“Joe…”
“Yeah?”
“He said for you to take a good look…at me. I’m an example. A little one. He says to do what he told you.”
“He knows what he can do.”
“Joe…for me. Lay off, huh? I don’t feel so good. Now I can’t work for a while.”
I patted his arm, fished a hundred buck bill out of my pocket and squeezed it into his hand. “Don’t worry about it,” I told him.
He looked at the bill unbelievingly, then at me.
“Dough can’t pay for…this, Joe. Kind of…stay away from me…for awhile anyway, okay?” He smiled again, lamely this time. “Thanks for the C anyway. We been pretty good buddies, huh?”
“Sure, Nick.”
“Later we’ll be again. Lemme knock off now. You take it easy.” His hands came up to his face and covered it. I could hear the sobs starting again and cursed the whole damn system up and down and Renzo in particular. I swore at the filth men like to wade in and the things they do to other men. When I was done I got up off the bed and walked to the door.
Behind me Nick said, “Joey…”
“Right here.”
“Something’s crazy in this town. Stories are going around…there’s gonna be a lot of trouble. Everybody is after…you. You’ll…be careful?”
“Sure.” I opened the door, shut it softly and went back to my room. I stripped off my clothes and lay down in the bed, my mind turning over fast until I had it straightened out, then I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
My landlady waited until a quarter to twelve before she gave it the business on my door. She didn’t do it like she usually did it. No jarring smashes against the panels, just a light tapping that grew louder until I said, “Yeah?”
“Mrs. Stacey, Joe. You think you should get up? A man is downstairs to see you.”
“What kind of a man?”
This time the knob twisted slowly and the door opened a crack. Her voice was a harsh whisper that sounded nervous. “He’s got on old clothes and a city water truck is parked outside. He didn’t come to look at my water.”
I grinned at that one. “I’ll be right down,” I said. I splashed water over my face, shaved it close and worked the adhesive off the bridge of my nose. It was swollen on one side, the blue running down to my mouth. One eye was smudged with purple.
Before I pulled on my jacket I stuffed the wad of dough into the lining through the tear in the sleeve, then took a look in Nick’s room. There were traces of blood on his pillow and the place was pretty upset, but Nick had managed to get out somehow for a day’s work.
The guy in the chair sitting by the window was short and wiry looking. There was dirt under his fingernails and a stubble on his chin. He had a couple of small wrenches in a leather holster on his belt that bulged his coat out but the stuff was pure camouflage. There was a gun further back and saw the same thing Mrs. Stacey saw. The guy was pure copper with badges for eyes.
He looked at me, nodded and said, “Joe Boyle?”
“Suppose I said no?” I sat down opposite him with a grin that said I knew all about it and though knew he got it nothing registered at all.
“Captain Gerot tells me you’ll cooperate. That true?”
There was a laugh his eyes, an attitude of being deliberately polite when he didn’t have to be. “Why?” I asked him. “Everybody seems to think I’m pretty hot stuff all of a sudden.”
“You are, junior, you are. You’re the only guy who can put his finger on a million dollar baby that we want bad. So you’ll cooperate.”
“Like a good citizen?” I made it sound the same as he did. “How much rides on Vetter and how much do I get?”
The sarcasm in his eyes turned to a nasty sneer. “Thousands ride, junior…and you don’t get any. You just cooperate. Too many cops have worked too damn long on Vetter to let a crummy kid cut into the cake. Now I’ll tell you why you’ll cooperate. There’s a dame, see? Helen Troy. There’s ways of slapping that tomato with a fat conviction for various reasons and unless you want to see her slapped, you’ll cooperate. Catch now?”
I him something that fitted him right down to his shoes. He didn’t lose a bit of that grin at all. “Catch something else,” he said. “Get smart and I’ll make your other playmates look like school kids. I like tough guys. I have fun working ‘em over because that’s what they understand. What there is to know I know. Take last night for instance. The boys paid you off for a finger job. Mark Renzo pays but in his own way. Now I’m setting up a deal. Hell, you don’t have to take it…you can do what you please. Three people are dickering for what you know. I’m the only one who can hit where it really hurts.
“Think it over, Joey boy. Think hard but do it fast. I’ll be waiting for a call from you and wherever you are, I’ll know about it. get impatient sometimes, so let’s hear from you soon. Maybe if you take too long I’ll prod you a little bit.” He got up, stretched and wiped his eyes like he was tired. “Just ask for Detective Sergeant Gonzales,” he said. “That’s me.”
The cop patted the tools on his belt and stood by the door. I said, “It’s stinking to be a little man, isn’t it? You got to keep making up for it.”
There was pure, cold hate in his eyes for an answer. He gave me a long look that a snake would give a rabbit when he isn’t too hungry yet. A look that said wait a little while, feller. Wait until I’m real hungry.
I watched the car pull away, then sat there at the window looking at the street. I had to wait almost an hour before I spotted the first, then picked up the second one ten minutes later. If there were more I didn’t see them. I went back to the kitchen and took a look through the curtains at the blank behinds of the warehouses across the alley. Mrs. Stacey didn’t say anything. She sat there with her coffee, making clicking noises with her false teeth.
I said, “Somebody washed the windows upstairs in the wholesale house.”
“A man. Early this morning.”
“They haven’t been washed since I’ve been here.”
“Not for two years.”
I turned around and she was looking at me as if something had scared her to death. “How much are they paying you?” I said.
She couldn’t keep that greedy look out of her face even with all the phony indignation she tried to put on. Her mouth opened to say something when the phone rang and gave her the chance to cover up. She came back a few seconds later and said, “It’s for you. Some man.”
Then she stood there by the door where she always stood whenever somebody was on the phone. I said, “Joe Boyle speaking,” and that was all. I let the other one speak his few words and when he was done I hung up.
I felt it starting to burn in me. A nasty feeling that makes you want to slam something. Nobody asked me…they just told and I was supposed to jump. I was the low man on the totem pole, a lousy kid who happened to fit into things…just the right size to get pushed around.
Vetter, I kept saying to myself. They were all scared to death of Vetter. The guy had something they couldn’t touch. He was tough. He was smart. He was moving in for a kill and if ever one was needed it was needed now. They were all after him and no matter how many people who didn’t belong there stood in the way their bullets would go right through them to reach Vetter. Yeah, they wanted him bad. So bad they’d kill each other to make sure he died too.
Well, the whole pack of ‘em knew what they could do.
I pulled my jacket on and got outside. I went up the corner, grabbed a downtown bus and sat there without bothering to look around. At Third and Main I hopped off, ducked into a cafeteria and had a combination lunch. I let Mrs. Stacey get her calls in, gave them time to keep me well under cover, then flagged down a roving cab and gave the driver Helen’s address. On the way over I looked out the back window for the second time and the light blue Chevvy was still in place, two cars behind and trailing steadily. In a way it didn’t bother me if the boys inside were smart enough to check the black Caddie that rode behind it again.
I tapped the cabbie a block away, told him to let me out on the corner and paid him off. There wasn’t a parking place along the street so the laddies in the cars were either going to cruise or double park, but it would keep them moving around so I could see what they were like anyway.
When I punched the bell I had to wait a full minute before the lobby door clicked open. I went up the stairs, jolted the apartment door a few times and walked right into those beautiful eyes that were even prettier than the last time because they were worried first, then relieved when they saw me. She grabbed my arm and gave me that quick grin then pulled me inside and stood with her back to the door.
“Joe, Joe, you little jughead,” she laughed. “You had me scared silly. Don’t do anything like that again.”
“Had to Helen. I wasn’t going to come back but I had to do that too.”
Maybe it was the way I said it that made her frown. “You’re a funny kid.”
“Don’t say that.”
Something changed in her eyes. “No. Maybe I shouldn’t, should I?” She looked at me hard, her eyes soft, but piercing. “I feel funny when I look at you. I don’t know why. Sometimes I’ve thought it was because I had a brother who was always in trouble. Always getting hurt. I used to worry about him too.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was killed on the Anzio beachhead.”
“Sorry.”
She shook her head. “He didn’t join the army because he was patriotic. He and another kid held up a joint. The owner was shot. He was dead by the time they found out who did it.”
“You’ve been running all your life too, haven’t you?”
The eyes dropped a second. “You could put it that way.”
“What ties you here?”
“Guess.”
“If you had the dough you’d beat it? Some place where nobody knew you?”
She laughed, a short jerky laugh. It-was answer enough. I reached in the jacket, got out the pack of bills and flipped off a couple for myself.
I shoved the rest in her hand before she knew what it was. “Get going. Don’t even bother to pack. Just move out of here and keep moving.”
Her eyes were big and wide with an incredulous sort of wonder, then slightly misty when they came back to mine and she shook her head a little bit and said, “Joe…why? Why?”
“It would sound silly if I said it.”
“Say it.”
“When I’m all grown up I’ll tell you maybe.”
“Now.”
I could feel the ache starting in me and my tongue didn’t want to move, but I said, “Sometimes even a kid can feel pretty hard about a woman. Sad, isn’t it?”
Helen said, “Joe,” softly and had my face in her hands and her mouth was a hot torch that played against mine with a crazy kind of fierceness and it was all I could do to keep from grabbing her instead of pushing her away. My hands squeezed her hard, then I yanked the door open and got out of there. Behind me there was a sob and I heard my name said again, softly.
I ran the rest of the way down with my face all screwed up tight.
The blue Chevvy was down the street on the other side. It seemed to be empty and I didn’t bother to poke around it. All I wanted was for whoever followed me to follow me away from there. So I gave it the full treatment. I made it look great. To them I must have seemed pretty jumpy and on my way to see somebody important. It took a full hour to reach THE CLIPPER that way and the only important one around was Bucky Edwards and he wasn’t drunk this time.
He nodded, said, “Beer?” and when I shook my head, called down the bar for a tall orange. “Figured you’d be in sooner or later.”
“Yeah?”
That wise old face wrinkled a little. “How does it feel to be live bait, kiddo?”
“You got big ears, grandma.”
“I get around.” He toasted his beer against my orange, put it down and said, “You’re in pretty big trouble, Joe. Maybe you don’t know it.”
“I know it.”
“You don’t know how big. You haven’t been here that long. Those boys put on the big squeeze.”
It was my turn to squint. His face was set as if he smelled something he didn’t like and there was ice in his eyes. “How much do you know, Bucky?”
His shoulders made a quick shrug. “Phil Carboy didn’t post the depot and the bus station for nothing. He’s got cars cruising the highways too. Making sure, isn’t he?”
He looked at me and I nodded.
“Renzo is kicking loose too. He’s pulling the strings tight. The guys on his payroll are getting nervous but they can’t do a thing. No, sir, not a thing. Like a war. Everybody’s just waiting.” The set mouth flashed me a quick grin. “You’re the key, boy. If there was a way out I’d tell you to take it.”
“Suppose I went to the cops?”
“Gerot?” Bucky shook his head. “You’d get help as long as he could keep you in a cell. People’d like to see him dead too. He’s got an awfully bad habit of being honest. Ask him to show you his scars someday. It wouldn’t be so bad if he was just honest, but he’s smart and mean as hell too.”
I drank half the orange and set it down in the wet circle on the bar. “Funny how things work out. All because of Vetter. And he’s here because of Jack Cooley.”
“I was wondering when you were gonna get around to it, kid,” Bucky said.
“What?”
He didn’t look at me. “Who are you working for?”
I waited a pretty long time before he turned his head around. I let him look at my face another long time before I said anything. Then: “I was pushing a junk cart, friend. I was doing okay, too. I wasn’t working for trouble. Now I’m getting pretty curious. In my own way I’m not so stupid, but now I want to find out the score. One way or another I’m finding out. So they paid me off but they aren’t figuring on me spending much of that cabbage. After it’s over I get chopped down and it starts all over again, whatever it is. That’s what I’m finding out. Why I’m bait for whatever it is. Who do I see, Bucky? You’re in the know. Where do I go to find out?”
“Cooley could have told you,” he said quietly.
“Nuts. He’s dead.”
“Maybe he can still tell you.”
My fingers were tight around the glass now. “The business about Cooley getting it because of the deal on Renzo’s tables is out?”
“Might be.”
“Talk straight unless you’re scared silly of those punks too. Don’t give me any puzzles if you know something.”
Bucky’s eyebrows went up, then down slowly over the grin in his eyes. “Talk may be cheap, son,” he said, “but life comes pretty expensively.” He nodded sagely and said, “I met Cooley in lotsa places. Places he shouldn’t have been. He was a man looking around. He could have found something.”
“Like what?”
“Like why we have gangs in this formerly peaceful city of ours. Why we have paid-for politicians and clambakes with some big faces showing. They’re not eating clams…they’re talking.”
“These places where you kept seeing Cooley…”
“River joints. Maybe he liked fish.”
You could tell when Bucky was done talking. I went down to Main, found a show I hadn’t seen and went in. There were a lot of things I wanted to think about.
Chapter 3
At eleven-fifteen the feature wound up and I started back outside. In the glass reflection of the lobby door I saw somebody behind me but I didn’t look back. There could have been one more in the crowd that was around the entrance outside. Maybe two. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to me and I didn’t care if they did or not.
I waited for a Main Street bus, took it down about a half mile, got off at the darkened supermarket and started up the road. You get the creeps in places like that. It was an area where some optimist had started a factory and ran it until the swamp crept in. When the footings gave and the walls cracked, they moved out, and now the black skel
etons of the buildings were all that were left, with gaping holes for eyes and a mouth that seemed to breathe out a fetid swamp odor. But there were still people there. The dozen or so company houses that were propped against the invading swamp showed dull yellow lights, and the garbage smell of unwanted humanity fought the swamp odor. You could hear them, too, knowing that they watched you from the shadows of their porches. You could feel them stirring in their jungle shacks and catch the pungency of the alcohol they brewed out of anything they could find.
There was a low moan of a train from the south side and its single eye picked out the trestle across the bay and followed it. The freight lumbered up, slowed for the curve that ran through the swamps and I heard the bindle stiffs yelling as they hopped off, looking for the single hard topped road that took them to their quarters for the night.
The circus sign was on the board fence. In the darkness it was nothing but a bleached white square, but when I lit a cigarette I could see the faint orange impressions that used to be supposedly wild animals. The match went out and I lit another, got the smoke fired up and stood there a minute in the dark.
The voice was low. A soft, quiet voice more inaudible than a whisper. “One is back at the corner. There’s another a hundred feet down.”
“I know,” I said.
“You got nerve.”
“Let’s not kid me. I got your message. Sorry I had to cut it short, but a pair of paid-for ears were listening in.”
“Sony Renzo gave you a hard time.”
“So am I. The others did better by me.”
Somebody coughed down the road and I flattened against the boards away from the white sign. It came again, further away this time and I felt better. I said, “What gives?”
“You had a cop at your place this morning.”
“I spotted him.”
“There’s a regular parade behind you.” A pause, then, “What did you tell them?”
I dragged in on the smoke, watched it curl up against the fence. “I told them he was big. Tough. I didn’t see his face too well. What did you expect me to tell them?”
I had a feeling like he smiled.
“They aren’t happy,” he said.
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