Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde (6 page)

Paddy gave him his contemptuous laughter like a mouthful of spit. Paddy roared.

“The twenty bucks was a joke, too. You knew that too? You sonufabitch, you knew all about it. A nice lil joke. Twenty bucks. And carryin’ the box all day, and reporting.”

“And you thought you were stringing me, didn’t you, Paddy? Ask Pop if I didn’t belly-ache about handing over the dough.”

“Did you bite!” Paddy laughed again.

“Listen to me. I wanted to get in with you even if I had to act the prime dumb bastard. I knew that match-box was empty. You think I toted it all day? Things aren’t done that way. I figured if I did as you said, give you your laugh, maybe you’d feel I meant it about a break. Fact is, I was at Duffy’s pool parlor. Ask Schneck, Ray. That’s how much I fell for your match-box.”

“Before you wised up, feller, you said you didn’t open it once.”

“Why should I? I knew nothing was in it.” He discovered, as his heart quieted, that Paddy’s eyes were slanting at him, speculative. Behind their bright gaze the bulky man leaned his head on a big fist. “Your going out of your way to play a joke on me proves — ”

“Proves what a sucker you are.”

“Proves I can be of use, Paddy.”

“Proves I hate you enough to rook you.”

“Hey, I’m sick of ‘proves’; let’s play something else. I can make dough.”

“Who’s stoppin’ you?”

“I need your help.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been collecting rents a long time. I know a mess of shopkeepers on Ninth and I know where they keep their dough and when it’s around. That’s worth something.”

“Maybe.”

“Quit stalling, Paddy. I don’t intend knocking off poor slobs. First it don’t pay, second there’s plenty cheap bastards who can afford to hand a little over.” He guessed Paddy approved his sentiment, Paddy the Irishman, Paddy the Tammany Robin Hood who chipped in his share of coal for the poor every winter and paid for his share of barrel turkeys, but didn’t bother a damn about grabbing the sons of the poor or corrupting their daughters for his pocketbook. He loathed himself for his cleverness, for putting over the proposition with such a Christian and piratical fervor.

Paddy offered him a cigar with a bland free attitude as if he were the devil, giving him the world. It’s only a stinking ten-center, thought Bill. He had to be careful. No use spilling the beans unless he was in real sure. No use being doublecrossed.

“I’ve other ideas, too, Paddy. I know a stack of whorehouses and joints loaded down with cash. If they aren’t friends of yours we can hook them.” Paddy suddenly didn’t know him. He was a stranger, muttering: “You better stick to real estate.”

“What’s wrong?”

“You sonufabitch. A mad dog, huh?”

Jesus, he was dumb. He couldn’t learn to keep his trap shut. This was a strange room and he didn’t know who might be listening, what eyes watching. “Don’t mind my hot air, Paddy. Who wants trouble? I was kidding.”

Paddy’s face was drained of all blood. “You young squirts talk rough.”

“I’ve been blowing hard.” The plain brown walls; this hole in which they sat seemed hemmed in by ears and eyes. “All I want’s a piece of your place.”

Paddy approved; his voice had a shade more color in it. “O.K. I got a swell one. Madge. She likes you even if you’re a sonufabitch.” They smiled, thinking of the young girl, bargaining over her body become an escape, retreating steadily from the menace of Bill’s crazy crack about hijacking joints.

“So long. I got to beat it.”

“Come around tomorrow. I’ll fix it up.” He passed down the narrow corridor, the sweat of fear under his skin, hating to turn his back. Betting his life on the card of a dumb ass crack. That was bright, that was the action of a smart guy.

It was after the theater hour. The lifetime spent with Paddy, including danger, wealth, and greed, had endured a half-hour. He returned to a forgotten life. Limousines traveled effortlessly up the streets, silvery bright shapes inside. Crowds piled the sidewalks, young men gripping their girl’s arms with the possessiveness of spendthrifts about to hit a movie. He followed his path among them, jostling against a soft hip or a hard elbow. These Broadway saps, he was stupid as they. Live and learn. You had to learn to keep your mouth shut. What storekeeper could be held up? Would he need a gun? It was all up in the air. There was Wiberg. Or Soger the pork man. Metz. Not Metz. He might get a job for his kid brother from Metz.

H
E DECIDED
Wiberg’s Dress Shop was the best bet for a beginner. Beginner was hot stuff. This was the second day he was looking the place over. It was becoming a routine job. He thought of the letter he’d received that morning from his kid brother. Joe would be in definitely after the New Year. “Next year I’ll be with you,” Joe had written. A regular kid letter. The dumb kid. His descriptions of Leroy Street and poverty with a capital P hadn’t scared him any. Joe’d rather live with him than stay home where it was a cinch. Back home he had a nice room, a lawn to look on, good food. He was crazy, a nut to leave high school. For what?

He dropped in at a drug store. “Pour me a coke, stinker.”

“Working yet, Bill?” asked the clerk. Tall, pale, he grinned behind the counter with the casual gigolo attitude of drug-store clerks, his light eyes blinking under carefully tended eyebrows. He approved Bill’s suit, his shirt and tie. Bill was a dresser.

“I’m making hay while the sun shines.”

“Your hay’s all wet. You’re canned, guy.”

“Hay’s for horses and hicks. The real-estate game’s cracking up.”

“I got a good tip, Bill. Marge in the fifth.”

“That’s a sucker game too.”

“Yeah, what do you do, wise-guy?”

“I’m buying up Ninth, including this crummy store.” They laughed quietly in the interior of prescriptions and remedies. It was an old-fashioned place with the soda counter stuck into one side and not bossing everything in sight as in the chain drug stores.

“Ain’t you heard of the crash?”

“Never crashed for smart guys. You still see plenty limousines, don’t you, stinker? Don’t forget it.” Outside he thought of Joe’s letter again. Could you beat it? Maybe Metz’d give Joe a job. He knew how to do a little favor for Metz. He strolled down Ninth. Sun poured between the ties on the El tracks. The air was crisp, with winter warmed into autumn. He peered into Wiberg’s Dress shop. Three outside cases. The big plate window displaying dresses at 1.89, 2.89, 3.89. Between the counter and a rack hung with garments, Wiberg himself was reading, the fat scholar’s nose with the thick glasses nailed tight against it. There was no need to spy on Wiberg, but it made him important and necessary. Paddy didn’t have to know it was a pipe. Later, back in his flat, staring across at the printery, he thought his life a putrid one. What a way to kill time. No dates. No wonder he sized up Cathy as a possibility before dropping off to sleep. A fellow had to live or else must dream of Cathy, Madge, the world’s women, spilling his seed in bed. What a life! What a damn bastard of a life. No job. Nothing. What the hell was he griping for? Things were due to change. Let Joe come. He’d get a job for him with Metz. Joe’d be out of the way. He’d be free for anything. He needed money, and Wiberg had it.

The next night, a little before twelve o’clock, things were set. It was the sleepy hour of closing. His hat slanted over his eye, the tiny red coal of his butt preceded him like another sight, calmer than his own. He felt a terrific mounting sensation. The El roared out of the cave of quiet with a monstrous noise. Many stores had closed. Fifteen minutes ago he’d observed the blue coat and stick of the law swagger down the avenue. He passed a butcher shop, a man in a white apron holding up a string of sausage and arguing with a Polish woman. The clerks were yawning in the gents’ furnishing. The windows of the pawnshop were empty of diamonds. Then he passed Wiberg’s. Again he saw the fat scholarly face surrounded by glare. He was reading a newspaper in his store. Bill hurried to the corner. McMann sat at the wheel of a long-bodied car. Two men were in the back. When they saw him coming, they leaned their slim urgent faces forward. “Clear?” said McMann.

“Clear. He’s alone.”

“O.K.” Immediately Bill crossed the trolley tracks, gleaming redly from the tail-lights of cars. Across the way, with the gray guarding El pillars between, he waited. He was alone. Wiberg was alone. The two men who had been in the rear of the car finished their walk. One of them paused outside the dress shop. The other entered. He saw this, his eyes speeding towards another incredible vision … Paddy, his kid brother, or thought he saw them beyond the actuality, swift and deadly. McMann was floating up in front of the shop, his timing fascinating and beautiful. The long black auto body prolonged itself from the corner, where three wops were talking in loud voices. The car went right up to Wiberg’s. It had been parked on the corner. Had been. This was it. This was the life. Holy Moses, what a guy McMann was! He was terrified, green inside and sick. The passers-by didn’t know him from Adam. A sullen couple, the woman pleading with her husband, began to bicker. Just at that second, the holdup guy outside Wiberg’s flipped his butt away. The one inside, like a machine animated by the cigarette’s arc, terminated his talk. All this in one second. Wiberg turned his back as if looking for some article. Wiberg crumpled. The one inside ducked his blackjack out of sight, interested in the cash register.

All done. He’d done it. Wiberg sloughed because he’d known that on Thursday nights the storekeeper always held his cash for deposit in the morning. He thought of how the fat face had flopped on the chest, the body slumping behind the counter. The visitor wasn’t interested in the register, chasing out, trailed by the lookout man. They hopped into the car just floated up. The gears sang. It was a finished job.

And what the hell was he moping around for? He hesitated, proud and curious, like a little boy elated over his first success. McMann and his helpers were phantoms. Poor Wiberg lying behind the counter, and no one the wiser. What the hell. They’d all been invisible. That was it. A successful job left no feelings in the criminal. If no one saw you, you weren’t seen, and if you weren’t seen, it’d never been. The ginzos on the corner were still hollering. The embittered couple glared into the window of a furniture store, the man glowering, the bewitched woman pointing to a plushy set in red and green. Poor Wiberg was lying there.

He walked a few steps away, cocking his head back. A deeper quiet was on the street. The El’s thunder was possessed of the menace of noise heard past midnight. Steel wheels hammered. A trolley was approaching. He stepped over to an El pillar, streaked wet from some bum, holding up his hand. The motorman stopped. He flipped a nickel into the cash-box. The traffic light beamed its great benignant green eye. He sat down in yellow light on the yellowish brown seat. The trolley jerked forward. He was the only one to notice a woman entering Wiberg’s. Only he heard or thought he heard her scream. The motorman drove remorselessly away on his inexorable duty. The other passengers were reading tabloids or else swayed punch-drunk. Looking back into a vanishing world dynamited with activity, the ginzos were running. Ten to one they’d phone a cop. In a few minutes the neighborhood’d be a beehive of radio cars, buzzing blue, authoritative. The families in the tenements would be poking their heads out of windows, crying out, thousand-voiced: “Ain’t those cops wonderful with dem raddyo cars? What chance’s a crook got?”

No one in the trolley had any idea of what had happened or was about to happen. Their blind peace was magnificent. Suppose some eagle eye had spotted McMann’s license number? Suppose? For the first time in his life the police were on the other side.

It was enough to make McMann scream with laughter. He was standing, red-faced, brash, in Paddy’s flat, a glass in his hand, when Bill popped the question. He roared himself out of his usual photographic calm. His observing stilled features curved away from sharp teeth. Paddy’s dames had been sent out. The men passed the whisky bottle, laughing at Bill. Bill was confused. He understood the others, but he didn’t get McMann at all. “Suppose they spot the license?” said McMann. “It ain’t my car.” He threw himself into another spasm with a hysterical, almost decadent relish. But his laughter was an act for the eye. Bill thought that all the time McMann was wondering how the others took him, laughing at them all with a private laughter that made no sound.

Bill grinned. “It went off like clockwork. The way you eased up that car.”

“Nothin’ at all. That wheel was pie. Whatta swell wheel! I’ll miss it.”

Paddy counted out the money. “About a hundred eighty bucks. That ain’t nothing for a mob.” He glared at Bill. “Hey, kid, it wasn’t worth it.”

“Wiberg should’ve had double that. Just my luck.” He was a sap coming up so late. Likely there’d been double one-eighty, the real dough divided by the four of them.

“I’m takin’ twenty,” said Paddy. “Chicken-feed. Fifty for McMann. O.K.? We were waitin’ for you, Bill. That’s hundred’n ten left.” He glanced at the pair who’d pulled the job. “You guys’ll take forty-five each.” He pushed the ninety bucks, mostly in fives and tens, to the pair. They divided it, muttered s’long, disappearing out the door like smoke. “That leaves twenty-one, twenty-two to be exact, for Bill.” Bill picked up his share.

“Them guys’re in a helluva hurry,” said McMann. “The sore bastards. Forty-five ain’t enough. They got guts bitchin’. We could’ve borrered a couple Duffy’s kids for half the dough.”

“Duffy’s kids are trigger-crazy,” said Paddy.

“I don’t like to kick, but my share isn’t much, Paddy,” Bill said. “The job’d be impossible without me.”

Paddy winked profoundly at McMann. “I was waitin’ for the sonufabitch to raise a stink. Can you beat his gall? If they don’t kill’m he’ll be a big feller. Let’s get down to facts. What’d you do? You didn’t risk your neck like McMann and the boys. What’d you do?”

“I got the inside dope.”

“Sure, you louse, but what’d you risk? They packed the rods.” He scowled, irate as an annoyed father. “What you want? Twenty odd bucks’ dough.”

“But watching Wiberg for days?”