“Phew!” said Toni.
“What is it?”
“Bacon fat, I think. But corroded.”
“You mean old?”
“Ancient.”
The bowl was of the family variety, usually used for serving up vegetables. How long had Sidney Wragge saved this grease? My mind stalled and balked at the picture of the fat man over a stove, cooking in this ancient lard, meticulously saving his bacon drippings for the next day’s repast. He wasn’t the type. He would be more at home in the Gourmet Society, fiddling with canapés and truffles, mixing intricate sauces and rubbing garlic tenderly in wooden salad bowls.
And the rest of the food in his box was just as ridiculous. Another smaller dish held the leavings of three boiled potatoes, a pale and greenish color. There were several bottles of cheap soda pop up high near the ice; a variety of liquid refreshment favored by small boys only, a sickly sweet lemon drink called Lemona. Had Sidney Wragge quenched his thirst with such drainage as this? Was he the type to munch stale and drab potato leavings?
“Foo!” said Toni, easing out a worn veal cutlet, stale and old and half gnawed away. “This fat man sure was a slob when it came to leftovers.”
She was right, of course. Any schoolboy would have come to the same conclusion here. I began to check it through my mental adding machine. The mind of a detective is a strange and delicate instrument, a sieve through which the flotsam and jetsam of assorted information and inspiration must be forever strained and filtered and filed away for future reference. Once before, long ago, I had gained a head start on a weird assignment by correctly appraising a woman’s closet. The intimate corners of a nest always reveal character. You look at a lampshade and guess at the buyer’s taste. You sniff a perfume and your mind clicks into a reflex judgment of the woman who wears the smell.
And this icebox? What was it telling me? How could this mess of garbage and goo belong to such a man as Sidney Wragge? No man on earth could develop such a contradicting series of personal tabs. Was he schizophrenic? Was he a Jekyll and Hyde? The idea sang with a high, sharp note in my tired head. I found myself back once again in Linda Spain’s little love nest, staring in amusement at the bad painting Wragge had bought her. I found myself weighing the incense burner and placing it on the growing list of incongruities. And finally, when I began to add it all up, Linda Spain herself became the crowning idiocy in Wragge’s roster of personal belongings. And something suddenly clicked and fell into place as I slammed the refrigerator door shut and decided to get out of there.
But at that moment the lights went out. Somebody came in. There was a stirring in the tiny corridor beyond the living room and I heard Toni suck in a deep sigh of astonishment.
“Elmo!” she said.
Then I saw him. I clawed back at the refrigerator handle in a desperate gesture that might bring me light. The door swung open and gave me a square of illumination, but not enough to define him clearly. The room heaved for me. The movement of Elmo exploded in my face. There was a moment when I saw the skulking shape moving in on me, and after that he was on me and all over me, forcing me back so that the door banged shut again and we were rolling and bouncing on the assorted pots and pans.
He was big. In the first flickering moment of his assault he hit me with his full weight, a ton of fat and muscle, an elephantine bulk who knew how to use his great and ponderous frame. He crashed against me and the breath sailed out of me, leaving me gasping and reaching feebly for the automatic I had taken from Masters. But there would be no time for firearms. He brought down his huge hands, blowing his hot and dirty breath into me, grunting and grumbling as he tried for my face. A filthy word escaped his lips and filtered through the heat of our struggle, and the word made me manic.
I said his name and the sound of it worked to unleash the needed fire in me, reminding me of my last fracas with him, so that I tried for his midriff, kicking up at him in the French style of fighting. I kneed him finally, a lusty blow that found the weak portion of his groin. I heard him grunt and then he went soft above me and I knew that it was time for the other knee.
In the same place.
Elmo sucked air and clawed at his gut as I found a convenient skillet and beat his head with it. I heard him gasp and he slid away and for a time I lost sight of his hands. But he showed them to me a moment later. And he had a gun in one of them. He brought it down against my head, a flat and leveling blow; a quick and metallic crash that sent me spinning out of the immediate gloom into a deeper and blacker pit. I was out again.
But paralyzed.
CHAPTER 26
Sidney Wragge’s Apartment
11:00 P.M.—July 19th
The hole I fell into was deep and dark and at the bottom of it there was water, because I splashed into it, over my head and gurgling in my private bubble bath. Down where I was, only the sound of my own internal twitching bothered me, until a pixie with a big mop began to slap my face. And I started to yell at the pixie, but no sounds came from my blubbering lips. The persistent pixie continued to massage me with the mop and I clawed out at it but didn’t quite make the elusive figure.
Until I woke up and saw that the pixie was Toni and the mop was a dishrag and the dishrag was slapping against my face. I was back in Wragge’s kitchen. Beyond Toni, the dim ponderous shape of Elmo loomed over me.
“Get the bastard up!” he said.
“Give him a chance to come around,” Toni said.
He grunted and allowed her to slap me alive. After a while it began to sting, but I played it dull and dismal, wanting time for thought, quieting the fresh rash of anger that clawed at me when I opened my eyes a crack and saw Toni’s elegant gams.
“Get up, sucker,” she said.
Elmo stepped forward and prodded my behind with the edge of his shoe. I got up slowly. He had his gun in my ribs and was pushing me toward the door. Toni led the way out to the street and into a big Caddy, as black as my immediate future. She opened the door to the rear seat and Elmo came around and shoved me inside. Then he brought down his ape’s hand again and clipped me with the gun. Just like that.
There was a space of nothingness and this time no damp and bubbling pool came up to slap my face. I was adrift in a concrete mixer, a coffee grinder, a Mixmaster, and a pneumatic drill sent off sparks and made my head sing with angry pain. The last sound I heard was the hoarse bellow of a humorous bull, a grating laugh from Elmo. Beyond that, Toni was saying something, but it was soon lost to me in the personal miasma that hemmed me in. I was on the floor and eating a small segment of the rug. I was spitting dust and rolling over for air. From somewhere far in the next country, a fillip of sound crawled through to my brain and I knew that I was coming through the mist. How long had it taken? Minutes? Hours?
“You don’t have to hit him again,” Toni was saying.
“I hate the bastard,” Elmo laughed. “When we get there, I’m gonna pull his eyes out.”
“Where are you taking him?”
“Out on the Island.”
Was her foot snaking alongside my shoulder? I froze and tried to see her without breathing, without moving my body.
“Why the island?” Toni asked.
“I know a good place. Water.”
“Why in the water?”
“The boss wants it should look like suicide. That makes it nice for me.”
“What’s the name of the place?”
“A dump called Freeport.”
What was happening to her foot? The shoe came slowly back to skim my thigh and then it was snaking up again, rubbing me. Talking to me? The car was on a smooth highway now and there were no traffic lights to hold Elmo to a decent pace. I was on my way to hell in a hack, on a one-way trip to cool water, but too much of it. It was an idiot’s ride, complete with lunatic characters. The smooth and silken leg rolled into me and the feel of it came through my jacket.
&nbs
p; “Canals,” Elmo was saying. “They got canals with houses on them, also a dock at the end where the water is good and deep.”
“Good idea, Elmo.”
“Wait’ll you see.”
“How much further?”
“Maybe a half hour now.”
“Listen—pull up somewhere, will you? I’ve got to see a man.”
“Haw!” said Elmo. “Anywhere? No gas stations on this stretch.”
“Anywhere,” Toni said.
And what was her hand doing now? Tapping and touching my stomach and then veering over to my right, where her skittering fingers slowed and stayed on my wrist. After that, I knew her purpose. She was handing me Masters’ gun. She was slipping it into my open palm. Her fingers hesitated for a fraction of a second longer, and I thought I felt an extra pressure, the added weight of the little muscles in her hand, squeezing mine.
Elmo swung off the main highway and slid around a turn and brought the Caddy to a sudden stop on the crest of a small ridge. To the right, as the door swung open, I could see the remains of a brick wall, the crumbling stones left from a fire, because there was scattered debris around it. Toni stepped over me and got out. In another tick of my watch I would have to move, because Elmo was adjusting himself for a fresh cigarette at the wheel. I saw the flicker of his lighter and waited. I gave him a chance to take his first drag. Then I got off my tail and hit him with the butt of Masters’ gun. He went down, sagging against the door, and I was out of the car and yanking it open before he had a chance to recover. I hit him again and pulled him out. He was heavy as a sack of lead, and twice as cumbersome. I began to jerk his hulk of a body into the shadows near the wall. Toni stepped quickly my way from behind the whitewashed bricks.
“You all right, Mike?”
I said, “You’re full of surprises.”
“He was going to kill you.”
“I didn’t think you cared.”
“Mike … I didn’t know about this … I …”
“Skip it. Find me some water—and fast.”
She ran back toward the yard and I saw her fumbling around where a small stream whispered in the darkness. I leaned into Elmo and checked his breathing. I wanted him conscious again. I wanted him alive and vocal. Because he was going to tell me things.
Toni came back with a can full of water and heaved it at him and he shook his head and blubbered a word and then sank into never-never land again. I let him have the rest of it and he blinked his eyes and groaned. He was grabbing at his head now. I slapped his hands away and jerked his head back against the concrete.
“Who sent you after me, Elmo?”
I showed him the automatic now. I put it where he couldn’t miss it, under the broad curve of his fat nose. I pushed it into his face, letting him savor its smell and its flavor. He pulled his head back and moaned. But he said nothing.
“Who sent you, Elmo?”
He would be tough and stubborn. He was rallying now, releasing his big hands from his belt and leaning heavily on them, bobbing his head in the attitude of a Bowery drunk caught in a dark doorway. The sight of him pulled the string for me, reminding me of Izzy again, bringing it all back, complete with the blood and the torture in my partner’s eyes. I was in no mood for cute games. I slapped Elmo across the jaw with the butt of the automatic. Hard.
“Who sent you, Elmo?”
How tough can you get? The head below me was mottled and pocked with blood, a splattered design brought on by the power of my last crack at him. He licked at his thick lips and shook his head and said a few gurgled words to his inner man. His head was on a loose hinge and it was swaying slowly. He might go out if I let him. So I let him have more water. He came to life again and I grabbed his sweating head and slapped it back against the wall, enjoying the sound of it as it beat against the bricks. He fell forward heavily when I released him. He waved a weak and rubbery hand at me. I pulled him around and slapped him back and let him see the gun again. It was important now that he begin to talk. And fast.
“Who sent you, Elmo?”
And now his mouth opened and there was a gold glint in his uppers as he began to mumble, slack-jawed and slobbering.
“I’ll talk,” he said.
“Talk.”
“Gilligan,” he said.
“You’re working for him?”
“Gilligan,” he said again.
“How about Bruck?”
“No. Not Bruck.”
“Where is Gilligan?”
“Brentworth.”
“How long have you been with him?”
“Chicago,” said Elmo. “Since Chicago.”
“Tell me more,” I said. “Tell me about Linda Spain.”
“Who?” His head bobbled and when he raised it, he hit the plaster behind him. “Who?”
“Linda Spain, remember?”
I worked to refresh his memory, pushing the automatic into his jaw so that his eyes bulged at it and his breath came hard and rough again. He made a try at pushing himself through the wall. He failed.
I said, “You were there, weren’t you? You killed her?”
“I had to,” he gurgled. “She …”
“That’s enough. Then it was you who slugged me up there?”
“I had to …”
“Why?”
“Gilligan,” he said weakly.
“What’s the deal?” I said. “Why did Gilligan have to put her away?”
“I dunno.”
“And the fat man? You killed him, too?”
“No!” This time his voice rose on a new note. He was fighting to telegraph his sincerity. He shook his head violently. “Not him!”
“You’re a liar!”
“Not the fat guy,” Elmo whispered. “I wasn’t there.”
“Then who killed him?” I shouted.
“I dunno.”
“Did Gilligan do it?”
“I dunno.”
He was much too apish for histrionics, much too elemental for any play-acting. His animal eyes were sick with fear, riveted on the gun with an intensity that almost made them pop out of his head. He was leveling.
“And Gilligan sent you to the apartment to mess up Izzy Rosen?”
“Who?”
“The little guy.”
“Oh, him. I didn’t mean to hurt him bad…”
That was the payoff for me. I kicked up at him, high on the head this time, where he had hit Izzy. All my pent-up fury went into the kick and my toe caught the rim of his jaw and the sound of the leather was a flat clop and the blood came oozing out of the crimson welt. The heat of my anger held me there, watching him sag and roll over, his hairy hands clutching at some invisible support. But he grabbed nothing at all.
And then he slid over in the dirt and lay still.
CHAPTER 27
Southern State Parkway—Long Island
12:21 A.M.—July 20th
I wheeled the Caddy back on the highway and headed for New York. It was getting late and there were things to do—important things. Toni sat away from me, saying nothing. Words would be useless now, because she had already told me where she stood on Gilligan’s list. She was no part of the murder and mayhem routine. He had assigned her to me as a watchdog, but his fancy poodle had let him down. He would be surprised, could he see her now, her deep eyes riveted on some personal vista far ahead of us. Once she half turned to me and I saw her mouth open tentatively, but she bit her lip and preserved her silence. And from then on in, I devoted my mental high jinks to Gilligan. He would be sitting in a soft seat now, quietly licking his lean chops over his past performance in the game of hide-and-seek we were playing. I yearned to start for the Brentworth at once, to let him feel the same toe that had mashed Elmo’s jaw. But there were things to do.
I raced off the Manhattan Bridge and swung upt
own and parked before the drugstore on the corner of Wragge’s block.
I said, “Inside, Toni. I may need you.”
She followed without a word. The pimply clerk grinned at me from behind the counter, his mouth open in a fly-chasing pose. He leaned my way and extended a palm and gave me his smug and priggish smile, complete with a whinnying laugh he must have learned at the Belmont track.
“Pay me,” he wheezed.
“For what?”
“Lady Lombar, mister.”
“She came in?”
“What kind of a bookie are you? She ran five lengths ahead of the favorite, Gertrude Gong.”
“I missed her, I guess.”
“So now you know,” said the clerk. “So now you pay off, mister—eleven-thirty.”
He pocketed the money eagerly. He was now a changed character—light and breezy and full of fun. He offered Toni a drink. He offered me a drink. Nothing warms a horse player to intimacy quicker than a few bucks back from the bookie. He began to reel off a list of bets for tomorrow. I took them on and let him chatter. Then I grabbed one of his menus and took out my broken sketching pencil and began to draw. My head bounced and burned from the massage Elmo had twice given me. There was a clattering behind my ears, a combination of dull pain and burning anxiety, a double dose of dizziness that did not make my job easy. I asked the clerk for a couple of aspirins and downed them fast, then returned to my job, conscious of Toni’s eyes following my pencil as it eked out the contours of Wragge’s face. After a while the pain dulled and I was able to concentrate.
I fought to recreate the picture of Wragge—my last sight of him, just before I fell into the heavy sleep of exhaustion in my compartment on the train. I doodled a square. This was the basic shape of his head, an almost perfect square. I tried him in full face, sketching his massive brows and working for some clue to the important symbols of his personality.
“… and then this nag, Bernie Hanover, starts around the backstretch,” the clerk was saying.
I barely heard him. I was deep in my personal creative trance, the sweaty moment when inspiration comes to the amateur caricaturist. Then the little nerves behind the ears set up a screaming, a shouting that bubbles through the ego and sifts slowly past the filter of the selective brain. I began to see Sidney Wragge clearly, his huge head outlined against the black window of the train, his features frozen in a stolid pose. He was coming through to me. I began with his eyebrows, shaggy and uncombed. This was the key to his caricature, for the sleepy eyes lay buried in soft, deep pockets beneath those brows. And after the eyebrows I recalled the nose, a small and sharp classic beak, complete with flared nostrils that added a note of animal keenness to his larded face. I rubbed in the shadows and blackened my outline. Now the profile shot was finished.
You Can't Catch Me Page 13
