Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde (21 page)

It was a tedious day in the flat. There was no one to share his happiness with but the dog. He read a magazine and stared at the trucks. The iron gate in the printery rasped up. All day in the rain, men and horses and motors slaved at tasks remote to him. From the river the sirens and whistles were calling, crying, imploring like a mob of children’s voices. They told tales of far rivers and forgotten ports. He was sad with listening, shivering, unable to forget Hanrahan, the crafty nose, the swollen cheeks. Where the hell were they going? Bill was steering for unknown harbors. Oh, Bill … Mrs. Gebhardt, her pale features seeming bleached in the pale light, dropped in to see how he was, sympathetic as he groaned and thanked her for the lemon and tea, refusing the aspirins. “One’s plenty, thanks.”

“You feel little better, Joe?” Each time she was so tearful he burst out for her not to worry about his job. It was slave work, fourteen hours a day for no money at all. Even if Metz worked just as hard, what was the use? The other clerks were saps to continue. At her third visit he said Bill might get him a job where he worked. She wasn’t keen on the new job. He insisted she shouldn’t tell Cathy. The flu was catchy.

The afternoon crawled away until he was a small boy again, actually feeling convalescent as if he’d been really sick. “How’d you know I was home?” he asked Cathy when she entered without knocking. It was simple, she said. Mom looked so sad she’d got it out of her. But he didn’t look sick. She shut the door, smiling, dressed in a blue dress falling in neat folds. It was trimmed with a white collar and cuffs. In the dark blueness her neck and face were a lovely white, her eyes blue. He walked to her diffidently, his hands outstretched. Before either of them knew it, while she was still smiling like a little mother, their hands had met and he was kissing her. She pushed him away. The flat had been tidied earlier in the morning. The gas radiator was hot. The rain slanted and sang its song. They were sudden strangers who never before had met together on a week-day at this hour. Mom had been so worried she’d told her about Joe’s job. Was it really so? Oh, it was awful. And was it true Bill was going to get him a job? What was wrong with that? What was wrong, as if he didn’t know or had never seen Bill come in at any old hour and get up when he felt like it? What sort of job was that? Even millionaires had to go to work at ten or eleven.

“It’s a better job than a bank president’s.” He scowled. “I shouldn’t’ve let you kiss me.”

She appraised him quickly. “You kissed me. Anyway, I never catch colds.” He tugged her to his lap, shivering in the three empty rooms silent as accomplices, both of them frightened by the encouragement of the inanimate for all sorts of deeds, for murder and schemes and love. They thought of this, but not in this way. They thought: We are alone. The house was quiet. It was hard to imagine Cathy’s mother downstairs or anybody in the flats. Her hands were icy; her blond hair brushed his lips. He tightened his arms, racked by this holiday in the flat, this temporary leave-taking from jobs and futures, kissing her neck and cheeks and eyelids with the tumbling madness of his youth.

She shuddered and they sat in silence a long time, dwelling together in their clasped bodies, content, wide-eyed. His lips wet through her thin dress. Pushing her from him, he thought of her slim body, soft and yielding. He got up. He didn’t want to go too far. “Better go down. You don’t want your mother getting wise?” She tidied up with the unconscious coquetry of a very young woman, kissed him on the lips, hurried downstairs. He listened to the sounds of her going until the house was without echo, truly sick, his body shaking, his brow hot to his hand. He was unable to read, thinking over and over again with a sad flagellation: I love her; I love her. He’d have to marry her, he wanted her too much.

After lunch Hanrahan stepped into the rain. He visited a few pool parlors, drank a beer at several likely speaks, each time returning to the dark wet streets, the rain drizzling out of an ugly sky in which the tops of the buildings loomed distinct and sharp. He called on other places. His Chesterfield was soggy. He cursed the formal velvet collar that was no protection, thinking of big ulsters with collars high enough to protect the ears, collars that were collars, rising until they hit the lid of your derby. That was a coat. On Forty-second and Eighth the brown fort of the Franklin Savings Bank stood formidable. Behind it the smaller houses sheltered like town dwellings. It was misty, the ruby traffic eyes gleaming with an exact imperturbable beauty. Hanrahan turned down another sidestreet, the cars wheeling between the wet tenements. On the sidewalk an occasional pedestrian hurried by. Hanrahan grinned at the fellow behind the counter in a fake cigar store, pushing open yet another door. “All right, Mike,” he called. “I know you’re stepping on the button.”

“Not me,” said Mike. Hanrahan stepped inside the secret room, laughing like a good fellow. There was a bar, a mirror. At one of the tables McMann was drinking beer with a young fellow. Something like Joe, thought Hanrahan. A nice-looking fellow, and can he dress? Bill was wearing a gray suit, gray shirt with red stripe, and grayish-blue tie. It was all very neat and Wall-Streetish. Hanrahan joined them. “What you drinking, Red?”

“Beer.”

“Three beers,” said Hanrahan, tilting up his derby, opening his soaked coat. “I been looking ahead to this a long time, boys. What a day to be searching for one’s pals! What a day! And you can’t kick me out, boys. I’ve had my hands full finding you; not that I couldn’t always pick you up, but it wasn’t necessary….”

The bartender, fifty, his skull shaped hard, brought the beers. The sawdusty beer-smelling place, with one workman leaning on the bar (and confiding to the empty place where the bartender had been, how hard times were and how the district leader oughta get him a job), seemed like a nice clubroom where bulls and crooks could meet on a friendly basis. There were no jails and night courts here, no busted-in stores. Just a neutral nook where enemies could pal together in between normal hang-outs and professional duties.

“You’re all wet, Hawkshaw,” grinned McMann.

“I sweated finding you, but it ain’t hard for a smart feller.”

“Only fifty thousand speaks, and you know where to go.”

“I blame near covered that many.”

“Speaks go on forever,” said Bill.

“No. Some day prohibition’ll be dead, but even then we’ll have speaks for guys who like it quiet. There always have been that kind of speak.” His tiny blue eyes, above their finely wrinkled pouches, were so patently intelligent that Bill thought: He’s a brain guy.

“The beer’s not bad,” said McMann.

“Most of your pals, Red, are sportier.” He leered at McMann’s shirt. “This must be Bill Trent.”

“Sure he is; what you want with him?” Hanrahan puffed out his cheeks, wiping his lips and brows. “The other day a feller called up headquarters and said McMann and Bill Trent were in on the Ninth Avenue holdups.” They all sat silent.

“Better trace that call,” said McMann.

“Don’t get sore. Probably just a crank. I’m just letting you hear what I heard.” He toyed with his glass. “Don’t speak much, do you, Bill?”

“I’m one of the silent kind.”

“Yeh,” said McMann.

“Your pal’s got a sense of humor.” Hanrahan appeared eager to argue any learned point. “No use pounding the streets when there’s so much humor here.” They smiled gently at one another. Bill observed the bartender polishing the bar. He listened to the blood pounding in his head. On the facts Hanrahan might suspect them, but could never convict. What the hell’d he have on them anyway? Suppose all the robberies were in stores he’d collected. He could shove the coincidence up his behind.

“I’ve always admired a sense of humor,” said Hanrahan, “no matter who the proud owner. You take so many of Red’s friends, nice fellows who show up for Sunday mass regular as saints. I like fellows like that with balance. A little religion ain’t so bad. Am I right, Bill? Sure I am. What sense is there pounding the streets in this raw weather; the climate’s changing in New York. Every season’s more cockeyed. My feet are wetter’n hell. Hey, three more beers.” The bartender placed the glasses down and trickled back to the bar. Hanrahan hardly paused. “I can’t get over a sense of humor. That’s why I stick to my job. One day a few weeks back I was passing down Eighth in the neighborhood of Twentieth when I see a coupla dames standing on the corner, nice builds. Then, some fellows pass by and one of them shoots his arm out. Now that fellow had a sense of humor, a little raw and untrained, but he was all there. The dames were just bums. I holler out and they look me over. The funny fellow happens to be a certain chap I’m after. He spots me and runs. I chase him into a sidestreet. It’s dark as hell, when I hear a gat cracking and some slugs whizzing past my face. I drag my gun out. What happened is neither here nor there. The point is, it shows you the sense of humor some boys have.”

“The dames were probably sore at being cheated out of their four bucks,” said Bill.

Hanrahan laughed as if that were the swellest yet, his round face quivering, his blue eyes beaming unhappily as if he realized that he couldn’t fool anybody with sense with those eyes of his. He paused abruptly, idiotic. “A sense of humor’s swell but sometimes, boys, and sometimes I put two and two together just for the joke of it. Now, you take those Ninth Avenue series, aren’t they funny? Wiberg, Soger the pork man, Petrucci, the cheese fellow, the paint fellow, five shopkeepers mind you, not one, and all taken over by a real funny bird, a guy with humor. What a joke! All of them kicked in the pants when they had more money than was good for them laying around.” He fidgeted, his belly pressed tight against the table edge. “Isn’t that funny?”

“Coincidence,” said Bill, “is funny as hell.”

“I was about to remark that. It’s funny.” He accented the words unpleasantly. “What’s even funnier is that the funny bird or birds have left no traces, none of those little belly laughs we fellers call clues.”

“Birds fly,” said McMann, his hard fists on the table, sitting very straight, his spine taut, his muscles tensed for a spring.

“I can stay here a week,” laughed Hanrahan. “You birds should be at the Palace. What a pair!” They chuckled at him calling them birds. Birds. That was a laugh, as if they were the birds that had played such a riproaring joke on the storekeepers. Hanrahan winked at them. “These birds always flew the coop. Once they were chased. Once it wasn’t so funny even if they made their getaway. Later, combing the streets over which they’d flown, the cops found a stolen car. Soger and Wiberg tell me the birds were slim — ”

“Just for a joke,” said McMann, grimacing, “were they slim as us, them birds?”

“It looks as if some slim birds are the funniest blokes in New York. But one thing is especially funny. Wiberg, Soger, Petrucci, the paint guy, those four were stuck up. But Metz was burglarized. I wonder why.”

“Why bother us?” said McMann.

“I want you to help me find those funny birds. I want to congratulate them personally for being so smart. I’ll take the chance even though some funny birds, pigeons I think, drop things in your eye when you’re not careful.”

They were getting griped at Hanrahan, afraid of his laughter and small eyes. Hanrahan was a pain, not even bothering now to conceal his suspicions. Perhaps this was what the bull wanted, to dry them up, to drop vinegar in their mouths so that their faces were wry and not for laughing. They laughed, feeling stupid like men chuckling in a field with the lightning hitting all around. They were unable to speak much, the words refused to form, their throats and tongues dry and speechless, their saliva caking up. Damn the bastard. Why didn’t he beat it?

Bill’s head was stone, his thoughts petrified, his eyeballs hard from staring at Hanrahan, who from the very first minute had put his handcuffs on them. If there wasn’t a good old law, he’d’ve dragged them to jail sure as fate. Why didn’t he go? Either arrest them or let them alone. Bill was tired of being sported with by this fat greasy treacherous cat. He puffed thick smoke in front of him, a trick learned from Paddy, as if to screen Hanrahan from sight, hoping to irritate him, to cloud those midget eyes, hating the tedious sly humor of the man. Lord, if Hanrahan ever decided to third-degree Joe. Poor Joe. Harshly, Bill broke his mind from thought. Those roving pinpoint eyes, concentrative of Hanrahan’s bulk and remorseless patience, might penetrate into his brain, right into the coiled-gray matter, reading his thoughts. He vacated his mind of thought, so that it seemed a mirror without a future or a past, simply reflecting back the immediate present moment, duplicating Hanrahan.

“Ain’t you got a home?” said McMann.

“One thing more, Red. It’s funny for you and Bill to be buddies. What can you have in common? Why hurry me out when I like the company?”

“Hang around, but make it funny.” McMann didn’t smile.

“Maybe this’ll make you laugh. I know why Billy boy was sacked. I know that between the time he lost his job and now, five robberies have taken place. How funny! Coincidence’s funny as hell. I agree with Bill.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” He thought: Always uses “funny.” Funny. Funny. Why? Funny is the hypnotic word, a wearing weary suggestive word. His voice spilled from his lips in liquid sounds. “Coincidences are damn funny.”

“You said it. Funnier, even, when you stop to consider. Think of it. Five stores taken over by a guy with inside dope about all of them, a guy who knew or guessed when the five suckers’d have real dough. Couldn’t be a relative. Nope. Imagine how funny it’d be for one guy to be related to Dutch Soger, to the wop Petrucci, to Wiberg and Metz, two Jews, to the French-Swiss mongrel who runs the paint shop. It’s against biology, ain’t it, Bill?”

“All funny stories are against somebody.”

The solitary customer had left. The bartender with the commiserating brutal face was peering at the three at the table. He was among friends anyway, thought Bill; this was no jail. How easy it’d be to fix Hanrahan! But he’d probably be a tough bargain, and anyway it wasn’t necessary to murder.

“No, boys, it couldn’t be a relative, though that’d be a league of nations. But some feller was a cousin to all the private affairs of these storekeepers. This feller was related in more ways than blood. Maybe he was Bill, with Red, here, helping out?” He rose, putting on his damp overcoat, his big arms diving into the black armholes, never turning his smile away from them. “Wouldn’t that be the funniest? Believe me, boys, I’m not so bad. You gave me such a good time I’ve no hard feelings. If I were Bill or Red, I’d say lay off. Honest, you fellers better lay off or you’ll be killing some poor slob and burning for it. I’d lay off. Maybe I won’t bother you if you behave. That’s another joke, for all the time I’d be planning how to send you up. I’m a funny guy myself and like a joke, but certainly I wouldn’t bother the avenue if I didn’t want to burn….” He eased out of the door, his cheeks flushed, his eyes almost buried between their flabby lids, that fattened and rolled together when he laughed. It seemed as if he’d been with them a second or a year, implacable and vague as time. The young men wondered at his purposes, bewildered, stunned, thinking themselves forever lost. The time must come when he would get them. That was sure as fate.