Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde (18 page)

“Are you implying anything?”

“Take it easy. We’ve been looking the clerks over at Metz’s — two Jewish boys, Murray Hecker and Sam Rothbard, and a kid, Joe Trent.” Stanger’s pale eyes glared at the detective. “I can’t say this interests me very much.”

“That’s funny. They’re all your tenants. Maybe you want your firm to get a rep for being a jinx?” He breathed greasily as if bloated. “Hell, what a meal does to a man! My doc says if I don’t cut out meats, my kidneys’ll go bad. I’ll be in the red. Ain’t that funny?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“That’s being sensible. I’m investigating the Metz clerks, as we think it may be an inside job. Maybe not. Therefore, just investigating, I found out Joe’s a brother of a collector you had here some months ago. Nice boys, are they? Co-operation, Stanger, you bet. Wouldn’t be nice if Soger and the rest complained to their landlords the agent’s not co-operating.”

“They’re sons of my best friend. I let Bill go because business was getting rotten.”

“Bill working?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t they visit?”

“They’re proud boys. I saw Bill for a few minutes during the holidays. I let them have a flat in a house of mine rent-free.” (Oh, Poppa Trent, hear what I did for your sons, oh best friend!) “I believe that they avoid me because they’re obligated.”

“Is Bill working?”

“I said I don’t know.” Hanrahan stuck a fresh toothpick between his teeth. “I know why Bill was sacked.”

Stanger blinked. “Really?”

“Really. A copper found out he was buddies with a pimp, proud boy though he is, a proud broth of a boy, as the Irish say. Maybe he had a racket shaking down pimps and fellers like that. He wouldn’t be the first real-estate feller.”

“You cops can’t afford to talk.”

“A Republican? Listen to me. The four stores robbed were collected by that proud feller.”

“Are you implying he’s mixed up with these robberies? I don’t believe it.” Stanger was affected, pallid, his nervous indigestion working up on him.

“I investigate. Don’t get hot, mister. Maybe we’ll see each other again. I just wanted you to know why you sacked him. See? I like to get the truth right off the bat. I believe in co-operation between real-estate agents and the law. Maybe I’m a sucker?”

“I’ve always co-operated with the police.” Stanger wiped his brow. Ought he to dispossess Bill? What a nuisance! No use doing that. If they proved him guilty, that’d be different. If Bill were guilty, the law’d serve the dispossess and provide new quarters. He might be innocent.

“S’long. See you again, Stanger.”

At a cigar store he contacted headquarters. He was informed Metz had phoned. He hung up, dropped another nickel in the slot, chewing on his frazzled toothpick. Metz said: “Gimme your number and I call you back tonight, Hannah.” Hanrahan called off the number and hung up. There was a delay; then the phone rang. Metz was sorry to keep him waiting, but he’d sent Joe out to the market to get rid of him. Metz told how Wiberg had spilled the beans. What should he do, sack Joe?

“Nope,” said Hanrahan. “I’ll be in later to quiz the joint. S’long.”

“Not in business hours.”

“I’ll come in at six. Seven?” He frowned, listening to protests. “Half past seven, then.”

“Good-by, Hannah,” said Metz.

Hanrahan laughed. The little Jew was funny. He hung up. Sure as God made apples, that Bill Trent was the boy.

Bill ran up from the pay booth in the hall. “How about a Hanrahan dick?” he said to McMann.

“What’sa matter, you see a ghost?”

“He’s in charge.”

“Who tole ya?”

“My kid brother over at Metz’s. That guy Wiberg barged in and said Hanrahan’s in charge. The kid says the phone rang late, and after that, Metz sent him down to the market. That’s why he called me.”

McMann heaved the
Daily Mirror
up in the air, celebrating. “You never tole me you had a kid brother workin’ for Metz. You keep things close.”

“Must I tell you everything?” He felt stronger than McMann, more resourceful. He wondered whether he was outgrowing McMann. “What sorta bull is Hanrahan?”

“Honest. Honest dicks are smart. Smart ‘cause they’re honest. He ain’t got a thing on us. Your brother’s safe. What you wild for?”

“Do you know that a dick must know about me? All four joints were hooked when their bosses were in the dough. I collected all of them. It points to an insider. To me.”

McMann laughed; he’d thought of that years ago.

“You never told me.” That was because he kept things under his hat. Bill wasn’t the only guy. Why worry? If Hanrahan couldn’t prove anything, he was safe. Let him guess it was Bill. “That dick’n five others is wise I hock cars night’n day, wise I’m in this’n that. They knows it like I knows it. That ain’t knowin’ nothin’. Kin they do a damn? Naw. That means they knows nothin’. But after the paint supply holdup on Thursday, they’d lay off the stores until the stink died down.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t take the paint supply.”

“Too late. Duffy’s het up. It’s the big chance. Hookin’ Metz’n now the paint supply, and them kids’ll eat outa our hands.” He seemed happy, mentioning speaks uptown they’d tackle next. They’d go for real dough, borrowing Duffy’s smartest kids, to lump some of the speaks above 110th. And gambling houses.

They had Joe between them, sitting in the room, blocking one from the other like a third person. Bill thought: I let it slip, I was so damn excited. What a brain guy! He listened as McMann explained how no cops’d bother them about speaks. They’d be safer than now. Bill laughed. The full tide was pulling out, the tide he’d created like God. Now the flux of events, the future he’d set ticking like a wound-up watch, dwarfed the creator. Out to sea, and God alone knew where….

Neither was very excited about clipping a speak. It was nothing. That was all. McMann picked up the tabloid, glancing up eagerly. “Here’s where some ginzos had a clubba their own. That’s swell. Hey, guy, we’ll have a club any day now. We’ll spring the idea on the resta the kids. Schneck and Ray is nuts about it.” Already he seemed to have sneaked control of the kids from Duffy, to have a clubhouse. Bill felt it’d all happened.

At seven-thirty Hanrahan edged into the dairy store, walking directly to the rear. He knew his way. He’d been in on Sunday. He shut the door and sat down on an empty tub. The clerks were busy with a scattering of customers, but Metz trailed the visitor, returning, waiting for the customers to go. “It’s a detective’n wants to kibbitz you boys. Sam and Joe first. Then Murray.” He implied it was a trifle, an interview formal and silly. Nobody laughed. “Take it easy,” Hanrahan said to Sam and Joe. “I got a few routine questions. You’re Sam Rothbard, and how in the devil could it be anything else?” He smiled at the clerks, the big blond one and the dark Jew. “Sit down. Find a comfy tub. Now, when you boys went home Saturday, did you tell anybody that Metz was sappy enough to leave dough in his bank? How dumb that was, boys! When you own your own cheese stores, let it be a lesson. Leaving dough after he knew of the stickups in the last two months. That’s why there are so many robberies. Everybody is sappy. It’s a sappy world, and fellows with special knowledge, special inside dope, some smart feller like that, can take advantage. We detectives like such theories such as insiders with dope. It makes it easier. A lot of us are kids. Now, did either of you boys tell about sap Metz to your families, to sweethearts when you had them out on dates and getting tired hugging, told them how sappy Metz was, to kill some time before getting wind up for the next session?” He paused, smiling, his plump red face gleaming under the suspended bulb, very jovial, just one pal with a coupla others. “Personally, neither of you two boys is in it, but when boys spill the word about sappy Metz thinking a cheese-box is the Bank of England, hell, boys, such news spreads to these smart guys. Tell anyone, Sam?”

“No, sir.”

“How about you, Joe? Did you tell your parents or a sweetie?”

“My parents are dead.”

“Too bad. How about a brother, sister, some kid brother or something?”

“I haven’t much of a family. One brother. I didn’t mention it to him or to anybody.”

“Not even a sweetie? A big handsome kid like you.”

“No one.” His head was singing. Hanrahan was a liar, rubbing that finger on his oily nose, his blue eyes pretending they were sleepy or tired. Hanrahan didn’t fool him, playing the dope like Metz.

“That’s all, boys. Send the other clerk in. Maybe he was dumb enough to tell somebody.” Metz said the jailbirds could go home. Joe and Sam returned to the back room, getting into their street clothes. “Sure you didn’t tell your sweetie?” asked Hanrahan.

“I did not.” Metz called good-night to him as if he were sorry for somebody. The night was warm. The next month might have been springtime and not February.

After supper Joe and Cathy strolled up to Seventh Avenue into the Village, walking sedately like long-established lovers, peeking into the shops, cute as Pekingese with their candleware and batik scarves and pewter. Cathy said he shouldn’t worry, she had it straight. “Now, you know as much as me about the robbery,” Joe said. “If that detective were to question you — ”

“I’d say you never had much money. Suppose they dig up the cab-drivers, Joe?”

“Lucky we never pulled up front of your house.” Fooling somebody — in this case Cathy’s folks — always was handy for someone else. “I gave that bull what for.”

“It was Bill’s money went for the cabs.” She stared at him as if to say: Bill’s a crook, ain’t he? It’s Bill.

“You remember all I’ve said and don’t tell a soul.”

“Not even the priest,” she promised religiously.

He had the most cockeyed feeling. Could you beat it? He was a priest, and Cathy was confessing to him. Tall, devout, her eyes shone at him. She was his private nun. He patted her arm. She was O.K. She loved him. She was grateful to him. He’d been in a sweat all day and now expanded with his power. Heck with the cops and Hanrahan. He wasn’t scared. Every time he felt her body touch his own, he boomed with youth. His head sang, but differently than it had down at Metz’s. He was listening fevered and exultant to his own blood and the love in his blood-stream. Her promise not to confess to the priest was the real thing. He was her religion. Thinking of the demands his religion, his love, would and must make…. “What are you thinking of, Joe?” she said gently, proud to be helping him. It was like the girls in the movies protecting their lovers from the cops.

“I love you. Honest.” It was miraculous to him that after all the Catholic youthhood of her, the candles, the choir boys, the priests intoning as she confessed to little sins, that she should stand before him so naked. He doubted his power, too Saxon, too American to really believe his love was the compensation and the cause. She wouldn’t confess. She’d switched sides. And it was because of him. Him alone. He arched his chest, appreciating who the devil he was. When he steered her past a truck or car, he did so with magnanimity, noting she’d accepted his estimate of himself, thought him grander than he dared to imagine.

He bragged toughly: “I guess you like me. Why not? Every dame’s a woman. Even the black skirts of the nuns cover up flesh-and-blood bodies.” He was combative, cocky, Protestant.

“You needn’t speak like that, Joe. People ought to respect other people’s religions.” But there was no heat in her; she reminded him of her mother. Gee, she was a good-hearted kid and he ought not pick on her.

“How’s high school? How you making out?” But he didn’t listen when she itemized about her bookkeeping and Spanish, the commercial course that would train her for an office job. He was in love. He had her number. He could do anything he wanted with her. She was easy. And tomorrow there’d be Metz over again. Nothing to worry about. Hadn’t Bill said there was nothing to be worried about? He respected Bill, admiring his brother like some white-collar reading of the deeds of Al Capone. Bill was a real man. Wouldn’t be so bad to be like Bill.

On Thursday the paint-supply store was knocked off. It was a good profit. Duffy made money, but wasn’t keen about it. Hanrahan thought: Another store collected by Billy boy. Damn Billy boy; didn’t he think there were cops in town? Damn him. Billy boy was like a kid swiping apples….

B
ILL
and McMann entered the lobby of the hotel where Duffy lived. It was one of the newer hotels, a mass of clean brown stone put together when Coolidge was President. Duffy paid fourteen bucks a week for a room and bath that used to be twenty-eight. The immense lobby was a corner of old Siam or some such land where the green things are decorative and plenteous. Two murals faced each other vaguely, nice-colored, as Duffy said. Their processions of heroic figures, men and women obviously resident in a California-like climate, were undecided whether they were en route to a palace, a fiesta, to war or to peace, to tragedy or comedy; and the little people underneath in old Siam, talking in stealthy hotel groups, also seemed like mural folk, headed for other cities, engrossed in a hundred plots of sex, money, and crime, whose outcomes were also in doubt. They weren’t mural folk, but guys like you’n me’n the nex’ feller.

Two clerks gleamed like expensive wood at the desk. Bill and McMann strode through the flora inhabited by drummers, prostitutes, vice-presidents, women in their thirties on the make for young actors, Broadway boys in dope or numbers or racing, searching everywhere for Ray and Schneck. Three fags sat discreetly in an ambush of palm trees. A plumpish eye-glassed group of business men held a couch for the glory of textiles, one composite lewd eye out for passable stuff. And standing upright, as if they were on a corner, Ray and Blowhard Schneck were smoking. The two interested parties smiled at each other. Bill and McMann took the elevator. “They’ll be right up. It’s showdown, Bill.” He removed his hat politely, nudging his hard hip and elbow against the side of a young woman, sniffing at her perfume. What a corker he is, thought Bill, always ready for anything, always with an eye peeled for life; hell, what a guy!

They got off. “Nice, huh?” said McMann.

“Haven’t you some business, you punk?”