The Tough Guys Page 7

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I was almost at Ninth when two men turned the corner. They walked toward me and I knew they both saw me and I saw what they wanted. I crossed the street and they did too. Then I started back and began to run. So did they. I ran in here.”

  “Any cabs pass at all?”

  “Yes.” She looked out the window, thinking back. “None stopped. He could have come by after I ran and thought I never showed up.”

  “He’ll contact you again. Don’t worry.”

  There was a pathetic eagerness in her voice. “You really think so?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  She glanced at me again, worried. “I… dropped the suitcase. How will… he know?”

  “He’ll find a way,” I said.

  I let her sit there while I showered and shaved. I found a shirt that hadn’t been worn too often and put it on. There was still an unwrinkled tie and the sports jacket Vinnie insisted I hold for the fin I lent him fit as long as I didn’t try to button it.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to walk across town a mile or so. See some people I know. You’re going to stay here, kitten. It isn’t the finest, but it’s the best for the moment. Leave the snaplock on, no chain, and if anybody tries to get in, duck in the closet. I don’t think anybody will be back again, but just to be sure, when I get here I’ll knock four times twice and you won’t have to break a leg getting lost.”

  “All right.” The nervousness faded away in a small smile. “I don’t know why you’re doing all this… but thanks, Phil.”

  “Forget it. It’s doing me more good than it is you.”

  I walked to the door and she stopped me. She came over, took my hand and pressed something into it.

  “Take a cab,” she said.

  In my palm was a twenty. It was warm and silky-feeling in my fingers and I could smell the perfume smell it had picked up from her pocketbook. I held it out to her.

  “With that in my pocket I wouldn’t get past the first bar. I’d drink half of it and get rolled for the rest and never get back here for three four days maybe. Here, put it back.”

  She made no move to take it. “That won’t happen,” she said softly. “Give it a try.”

  I didn’t take a cab and I got by the first bar. But I walked across town anyway and passed a lot of bars on the way and wondered what the hell had happened to me in just a couple of hours.

  When I reached Rooney’s the lunch crowd had cleared out. But, as I expected, the west corner of the back room was still noisy with half the eighth-floor staff of the great paper up the street marking time between editions.

  I slid into a booth along the wall, ordered a sandwich and coffee, and borrowed the waiter’s pad and pencil. When he brought the lunch I handed him the note. “You know Dan Litvak?”

  His eyes indicated the back room. I handed him the note and he walked away with it.

  Dan was a tall, thin guy who seemed eternally bored unless you could read the awareness in his eyes. He had always moved slowly, not seeming to care what he did or what happened to anybody. He was never a man you could surprise with anything and when he walked up to my booth he studied me a moment, his face expressionless, then said, “Hello, Phil,” and sat down.

  His eyes didn’t miss a thing. With that one look he could have read down my last 10 years in detail. I gave him a break, though. I let him look at the twenty under my bill so he wouldn’t have to suffer the embarrassment of thinking he was sitting through a touch.

  I said, “Hello, Dan. Have some coffee?”

  He waved a sign to the waiter, then sat back. “Looking for a job?”

  “Hell, no. Who would hire me?”

  “You don’t have to go back to the same business.”

  “You know better than that, Dan. Anything else I’d go nuts in.”

  “I know. Now let’s get to the point of why you’re here.”

  I nodded. “Three years after I got sent up, word reached me about Rhino Massley dying. I never bothered finding out why or how. I want to know.”

  Dan toyed with the handle of his cup, turning it around in the saucer. “The date, if you’re interested, was August 10, ’68. It’s the kind of date you don’t forget very easily. Rhino was hit with polio in that epidemic we had that summer. He was one of 20 some adults who had it. He was in an iron lung up at Mayberry for a couple of months, then the one he ordered came through and he was shipped in it to that ranch he owns near Phoenix. He was still handling all his business from the lung and, although he wasn’t going to get any better physically, he was still the rackets boss hands down.”

  “He died of polio?”

  “No. A violent storm knocked out the power and the lung failed. The nurse on hand couldn’t get the motor kicking over that ran the stand-by generator and she tried to get into town to get help. When they got back it was too late. Rhino was dead. He was buried out there.”

  “What happened to his estate?”

  “This’ll kill you. What he had, which wasn’t much, only about a half million, went to polio research. Two hospitals.”

  “He had more than that,” I said.

  “Sure, but you know the mob. They’re set up for that contingency. If Rhino had cash, it was ground-buried who knows where. Oh, he had plenty more, all right, and it’s still wherever he put it. He couldn’t take it with him after all.”

  Dan looked at me again, a flicker of interest in his eyes. “What’s your angle?”

  “You know why I got sent to the can?”

  “I covered the case,” Dan said flatly.

  “And saw me convicted for attempting to extort money from an elected official.”

  “The D.A. had a good case.”

  “I know. The evidence was absolutely conclusive. It was black and white and open and shut. It was perhaps the most solid of any case the D.A. ever was presented with.”

  Dan grinned for a change. “That’s right. So solid he gave it over to his newest assistant to handle who won it with ease. Your former inquisitor, by the way, is now our current D.A.”

  “Good for him.”

  His eyebrows went up. “No recriminations?”

  “He wasn’t in on it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Nearly every con says he was framed.”

  “So I hear.”

  “So I was framed.”

  The grin came back again. “Yeah, I know.”

  Words didn’t want to form in my mouth. I waited until my breathing was right again and I could think. “How did you know, Dan?” There was an edge on my voice.

  He didn’t wipe the grin off at all. “Hell, man, this is my racket, too. Nobody in our business would ever have pulled the things off they said you did. Not unless they were crazy. But now you’re out and you can answer me one thing you ought to know.”

  “What?”

  “Who did it and why?”

  “Rhino, buddy. I found his protection wasn’t the long green to the right people, but information he collected on them that could lay them out. I let it be known I was going after the same information and make it public and was doing pretty well when the boom came down. They sacrificed the first guy I was after, probably for a bundle paying for his chagrin of exposure, then they worked it airtight against me.”

  “Rough.”

  “That lousy sheet could have stood behind me.”

  “You had them on a spot.”

  “Nuts. They’d been on other spots before. That stinking publisher Gates…”

  “Don’t talk ill of the dead.”

  It was my turn to be surprised. “When?”

  Dan shrugged. “A year ago. He was an editor over at Best and Hines. His heart gave out. He never did recover from losing the paper. Anyway, we’re back to the first question. Why all the reminiscing?”

  I looked at him across the table. “I don’t think Rhino Massley is dead, friend.”

  He didn’t say anything. He waved the waiter ove
r, handed him my check and a buck for his back-room bill, waited until I got the change and nodded me out. We walked down the street to his office, went through the lobby to the elevators and he called off a floor.

  Except for several offices and the photo lab on the north side, the picture morgue with its aisle after aisle of files took up the entire area. Dan checked at a cross file cabinet and from a big drawer brought out what he was looking for and handed it to me.

  It was a four-by-four positive of Rhino Massley stretched out in a coffin ringed with bank after bank of flowers. To erase all doubt Dan handed me an eight-by-ten blowup so I could see the dead bastard in all his final glory.

  When I handed it back he said, “Enough? I can get some clips from the file if you want.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t bother.”

  “Why?”

  “Danny boy, I’m only just starting and you don’t get the short stop blues at the beginning, y’know? Photos can be faked. Rhino could have laid real still in a box for a dead shot and from here you couldn’t tell the difference. Who took ’em, Dan?”

  He glanced at the back of the smaller one. “Gifford,” he said.

  “Unimpeachable.”

  He rode me downstairs and walked to the street. This time I did take a cab. I got out at the corner of the block and picked up some cold cuts at the delicatessen and started toward the house. I started to say hello to Mr. Crosetti, my neighbor, then stopped and gave him my package to hold for a minute and felt my teeth all showing in a crazy kind of grin, because across the street holding down a post where they were still looking for Terry were the two hoods who had worked me over that morning.

  I held my head down and the first guy didn’t even bother to give me a glance. I timed the step and the swing just right and slammed my fist into his stomach just over his belt line and the immediate spasmodic folding of his body sprayed puke over everything, and when he hit the sidewalk his mouth was a wide-open hole in a frantic, twisted face.

  His partner went for his gun instead of jumping me, and that was his mistake. My foot caught him in the crotch and he tried to scream and claw at his genitals and yell for help and beg for mercy all at the same time.

  But I’m lousy. Real lousy. This sportsmanship crap is for TV heroes. I like it the lousy way where the hoods don’t get the wrong idea about you and about coming back to get you and that kind of stuff. I kicked each one’s face into a terrible bloody mess, then went back across the street, and thanked Mr. Crosetti for holding my groceries. He didn’t look like he was going to be able to hold his.

  I knocked four times twice and she opened the door. I stepped in quickly, closing the door with my foot, feeling suddenly breathless because she was still wet, but this time from the shower and the water droplets were like little jewels sparkling all around her, the midnight of her hair longer now, out of its soft wave and sucked tightly against her skin. The towel she held around her was too brief. Beautifully too brief. She was wider in the shoulders than I thought. Lovely round dancer’s legs were a song of motion when she stepped away.

  She smiled and I smiled back, then the bottom fell out of the grocery bag and when everything began to tumble she reached out instinctively and then the towel went too.

  I shook my head so she’d know the groceries wouldn’t matter at all and I watched while she picked up the towel, smiled once more, and walked back to the shower.

  At 8 that night I got a sweater and skirt combination from Jeannie McDonald upstairs and Terry got dressed. Jeannie passed on the information that the two hoods had been picked up that afternoon by a new Buick sedan occupied by another pair of hard guys and as yet there were no repercussions.

  Terry had 300 bucks in her bag and we used part of it to sign her into the Enfield Hotel just off Seventh in the Times Square area. She used the name of Ann Spencer and paid a week in advance in lieu of luggage. Luckily, she had her hotel key with her so I took it to get some of her stuff out of the Sherman. There was no doubt about her movements having been spotted and most likely the hotel was staked out, but it wasn’t likely that there would be anybody on the floor.

  I was right. I packed one large bag with the things she asked for and brought along the smaller over-nighter.

  When I got back to the Enfield, I had her call the Sherman to ask if there were any messages for Terry Massley or Ann Lowry. The clerk said there weren’t.

  She put the phone down, concern deep on her face. I said, “Don’t worry, he’ll get in touch.”

  “I’m sure he will.” She spun around and strode to the window.

  That she sensed something was evident. She walked over and sat down opposite me. “You know my father, don’t you?”

  I tried to keep my face blank. “If he’s the same Massley I knew once, then I do.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “You won’t like it if I tell you.”

  “Perhaps not, but I’ll listen.”

  “All right. The Massley I knew was a hood,” I said. “He was the East Coast wheel for the syndicate and quite possibly head man there. He was a thief and a killer with two early falls against him, one in Chicago and one in San Francisco. A check on the back issues of any paper can verify this and, if you like, I’ll be glad to supply the datelines.”

  She knew I wasn’t lying. She said simply. “Never mind. It couldn’t be the same one.”

  I gave her back the possibility. I said, “The Massley I knew is supposed to be dead. I’ve even seen pictures of him in his coffin.”

  “This Massley you knew,” she asked, “what was his full name?”

  “John Lacy Massley. He was known as Rhino.”

  The frown between her eyes smoothed and a smile touched her mouth. “My father was Jean Stuart Massley. So they aren’t the same after all.” Then the obvious finally got through to her and her hands squeezed together again. “Somebody thinks my father… is the… one you mentioned.”

  “Perhaps.”

  She held the side of her hand against her mouth and bit into her finger.

  I said, “What personal effects did your mother have that might be important?”

  She shook her head vacantly. “Nothing. Her marriage license, divorce papers, insurance, and bank books.”

  “Letters?”

  “Only correspondence from the legal firm that handled the trust fund.”

  “Can I see all this?”

  She pointed to the still unopened over-nighter. “It’s all there. Do as you please.”

  I snapped the case open and laid the contents out on the coffee table. I went through each item, but nothing there had anything of seeming importance. All it did was make more indelible the simple fact that Terry was so sure of—I had the wrong Massley in mind.

  When I turned around, I was caught in the direct stare from her eyes.

  She said, “You thought my father was this other Massley, didn’t you?”

  I didn’t try to lie out. I nodded.

  “You were going to help me find him, if it had been the other one.”

  I nodded again, uncomfortable.

  “And now that you’re wrong?”

  I grinned at her. She didn’t waste time trying to fool you and, no matter how big and beautiful she was, she was still a dame caught alone with the shadows closing in behind her.

  I said, “I’m with you, Terry. I won’t bug out. You just got one hell of a slob in your corner though.”

  She uncurled from the chair, standing almost as tall as I was. There were lights in her eyes and when she came closer I saw they were wet. Her arms reached out and touched me, and then she was all the way there, warm and close, pressing so tightly I could feel every curve of her body melting into mine. Very softly, she said, “You’re no slob,” and then her mouth opened on mine and I tasted that crazy excitement again so bad I crushed her hard and tight until she threw her head back to breathe with a small, moaning sob.

  I had to leave before there was more. I was finding myself with limi
ts and inhibitions again and wondered briefly if it was going to be worth while coming back into society again. Then I knew it was and the thought passed. Terry smiled lazily when I left and I wanted to kiss her again. But what I had in mind wouldn’t make a kiss easy to take… or give. I was thinking louse thoughts once more. There were two J. Massleys involved and if there ever had been a name switch it would be following the common pattern to keep at least the first initial of the original name.

  It only took a few minutes to locate Gifford. He was still in his office finishing off a picture series that had to be up tomorrow. He said he’d be glad to meet me for coffee in 15 minutes and named a Sixth Avenue automat for the contact.

  When he arrived I called to him from a table, waited while he got his tray, then introduced myself over the coffee. Although we had never met before, I knew of his work and he remembered me.

  When I told him about seeing his shots of Rhino, he screwed up his face, remembering back.

  I said, “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Lousy shots, that’s all. No class.”

  “You went all the way to Phoenix for them?”

  Gifford shook his head. “Hell no, I was there in a private sanatorium.” He tapped his chest with a thumb. “Touch of T.B. I was there four months when Rhino died.”

  “You ever see him around?”

  “Not me. He lived on a ranch 20, maybe 30 miles off. Oh, I knew he was out there and running his business with that lung and all, but that’s it.”

  “Then you had a good look at the body.”

  “Sure. It was hurried, but there he was.”

  I squinted and shook my head impatiently. “Like how? Tell me.”

  “What’s to tell? I got a call from the paper at the time to get a body shot of Rhino for the night edition. At the time it was pretty big news and I was at the spot, so it wasn’t unreasonable to ask. I went over the day they were having the funeral, managed to get by the professional criers and found this woman who was in charge of things. She didn’t like it, but she let me into the room where the casket was for a quick shot.”

  “Who was this woman, family?”

  “No, Rhino left no family except for some cousins who weren’t there. She had been his nurse as I remember. Quite a looker.”