The Snake mh-8 Page 4

  "Anybody else?"

  "Nobody else," he said gently.

  "Business is business," I grinned.

  "So be it, Mike."

  "Sure, Charlie," I told him.

  He walked away and set up a couple for the hookers working the tourist traffic at the other end, then sort of stayed in the middle with a small worried expression on his face. Outside it was hot and sticky and here it was cool and quiet with the dramatic music of Frank's Symphony in D Minor coming through the stereo speakers too softly to be as aggressive as it should. It could have been a logical place for anybody to drop in for a break from the wild city outside.

  One of the hookers spotted my two twenties, on the bar and broke away from her tourist friend long enough to hit the cigarette machine behind me. Without looking around she said, "Lonely?"

  I didn't look around either. "Sometimes."

  "Now?"

  "Not now," I said.

  She turned around, grinned, and popped a butt in her pretty mouth. "Crazy native," she said.

  "A real aborigine."

  She laughed down in her throat. "So back to the flatland foreigners."

  Jersey Toby waited until she left, then did the cigarette-machine bit himself before taking his place beside me. He made it look nice and natural, even to getting into a set routine of being a sudden bar friend and buying a drink.

  When the act was over he said, "Look, Mike..."

  "Quit sweating, buddy."

  "You come for me or just anybody?"

  "Just anybody "

  "I don't like it when you don't come on hard."

  "A new technique, Toby."

  "Knock it off, Mike. Hell, I know you from the old days. You think I don't know what happened already?"

  "Like what?"

  "Like what's with Levitt and Kid Hand. You got rocks in your head? You think you can come shooting into the city any more? Man, things ain't like before. You been away and you should've stayed away. Now before you get me involved, let me tell you one big thing. Don't make me out a patsy. I ain't telling you nothing. Not one goddamn thing. Lay off me. I been doing a lot of small-time crap that don't get me no heat from either direction and that's the way I like it."

  "Great."

  "And no soft stuff too. Save that bull for the enlisted men."

  "What are you pitching now?"

  "I'm a pimp."

  "You came down in the world."

  "Yeah? Well maybe I did, but I got bucks going for me now and a couple of broads who like the bit. I do it square and not like some of the creeps and on top there's enough juice to pay off who needs paying off, like. Y'know?"

  "I won't eat your bread, kiddo."

  "Goddamn right."

  He sat there glowering into his drink, satisfied that he had made his point, then I reached over and took his hand and held it against my side where the .45 was strung and said, "Remember?"

  When he took his hand back he was shaking. "You're still nuts," he said. "You ain't nothing no more. One push with that rod and you've had it. I'm still paying juice."

  This time I pulled the other cork. I took out the wallet and opened it like I was going to put my money back only I let him see the card in the window. He took a good look, his eyes going wide, then reached for his drink. "An ace, Toby," I said. "Now do we go to your place or my place?"

  "I got a room upstairs," he told me.

  "Where?"

  "313"

  "Ten minutes. You take off first."

  It was a back-alley room that had the antiseptic appearance of all revamped hotel rooms, but still smelled of stale beer, old clothes, and tired air. Jersey Toby opened a beer for himself when I waved one off, then sat down with a resigned shrug and said, "Spill it, Mike."

  "Kid Hand."

  "He's dead."

  "I know. I shot him. The top of his head came off and left a mess on the wall. He wasn't the first and he probably won't be the last."

  Toby put the beer down slowly. "You're nuts."

  "That's the best you can say?"

  "No," he repeated. "You're nuts. I think you got a death wish."

  "Toby..."

  "I mean it, Mike. Like word goes around fast. You don't make a hit in this town without everybody knowing. You was crazy enough in those old days, but now you're real nuts. You think I don't know already? Hell, like everybody knows. I don't even want to be in the same room with you."

  "You don't have a choice, Toby."

  "Sure, so I'll pay later. So will you. Damn, Mike..."

  "Kid Hand," I repeated.

  "He took Tillson's job. Everybody knew about that."

  "More."

  "Like what, you nut! How the hell should I know about Kid? We ain't in the same game. I'm pimping. You know what he was? Like a big shot! Mr. Dickerson's right-hand boy. You think I'm going to... ?"

  "Who?"

  "Knock it off... you know."

  "Who, Toby?"

  "Mr. Dickerson."

  "Who he, buddy?"

  "Mike..."

  "Don't screw around with me."

  "Okay. So who knows from Dickerson? He's the new one in. He's the big one. He comes in with power and all the hard boys are flocking back. Hell, man, I can't tell you more. All I know is Mr. Dickerson and he's the gas."

  "Political?"

  "Not him, you nut. This one's power. Like firepower, man. You know what's happening in this town? They're coming in from the burgs, man. Bit shooters and they're gathering around waiting for orders. I feel the stream going by but I ain't fishing. Too long the mobs have been dead... now it's like Indians again. A chief is back and the crazy Soos is rejoicing. That's all I can say."

  "Kid Hand?"

  "Crazy, man. A shooter and he knew where his bread was. He was on the way up until he decided to get back in the ranks again. He should've stayed where he was."

  "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "He pulled on me. I don't take that crap."

  "He knew it was you, maybe? He knew it was anybody?"

  "Somebody said he might have been doing a personal favor."

  Toby got up and faced the blank window. "Sure, why not? Favors are important. It makes you look big. It proves like you're not a punk. It proves..."

  "It proves how fast you can get killed, too."

  Slowly, he turned around. "Am I in the middle, Mike?"

  "I don't see how."

  "Ask it straight."

  "Who is Dickerson?"

  "Nobody knows. Just that he's big."

  "Money?"

  "I guess."

  "Who takes Kid Hand's place?"

  "Whoever can grab it. I'd say Del Penner. He's pretty tough. He had a fall ten years ago, but came back to grab off the jukes in Chi, then moved into the bolita and hi-li in Miami. He was pushing Kid pretty hard."

  "Then maybe Kid's move in on me was part of a power grab."

  "Favors don't hurt nobody."

  "It killed Kid."

  "So he didn't know it was you."

  I looked at him a long time, then his face got tight and he turned away. When he gulped down his beer he looked at me, shrugged, and said, "Word goes it was a personal favor. You were a surprise. You just don't know what kind of a surprise. It wasn't with you. It was something else. That's all. I don't know... I don't want to know. Let me make my bucks my own way, only stay loose, man."

  "Why?"

  "You're hot now, man. Everybody knows. Everybody's looking."

  "I've had heat before."

  "Not like this." He looked into his beer, shrugged, and decided. "You ever hear of Marv Kania?"

  "No."

  "He's a contract man from St. Loo. Punk about twenty-eight, got a fall for murder second when he was a teen-ager, joined with Pax in K.C., then did the route with Arnold Philips on the coast and back to St. Loo. They figured he was a contract kill on Shulburger, Angelo, and Vince Pago and the big Carlysle hit in L.A. He's got plenty of cover and is as nuts as you are."

  "Wh
at does that make me, Toby?"

  "A target, man. He's in town with a slug in his gut and everybody knows how it happened. If he dies you're lucky. If he don't you're dead."

  I got up and put on my hat. "My luck's been pretty good lately," I said.

  He nodded gravely. "I hope it holds."

  When I went to open the door he added, "Maybe I don't, too."

  "Why?"

  "I don't want to be around when it stops. You'll make an awful splash."

  "It figures."

  "Sure it does," he said.

  Then I went back to her, the beautiful one whose hair hung dark and long, whose body was a quiet concert in curves and colors of white and shadow that rose softly under a single sheet into a woman's fulfillment of mounded breasts and soft clefts.

  She didn't hear me come in until I said, "Velda..."

  Then her eyes opened, slowly at first, then with the startled suddenness of a deer awakened and her hand moved and I knew what she had in it. When she knew it was me her fingers relaxed, came out from under the cover, and reached for mine.

  "You can lose that way, kid," I said.

  "Not when you're here."

  "It wasn't always me."

  "This is now, Mike," she said. It was almost me thinking again when I walked up the steps a couple of days ago.

  I took her hand, then in one full sweep flipped the sheet off her body and looked at her.

  What is it when you see woman naked? Woman. Long. Lovely. Tousled. Skin that looks slippery in the small light. Pink things that are the summit. A wide, shadowy mass that is the crest. Desire that rests in the soft fold of flesh that can speak and taste and tell that it wants you with the sudden contractions and quickening intake of breath. A mouth that opens wetly and moves with soundless words of love.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and let my fingers explore her. The invitation had always been there, but for the first time it was accepted. Now I could touch and feel and enjoy and know that this was mine. She gasped once, and said, "Your eyes are crazy, Mike."

  "You can't see them."

  "But I know. They're wild Irish brown green and they're crazy."

  "I know."

  "Then do what I want."

  "Not me, Kid. You're only a broad and I do what I want."

  "Then do it."

  "Are you ready?" I asked.

  "I've always been ready."

  "No you haven't."

  "I am now."

  Her face was turned toward mine, the high planes in her cheeks throwing dark shades toward her lips, her eyes bright with a strange wetness, and when I bent forward and kissed her it was like tasting the animal wildness of a tiger filled with an insensate hunger that wanted to swallow its victim whole and I knew what woman was like. Pure woman.

  Across the room, muffled because of the alcove, came a peculiar distant tone that made the scales, rising and falling with an eerie quality that had a banshee touch, and Velda said, "She's awake."

  I pulled the sheet up and tucked it around her shoulders. "She isn't."

  "We can go somewhere."

  "No. The biggest word."

  "Mike..."

  "First we get rid of the trouble. It won't be right until then."

  I could feel her eyes. "With you there will always be trouble."

  "Not this trouble."

  "Haven't we had enough?

  I shook my head. "Some people it's always with. You know me now. It comes fast, it lasts awhile, then it ends fast."

  "You never change, do you?"

  "Kitten, I don't expect to. Things happen, but they never change."

  "Will it be us?"

  "It has to be. In the meantime there are things to do. You ready?"

  She grinned at me, the implication clear. "I've always been ready. You just never asked before."

  "I never ask. I take."

  "Take."

  "When I'm ready. Not now. Get up."

  Velda was a woman. She slid out of bed and dressed, deliberately, so I could watch everything she did, then reached into the top drawer of the dresser and pulled out a clip holster and slid it inside her skirt, the slide going over the wide belt she wore. The flat-sided Browning didn't even make a bulge.

  I said, "If anybody ever shot me with that I'd tear their arms off."

  "Not if you got shot in the head," she told me.

  I called Rickerby from downstairs and he had a man stand by while we were gone. Sue was asleep, I thought, but I couldn't be sure. At least she wasn't going anyplace until we got back. We walked to the parking lot where I picked up the rented Ford and cut over to the West Side Highway.

  She waited until I was on the ramp to ask, "Where are we going?"

  "There's a place called 'The Angus Bull.' It's a new one for the racket boys."

  "Who told you?"

  "Pat."

  "And whom do I con?"

  "A man named Del Penner. If he isn't there you'll pick up a lead if you work it right. He was pushing Kid Hand and will probably take his place in the group. What you want to know is this... who is Mr. Dickerson?"

  She threw me a funny glance and I filled her in on the small details. I watched her out of the corner of my eyes while she picked it all apart and put it back together again. There was something new about her now that wasn't there seven years ago. Then she had been a secretary, a girl with her own P.I. ticket and the right to carry a gun. Then she had been a girl with a peculiar past I hadn't known about. Now she was a woman, still with a peculiar past and a gun, but with a strange new subtlety added that was nurtured during those years behind the Iron Curtain in the biggest chase scene civilization had ever known.

  "Where do we clear?"

  "Through Pat."

  "Or your friend Rickerby?"

  "Keep him as an alternate. It isn't his field yet, so we'll stay local."

  "Where will you be?"

  "Running down the immediate past of a guy called Basil Levitt. Pat came up with nothing. They're still on the job, but he had no office and no records. Whatever he carried he carried in his hat, but he sure was working for somebody. He was after you and the kid and was four days watching your joint. I don't know what we have going, but these are the only leads we have."

  "There's Sue."

  "She has nothing to say yet."

  "Did you believe what she said about her father trying to kill her?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it isn't logical. The kid's a neurotic type and until something proves out I'm not going along with childish notions."

  "Two dead men aren't notions."

  "There's more to it than that, baby. Let me do it my way, okay?'

  "Sure. It's always your way, isn't it?"

  "Sure."

  "Is that why I love you?"

  "Sure."

  "And you love me because I think that way?"

  "Why sure."

  "I'm home, Mike."

  I touched her knee and felt her leg harden. "You never were away, kid."

  She was on her own when I dropped her downtown. She grinned at me, waved, and I let her go. There was something relaxing about the whole thing now. No more tight feeling in the gut. No more of that big empty hole that was her. She was there and bigger than ever, still with the gun on her belt and ready to follow.

  Going through Levitt's place was only a matter of curiosity. It was a room, nothing more. The landlady said he had been there six months and never caused trouble, paid his rent, and she didn't want to talk to any more cops. The neighbors didn't know anything about him at all and didn't want to find out. The local tavern owner had never served him and couldn't care less. But up in his room the ash trays had been full of butts and there were two empty cartons in the garbage and anyone who smokes that much had to pick up cigarettes somewhere.

  Basil Levitt did it two blocks away. He got his papers there too. The old lady who ran the place remembered him well and didn't mind talking about it.

  "I know the on
e," she told me. "I wondered when the cops would get down here. I even woulda seen them only I wanted to see how fast they'd get here. Sure took you long enough. Where you from, son?"

  "Uptown."

  "You know what happened?"

  "Not yet."

  "So what do you want with me?"

  "Just talk, Mom."

  "So ask."

  "Suppose you tell." I grinned at her. "Maybe you want the third degree, sweetie, just like in TV... okay?"

  She waved her hand at me. "That stuff is dead. Who hits old ladies any more except delinquents?"

  "Me. I hit old ladies."

  "You look like the type. So ask me."

  "Okay... any friends?"

  She shook her head. "No, but he makes phone calls. One of the hot boys... never shuts the door." She nodded toward the pay booth in back.

  "You listened?"

  "Why not? I'm too old to screw so I get a kick out of love talk."

  "How about that?"

  "Yeah, how?" She smiled crookedly and opened herself a Coke. "He never talked love talk, never. Just money and always mad."

  "More, Mom."

  "He'd talk pretty big loot. Five G's was the last... like he was a betting man. Was he, son?"

  "He bet his skin and lost. Now more."

  She made a gesture with her shoulders. "Last time he was real mad. Said something was taking too long and wanted more loot. I don't think he got it."

  "Any names?"

  "Nope. He didn't call somebody's house, either."

  I waited and she grinned broadly.

  "He only called at a certain time. He had to speak up like wherever the other party was, it was damn noisy.

  "That's how come I heard him."

  "You'd make a good cop, Mom."

  "I been around long enough, son. You want to know something else?"

  "That's what I'm here for."

  "He carried a package once. It was all done up in brown paper and it wasn't light. It was a gun. Rifle all taken down, I'd say. You like that bit?"

  "You're doing great. How'd you know?"

  "Easy. It clunked when he set it down. Besides, I could smell the gun oil. My old man was a nut on those things before he kicked off. I smelled that stuff around the house for years."

  Then I knew what bugged me right after Basil Levitt died. I said my thanks and turned to go. She said, "Hey..."

  "What?"

  "Would you really hit an old lady?"