It pitched-out around 9:30, and I started my creep toward the penthouse.
The grass was dry now, and the sounds of traffic filtered up the face of the building. The .45 was warm in my mitt. I suddenly realized I’d been hanging onto it for over three hours, while I’d been waiting.
I crawled over to the big windows and looked inside. At first I didn’t see anyone. The living room was empty. Just an overplush apartment, decorated ultramodern with hanging lamps, screwy-looking wire clocks on the walls—the works.
In a few minutes a man came into the room with a drink in his hand; he was wearing a wine-colored satin smoking jacket, with a silk scarf knotted about his throat. The guy was about forty, or forty-five, hair graying at the temples, a smooth, unlined face, almost like a baby’s. He looked hard, but the mark of dissipation was on him. As though he’d just gotten rich and was letting himself go to fat enjoying it.
It was Steckman all right. Richie Ellington had described him almost perfectly. I waited a few minutes to make sure he was alone; then I shoved in.
The French doors were unlocked. He must have felt pretty secure up there in the clouds. When I stepped through into his living room, the .45 aimed at the spot behind his brandy snifter, he turned a fish-belly white.
“Who—who are you?” he asked. Real hacky phrase—no inventiveness, this guy. I disliked him more and more. But I told him anyhow.
“The name’s Campus, Mr. Steckman. Neal Campus. I’m the boy you don’t like.”
He started sputtering something about getting out, and who the hell did I think I was, but I cut him off sharply.
“I know you don’t like me, Mr. Steckman, because you had a few of your kindergarten associates clobber me, then toss me over a cliff, then plant a bomb in my hack. They really tried everything but staking me out and letting the ants eat me alive. Now unless that’s the way you recruit new members for the Social Register, I’m certain you don’t care for little old Neal Campus.”
“You’re out of your mind. Get out of here before I call the police!”
“Oh, you’ll do some calling, all right, Mr. Steckman, but not right now. First I want to thank you in my own charming way for all the attention you’ve paid me.”
I laid the gun down on top of the spinet piano, and chucked off my jacket.
Steckman was almost as tall as me, but he was heavier by a good twenty pounds. And he wasn’t that soft.
I came at him, and he did something really old hat: he tossed the brandy in my face. Glass and all. The damned stuff burned like lye, and I fell back. The next thing I knew he had a foot in my groin, and I was getting pitchforks of pain in my abdomen.
I staggered back against the spinet and grabbed out blindly for him, while I prayed my eyes would stop tearing.
All I could see was a vague blur, but I threw a left hook at it, and it connected. He tumbled backwards over a modern chair, and brought up short against the opposite wall, next to the fireplace.
I shook my head a couple of times, and my eyes cleared just nicely so that I could see him coming whole-hog at me with an andiron in his big mitt.
He swung the thing like a golf pro, and it sizzled past my temple, parting my hair. The thing smashed into the wall, shattering a shadow box and a couple of little Chinese figurines.
I dove for him, low, and caught him around the legs. Then I was on top of him, and all the anger and frustration of the past weeks let loose. I clobbered that guy real good. I don’t think I’d have stopped, except his kisser started looking like a pound of prime ground round. I figured it was time to back off him.
I hauled him to his feet, shoved him into a chair, and emptied the water from the bottom of an ice bucket in his face. He jerked like I’d harpooned him when the ice water hit, and I jerked him erect by his satin lapels.
“All right, Mr. Steckman, how’s about you letting Uncle Neal in on what the pitch is here. Why the juvies? Why all the muggings?”
He seemed reluctant to talk, so I tossed him a couple of open-hand cracks across his bleeding mouth, and he came around real fast.
“I’ve had some serious losses in the stock market of late,” he explained, “and I had to recoup the money somehow.”
“Pretty high living you’re doing here. Ever think if you moved back to Earth with us poverty-struck commoners you might be able to get along on less?”
He glared at me, and continued: “I got in touch with a boy named Boots, and told him to get a few of his friends in the gang, and bring them over; that I’d like to talk to them. So I brought them over and showed them how to avoid being caught—”
I interrupted, “Like changing to charcoal suits and hiding the leather jackets when they were off duty, right?”
He nodded. “Then I planned a few jobs for them, with myself handling the disposal of non-cash merchandise—”
“Like Pessler’s diamonds,” I put in.
“Like Pessler’s diamonds,” he agreed, dabbing at the trickle of blood running out of his mouth. “But I never told them to frame you, or to kill anyone. They did that on their own. I swear to god! I never told them—”
“You’re lying like a rug, Steckman!” I accused him. “No matter how sharp those kids are, it would take a lousy fagin like you to think up that cliff deal, or the bomb.”
“No, I—”
“Shut up, Steckman. You make me sick to my belly. How many are there in the gang, fagin?”
He gritted his teeth—those he had left—and told me there were eight of them, all members of a gang called the Falcons.
“Get them over here,” I told him.
He looked at me sharply. “Get them!” I snapped.
He went to the phone, lifted it and dialed. He spoke to someone on the other end, and asked them if he could speak to Boots. They must have told him Boots wasn’t there, because he asked who was there in the Falcs.
Then he said, “All right, let me talk to Stick.” He waited about a minute, then he said, “Hello, Stick?” He paused and licked his lips, started to say something, but I stepped over quickly and prodded him with the .45 in the back of the head.
“This is Steckman. Yes, that’s right. Come on up immediately. I’ve got—what’s that? Yes, that’s right, a big job for you. Bring the rest of the boys.” He waited, listening, then said, “Yes, all of them. Even Carpy and Second.” I stepped in front of him and mouthed that Stick should get Boots, too, in particular. “Oh, and Stick—be sure Boots is with you.” He muttered a few more things, then hung up, sweating like a pig. I’d had the muzzle of that .45 behind his ear all the time he’d been talking.
Steckman looked scared.
“Sit down again,” I told him. He walked over and folded up into his contour chair. I wondered about one thing more, so I asked him, “How did you know guys like Pessler would be carrying that much with them, or where they’d be?”
He shrugged sullenly, answered, “Friends of mine, or acquaintances I’ve met at parties. It was easy to get them to drop word of where they were going, or where they’d be at certain times, and if they were carrying much money. Then all I had to do was make sure the kids were there.” He seemed proud of his little fling into crime.
A real nice guy this Steckman. “Where are those kids coming from now?” I asked.
He hesitated a second, then said, “Way over from Brooklyn. Why?”
I knew I couldn’t handle all of them alone, that I’d need the help of Harrison and his Homicide boys, but I wanted those kids here first. I didn’t want any of them walking up as the cops showed, and then blowing.
So I waited. After half an hour, I dialed the operator. “Get me the police! This is an emergency!”
Then a short wait, and finally a voice said, “Police Headquarters. Can I help you?”
“Homicide!” I bellowed. There wasn’t any reason to yell, but I thought it might get me faster service.
In a minute I heard Harrison’s dulcet tones. I briefed him in fast, and gave him the address, told him to bla
st over.
“Is this a gag, Campus? I know Fritz Steckman, and he doesn’t front any bunch of juvie hoods!”
“Look, Harrison,” I shouted at him, “either you get over here within the next ten minutes, or you’re going to find a cache of corpses. And I can bet you either Mr. Steckman or I will be among them. Now for Christ’s sake, back me up on this, at least till you find out whether I’ve got hold of something or—”
Right then, the kids blew in. Without knocking. Eight of them. With switchblades uncurled.
“Fast, Harrison!” I yelled into the phone. “Eight of them just showed on the scene, and they don’t look as though they’re here to trade bubble-gum pictures!”
I had to drop the phone then, because Steckman was grinning and clapping his hands at them. “You understood the ‘Boots’ warning! Good, good! Now get Campus! I can cover with the police. Get him!”
Then, maybe because the kids were too slow for him, Steckman came out of his chair at me, with a fist as big as a musk-melon aimed at my head. I ducked under it, and it swished past my ear. Beyond him I saw three of the eight kids coming at me.
Steckman had spun halfway around me with that swing, so I leaned away from him and smacked him good and hard behind the ear as he swung past. The blow didn’t catch him full, but he fell across me, and threw me against the spinet again.
He tumbled to the floor, on his back. Then the kids were on me.
I felt one of their knives go into my shoulder, ripping up and out, and tearing away my shirt—some skin with it. It wasn’t really a deep slash, but it hurt like hell, and I could feel warm stickiness running down my arm. I wished I’d kept my jacket on.
They were all over me, but it was as rough for them as it was for me. They couldn’t get a clear shot at me and I couldn’t pot any of them.
Even so, I felt another shank go into my thigh. It was close again, hit nothing vital, but much more of this and I’d bleed out!
Finally I kicked up with both knees, lying on my back as I was, and they went in all directions. The pain was blinding me, and blood was all over the place. But I staggered to my feet, holding on to the edge of the piano, and barked, “Get the hell back, you little bastards, or I’ll make you look like Life Savers!”
They laughed, almost at the same time, and came at me.
I fired and caught the first one in the left leg. He slipped over and crumpled onto his side, moaning and clutching the shattered shinbone. The second one was too close to stop, and had his arm back for an overhand swipe with the knife. It was the ratty-faced kid that had pushed me off the cliff.
I couldn’t help it—all I could see was that knife, so I fired at it as it slipped toward me. The shot went past his arm and caught him just under the nose. The bullet plowed upward and the back of his head flew off. He fell forward, just a lousy bloody wreck, and I shoved the knife hand aside as he fell. He tumbled on top of Steckman, who wasn’t completely out and who was just rising. When Steckman saw what was on his back, he screamed like a woman, high and thin, and fainted.
The other six stopped cold. They didn’t want any more of that jazz. I felt sick for a moment, thinking how I’d killed a kid, but then I remembered what Harrison had said about how Pessler’s face had been stomped to goo. Then it didn’t bother me so much.
I staggered back till I had them all in sight, and suddenly I felt the ceiling lowered down on me. “Back up, and drop those shanks,” I mumbled. Things were starting to ooze off into grayness. I had to keep my eyes wide open and focused on them or I’d lose them, too.
I heard the switchblades drop dully to the rug, and they backed against the wall.
“You didn’t come from Brooklyn, did you?” I rattled. They shook their heads.
One of them gave a belligerent half-laugh, said, “We live eight blocks away from here, off Broadway. You thought we’d be a whole lot longer comin’. But Steckman gave us the word.”
“Now we’re going to wait for Harrison and his squad boys,” I said. I choked the words out, and the kids didn’t look too worried about matters.
They didn’t say a word. I leaned against the piano and waited.
It seemed like forever. I could feel the blood oozing off down my arm and leg, and all the clubbings I’d taken in the past few weeks were finally adding up. How I’d kept going till now suddenly shocked me. It seemed fantastic, but nervous energy accounted for most of it, and good condition answered the rest.
I glanced down at my wristwatch. It had been a good twenty minutes since I’d spoken to Harrison. Maybe the sonofabitch didn’t believe me!
I didn’t have a very long while to think about it though. Abruptly, somebody drained all the juice out of me, and I felt myself tilting over. The gun dropped out of my hand, and as the grayness closed in I saw the kids dipping for their shanks, with hell in their eyes.
A weird thought about all the times I’d been unconscious lately popped into my head as I fell:
What a helluva way to go through life!
I came to with the sweet young thing just focusing in, and beyond her the black-and-white bespectacled kisser of Harrison.
“I made it,” I said, duck-rasp.
“Yeah,” he said. For the first time, the slob smiled. “There’s money in this for you, Campus. Nice reward—totes up into four figures.”
I grinned back at him, and my head started playing the Anvil Chorus. I could feel the adhesive pull of bandages on my arm and thigh. “Reward, huh?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Know what I’m going to do with it?” I asked.
He shook his head. “What?”
“I’m going to buy you a pair of roller skates, you creeping, crawling slob!”
He didn’t smile—but what did I care?
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