The other sirens were almost there. I said, “Watch yourself. And thanks.”
“Sure, kid. I hate crooked cops worse than crooks.”
I ran for the car, hopped in and pulled the door shut. Behind me something splashed and a two foot square package floated on the water a moment, then turned over and sunk out of sight. I left the lights off, turned down the first street I reached and headed across town. At the main drag I pulled up, wiped the wheel and gearshift free of prints and got out.
There was dawn showing in the sky. It would be another hour yet before it was morning. I walked until I reached the junkyard in back of Gordon’s office, found the wreck of a car that still had cushions in it, climbed in and went to sleep.
Morning, afternoon, then evening. I slept through the first two. The last one was harder. I sat there thinking things, keeping out of sight. My clothes were dry now, but the cigarettes still had a lousy taste. There was a twinge in my stomach and my mouth was dry. I gave it another hour before I moved, then went back over the fence and down the street to a dirty little diner that everybody avoided except the boys who rode the rods into town. I knocked off a plate of bacon and eggs, paid for it with some of the change I had left, picked up a pack of butts and started out. That was when I saw the paper on the table.
It made quite a story. GANG WAR FLARES ON WATERFRONT, and under it a subhead that said, Cop, Hoodlum, Slain in Gun Duel. It was a masterpiece of writing that said nothing, intimated much and brought out the fact that though the place was bullet-sprayed and though evidence of other wounded was found, there were no bodies to account for what had happened. One sentence mentioned the fact that Johnny was connected with Mark Renzo. The press hinted at police inefficiency. There was the usual statement from Captain Gerot.
The thing stunk. Even the press was afraid to talk out. How long would it take to find out Gonzales didn’t die by a shot from Johnny’s gun? Not very long. And Johnny…a cute little twist like that would usually get a big splash. There wasn’t even any curiosity shown about Johnny. I let out a short laugh and threw the paper back again.
They were like rats, all right. They just went the rats one better. They dragged their bodies away with them so there wouldn’t be any ties. Nice. Now find the doctor who patched them up. Find what they were after on the docks. Maybe they figured to heist ten tons or so of machinery. Yeah, try and find it.
No, they wouldn’t say anything. Maybe they’d have to hit it a little harder when the big one broke. When the boys came in who paid a few million out for a package that was never delivered. Maybe when the big trouble came and the blood ran again somebody would crawl back out of his hole long enough to put it into print. Or it could be that Bucky Edwards was right. Life was too precious a thing to sell cheaply.
I thought about it, remembering everything he had told me. When I had it all back in my head again I turned toward the place where I knew Bucky would be and walked faster. Halfway there it started to drizzle. I turned up the collar, of my coat.
It was a soft rain, one of those things that comes down at the end of summer, making its own music like a dull concert you think will have no end. It drove people indoors until even the cabs didn’t bother to cruise. The cars that went by had their windows steamed into opaque squares, the drivers peering through the hand-wiped panes.
I jumped a streetcar when one came along, took it downtown and got off again. And I was back with the people I knew and the places made for them. Bucky was on his usual stool and I wondered if it was a little too late. He had that all gone look in his face and his fingers were caressing a tall amber-colored glass.
When I sat down next to him his eyes moved, giving me a glassy stare. It was like the cars on the street, they were cloudy with mist, then a hand seemed to reach out and rub them clear. They weren’t glass any more. I could see the white in his fingers as they tightened around the glass and he said, “You did it fancy, kiddo. Get out of here.”
“Scared, Bucky?”
His eyes went past me to the door, then came back again. “Yes. You said it right. I’m scared. Get out. I don’t want to be around when they find you.”
“For a guy who’s crocked most of the time you seem to know a lot about what happens.”
“I think a lot. I figure it out. There’s only one answer.”
“If you know it why don’t you write it?”
“Living’s not much fun any more, but what there is of it, I like. Beat it, kid.”
This time I grinned at him, a big fat grin and told the bartender to get me an orange. Large. He shoved it down, picked up my dime and went back to his paper.
I said, “Let’s hear about it, Bucky.” I could feel my mouth changing the grin into something else. “I don’t like to be a target either. I want to know the score.”
Bucky’s tongue made a pass over dry lips. He seemed to look back inside himself to something he had been a long time ago, dredging the memory up. He found himself in the mirror behind the back bar, twisted his mouth at it and looked back at me again.
“This used to be a good town.”
“Not that,” I said.
He didn’t hear me. “Now anybody who knows anything is scared to death. To death, I said. Let them talk and that’s what they get. Death. From one side or another. It was bad enough when Renzo took over, worse when Carboy came in. It’s not over yet.” His shoulders made an involuntary shudder and he pulled the drink halfway down the glass. “Friend Gulley had an accident this afternoon. He was leaving town and was run off the road. He’s dead.”
I whistled softly. “Who?”
For the first time a trace of humor put lines at the corner of his lips. “It wasn’t Renzo. It wasn’t Phil Carboy. They were all accounted for. The tire marks are very interesting. It looked like the guy wanted to stop friend Gulley for a chat but Gulley hit the ditch. You could call it a real accident without lying.” He finished the rest of the drink, put it down and said, “The boys are scared stiff.” He looked at me closely then. “Vetter,” he said.
“He’s getting close.”
Bucky didn’t hear me. “I’m getting to like the guy. He does what should have been done a long time ago. By himself he does it. They know who killed Gonzales. One of Phil’s boys saw it happen before he ran for it. There’s a guy with a broken neck who was found out on the highway and they know who did that and how.” He swirled the ice around in his glass. “He’s taking good care of you, kiddo.”
I didn’t say anything.
“There’s just one little catch to it, Joe. One little catch.”
“What?”
“That boy who saw Gonzales get it saw something else. He saw you and Johnny tangle over the package. He figures you got it. Everybody knows and now they want you. It can’t happen twice. Renzo wants it and Carboy wants it. You know who gets it?”
I shook my head.
“You get it. In the belly or in the head. Even the cops want you that bad. Captain Gerot even thinks that way. You better get out of here, Joe. Keep away from me. There’s something about you that spooks me. Something in the way your eyes look. Something about your face. I wish I could see into that mind of yours. I always thought I knew people, but I don’t know you at all. You spook me. You should see your own eyes. I’ve seen eyes like yours before but I can’t remember where. They’re familiar as hell, but I can’t place them. They don’t belong in a kid’s face at all. Go on, Joe, beat it. The boys are all over town. They got orders to do just one thing. Find you. When they do I don’t want you sitting next to me.”
“When do you write the big story, Bucky?”
“You tell me.”
My teeth were tight together with the smile moving around them. “It won’t be long.”
“No…maybe just a short obit. They’re tracking you fast. That hotel was no cover at all. Do it smarter the next time.”
The ice seemed to pour down all over me. It went down over my shoulders, ate through my skin until it was in the blood that pound
ed through my body. I grabbed his arm and damn near jerked him off the stool. “What about the hotel?”
All he did was shrug. Bucky was gone again.
I cursed silently, ran back into the rain again and down the block to the cab stand.
The clerk said he was sorry, he didn’t know anything about room 612. The night man had taken a week off. I grabbed the key from his hand and pounded up the stairs. All I could feel was that mad frenzy of hate swelling in me and I kept saying her name over and over to myself. I threw the door open, stood there breathing fast while I called myself a dozen different kinds of fool.
She wasn’t there. It was empty. A note lay beside the telephone. All it said was, “Bring it where you brought the first one.”
I laid the note down again and stared out the window into the night. There was sweat on the backs of my hands. Bucky had called it. They thought I had the package and they were forcing a trade. Then Mark Renzo would kill us both. He thought.
I brought the laugh up from way down in my throat. It didn’t sound much like me at all. I looked at my hands and watched them open and close into fists. There were callouses across the palms, huge things that came from Gordon’s junk carts. A year and a half of it, I thought. Eighteen months of pushing loads of scrap iron for pennies then all of a sudden I was part of a multi-million dollar operation. The critical part of it. I was the enigma. Me, Joey the junk pusher. Not even Vetter now. Just me. Vetter would come when they had me out of the way.
For a while I stared at the street. That tiny piece of luck that chased me caught up again and I saw the car stop and the men jump out. One was Phil Carboy’s right hand man. In a way it was funny. Renzo was always a step ahead of the challenger, but Phil was coming up fast. He’d caught on too and was ready to pull the same deal. He didn’t know it had already been pulled.
But that was all right too.
I reached for the pen on the desk, lifted a sheet of cheap stationary out of the drawer and scrawled across it, “Joe…be back in a few hours. Stay here with the package until I return. I’ll have the car ready.” I signed it, Helen, put it by the phone and picked up the receiver.
The clerk said, “Yes?”
I said, “In a minute some men will come in looking for the blonde and me. You think the room is empty, but let them come up. You haven’t seen me at all yet. Understand?”
“Say…”
“Mister, if you want to walk out of here tonight you’ll do what you’re told. You’re liable to get killed otherwise. Understand that?”
I hung up and let him think about it. I’d seen his type before and I wasn’t worried a bit. I got out, locked the door and started up the stairs to the roof. It didn’t take me longer than five minutes to reach the street and when I turned the corner the light was back on in the room I had just left. I gave it another five minutes and the tall guy came out again, spoke to the driver of the car and the fellow reached in and shut off the engine. It had worked. The light in the window went out. The vigil had started and the boys could afford to be pretty patient. They thought.
The rain was a steady thing coming down just a little bit harder than it had. It was cool and fresh with the slightest nip in it. I walked, putting the pieces together in my head. I did it slowly, replacing the fury that had been there, deliberately wiping out the gnawing worry that tried to grow. I reached the deserted square of the park and picked out a bench under a tree and sat there letting the rain drip down around me. When I looked at my hands they were shaking.
I was thinking wrong. I should have been thinking about fat, ugly faces; rat faces with deep voices and whining faces. I should have been thinking about the splashes of orange a rod makes when it cuts a man down and blood on the street. Cops who want the big pay off. Thinking of a town where even the press was cut off and the big boys came from the city to pick up the stuff that started more people on the long slide down to the grave.
Those were the things I should have thought of.
All I could think of was Helen. Lovely Helen who had been all things to many men and hated it. Beautiful Helen who didn’t want me to be hurt, who was afraid the dirt would rub off. Helen who found love for the first time…and me. The beauty in her face when I told her. Beauty that waited to be kicked and wasn’t because I loved her too much and didn’t give a damn what she had been. She was different now. Maybe I was too. She didn’t know it, but she was the good one, not me. She was the child that needed taking care of, not me. Now she was hours away from being dead and so was I.
The thing they wanted, the thing that could buy her life I saw floating in the water beside the dock. It was like having a yacht with no fuel aboard.
The police? No, not them. They’d want me. They’d think it was a phoney. That wasn’t the answer. Not Phil Carboy either. He was after the same thing Renzo was.
I started to laugh, it was so damn, pathetically funny. I had it all in my hand and couldn’t turn it around. What the devil does a guy have to do? How many times does he have to kill himself? The answer. It was right there but wouldn’t come through. It wasn’t the same answer I had started with, but a better one.
So I said it all out to myself. Out loud, with words. I started with the night I brought the note to Renzo, the one that promised him Vetter would cut his guts out. I even described their faces to myself when Vetter’s name was mentioned. One name, that’s all it took, and you could see the fear creep in because Vetter was deadly and unknown. He was the shadow that stood there, the one they couldn’t trust, the one they all knew in the society that stayed outside the law. He was a high-priced killer who never missed and always got more than he was paid to take. So deadly they’d give anything to keep him out of town, even to doing the job he was there for. So deadly they could throw me or anybody else to the wolves just to finger him. So damn deadly they put an army on him, yet so deadly he could move behind their lines without any trouble at all.
Vetter.
I cursed the name. I said Helen’s. Vetter wasn’t important any more. Not to me.
The rain lashed at my face as I looked up into it. The things I knew fell into place and I knew what the answer was. I remembered something I didn’t know was there, a sign on the docks by the fishing fleet that said “SEASON LOCKERS.”
Jack Cooley had been smart by playing it simple. He even left me the ransom.
I got up, walked to the corner and waited until a cab came by. I flagged him down, got in and gave the address of the white house where Cooley had lived.
The same guy answered the door. He took the bill from my hand and nodded me in. I said, “Did he leave any old clothes behind at all?”
“Some fishing stuff downstairs. It’s behind the coal bin. You want that?”
“I want that,” I said.
He got up and I followed him. He switched on the cellar light, took me downstairs and across the littered pile of refuse a cellar can collect. When he pointed to the old set of dungarees on the nail in the wall, I went over and felt through the pockets. The key was in the jacket. I said thanks and went back upstairs. The taxi was still waiting. He flipped his butt away when I got in, threw the heap into gear and headed toward the smell of the water.
I had to climb the fence to get on the pier. There wasn’t much to it. The lockers were tall steel affairs, each with somebody’s name scrawled across it in chalk. The number that matched the key didn’t say Cooley, but it didn’t matter any more either. I opened it up and saw the cardboard box that had been jammed in there so hard it had snapped one of the rods in the corner. Just to be sure I pulled one end open, tore through the other box inside and tasted the white powder it held.
Heroin.
They never expected Cooley to do it so simply. He had found a way to grab their load and stashed it without any trouble at all. Friend Jack was good at that sort of thing. Real clever. Walked away with a couple million bucks’ worth of stuff and never lived to convert it. He wasn’t quite smart enough. Not quite as smart as Carboy, Gerot, Renz
o…or even a kid who pushed a junk cart. Smart enough to grab the load, but not smart enough to keep on living.
I closed the locker and went back over the fence with the box in my arms. The cabbie found me a phone in a gin mill and waited while I made my calls. The first one got me Gerot’s home number. The second got me Captain Gerot himself, a very annoyed Gerot who had been pulled out of bed.
I said, “Captain, this is Joe Boyle and if you trace this call you’re going to scramble the whole deal.”
So the captain played it smart. “Go ahead,” was all he told me.
“You can have them all. Every one on a platter. You know what I’m talking about?”
“I know.”
“You want it that way?”
“I want you, Joe. Just you.”
“I’ll give you that chance. First you have to take the rest. There won’t be any doubt this time. They won’t be big enough to crawl out of it. There isn’t enough money to buy them out either. You’ll have every one of them cold.”
“I’ll still want you.”
I laughed at him. “I said you’ll get your chance. All you have to do is play it my way. You don’t mind that, do you?”
“Not if I get you, Joe.”
I laughed again. “You’ll need a dozen men. Ones you can trust. Ones who can shoot straight and aren’t afraid of what might come later.”
“I can get them.”
“Have them stand by. It won’t be long. I’ll call again.”
I hung up, stared at the phone a second, then went back outside. The cabbie was working his way through another cigarette. I said, “I need a fast car. Where do I get one?”
“How fast for how much?”
“The limit.”
“I got a friend with a souped-up Ford. Nothing can touch it. It’ll cost you.”
I showed him the thing in my hand. His eyes narrowed at the edges. “Maybe it won’t cost you at that,” he said. He looked at me the same way Helen had, then waved me in.
We made a stop at an out of the way rooming house. I kicked my clothes off and climbed into some fresh stuff, then tossed everything else into a bag and woke up the landlady of the place. I told her to mail it to the post office address on the label and gave her a few bucks for her trouble. She promised me she would, took the bag into her room and I went outside. I felt better in the suit. I patted it down to make sure everything was set. The cabbie shot me a half smile when he saw me and held the door open.
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