The Death Dealers Read online

  “Where are you?”

  “Across town,” I lied. “Listen ... check the room adjacent to Sarim Shey’s. Vey Locca’s there and she’s hurt. She was supposed to have died but it didn’t work out. She’s unconscious now and when she comes around she ought to have a story for you. But, damn it, keep her under cover. If word gets out she’s still alive somebody will get to her.”

  “Tiger ...”

  I didn’t hear the rest. I hung up, but I was thinking back to the room and the telephone on the nightstand between the two beds. The phone was almost on the edge of the table where somebody had used it, not where it normally would be.

  My identity papers bought me the information. The operator at the PBX board looked up her charge calls and found the only one credited to that room. It had been made that evening to a number she wrote down and handed to me. I didn’t want to hang around so went out to the street and looked around for a gin mill that would have a pay phone.

  It was still raining. It always rained on nights like this.

  I headed west, picked a bar a block away and called Virgil Adams, asking for a reverse on the number. He went through his listings and found the address that went with the phone number that had been called.

  Then I felt like slamming my fist through a wall. When I got there it was a public pay booth on a comer of Tenth Avenue and the gas station behind it was closed. The phone had been used as a contact point and nothing more.

  I called Virgil Adams back, gave him the information and asked if any of our informants had come up with anything. Several false leads had been tracked down and found to be negative and the best we could hope for was a little luck coming from the manager of a belly dance joint like the Turkish Gardens who remembered seeing a person answering the description of Malcolm Turos as he had looked the night I spotted him.

  He had changed a five-hundred-dollar bill when he paid his check for a meal and drinks and the manager had noticed a card in his wallet from a club owned by his friend, Stephen Pelloni. Virgil had placed two men and a female operative in the place in case he showed again.

  Virgil was about to sign off when he said, “Hold it, Tiger. Just got a note.”

  “What is it?”

  “A little oddball, but it’s from one of our sources. The guy has a used clothing place on the East Side.” He rattled off the address and I memorized it. “Something about a man with a strange voice buying a very small-sized suit of old clothes. His boy happened to look in the car outside and saw a man there in what looked like a nightgown to him. What do you think?”

  “May have something, Virg. I’ll get over there.”

  “The guy makes ten grand if he comes through.”

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  The taxi dropped me off on the end of the block and I walked the rest of the way. During the day the street would teem with people and pushcarts, but now it was almost deserted. A couple of bars were still open, a restaurant had a few people in it, but the blinds were drawn on the door and the lone waiter inside was standing beside it, arms crossed as he waited for everybody to go home.

  Halfway down I found the address I was looking for, a rundown place that had a window full of odds and ends and a sign, WE BUY OLD CLOTHES, over the doors, with Leo Rubin, prop. under it. There was a night light on in the back of the place, but no one inside. I checked the door next to the store and flicked a match on to read the names under the doorbell.

  The lower one had Rubin scratched in the metal and I pushed the buzzer. Nobody answered so I stood there with my finger on it until I heard a door slam upstairs and a voice yelled down the stairwell, “Yes, yes, what is it? Don’t you know what time it is? A man is to sleep at this hour. Now what do you want?”

  “To give you ten thousand bucks maybe,” I called up. “So it is not too late for a little work then. Upstairs. Come upstairs and watch out for the junk on the stairs. These kids ... junk all over everyplace. There is no light.”

  I picked my way up, toeing toys and boxes out of the way until I reached the landing. Framed in the light from his door was a withered man of indeterminate age wrapped tightly in a bathrobe, peering at me from behind heavy-lensed glasses, his face squinted up trying to make me out in the darkness.

  “Now who are you, please? Who is it that wants to give me so much money?”

  “Does the amount ring a bell?”

  “I have heard such a sum mentioned.”

  “And you reported about seeing a man with a strange voice.”

  He stopped squinting then and looked around the darkness uneasily. “Come in, come in. It is not right to talk about such things in public.”

  “Anyone live upstairs?”

  “Only mice. It is a storeroom for me and sometimes a place to put the relatives who you don’t want to visit too long.” He stepped aside and waved me through the door.

  From one side a voice thick with the accent of the Lower East Side said, “Who is it, Leo? If it is those card players tell them that they should go home where they belong.”

  “Be quiet!” Rubin said sharply. “This is business for men.” Obviously he was the head of the house because the woman shut up and didn’t say another thing. “In here, the kitchen,” he told me. He went to the cupboard, took down two glasses and a dusty bottle. “It is the custom here. First the wine, then the business. After the wine I can tell if a man speaks truthfully.”

  I dumped mine down in a hurry, anxious to get with it, but some types you can’t push and he was one. When he was ready he sat down, pointed to a chair for me, folded his fingers inside one another and waited. “My name is Mann,” I said, “Tiger Mann. We have people looking for a certain person with an odd voice.”

  “Who is this one, please?”

  “Nobody you need know. He’s a killer and he’s ready to kill again if it eases your conscience any. We have to nail him before it happens. Now you tell me what you saw, when and how. All the details.”

  He nodded, took off his glasses and wiped them, then adjusted them back on carefully. “It was the little one they call Dog who has told us to watch for this person. So for that much money, everyone is watching. Once Dog himself was paid generously for giving information and we know this. Ohce I myself was given a tidy sum for letting someone know what I found in the pocket of a suit that was stolen and later sold to me. Yes, I know how you people work, so I am watching.

  “It is tonight and I am finishing repairing several old garments for sale when this man came in. Naturally, I first notice his clothes and they are not in need of replacement.”

  “Describe him?”

  Leo Rubin made a peculiar face and spread his hands out in a gesture as he shrugged. “So nothing special. A man. Maybe forty. Not big, not small.”

  “Average?” I probed.

  “Yes,” he agreed at once. “Like so. It is hard to describe him. His suit, that I can tell you. Dark gray, not too old, but it is not an American suit. There are differences only an expert can tell,” he said proudly. “Glasses and a hat he wore and good shoes with rubber soles. Why he wants to buy in my store is a curious thing.” He shrugged again and made another gesture with his hands. “But who knows people? Sometimes they see a bum, they buy him a suit, the bum sells it right back to me for less and drinks down the street. We all make a little bit then.”

  “The guy. Tell me about him.”

  “So I am telling you. It is when he talks that I notice this. It is like he is having a hard time to talk and all the time he keeps his chin down, like so.” He demonstrated it for me, then looked up. “At first I forgot about what Dog has told me because I am trying to understand him. He wants a suit, size thirty-four, any color, any style. Just a suit and I feel bad because I do not think I have any that small in stock without going upstairs to the storeroom. So I look anyway and I find a suit. For five dollars I sell it, not in a wrapping even. He takes it over his arm and leaves. Outside he is in a car. He goes away.”

  “What kind of a car?”
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  “So who can tell? It is raining and I do not go out to look. My boy comes in then and he tells me that inside the car is a man in a nightshirt. A white one. I think then and call Dog and tell him about the one with the voice that can’t talk and he tells me later he has made a phone call and has let somebody know about it. Then you come.” He looked at me hopefully. “Is it enough?”

  “No.”

  His face fell with regret.

  “I have to know about that damn car.”

  “That I cannot tell you.”

  I was going to stop right there and not waste any more time, but a piping voice from the doorway of the kitchen said, “I can tell, Papa.”

  “You can tell nothing. Go to bed,” Rubin commanded.

  “Wait a minute.”

  “What do these boys know?” he insisted. “They ...”

  “How old are you?” I asked the kid.

  “Eleven. And it was a black Chevy sedan, a 1963 model”

  “And you saw a guy in a nightshirt in the back?”

  He nodded. “Sure. I even jumped so I could look through the back window. Some old guy. He looked sick.”

  I tried for the impossible. “You get a look at the plates?”

  “Naw.” The kid shook his head.

  “See,” Rubin said, “what do these kids know? They see nothing and ...”

  “But I know whose car it was,” the kid grinned.

  The feeling was there. I felt good all over, a wild, crazy good and knew I had hold of something. I said, “Whose?”

  For a second the kid hesitated, a sly look on his face, then Rubin said in a voice that was going to tolerate no nonsense, “Say your piece.”

  “Yamu Gorkey’s.” I waited, watching him, and he added, “He’s got that loan place down on Fulton.”

  Leo Rubin stood up, his face stern. “You have been so far from home?”

  “Aw, Pop.”

  Rubin took his glasses off again, worked the earpieces, put them on and said. “That Gorkey is a bummer. A real bummer. He is a Communist and a bummer.”

  “How do you know him, Pop?” the kid chuckled.

  “I know from the people he takes,” Rubin exploded. “You are not to go near Fulton, do you hear? I am telling you ...”

  “How did you recognize his car?” I asked the kid.

  “Last week on the back somebody scratched Yamu stinks. I seen it there. Besides, I’m sure some way else.”

  “Spill it,” I said.

  “Yamu was driving, that’s how I’m sure.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Upstairs over Sloan’s Bar four blocks from here. That’s the big one in the middle. Got about six on that block. The Greenies ... that’s a social club... they’re havin’ a party tonight and that block’s jumpin’. Boy!”

  “To have seen such things. To think such a young boy ... Mr. Mann, it makes me afraid.”

  I pulled a five-dollar bill out and held it out to the kid. He grabbed it eagerly and folded it up in his palm. “You earned it. Just don’t talk it up.”

  “What do I care? That Yamu Gorkey does stink. He’s always taking a poke at us.”

  “To bed!” Rubin said, arm outstretched, his finger pointing. The kid grinned again and ran off. When Rubin looked at me with another shrug he shook his head. “They are so different.”

  “Maybe he just got you a wad of dough, Mr. Rubin.”

  “Perhaps. Is it worth what they have to see?”

  “In this case it is,” I said.

  chapter 10

  The kid knew what he was talking about when he said the block was jumping. Every bar and store on the stretch between the two avenues sported bright orange placards with blazing lettering announcing this as the Greenie’s annual social week and listed events coming up with everything from a softball game in Central Park to beer barrel rolling down the street. This was their opening night and from the friendly blasts they got from stickers plastered on the walls and poles from the other clubs, they had plenty of rivals for competition.

  All six bars were wide open and blaring jukebox music and what crowd wasn’t packed inside was going from one place to another. Everybody had half a jag on and paid no attention to the rain. One guy was sprawled up against a parked car, out like a light, and further down two more were getting sick at the curb. One finished chucking his cookies and turned back into the bar again. Like a seagull, I thought.

  I looked at them all with a nice happy grin because if they hadn’t been there it wouldn’t have been necessary for Turos to buy clothes to wrap Teish in. He would have stuck out like a sore thumb in his native dress he was wearing, but in a nondescript suit, propped between a couple of guys, he was just another character who had belted too many and was paying for it and his friends were carrying him home.

  Sloan’s was the hit spot, all right. They had a three-piece band hammering away instead of a juke and the B girls were making theirs at the bar. A couple of hustlers were trying to make a buck, hitting the guys who came out of the place, but right then they were more for the beer and booze than they were for the broads and waved them off with a “later maybe” sign.

  One of the dames spotted me, got the drop by cutting in front of her friend and swung over, her legs flashing whitely under the belted black plastic raincoat. The pert little hat she wore was soaked through, but it didn’t dampen her spirits any.

  She smiled broadly, her pocketbook swinging from her shoulder and said, “Going places tonight?”

  Then she got up close where she could see my face and the smile became a little forced. She was tabbing me for the fuzz and could see herself in the cooler already. I didn’t want to shake her illusions. Sometimes you could play it right and come out winning, even with that type. “Relax, kid,” I told her. “No roust. Vice can handle their own business.”

  The smile got friendly again. “They told Buddy not to pull that gun on Gretch. Somebody called in, eh?”

  “You know these socials.”

  The broad got friendly cute then. “You ain’t gonna pop ’em are you?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. As long as it’s peaceful, let them have fun.”

  “Huh, with all the squad cars rollin’ by nobody’s messin’ around. It ain’t like last year.”

  “You seen Yamu Gorkey?”

  “That punk?” She made a face of disgust. “He needs more nudgin’ than he gets to stay in line. He’s probably upstairs countin’ his dough, the Commie bastard. Always talking it up with the jerks who don’t know better. You know how many May Day parades he was in?”

  “We know.”

  “Sure, and you let him run that racket of his. Why don’t you roust him?”

  “Better than standing in the wet,” I said.

  “He went upstairs a long time ago. Shake him up good.”

  I winked at her, let her walk back to her friend and went over to the door that led to the apartments over the gin mill. Parked directly opposite the building was a black 1963 Chevy sedan. I didn’t have to look at the sign scratched on the back to know whose it was.

  The outside door opened into a small vestibule and the inside one was locked. All it took was a plastic credit card slipped into the slight space between the door and the jamb to force the beveled tongue back and the door opened easily. I closed it behind me, letting the lock fall in place quietly, then took out the .45 and cocked the hammer back.

  Old carpeting ran up the stairs, muffling my steps, but I stayed near the junction of the wall to avoid making them creak. I took them two at a time, but slowly, and once when one let out an ominous groan, stopped and waited to see if the sound was heard. There was only one light in the place and that was behind me, so that if anybody jumped me I was going to be a beautiful target. Ahead all was wrapped in the dusky gloom of shadows I couldn’t see through at all, a perfect place for an ambush.

  A good five minutes passed before I reached the top, then stood there trying to make my eyes adjust to the darkness. I couldn’t hu
rry, yet I couldn’t afford to wait. When I thought I was ready I felt my way along the wall, touched a door and paused there. My fingers felt a padlock snapped into a hasp and I debated blasting it open, but if I was wrong it would only alert anyone waiting. I felt the gossamer touch of a spider-web then and grinned because the luck was still there. That was one door not used recently.

  I had to run my hand along the banister until I came to the bend in the stairs going up, then took those steps the way I had the others. Only this time I didn’t have to be quite so careful. From the landing above I could hear the distant sound of a television, the theme music of a popular program and the voice of an announcer running through a beer commercial.

  Then I was there.

  The door was a wood panel job, the lock a fine new Yale, but the house was old and the framing around the door warped enough so that even the precaution of a massive lock was insufficient. The plastic credit card got the latch back again and I twisted the knob so that the door opened about four inches.

  No more. A chain was strung across the opening and through the angular inch-wide gap I could see a pair of crossed legs cut off by a wall where somebody was very nice and comfortable watching his favorite show.

  I had two choices. I could put a shot through the legs then try to break the lock out of the wood or shoot the damn thing off and get in there as fast as I could. The trouble was that with the odds at stake, one second’s delay would give anyone inside a chance to grab a gun and even the odds up ... or drop a slug into Teish. If he was there.

  And it was a chance I couldn’t take.

  But I got my third choice when I looked at the chain carefully. Those things are supposed to be strung up in a way so that any opening of the door at all automatically slides the stop in a position. It was designed so that the door had to be fully closed first before it could be unhooked, but in this age of do-it-yourself gadgetry too many people tried doing things their own way without reading the directions first and made mistakes. Yamu Gorkey made a beauty.