by Ed Lacy
“Lou Franconi around?”
“He's in the market. Should be back in a few minutes.”
“I'll wait.”
He didn't ask me who I was, merely went back to work. I found a chair and sat. They evidently supplied bars and restaurants, and there were a number of large wicker baskets against one wall, each with a bar or eating place tagged on the handle. The butchers were filling orders—hatchet-face weighed up a steak, wrapped it and tossed it into one of the baskets, and checked it off on an order pad. Then he went into the icebox and came out with a whole liverwurst, a bag of franks, and chopped meat.
In the other baskets I could see tins of frozen livers, turkeys, loins of pork, and other meats. There were three phones and they seemed to be working all the time. There was a kind of office at one end of the store, and some old guy who looked like a bookkeeper would answer a phone and then call out, “August—Palm Bar wants a fresh ham. How much?”
The butcher working with hatchet-face yelled back, “A buck ten a pound.”
The bookkeeper told the guy on the other end of the phone and there was a sort of argument and the bookkeeper put the phone down and called out, “August—talk to Palm.”
August dropped a cleaver and picked up one of the phones, said, “Charlie? Yeah, yeah, that's right a buck ten a pound. So what you fighting with me for? Pork is sky-high on the market. Don't buy no hams. Look, we got some canned picnics from Holland you can have for ninety cents a pound. What? Charlie, you want ham or not? I'm busy. Okay, okay, they run about twelve pounds. What else you want? How much chopped meat? Sure it's all lean, you know us.”
Next to the icebox there was another room-sized wooden box without a window that must have been a deep-freeze— every few minutes one of the butchers would dash in and a foggy ice vapor would come out. Soon as he opened the door a light went on and I saw shelves with frozen turkeys, chickens, and meats—everything wrapped in some kind of plastic bags.
I was sitting there about ten minutes—August had been called to the phone twice and was bawling out the bookkeeper with: “How am I going to get the orders out if you keep me on the phone? Don't take no crap from them, tell 'em the price and they either take it or leave it”—when a stocky young guy breezed in carrying a half a cow, or something, on his shoulder. He was wearing a white butcher coat but no hat and he had thick bushy hair. He hung the meat on a hook, and hatchet-puss jerked his thumb at me and the guy came over, asked, “Looking for me, mister?”
“Want to talk to you.”
“Cop?”
I nodded. “Any other cops been around to see you, Lou, today?”
“Today has just started. What's the matter? I only got two tickets in the last months and I paid.... There was a young cop talked to me a couple of days ago. Called me and said he was going to drop in yesterday.”
“Drop in where?”
“Here. Said he'd be around at closing time. Never showed. What's up?”
“That young cop was beaten up yesterday afternoon, hurt bad.”
“That's tough. How did it happen? I... Hey, you ain't tying me in with anything like that?”
“All I want is a couple of answers, mainly about your ex-boss Lande.”
Franconi grinned. “Willie ain't my ex-boss, I'm still working for him, and if you think Willie did it, you're way up the wrong tree. He's jerky but not tough.”
“I didn't say Wilhelm—Willie—did anything or that he's connected with the beating. Matter of fact this isn't an official visit, sort of off the cuff.”
“Hey, that's what the other cop told me. He wasn't a real copper, was he?”
“He was real enough. Let me ask the questions.”
“Sure. You, you got copper written all over you.”
“Did anybody else know the young cop was to meet you here yesterday?”
Franconi shook his head. “No. I didn't tell nobody, didn't think much of it.”
“Think about it now: sure there wasn't a single other person you mentioned it to?”
“Naw. He called and said he wanted to see me and I says I knock off here at five and he says he'll be here. I'll give it to you straight—I forgot all about it till yesterday. I was halfway up the street on my way home when it come to me. I came back here and waited for about ten minutes and he never showed. Naw, I know I didn't tell nobody because like I say I never thought nothing of it—like this cop was some kind of boy scout or something.”
“Anybody else call you yesterday, stop you on the street?”
“Just my wife. She calls me every day and I pick her up on the way home. I kid her about it, you know, a pickup every day.” Lou grinned like a kid.
“What did you mean by Willie Lande not being your ex-boss? Still working for him?”
“I sure am, just picking up some extra greens here. Tell you, I think Willie is headed for the bughouse. Started acting nuts about a month ago.”
“What means nuts?”
“See, Willie is a small-time outfit, I mean smaller than this one. He's the butcher, does all the buying and making up orders, hustles up sales. Me, I deliver the stuff. Job isn't bad, sixty-five a week take-home pay, but no loafing. I'm in the market early in the morning with Willie to pick up the meat, then I help him fill orders, and spend the afternoon delivering while Willie is out hunting up business. Sometimes I make two deliveries a day, so I got to keep going at high speed. This meat deal is a rat race.”
“Just the two of you working there, no bookkeeper, or nobody?”
Franconi nodded. “Except during Christmas when he'd hire a school kid to help me, and his wife would come down to help with the phone calls.” He lowered his voice. “Union would have my rear if they knew, but I help out by making the chopped meat, clean turkeys, fill what orders I can. Like I say, it's hard work but the pay is okay and Willie don't mind if I take home meat every day. With prices the way they are, that's a savings you...”
“What did you mean when you said this was a rat race?”
Franconi took a deep breath, rattled off, “In this racket there's two things you got to watch: one that the bar or restaurant don't fold owing you a bundle, because some of them go out like flies—the overhead is big, you understand. The other things is—watch out a rival don't take your customers. Take Willie, for example; on a new account he takes it easy the first few weeks, keeps his prices down so maybe he's only breaking even, even losing a few cents. Then he slowly raises them. If the restaurant is a sharpshooter, when he feels the wholesaler is trying to goose him, he switches to a new one. But he has to play it careful too—if he should miss a day's meat, for example, he'd be in a spot, maybe have to close up. In the meat business—in the food business—everybody is screwing the other guy—but not too hard.”
“Lande doing much business?”
Franconi let out a sharp laugh, a bark. “That's a good question, mister. He had a fair business, good steady accounts. What he has now is anybody's guess, probably nothing. And the way he played it smart—the cook is the key man in these places, and Willie would treat them right—a turkey here, a couple of steaks any time they wanted them, bottles of rye on Christmas wrapped in ten-buck bills. This way, if the meat is grade C instead of A, or a little under the weight, they don't say nothing. And if a guy called up and needed anything in a hurry, I'd dash right over. A nice setup, so about three weeks ago Lande chucks it all.”
“Why?”
Franconi shrugged. “Willie come down on a Monday and says his ticker did a double jump over the week end, and the doc told him to either take a rest or plan to live in a wooden box. You see the story now: his customers got to have meat, so they'll turn to a new butcher—Bay has a couple of them already—be fed low prices for a while. A week from now when Willie gets back in business, he'll have to start from, scratch.”
“Let me get this straight—Lande worked years to build up a set of customers, then threw them over like that?”
“That's the picture. I don't get it because if his ticker is
bad he could have hired a butcher, and sat on his can. Okay, Willie wouldn't have made dough, but he would still have his customers. Of course he give me four weeks' salary so I can't kick.”
“And he expects to open again in about a week?”
“That's what he told me—come back in a month.”
“Did Lande act sick?”
“Look, boss, I ain't no doctor and in this business most of the owners act like nervous wrecks all the time, but about two months ago, maybe six weeks, I notice Willie is up in the air a lot. I can tell—he starts forgetting things, and cursing.”
“Cursing? He call people sons of bitches, bastards?”
“Naw, he only has one curse, something in Dutch that means may your spit turn into stone. What you guys after him for, unpaid taxes?”
“Why, does he keep a double set of books?” I asked.
“Naw, at least not that I know, and I know about everything in the business. He's like all the rest: he'll shortweight you and maybe slip in some poor-grade meat, but I can't picture Willie doing anything real crooked. He's just another hard-working slob, a little tight with the buck—that's why I near dropped dead when he hands out four weeks' salary like that. Jeez, I paid off my TV set.”
“Anything doing at Lande's store while he's shut down? He seems to be down at the shop a lot.”
“Naw. The market is like a fish bowl—everybody knows what's going on. I stick my head in every day when I go back to the old coffeepot for lunch. He isn't doing anything but cleaning up his books, trying to dun some of his bad accounts.”
“Did you know Lande reported a stick-up a few days ago? Then denied it? Claimed two punks got him for fifty grand in his store.”
Franconi stared at me like I was telling him a dirty joke, then burst into real laughter. “I never heard that, but fifty grand! Why Willie never saw more than five hundred bucks at any one time. Fifty grand—say, hey!”
“There's rumors his wife has a new mink and a car, Willie gamble?”
“He wouldn't bet a dime on tomorrow showing. Mister, you don't get him—he's one of these refugees, you know, work hard and no sense of humor. Funny thing, one of the other guys in the market mentioned seeing Bebe—that's his wife—driving a Caddy. I thought it was just a lot of hot air. Maybe it belongs to a friend or something.”
“Lande have anyplace he might get a bundle of dough from? Any rich relatives or friends, or did he collect an insurance policy lately?”
“You got me there. I don't know his pals, but he usually put in a sixteen-hour day so he didn't have much chance to sport it up. Think he once told me he had some cousins in this country, but most of his people were bombed out in the war. He ain't no spender or ...”
Hatchet-face came over and said, “Lou, run over to Rosey's and pick up a hundred pounds of pull-its, and watch out for his scale.”
1 stood up, walked him out to his panel truck. “Thanks, Lou, and keep this under your hair. Willie is nervous and nothing may come of all this, no sense getting him excited.”
“Mister, I ain't the talkative type. Anything else you want to know? Don't pay no attention to him,” he jerked his thumb back toward the store, “I ain't breaking my ass for them.”
“That's about all, wanted to get a general idea of the business. You know how it is, we have to look into all the corners.”
“I know, I been to the movies,” he said, winking. “Mister, I'm not one to tell you your job, but Lande wouldn't do nothing real crooked. Plenty of times I had a chance to buy us some hot meat, but he was too scared.”
“That's why I want you to keep things quiet—all this may be a waste of time. Lou, one more thing, can you get me a list of the restaurants, bars, night clubs, Willie sold to? All the customers he'd had this last six months or so?”
“Easy, only about twenty-five of 'em. I delivered to them every day. Hold still, I'll write them out.” He reached into the truck and took out a piece of wrapping paper, started writing.
When he gave me the list. I thanked him, told him again to keep his trap shut, and maybe I'd drop in to see him again sometime.
“Glad to work with you—only don't get me in no trouble.”
“Can you get into trouble, Lou—got a record?”
He shook his head too quickly. “No, sir. That is, nothing but a lot of traffic tickets... expect that when you're delivering and... yeah, I once did thirty days on the island for disorderly conduct. Kid gang stuff.”
“All right, don't worry and just keep working with me. See you.”
I started for the precinct, and the day was already so hot the heat waves were making me dizzy. I stopped at a couple of bars, not for beers, but to relieve my gut—my lousy tumor was really acting up.
It was just before nine when I reached the police station and Ash wasn't in yet. The desk sergeant was an old-timer whose face I remembered. He told me, “The lieutenant is a busy beaver these days, Bond. We're trying to check where the hell Cocky Anderson was before he died and it seems he dropped completely out of sight for at least a week before he ate lead. Want to see the lieutenant about anything special?”
“I'll drop back. When do you expect him?”
“Now, this afternoon, any time. Downtown is putting the screws on. You know these big cases, somebody will be the patsy if they don't come up with the killer pronto, so Bill—the lieutenant—is rushing around like he swallowed a firecracker.”
“I'll be back sometime this morning. Tell him to wait for me,” I said and walked out.
I didn't know how to kill an hour or so. I could go back to the Grover and catch some shut-eye, but I'd certainly have a run-in with King and that nance Lawson, and I didn't want to be bothered with petty arguments this morning.
I had some orange juice and a plate of French fries, and went down to the Lande Meat Company, Inc. The door was slightly ajar and I walked in. There was nobody around, but after a couple of minutes a little guy wearing a sweater under a white butcher coat, and an old homburg atop his thick face, stepped out of the icebox room and almost jumped through the ceiling when he saw me. He said, “Got the wrong store. I'm not open.” He spoke with a slight accent.
“I got the right store, Lande.”
“What is this—what you guys want?”
“What guys?”
“You don't fool me, you're a cop. You want a salami sandwich?”
“Too hot for salami—I want to talk to you.”
“I'm a sick man, an honest businessman taking inventory. I ain't parked by a hydrant or nothing, I give to the PAL— let me alone.” He had a fast way o£ talking, skipping from phrase to phrase.
“Where did you get the fifty grand from?”
He smacked himself on the chest. “Me? Do I look like a man with fifty thousand dollars?”
“Bebe bought a mink recently, a Caddy—she didn't get them with soap coupons.”
“You got no right to ask me questions—I didn't do nothing,” he said, going to the other end of the store and taking a handful of sawdust out of a barrel. “We had some dollars in a safe-deposit vault. When I got a stroke a few weeks ago, I tell the wife, What we keeping this for? We can't take it with us, let's spend it.”
He spread the sawdust on a wooden chopping block, then took a steel brush from the wall, started scraping the block top.
“Willie, those two kids who were bumped off over in New Jersey—one of them talked in the hospital before he died, said he'd stuck you up for fifty grand.” It was a clumsy lie and he didn't tumble, kept cleaning the block, both hands on the brush.
“We're passing this on to the income-tax boys—they're interested.”
“Interested in what? Let anybody find an income of fifty thousand for me and I'll be glad to pay—give them half.”
“Lande, maybe you don't know how the tax boys work once they bite into a case. All right, maybe they can't find no record of the cash, but they watch you. Maybe five years from now you think it's safe to take the dough out of your mattress. The second y
ou buy a house, a car, take a cruise, they crack down on you like white on rice, asking where you got the dough from.”
I could have been talking to myself. Lande put the brush away, waved the tails of his coat over the block to brush off any remaining sawdust.
“Willie, the young cop you first reported the robbery to, he was almost killed yesterday.”
He jumped at that, paled, fought to get control of himself. He went into the icebox and came out with a liverwurst. He sliced off a piece, began eating it—nearly choking on it.