Me, Hood! Page 13

  “Try remembering me for a starter,” I said.

  “Yes?” The voice was puzzled.

  “The name is Ryan… the Irish one as you used to call me.”

  “One moment, please.” Sound diminished as he held a hand over mouthpiece and I could barely hear the hum of voices. Then the hand was taken away and the voice that spoke to me was a different one, but one I remembered well.

  There was nothing friendly there. It was cold and impersonal and said, “What do you want, Ryan?”

  “To see you, Shaffer. You’re picking up a tab for me.”

  “Ryan…”

  “Uh-uh. I’ll do the talking. I’m in a pay station and you can’t trace the call in time so don’t bother. Just go to the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-Fifth Street and start walking north on the west side. When I’m sure you’re alone I’ll contact you. Twenty minutes, that’s all you have.” I hung up and grinned to myself. Cliff Shaffer would be there, all right. He knew what the picture was well enough.

  I knew he’d make a try for a pinch anyway so I had a friend of mine who had an independent cab out in front of the car he had stationed near the corner and block its way. Before Shaffer went fifty feet I was behind him, steered him into the hotel lobby on the corner and angled to the east-west street and started him walking. I didn’t have to use the gun. Shaffer never did trust me all the way and wasn’t taking any chances. When he knew I had caught the play in time, he shrugged it off and played the game. He hadn’t bothered wearing a rod either.

  Two blocks over was an all night diner and we had coffee and sandwiches sent back to our table and I looked at him sitting there, still the same, case hardened cop he had always been, a little grayer now with a few more wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but a guy who headed up a tight little agency assigned to special high-priority projects only.

  He looked at me just as carefully and said, “You haven’t changed much, Irish.”

  “I’m still alive.”

  “For how long? There’s a city wide alert on you. Or maybe Big Step will reach you first.”

  “You left out some tourist types, old buddy.”

  The hand bringing the match to his cigarette stopped in midair. “You know too much, Ryan.”

  “No… not quite enough. I want to stay alive and you, friend, are going to help out.”

  “Like hell. What you did before doesn’t carry any weight now. You’re just another hood to me and if I can nail you for the city boys it’ll be my pleasure.” He glared at me and finished lighting his butt.

  “Let’s put Karen Sinclair in this,” I said. “Let’s not make me out an idiot. I didn’t get asked in, I was forced in by one of your people again and I’m tired of being a pawn.”

  Softly, he said, “Where do you get your information from, Irish?”

  “I was a college boy once, remember? I was a war hero. I’m clever.”

  “You’re a damned hood.”

  “So I like it this way. I can chisel the chiselers and don’t have to pay any respect to the phony politicos who run us into the ground for their own egotistical satisfaction. I don’t have to go along with the sheep who cry and bleat about the way things are and can do something about it in my own way. If this was 1776 I’d be a revolutionary and tax collectors would be fair game. I could drop the enemies trying to destroy us and be a wheel. So screw it, I’m not going to be a sheep.”

  His icy gray eyes ran over my face and his smile was almost deadly. “Let’s talk about Karen Sinclair.”

  “And oceanography?” I needled him. “Or would a strip of microfilm be better, one that locates all the underwater missile pads the Soviets laid off our coastline?”

  With feigned calmness Shatter folded his hands together and leaned forward on the table. “I didn’t think it was possible. I didn’t think coincidence could be so damn acute. We all wondered and tried to put it together and nothing would fit.”

  “The ones who tailed her put it together fast enough.”

  He ignored me completely, following his own train of thought. “So you’re the one she passed it on to. She was able to say that much but couldn’t make a positive identification. We knew but we weren’t sure. We didn’t think it could have happened like that.”

  “Who are they, Shaffer?”

  “Where is it, Irish?”

  “Who are they?” I repeated.

  Shaffer let his smile stretch across his mouth, tight and nasty. “Manos Dekker. He’s the head of the thing we labeled the Freddie Project in Argentina, the one who killed Carlos Amega in Madrid and behind the sabotage in our installations in Viet Nam.”

  “Now he’s here,” I stated.

  “I’m going to tell you a story, Irish.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “They spotted our people supposedly engaged in simple coastwise oceanography. They used a limpet and blew the Fairway II apart, but they didn’t get the motor launch in time. Karen Sinclair and Tim Reese got away with the charts they had made and Tim microfilmed them in Miami. They got him there too, but by then Karen had the film strips but couldn’t deliver because they were right behind her. Somehow she made New York. It didn’t do her much good because they have their agents all over and covered all routes and were waiting for her to show up. Luckily, she spotted them and took the big chance. Unluckily, it had to be you. Now where is it?”

  “Get me off the hook and maybe you’ll find out.”

  Gently, he unlaced his fingers and shook out another cigarette. “What?”

  “I know where it is. I might be able to recover it. I can’t do it with the cops on my neck. I can’t fight a murder charge and the Stipettos at the same time.”

  “Sorry, Irish.”

  “In that case, so am I. You’ll lose an agent and all she worked for.”

  “Damn it, Irish…”

  “Just do it,” I said, “I don’t care how. You guys have the power so make things move. You did it once before when I didn’t want it, so do it now when I do or I’ll resurrect that deal all over again and blow it wide open in the papers.”

  “Patriotism, Irish.”

  “Don’t bother naming it. I’m saving my own neck.”

  “How about Karen Sinclair’s? You seem to have a soft tone when you say her name.”

  Soft? I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Ever since I saw her that’s all I could think about.

  “Knock it off, Shaffer. Are you coming through?”

  “This time I don’t have the choice, do I?”

  “No.”

  “I’m wondering about something else too,” he said. “You’d like to process this so you come out clean, wouldn’t you?”

  I watched him and waited.

  Shaffer smiled at me and I couldn’t read his face at all. “I’m going to run your gun permit through for you. You’re being reactivated, Ryan.”

  “The hell I am!”

  “Then you didn’t read the fine print in those papers you signed a couple years ago. The provision was there. The penalties too.”

  “You bastard. I’m not playing cop again.”

  “Like you say, Irish boy, ‘The hell you ain’t.’ You know where to reach me. Call in. I’ll get some of the heat off your back. You take care of the rest.” He got up slowly, his mouth twisting in a wry smile. “Maybe it was a good thing she did pick you out of eight million people. You’re just smart enough, mean enough and evil enough to do what has to be done.”

  “Listen, Shaffer…”

  But he wouldn’t. He shook his head, holding up his hand to cut me off. “We’ll have our men out too. We’ll scour the city for Karen Sinclair, but we know what we’re up against. This isn’t a ransom snatch. It was cleverly planned and executed. The ones behind it have a motivation greater than ransom with more resources at their command than the criminal element. But in their own peculiar ways they are criminals and like the old saying goes, it takes one to catch one. Good hunting, Irish. If we can supply any leads just call. You have the number. I
suggest you come down and look at our mug shots.”

  He turned and walked out and I cursed him silently every inch of the way to the door. The slob hung me again with my own kind and there was no turning back. Even getting the heat off wasn’t worth it. I liked what I was and wanted to keep it that way and now I was back on the other end of the stick again.

  Damn.

  Shaffer had clued his office staff. They were all the clean cut type and two of them watched me go over the mug books with narrowed eyes of disapproval. On one’s desk was my dossier so I knew they had all the data from the last deal. The broad at the reception desk was the only one who seemed impressed because she took a pose with her legs so I could see the flash of white thigh above her nylons under the desk and when she brought another set of photos over she bent down deliberately to give me the benefit of an unrestricted view of ample breasts that wanted to spill out of her dress. One of the guys tightened his mouth impatiently and threw three eight by ten glossies in front of my nose and waved her out of there. “Manos Dekker,” he said.

  They weren’t studio shots. They were taken with a long range lens and blown up, but the face and all its characteristics were there. Dekker had no stamp of nationality on him, but the set to his eyes, the flaccid mouth and the slight hump in his nose marked him a killer and a man who enjoyed his work. I had seen too many with those almost imperceptible peculiarities not to recognize the breed.

  I fastened him in my mind and went back to the selected photos of other agents operating in this country. Two I knew right off, but so did everybody else. In one hazy shot that was evidently an enlargement of individuals originally in a group shot, I thought I had seen another before but couldn’t quite place him. The guy at my shoulder caught my hesitation and said, “Taken at a Commie meeting on the Island. Not identified.”

  I nodded, looked through the book and closed it. “Thanks for the trouble.”

  “No trouble at all,” I told him.

  “Any contact with those persons will be reported.”

  “Sure. Dead or alive?”

  “Don’t be funny.”

  Lisa Williams left very little trail. She was always on call for anything Big Step needed and if he wanted to farm her out to his boys for kicks she had to go along. Ever since he destroyed her with his fists she had lived a life of fear, indelibly tied to the punk because his mark was on her and nobody else would touch her. She hustled the upper Broadway Johns for side money and spent it in the gin mills, a sucker for a touch from every stray cat type with a hard luck story.

  Getting to her without making contacts with any of the Stipetto mob or their stringers who would be happy to pass on the news I was in the territory wasn’t easy, but like I said before, it was my city too and there weren’t many back alleys or dodges I didn’t know. I had to live by them the same way they did only on a bigger scale and it took a hell of a lot more doing.

  I found her in the back room of a shabby brownstone at four in the morning, a lonely voice fogged out of shape by too much booze, caroling a song from a stage hit she had been in years ago. When I knocked on the door it was as if someone had lifted the arm on a record player. The quiet was almost intense, and I knew that inside she was standing there rigid, listening hard, her heart pounding with that old fear again.

  At last she said, “Yes… yes, who is it?”

  “Irish, honey, open up.”

  Very slowly, the door opened on a chain and she peered out at me, eyes reddened from a big bar night, her hair dishevelled, an untidy lock of it falling across her face. “Ryan?” she said tentatively. And when she made sure it was me she bit into a knuckle and shook her head mutely.

  “Let me in, girl.”

  “No… please. If anybody sees you…”

  “Nobody saw me but they might if I stand here long enough.” That decided her. She closed the door, took off the chain and held it open reluctantly. I squeezed inside, shut and locked it, then walked across the room and sat on the arm of the mohair chair by the shaded window.

  “Why… did you come here?”

  “I’m looking for Fly. You know where he is?”

  She opened her mouth to lie then knew I caught it and let her head fall into her hands. “Why doesn’t Big Step let him alone?” she sobbed jerkily.

  “What did he do to you, baby?”

  Lisa let her hands fall and hang straight at her sides. “All he could do was hit me. I… I didn’t care. It was that new one from Miami they call Pigeon who did things.” The tears welled up and an expression of shame clouded her face. Without looking at me she sank into a straightback chair and stared at the floor. “That one isn’t normal. He… he’s perverted. He made me…”

  “You don’t have to tell me about it.”

  “I never did anything like that before, even when they tried to… hold me down. He took this…”

  “Can it, Lisa.”

  She looked up, her eyes gone dull. “They hurt me. Step laughed and laughed. He thinks I let you go… because of those times years ago.” Like a slow motion picture she moved her hand and ran her fingers through her hair. A smiled played at the corners of her mouth and she said, “I’m going to kill him some day. Some day. Yes, it will be very nice.” There was a sing-song lilt in her voice and only then did I realize how really crocked she was. Constant practice with the bottle and an uncommonly strong constitution provided her with the ability to maintain a semblance of sobriety even when she was almost ready to go off the deep end. Her fear had covered it in the beginning, but now it showed through.

  I said, “Where’s Fly, Lisa,” as gently as I could.

  Little by little her eyes came back to mine. “Fly is nice. He always told me when… Step wanted me… and I would go away. When I was sick… he sent a doctor. Yes, yes. He stayed with me a week then.”

  “And how did you pay him off, Lisa?”

  Her smile was unconcerned. “It… didn’t matter.”

  “Fly’s no better than the rest, kid. Where is he?”

  “Are you… going to hurt him?”

  “No.” I leaned forward to center her attention. “He took something from me. I want it back.”

  She frowned, trying to think, then grimaced and said, “You… you hooked, Irish? You can get the… junk anytime.”

  “I’m not hooked, kid. I want that capsule Fly took. Where did he put it?”

  “He needs it.” There was a defiance in her face I knew I couldn’t break.

  So I said, “It’s only sugar, Lisa. He won’t get anything from it but trouble.”

  It wasn’t Fly she cared for. It was the little guy, the creature, the beat-down thing that made him so much like she was herself. It was the two-of-a-kind feeling, people in the same foxhole, wounded and hurting with terrifying death at any moment.

  “Is… it true?”

  I nodded.

  Without seeming to cry, the tears began an erratic course down her cheeks. “He put it… somewhere. For later, he said. Now he can’t go to his place…”

  “I know, Big Step has one of his boys outside waiting to cut him off.”

  Absently, she wiped the tears away. “He knows where Ernie South… keeps his supply. He was going… to break in and…” Abruptly, the tears stopped. “You know Ernie South?” she asked me. Some of the drunkenness seemed to have drained out of her.

  “We met. He’s a bum.”

  Her mouth tightened. “Irish…” she opened her mouth to say something, stopped, reconsidering, then said vacantly, “He’s… his king… heroin… the worst of them all.”

  “Did Fly tell you where he was going?”

  “Tarbush’s Coffee Shop. Fly… he stole Ernie’s key once. He had another made.”

  “He’s nuts! Ernie’ll chew him up. He can’t pull a stunt like that!”

  She grinned again and nearly slid off the chair. Her eyes were half closed when she said, “No?” then her head fell forward and I caught her before she hit the floor. Lisa Williams was out like a light but
there was still that satisfied grin on her mouth. I picked her up, dropped her in the bed and went out, making sure the door locked shut behind me.

  I had just reached the front door of the vestibule when I saw the outline of a figure on the other side. I flattened against the wall, deep in the shadows, glad the overhead bulb was out. The door swung open and the guy standing there smirked to himself. Briefly, I caught the wink of light from the open blade in his hand, then he closed the door silently and started back toward Lisa’s room.

  When I laid the barrel of the .45 across the back of his head he went down like a withering flower and I grabbed him before he hit the floor. Even in the semi-darkness I could see he was a pasty faced snake with all the evil inside him written across his features. The dark gray suit he wore was the kind they only sell south of Jacksonville and when I yanked the wallet out of his pocket I confirmed it. The driver’s license was issued to one Walter Weir of Miami, Florida. I said, “Hello, Pigeon,” and slipped the wallet back.

  The car he had used was a beat up black Buick ten years old, still carrying Florida tags. Nobody saw me lug him out and if they did, nobody cared. Shouldered drunks weren’t unusual around that neighborhood even in the pre-dawn hours. Pigeon Weir did me a favor in a way. It saved hunting up a cab. I drove six blocks North and three across town to where Tarbush ran his coffee shop, an unlikely little place popularized by the trucking crowd rather than the beats. Tarbush had been nailed twice for pushing Bennies on the teenage set and did a stretch in Elmira, but if he was letting Ernie South use his place for a storehouse it looked like he never cut loose from his old connections.

  Pigeon wasn’t about to come to for a long while yet so I just let him slump there half on the floor out of sight. When I saw the silhouette of a roving prowl car heading toward me, I went down beside him and waited until it passed. Then I slid out of the car and edged, toward the narrow alley that separated Tarbush’s Coffee Shop from the garage next door.

  A night light was on inside, a single low wattage bulb throwing enough of a glow to make out the array of tables and the short counter with its oversized coffee urns. But it wasn’t the front section I was interested in. All the side windows were barred, and at the far end was the service entrance, a steel plated door that looked impossible to force. I swore under my breath and out of habit thumbed the latch to check it.