by Edson, J. T.
Coming to a stop, Grantley responded with speed and effectively. Travelling with a power which swept aside the reaching hands of his would-be assailant, his right arm swung in an upwards and outwards arc. The back of the revolver-filled fist caught Furillo at the side of the jaw. Spun around by the far from gentle impact, he sprawled headlong into the corner of the room. Although the redheaded deputy turned the three and a half inch barrel of the Smith & Wesson to cover the Syndicate ‘soldier’ from New York, there was nothing to suggest it would be needed to quell further aggression. Stunned by the blow and collision against the wall, he lay crumpled and motionless where he had fallen.
‘Peace officers here!’ Melnick shouted, while his partner was dealing with Furillo, lining his weapon towards the door of the bathroom from beyond which arose a startled exclamation in Italian. ‘Come out with your hands empty!’
Instead of obeying, the speaker called something in the same language which the deputies assumed to be a query directed to the man just felled by Grantley.
‘Cut out the ethnic crap, Rossi!’ the slimmer Deputy commanded, throwing a quick look to where a Smith & Wesson Model 39 9mm automatic pistol in a belt clip holster lay on the second bed. ‘We know you’re not a Mustache Pete fresh off the boat who “don’t-a speak-a da English”. So haul your butt out here, pronto!’
‘Maybe he’s got a piece in there, Jake!’ Grantley called, despite having been just as observant as his partner, putting a savage snarl into his voice. ‘Let’s pump a few through the door, we can always slip him a Saturday Night Special if it comes out we’ve called it wrong.’
‘Don’t shoot!’ yelled the speaker, this time in the English of a native New Yorker. ‘I’m not carrying, men!’
‘We don’t see that god-damned door opening and you coming out, either!’ Grantley answered, keeping the mean and vicious timbre in his tone. ‘I’m counting to five and starting at three and, if you’re not out here by four—!’
‘Hold it!’ requested a thoroughly alarmed voice and the door of the bathroom flew open. ‘I’m coming already!’
First to appear after the words were spoken was a pair of hands, held palms outwards and unclenched as an indication of pacific intentions. The stocky youngish man who emerged from the bathroom was—albeit from another part of that country and using the alias, ‘Bernard Reynolds’, with the same false place of origin as his companion—just as obviously of Italian ‘roots’. He had on a multicolored sports shirt, light blue slacks with an unfastened belt and the zip of the fly open, and was barefoot.
‘Cool it, men!’ Dominic Rossi almost yelped, after glancing to where Furillo still sprawled unmoving in the corner. ‘I was only pulling my pants up and didn’t even take time to wipe my arse. What’s with you, anyways, busting in on “Phil” and me like this?’
‘Fasten your zip and buckle the belt,’ Melnick ordered, without offering to answer the question, as he reached behind him beneath his sports coat with his left hand and extracted his handcuffs. ‘Then get your hands behind your back.’
‘Whatever you say,’ the New Yorker assented, being too wise to disobey. ‘But I hope you know what you’re doing.’
‘We’ve a notion,’ the slimmer Deputy declared, watching his instructions being carried out.
‘But what’ve we supposed to have done?’ Rossi wanted to know, as his wrists were secured by the handcuffs behind his back.
‘I don’t know how it is in the Big Apple,’ Grantley growled, closing the door after checking that nobody had heard and was coming to investigate the disturbance. ‘But down here trying to waste anybody is considered against the law and that goes double when it’s the Sheriff you’re trying to waste.’
‘The Sheriff ?’ Rossi repeated, staring at the redhead as if unable to credit what he had heard. ‘Like hell we tried to waste him. We’re here after—!’
‘Who?’ Melnick inquired, straightening up after having fastened the wrists of the second gangster with the handcuffs supplied by his partner.
‘I’ve got a right to make a phone call!’ the New Yorker claimed.
‘Only if we arrest you, wop,’ Grantley pointed out in a savage snarl, holstering his Smith & Wesson to replace it with a leather-wrapped sap taken from his hip pocket. Tapping the new weapon almost pensively against his left palm as he spoke, he continued, ‘Only we haven’t arrested you yet. Have we, Jake?’
‘I’ve never heard you read him his rights, Ian,’ Melnick asserted. ‘Did you hear me read them for him?’
‘No,’ the red haired deputy admitted. ‘Which means he’s not arrested, so he don’t have the right to make any god-damned phone call until he is.’
‘You going to tell us who you’re here after?’ the slimmer peace officer asked.
‘I don’t know what—!’ Rossi commenced.
‘Then we’ll figure we’re right and it’s the Sheriff,’ Melnick stated, sounding and looking sadistic. ‘Let’s take him and the other yoyo along, Ian. We can get ourselves in good with Super Heat and make some money doing it.’
‘We can both stand to get in good with him,’ Grantley said somberly. ‘But how do we make the bread doing it?’
‘When the word they headed here was passed from Manhattan South,’ Melnick replied, paying no discernible attention to Rossi, or the other gangster who was groaning his way back to consciousness. ‘The Watch Commander said he was told these yoyos wasted Bucky Blue—!’
‘If that lying, bald-headed bastard, Ko—!’ the New Yorker commenced, but relapsed into silence as he realized he was being indiscreet. ‘I want to call a lawyer.’
‘If we book you,’ Melnick promised, but his attitude implied this would not be done any too quickly if at all. ‘Anyways, the soul brothers of that super-fly have spread the word to all the other Third World crap they deal with to get this pair. If we take them to Joey Upetangi xxix in the Bad Bit, he’ll lay some heavy bread on us for doing it.’
‘Hell, yes!’ Grantley agreed. ‘And Jack Tragg won’t ask too many questions on how come they got carved with Harlem sunsets when he hears they’re the yoyos who tried to stiff him.’
‘Let’s haul them down there then,’ Melnick suggested. ‘I can use some bread to pay off a couple of markers.’
Having stared from one peace officer to the other all the time they were speaking, Rossi was drawing conclusions he found distinctly alarming!
Nothing the New Yorker had heard, or deduced, led him to assume his captors might be bluffing.
The pair were dressed in sports coats, open necked shirts, flannel slacks and shoes which had clearly been bought ‘off the peg’ from a chain store such as J.C. Penney, and were definitely not hand tailored. However, that alone could not be regarded as verification of them being so honest they were compelled to live solely upon their earnings as deputy sheriffs. A smart peace officer who was ‘on the take’ did not exhibit signs of affluence beyond his normal means.
The scowling red head had the look of a hard-nosed ‘bull’, the kind who derived pleasure from mistreating prisoners. What was more, television series and movies of the past few years had conditioned Rossi to believe that every peace officer with a Southern accent was brutal, sadistic and corruptible. To have fallen into the hands of one was a most disturbing sensation, even for a ‘soldier’ under the protection offered by serving the Syndicate. Such a man would not hesitate before turning over prisoners to vengeance seeking enemies in the underworld if there was money in it, particularly as this could be done without arousing awkward questions from his superiors.
Despite sounding like a Texan, there was a timbre in his voice and a suggestion in his features of the second ‘badge’, indicating he had Hebraic ‘roots’. However, this gave the New Yorker no comfort. He was aware that, while no movie or television series would dare suggest such a thing, the qualities he suspected the burly redhead of possessing were not restricted solely to white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Past experience had taught him there were peace officers belonging to �
��acceptable’ religious or ethnic ‘minority groups’ who behaved just as viciously and were as corruptible as any W.A.S.P. character created by a Hollywood ‘liberal’. Therefore, he considered the leaner deputy was just as capable of handing over himself and Furillo to the associates of the Harlem gang leader whom they had killed on orders from their superiors in the Syndicate.
Furthermore, having made the capture, there was nothing to prevent the pair putting their threat into effect!
With the possible exception of the desk clerk, who would in all probability be compelled to remain silent about the visit—or could be persuaded that these guests had proven to be innocent and had fled at the conclusion of the interview—there was nobody close by. The rooms on either side were unoccupied, business at the hotel being very slack that night. xxx Nor had anybody come to find out what the commotion had been. Therefore, the deputies could remove their captives without being seen or heard and could later deny this had been done. They could prevent any outcry on leaving, either by gagging the prisoners or with blows from the saps each had produced on holstering their handguns, then deny all knowledge on reporting to their superiors.
‘Hey, men!’ Rossi gasped, reaching a decision. ‘Can we make a deal?’
‘What kind of deal?’ Grantley inquired, sounding as if he doubted the other had anything worthwhile to offer.
‘We’ve got bread—!’ the New Yorker began.
‘Not as much as we could get from Joey Upetangi,’ Melnick asserted in a disinterested fashion.
‘Maybe not,’ Rossi admitted, concluding he must offer some more suitable inducement. ‘But I’ll throw in something which’ll put you in real good with your boss.’
‘Put it on the line,’ Grantley instructed. ‘And make it quick!’
‘I told you we’re not here gunning for the Sheriff!’ Rossi obliged, darting nervous glances from one peace officer to the other and back. ‘But the guy we’re after is!’
‘You’re snowing us again!’ Melnick growled, showing signs of impatience.
‘Like hell I am!’ Rossi protested in alarm. ‘On my mother’s life, it’s the truth. We’ve been sent out to find the Crazy Doc and waste him.’
‘“Crazy Doc”?’ Grantley challenged.
‘Sure!’ the New Yorker confirmed. ‘Maybe you’ve never heard of him out here in the st—Crazy Doc Christopher.’
‘We’ve heard of him, all right,’ Melnick declared, in a manner indicating the “hearing” was not of a pleasant nature. ‘Even if we are out here in “the sticks”. Fact being, it was the Sheriff who caught on to his extra-circular games and sent him to the slammer.’
Which was true enough!
A vociferous exponent of ‘socialized medicine’, frequently pointing to the benefits offered—if rarely fulfilled, although this was never mentioned—by the British National Health system, Anthony ‘Crazy Doc’ Christopher had supported the bizarre tastes which created his nickname by performing abortions, treating wounded criminals without reporting the injuries to the authorities as required by law, and supplying information enabling shipments of narcotics intended for hospitals or medical research facilities to be hijacked. That he had evaded justice for so long was attributable to his having strong connections with the Syndicate. While he had not indulged in any of those nefarious activities in Rockabye County, the parents of a boy he had raped at a party, following one of his speeches in support of socialized medicine—on the itinerary of a nationwide tour he was making—had reported the matter to the authorities. The high-priced trial lawyer supplied by the organization sponsoring his travels had failed to save him from a prison sentence, or being ‘struck off’ by the American Medical Association, but was able to have him incarcerated at an easy going penal institute outside Rockabye County. It was known he had developed a paranoiac hatred of Sheriff Jack Tragg, who had handled the investigation resulting in his arrest personally, making repeated threats of vengeance.
However, when Christopher had taken advantage of the lax conditions at the State Prison Farm at Jonestown which he was assigned, and escaped, xxxi he had not made any attempt to carry out his threats. Instead, he had fled and was next heard of when arrested for a similar offense, this time ending in the death of his victim, at Providence, Rhode Island. Due to the gravity of the latest crime, the authorities in Rhode Island had refused a request made from Texas for his extradition. For a second time, ‘strings had been pulled’ which led to him being held in a much less secure penal establishment than his activities warranted and he had once more made the most of his opportunities.
‘Only we know this is another snow-job!’ Grantley claimed coldly. ‘He wasn’t so lucky when he split from the pokey in Rhode Island and got himself burned to death in a car smash-up.’
‘That’s what everybody thought!’ Rossi admitted. ‘But it comes out he’d wasted a hitch-hiker he’d picked up and left the stiff in the heap, setting it off to burn him until there was no way anybody could tell the difference.’
‘Don’t try to tell us the hitch-hiker was the “Godfather’s” favorite grandson!’ Melnick warned.
‘No!’ the New Yorker replied and, glancing at his companion—who had recovered sufficiently to listen to the conversation—and, receiving a confirmatory nod in return, went on, ‘He went to one of our safe houses to hide out until the heat cooled, then blew away the folks’s run it when he left. I tell you, that crazy son-of-a-bitch is still very much alive and kicking.’
At that moment, heavy footsteps sounded on the verandah and the sound of a voice, its timbre suggestive of much liquor having been consumed, came to the men in the room. While the tune was the old cowhand ballad, ‘Red River Valley’, it was clear the singer was making up his own words.
‘Oh we-sh got a call from Shen-Consh,
Saying you-sh call ole Big Red right away,
‘Cause he’sh got shomething import—imporshant to shay!’
‘Keep these yoyos cool, Ian,’ Melnick requested. ‘I’ll go and quiet him down.’
‘Yo!’ Grantley concurred, then swept the criminals with his scowling gaze. ‘If either of you lets out a peep, I’ll bend your skulls in with “Lil Billy” here!’
Accepting the warning as valid, Rossi and Furillo did not make a sound during the brief absence of the slimmer deputy. Instead, they listened to him asking the singer to, ‘Hold the noise down, amigo, there’s a sick feller in this room.’ On being obeyed and the footsteps continuing along the verandah without any musical accompaniment, he returned to the room.
‘It’s about time you checked in, isn’t it, Ian?’ Melnick inquired, closing the door.
‘Sure, Jake, the Watch Commander’s probably busting a gut trying to get us on the horn, trusting us the way he does,’ the red headed peace officer assented. Crossing the room, he picked up the receiver of the telephone and dialed a number, saying, ‘That you, B.R.?’ Having listened to the person on the other end of the line, he said, ‘Thanks, it’ll come the usual way.’ Hanging up, he turned around and continued, ‘Well, what do you know about that, Jake?’
‘What?’ Melnick asked.
‘Seems this yoyo’s been telling us the truth,’ Grantley explained, strolling towards Rossi and reaching into the opposite side pocket to which he had returned the sap. ‘At least, they’ve been making the rounds spreading the word for anybody who saw Crazy Doc to let them know straight away.’
‘It could have been a bluff,’ Melnick pointed out, then gave a shrug and corrected the theory. ‘Naw! If that was their game, they’d have picked somebody we didn’t think was dead. Anyway, we’ve got nothing to hold them on.’
‘Trouble being,’ Grantley growled, ‘I don’t take to the notion of having a couple of out-of-town pistols roaming the streets, it could get us a bad name.’
‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Ian,’ Melnick said, crossing to collect the two handguns from where they had been left by their respective owners. ‘If these two yoyos aren’t on the flight to Big D-Cowtown, xx
xii to connect with one to New York, at six-thirty in the morning, we’ll let Joey Upetangi know they’re in town and he’ll likely figure out some way to move them on.’
‘You get smarter every day, Jake!’ the burly red head praised. ‘That’s just what we’ll do.’
Watching and listening, Rossi began to suspect he had been tricked!
This was true enough!
Grantley and Melnick were neither so brutal, sadistic, nor corruptible as they had conveyed the impression of being. Although both possessed better clothing, their salaries as deputy sheriffs being adequate for a good standard of living without the need to augment it by illegal means, they preferred to dress in such a fashion when on watch as it allowed them to merge into the backgrounds of the area they would be covering that night. However, wanting to obtain information which would not otherwise have been forthcoming, they had put to use the information passed to Alvarez by his amigo, ‘Theo’ at Manhattan South. What was more, not for the first time when dealing with ‘Yankees’, they had been helped by the adverse image of Southron peace officers caused via the media; although they felt sure such an aid to the enforcement of law and order had never been intended by the makers of the movies and television series when creating such portrayals.
Believing himself to have fallen into the hands of a couple of Hollywood-type ‘redneck badges’, Rossi had been frightened into supplying the deputies with what they wanted to know. Acting upon the instructions delivered by the senior of the detectives, who had been asked to do so by Central Control, and selecting an ingenious way of passing it on without the New Yorkers learning his true identity or purpose, Grantley had called ‘Big Red’ and received confirmation for the unlikely story they had been told. With this received and the promise of payment for services rendered made, he had joined his partner in ensuring the unsavory pair departed from their bailiwick—there being no way either could be taken into custody and made to pay for their crimes—without delay.