Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde (17 page)

Hanrahan laughed harshly. “I wanted to hear you say it. I knew it without your help. I’ve been talking to Soger and Petrucci and Wiberg. ‘How is it,’ I says, ‘you guys are held up when you’re flushed? Ain’t it funny? Don’t it prove you told somebody, a friend, some good guy?’ I got them to thinking. Wiberg admitted his wife knew and a cousin. Soger said only his clerk, who was also his son. Petrucci said his wife, two daughters, and about half of his ginny society knew how he ran his business. Oh, I had them using their heads, and without their suspecting it they pinned it on Bill Trent tight as hell. Why, of course, the rent-collector knew; not the new one, but the old one, a fine good fellow; too bad he lost his job. I’m crazy, Metz. Huh! Like hell I am, but I wanted you to tell it. You’re smarter than the pack. Shall I third-degree your Jewish relatives or Joe Trent? Inside jobs are always easy. You always know what and where to look.”

“Joe’s a good honest kid.”

“So’s his brother. Why’d you hire Joe? He ain’t a Jew. Why?”

“I got fellers not Jews working for me.”

“All right. All right. You took on the kid. Bill Trent ain’t so dumb, but they always slip. You took on a green kid because Bill says so when the town’s full of experienced help.”

“You know so much, why ask?”

“I’ve checked up on a few things. I wonder if this smart article got your rent reduced or what?”

“You should a Jew be.”

“Maybe I am. You don’t know why Billy boy got canned? Well, let it go. The point is, since his canning we’ve had four robberies among old tenants of his. Coincidence? Nope. You lost your dough like the rest when you had a pile of it. Is it coincidence or Billy boy?”

“He didn’t make me hire Joe to steal from me. No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s no.” As he’d listened to the detective, the abashed fake grin had disappeared. Now, dark, somber, he added: “I hate to hear. Bill a fine feller. His brother work hard and good.”

“I still got plenty work. Not so easy pinning it on him. He worked smooth and fast. When Soger was stuck up they were chased by a copper in a cab, but they got away.” He didn’t mention he’d sent the word down to the stools with the regular mobs, but nothing had turned up. He had a hunch Bill wasn’t in with a regular mob. Mobs weren’t taking on outsiders. All they could do to keep themselves clicking. “You don’t can Joe until you hear from me.” He yawned, speaking again about the steak, vaguely intimating this was a social as well as a business visit. “So long. Don’t forget.”

“Good-by. You figure things pretty good.”

“I’m good at pinochle too,” said Hanrahan.

Bill read a magazine. The dog was sleeping in its box near the bed, three or four bones scattered on the floor where the dog had left them. The bones were the dog’s treasures, and each day he cleverly hid them behind chairs and under the bed. Bill looked at the dachshundish body speckled black and white. That dog slept sound. His only worries were eating worries. That was his worry, too. Only he was greedier, a few grand greedier. Thursday’s job ought to net a few pennies. It might be their real start and Duffy’s end. McMann had said that the Metz break was half the battle. The kids in on the Metz job thought they were wonders, and if Thursday went off O.K., the kids’d be theirs.

Joe opened the door. The dog shot his groggy head up, his bright eyes watching. He sprang out of the box, leaping to Joe’s hand, his tail like a fly-swatter. Joe sat down in his coat, taking the dog on his lap. The dog licked his ears. “Did you see Stanger?” he asked.

“No. That mutt can smell a key in a lock.”

“You didn’t see him?”

“How many times do you want me to say no?”

“Why not?”

“Joe the Sherlock. I thought too much of an alibi might look queer. I haven’t seen Stanger since the holidays. Why call on him just the day Metz got hit? The Gebhardts saw me take the dog out, saw me make a face over my headache.”

“Why’ve you got a headache today?” He put the dog in its box, patting its head and staring at his brother.

That was a hit. Best to laugh it off. “It’ll be all right. It’ll blow over.”

“Maybe I ought to quit; that is, if I don’t get sacked. He’s treated me decent and I feel cheap.”

“So that’s what’s eating you?”

“I’m quitting.”

“You can’t quit.” He shouted, bitter, crafty: “Can’t you realize that’d give everything away? Who gives up a job these days? Do you want the pair of us thrown in jail?”

“Hell,” said Joe.

“You stubborn damn fool, want to squat in jail?”

Joe wanted to slam the swine. Things weren’t so easily done. He suddenly caught on to the decorum, the routine necessary for successful criminals. They must act innocent. He was licked. “Find me another job. That’d be a good reason to quit.”

“My eyes are open.” He was sorry for the kid, averting his full glance, observing him covertly. “Want to go over tomorrow?”

“I’d like to die or run away.”

“Cut that talk.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t sneak out on you. I’m your brother. I’ll look dumb and innocent for a hundred priests.” (Cathy confessing to priests he put his hands here and there. Joe the accomplice, Bill the crook.) He laughed.

“Snap out of it.”

“When Cathy asked me how you were making out I said you got a raise. Christ, that’s funny.”

“You’re cracked. Don’t tell that dame so much.”

“Don’t you order me. You can go to hell.” They glared at each other like foreigners met for a common purpose, but hating each other’s difference, thinking of tomorrow, hating. “I’m going to bed. It’s still early bird for me.”

“Maybe it’ll do you good.”

“Well, this was one Sunday we saw each other.”

“Rest your bones.” Poor Joe was beaten. He bit deep into his cigar butt, feeling the tobacco. Jesus, he thought, it’s no good, it’s just no good.

When Joe awoke Monday morning to shut off the alarm, Bill heard the jangling for the first time in weeks, raising himself on elbow, squinting at Joe through one eye. “Hell, my right eye feels pussy. I left a slip on the dresser when you went to bed. It’s my phone. You can reach me there afternoons, case you need me.”

“Get back to sleep. I know what to do.”

“Play mum, kid.” The brothers looked steadily at each other in the icy cold room. Joe dressed swiftly, his head singing as if with fever. What’d Metz do? “Set the clock for eleven,” Bill said.

Metz surveyed his three clerks. He himself hauled the bucket of water to the sidewalk. “O.K.” He smiled insipidly, his eyes invisible behind the thick glare of his glasses, his black eyebrows lifting. They worked as always, sloshing the window, their raw wet hands scalded by the wind. Ninth Avenue was a meager town beneath the flat hopeless sky of January. Inside, the safe in the rear, high as Joe’s chest, stood against the wall, “S. Metz, Cheeses & Dairy” engraved on it in gilt. The safe was closed, the jaws of the two clerks and the boss shut as firmly as the steel door. No one said anything. They just worked. Joe carried tubs of butter, later waiting on the customers, cutting cheese, making change, trying to act as if nothing had happened the day before. He felt punk, thinking of Cathy to help him forget.

He imagined the melancholy eyes of the clerks were staring at him when he wasn’t noticing. They didn’t call him Der Starker as often as they had. Only Metz, grinning affably, wearing his straw hat, seemed at all the same. Foxy Metz. All morning his head was singing. He listened for his heart. Did it beat faster? Concentrating on his work, cracking jokes with the ladies, hearing them compliment him for his looks, bored as if he were an old man and his beauty crumbled thirty years ago. He had no use for a woman. That’s how he acted, hardly distinguishing between even the regular customers, blundering. He said: “Is that all, Mrs. Murphy?” when it should have been Mrs. Martin, saying Mrs. Skoularekes for Mrs. Skolpas. Each time he made an error, his head swelled to immense dimensions, his heart like a pounding hostile fist in him. Surely Metz had noticed, or one of the clerks next him at counter. Each time he smiled at the surprised customer. “Why, Mrs. Martin, you didn’t think I didn’t know who you were? I thought I’d kid you along.” And Mrs. Martin, a big Irishwoman with a peaked nose and the grim lips that somehow go with hefty Irish ladies, had smiled as if he were courting her. He was very handsome, fresh-colored, Amurrican down here on Ninth with the Jew shopkeepers, the Greeks, the shanty micks, the ginzos and Dutchies. As for Skoularekes-Skolpas, he had whispered to the nearest clerk: “Christ, Murray, I can’t get them Greek names straight.” He didn’t fool himself, however. He’d never made mistakes before. They must know it, pitying him as they put orders in brown bags.

He was a rat in a trap, a rat caught in a cheese store. His head was singing. The shelves crowded with canned goods, the clerks, Metz, all these known things were far from him, as if he were diving deep in water, gazing with strained eyes towards a lost and mysterious world. Things were so far away he knew he didn’t belong. He was an outsider, the sharp precise outlines of human beings blurring as if he had the grippe. His head sang, and all the morning he listened to the sick song, wondering when the break’d come, hoping it’d be soon. They must know. They were playing with him like cats. That was it. Metz didn’t say boo, watching him. Why didn’t he send him to the market? The long free ride in the truck, the driver unable to spy on him because he’d be driving and keeping an eye peeled for cops and goofy drivers. That’d be swell. If only they sent him out! The pattern of their eyes, inimical, curious, the three pairs of eyes piercing him all over so there was no escape, worried him to death. They were waiting for him to monk up. He’d fool the bastards. He began to whistle, grinning at the fraudulent music issuing from his dry lips. He moistened his lips, but song wasn’t in him.

Walking in the narrow space behind the counter, brushing against the secretive bodies of the clerks in passage, he thought he’d go bugs. They didn’t goose him and he didn’t goose them as he passed for a can of salmon for some customer. The customers dropped off. It was time to eat, the clerks forgathering in the rear, slicing cheese, smearing on butter, eating lunch in the usual panic, as Metz grinned, saying nothing, but seeming gabby anyhow with his smile and eyebrows and pantomimic hands. They talked of the trade, kidding Joe as if there’d been no robbery. He was frightened more than ever, suspecting they were doing their best to make him feel at home. His roll and cheese had no taste, a vague mush his teeth bit into until the bite was semifluid like a heavy syrup which he swallowed hatefully.

The sun slanted from high noon, the street outside was sunny, colored with the shawls of women and their wintry red cheeks. How long would it keep up? It wasn’t fair. It was dirty cheap. Then Wiberg strolled into the store, and Metz waited on him. Wiberg hadn’t come to buy, but to brag, the two clerks peering from him to Joe. Wiberg snorted how misery loves company, don’t you know, hahaha; so Metz was stuck too, and Soger said it was Metz next like in a barber shop, and so he got his shampoo and schnozzle lifted. But Metz was lucky. He wasn’t socked on the bean. Wiberg grinned, patiently demanding that Metz give him the story. “I couldn’t get off till now. Sometimes I sell some dresses and then I know you busy. Hanrahan come here? He find out nothing. Already he speak to Soger and me and Petrucci. He knows to ask questions, but he finds nothink.” There had been no one to stop the exuberant fat man. Metz grinned, baffled. Joe thought this time Metz was really dumb, without words. He watched the boss twist his lips from old habit, idiotic as ever, but licked, speechless. The clerks exclaimed, excited, what the hell had happened? Wiberg was kidding. And finally, like an awakening dreamer, Metz said: “What robbery?”

Wiberg’s admiration was colossal. Metz said the boys didn’t know till this very minute. Wiberg roared at the joker. “Everybody see the cops yesterday. The cop on the beat tell Soger. What a liar, the clerks don’t know!” Metz insisted it was the truth. Hanrahan’s case was ruined by this blabby Austrian. What could you expect from an Austrian Glitz. Well, sooner or later Joe must’ve known. He smiled at Joe shouting with the others. Oi, a shame. He’d known all morning Joe was in it. He was sorry. “Huh, Metz,” cried Wiberg, “you sneak, you watch the boys; one of them is the goneph.”

“Go home to your wife,” said Metz.

“All right, I see you later.” Joe almost dropped to the floor, his thighs leaning hard against the counter. He had the idea that Wiberg even while joking had snapped out of his fog, guessing Metz had a reason for hiding the robbery from the clerks. Wiberg, speaking the truth with blubbery good humor, the words lost forever, had pulled up, thinking: That’s the reason. Metz is watching the boys. That’s why he left so quickly. They were wise.

Metz rubbed his hands, folding them over the small bulge his belly made in the apron. “Yeh, them crooks. They bust open the safe yesterday. Why tell you boys? What’s the use? And them cops know what? I tell them yesterday it’s the racketeers, them hangouts.” They all wished for a customer to come in, the clerks irritated and uneasy.

“A half pound salt butter,” said a German lady. Joe sliced it out of the tub, dumping the yellow slab on a piece of paper.

“You wasting your time here, Joe,” said the lady. “You should a job in the movies get.”

“I will one of these days. The cheese business is slow.” Other customers dropped in. Metz was sorry that later on he’d have to phone Hanrahan and inform the bull the beans was spilled and what was to be done? Joe wrapped up the package. Anyway, this was excitement, something doing. He had belly-ached about the sameness of his work, but this was something like. His eyes glinted. He felt a hot kinship with his brother, almost without regret. This was something.

C
HEWING
a toothpick, Hanrahan marched into Stanger’s office, pointing his nose at the girls. “The boss in?” He flashed his badge, holding it in his fat moist palm, continuing his stride. The girls whispered; the detective entered the last frosted window. The window said: PRIVATE, but those cops were corkers.

“How do?” said Hanrahan, unbuttoning his overcoat, dropping his bottom into a big leather chair. He slanted his derby further back on his wet brow. He seemed to have eaten a heavy dinner, smoking his cigar with the enjoyment of a man whose belly is full. He explained who he was. It was nothing important, but had Mr. Stanger heard of the recent robberies on Ninth? “Sure you have. I’m in charge. Do you know your firm collects rents from all four parties that’ve been stuck? That’s coincidence. You must do a big collection.”