Me, Hood! Page 14

  Without a sound, the door swung open inward. The .45 jumped into my hand and I was in with the door closed at my back and the darkness around me like a blanket. If anybody was there with his eyes already tuned to the dark, I could be a perfect target and if I moved, they could pick me out by sound as well. So I stood there waiting, the rod out and showing big and if they saw that, they knew one flash of gunfire would get a barrage back and it might not be worth the chance.

  A full minute passed before I knew I was alone. I let my breath out slowly, listening to the stillness, then flicked on a match. I was alone, all right, but only in a way. Crumpled on the floor among the wreckage of cardboard cartons and scattered cans that had spilled out mounds of coffee was the pathetic body of Fly who lay there with his eyes wide open, his neck cocked at a screwy angle and a dark bluish welt on the side of his neck.

  Somebody had cooled Fly the hard way. He had torn his clothes apart, ripped open seams and turned the pockets inside out and I knew damn well what he was looking for. But he never found it. Every last possibility had been exhausted and the marks of frustration were there marked by where the body had been kicked a half dozen times.

  It wasn’t Fly who had opened the cans. If he had, he would have found what he came for. Idly tossed aside were two plastic wrapped packets and it didn’t take twenty questions to figure out what they held. Somebody had finished Fly’s search for him, not knowing just what it was he was after.

  I looked at the body again and saw the bruise under one eye and the smashed lips. The fingernails of one hand were streaked with blood and I knew why he died too. Manos Dekker had picked up Fly’s trail somewhere but didn’t know he was dealing with a hophead half-crazy from narcotic starvation and Fly put up a fight. It was his last. He was chopped down quickly and efficiently without knowing what it was all about.

  The stuff that had been in his pockets was piled on the floor, in the middle of the odds and ends, a new brass key. The match burned out and I lit another, picked up the key and went to the door and fitted it in the lock from the outside. It was the type you had to lock by key when you left with an oversize barrel bolt on the inside. In his haste, Fly hadn’t barred the door and left himself wide open for murder.

  And the chase was still on.

  I locked the door, went out to the car and drove it to the nearest subway station. I pulled in next to a hydrant deliberately, took the knife Pigeon was going to use on Lisa, wrapped a handkerchief around it, and rammed it up to the hilt in his tail. He never even moaned, but he would tomorrow, and he’d get the message loud and clear. I wiped the wheel clean, got out and went down the Kiosk to catch the downtown local.

  Chapter 6

  STATISTICS say most of all police cases are solved through the use of informants. There are three kinds: stoolies who squeal to ingratiate themselves with the cops, those who talk when the cops put the heat on them one way or another, and those who dump information into HQ anonymously to get the competition out of the way.

  But there are others of the night people who know the same things, untouchable in their own way, living by the strange code that separates those of the badge from their own kind. And I was one of them. Once. Until they found out different I’d still be one.

  I got to the hotel as the day shift was coming in and I had a chance to get a quick glance at the desk. The night man was just coming on with wrists fluttering all over the place and he looked like a whipped child every time he looked at Ames. The lobby was empty and I crossed to the elevator and as I did Ames spotted me, came around the desk and took me to one side. “You have anything in your room?”

  “Nothing worth while. Why?”

  “Paul… one of the bellboys… spotted the fag going in there and let me know about it. I gave him a clout in the mouth. Either he was curious or he was after your skin.”

  I felt my shoulders start to crawl. “Listen…”

  “It’s okay. He tried that before on somebody who was holing up here because the fuzz was looking for him. Thought he could pressure him into playing his little love games.”

  “I’ll give him pressure.”

  “Never mind, I took care of it. Just check your stuff. I don’t trust any of those AC-DC guys.”

  “Sure.” I slapped his shoulder, threw a dirty look toward the desk and watched the guy turn away with a nervous little squeal. Nothing was missing from the room, but I had run enough shakedowns to know my stuff had been thoroughly searched. Later I’d take care of the guy my own way and he wouldn’t go snooping anywhere again.

  I called the desk, got Ames just before he left and gave him Pete-the-Dog’s number. He was in a state of half sleep it took a couple of minutes to lose but he straightened up the second I told him what I wanted. I gave him the poop on Karen Sinclair’s kidnapping from the hospital and told him to spread the news to our people fast. There were always eyes around that saw everything and no matter how good you were, New York had just too many people who never seemed to sleep, whose eyes caught everything and could put the pieces together. Some of those people were ours. Pete said he’d get on it and I flopped back on the bed and closed my eyes.

  It was raining when I woke. My watch said ten after five and outside in the premature dusk of fog and rain the offices were beginning to empty, spilling their occupants into taxis and subways. I cleaned up, shaved and got dressed, then headed for the Grand Canyon of New York.

  On the corner I picked up a paper, scanning it to see if Fly’s body had been found. I was willing to bet it hadn’t shown up yet and if the absence of news was an indication, I was right. I scrounged up a box, packed the heroin into it, wrapped it in birthday paper and addressed it to Newbolder at the precinct house. It wouldn’t take them long to analyze the grains of coffee still sticking to the packets and locate their source. A few heads would roll and it was doing it the easy way.

  Pete-the-Dog ran a news stand that was a clearing house for anything we wanted. He always knew who was under the heat and where the rabbits were holing up and if somebody had to jump fast to stay ahead of the fuzz, he saw the message got through. We always took care of our own. I caught him having a hamburger across the street from his corner spot and climbed up on a stool next to him. “What have you got, Pete?” I ordered coffee and when it came, sipped it slowly.

  “You pull some big ones, Irish. Good thing you got friends. Remember Millie Slaker?”

  “She still hustling?”

  “Yeah. So she leaves a client where they dumped the ambulance. She seen this guy get out and walk back to the corner where another car was waiting. Millie, she’s in a doorway by now because she don’t like the setup, but she hears the guy tell the other one to stop at the Big Top for something to eat before they go back. Millie got outa there then and that was that, but I checked the Big Top Diner and Maxine Choo remembered them because they was both foreigners. Now Maxine’s a Hunkie, but she still picks up enough Polish to get the drift of their talk and hears them mention Matt Kawolski’s place down by the bridge. They was both arguing about something like if they should check in and pick up expenses right then or wait. She got kind of busy then and when she listened back in they had decided, paid up and left.

  “I sent Benny down to talk to Matt but with all the seamen dropping in his place he couldn’t tell who was new and who wasn’t, besides half the guys there never spoke English anyway, and Matt, he’s too damn busy to bend an ear to somebody else’s chatter.”

  I said, “Get a description from Millie?”

  “What am I, dumb?” he asked indignantly. “Sure. The guy she made was average all around and you couldn’t pick him outa a crowd except he had only half an ear. Maxine didn’t see that side of him, but the other guy she said was a mug type. Tough, broken nose, that kind of jazz. You know?”

  “It’s enough.”

  “So you goin’ down there?”

  “Tonight. Keep some of our people around.”

  “Sure, they’re on the street. They won’t let up until I
call ‘em off, don’t take too long. They still have bucks to make and it ain’t easy. This convention crowd is a tight bunch with their loot pinned to their pockets.”

  I looked at my watch. “It has to be fast.” I threw a buck on the counter to cover the bill.

  Pete-the-Dog suddenly grabbed my arm. “Hey Irish, Big Step softening up?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Carney said he took his spotter off Fly’s joint. Maybe he ain’t out for poor Fly no more. All the time he had that punchy Martino staked out to nail Fly if he went home and now Martino is gone.”

  I started to put the pieces together and they fit nicely. When Tarbush opened he would have seen Fly’s body and gotten to Ernie South. With the cache of H gone they wouldn’t have time to play any fancy tricks, so with Big Step’s help they must have rigged it to get Fly back to his pad and let him be found there. Nice trick in the daytime, but it could be worked. Right now Ernie must be flipping with his supply of narcotics gone. I wished I had had time to shake down the place completely.

  I said, “No, he’s not getting soft. See you later.”

  “Sure thing.”

  The darkness had closed in completely by the time I reached Matt Kawolski’s place. It was a dirty joint on the corner across the street from the river that stunk of city sewage from the vents in the area, stale beer and just plain age, but it was in a handy spot for everybody from the day crew at the nearby newspaper to the night crowd of seamen, bums and escapees from a city housing project a few blocks away. I hadn’t been there in five years so I wasn’t worried about being recognized, and Matt wouldn’t even tip his own mother to an old face.

  I managed to snag Matt alone in the back kitchen and I didn’t have to paint any pictures for him. Before I could ask he said, “Blue station wagon and a late model sedan parked outside Mort Gilfern’s print shop. He don’t get much action never.”

  “He the one that turns out that Commie newssheet?”

  “Yeah, hands it out free to the seamen. Plays up trouble, goes for ship tieups, backs hardnosed union demands. I won’t let him in here since he was in the May Day parade. Says he’s a liberal, but I know what he is.”

  “How’d you hear?”

  “Billie Cole said it.” He threw a quick look to the half closed door and wiped the sweat from his face. “That guy with the half a ear…”

  “What about him?”

  “Billie saw him gettin’ out a car. He been there before, Billie said.”

  “Thanks, Matt.”

  “You gonna bring any trouble in here?”

  “Nope.”

  “Can if you want. Enough boys here to take care of it. They ain’t all alike. Some of you guys from uptown are scrounging around too.”

  “I’ll yell if I need them.”

  “Since when did you ever need anybody?” he asked and went back to cleaning out his pots under a steaming faucet.

  The rain had turned from a drizzle to a hard, slashing downpour. The fog had dispersed, but the cloud bank overhead put a ceiling on the city like sealing up a tomb. Small rolling rivers cascaded along the curbs to swirl down into the sewers and aside from a hissing of occasional car tires on the wet streets, all sound had been obliterated. Even the short blasts from tugs in the river or freighters at the docks were muffled and the jets circling overhead to come in at LaGuardia or International had no more than the soft drone of a bee then were gone.

  Nobody was on the street. If they were, they had slouched back into doorways or found a dry spot in one of the abandoned buildings if they couldn’t afford a beer inside a gin mill somewhere. I came out of Matt’s alone, trench coat open, hat half sideways on my head, weaving up the sidewalk like any early drunk, oblivious of the downpour. In case anyone was watching I even managed to make myself sick and chucked my cookies up against a wall. It was a nice act. It got me past the old store where Mort Gilfern had his print shop and time to case it quickly. The windows were painted over and I knew the door would be locked, but through a chip in the lettering that spelled out Mort’s name I saw a speck of yellow that meant he had a light on inside.

  There was no back way in. The opposite street was a clutter of construction equipment and piles of rubble where buildings had been demolished with the debris still in gigantic piles waiting to be hauled off. A well lighted watchman’s shack was on the site and inside a pair of uniformed guards were looking out the side doors.

  One was still open and I took it. I scaled a fence on the other end, forced down a rusted fire ladder and swung myself up to the landing. The stairs leading to the roof were all but rusted through and I stayed tight to the edge where the support was greatest. They were all three story buildings, most of them empty, with evidences of summertime love nests here and there, rotted army cots and soggy mattresses with empty wine bottles thrown carelessly aside. I went over the parapets, keeping to the shadows until I was on top of the building that housed Mort Gilfern on the bottom floor. Ahead of me in the night was the irregular outline of the rooftop entrance.

  Mort hadn’t taken any chances. It was a steel fire door and bolted from the inside. The plating over it was fairly new and bolted in place. Unlike the other buildings, this one had no skylight. The only way down was the fire escape, a steel vertical ladder hugging the exterior wall fifteen feet to the landing and anyplace along it I would be a perfect target. I hated to lose the trenchcoat, but it was too light in color. I shucked it off and left it on the rooftop. In my black suit I would be almost impossible to spot unless a light hit me squarely.

  The rain went through my clothes before I was halfway down. I made the landing and stood there a minute. Beside me a dirty window was locked in place, pigeon droppings and a mound of coal dust and grit piled along the sill showing it hadn’t been used in months. I started to feel my way down the staircase to the next floor when I saw the thin line of light that reflected on the sandstone basement and then the lightning flash cut through the cloud layer above and I froze. The thunder came immediately afterward, a dull booming that preceded a sharper crack. I was glad I had the chance to immobilize myself there. Down below I saw the faint red dot that brightened once, the tip of a cigarette that flared as the guy behind it sucked in hard.

  Between the bursts of light I went back up to the top landing, waited for the flash, and when the thunder followed it, rapped a hole in the window pane and hoped the sound wasn’t heard below. It only took a second to-open the latch and get the window up, then I was inside. These old buildings were built from identical patterns to exact minimum specifications and I had no trouble feeling my way to the stairwell outside the door. I went down the steps, sweating out each creak, pausing between sounds until I was on the second floor.

  The door on my left was shut, but the warp in it bowed it inwards and the light in the gap showed no sign of a chain across it. I knew they’d have it locked but that wouldn’t be any trouble at all. It would have to be quick and it would have to be exact. There wouldn’t be time for second chances. These were pros trained in a school that specialized in perfection and they wouldn’t be just sitting there idly.

  As softly as I could I edged up close, the .45 cocked in my fist. Inside there was a choked sob and a harsh voice said abruptly, “Be still!” There was a foreign rasp to his words I couldn’t quite place.

  There was another sob and I knew I had guessed right. It was a woman and it could be only one. This time it was the other voice that said in the same accent, “Lady, I will make you be quiet!”

  He might have. I heard a chair scrape back when the other one rattled something off in what sounded like Polish and at the same time I blasted the lock off the door with the .45 and smashed the door wide open with my foot so that it splintered with a dry crack and dangled from one hinge.

  They spun together and I had time to see that only one had a gun beside him on the tabletop. I blew his whole face into a bloody froth with the first shot and as the other one unlimbered a Luger from his belt already thinking he
had me I took him through the chest dead center and he half flew backwards across the room as he screamed “Alex!” just once. He was dead before his head made a sodden sound against the radiator and I didn’t stand there waiting. I triggered three shots fast into the floor, backed out into the hall, listened a minute and went down the stairs fast and waited.

  Maybe it took ten seconds, maybe less, but I was there first. The one who had been outside came in with all the stupidity that initial excitement brings on and forgot the rules. He remembered them a moment too late and by then he felt the gun in the back of his neck and his knees went limp with fear because he knew there was no sportsmanship in this game and he would be dead before he could move.

  I said, “Upstairs,” and went behind him, the .45 barely nudging his spine right above his belt. He let out little whining noises and when he saw the two on the floor he gagged, spilling his supper down the front of his suit.

  Karen Sinclair lay on a rumpled bed still wrapped in a white hospital gown. A dirty blanket was thrown carelessly over her legs and her hands were taped together on her stomach. Both ankles were taped too, the strip running around the metal framework of the bed.

  Someone had wanted to see what she looked like and the gown was pulled up to her navel. She was conscious now, her eyes wide open… and now she was beautiful. I kept the gun on the guy, pulled the gown down, flicked open the blade I carried in my pocket and sliced through the tape around her wrists and ankles. She smiled, never taking her eyes from me.

  Very slowly then I turned and looked at the face of the one who had been outside.

  Their eyes always got that way when they knew they were about to die. It was a dull, glassy look and a slack expression and no words because they realized that the one on the other end of the gun had the same conscience factor as they had themselves and would shoot for the fun of it if they had to. They could hardly talk with the fear, so they couldn’t lie at all. They could only hope that it would be over fast and painlessly and not with a gigantic hole in their intestines that would leave them living in hours of agony before the merciful blackness came. I said to him, “Manos Dekker… where is he?” A long string of saliva drooled from his mouth. He turned his head and looked at the mess on the floor. Outside there was another flash of lightning, closer this time, and the sharp roll of thunder “He…” The guy stopped there, thinking about the rules again. He swallowed, wiped his mouth and let his lips come shut.