Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde (30 page)

He ate heartily, then walked down Eighth. Spring was at least half-way round the corner even if prosperity hadn’t yet showed an inch of its schnob. The sky was soft, the wind mild; it was what is known as a great day to be alive. The yellow bitter stone faces of the mob welcomed spring, but with no acknowledgment. It was a secret between the coming season and each individual. A fat man smiled shabbily, a slim girl held her head higher into the annual delusion of the warming sun. Ah, life would be better for everybody in the spring. They would prosper, know love. Bill, striding among them, also gazed towards the dazzling sky. Perhaps it was for him? Perhaps something good was waiting. Perhaps in a short time he’d have enough dough to leave New York, to settle somewhere in a decent life. His teeth snapped tight. He felt a cavity in his lower jaw. It hurt like hell. He smiled like a fifteen-dollar-a-week white-collar spurring himself on to the rainbow’s end of thirty bucks every damn week in the year, plus a month’s vacation. His future was charted; Spat was the first future hour.

It was almost one before he found Spat. He’d dropped in at pool parlors and speaks, but Spat had already collected the betting slips. What a job! All you did was collect numbers and the nickels bet on them, paying out five hundred to one when some sap won. What a respectable racket! If a lousy bull picked you up, you phoned the boss, the bull’d get fifty bucks, and that’d be that. If you got hauled to a judge, it was a few days in stir. And yet this dope Spat wasn’t satisfied, had to better himself in life. Maybe he was working towards a stake so he could retire and raise chickens.

Bill laughed wildly. Was that the way conscience played its tricks on him? Spat was coming out of a saloon on Tenth Avenue, wiping his lips. He was dressed in sporty gray and seemed beefier than ever.

They both stopped, two enemies met at last. “I been searching for you, Spat. First I got some dough for you from the last job.”

“McMann givin’ me dough? Nuts.”

“I’m giving it to you.” He smiled at the dark sullen face as if to remind Spat of the time McMann had licked him and he’d washed his bloody mug….

Spat grinned. “Le’s have a beer.” They went inside. It’d been a saloon in the old days, the woodwork, the mirrors, preserving a sense of handlebar mustaches and fighters like Sullivan and Corbett. They drank beer.

“Let’s sit down,” said Bill. The place was almost empty. “You don’t get it because you think McMann’s chief cheese.”

“Who is? You?” He laughed.

“I’m his partner.”

“And the brain guy.”

Bill scanned him carefully. Spat wasn’t kidding. His glib face betrayed no knowledge of Duffy. Didn’t he read the tabloids? McMann’s death might even be in the papers already. He wondered how much Spat knew. “I’m the brain guy, but I didn’t dope out your pounding. That was McMann’s idea.”

“Yeah?” He twisted his glass. “Mebbe so.”

“No maybe about it.” He stared into the black eyes, hard, hostile. “If I had a thing against you I wouldn’t’ve helped you after that fight.”

“I thank ya.” He smiled maliciously.

“McMann beat you up because he was aiming to get control of the kids. Beating you up was poking Duffy.” (Still Spat was pokerface.) “It let Duffy save his face while banging yours. Now you know why you were lumped. McMann’s got control of the kids. We’re holding a party at the clubhouse. You’re invited.”

“Duffy won’t be there. Why should I?”

“It wouldn’t look right for Duffy to come. He’s through. Duffy’s through. What you care? He let you down.” They stared across the plate of pretzels. He thought: Spat’s wise.

“You and McMann are funny guys.”

“In what way?” His eyes flashed, he tightened his fists, a recklessness in all his bones, stripped down to hardness. “Maybe you were lucky coming off with a licking. Lickings aren’t the worse things.” He could lick the world if he had a mind to. His heart whispered: You’re McMann now. He was McMann as if, with the death, the qualities of Red had become part of his body.

“The hell with it,” said Spat despondently. “The papers are full with Duffy found killt. Poor Duff. Shot to hell.”

“He ain’t the only one. Another guy was found stabbed in a doorway over Chelsea.”

Spat gripped the table with both hands, leaning forward all dark eyes, so near Bill noticed the coarse hairs in his nostrils. “Clip ‘em, Spat.”

“Clip what?”

“The hair in your beak. That might give you some brains. Duffy and that other fellow were mixed together, in case you don’t know it.” Spat was tapping his beer glass, the beer was flat. “McMann’s in Yonkers.” Hadn’t a chambermaid removed the Not To Be Disturbed sign on the knob? “McMann’s out there on business.”

Spat shivered. “I don’ like the whole business. Poor Duff.”

“That’s what I told them. What the hell good would it be to wipe Spat, I said.”

“You ain’t scarin’ me any.”

“That’s what Duffy said.”

“Christ, why wipe me?” He blew his nose. He was used to Duffy’s murder, but now to hear another guy’d been finished, it wasn’t so hot.

“You’re O.K. I want you in. I like you.”

Spat trembled more than ever. “I don’ get it.”

“You ever wonder why I mixed with lil stinkers like you’n Duffy and McMann?”

“Me? I knows nottin’.”

“I’m from a big guy. I got orders to get hold of a bunch of kids. That’s why I was sent down. That’s why I was called the brain guy. So I got McMann to help. Duffy was out for McMann. He got sloughed with that other guy. You can’t act up like that when big guys are behind a feller. And McMann ain’t in Yonkers. I got it over the phone.” Spat appeared like a kid watching a magician. “McMann tried to cut loose from the big guy. He’d wiped out Duffy and that other guy on Mac’s say-so. Now, McMann was thinking he’d be independent, he had the kids sewed up. Well, it ain’t in the papers, but you’ll read about it. McMann’s dead.” He enjoyed Spat’s amazement, the enemy eyes losing harshness. He was a god predicting the future. “You’ll be reading how McMann was fixed in some hotel right here in town. The big guy told me he was watching me night and day. If I did as I was told, everything’d be O.K. I’m a brain guy, I listen to guys bigger’n me.”

“I’m outa it.”

“Like hell, Spat. It’s too late.”

“What the hell you mean?” Frightened, he forgot the glass in his hand, his lips parched with another thirst.

“I’m looking for you for a reason. When I heard McMann was wiped I said how about you as assistant. They said O.K.” He winked kindly at the terrified book, at the striped green tie and yawning jaws.

“I’m outa it.”

Bill spoke dreamily, his heart floating in the current of his power, the current roaring in his body. He pulled out his wallet and handed Spat two tens. “Those guys got loads of kale. They’re free with it. Don’t be a sucker.”

“I’m makin’ plenty runnin’ numbers. Hell with it.”

“You can use small change. You damn fool, get it in your bean. In two days and a half, Duffy, the other guy, McMann are wiped. Come in. You’ll be treated square if you’re on the square. Big things are ahead. Real dough.”

“Yeah, a stinkin’ clubhouse off Eight’.”

“You dumb bastard, you stunk around with Duffy when you didn’t have any hole.” He glared sternly. “Maybe it’s a stinking clubhouse, but it gets things done. One way or other you’ll be leaving this man’s town. You were Duffy’s pal and we gotta know how you stand. If you don’t come in, we know. I’m tipping you straight, you dumb bastard. You’re mixed with Duffy. Why let you off? Only on my say-so that you’d come in and behave….”

Spat shook his big head from side to side as if trying to get something out of it. He wet his lips, leaning on his fists. “What am I gonna do?”

“Take the twenty and listen to me. You’ll be in the dough. Keep your job with the numbers but here’s a chance for easy side-money.”

“I got no break,” said Spat. He put the money in his pocket as if it was cigar-store coupons, stiff in his chair as if pinned to it.

He was trapped by a bull story, a lousy lie, the best trap in the world. Bill smiled. “I need a guy to take McMann’s place. I got a hunch I can trust you. Now, you pass the word among the kids to meet at the poolroom tonight. I want to talk to them. We’ll begin clean.”

“O.K.,” said Spat, rising. He stared at the table as if he had left something behind. There was nothing. “S’long. Around ten tonight? O.K. I’ll be seein’ ya.”

They parted. Bill admired himself for that bull story. He was a bull artist. The way he’d got round Stanger, Paddy, McMann, Spat. Hanrahan, though, was a tougher
egg.
Could Spat be trusted? He felt so strong, so cocksure, he didn’t give a damn. If he lived or died, what of it? It didn’t mean a damn. He wasn’t excited, his life was mean, lonely. The only beautiful picture in it was the long dream of power. Ten o’clock…. He wondered about Joe. With some sleight-of-hand trick he placed Joe out of sight, plunking him down beyond the horizon with that future of his. He phoned Madge, the people in the drug store drinking sodas and eating lettuce and tomatoes. Madge seemed reluctant to meet him. “What’s wrong?” he said. “You meet me at Fiftieth and Ninth front of the A. & P. or you can go to hell.” He hung up.

His thoughts walked with him, the remorses, the doubts, the terrors encancering heart and brain. On these light streets hewn in gray stone out of the year’s dying, sunlight flowing between in beneficent rivers, he went with the crowd of memories. He’d killed a man. He. No one but himself. Bill Squattamellon Percy Macaroni Whathaveyou Trent. With these hands, this lunge of body, he had killed. This brain had plotted and consummated. It was hard to believe. It was entirely a matter for belief. Not him. Somebody else.

Madge smiled. Her face was pretty with the exception of a few skin roughages the nightly Zonite had not eradicated. They went north-east to Broadway. She was brisk, normal, at ease.

He squeezed her arm. “Listen. McMann’s been fixed.”

She lowered her head like a devout Catholic passing a church. “Killed?”

“Twice as dead as hell.” He heard the word
hell
deep within him like an angelus: Hell hell hell…. He suggested they go up to his room, McMann’s death fading into a sex deadlock. She refused as if she were a dilly-dallying virgin. Paddy’d holler and why now? “I’ll be waiting. The number’s 453.” Minutes later she knocked. He called: “Come in with the ice water.”

It was a hot joke. He helped her out of her coat, kissing her neck. The winter’s sun slanted pale rays of another spring. Life was moving to another awakening. Despite themselves, spring was in their blood and they were listening for the voice of the new year to cry out like that of another sleeping beauty. Her arm was bandaged.

“What’s that?” A kiss, she said. Like hell it was. If it ain’t a disease what could it be? How’d she get hurt? “It’s a burn.” “You’re a liar.”

“I got cut accidental at a party.”

“With a knife?”

“So what?”

“So what. Just as McMann’d say it. So what. I can’t get rid of the bastard. Maybe McMann did it.”

“What the hell if he did?”

He slapped her. So that was it. Well, let her spill it. She blurted the details of that night. He thought the red devil was at every turning of his life. That McMann was his own tissue and had been and done unto Madge as his flesh. He was confused at the duality of their lives. They were brothers, and the murder was as evil as the slaying of Abel. He was aghast, superstitious. “You’re not sore?” she asked. “I give it away to a million guys; may as well be a buddy of your’n.” She smiled, female and logical.

He quibbled over the morality of the situation. “But he didn’t pay you like the rest.” It was ethical and consistent with their love if she got paid. It was false to do it for nothing, for the love of it.

“He paid me.”

He let the lie be, for McMann was dead and there could be a courtesy for a dead man. McMann pay? Like hell. McMann’d never pay. McMann was like himself, his brother.

“It’s all over. He’s been taken for a fall. I’m boss. You’re my girl till I get tired of your face. If I pull down enough dough you’ll quit Paddy. I’ll buy you from him.” He spoke wearily of a future opulent and dangerous. “You tell Paddy I’ll see’m tonight. The clubhouse is opening soon and I want him to supply the dames. They’ll get paid well.”

“For April Fool’s Day? Ain’t it?”

“Maybe you wouldn’t’ve cracked that? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Oh, you little fool.”

“Go to hell, you’re too snotty.”

“That’s why you love me.”

What’d she do if he were spotted? She’d do nothing, go back to work, look for another guy. He’d do the same if she were dead. He was proud as Lucifer of their self-sufficiency….

Afterwards, returning to Leroy, he felt like a tourist coming back again to old streets with valises in both hands pasted with foreign labels.

“Hello,” said Joe.

“Hello,” said Bill, with a death between them. He patted the dog, incredulous to be remembered, he’d been away so long; what memories beasts had!

“How’s it going to end, now, with that red-headed guy chasing you early in the morning? God’s sake, why don’t you quit?”

“What you screeching for? Don’t mind me. I’m so damn busy I’m losing track of you. What you been doing?”

“I’d like to work.”

“What do you do all day?” Bill persisted as if he was fresh from Siam or Australia and was quizzing old friends. “You must do something. Yes, a handsome kid.” (Just like Hanrahan, thought Joe.) “How about Cathy?”

“I see some of her. What you driving at?”

“You like her, kid, don’t you?”

“Aw, cut it.” He was red to the eyes, his hands, his forehead up to the yellow shock his hair rooted in red.

“I wish you luck. That’s what we all need in life.”

“Are you sick? You’re talking groggy.”

“Both of you young and goodlooking. Why not?” His manner was comparative, like a traveler’s noting the likeness between love in Siam and in the home town. “My dough’s running low, but I’ll have more later. Take this fiver. Gwan.” He moved to the door despite Joe’s pleading, not even listening to the names of the words, so that it seemed one big sound spouting at him, low, monotonous. Behind the voice Joe’s mouth was open, his teeth set in even pearly lines. “Sorry, I got a date to address a political organization. Your brother’s becoming a big shot. Good-by.”