They passed the bottle, and I poured myself a stiff hooker. Charlie and I had been kids together, hitching rides on the trolley that used to run along First Avenue. That was a long time ago, though, and I hadn’t seen Charlie since long before I’d lost my license. I probably would never have seen Charlie again, dead or alive, if I hadn’t run into The Moose down on Fourteenth Street. He’d told me about Charlie, and asked me to come pay my respects. He didn’t mention the fact that I had a three-day growth on my face or that my eyes were rimmed with red. His glance had traveled briefly over my rumpled suit. He ignored all that and asked me to come pay my respects to a dead childhood friend, and I’d accepted.
“So how you been?” The Moose asked now. He was holding a shot glass between two thin fingers. The Moose is a very small man, his hair thinning in an oval on the back of his head. He’d been a small kid, too, which was why we tagged him with a virile nickname.
“So-so,” I told him. I tossed off the drink and held out my glass. One of Charlie’s relatives filled it, and I nodded my thanks.
“I read all about it in the paper,” The Moose said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” The Moose shook his head sadly. “She was a bitch, Curt,” he said. “You should have killed that guy.”
He was talking about my wife Toni. He was referring to the night I’d found her in my own bedroom, after four months of crazy-in-love marriage, with a son of a bitch named Parker. He was recalling the vivid newspaper accounts of how I’d worked Parker over with the butt end of my .45, of how the police had tagged me with an ADW charge—assault with a deadly weapon. They’d gotten my license, and Parker had gotten my wife, but not until I’d ripped a trench down the side of his face and knocked half his goddam teeth out.
“You should have killed him,” The Moose repeated.
“I tried to, Moose. I tried damn hard.” I didn’t like remembering it. I’d been putting in a lot of time forgetting. Whisky helps in that category.
“The good ones die,” he said, shaking his head, “and the bad ones keep living.” He looked toward the living room, where the flowers were stacked on either side of the coffin. I looked there, too, and I saw Charlie’s mother weeping softly, a big Italian woman in a black dress.
“What happened?” I asked. “Who gave Charlie the knife slash?”
The Moose kept nodding his head as if he hadn’t heard me. I looked at him over the edge of my glass, and finally his eyes met mine. They were veiled, clouded with something nameless.
“What happened?” I asked again.
The Moose blinked, and I knew what the something nameless was then. Fear. Cold, stark, unreasoning fear.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They found him outside his store. He ran a tailor shop, you know. You remember Charlie’s father, don’t you, Curt? Old Joe Dagerra? When Joe died, Charlie took over the shop.”
“Yeah,” I said. The whisky was running out, and the tears were running in all over the place. It was time to go. “Moose,” I said, “I got to be running. I want to say good-by to the old lady, and then I’ll be . . .”
“Sure, Curt. Thanks for coming up. Charlie would have appreciated it.”
I left The Moose in the bedroom and said good-by to Mrs. Dagerra. She didn’t remember me, of course, but she took my hand and held it tightly. I was a friend of her dead son, and she wanted to hold everything he’d known and loved for as long as she could. I stopped by the coffin, knelt, and wished Charlie well. He’d never harmed a fly as far as I could remember, and he deserved a soft journey and maybe a harp and a halo or whatever they gave them nowadays.
I got to my feet and walked to the door, and another of Charlie’s relatives said, “He looks like he’s sleeping, doesn’t he?”
I looked at the coffin and at the red, stitched gash on Charlie’s neck where it was already beginning to show through the make-up. I felt sick all of a sudden. “No,” I said harshly. “He looks dead.”
Then I went downstairs.
The neighborhood looked almost the same, but not quite. There was still the candy store huddling close to the building on the left, and the bicycle rental shop on the right. The iceman’s wagon was parked in the gutter, and I remembered the time I’d nearly smashed my hand fooling with the wagon, tilting it until a sliding piece of ice sent the wagon veering to the gutter, pinning my hand under the handle. I’d lost a nail, and it had been tragic at the time. It got a smile from me now. The big white apartment house was across the street, looking worn and a little tired now. The neighborhood had changed from Italian-Irish to Italian-Irish-Puerto Rican. It was the same neighborhood, but different.
I shrugged and walked into the candy store. The guy behind the counter looked up when I came in, squinting at my unfamiliar face.
“Pall Mall,” I said. I fished in my pocket for change, and his eyes kept studying me, looking over my clothes and my face. I knew I was no Mona Lisa, but I didn’t like the guy’s scrutiny.
“What’s with you?” I snapped.
“Huh? I . . .”
“Give me the goddam cigarettes and cut the third degree.”
“Yes, sir. I . . . I’m sorry, sir.”
I looked into his eyes and saw the same fear that had been on Moose’s face. And then I recalled that the guy had just called me “sir.” Now who the hell would call a bum “sir”? He put the cigarettes on the counter and I shoved a fifty-cent piece at him. He smiled thinly and pushed the coin back at me. I looked at it and back into his eyes. In the days when I’d been a licensed private eye, I’d seen fear on a lot of faces. I got so I could smell fear. I could smell it now, and the odor was overpowering.
I pushed the fifty-cent piece across the counter once more and said, “My change, mac.”
The guy picked up the money quickly, rang it up, and gave me my change. He was sweating now. I shrugged, shook my head, and walked out of the store.
Well, Cannon, I told myself, where now?
“Curt?”
The voice was soft, inquisitive. I turned and found its owner. She was soft, too, bundled into a thin coat that swelled out over the curves of her body. Her hair was black, as black as night, and it curled against the oval of her face in soft wisps that didn’t come from a home permanent kit. Her eyes were brown, and wide; her lips looked as if they’d never been kissed—but wanted to be.
“I don’t think I know you,” I said.
“Kit,” she said. “Kit O’Donnell.”
I stared at her hard. “Kit O’Donn . . .” I took another look. “Not Katie O’Donnell? I’ll be damned.”
“Have you got a moment, Curt?”
I still couldn’t get over it. She’d been a dirty faced kid when last I’d seen her. “Sure,” I said. “Plenty of time. More than I need.”
“There’s a bar around the corner,” she said. “We can talk there.”
I grinned and pulled up the collar of my coat. “That’s just where I was heading anyway.”
The bar was like all bars—it had whisky and the people who drink whisky. It also had a pinball machine and two tables set against the long front window. We sat at one of the tables, and she shrugged out of her coat. She shrugged very nicely. She was wearing a green sweater and a loose bra, and when she shrugged I leaned closer to the table and the palms of my hands itched.
She didn’t bother with a preamble. “Curt,” she said, “my father is in trouble.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“You’re a private detective. I’d like you to help.”
I grinned. “Katie . . . Kit . . . I’m not practicing any more. The Law took my ticket.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, doesn’t it?”
“Curt, it’s the whole neighborhood, not just my father. Charlie . . . Charlie was one of them. He . . . they . . .”
She stopped talking, and her eyes opened wide. Her voice seemed to catch in her throat, and she lowered her head slightly. I turned and looked at the bar. A ta
ll character in a belted camel’s-hair coat was leaning on the bar, a wide grin on his face. I stared at him and the grin got bigger. Briefly, I turned back to Kit. She raised her eyes, and I was treated to my third look at fear in the past half-hour.
“Now what the hell?” I said.
“Curt, please,” she whispered.
I shoved my chair back and walked toward the bar. The tall character kept grinning, as if he were getting a big kick out of watching a pretty girl with a stumblebum. He had blond hair and sharp blue eyes, and the collar of his coat was turned up in the back, partially framing his narrow face.
“Is something wrong, friend?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He kept grinning, and I noticed that one hand was jammed into a pocket of the coat. There was a big lump in that jacket, and unless the guy had enormous hands, there was something besides the end of his arm there.
“You’re staring at my friend,” I said.
His eyes flicked from the swell of Kit’s breasts where they heaved in fright beneath the green sweater.
“So I am,” he said softly.
“So cut it out.”
The grin appeared on his face again. He turned his head deliberately, and his eyes stripped Kit’s sweater off.
I grabbed the collar of his coat, wrapped my hand in it, and yanked him off the bar.
He moved faster than I thought he would. He brought up a knee that sent a sharp pain careening up from my groin. At the same time, his hand popped out of the pocket and a snub-nosed .38 stared up at my face.
I didn’t look at the gun long. There are times when you can play footsie, and there are times when you automatically sense that a man is dangerous and that a fisted gun isn’t a bluff but a threat that might explode any second. The knee in my groin had doubled me over so that my face was level with the .38. I started to lift my head, and I smashed my bunched fist sideways at the same time. I caught him on the inside of his wrist, and the gun jerked to one side, its blast loud in the small bar. I heard the front window shatter as the bullet struck it, and then I had his wrist tightly in my fingers, and I was turning around and pulling his arm over my shoulder. I gave him my hip, and he left his feet and yelped hoarsely.
And then he was in the air, flipping over my shoulder, with his gun still tight in my closed fist. My other hand was cupped under his elbow. He started coming down bottoms up and the gun blasted again, ripping up six inches of good floor. He started to swear and the swear erupted into a scream as he felt the bone in his arm splinter. I could have released my grip when I had him in the air. I could have just let him drop to the floor like an empty sack. Instead, I kept one hand on his wrist and the other under his elbow, and his weight pushed down against his stiffened arm.
The bone made a tiny snap, like someone clicking a pair of castanets. He dropped the gun and hit the floor with a solid thump that rattled some glasses on the bar. His hand went instantly to his arm, and his face turned gray when he saw the crooked dangle of it. The grayness turned to a heavy flush that mingled with raw pain. He dove headlong on the floor, reaching for the gun with his good arm.
I did two things, and I did them fast. I stepped on his hand first. I stepped on it so hard that I thought I heard some more bones crush. And then, while he was pulling his hand back in pain, I brought my foot back and let it loose in a sharp swing that brought my toe up against his jaw. His teeth banged together and he came up off the floor as if a grenade had exploded under him, collapsing against the wood flat on his face a second later.
“Get your broom,” I said to the bartender. I walked back to Kit and helped her on with her coat.
“Curt, you shouldn’t have,” she mumbled. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
She huddled close against me in the street. A sharp wind had come up, and it drove the newspapers along in the gutter like sailboats in a furious hurricane. I kept my arm around her, and it felt good to hold a woman once more. Subconsciously my hand tightened and then started to drop. She reached up with one hand and pulled my fingers away, staring up into my face.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I sometimes forget.”
A sort of pity came into her eyes. “Where are you living now, Curt?” she asked.
“A charming little spot called The Monterey. It’s in the Bowery. I don’t suppose you’ve ever been there.”
“No. I . . .”
“Who was the joker?”
“What joker?”
“The one who’s picking up his arm.”
“His name’s Lew. He’s one of them. They’ve been . . . we’ve been paying them, Curt. All the storekeepers. My father with his grocery, and Charlie—everybody. That’s why he was killed. Charlie, I mean. And now my father, Curt, he’s refused to pay them any more. He told them they could . . . Curt, I’m frightened. That’s why I want your help.” It all came out in a rush, as if she were unloading a terrible burden.
“Honey,” I said, “I have no license. I told you before. I’m not a real eye any more. I’m more a . . . a glass eye. Do you understand?”
She turned her face toward mine. “You won’t help?”
“What could I do?”
“You could . . . scare them. You could make them afraid to take any more money.”
“Me?” I laughed out loud. “Who’d be afraid of me? Honest, Kit, I’m just a . . .”
“What do you want, Curt?” she asked. “I haven’t any money but I’ll give you . . . whatever else you want.”
“What!”
“They’ll kill my father, Curt. As sure as we’re standing here, they’ll kill him. I’ll do anything.” She paused. “Anything you say.”
I grinned, but only a bit. “Do I look that way, Kit? Do I really look that way?”
She lifted her face, and her eyes were puzzled for a moment. I shook my head and left her standing there on the corner, with the wind whipping her coat around her long, curving legs.
I walked for a long while, past the public school, past the Latticini, past the bars and the coal joint and the butcher and all the places I’d known since I was old enough to crawl. I saw kids with glazed eyes and the heroin smell about them, and I saw young girls with full breasts in tight brassières. I saw old women shuffling along the streets with their heads bent against the wind, and old men puffing pipes in dingy doorways.
This was the beginning. Curt Cannon had started here. It had been a long way up out of the muck. I had had four men working for me in my agency. I had gone a long way from First Avenue. And here I was back again, back in the muck, only the muck was thicker, and it was contaminated with a bunch of punks who thought a .38 was a ticket on the gravy train. And guys like Charlie Dagerra got their throats slit for not liking the scheme of things.
Well, that was tough, but that wasn’t my problem. I had enough troubles of my own. Charlie Dagerra was dead, and the dead don’t dream. The living do. They dream a lot. And their dreams are full of blonde beauties with laughing eyes and mocking lips. And all the blondes are called Toni.
She startled me. She was almost like the dream come to life. I almost slammed into her, and I started to walk around her when she took a step to one side, blocking my path.
She had long blonde hair, and blue eyes that surveyed me speculatively now. Her mouth was twisted in a small grin, her lips swollen under their heavy lipstick. She wore a leather jacket, the collar turned up, and her hands were rammed into her pockets.
“Hello,” she said. Her voice rose on the last syllable and she kept staring at me. It was getting dark now, and the wind was brisk on the back of my neck. I looked at her and at the way her blonde hair slapped at her face.
“What do you want, sister?” I asked.
“It’s what you want that counts,” she said.
I looked her over again, starting with the slender, curving legs in the high heels, up the full rounded thighs that pressed against her skirt.
When my eyes met hers again, she looked at me
frankly and honestly. “You like?”
“I like.”
“It’s cheap, mister. Real cheap.”
“How cheap?”
She hooked her arm through mine, pressing her breasts against my arm. “We’ll talk price later,” she said. “Come on.”
We began walking, and the wind started in earnest now, threatening to tear the gray structures from the sky.
“This way,” she said. We turned down 119th Street, and we walked halfway up the street toward Second Avenue. “This house,” she said. I didn’t answer. She went ahead of me, and I watched her hips swinging under her skirt, and I thought again of Toni, and the blood ran hotly in my veins.
She stepped into the dark vestibule of the house, and I walked in after her. She walked toward the end of the hall on the ground floor, and I realized too late that there were no apartments on that floor except at the front of the building. She swung around suddenly, thrusting a nickel-plated .22 at me, shoving me back against the garbage cans that were lined up underneath the stairway.
“What is this?” I asked. “Rape?”
“It’s rape, mister,” she answered. She flicked her head, lashing the blonde hair back over her shoulder. Her eyes narrowed and then she lifted the .22 and brought it down in a slashing arc that sent blood spurting from my cheek.
“This is for Lew,” she said. She brought the small gun back and down again, and this time I could feel the teeth rattling in my mouth. “And this is for Lew’s broken arm!”
The gun went back, slashing down in a glinting arc. I reached up and grabbed her wrist, pulling the gun all the way over to one side. With my other hand, I slapped her across the face. I tightened my grip on her wrist until she let the gun clatter onto the garbage cans, a small scream coming out of her mouth. I slapped her again, backhanded, and she flew up against the wall, her mouth open in surprise and terror.
“We came here for something,” I told her.
“You lousy son of a bitch. I wouldn’t if you were the last man on earth.”
I slapped her harder this time, and I pulled the zipper down on her leather jacket and ripped her blouse down the front. My fingers found her bra, and I tore it in two. I pulled her to me and mashed my mouth down against hers. She fought and pulled her mouth away, and I yanked her to me, my hand against her. She stopped struggling after a while.
A Century of Noir Page 44