Me, Hood! Page 8

  I reached for the phone again, held my hand on it and thought back, all the way back to the beginning and ran it up to date. There was no more puzzle then. The pieces became a picture and faces and times and events and now there was nothing left to find out at all… except for one thing.

  All the tiredness left me and I felt good again, like that day in the beginning. The sucker trap was over and I was out of it and after tonight there wouldn’t be a kill list at all. Not for me. For a lot of others, maybe, but not me.

  I grabbed at the phone, rang Carmen’s number and she had it before it finished ringing the first time. Her voice almost cracked with anxiety when she said, “Ryan, Ryan, where are you?”

  “Home, Baby, I’m okay. What happened?”

  “We left with the rest. The police came up as I came out but there weren’t enough to catch us. We heard those shots and I thought it was you. I couldn’t get over there. It was like being caught in the tide. Everybody was screaming and pressing forward…”

  “You can forget it now.”

  “Who was it?”

  “’Fredo. They got him.”

  “Oh, Ryan.”

  “He was alive when I got there. He talked, kitten, and now I can really twist some tails. You want to see it happen?”

  “Only… if I can help.”

  “You can. Look, grab a cab and come over here, I’ll be waiting outside. We can go on from here.” I gave her my address, hung up and went in and changed my shirt. I walked past Mario Sen to the street and stood in the shadows, waiting.

  When the cab stopped I got in and there was my lovely Carmen. Her breath half-caught in a relieved sob. She said my name and buried her face against my neck. I gave the driver my old address.

  The street was dying. What life it had left showed in the few windows glowing a sickly yellow. Only a handful of kids made noises under the street lights. The plague it had even seemed to reroute traffic which hurried by as if anxious to get away from the old and decaying.

  I stopped, and Carmen looked up at me quizzically, her hand tight on my arm. “Thinking?”

  “Reliving a little.”

  “Oh?”

  “I used to live here.” I nodded toward the blank row of windows that faced the second floor.

  A thin stoop-shouldered old man, his face gaunt under the grey velvet of a beard, shuffled out of the darkness, glanced at us suspiciously, then twisted his mouth into a grin. “Evenin’, Mr. Ryan. You come back for a last look?”

  “Hi, Sandy. No, just a little unfinished business. How come you’re still here?”

  “That Kopek Wrecking outfit got a bunch of us around. Supposed to keep out sleepers. You remember when they knocked down that place with them two bums holed up inside? Cost them for that.”

  I motioned toward the hallway on my right. “Anybody here?”

  “Steve. He’ll be drunk. You want to see him?”

  “Not specially.”

  He flipped an off beat salute and said, “Well, have fun. Can’t see why anybody’d come back here. Three more weeks everybody’s out and down they come.”

  We watched him walk off and Carmen said, “Sad little man.”

  I took her arm and we went up the time worn brownstone steps into the open maw of the tenement.

  The scars of occupancy were still fresh, the feel of people still there. The pale light of the unshaded bulb overhead gave a false warmth and cast long, strange shadows around us. From somewhere in the back came a cough and the mumble of a voice thick with liquor.

  A box-like professional torch with Kopek Wrecking stenciled on it was wedged in the angle between the bannister and the newel post. I picked it up and snapped on the switch. Then I smiled at Carmen, took her hand and started up the stairs.

  At the door I stopped and turned her head toward mine. “You haven’t said anything.”

  Her eyes laughed at me. She waved her hand at the darkness outside the light. “What can I say? Everything is so… strange.” An involuntary shiver seemed to touch her and she drew closer to me. “The things you do… are so different. I never know what to expect.”

  “They’re hood things, kitten.”

  For a moment she seemed pensive, then she shook her head lightly. “You’re not really, Ryan. In the beginning you were, but something’s happened to you.”

  “Not to me, sugar. Nothing in this whole lousy world is going to shake me up. I like being a hood. To me it’s the only way I can tell off this stupid race of slobs. I can keep out of their damned organizations and petty grievances and keep them away from me. I can drink my own kind of poison and be dirty mean when they want me to drink theirs.”

  I tried the knob. It turned easily and the door opened.

  In a way it was like visiting your own tomb.

  There was my chair by the window. The drop leaf table Mrs. Winkler gave me was still in its usual position by the wall. Somebody had stolen the mirror and the magazine rack. When I turned the light into the bedroom the framework of the iron bed made a grilled pattern in shadows on the wall. Somebody had swiped the mattresses too.

  I walked to the window and looked out into the street. The haze of dirt put things out of focus. I turned the head of the torch ceilingwise and put it on the floor, then sat down in the armchair.

  Almost softly I said, “It’s a ‘once-upon-a-time’ story. It started in Lisbon where two drunks named ’Fredo and Spanish Tom accidentally witnessed the caching of a narcotics shipment. In cubic displacement it only made a small package, eight kilos worth, but in value a multi-million dollar proposition. They never realized the full value of it. A few grand was as far as they could think.

  “But others knew what it meant. In port they contacted a Spanish speaking buddy, Juan Gonzales. He knew a guy who had the loot to make the buy. That takes us to my old friend Billings. The louse.”

  For some reason I didn’t feel the quick flush of hate I used to feel when I thought of his name.

  “Juan made the buy for Billings, all right, and probably before he could pass over the ten grand he paid for it to Tom and ’Fredo, they shipped out. Juan didn’t care for ten grand… you see, he was going to be Billings’ partner in something really big. He even told his wife the great things they’d do… things you don’t do on only ten grand.

  “And now the rub. Billings didn’t want a partner. The big cross was coming up and Juan could feel it. He didn’t have a chance in the world and he protected his wife the only way he could. He gave her that ten grand then tried to skip out. He didn’t get far. Billings was waiting. He shoved him under a truck and that took care of Juan. He didn’t worry about the other two since they never knew who made the buy.”

  The curiosity in her eyes deepened. Her tongue made a slight movement between her teeth as she followed my thought. She said, “But those other two… they’re dead.”

  “I know. I’ll come to that.

  “Billings put eight kilos of junk on the market. I can’t figure how he could have been so incredibly stupid, but apparently his greed got the better of him. Eight kilos! This was the biggest load that ever hit the states in one piece!”

  I stopped a moment, thought about it, then said reflectively, “You know, this was what they were waiting for.”

  “They?” She was perched on the edge of the dropleaf table, her hands folded under her breasts making them strain against the fabric of the raincoat.

  “They, sugar. Whenever eight kilos of H gets away from its handlers there’s some hell waiting for somebody. An organizational hijacking they could cope with, but not coincidence. They didn’t know where it was, but they knew it would show up in time. When it did they went after it and Billings was their target. The slob got smart too late.

  “When the word went out how hot the junk was nobody would touch it. There were no buyers. That’s when Billings knew he was about to be tapped. He tried to protect himself by going to a policing agency, but again it was too late. The stakes were too high. They knocked off his protection
, moved in close and were ready to tap him out.

  “Buddy Billings made his final move. He knew they wanted the stuff as well as him, so like he had done once before, he included me in the mess. Hell, he knew where I lived. He wanted me dead or imprisoned… anything to pay for the anxiety I had made him live with all the days I had hunted for him.”

  I stopped, sucked in a deep breath and looked at the ceiling patterns again.

  “He hid the junk in my place, kid. He probably figured on writing an anonymous letter or something but they caught up with him beforehand. He wasn’t quite dead when a cop found him. His last words implicated me.

  “Now catch this. By now the underworld has been rattling with this story. The policy agency involved have a good picture of what they’re after. This stuff has to be found before the original owners get it and put it into circulation.

  “The catch, kiddo. They have two names. Mine, and a certain Lodo. The last one is a killer. The head of operation kill. The wheel that Mafia HQ keeps set up to enforce its east coast programs and keep things in line. Lodo is rarely called upon, that’s how clever the organization is, how big it is, how tightly it can work within the frameworks of certain governments. Narcotics are big… and legal… businesses in several countries. Lodo is an important cog in the machine… and Lodo is only a cover name.

  “Lodo must be smart, untouchable, able to operate without suspicion. And now Lodo is responsible for recovery of eight kilos of H.”

  She began to see what I was driving at. “And all that time it was… at your place?”

  “That’s right.”

  She looked around quickly. “Here?”

  I nodded. “Billings’ mistake. He didn’t know about the move.”

  “All that… is here?”

  “I could almost say where.”

  She waited, her face reflecting her interest. I got up, went to the kitchen and in the barren limits of the light felt for the obvious wall partition by the sink that opened onto a series of valves. I hauled the carton out and shut the partition. My arm hit a cup that still stood on the sink and it crashed to the floor.

  In the living room I heard Carmen gasp.

  I put the carton beside the torch and sat down. “There was no other place in this dump to hide anything,” I said.

  The box fascinated her. I tapped it with my foot. “Eight kilos. Millions. Not one or two. Not ten. More than that. Enough to get a whole city killed off.”

  “It… doesn’t seem like much,” she admitted.

  “It never does.”

  “And you found it. Nobody else could. Just you.” Her voice held a touch of admiration and she was smiling.

  “There were red herrings. Money Billings won on the nags. The fuzz thought it was loot I paid him for the stuff. You know, all that time they sucked me in thinking I had possession and were trying to get it out of me. They knew I had to play their little game or else.”

  “Game?”

  “Sure, sweetie. In my own crazy way I’m a fuzz too. They played the game to the hilt. They played it two ways at once and played it smart. I was the complete unknown and they didn’t know what to do with me. What they pulled might be called the Ultimate Stunt. I like that. It fits real well. But what I like best is what I told them in the beginning. I was right. I was bigger than their whole damn department. Hoodtown’s my back yard too and the game is my game as much as theirs. If I felt like it I could bust this play open like a ripe egg. Alone.”

  I said suddenly, “What made you do it. Carmen?”

  She frowned and asked the question silently.

  “Take the job, I mean.”

  “Job?”

  “Lodo” I said softly. “My beautiful big lovely is Lodo.”

  Her breath came in a gasp. “Ryan!”

  “I’m going to guess again, kid. Check me. You probably never have before. But look deep. Look at a kid brought up around the gaming tables whose ears catch talk and intents kids shouldn’t hear. Look at a kid who gets used to wrong money young, who learns the mechanics of card handling from an expert and who finds a taste for those things develop into a lust for them.”

  The next thing I let come out slowly.

  “Look at a kid who blew a guy’s head off from ten feet away and think of what impact that had on a mind already decaying.”

  For a moment a terrible shudder touched her shoulders and the beauty of her face was twisted with anguish.

  “Stop it, Ryan! These things you’re guessing…”

  I shook my head. “I’m not guessing any more, kitten.”

  Her teeth bit into her lip and the tears that made her eyes swim flooded out and coursed down her cheeks.

  I said, “Lodo left a line to Billings… a slim one, a deliberate one. Lodo had to maintain that connection to be in on things if they ever developed, yet not enough to be suspicious. That line was the sweet bouquet you sent the departed. The eventuality paid off. I followed it.

  “Your next move was easy. On our first lunch date you went to the ladies room as per usual, but made a phone call that had me tailed. You made all the provisions for a tap job in my own apartment using organization punks and sat back and waited.”

  “Ryan…” her eyes were pleading, “do you think I could do that?”

  “Sure. The kill wasn’t yours directly. You just made the call. Operation tappo went into effect automatically. Trouble was, it didn’t come off. The big second phase began. I was cultivated for information. I was still an enigma. Nobody could figure my part in it at all. Hell, don’t feel sorry about it, I didn’t know either.”

  She shook her head, telling me it was wrong, all wrong, but I didn’t watch.

  “My friend Art died before I could catch on. He had some great connections, that guy. They went pretty far. He was a big hero in the Italian campaign during the war. He made a lot of friends over there. He called on one to do some poking for him. He found out Lodo was a cover name and was about to find out who Lodo was. So Art had to die.

  “Coincidence entered the picture again. You weren’t deliberately set up for it… the gimmick was just there, that’s all.”

  “Gimmick?” Her voice was quiet, her face expressionless.

  “The tape recorder attachment on the phone. One in the office, one at home. You picked up my conversation with Art, went to his place and while he was asleep, killed him yourself or had him killed.”

  “No!”

  I shrugged. “It really doesn’t matter who did it. I prefer thinking it was you. By this time your organization had run down the Lisbon kids. One was bumped, one to go. The game was all yours when I figured when the last one would be. You had your stooges there and waiting and when the contact was made they beat me to the guy and the tap cleaned up that end of things.”

  I leaned back in the chair and stretched out my feet. “Pretty quick now this outfit of yours will take plenty of lumps.”

  “Please, Ryan… ”

  “You suckered me, kiddo. I’m sore at the whole business now. I’m sore because when things were getting tight you called out the troops. I was on everybody’s kill list. All the big ones were called in, guns from all over the country. Suddenly I’m thinking like fuzz and want the whole damn bunch slammed. Suddenly I know that for a change I can be useful. Suddenly I see that playing hood isn’t the big thing after all because it’s playing with the things I hate.”

  I took a big, deep breath. “And suddenly I’m hating those things especially hard because I started to be in love for the first time and now I don’t know if it will ever happen again. Suddenly I have a terrible feeling like when I walked in the room here. It’s all over. Everything’s all over. The mistakes have all been made and now it’s all over.”

  And then she showed me how the first part was wrong and the second right. The mistake still to go was mine in thinking I could get my rod out before she could move. I was wrong. It was about to be all over. In that I was right.

  I could see the hole in the end of the hammer
less automatic she pointed at my head. It was a fascinating thing, a bottomless black eye. I looked over it at Carmen’s smile. It was strained at first, then relaxed.

  She was still very beautiful.

  “What would you have done, Ryan?”

  I shrugged, gauging the distance between us. I’d make the try, all right, but it would be no use.

  “You were right, you know.” She tossed her head, making her hair swirl again. “The Peter Haynes Company is a front. Very legal, economically sound. A wonderful place to keep… other records. A good source of income to keep key personnel in funds and in style until their services are needed. My file of personal correspondence there would be very enlightening to a cipher expert, but completely meaningless to anyone else.”

  When I gave her a hard smile she said, “That one little fact could break and smash half of the whole organization.”

  And now it was too late.

  “What would you have done, Ryan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Killed me?”

  I didn’t lie about it. “No.”

  “Being a hood never became you. The one act of turning me in would have justified you. You could have walked straight again. I think now you really want to.

  “Two things would have happened. In this state, the chair… or with a good lawyer, permanently confined to a mental institution. I couldn’t live that way. It would be better to be dead.”

  Her face softened and the light glinted on the wetness that lay along her cheeks. “Only you couldn’t kill me, Ryan. Why?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  I could hardly make out her words. “It makes a difference.”

  “I told you. I was falling in love. I was a jerk. So now I pay for being a jerk. A whole lifetime I laugh at the idiots who get tied up in love knots and then it happens to me. Well at least I won’t be hurting for long. I’m going to make you do it to me fast, kitten.”

  “Please don’t.” Her lip was tight in her teeth, choking something back. “Did you really love me, Irish?”

  “Okay, kid, get the last laugh. Make it loud. It was true. You were the one. I loved you very much.”