Long Live the Dead

by Hugh B. Cave

  He thought Vierick would be surprised to see him. He was mistaken.

  Aslender, sleek-haired man of unguessable age, Vierick nodded without rising, without extending his hand. “I thought you’d be around,” he said as Grossman shut the door. His voice was soft. Men who worked for Nick Vierick had to pay close attention to everything he said, so gentle was his voice, so swift and savage his anger if they asked him to repeat.

  “Ed Corley—” Grossman began.

  “I know. The boys keep me posted.”

  Grossman sat down, uneasy in Vierick’s presence. He dabbed a handkerchief at his high white forehead and it came away damp. He wet his lips—they were thin and taut and trembling. “What am I going to do, Nick?”

  Nick Vierick’s smile was very slightly a sneer. “Aren’t you getting the jitters a little early?”

  “Early? My God!”

  “How do you know he came back to look you up?”

  “What—what else would bring him?” Grossman moaned.

  Nick Vierick held a match to a cigar, blew the flame out and carefully shredded the match with his immaculate fingernails. He touched the tip of his tongue to the backs of his upper teeth and let smoke curl lazily from his mouth-corners. He appeared to be enjoying himself at Grossman’s expense.

  “A lot of others had a hand in what happened to Corley,” he said.

  “I know, but—”

  “He could be here to see any of them. Why should you be jittery, Hank? You’re supposed to me smart.”

  “For God’s sake,” Grossman said hoarsely, “talk sense, Nick. What am I going to do?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You won’t—help me?”

  “I help anyone,” Vierick said soberly, “for a price. The

  price will be high, though. The night-club business is lousy

  lately.”

  “How much?”

  “I’ll send one of the boys up to see you,” Vierick said,

  “after I give it some thought.” A look of shrewdness entered

  his eyes. “There’s one thing I don’t quite get, Grossman. Link

  Latham used to do your dirty work. Why the sudden shift to

  me?”

  “This is too big for Latham!”

  “You think so?” Vierick smiled. “That’s good, Grossman.

  That will jump the price at least five grand.” He stood up, yawned, gently patted his mouth with a slender hand. Opening the door he said softly: “It’s a shame, in a way. I always thought Corley was a pretty right guy, in spite of you. Still, business is business.”

  She had a spacious and expensive apartment, but the furnishings were just over the border-line of good taste. A shade too flashy. Impressive enough at first glance, perhaps, but too garnish, too dazzlingly brilliant. She herself was like that.

  At first glance she took a man’s breath away with the slender perfection of her body, the studied grace of her step, the easy sparkle of her smile and the provocative way she held her head. Men stared and wet their lips, and felt old. Or felt foolishly young and reckless. But her smile was too easy, too mechanical. Behind it lay a hardness acquired through four years of show business. The subtle shadows in her voice could vanish instantly in crisp, metallic accents of anger. She was a lady, but she could be a tramp.

  Shapely arms aloft, she wriggled into an eighty-dollar evening gown that hugged her hips, tautened and pointed her breasts. Then she sat before the full-length mirror of her dressing-table and carefully dressed her face. Getting old, she thought angrily. Twenty-nine next month, wasn’t it? Or thirty. She had lied so much about her age, first to Ed Cor-ley—the sap!—and then to Nick Vierick and others, that the truth was hard to remember. But anyhow, she wasn’t getting any younger.

  A key turned in the entrance door and for a moment she was motionless, her hands upraised, dark eyes impassively studying her reflection in the glass. She did not turn when Nick Vierick’s voice called softly: “Where are you, kid?”

  “In here,” she said.

  He walked up behind her and her eyes watched his image in the mirror. She lowered her arms and Nick’s cool hands pressed her shoulders, pulling her against him. He stooped and kissed her. “Hot stuff, that dress,” he said.

  She smiled up at him. “It ought to be. Did you get the bill yet?”

  “No. How much?”

  “Eighty dollars, Nick.”

  “Stiff,” he said, scowling.

  “You want me to look nice, don’t you?”

  His scowl faded more slowly than it usually did. He looked her over, not amorously but critically, withdrew his hands from her shoulders and stepped back. “Hurry it up. I want to talk to you.”

  She put the very best of herself into the languid look she gave him then. The slow parting of her lips, the softly indrawn breath, the studied subtlety of her body-movements. She could do no better and knew it. Even her voice was just right when she murmured: “Can’t we talk—here, Nick?”

  Nick Vierick laughed shortly, mirthlessly, with his lips tight. “I never said a sensible thing in this room yet, kid. We’ll talk over a drink, in decent light.” He turned abruptly and walked into the living-room.

  He had a cocktail mixed for her, on the bar, when she emerged. Handing it to her, he raised his own, stared at her for an instant without touching his lips to the glass. Then: “Ed’s back,” he said.

  She didn’t hear it. She was studying the amber liquid in the glass and wondering if she ought to get a little bit drunk tonight. Nick liked her to get drunk once in a while. He liked to think she was being herself, being “natural,” when liquor loosened her tongue and melted the cloak of restraint which ordinarily kept him from getting too rough. Perhaps tonight, to thaw him a little …

  “Why the hell don’t you listen to me once in a while?” Nick said with sudden anger.

  She came out of her thoughts, stared at him in amazement. “Are you talking to me in that tone, Nick Vierick?”

  “I’m telling you,” he said darkly. “I’m telling you Ed’s back.”

  She got it then. Under the eighty-dollar gown her body was suddenly taut and cold, her flesh was shrinking. There was a hand at her throat, squeezing her breath back. She could feel the bones of her face aching, and realized that her tongue was jammed against the back of her teeth.

  “No, Nick!”

  “You didn’t know, eh?”

  She knew what he meant. She sensed that he was stabbing at her, testing her, and realized numbly that she must meet the test—or else.

  “I didn’t know, Nick,” she whispered, cringing. “My God, I never dreamed!”

  Nick Vierick gripped her shoulders, held her at arm’s length and stared at her. His face wore no expression that she could analyze. It was the face of a shrewd card player studying his hand.

  “You haven’t been hearing from him, by any chance?”

  “No!”

  “Women don’t usually lie to me, kid.”

  “Nick, I’m not lying! I’m not!”

  Nick Vierick held her for a moment, then gave her a light shove that sent her stumbling into one of the ultra-modern chrome-and-satin chairs.

  “O. K., I believe you,” he said softly. “But get this. You’re staying here—right here—until Corley’s taken care of. I wouldn’t go out if I were you, sugar. When I give the boys an order, I never soften it with any ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’—I just give the order. Understand?”

  Her hands were wet and white on the gleaming arms of the chair, and she watched him as a terrified bird watches a snake.

  “Understand, sugar?”

  She nodded, her lips too dry to make words.

  Nick Vierick put a hand on her head, roughed her hair and kissed her. He was smiling, but men who knew him feared that particular smile, knowing its implications. With a gentle, “So long, kid,” Nick went out, closing the door behind him.

  Mrs. Ed Corley sat where she was, motionless in her eighty-dollar evening gown.

&nbs
p; Ed Corley stepped from the doorway of the Minmar at nine o’clock that evening into a drizzle of rain. A tall, too-thin man, he wore a limp-brimmed felt hat, and a gray raincoat that hung shapelessly to a point about six inches above his knees. The brim of the hat half-covered his face. His hands were in his pockets. He limped.

  Pausing for a moment on the sidewalk, he looked up and down the street, then lowered his head against the turned-up collar of his coat and began walking. He appeared to be in no hurry.

  A year ago, Ed Corley had weighed fifty pounds more. A year ago he had worked for the mayor as special investigator, his job the smelling out of the crime and corruption that had made this city the joke of the nation.

  The mayor was gone now. The job of special investigator no longer existed. And after six months in the hospital, six more months in a convalescent home out West, Ed Corley was a slow-moving, transparent ghost of his former self.

  He walked slowly along Firth Avenue, through the drizzle.

  Behind him a wiry, white-haired little man moved methodically from a drugstore doorway on the far side of the street, to tail him. In a parked sedan at the corner of Firth and Murray, two other men came to life and exchanged scraps of words. In the Minmar lobby, still-another man stepped into a telephone booth and gravely slotted a coin.

  The wolves were watching. Waiting. This was at nine o’clock.

  At ten, Harlan Grossman downed his fourth drink in half an hour, put a match to his eleventh cigarette and resumed his pacing of the living-room carpet in his expensive suburban home. Sweat glistened on Grossman’s high white forehead. He dabbed at it with a handkerchief. His round, fleshy face was colorless.

  Grossman could stand just so much of this, and no more. He lacked the stability for enduring suspense. The moments crawled by now and he cursed the phone for not ringing. Damn Rigney! Why didn’t he report?

  Grossman tried to comfort himself and soothe his nerves with a cool analysis of the situation. He had done all he could, hadn’t he? His private trouble-shooter, the white-haired little man, Abel Rigney, was on the job and could be trusted to end this suspense at the first opportunity. Nick Vierick’s boys were on the job, too. It was just a matter of time.

  But time was precious. If Ed Corley got a chance to open his mouth and talk for even ten minutes to the right people, the fate of Harlan Grossman was sealed.

  Grossman stopped before a mirror and stared at his reflection. Talked to it, in a voice tense with fear. “I could pay him a visit myself,” he whispered. “By God, that’s it! I could talk to him, hand him a song-and-dance about a lot of innocent people who’d be blasted if he turned on the heat too soon. That would give the boys time—”

  It seemed a good idea, perhaps because Grossman had drunk too much and was in a mood to snatch at straws. He went to a window and looked out, and heard a downtown clock strike eleven. “I’ll wait ten minutes more.”

  He waited five, and the minutes were hours.Then the mutter of the rain against the windows got him. The silence of the house set up a reactionary shriek inside him. He snatched his coat and hat from the hall closet, stormed out to his car at the curb, and drove downtown.

  He entered the Minmar at twenty past eleven and forced himself to walk slowly through the empty lobby, past the desk and the sleepy-eyed clerk, to the stairs. He knew the number of Ed Corley’s room. Two-one-nine. Rigney had reported that much, damn him, earlier in the evening.

  The second-floor corridor was as empty as the lobby. It should be, of course. The Minmar was a small hotel, far removed both in spirit and distance from the pretentious hostelries of the bright-light district.

  Grossman nervously paused before the door of two-onenine and raised his hand. He wet his lips, caught and held his breath. He knocked.

  The unlocked door creaked open a couple of inches when his knuckles made contact. Grossman stepped back, startled. But the door stopped swinging, stopped creaking, and there was no further sound except the noise of his own harsh breathing. The room was dark.

  Grossman furtively pushed the door wider and stepped over the threshold. “Is—is anyone home?” he asked. No answer. The hall’s dim light filtered in to reveal a floor-lamp near the door. He switched it on.

  He closed the door and advanced to the center of the room, stood there looking around. Until tonight, Harlan Grossman had prided himself on his lack of nerves. Now he was jittery. His hands shook and he was hypersensitive to every slightest sound—the whisper of the carpet under his feet, the muffled noise of a car moving along the street outside.

  Mopping his forehead, Grossman sat down to wait. He sat facing the door, in the overstuffed chair under the lamp. His gaze roved the room again, stabbing at seedy hulks of furniture, at the stains on the wallpaper. It was an old-fashioned room, a small room. The walls were too close, too crowding. The window, to Grossman’s right, was a grimy rectangle opening on an interior court.

  “I’ll tell him he’s got to give me twenty-four hours,” Grossman schemed. “I got to have that, I’ll tell him, or else a bunch of innocent people will go down with me. If I lay it on thick I can convince him. Then Rigney—or Nick’s boys—will have time enough.”

  He began to get over his jitters. “Why, hell, it will be easy! Ed Corley was always a sucker for a sob story. If I just shed a few phoney tears, it will be a cinch!”

  A shadow moved at the window, but Grossman did not see it. He was mired in thoughts of what he would tell Ed Corley. Perched on the fire escape outside the grimy glass, the shadow slowly straightened and peered into the room.

  It was the white-haired little man, Abel Rigney.

  He saw the lamp burning yellowly beside the overstuffed chair. He saw Harlan Grossman’s legs, and the back of Grossman’s head. The chair hid the rest.

  The white-haired little man slid a revolver from his pocket. Carefully he fitted a homemade silencer, shaped like a musical sweet potato, over the muzzle. A little while ago, things had looked pretty dark, he mused. Ed Corley had given him the slip down on Nixon Street somewhere. “But they always come home to roost,” the little man thought. “You just got to be patient.”

  He pressed the gun delicately against the glass and took aim at the back of Grossman’s head. He squeezed the trigger—once, twice, thrice—with the cool deliberation of a man shooting tin ducks in a target range. Then, without undue haste, he noiselessly descended the fire-escape, dropped into the court and walked away.

  A little while later he stepped into a cab and gave the driver Harlan Grossman’s suburban address. Grossman would be relieved, he mused, to know that Ed Corley was dead.

  Ed Corley came out of the Elite Bar on Nixon Street at twenty past twelve. He was tired, and his limp was more pronounced. He looked both ways along the street, hunched his coat collar higher and turned south. It was still raining.

  In a sedan parked at the opposite curb, some fifty yards distant, a sallow man nudged his dozing companion. “He’s on the prowl again, Joe. Let’s move.”

  The stocky, block-shouldered man at the wheel looked at his watch, cursed softly, and put the sedan in motion.

  Ed Corley walked along Nixon Street, under neon signs and street lamps. This was a middle-class neighborhood of middle-class theaters, restaurants, dance-halls. The lumpy rhythm of a boogie-woogie piano seeped from a second-floor casino. Hot odors of deep-fried food emerged with a noisy foursome from the opening door of a restaurant. Traffic was thin but steady. A drunk weaved along, peering gravely in store windows.

  Ed Corley turned left into Mabel Street and entered a small, brown-front eating place noted for its Armenian food. The sedan turned left into Mabel Street and slowly stopped with its tires hugging the curb.

  “One damn joint after another,” the sallow man muttered. “What the hell is he up to?”

  “Plenty, most likely. Go phone in,” Joe said.

  The sallow man let himself out of the car and walked back to the corner, to a seedy drugstore. There he shut himself in a booth and spat disgu
stedly on the floor while dialing.

  “Lester, chief. Drugstore corner of Nixon and Mabel. He’s in that Armenian dump.”

  The answering voice of Link Latham was an angry snarl. “What’s the matter with you two saps? Does it take all night to snag a man off the street?”

  “Now listen, chief—”

  “Listen yourself! I told you what to do and how to do it. Do I have to attend to every damned little detail personally?”

  “We ain’t had a decent chance at him yet,” the sallow man snarled back with rising bitterness. “It’s too early and he’s been stickin’ close to the bright lights.”

  “There are no bright lights on Mabel Street!”

  “Well—maybe not. Maybe when he comes out of this Armenian dump we’ll get him.”

  There was silence for an instant, then the voice of Link Latham came thoughtfully, with less venom. “Listen, Lester. Is he alone?”

  “Yeah, chief. There ain’t been a soul with him since he left the Mimnar.”

  “Good. Watch him, but don’t make a move until I get there. I’ll see this through myself—then there’ll be no hitch.”

  Lester went back to the sedan. “The boss is comin’ down himself,” he announced.

  Joe sluggishly turned his head, raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

  “Mm.”

  “Well, well,” Joe said. Without further comment he centered his attention on the door of the Armenian restaurant.

  Ed Corley had not emerged when Latham arrived. Driven by a lantern-jawed chauffeur, Link Latham got out at the corner, walked up to the sedan. His own car purred away again.

  “He still in there?”

  “Still in there,” Joe said.

  “Take a look at me,” Latham ordered softly. “Will he know me?”

  The two hoods looked him over and were surprised. Link Latham hardly resembled a big shot racketeer in this garb. He wore a threadbare coat, a battered brown hat, scuffed shoes. The three-carat diamond was missing from its customary place on his left little finger. Link Latham was physically as huge as before, but less impressive. His eyes blinked behind ill-fitting glasses.