wouldn’t bring any of you kids back to life if he or his gang decided to do some wholesale bumping,” I said. “I want to think this over awhile.”
They all looked a little disappointed.
“Tell you what,” I decided. “You contact the other two members you think you can trust over the weekend, and I’ll meet all of you here Monday night. Meantime I’ll work up some safe ways you can help out. Ways like listening for rumors about how this gang Buzz belongs to felt about Bart Meyers. I can tell you right now I’m not going to set you to tailing Buzz around though. Or his pal, Limpy Alfred. Okay?”
Stub Carlson made the decision for the whole group. “We’ll be here, Mr. Moon. And you’re the boss. Whatever you say, we’ll go along.”
13
THE next morning, Saturday, I arrived at the downtown YMCA at nine a.m. The YMCA secretary, an affable man in his fifties named Gardner, saw me immediately without my having to go through the rigmarole of first explaining to his stenographer what I wanted. In reply to my question as to who I should see concerning the Y’s program of converting natural gangs into law-abiding clubs, he told me a Mr. Wilfred Reed was their “community-boy organizer.”
Then he personally escorted me downstairs to the man’s office.
Wilfred Reed’s office was merely a cubbyhole in the basement off a large game room full of pool tables and ping-pong tables. About twenty boys of varying ages were in the game room.
Gardner introduced me to Reed, gave me an amiable good-by and left us alone. The YMCA secretary hadn’t even asked what I wanted.
“Have a chair, Mr. Moon,” Reed invited. Then he went over and closed his office door to cut off the racket being made by the boys in the game room.
Wilfred Reed was a lean young man in his late twenties with a pleasant air of vitality about him. Horn-rimmed glasses gave his face a somewhat studious expression, but there was nothing sissified about him. His lean frame was well-muscled and there was a touch of firmness beneath his pleasant manner which indicated he was accustomed to exercising authority when he had to.
I took the proffered seat and, when he had seated himself at his desk, offered him a cigar.
He shook his head. I don’t smoke. But don’t let that stop you. We don’t allow smoking in the game room, but it’s all right in here.” He grinned and added, “If you’re over eighteen.”
“I passed it several years back,” I confessed.
He shoved an ash tray across the desk toward me.
When I had lighted up, I said, “I’m a private detective, Mr. Reed, and I’m investigating the murder of a boy named Bart Meyers. Maybe you read about it.”
“I did indeed,” he acknowledged. “Terrible thing. Bart was an awfully nice kid.”
“Oh, you knew him?”
“Rather well.”
When he didn’t offer anything more, I said, “I understand somebody from the Y had been talking to Bart about converting the Purple Pelicans into a straight club. Was that you?”
“Yes. I usually make initial contacts. I have two assistants whose job is to take over supervision of organizing club activities once a club has agreed to try our program, but the salesmanship end is almost entirely my baby. What is it you wanted to know?”
“I thought perhaps you could tell me something about Bart’s plans. Insofar as the club was concerned, that is. There seems to be a strong possibility that his reform program was what got him killed.”
The community-boy organizer looked distressed. “You mean this youngster who killed him resented the suggested change that much?”
It hadn’t occurred to me that my statement might make the man feel he was indirectly responsible for Bart Meyer’s death. I tried to reassure him.
“Joe Brighton claims he didn’t kill the kid,” I said. “And I believe him. It’s in Joe’s interest that I’m working on the case. I have a tentative theory that an adult gangster murdered Bart in order to discourage club reform. That’s why I’d like to know just what your dealings with Bart were.”
My attempt at reassurance didn’t work, for his expression indicated he wasn’t any happier about an adult murderer than he had been about a juvenile one, so long as the motive seemed to stem from his work with the club. It naturally upset him to think Bart Meyers might still be alive if the Y hadn’t attempted to reform the Purple Pelicans.
I said, “If you’re blaming yourself, I don’t think you should. From what little I know of your program, it’s a fine one. If you abandoned it because of the possibility of somebody occasionally getting hurt, you’d be playing right into the hands of the racketeers who exploit these teenage gangs. Violence is common in that part of town. If you dropped your whole program, probably more kids would get killed in rumbles alone than could possibly get hurt in fighting for reform. Not to mention the number whose lives would be ruined by graduating from juvenile gangs into adult ones if nobody took the trouble to steer them straight.”
“I know that,” he said ruefully. “Naturally I couldn’t anticipate a murder might result from my salesmanship, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. The worst part is that Bart himself was well on the road to developing into an outstandingly useful citizen before I ever contacted him. Most of the juvenile gang leaders I deal with are confirmed toughs when I first meet them. But not Bart Meyers. He was tough enough in a physical sense, but his thinking had already straightened out before I ran into him.”
He explained that he had known Bart for only about two months, but almost from
the first contact the boy had shown enthusiasm about the Y’s program.
“My usual procedure is to work on the gang leader first,” he said. “Once you get him sold on the program, half the battle’s won. Normally I take it pretty slow, never pushing too hard, at first just sounding out the boy’s interests, talking about baseball and such things, and not even mentioning reorganization plans. Of course the juvenile gang leader always knows what I’m really after, because most of these teenage clubs have heard of the community-boy program, but I run into surprisingly little resentment unless I push too hard. Mainly because the kids have a natural interest in the kind of sports program we offer. When they do begin to come around, it’s hardly ever with the idea that they’re reforming. They become sold on the sports program and decide to take it on as an additional activity, intending to continue with their rumbles, vandalism and petty theft as well. Getting the club to start participating in our program is only the first step in straightening it out. But Bart Meyers was unique in my experience with juvenile gang leaders. From the very beginning he took to the idea so wholeheartedly, I actually had to slow him down.”
“How was that?” I asked.
“He wanted to convert the Purple Pelicans into a straight club at one fell swoop. I knew it wouldn’t work because I’d gathered a pretty good picture of the gang from boys in some of the other clubs we’d reorganized. It and the Gravediggers are generally regarded as the toughest gangs in town. They’ve both ranged beyond mere petty theft and have developed into well-organized criminal groups. Also both have a high percentage of narcotic addicts. I knew the Purple Pelicans would have to be brought into the program very very cautiously, and their energies diverted into normal channels very gradually after they were in. I had some difficulty getting Bart to agree to go through a period of merely feeling out club reaction instead of laying down the law and offering to whip anyone who disagreed with him.”
I asked him if he and Bart had ever discussed the criminal activities the Purple Pelicans engaged in.
He shook his head. “I make a point of discouraging that even if a boy wants to talk about it. Of course Bart knew I was aware the Purple Pelicans regularly broke the law, but I got across to him that my interest was in what the club did in the future, not what it had done in the past. If I had specific information about crimes committed by a juvenile gang, I’d either have to report it to the police or become an accessory. Since the whole program would collapse if I got myself in the position of being an informer, the only intelligent way to handle the situation is for me to refuse to listen to confessions.” He grinned a little. “I’ve found that most of these kids who feel impelled to confess their past crimes aren’t driven by repentance anyway. They sense I can’t very well inform on them, and I constitute a safe audience for their bragging.”
I asked if he knew anything about the club’s tie-in with adult criminals.
Again he shook his head. “I avoided that subject for the same reason. I’m afraid the only information I can really give you is that Bart was determined to reform the club. I hadn’t even talked to any members aside from Bart. I didn’t think they’d take too well to what they’d probably regard as a reformer in their midst until after Bart had softened them up a little.”
When I asked him about the Gravediggers, he couldn’t tell me anything at all aside from the rumors he had heard about it from members of other clubs. The organization was on his agenda, but he hadn’t as yet established any contacts with it.
He also had never heard of either Buzz Thurmond or Limpy Alfred Levanthal.
As there didn’t seem to be anything else he could tell me, I thanked the man and left.
• • •
Sunday I picked Sara Chesterton up at six a.m., as scheduled, and we spent until noon on the river in a hired boat with an outboard motor. Sara wasn’t a very expert fisherman, but what she lacked in skill she made up for with luck. She brought in four average-sized jack salmon and a two-pound channel cat; I caught one small alligator gar, which is slightly less edible than broken glass.
At noon we camped on a sand bar and I built a driftwood fire to cook the jack salmon. Sara had brought a picnic basket which, when opened, proved to contain nothing but potato salads, rolls, paper plates, silver and a Thermos of coffee.
“You certainly had confidence in your luck,” I commented. “If you’d banked on me, you’d be eating gar with that potato salad.”
She made a face. “Don’t be disgusting, Manny.”
It was a kind of disgusting thought, if you’ve ever seen one of the snag-toothed monstrosities.
Sara had worn a blue denim shirt and jeans, which perversely made her seem more feminine than her usual attire. She wasn’t much of an outdoor girl, and being out of her normal environment had the further effect of making her seem less brisk and businesslike. I found myself enjoying her company more than I ever had before, possibly because it was the first time we’d ever been in a situation where I was placed in the superior male role instead of merely being the companion of an entirely self-sufficient woman.
Even the fact that she caught all the fish didn’t alter the feeling.
Sara too seemed to enjoy herself thoroughly. Her face literally glowed, and never before had I heard her laugh so frequently. She seemed almost disappointed when, after we had cleaned up our camp and left the sand bar, she discovered I was heading in.
“Aren’t we going to fish any more?” she asked.
“They hardly ever bite in the afternoon,” I told her. “They won’t start again until just before dusk. We’d just be wasting our time.”
We took the cat she had caught up to her apartment, where after I had skinned and cleaned it, she put it in her freezing compartment.
The moment she was back in her normal surroundings, Sara reverted to her usual self. While I was cleaning the catfish, she excused herself, went into the bedroom and a few moments later emerged in a dress which would have been appropriate for church. With the change of clothes she again changed back to a brisk and sophisticated woman, and unaccountably seemed to lose much of the femininity I had begun to admire when we were out fishing.
As she put the fish away, she said, “If you’ll come back next Friday evening, we’ll have southern fried catfish.”
“Sure,” I told her, but with less enthusiasm than I would have said it ten minutes before.
14
PRIOR to Stub Carlson’s suggestion that he and his selected group of friends assist in the investigation, I had planned a visit to the Bremmer Hotel to see if I could turn up a connection between racketeer Sherman Bremmer and the two hoods who acted as advisors to the Purple Pelicans and the Gravediggers. But I decided to hold off on this until I decided just how I wanted to use the boys.
By eight o’clock Monday evening I still hadn’t decided exactly how I wanted to use them. I knew how I didn’t want to use them, however. I didn’t want to use them in any way which might make Buzz Thurmond suspicious that the kids were plotting against him.
I decided to await the eight o’clock meeting before coming to a definite decision, feeling that I’d be better able to evaluate the boys’ respective capabilities after I’d talked to them for a time. I also intended to listen to their own suggestions as to how they might be used before I made up my mind as to how to deploy my volunteer army.
I might as well have saved myself the trouble of mulling over the problem, however, as I never got to use the kids in any way. When I reached the corner of Sixth and Vernon and started to turn right, a purple-jacketed youngster stepped from the curb and waved me down.
Braking to a stop, I peered at him through the gathering dusk, but couldn’t make out who it was until he had stuck his head in the car window. Then I saw that it was the redheaded boy Stub had introduced as Dave O’Brien.
In an excited voice he said, “Stub told me to head you off, Mr. Moon. Everything’s blown up.”
I waved him back from the car, nosed it over to the curb and parked.
He waited on the sidewalk until I got out of the car and joined him.
“What’s blown up?” I asked.
“The whole deal. Somehow the whole club found out some of us were messing with a private cop, and they called a mass meeting. They’re all down in the club room now.” The kid’s face was pale and his speech was so hurried the words ran over each other, but I got the impression he was more excited than scared.
“What are they doing down there?” I asked.
“Holding a kangaroo court on Stub. For telling you club secrets.”
I glanced up the street toward the brownstone entrance in the center of the block, but saw no sign of activity.
“Just on Stub?” I asked. “What about the other seven of you?”
“They know all we did was listen to Stub,” he explained. “Anyway, all those guys except me have switched over to thinking like the rest of the club. Or at least are acting like they do because they’re scared to stand up to the guys behind the mass meeting. Nobody’s sore at anybody but Stub and you.”
“They’re sore at me too, eh? They figure to hold a kangaroo court on me?”
“Some of the guys were talking a little wild,” he said. “Stub give me the word to head you off and keep you away from the club room.”
I mulled this over a minute, then asked curiously, “What do you think got the boys riled up?”
“I don’t know. I can’t even figure how they found out.”
I thought I could. “How many of the group I met the other day ride H, Dave?”
The redhead looked surprised. “None of them. Stub steered clear of the junkies on purpose.”
“He just thought he did,” I told him. “I think your pal, Buddy Tipp, is hooked. I’ll bet you a protzel the leak came from him.”
His expression turned puzzled. “Buddy? He’s not on the stuff far as I know. What makes you think he is?”
“The other night he went into Sam Polito’s barbershop by the back way with the shakes, and came out steady as a rock.”
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