The Tough Guys Page 8

  “Then who were the mourners?”

  “Hell, you can imagine. Hoods, politicians who wanted to stay in with the next-in-line, whoever it would be, the usual business. You know.”

  “Sure.”

  Gifford studied me. “Anything special in this? Like with pictures?”

  “I don’t know. I’m groping. Tell me, what did the body look like?”

  He made a gesture with his shoulders. “What do they all look like? Dead. Waxy. Only difference here was the coffin wasn’t the kind that opened down to the waist. Rhino’s body was so twisted they kept him covered to the neck. All you could see was his face and the tips of his fingers where they crossed on his chest.” He paused, fingered his mouth thoughtfully, then added, “As I remember, they only opened the casket for a short time so the public could have one last, quick look. Rhino had been pretty sensitive about his condition and had left orders to that effect.”

  “He was buried there?”

  “Yup. Cemetery out near the hills. They didn’t keep him around long, either. He was planted two days after he died.”

  “Oh?”

  Gifford drummed on the table top with his fingers. “How come all the interest?”

  “I had the idea Rhino Massley could still be alive.”

  For a moment his face took on a thoughtful look, then he shook his head. “I’ve seen dead men before.”

  “Anybody in a coffin automatically looks dead,” I told him.

  “Good assumption. Go on.”

  “Some makeup, total immobilization, easy to achieve in a three-quarters’ casket, only allow a quick, unstudied look, and live men can seem pretty damn dead.”

  “Reasonable, but that’s assuming something else.”

  “What?”

  “His motive.”

  And that was that. There wasn’t any damn motive in the world. He was already on top, he had no place to go that an iron lung couldn’t be spotted, and no reason to fake his death anyway.

  I thanked Gifford and broke up the party.

  I turned south on Sixth, walking aimlessly back to the Enfield. Overhead a low rumble shook the night and I could smell the rain in the air. It started before I reached the end of the block and it felt good. Anything was better than that down-the-drain feeling of knowing your grand hopes had been washed right out of existence.

  Damn that Rhino anyway, why the hell couldn’t he have stayed alive! I would have choked him as he lay in that lung of his and laughed in his face when he died. I would have given anything to have been there the night the power blew out. Man, I could have watched him die by inches in his cell like I did in mine. I could have watched his face in that mirror over his head beg for me to do something and, while he kicked off inch by inch, I could have toasted his passing with a cold brew.

  I stood there on the corner waiting for the light to change, and then just as suddenly as it had turned sour it turned sweet again. In a way it was reaching for straws, but it made me feel good and light-headed like before when there was a purpose left in life yet, and this started with an assumption too.

  Assuming that Terry’s father was Rhino Massley, then somehow he did have a reason for playing dead.

  And with that the big second assumption was laid right out in front of me. If Rhino was alive, then he had not only been assumed dead, but assumed sick too. No polio victim in a lung could hide out long anywhere, far less travel around!

  I grinned at the night and held my face up to the rain. I was going against all logic and flying in the face of the classic objectiveness we had been taught to observe. It was a crazy Don Quixote move, only on the other end there might possibly be a real giant.

  I opened the door of my flat and switched on the light. The two boys sitting together on the couch and pointing the cold round noses of the automatics at me stood up. They were different ones, these. Neither smiled.

  The taller one said, “Turn around and let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “You talk too much,” he told me. His hand gave an easy push, a hint, but it was enough. I turned around and headed outside again. The car was there at the curb, the back door open. I got in with one on either side.

  In a way it was funny. Ten years of being alone, hating every minute of it. Now when I wanted it, what did I get… togetherness. I started to laugh and the hood on my right looked at me like I had spilled a few marbles.

  On the East Side there’s a steak house known as Ruby’s and from the back room, across a platterful of T-bone, Mannie Waller did his business. His side was a private little niche with a phone, a walnut humidor of cigars and a shelf of light wine that was all he would drink. He was a big heavy pig of a guy who ate himself into obesity but in doing it kept out of the line of fire and inherited a fat hunk of the underworld business when the others knocked themselves off.

  Nobody knew just where Mannie stood, but nobody was trying to push him out, either. Talk had it that Mannie was a Syndicate man, a paymaster for the uptown boys. He was part of a new quiet mob that had moved in and taken over after the Appalachin fiasco.

  And now Mannie was looking up at me, wiping the grease from his chin. He said, “Sit down.”

  I took too long. The hood beside me gave me a cut in the gut with the edge of his hand and I folded into the chair.

  Mannie said, “No hands, Joe. You know what he did to Jolly and Hal.”

  “That why you dragged me down here?”

  He hunched his fat shoulders and grinned again. “Not entirely, but still I got to keep telling you little guys. One gets tough, the others try it, and then I got trouble. We like to keep things quiet. The boys were only doing a job.” He belched and settled back in his chair. “They look for a girl. She ran in your place. You know something about this?”

  “You know what I know. Them idiots bust in and looked around. They know what they saw.”

  “Sure. Nothing. They look all through that tenement and find the same thing. Only trouble is she don’t get out on the roof or through the cellar and she don’t have time to get any place else but to your joint.”

  “So?”

  “So she knows where she’s going.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  Joe’s gun muzzle slashed the top of my head open. It turned my skull into a white hot sheet of flame that took too long to subside. Mannie was nodding approvingly, waiting.

  Mannie said, “Maybe I’m wrong. Me, I got to be sure. You know where this dame is, you tell me. I got a C waiting. You want to hold out… so it’s your funeral. Maybe later we find out we’re wrong and you got to take a beating for no reason. I send you a C anyway. I’m a good guy. Meantime, you gotta hurt a little. You know how it is.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I know how it is, but since when are you playing it stupid?”

  His brows twitched and rose in a slow gesture of surprise. “You think I am that, eh?”

  “You’re sure showing all the signs. What would anybody want with me?”

  Mannie enjoyed his moment. He scraped his chair back from the table, folded his hands over his stomach, and smiled. “Now, that is something to think about, hey? So I’ll tell you.” He licked his lips with contentment and rumbled a laugh like Sidney Greenstreet used to in the Humphrey Bogart movies.

  “The girl she runs in and don’t come out. She don’t have time to go anywhere but your place. Now, if you’re a nothing, then she comes out. But if you’re a something, then maybe not. So we ask around about you and find out some funny things. Used to be a big shot, hey? Reporter, and a hot one. You laid out Anthony Smith’s bunch after the war and you was the guy who went to town on the Petersen snatch. You sure was a big one until you held out the wrong hand.”

  “So what?”

  “So you’re big two ways. This girl, when she runs she goes straight to the only big brain around who at the same time is muscle enough to take care of things the hard way. In all the block there’s nobody but bums and punks and hookers. You’re the only big one…” he point
ed a finger at me to make his point “… and to you she goes.”

  “Look…”

  “No,” Mannie said. “You talk to me and I listen, but I won’t look. Where is the girl?”

  I spit on the floor in front of his feet. “Drop dead,” I told him.

  Mannie smiled indulgently again, his thick lips wetly red like fresh opened meat. “Take him upstairs, Joe,” he said.

  The rod went in my ribs again, a cold round rudder that showed me the way to the back, the iron staircase going to the third floor, the steel fire door, and the big room inside. It steered me toward the wall where the packing cases were and sensed when I was going to make my move because it beat me to the trick with a quick downward slash and I was all sobbing pain again, trying to yell out against the fire in my head and the insistent drumming of heavy feet on my ribs.

  There were times when they would stop and ask about the girl and twice I almost told them but they didn’t let me get my breath and after that I couldn’t tell them. Then the feet and the hands and even the things they used stopped hurting and started to be nothing more than a nuisance and far-away sounds, and I drifted off into the deep black that’s at the end of time.

  They had used wire on my wrists and ankles and just left me there on the floor. I stared at the bare wood, tasted the dirt that had been ground into my mouth, and saw the dark red of the splotches my blood had made.

  Any movement was pure torture and, when I managed to turn over, my breathing became a series of convulsive sobs that tried to tear my chest out. Somehow I got on my knees, my hands behind my back, fighting the terrible cramps that racked at pounded and beaten muscle tissue.

  To one side, the heavily-barred window was showing a brighter gray now. Somewhere beyond the apartments and office buildings the sun was rising and soon the city would too.

  There wasn’t much time left.

  Near me was a spool of baling wire. The two lengths I had been wrapped in came from that reel and seeing it there burned a little hole in my brain until I realized what it meant. There had to be cutters around somewhere.

  I had to roll over completely three times to reach the packing crate. I lay on my side and lashed out with my feet until I had the crate rocking and finally tilted up against the wall. The next kick brought it over and with it the cutters that had been lying on top.

  It was almost impossible to force life into my hands, but somehow it happened. I knelt there, fingering the cutters, and finally cut through the strands around my legs. It made life more bearable for a while and made it easier to recover the tool when I dropped it trying to free my hands.

  Then it was done and the sun was a bright thing laying a wide band of light across the floor while it brought to life the city outside. There was a toilet and a basin in a cubicle in the corner and I soaked myself down, washing the cuts and cleaning the grime and dried blood from my face. It was bad, but I had awakened other times when it had been just as bad.

  The band of sunlight was touching the far wall when I heard them coming. They stopped several times because Mannie Waller couldn’t make the stairs all at once. Near the top, one got impatient as I knew he would and came on ahead. I laid the hunk of piping I had picked up across his head and caught him before he fell. I had him out of the way and his .38 in my hand before the other came in. The other one tried to yell before the pipe came down but it never reached his lips. The pipe smashed his forehead into a bloody mess and he tumbled into my arms and slid to the floor.

  When Mannie came in the white sickness showed on his face and he stood still, absolutely still, trying hard to take his eyes off the two on the floor. He knew I had to be behind him. He knew I’d have a rod and he knew he was real close to being dead.

  Touching the back of his skull with the muzzle of the .38 was only a gesture, but the effect was beautiful. Big Mannie, the Boss, the Head Man, went into a violent fit of trembling, making whimpering sounds that had a pleading tone to them.

  I used the wire on all of them, twisted hard into the flesh so that you could barely see it. When Joe moaned and opened his eyes I kicked him insensible and let Mannie see it. Then I squatted down beside the fat man, the clippers in my hand opening and shutting suggestively, and in that movement and metallic sound he read all the terrible things that could possibly happen to him and his eyes rolled in his head.

  I said, “You’re going to talk, Mannie. I heard some things so I know what’s going on, and if you lie I’ll know it and it will be the last lie you’ll tell me. You understand?”

  He couldn’t talk. Spit ran out of his mouth as he bobbed his head, never taking his eyes from the clippers.

  “Who is the girl?”

  Mannie wet his lips, trying desperately to say something. He finally made it. “Massley’s kid.”

  “Rhino’s?”

  His jowls shook again with the nod. “Yeah, Rhino.”

  I paused, savoring the next moment. “He’s alive then?”

  The expression on his face made me wish I hadn’t asked it. Even in his fear he was completely puzzled by it. He shook his head, swallowed hard, and said, “Rhino… he’s dead.”

  “Then why do you want the girl?”

  He tried not to say it, but when I moved those clippers toward his mouth he couldn’t keep it in at all. “Rhino left papers… his wife had them.”

  “What kind of papers?”

  “Big papers. They could send up lots of guys. They were… Rhino’s cover… his protection. He even could break up… the organization with them.”

  “Why didn’t you get them before this?”

  “His woman. She knew where he kept them but she disappeared. Nobody knows until she dies where she is.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “So she gets the papers, don’t she? She comes east, what for if not to make contacts and use them. She’s big trouble to everybody. She will die.”

  “And you were elected to kill her?”

  He blubbered softly until I touched him with the clippers again. “I get orders… you know,” he whimpered.

  “From who?”

  His eyes tried to bug out and his tongue was even too dry to dampen his mouth. “How… can I know. It’s by phone. I get the word… then I do it”

  “Names, Mannie.”

  You could smell the fear coming from his pores. He tried to talk and couldn’t. “Okay,” I said with a fat grin, “so maybe you don’t know, but let me put in a word, too. If she dies, so will you, fatty.”

  “No! No… anybody will kill this girl. She is dangerous to many big people.”

  “But if she dies, you’ll be right behind her, understand?”

  He knew I wasn’t going to kill him then. He nodded quickly, eager to please, then I gave him a boot that wiped all the eagerness off. I did it enough, so he knew what it was like to play it like back in the old days, and walked out. Only they wouldn’t have it so easy. I still had the clippers in my back pocket.

  I took another cab and waited until I got back to my place again before I let it all come through to me, bit by bit. I cleaned up right, shaved, and spoke to myself in the mirror. All the bits and pieces were starting to pull together and show signs of belonging to an orderly whole.

  It made a nice, satisfying picture with only one ugly blot in the middle. Perhaps Rhino wasn’t alive, but Terry still came from his loins. It was going to be hard to tell her that. But at the moment the prime thing was to keep her hidden. She was the target in the game from every angle. Orders were for the mob to take her. On top of that somebody else was dealing himself into the game. Somebody who said he was her father.

  At the corner I called Dan Litvak and asked him to meet me in Rosario’s in an hour. He got there right after

  I did, raised his eyebrows a little when he saw my face, but made no comment at all.

  I said, “I need another favor, Dan. Check through the files and run down a Jean Stuart Massley.”

  “Still on that kick?”

  “It’s
looking up.”

  “Anything you can tell me?”

  I brought him up to date with all the details. His face never changed, but in back of his eyes strange things were happening. He let me finish, then said, “You think both Massleys were the same?”

  “Could be.”

  “And if Rhino Massley is, as he seems to be… dead?”

  I shrugged, “Then I want his papers. This whole thing started over those documents. I lost seven years because of them and now I want some kicks.”

  “Have you tried being sensible about the bit?”

  “Like how?”

  “Like how, if you handle this right, you can throw it back in a lot of faces the right way and maybe get back on top again. Make a story of it and every sheet in the country will want you on the staff.”

  “Nuts.”

  “Think it over anyway.” He swilled the coffee down and climbed out of the booth. “Anything else you want?”

  “Yes. Find out who the doctor was who handled Rhino’s case. If you can get his medical history, so much the better.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard.”

  I called from the Enfield Hotel lobby and she sounded a little breathless. It was as if she had been expecting me and all the anticipation showed in a few husky words. It was a heady feeling, thinking there was someone waiting. It had been a long time since there had been anything like that. And now it was only a thought and a foolish one at that. Who the hell was I to invite such thoughts at all? Phil Rocca, ex-con, the big nothing. Sweaty underwear, dirty shirt and somebody else’s coat. Great.

  Upstairs was a lovely woman. She was waiting, all right, because I might have some news about her old man. When I told her what I had, she wouldn’t be waiting any more. So forget it, idiot boy. Let her just be something that happened and nothing more. Let’s not get hurt again.

  But it didn’t happen like that. She was a smiling Valkyrie standing in the doorway, hair like a black waterfall on her shoulders and her hands out to take mine. Her eyes were laughing and her mouth told me she missed me. She laid her cheek against mine and squeezed my arm, then suddenly realized that there was a difference and her eyes went wide and she traced the shoe marks on my face with the tips of her fingers.