The wind kept howling outside. I left her slumped against the wall. I threw a five-dollar bill into the garbage cans, and I said, “Tell Lew to keep his bait at home. I’ll break his other arm if he sends another slut after me. You understand?”
“You didn’t seem to mind, you bastard,” she mumbled.
“Just tell him. Just tell him what I said.”
I walked out of the building. I was sore, very sore. I didn’t like being suckered. I was ready to find this Lew character and really break his other arm. I was ready to rip it off and stuff it down his God-damned mouth. That’s the way I felt. The old neighborhood made it only tougher to bear. You go to a funeral, you don’t expect a boxing match. You don’t expect punks shaking down a poor neighborhood. It was like rattling pennies out of a gum machine. It was that cheap. It stank, and the smell made me sick, and I wanted to hold my nostrils.
I kept burning, and before I knew it, I was standing in front of O’Donnell’s grocery. I walked in when I spotted Kit behind the counter.
“I’ll take take six cans of beer,” I told her.
Her head jerked up when she heard my voice. “Curt,” she said, “one of them was just here!”
“What? Where is he?”
“He just left. He said we’d better have the money by tomorrow or . . .”
“Which way did he go?” I was halfway to the door.
“Toward Pleasant Avenue,” she said. “He was wearing a tan fedora and a green coat.”
I didn’t wait for more. I headed out of the store and started walking down toward Pleasant. I caught up with him about halfway down the block. He was big from the back, a tall guy with shoulders that stretched against the width of his coat. I walked up behind him and grabbed one arm, yanking it up behind his back.
“Hello,” I said. “My name is Curt Cannon.”
“Hey, man, you nuts or something?” He tried to pull his arm away but I held it tightly.
“Take me to the cheese,” I said. “The head punk.”
“Man, you’ve flipped,” he whined. I still couldn’t see his face, but it sounded like a kid talking, a big kid who’d once lifted weights.
“You want to carry your arm away?” I asked.
“Cool it, man. Cool it.” He tried to turn but I held him tightly. “What’s your gripe?” he asked at last.
“I don’t like shakedowns.”
“Who does? Man, we see eye to eye. Loosen the flipper.”
I yanked up on it and he screamed. “Cut the jive,” I shouted. “Take me to the son of a bitch behind all this or I’ll leave a stump on your shoulder.”
“Easy, easy, man. Easy. I’m walking. I’m walking.”
He kept walking toward Pleasant, and I stayed behind him, ready to tear his arm off if I had to.
“He ain’t gonna cut this nohow,” the weight-lifter said. “He ain’t gonna cut this at all.”
“He’s done enough cutting,” I said. “He cut Dagerra’s throat.”
“You don’t dig me, Joe,” the weight-lifter said. “You don’t dig me at all.”
“Just keep walking.”
He kept walking, and then he stopped suddenly. “Up there,” he said, gesturing with his head. “He’s up there, but he ain’t gonna cut this . . .”
“At all, I know.”
“Just don’t drag me in, man. Just leave me be. I don’t want no headaches, thanks.”
I shoved him away from me, and he almost fell on his face on the sidewalk. “Keep your nose clean,” I said. “Go listen to some of Dizzy’s records. But keep your nose clean or I’ll break it for you.”
I saw his face for the first time. He was a young kid, no more than twenty-one, with wide blue eyes and pink cheeks. “Sure, man, sure.” He scrambled to his feet and ran down the street.
I looked up at the red-fronted building, saw one light burning on the top floor, the rest of the windows boarded up. I climbed the sandstone steps and tried the door. When it didn’t open on the second try, I pitted my shoulder against it, and it splintered in a hundred rotting pieces. The hallway was dark.
I started up the steps, making my way toward the light on the top landing. I was winded when I reached it, and I stopped to catch my breath. A thin slice of amber light spilled onto the floor from under a crack in one of the doors. I walked up to the door and tried the knob. It was locked.
“Who is it?” a voice called.
“Me, man,” I answered.
“Zip?”
“Yeah. Come on, man.”
The door opened a crack, and I shoved it all the way open. It hit against something hard, and I kicked it shut and put my back against it. All I saw, at first, was Lew with his arm in a plaster cast hanging in a sling above his waist.
His eyes narrowed when he saw who it was, and he took one step toward me.
“I wouldn’t,” I told him. My voice was soft. “I wouldn’t, Lew.”
“He’s right,” another voice said. There was only one bulb burning in the room, and the corners were in shadow. I peered into one corner, made out an old sofa and a pair of blue slacks stretched the length of it. I followed the slacks up the length of the body, up to a hatchet face with glittering eyes, down again to the open switchblade that was paring the nails of one hand.
“Are you Mr. Punk himself?” I asked.
The long legs swung over the side of the sofa, and the face came into the light. It was a cruel face, young-old, with hard lines stretching from the nose flaps to the thinly compressed lips.
“The name’s Jackie,” he said. “Jackie Byrne. What’s your game, mister?”
“How old are you, Jackie? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?”
“Old enough,” he said. He took another step toward me, tossing the knife into the air and catching it on his palm. “How old are you, mister?”
“I’m really old, punk. I’m all of thirty. Really old.”
“Maybe you won’t get any older. You shouldn’t complain.”
“Charlie Dagerra was about thirty, too,” I said. “He didn’t get any older, either.”
“Yeah,” Byrne said. “That’s just what I meant.”
“How long you been shaking down the local merchants, Jackie?”
He grinned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The merchants donate money to me. I’m their favorite charity. They like to give me money. I make sure no snotnosed kids throw stink bombs in their stores or break their windows. I’m good to them.”
“You think you’ve got a new dodge, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You heard me. You’ve stumbled onto a real easy game. Just point your knife and the storekeepers wet their pants. It’s been done before, Jackie. By bigger punks than you.”
“You don’t have to take that, Jackie,” Lew said. “You don’t have to take that from this bum.”
“You’ll find your girl on a garbage can in one of the hallways,” I told him. “She was missing some clothes when I left her.”
“Why, you son of a—” He lunged toward me and I whirled him around and shoved him across the room toward the sofa. His head clunked against the wall, making a hollow sound.
“All right, pop,” Byrne said. “Enough playing around.”
“I’m not playing, Jackie-boy.”
“Get the hell out of this neighborhood,” he said. “You got a long nose, and I don’t like long noses.”
“And what makes you think you can do anything about my nose, Jackie-boy?”
“A wise guy,” he said disgustedly. “A real wise guy.” He squeezed the knife shut and then pressed a button on its handle. The knife snapped open with a whistling noise.
“Very effective,” I said. “Come on and use it.”
“Nerves of steel, huh?” he asked, a small smile forming on his thin lips.
“No, sonny,” I said. “I just don’t give a damn, that’s all. Come on.” He hesitated, and I shouted, “Come on, you simple bastard!”
He lunged at me, the knife swinging in a glis
tening arc. I caught his arm and yanked it up, and we struggled under the bare bulb like two ballet dancers. I twisted his arm all the way up then, bringing up my foot at the same time. I kicked him right in the butt, hard, and he went stumbling across the room, struggling for his balance. He turned with a vicious snarl on his face, and then did something no expert knifeman would ever do.
He threw the knife.
I moved to one side as the blade whispered past my head. I heard it bury itself into the doorjamb behind me. I smiled then. “Well! It does appear we’re even.”
I took one step toward him, remembering Lew when it was too late.
“Not exactly, pop,” Lew said.
I didn’t bother turning around because I knew sure as hell that Lew would be holding the .38 I’d taken from him once today. Instead, I dove forward as the gun sounded, the smell of cordite stinking up the small room. My arms wrapped around Byrne’s skinny legs, and we toppled to the floor in a jumble of twisting limbs.
The gun sounded once more, tearing into the plaster wall, and Byrne shouted, “You dumb mug! Knock it off!”
He didn’t say anything else just then because my fist was in his mouth and he was trying hard to swallow it. I picked him up off the floor, keeping him in front of me. I lifted him to his feet and kept him ahead of me, moving toward Lew on the couch.
“Go ahead, Lew,” I said. “Shoot. Kill your buddy and you’ll get me, too.”
“Don’t move,” he said.
I kept crossing the room, holding Byrne’s limp body ahead of me.
“I said don’t move!”
“Shoot, Lew! Fill Jackie-boy with holes. Go ahead!”
He hesitated a moment and that was all I needed. I threw Byrne like a sack of potatoes and Lew moved to one side just as I jumped. I hit him once in the gut and once in the Adam’s apple, almost killing him. Then I grabbed Lew by his collar and Jackie by his, and I dragged them out of the room, and down the stairs, and out on the sidewalk. I found the cop not far from there.
I told Kit all about it later.
Her eyes held stars, and they made me think of a time when I’d roamed the neighborhood as a kid, a kid who didn’t know the meaning of pain or the meaning of grief.
“Come see me, Curt,” she said. “When you get the time, come see me. Please remember, Curt.”
“I will, Kit,” I lied.
I left the grocery store and walked over to Third Avenue. I grabbed the bus there, and I headed for home.
Home . . .
If I hurried, I might still find a liquor store open.
The bus rumbled past 120th Street, and I looked out of the window and up the high walls of the tenement cliffs. And then 120th Street was gone, and with it Curt Cannon’s boyhood.
I slumped against the seat, pulling my collar high, smiling a little when the woman next to me got up and changed her seat.
LOREN D. ESTLEMAN
Loren D. Estleman (1952– ) is a highly regarded crime novelist walking the mean streets of Raymond Chandler’s America. He has borrowed from Chandler, but made his own detective more real, more contemporary, and much less a B-movie gumshoe. Along the way—Estleman was very young when he was first published—he also established himself as perhaps the best contemporary writer of Westerns in this country.
Estleman brings style and serious purpose to the mystery genre. People as different as John D. MacDonald and Robert B. Parker have praised Estleman’s Amos Walker novel series. And deservedly so.
The Used
“But I never been to Iowa!” Murch protested.
His visitor sighed. “Of course not. No one has. That’s why we’re sending you there.”
Slouched in the worn leather armchair in the office Murch kept at home, Adamson looked more like a high school basketball player than a federal agent. He had baby-fat features without a breath of whisker and collar-length sandy hair and wore faded Levi’s with a tweed jacket too short in the sleeves and a paisley tie at three-quarter mast. His voice was changing, for God’s sake. The slight bulge under his left arm might have been a sandwich from home.
Murch paced, coming to a stop at the basement window. His lawn needed mowing. The thought of it awakened the bursitis in his right shoulder. “What’ll I do there? Don’t they raise wheat or something like that? What’s a wheat farmer need with a bookkeeper?”
“You won’t be a bookkeeper. I explained all this before.” The agent sat up, resting his forearms on his bony knees. “In return for your testimony regarding illegal contributions made by your employer to the campaigns of Congressmen Disdale and Reicher and Senator Van Horn, the Justice Department promises immunity from prosecution. You will also be provided with protection during the trial, and afterwards a new identity and relocation to Iowa. When you get there, you’ll find a job waiting for you selling hardware, courtesy of Uncle Sam.”
“What do I know about hardware? My business is with numbers.”
“An accounting position seemed inadvisable on the off chance Redman’s people traced you west. They’d never think of looking for you behind a sales counter.”
“You said he wouldn’t be able to trace me!” Murch swung around.
Adamson’s lips pursed, lending him the appearance of a teenage Cupid. “I won’t lie and say it hasn’t happened. But in those cases there were big syndicate operations involved, with plenty of capital to spend. Jules Redman is light cargo by comparison. It’s the senator and the congressmen we want, but we have to knock him down to get to them.”
“What’s the matter, they turn you down?”
The agent looked at him blankly.
Murch had to smile. “Come on, I ain’t been in this line eighteen years I don’t see how it jerks. Maybe these guys giving your agency a hard time on appropriations, or—” He broke off, his face brightening further. “Say, didn’t I read where this Van Horn is asking for an investigation into clandestine operations? Yeah, and maybe the others support him. So you sniff around till something stinks and then tell them if they play ball you’ll scratch sand over it. Only they don’t feel like playing, so now you go for the jugular. Am I close?”
“I’m just a field operator, Mr. Murch. I leave politics to politicians.” But the grudging respect in the agent’s tone was enlightening.
“What happens if I decide not to testify?”
“Then you’ll be wearing your numbers on your shirt. For three counts of conspiracy to bribe a member of the United States Congress.”
They were watching each other when the doorbell rang upstairs. Murch jumped.
“That’ll be your escort,” Adamson suggested. “I’ve arranged for a room at a motel in the suburbs. The local police are lending a couple of plainclothesmen to stay there with you until the trial Monday. It’s up to you whether I ask them to take you to jail instead.”
“One room?” The bookkeeper’s lip curled.
“There’s an economy move on in Washington.” Adamson got out of the chair and stood waiting. The doorbell sounded again.
“I want a color TV in the room,” said Murch. “Tell your boss no color TV, no deal.”
The agent didn’t smile. “I’ll tell him.” He went up to answer the door.
* * *
He shared a frame bungalow at the motel between the railroad and the river with a detective sergeant named Kirdy and his relief, a lean, chinless officer who watched football all day with the sound turned down. He held a transistor radio in his lap; it was tuned in to the races. Kirdy looked smaller than he was. Though his head barely reached the bridge of Murch’s nose, he took a size forty-six jacket and had to turn sideways to clear his shoulders through doorways. He had kind eyes set incongruously in a slab of granite. No-Chin never spoke except to warn his charge away from the windows. Kirdy’s conversation centered around his granddaughter, a blonde tyke of whom he had a wallet full of photos. The bathroom was heated only intermittently by an electric baseboard unit and the building shuddered whenever a train went past. But Murch had his color T
V.
At half past ten Monday morning, he was escorted into the court by Adamson and another agent who looked like a rock musician. Jules Redman sat at the defense table with his attorney. Murch’s employer was small and dark, with an old-time gunfighter’s handlebar mustache and glossy black hair combed over a bald spot. Their gazes met while the bookkeeper was being sworn in, and from then until recess was called at noon Redman’s tan eyes remained on the man in the witness chair.
Charles Anthony Murch—his full name felt strange on his tongue when the court officer asked him for it—was on the stand two days. His testimony was complicated, having to do with dates and transactions made through dummy corporations, and he consulted his notebook often while the jurors stifled yawns and the spectators fidgeted and inspected their fingernails. After adjournment the first day, the witness was whisked along a circuitous route to a hotel near the airport, where Kirdy and his partner awaited their duty. On the way Adamson was talkative and in good spirits. Already he spoke of how his agency would proceed against the congressmen and Senator Van Horn after Redman was convicted. Murch was silent, remembering his employer’s eyes.
The defense attorney, white-haired and grandfatherly behind a pair of half-glasses, kept his seat during cross-examination the next morning, reading from a computer printout sheet on the table in front of him while the government’s case slowly fell to pieces. Murch had thought that his dismissal from that contracting firm upstate was off the books, and he was surprised to learn that someone had penetrated his double-entry system at the insurance company he had left in Chicago. Based on this record, the lawyer accused the bookkeeper of entering the so-called campaign donations into Redman’s ledger to cover his own thefts. The jurors’ faces were unreadable, but as the imputation continued Murch saw the corners of the defendant’s mustache rise slightly and watched Adamson’s eyes growing dull.
A Century of Noir Page 45