by Unknown
Eighteen. Twenty. Twenty-five. He stopped.
“It’s seven-thirty, Skeat. How about some dinner?” he asked flatly. “You’re tying up some good men in this crummy basement. Open up and let’s all go home.”
I retched and shook my head for “no.”
Angonides felt the spot he’d been pounding and then wordlessly fired his fist into a new part of my hide, six inches to the right. He took his stance again and pounded, I don’t know how long. My body felt swollen and waves of pain swept over it. Between the waves the light seemed to dim. Then I slipped and began to speed down the longest, slickest, steepest toboggan slide in the world. The photo-flood bulb in the kid’s magic lantern went out.
The detective was shaking me. I tasted cheap whiskey on my tongue and felt it burn my lips. When my eyes opened things were blurred, but I saw Angonides’ big, serious face staring into mine.
“Skeat,” he said, “you won’t get anywhere if you try to put through a complaint. You understand that?”
“So what?” I asked thickly. “What happened?”
“You got tired and went to sleep. But you didn’t talk. The hell with you.”
“You shouldn’t have muscled me, George,” I said. He left his face blank. His boys silently led me out.
I found myself on the sidewalk outside 32 Center, rocky as a drunk at the end of a three-week bender. I walked to a subway trying not to swing my shoulders. They hurt. I hurt from the waist up—and down.
At the Russian Baths on Second Avenue I bought a cot for the night and went into the steam room. I sat on the top tier where it’s thickest and hottest. My skin became pink all over and then two pinker blotches appeared just under my bottom ribs. That was all. Angonides knew his stuff.
I told the rubber to take it easy. He was a big, gray man with knowing hands and an Eastern Europe accent. He touched the two faint bruises once and asked: “Mugs or cops?”
“Prunes,” I said. “That happens whenever I eat too many prunes.”
He grinned and shut up. A little later he began to talk about the Cossacks of the tsar and what they used to do to nihilists and liberals.
I asked him if the Cossacks ever used to shred liberals with beer-bottles. He left off the massaging and showed me page three of the Mirror: “SUSPECT HELD IN BOTTLE DEATH.” The story said a little less than nothing. My name wasn’t mentioned, though I suppose I was the suspect.
“Never heard of it.” I yawned. I was so sleepy he had to lead me to the cot.
“ ’Night, mister,” he said. “Lay off them prunes.”
he next morning I woke with ice-picks under my ribs, but in pretty good shape, considering. I had a barbershop shave and some coffee and wheat-cakes in a cafeteria. I went uptown to my office. It was only nine-thirty, but I had a visitor already in the little waiting-room I keep unlocked for the drop-in trade.
He was young and trained-looking. He was dressed in gray and had hot, dark eyes that wrinkled at the corners.
“ ’Morning,” I said. “I’m Tim Skeat. Is there anything—” I was unlocking the office door when I saw that he had a little gun out.
I locked my office door again and put the key in my inside breast pocket. “What’s the caper?” I asked.
He jerked the gun toward the office door. It was a short-barrel .32 revolver. He held it right, with his thumb horizontal along the frame.
One word came from his lips, in a gray, chilly monotone: “Open.”
“Not for you, punk.”
The cold monotone said again: “Open or I’ll shoot your guts out.” But his hand didn’t tighten on the gun.
“Nope. You aren’t coked up, so you won’t shoot. If you want the keys, come and get them. Only I don’t think you’re man enough.”
He didn’t waste words; he took two steps toward me, like a boxer—exactly like a boxer. He shuffled forward his left foot and didn’t bring the right up until it was planted. His left hand was out, the gun was in his right hand at waist level. If I grabbed for it his body would be in the way of my grab. If he fired my body would be in the way of his bullet.
He dipped the left hand into my jacket. His hot, dark eyes didn’t leave my left shoulder. That was the hand I’d have to grab with, and my shoulder would telegraph the grab.
His hand closed around the key-ring in the pocket.
“Your safety’s on,” I said, looking down.
His eyes flicked down.
My left hand went out, the thumb slipping under the hammer, the fingers clamping on the cylinder. The cylinder twitched but didn’t turn as he jerked the trigger and the hammer slammed my thumb-nail. As he yanked his hand out of my jacket pocket the ulnar surface of my right landed in his wind-pipe and then crunched on his right wrist. He dropped the gun and squared off like a manly little Golden Glover.
I back-handed him with my right and he jabbed me nicely in the nose. I apologized hastily to the Marquess of Queensbury and caught his wrist as his hand bounced back to the guard.
The Ito Soji doesn’t often work unless you practice daily, but this time it didn’t let me down. He went spinning through the air and fetched the office partition an awful smack.
Moe Baumgart, the insurance agent next door, yelled: “Skeat, for God’s sake!”
“Sorry, Moe!” I bellowed back through the partition. I rolled back Junior’s eyelid. He was faking. I picked him up by the collar, pocketed his gun and opened my office door. Suddenly he was writhing like a crazy wildcat in my grip, clawing for my eyes, my throat, my hair. I threw my right arm around his throat from behind in a stranglehold and coldly put the pressure on, and then I held it.
His eyes popped and he made faint, gargling noises. His face went blue. I let him drop and booted him through the door. I locked it and went to the phone.
“I want a young, intelligent policeman,” I said to the operator. “Room 917, Greenleaf Building, Broadway at Fifty-first Street. There’s no great hurry about it.”
She repeated the address and thanked me, I don’t know why.
“Get into a chair,” I said to the kid. He glared at me from the floor. I picked him up and dumped him into the client’s seat. He wasn’t going to talk, he was saying over and over to himself. I grinned at him.
“They’ll trace you through the A.A.U. welterweight division,” I said.
His eyes widened for a moment; then he looked away from me. He wasn’t going to talk.
He didn’t have to.
“Lots of form,” I said. “Lots of form and no guts.”
“The hell with you,” he said. The movie-gangster chill was gone from his voice.
“They shouldn’t have sent you,” I said. “They should have sent a man.”
He grinned wolfishly. I was glad I had the gun.
“Being a detective is hard on the stomach,” I said. “Every time I meet a punk like you it makes me want to throw up. And you don’t know how many punks like you there are, in the new suits with the new guns they don’t know how to use. ‘Your safety’s on, Junior—take your safety off before you shoot the man!’ And you fell for it!”
He grinned his animal grin again and said slowly: “Someday I’m going to meet you again, buddy—” The words trailed off.
“Merry hell you will. You’re headed up the river right now. And when you get out you won’t be able to fight those good, clean amateur fights for thirty-dollar suits and fifty-dollar watches. The mob won’t even hire you back after the way you fluffed this job.”
“The hell I won’t meet you, buddy.” He grinned tightly. “And the hell I won’t get hired.”
He was beginning to talk, and then the law had to pound on the door.
“Hey!” yelled the law. Bang, bang, bang on the door with the nightstick. “You want a cop in here?”
I unlocked the door. “Hello, Benelli. I asked for a young, intelligent policeman and they send you. What’s the force coming to?”
Benelli grinned. “Is that the emergency?” He indicated Junior and hung his nightsti
ck on his badge.
“Yep. Assault with a deadly weapon. Maybe assault with intent to kill. Here’s his gun.”
Benelli pocketed it and flipped a chain come-along on the kid’s wrist. He twisted it once and the kid shot out of the chair with a yelp.
“Comfortable?” asked Benelli solicitously. He twisted it again and the kid bit his lip.
“Don’t be brutal,” I said.
He didn’t grin. “I know these punks, Timmy. I don’t like them worth a damn. Let’s all go to the precinct.”
I looked at my watch. The kid started and his eyes twitched to my desk. I looked at him and he stared out the window. He wouldn’t meet my eye.
Half a hunch is better than none.
“It’s nine-thirty,” I said to Benelli. “I have a big-deal phone-call coming up. I’ll be there at eleven.”
Benelli took him away.
I sat by the phone and smoked a chain of cigarettes until ten sharp. The phone rang.
I picked up the speaker and said, in the kid’s movie-gangster rasp: “It’s O.K.”
“Did you cool him?” asked a woman’s voice excitedly.
“Between the eyes,” I hissed.
“Maxie’ll be there in five minutes.”
“O.K.,” I rasped, sweating.
“Morgan’s tonight?”
“Uh, sure.”
“See ya.” She hung up and I scrambled for my safe to get out the .38 before mysterious Maxie arrived. I locked the door again. It would be locked.
At ten-five there was a knock.
“Maxie?” I hissed.
“That’s me,” said a pale, thin voice.
I opened the door and Maxie came in. His jaw dropped when he saw himself covered by all that caliber.
“I’m O.K., kid,” he said, surprised. “I’m here for the box.”
He didn’t know me!
“Where’s the, er, stiff?” he asked nervously.
“There—” I waved the gun at the lavatory door and put it away. Maxie could be handled without a gun—he wasn’t much of a man except for his hands. They were big, muscular and manicured. I found out why in a moment. He made a bee-line for my office safe and squatted before it.
I didn’t understand half the things he did—maybe some of it was mumbo-jumbo. Every crook dramatizes himself. But in three minutes the door swung open.
He practically dove in, ignoring me. I keep a little cash in my safe, a small set of burglar tools, my gun and cartridges, and all my case reports. Maxie set the cash aside, whistled over the tools, ignored the bullets and spread the reports on the floor.
While he pawed them I took time out to wonder what the hell was going on, but I couldn’t seem to get anywhere.
Maxie gave up the reports, puzzled. “Have I got it straight, kid?” he asked. “The guy’s name was Anson Charles English and he hired Skeat last Tuesday. He could’ve used a phony name, but Skeat didn’t open any files on Tuesday at all.”
“Who was that dame on the phone?” I asked. “Who is Anson Charles English? Why was Skeat supposed to be killed? Where is Morgan’s?” I took out the pistol again. His jaw dropped again.
“I’m Skeat,” I said. “Your gunsel didn’t keep his left up. You look silly with your mouth open.”
He closed it and gulped faintly.
I said: “You look silly with it closed, too.”
“I won’t talk to you,” he said.
“I’ll bet you want to see your lawyer.”
He looked at the door.
“It’s locked,” I said.
He went over and tried it.
“See?” I told him. “Just you and me.”
“I want to see my lawyer.” He gulped.
“No law here, Maxie. I’m getting sick of cops. They punch you around and then they say the hell with you. You get your suspect talking and they bust in and take him to the precinct. Here’s one I learned from a cop.” I belted him just below the bottom rib on the left side.
He quacked like a duck and his face went gray. He was a little man.
I pounded him in the same spot until his face was like putty and his breath crowed from his throat.
“Lay off—agh!” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “Lay off. Where’s the stiff. Oh, the stiff’s in there. Guy named Skeat. Lay off, Skeat. See what I mean?”
“A-a-agh!” He retched as my fist sunk in again.
By ten-thirty I was sweating from both armpits. Don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t hard work to bounce even a little man like a handball.
By ten-forty he was talking. I slammed him whenever he stopped, and he’d begin again like a turned-on radio.
He said Morgan’s was a gambling house in the Village.
He said English was a petty blackmailer who’d put the screws on Morgan for something. He said also that English was the corpse which had been shredded with the beer-bottle.
“Where the hell do I figure?” I asked.
He said a Mirror reporter had told somebody that I was a key-figure in the case and it had got to Morgan.
“Who’s the dame?”
He said she was just Morgan’s steno.
“What did English have on Morgan?”
Maxie shivered. “Mister, I don’t know. I’m very damned glad I don’t know. What English knew got him killed. You were supposed to have got the story from English, so you were supposed to be killed. I got sent here to see if you had the story on paper and if you did, to burn it.
“If I found a file on English in your safe I would have burned it without looking inside, as soon as I read his name on the folder. I’m—I’m glad I don’t know any more than I do about it.”
He couldn’t walk, or thought he couldn’t. I hoisted him and booted him into the corridor. He got up and made it to the elevator.
Moe Baumgart came out of his office next door and coldly asked whether I’d been holding a three-ring circus all morning. I apologized nicely and went in again to lock up.
I went to the precinct to file charges against the kid.
he part I hated was that there wasn’t any money in it for me. Maybe keeping alive’s more important than money. If it is, why does anybody get into the detective business? But I had something to do with it. They were sure as hell going to shoot my tail off unless I got the drop on them. I could call the cops and tell them the whole story, but what was the story?
A punk who wouldn’t talk. A phone-call that only I knew anything about. A little peterman who could sue me for assault and collect. Another gambling house. A nasty kind of murder still unsolved.
The cops would laugh.
But I wasn’t laughing.
I was going to see Mr. Morgan and tell him that I didn’t know him from Adam.
How was I going to find Mr. Morgan without getting chopped down? Ah-hah, that’s the catch. Maybe I was going to get chopped down. Wouldn’t that be funny as hell? To be killed so I wouldn’t spill a secret I didn’t know?
I went out and rented a dress suit.
“Got a wedding job?” Sol asked, and I said yes. After the deposit was paid I got the quakes. I felt somehow that the ten dollars changing hands had committed me. There was no turning back now.
In my hotel room I tried on the dress suit and it looked lousy. I pressed it myself, and it didn’t fit any better but it lost that off-the-shelf look. I filled the pockets with a set of cheap, flashy accessories—cigarette case, lighter, wallet, pen, memo pad, silk handkerchief. They were all monogrammed C. McC.
In my top left bureau drawer I keep a tiny Belgian .25 automatic. It’s a slim, dainty woman’s gun, no bigger than a pack of cigarettes and not as thick. I hefted it for a long minute and pondered. I slipped it into the little pocket half-way down the left tail of the dress-coat. It didn’t bulge. The tail swung a little too heavily when I tried the jacket on and walked. That was all.
I got into the gray suit again and took the subway for Washington Square. That’s Greenwich Village, where the suckers go, and I felt l
ike the biggest sucker who ever drew breath.
Morgan’s was a brownstone front three stories high, with curtained windows. I walked past it a couple of times—it looked like three stories of absolutely nothing.
By six I was back at my hotel. The manager got three hundred dollars of my money from the safe and I stowed it in the C. McC. wallet. It was probably going to be gone before the evening was over. I might not be alive to miss it.
I shaved myself clean again and took off my sideburns. From that top bureau drawer on the left I took a sissy-looking pair of horn-rim glasses and put them on. I parted my hair and plastered it down. Usually I comb it back with water and the hell with dandruff. I polished a pair of dancing-pumps—old-fashioned, but they and the hair would take more than an inch from my height.
By eight I was dressed and staring dubiously at myself in the mirror. Nuts. I put on a chesterfield and the rented opera hat and called the desk for a taxi.
The taxi took me to a clip-joint nightclub six doors from Morgan’s. The place was the last water-hole, and some gambling parties were sure to stop there. The rest was up to me.
The clip-joint loved me. Only half a dozen parties were in dinner-jackets, and my tailcoat was almost too good to be true. The captain scraped and gave me a ringside table. I ordered a club sandwich, to the dismay of the waiter, and a side-car.
By the time I’d finished that side-car and another the nine-o’clock floor show had begun. There was a soapy little emcee who told three fairy jokes and then brought on the unrivaled, unparalleled, lavish and magnificent chorus of five retired scrubwomen. They listlessly hipped their way through a Hawaiian number and then the emcee was back.
He told three fairy jokes and brought on that brilliant tip-top tapper, favorite of Broadway, star of stage, screen and radio, Joe Nobody. Joe pretended to work up a sweat doing a steal of Bill Robinson’s staircase dance, milked a little applause by keeping up a double-shuffle for a full minute, and pranced off to the thunderous clapping of the waiters, bus-boys and the hat-check girl.