Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde (11 page)

McMann had him going. If he had real guts the best thing to do would be to kill the rat. To get rid of him once and for all. McMann wouldn’t stop now until death. “I won’t carry a gun. It’s a lousy laugh. Every day I’m getting more mixed up, just like the storybooks.”

“Who toldya to come in? Quit crabbin’. Won’t Paddy raise a stink? They’ll all be suckin’ around. They’ll work for us. We’re going to be boss. Big shots, you’n me.”

“That’s what I’m scared of.” He had a vision of the Duffy kids in their pool parlor like parts of machinery waiting to be assembled, the hard, soulless kids, pale broad Schneck, Ray, who was like a younger McMann, the others, bits of steel waiting to be put together in power, waiting for the strongest to direct them. It was Duffy. It could be McMann. Those kids were waiting for the strong finger to start them clicking. And McMann was the devil to do it. He would do it. He would if he lived.

“Do we take Soger, kid? You need dough.”

“I guess so.”

Two nights later Bill drove the car, a five-passenger Chrysler, downtown from Columbus Circle to Forty-eighth Street, parking a hundred feet above Soger’s Pork Store. He was alone. It was ten sharp. Where was McMann? God Almighty, where was Red? He put the car in neutral, turned off the ignition, shivering in the dead auto, waiting. The tiny dashboard light glowed on his knees. Christ, he couldn’t hang out here all year where some guy might spot him. He lifted his coat collar high about his face, pulling down his hat brim, shrinking into his coat as if hoping to bury himself from sight like a kid ducking under a blanket. Lucky it was late January, a high howling wind roaring around the El supports, standing like resolute beggars in mid-winter.

He looked at the linoleum shop with shiny coils of carpet, the Jewish butcher store with Hebrew letters saying: “Kosher Bosher” (or “All Jews can buy here,” grinning at Metz’s translation). He gripped the wheel tight, glancing past the Swiss watchmaker’s hole in the wall, the bald head in the front of the tiny window, glass in eye; the second-hand furniture shop, the cordial shop with a window full of crepe and artistic bottles; Soger’s Pork Store. Soger’s. Where was Mac? Poor Soger. Many a time he’d cut him a swell sandwich, two huge slices of bread with a hunk of liverwurst the size of a fist. It was ten minutes after ten. He’d hurried downtown with hell after him to be on time. “Ten sharp,” Mac’d said, “a hundred foot above Soger. You’ll see me coming down from the opposite corner. Start up the boat when you see me. Put it in first. Soon as I come out, roll forward, and don’t forget to keep the back door open….” He thought of his instructions with a misery he hadn’t known since college exams, sweating under his arms, burdened with heat…. What a ride downtown in the hocked car, knowing every second it was stolen, dodging trucks, afraid of every cop who might be Eagle-Eye Gus with a million numbers memorized (McMann said Gus hung out on the bridges mostly), shaking and dry-mouthed when the red traffic lamps like mad beast eyes compelled him to stop. Where was McMann? Was the guy planning to frame him? How many years in the coop for a hocked car? To a passer-by he looked like a young fellow on a date, moping for his broad to come down from one of the flats above the linoleum or pork stores.

His heart rushed forward as if he were in love and McMann his approaching sweetie. McMann at last sauntering down the street, not fast, not slow, wearing a big felt yanked down almost to his eyebrows in Greeky fashion. Bill’s body quivered. He pushed in the clutch. The gears ground, the car was in first. Frantically he put it in neutral. He’d forgotten all about the ignition. Christ! He switched the ignition on, starting up the car, the motor singing. He put the car in first, his foot depressing the clutch and ready to ease up. While he’d fumbled getting ready, his eyes concentrated on the dark pit of the footboard, he’d somehow kept glancing up and down the street, knowing Mac’d gone into Soger’s, a customer in a pulled-down felt. The door opened, he had a sense of stout Soger falling over, all mixed up with another storekeeper who’d flopped the same way (was it Wiberg?), but not really seeing Soger, just thinking he must be falling like Wiberg. Mac hurried out, slamming the door. He started forward. Mac yanked the door open in the moving car. (He’d forgotten about the door.) “Step on’t. Round the corner. Down Tenth.” He slumped back in the rear. As they turned the corner into solitude, he crawled over the driver’s seat with the dexterity of a snake. Bill was doing thirty miles an hour, honking his horn at the dark tenement street with the windows glistening and the lost sky directly above and ahead like some vast sanctuary. They bowled out on Tenth, the tires noisy. “Put it up to forty,” said McMann, “and down Eleventh.”

“O.K.”

“There’s a cop in a damn cab follerin’ us. Lucky we got the head start.” The glory of speed after all the waiting zizzed out of his bones. He turned limp, non-muscular, remembering now what should never’ve been forgotten, the sharp crack heard a second ago, the sharp malevolent spitting of pistol fire. He glanced sideways at McMann, hatless and nodding as if to say: Yeh, it’s a gat. He jerked his head around. “That bastard hack can’t do more’n fifty. Hit ‘er up.” Bill swerved into Eleventh Avenue, speeding across the railroad tracks. A huge locomotive was chugging down at him with one immense yellow orb. He heard the clang of the locomotive, saw the shining black steel, saw the indignant white face of a fellow in a roadster twisting out in panic from between Bill and the slow but terrible moving hill of steel. The meshing of tracks held yellow light, and he was swinging down Eleventh between the warehouses and auto-assembling plants, morbid and lonely, the car bouncing on the rough going.

“We duck the cab?”

“Jus’ made it. We’ll screw’m.”

“What next?”

“Up Eleventh. I’m going to take the wheel. Get it. I’m takin’ it. Don’t let go the wheel. Shift over. Get it. And keep your foot on the gas.” Bill heard the cop’s gun bang once. In his mirror he saw the reflection of the cab’s big lamps. They still had a good lead. “Up Tenth,” said McMann. He headed for Tenth again, now feeling McMann’s hard buttocks on his lap, his voice shouting to keep the gas going. McMann’s hands held the wheel while he shifted from under, the car clipped of its wings. McMann sat in the driver’s seat. He rammed his foot down on the gas. The night leaped forward. They curved into Tenth. “We gotta ditch them bastards. Radio cars. We’ll park’n beat it.”

Bill watched the slower cab hurtling after them. He wiped his brow. In for it. In for it. Good for him. Served him right. All crooks got — Mac jockeyed the car down Tenth, swinging the heavy tonnage like a fist towards Ninth Avenue. His recklessness had them on two wheels for a guts-falling second; then they coasted down the sidestreet. He jammed on the brakes, rolled the car up to the curb, tugged back the emergency. “Step on’t.”

The street was emptily gripping winter. There were a Lutheran church and many respectable basement stoops populated by shopkeepers and old-fashioned Germans. Bill and McMann legged it for the corner. “Don’ run,” said McMann. “Easy, kid.” Far below, at the beginning of the street, the lights of the cab flared at them. They were safe on Ninth. A cab was waiting on the corner. They’d just made it, piling in. “Gran’ Central,” said McMann calmly. “Step on’t, buddy.” They breathed easily, the danger left behind them in the stolen car.

Lucky there was a cab parked, Bill thought. The cab cut down with the green lights to Eighth Avenue. They never saw the pursuing cab. He’d never know, thank God, whether it’d stopped at the abandoned car or pushed down Ninth still chasing the Chrysler. He lit a cigarette, dull with calamity, obsessed by a tracking fear. McMann was gabbing about Bobbie and Madge and the swell time they’d have (for the benefit of the hack; yet he was afraid of McMann, the icy bastard). “Wake up,” said McMann.

“It’s crazy gambling the way we do.”

“The breaks is with us. Seven eleven.”

“We almost crapped out.”

Eighth glittered with the suave bulks of the new hotels, the theater vistas opening down to Broadway. Signs shot their thousand bulbs at them, yellow, green, red. It was true. They’d got away. He breathed with difficulty, but breathed, not gasping, tasting the blessed air. Their cab stopped for a traffic beacon. In this anonymity where no one was known and no one was in pursuit, he spoke defiantly. “I’m tired of Madge, the little slut.”

McMann grinned. He was wearing his hat differently now, tilted back at its usual cocky angle. His eyes glinted. He paid off the hack. Grand Central shoved its clock at Forty-second, insisting on time and punctuality. Men were getting into cabs or hailing them. Everyone wore the same face. “Time for coffee before the train leaves for Atlanta,” said McMann. Their cab moved up towards Fifth. “Tired fixin’ Madge. Hell, that hack must’ve figured you a big shot.”

“Like hell. He listens to crap all day.”

“Not that hack. He can tell the difference.”

They went into the Thompson. “Two coffees’n apple pies.” The brown coffee spilled promptly out of its tap. “Jus’ right. When beer comes back I’ll give ya a job.”

The counterman smiled. “Beer ain’t never coming back.” They sat down in two chairs. The sidearms had been swollen into miniature tables. “You’re the nuts,” said Bill; “if you aren’t kidding about Madge in cabs, you’re pals with that counter guy.”

McMann gobbled pie. “Talk friendly to guys and they sorta don’ see you. When you’re frozen in the puss, every guy’s got his peep out for you.”

“Why’d you take me tonight? A beginner like me, to take a chance on me. I even forgot to open the door.”

“You did all right. That shows I guess right. You got the start of a brain guy, no foolin’.”

“I almost flopped.”

“I’d abeen wrong then.”

“Don’t you brain-guy me.”

“When we’re boss of Duffy’s kids and own our clubhouse, you’ll be the brain guy.”

“Sounds the nuts, but what of Duffy?”

“Nothin’ about him. That cop never even touched our tires’n the pork feller didn’t like me at all.”

“The dough.”

“Safe.” He seemed to be looking back as if holding tomorrow’s morning paper, reading the paragraph about the holdup…. At about ten o’clock last night, two unidentified men held up Soger’s Pork Shop. One of them struck Soger with a blackjack, escaping in a stolen car. Pursued by Officer X in a chartered cab, yet the gangsters escaped with their booty. Soger claims he lost??????? … The newspaper boys’d write it up like that, but with more kick. “How much?”

“How in hell do I know?”

“Two to share. That part’s swell.”

“That’s talkin’. I’m sayin’ it once’n for all, with your dope on these guys, we’ll be king o’ the hill.”

“You bet. I know when they got the paperbacks.”

“Don’ I know it?” He beamed as if Bill had slaved years for his information, as if it were the result of brilliance and endless patience.

“Any rent-collector’d be as smart.”

“What’s the diff? You know. The thing is you’re wise.”

His psychology was certainly a funny one. Bill thought about it, fooling with his cup. All result and end with McMann. The redhead didn’t give a damn about the how of things. The idea was to snatch the sugar, to put your mitts on it anyhow. How you did it or whom you gypped didn’t matter. His cue was to make Mac feel that he was needed, to build up his own importance, or else some day he’d be bopped on the head for two cents. Mac was a first-class American business man; he had no use for anybody that couldn’t be of use. He glanced up, his lips tight against his gums, almost as wolfish as McMann. He understood business, didn’t he? “I got a hunch, Mac, we’re due to be in the dough. It’ll be seven eleven with us. Duffy better watch his step…. Hell, Soger wasn’t a bad guy.”

“One good sock fixes ‘em all alike.”

He wondered whether Joe was sleeping. Both of them had put in a swell day’s work. He ought to see more of Joe, the resolve an atonement, a washing-clean of his betrayal of an old friend. “I’ve been thinking how lucky we were with that cab just there.”

“I told him to wait. We owe him ten smacks. I was nuts enough to stick up the joint myself, but not too nuts.”

“You bitch,” cried Bill. “Is that why you switched the wheel on me? And chasing up that block?”

“He couldn’ be all over the joint.”

“Who was it?”

“Schneck.”

“Can you beat it?” Sure, he’d fixed things up. Schneck’s brother was a hack. The story was that Schneck swiped the cab so in case things got stinky, Schneck’s brother’d be clean. Schneck’s brother was a respectable guy. Sure, that’s how it was.

“I wondered about you talking about Madge and Bobbie when you could’ve used fake names.”

“I was tellin’ Schneck what ginks we are.” It was in the cards for them to grab Duffy’s kids. Wait’ll Schneck spreads the news. They had a pocket full of dough and they’d be boss soon.

“And I didn’t even recognize that Schneck’s mug.”

“We’re due, kid.”

“Maybe.”

On Sunday he took Joe out for dinner. It was a punk meal. Joe was griped, insinuating Bill must be in a racket. “Why?” said Bill. “Because,” Joe answered. “Why because?” “Because.” It was a regular kid argument.

Hell, did Bill think he could pull the wool over his eyes forever? He wasn’t that dumb. Bookkeeping. Like hell. He never knew a bookkeeper with Bill’s hours or his boozy smelly breath.

“Let’s have it,” said Bill.

“Sure, why not?” Bill must be in a racket.

“Why not? Lots of rackets within the law.”

It wasn’t much of a meal and when Bill said he had to beat it uptown, Joe snickered and said for him to go ahead. Bill said he was sorry, but he had to go, it was business. Joe sniffed, sulky, said business your hat. “Here’s ten smacks,” said Bill.

“Why not?” Joe wanted to know. If Bill gave him two bucks more he’d have a double week’s salary. It took him six days, twelve hours a day, to earn twelve bucks. The other salary he made in a minute. Bookkeeping wasn’t so bad.

“Don’t be so sarcastic.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Go to hell.” He ran out of the restaurant. Joe’d have liked to rip up the ten-dollar bill. He pocketed it. You don’t rip up a salary. And then why shouldn’t he get it rather than some crummy whore? He felt like crying. Bill was tickled to be alone. He didn’t feel too hot. Sure as fate, he was spoiling Joe. Aw, the hell with him. He was bitter at any hindrance, at any hand grabbing at his coattails. He was on the way up. Joe’d have to lump it. If it was in Joe to be honest, he’d stick honest. He had a square job. If it was in him to be a crook, it wouldn’t make any difference. Bill grinned. His reasoning was hypocritical, but what the hell? It looked as if he had a hunk of conscience left. “The hell with everything!” he exclaimed. “I got enough trouble.”