Killing Town Page 2

  But I needed to get out of there while the railroad officer was still getting his fill.

  I slid off into the alley between the freight and the sleeper, ducked under the light and walked to the end of the string of cars. I didn’t have a bit of trouble after that. Just strolled out of the yards into the passenger station, cleaned up in the restroom, dumping the torn trousers and glad I’d brought a few changes along.

  Then I went down a dingy, ill-lit, worse-smelling street to a sloppy hash house crowded with a section gang going on late shift. I ate at the counter and a cute waitress with black streaks in her blonde hair and pretty green eyes flirted with me as she took my order for bacon and eggs.

  “You just roll into town, mister?”

  She didn’t know how right she was.

  “Yeah. My first trip to Rhode Island. What do I need to know about this burg?”

  “Killington? More like Killing Town—it’ll kill your dreams deader than a mackerel. And does this burg know about dead mackerels!”

  Her joke missed me, but I gave her a grin anyway.

  She went over to the kitchen window. She had a nice shape and when she stepped on her tiptoes to shout the order in, her fanny said hello. Five minutes later she was back with my food and a refill of my coffee.

  “Where you from?” she asked.

  “New York.”

  “The big town! Man, would I like to get there some time.”

  “Not that far away, sugar.”

  “A world away from here.”

  I threw down the plate of bacon and eggs, left her a buck tip, then went out and roamed around until I found a hotel one step up from a flophouse.

  The bleary-eyed night clerk, looking forty and probably not thirty, was smoking a cigarette that didn’t have tobacco in it. His shirt had been white once and his bow tie was half off, hanging like a carelessly picked scab. He shoved the register at me without really looking. I wrote “Hammer, Mike,” and passed over my buck. For that I got a key to a closet masquerading as a room where I dumped my bag before I came downstairs again.

  When the clerk saw me, he did his best to place me, then made me as his new arrival and reluctantly let go of the smoke he was holding in his lungs, also letting out a few words: “Want a whore?”

  Full service, this place.

  I said no thanks and pitched my key on the desk.

  Some town, Killington.

  Two doors down from the hotel, through the rank-smelling night, waited a cellar bar that hadn’t done anything to itself since Prohibition except get a license. The walls were bare brick with only a couple inches of clearance over my head. An old scarred mahogany bar ran along one side while a few tables were spaced around the rest of the room, wearing so many scratches they at first seemed covered with patterned cloths.

  A pair of sharp articles played blackjack at one table; two frowsy, blousy women with shrill voices and ugly print dresses had another; and over in the corner a kid about twenty sat at one having a quiet argument with his girl. Neither of them belonged in the place. They had good manners and good clothes, and from the flush on the girl’s face and the excitement that showed in her eyes, it was a slumming party with the skirt doing the picking.

  Probably this was her way of telling her boy friend she was up for anything—get it? Anything. Psychology, it’s called.

  Over the bar was a clock that said it was a quarter after one. Two and a half hours since the naked babe on the train. In the upper corner of the mirror over the back bar was a bullet hole spider-webbed with cracks. Place had character, all right.

  I sat there and filled up on beer. I was dry right down to my shoes from the trip from Manhattan to Rhode Island on the rods, and until I had three brews under my belt, I didn’t get anything but wet. But don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t get drunk on beer. On six I was mellow, and one later I was there.

  The street door opened and let in some more of the humid night. For a minute the brunette just looked the place over, her almond-shaped brown eyes taking everything in, her full mouth wearing lipstick so red it was almost black. She nearly changed her mind about coming in, then shrugged and walked over on her black high-heeled strappy pumps to the bar.

  It wasn’t exactly a walk—there should have been an orchestra, a stage and wings for her to come out of. She was nicely stacked, shades of blue-and-pink jersey dress clinging as if she were facing a headwind. All that brown hair bounced off her shoulders while she held her stomach in to keep her breasts high and breathed through a faint smile that might have been real if it weren’t so damned professional.

  Sure, she picked me. Maybe she could sense class when she saw it. Or maybe she liked the color of my dough on the bar. The other two drunks were showing nickels and dimes while I sported change of a twenty.

  The greasy, glassy-eyed bartender, two parts pockmark and one part skimpy mustache, swabbed down the bar in front of her with a wet rag, looking like he could use a swabbing himself. “What’ll it be, honey?” he gruffed.

  Her eyes passed over the Scotch bottles, but she said tiredly, “Whiskey and ginger.”

  I kicked a buck forward. “Make it Scotch. Best you got. Soda on the side.”

  Hell, why waste time.

  The brunette raised her eyebrows and smiled at me. “Well… thank you. You know, I don’t usually…”

  “Skip it, sis,” I said. “I was already in the mood for company.” I finished my current beer, watching her over the rim of the glass.

  She shrugged and the smile looked a little tired, too. “Does it show on me that much?”

  I put the glass down and let the bartender fill it up again. “Not really,” I lied.

  “Couldn’t I just be some lonely girl looking for a nice guy?”

  “Maybe, but you didn’t find one.” I shrugged. “You look just fine. I’m just used to spotting the symptoms.”

  Her sigh was abrupt and so were the words that followed: “Someday I’m going to get out of this town and get a real job.”

  “What’s the matter with the one you got?”

  If I had been leering, she would have given me the glass of booze right in the face. But I wasn’t leering, so she studied me curiously a moment. “Don’t see a ring. You married?”

  “Nope.”

  “Got any kids?”

  I grinned. “Not that I know of.”

  She swirled the ice around in her glass. “Want to hear something funny?”

  “Sure.”

  She looked in the mirror behind the bar, past her reflection. “I want both. A ring and kids. Together and legitimately.”

  “So what are you doing about it?”

  Her shoulders made that resigned motion again. “Not much. Anyway, men like nice girls, don’t they?”

  “Like women like nice guys? That one was started by an old maid who died a virgin. You can have your nice girls. They’re all a pack of phonies.”

  The sleepy, one-hiked-eyebrow glance she gave me was deliberately sarcastic. “Really?”

  “I mean it,” I said. “They’re phonies because they’re all liars. Everyone wants the same things and the good girls are afraid to go after ’em.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Sex. Money. Not necessarily in that order. So they think up lies to excuse themselves, get loaded down with frustrations that turn into inhibitions, and when they finally do get married and give it up? The first thing you know, the Holy Union is on the rocks.”

  “That right?”

  “That’s right. Hell, give me a dame that knows her way around every time. When they settle down, they’re really settled and know how to treat a guy. Like I said, the nice girls you can have.”

  “Thanks.” Her eyes were laughing at me. I ordered her another drink. “You go to college or something?”

  “A few semesters in the Pacific.”

  The door opened again and foul muggy air and a sallow-faced kid in work clothes came in. He wandered to the cigarette machine, put a quarter i
n, and pulled out his butts. He stood there fiddling with the pack until the bartender yelled, “ Hey! Close that damn door!”

  The kid said something dirty, finished opening the pack, lit a butt and walked out, leaving the bartender to go over and shut the damn door himself.

  I said, “What’s that smell?”

  I’d noticed it before, but now it seemed worse than ever.

  “Fish,” she said, like she was tasting some that had gone off. “Tons of it. Also clams, crabs, and anything else that comes out of the ocean, all getting chopped, cooked and canned.”

  I shook my head. “Fish, my eye. If it is, that catch’s been dead a long time.”

  She shook her head and the brunette hair bounced on her shoulders some more. “No, it’s fish, all right. Until the war, it wasn’t bad at all. But the factory took a contract to turn out glue and put up the new addition where they make it and that’s what smells. Fish glue.” She shuddered. “They say it makes more money than the cannery.”

  “Oh.”

  And so now I knew all about fish glue. Just plain glue, and the horses they made it from, wasn’t bad enough. Now they made it out of fishes. Dead mackerel.

  “I heard better fish stories,” I said.

  She shrugged. “It’s the biggest industry in town. Senator Charles owns it.” She took a long pull on the drink and set the glass down empty. “I used to work there, y’know. At the cannery. I had a pretty good job, too.” Her hand made a wave at the room and herself. “That was before… this.”

  “What happened?”

  “My boss had busy hands. I slapped him.”

  I grinned. “With a fish, I hope.”

  She grinned. “No. I had to make do with an ashtray.”

  “Well played,” I said.

  Another shrug, too small to make her hair dance. “One way to get fired.”

  The door opened again and more of the smell seeped in. Only this time it closed and stayed closed, after a wide, dish-faced blue-uniformed cop with a big belly held it open for a younger partner to come down the three steps from the street. They both looked around the room. You’d think there was something to see.

  Everything got quiet awfully fast and one of the drunks at the bar turned around and lost his balance. He went flat on his face and the big cop stepped over him, barely noticing. The slick pair at the card table stopped playing and stared. Were these two after them?

  I stared too because the big cop wasn’t looking at the blackjack-playing pair but instead right at me, and the way he held that club meant he aimed to use it before asking any questions. He played it tough, the way nearly every stupid cop does, thinking that a uniform made him a superman and forgetting that other guys are just as big and maybe even tougher. With or without a billy.

  He reached for me with one hand to hold on while he swung, and as soon as he had his fingers planted in my coat front, I pulled a nasty little trick that broke his arm above the elbow and he dropped to the floor screaming. The other cop was pulling his gun as he ran for me.

  This one was stupid too. If I had gone the other way he would have had time to jerk the rod free, but I came in on him and split his face six ways to Sunday with a straight right and while he lay there, I put a foot on his belly and brought it down hard. Like I was stomping on a particularly ugly bug.

  He turned blue for a while, then started breathing again.

  The cop with the broken wing had fainted.

  The bartender was wide-eyed over his open mouth.

  Over in the corner, the slumming party looked sick to their stomachs, then got up and scrambled out.

  The brunette hadn’t reacted at all.

  I said to the barkeep, “I’d like to know how goons like this pair got on the force.”

  There was a wheeze in the bartender’s throat when he told me. “For three hunnert bucks, you get put on the list.” His eyes still seemed a little glassy. He looked at me, the phone on the wall, then toward the door, wondering what to do next.

  “I don’t know what the hell this is all about,” I said, “but I don’t like to get pushed. Not even a little bit.”

  He swallowed and nodded. No argument.

  One of the drunks decided it was time for another drink and pounded on the bar to get it. I raked in my change, stuck the bills in my wallet and put the silver in my pocket.

  The brunette smiled wistfully. “Another time, another place?”

  “A better time,” I said, “a better place.”

  I pulled out a ten and shoved it over to her. “Till then,” I said. “Sorry to drink and run.”

  “Good luck,” she said and smiled. She meant it too.

  I had to step over the big-belly cop with the busted arm. I opened the door and stood sniffing the air. It stunk. Everything stunk about this burg.

  But it went right with how I was feeling, so I didn’t give a damn. I went up the few steps to the street, saw the empty squad car at the curb and got too damned cocky for my own good. Cops drive in pairs and I didn’t expect any others to be hanging around.

  But they were—they sure were.

  Somebody yelled, “Cripes, there he goes!”

  That was all I needed. I faded into the shadows alongside the building and took off as fast as I could. I skirted around the stone stoops, hurdled the boxes of rubbish packed against the railings and kept my head down all the way. The night started to scream with staccato blasts of gunfire while ricochets whistled off the pavement around me.

  A slug tore into my shoe and knocked my foot out from under me. I hit the sidewalk on my tail, swearing my head off, wishing I had a rod in my hand that would tear the guts out of somebody— any “three-hunnert-dollar” cop would do.

  Up ahead a street lamp doused the area and I knew if I went into that yellow splash of light, I’d be a dead duck. I couldn’t go forward and I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t do a single damn thing except roll down the steps next to me until I hit a pile of newspapers and spilled them over on top of me.

  I didn’t get it. I didn’t get it at all. I lay there with my lungs sucking air hungrily to stop the burning in my chest. I come in undercover and suddenly I’m the main attraction. My heart was slamming into my ribs and my mind was telling me to get the hell out of there in a goddamn hurry.

  Sure, get out. Walk right up into a face full of bullets.

  They were up there knowing right where I went and I could hear their feet converging on the spot. I pulled out the manila packet of green from under my coat, under my shirt, and tucked it in a gaping crack in the cement between the wall and the first step of the staircase that ran over my head. Tucked it in good, and hoped for the best, filling in with some pebbles. That left me with my wallet and a few bucks.

  But I sure as hell didn’t want to be found with that packet of green on me. The thirty-thousand dollars that brought me to Killington would wind up in the pockets of the bent cops who busted me.

  Then I waited.

  The door beside me that led to a cellar was too heavy to crash and the padlock too big to force. Go up and I’d die. Wait it out and maybe I wouldn’t. So I stopped thinking and just waited.

  A voice said, “ You down there! Come out with your hands in the air.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Would you sooner do it in a basket?”

  I went up.

  Slowly, my foot hurting a little, but the only things missing were the heel of my shoe and my damn dignity. I limped up the steps with my hands at shoulder level and stood on the landing looking at the hounds.

  Ten of them altogether. One with a Tommy gun, for Christ’s sake! Two with shotguns. One with a sack brimming with gas bombs. Suddenly I was the Capone mob crossed with the James Gang. The others were practically unarmed except for little bitty snub-nosed revolvers that held tiny tickets to hell.

  For that much I was grateful. Another inch on the barrels of those things and I would have got it in the back when I was running.

  A tall, cadaverous, derby-spo
rting guy in plainclothes with a shotgun and a sneer nodded and the rest formed a semicircle around me, like I was a quarterback who wandered into the wrong huddle. Windows were opening all over the place and the heads that poked out were screaming questions across the street that weren’t being answered. Maybe these windows and the faces in them would keep me alive long enough to find out what made me worth rounding up.

  And maybe killing.

  When I had gotten frisked from my hat to my shoes, one of them said, “He’s clean.”

  “Try again and be sure.”

  Hands patted me down again. “Nothing.”

  Finally I’d had about as much of it as I could take.

  “Somebody’s going to do a lot of explaining, chums,” I said, my words bland but the edge in my voice something that could cut you.

  The back of a hand rocked my head and dumped me right on my ass. The same guy hauled me up and was going to try it again, only a flashbulb popped and blinded the both of us.

  All I could see were twin bright spots of brilliant white, but I could hear the cops arguing with the photographer, who got the best of it without half trying. Apparently Freedom of the Press had gotten around even in Killington.

  Somebody said, “Hell, let him have his damn picture. He can get plenty more later, too.”

  A couple more bulbs went off while the boys were crowding in around me. I got shoved into the back of a car as a uniformed cop came puffing up, yelling, “Y’oughta see what he did to Jenkins and Wilby! Ya oughta see it! Get an ambulance down there fast. Cripes!”

  “What’d he do?” the photog asked. “Who is this guy? I thought Dillinger was dead.”

  “Come on, Lieutenant Sykes,” another voice called, apparently the reporter who traveled with the camera guy. “This is for publication. What’s the damn story?”

  The tall plainclothes dick in the derby was in the front seat of the unmarked car now. He leaned out the window, his shotgun in his lap.