by P. N. Elrod
The second man paused to grin at me assessingly; he shifted his balance fast and swung. I blocked it easy with one arm, pushed him back, and told him to take a walk.
His response was to inform me of what I could do with myself. He stepped over the prostrate Malone so we could properly square off.
I felt a smile creeping over my face. Maybe it was only an excuse to show my teeth. “You don’t want to do this,” I warned him, arms out, palms down.
“Sure he does,” Gardner Pourcio crowed behind me. “I’m giving four to one on Fleming, who’s taking?”
The big bouncer scowled at what to him must have been insulting odds. We were of a height, but I’m also on the lean side. A year ago, he’d have bent me in two the wrong way and not broken a sweat. I’m no fighter, but I had one hell of a supernatural edge he didn’t know about.
While Pourcio hastily gathered bets, the bouncer made another swing, which I dodged. I once more tried to tell him he should stop, but that just annoyed him.
He’d had some experience in the ring and in old-fashioned street fighting, with no qualms against hitting below the belt or any other place he could plant a fist or a foot. I kept my distance and darted in when an opening presented itself, but he was quick enough to dodge or put up a guard before I could connect. Someone yelled at me to stop dancing with him.
Okay, what the hell. Pourcio had probably collected enough bets by now to last him awhile.
I let the bouncer get close and felt a solid punch in my belly that should have flattened me for a week. The pure force of it doubled me over, but I didn’t feel much in the way of pain. It did put me in a position to return the favor with some very steep interest. I piled in with a right, not as hard as I could have made it—no need to rupture his internal organs—but sufficient for the job. He wheezed in shock, folding. I followed with a quick, solid shot to his chin, and it was over.
He wasn’t the only one shocked to judge by the faces gaping at me when I straightened and brushed my clothes back into place. An odd silence descended upon the gathering. There was one happy man in the crowd: Pourcio, who immediately began calling in markers.
“Hell of a show, Fleming! Hell of a show! I owe you a drink. Hell, I’ll even buy you dinner!”
“You owe me ten percent of the take,” I corrected him. I trudged over to Malone, who was feebly trying to sit up. The bloodsmell hit me a yard away. His face looked like a bad road, and his once neat white shirt and black vest were stained with gore and torn past repair. “Can you stand?” I asked.
“One—one thing at a time,” he panted, his voice thin and distorted by a split lip.
I looked toward the waiters, thinking his friends would come help, but they turned away, not meeting my eyes. “Hey, get a towel or something.”
“Our break’s over,” one of them said, and slipped off with the other man to get into the club.
“Hey!”
“Never mind,” Malone whispered. “I’ll be all right.”
“Yeah, and prosperity is just around the corner.” When he was ready, I helped him up. “C’mon, let’s get you—”
“No.” He waved off my attempt to turn him toward the door. “No. Please. I’d rather not go back there.”
“Okay, then where? You can’t walk around like that, you’ll scare the muggers.”
“I’ll just go home.”
“You got a car?”
“I—no—I take the El. Please, you’ve been more than kind, but I’ll see to myself now, thank you.”
Well, if a man doesn’t want to be helped, you can’t force the issue. I backed off, checking on the bouncers. Neither of them moved. Pourcio was busy with his collections. I went over.
“What made you put the odds on me?” I asked.
He beamed my way, counting his cash. “I hear stories. You may look like a string bean, but that’s only looks.”
“What stories?”
“Just stuff. Heard you once mopped a floor with Lead-Foot Sam and Bruiser Butler. You’re gettin’ a reputation, kid.”
Wonderful. Just what I needed. In lieu of a dinner I’d never be able to eat, I collected over fifty bucks from Pourcio as my part of his take. He didn’t seem to mind and got on with the counting of his lion’s share, grinning fit to crack his face.
On uncertain legs, Malone stumbled toward the end of the alley, holding his stomach. He clawed at the lid of a trash can but couldn’t get it pried loose. Swaying, holding on to the can for dear life, he bent forward and vomited. He stayed that way for a time, then slowly straightened. His legs wouldn’t hold, though. His back to a wall, he sagged all the way to the pavement. His face was gray under the seeping blood.
No one went near him. No one even looked at him.
“What gives?” I said, mostly to myself.
“He’s one of them,” Pourcio cheerfully informed me.
“What, a leper?”
“You know,” he added with a twist of distaste, then moved off to count his money. The others drifted elsewhere until it was just me, Malone, and the two out-for-the-count bouncers in the alley.
Damnation. Now I understood the cause of the beating. I went over to Malone. “You’re not going to make it to any train ride in the shape you’re in, so don’t argue with me.”
He squinted up, one of his eyes already puffing shut. “You’ve helped too much already. I can’t impose on you further.”
“I’m volunteering. Come on.”
He allowed himself to be helped up again and hobbled with me to my car. I’d have to deal with Rita Robillard later, which was annoying, but at the moment questioning her was less important than getting Malone someplace safe. If the goons woke up before he could get away, they would kill him. They’d have to get past me first, but I had enough wrinkles in my suit for one night.
Gently bleeding into one of my handkerchiefs throughout the ride, Malone muttered directions, and about half an hour later I set the brake in front of a two-story clapboard on a narrow street lined with similar structures. It housed eight cheap flats to judge by the number of mail slots. Not the Ritz or a fleabag, but somewhere in between on the lower end of things.
“You sure you don’t want a doctor?” I asked. “I know a good one who won’t ask questions.”
“I’ll be all right,” he said in a near whisper, looking anything but well. “I’m very much in your debt, Mister—”
“Fleming. Forget it.”
Before he could insist on trying to do it for himself, I went around to the passenger side and helped him out. No protesting this time. I got him up the steps and inside, then more steps to the next floor. This tired him; he was panting and white by the time we reached the upper landing.
His flat was in the back. The building was old, worn, with creaking wood and faded wallpaper saturated with the smell of decades of boiled cabbage and fish. He shuffled to his door and unlocked it, found the light switch. The kitchen was right there as you walked in. It was clean but matched the rest of the joint for general shabbiness. He dragged himself over to a battered table; I pulled a chair for him to sit. In his case it was more of a collapse.
I opened the top door of his icebox, found an ice pick in the draining tray, and chipped some pieces off the block. There was a dish towel by the sink. I wrapped it around the melting shards and gave it to him.
“Try this over your eye and that lip,” I suggested.
He did so, bowing over the table. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? A couple of assholes knocking you around just for fun?”
He made no reply.
“Not the first time for you, is it?”
By degrees, he managed to look up at me. The forty-watt overhead didn’t improve his face. Right now he was less clean and more cut. The expression in his brown eyes made me think of a beaten dog, pleading for the punishment to stop, just for a little while. “You know?”
“It’s been explained to me.”
“And you still helped?”
�
�Your life’s your business, not mine, but I don’t like bullies much.”
“You are an exceptional man, then.”
“Sometimes. You got anything to drink here?”
“I’m afraid not.”
A bartender who didn’t drink. What next? “Too bad, you need it. What about aspirin?”
“That cupboard.” He gestured, and I searched. I made him take four tablets with a lot of water. It was even odds if he could keep them down after all those gut punches, but maybe enough would get into his blood to take the sting out of the worst of them.
“What about food?” I asked.
“I’m not hungry, but if you want something—”
“I’m fine, thanks.” I allowed myself a quick look around. A wide archway led to a living area with three open doors in the opposite wall leading to a bath and two bedrooms. That seemed to be the whole flat. As with the kitchen, the place was well kept, with no trash or stray laundry on the floor. A tidy man, suddenly violated by brutal chaos. “Did those two guys have a long grudge on you?”
“They’re new at the club. The others there, they never bothered much with me, just ignored me. The new ones, though . . . it’s been building for the last few weeks. A lot of little things. I couldn’t exactly complain to the boss about them.”
“I guess not.”
“No one seems to understand, this is not something I’ve chosen. It’s just the way things are. Who would want to choose my sort of life?” He started to say more, then seemed to realize he might have said too much to a near stranger. “I’m sorry, I don’t wish to burden you.”
“Sometimes you gotta talk to somebody. I know what it’s like.”
“But you’re not—”
“No, but I know what it’s like.” Right after my death and change I’d needed to talk to someone. If it hadn’t been for Escott just simply sitting and listening, I’d have gone bug-eyed nuts. He didn’t have to understand one word of what I was throwing at him or offer advice; all he did was listen, and that was enough.
“I suppose you do, in a way,” Malone admitted. He started to stand, then thought better of it.
“You got a tub? Hot water should help.”
“Quite the doctor, aren’t you?”
“I’ve had some knocks. You learn what to do about them.”
While he hunched over with the ice and let the aspirin go to work, I went to the tiny bathroom and started filling the tub, dropping in half a box of Epsom salts I found in a cupboard. On the way back through the living area I noticed he had a lot of serious-looking books on his shelves. They had the overweight look of college texts. The subjects were accounting and business and a couple on psychology. The latter made me think that perhaps he’d been seeking an answer to his situation. Or maybe a solution. Sometimes there just isn’t one.
On a low table were some comic books and in one corner of the floor by the radio someone had set up an elaborate toy fort made of glued-together bits of cardboard. It was very detailed, with roofs that lifted off and working doors with tape hinges; there was even a stable, a watering trough, and a well in the middle. Wooden cowboys, Indians, and horses were scattered around it. Incongruously next to it was a homemade model of the Empire State Building standing about two feet tall. This time the cardboard had been painted gray, with tiny black rectangles marking its many windows. Someone who had seen King Kong had placed a small wooden monkey on the eighty-sixth-floor observation deck.
“You got a kid?” I asked, returning.
Malone’s expression lifted and softened. He couldn’t quite do that nervous tic smile because of his split lip, but came close. “Yes. Norrie. She stays with my neighbor while I’m at work. Oh, God, how do I explain this to her?”
“Get cleaned up first.”
“You don’t understand, she’s—” Malone shut himself down again.
“She’s what?”
“It’s complicated,” he finished, rather lamely. “She’s had upsets like this before.”
“And you think your face will scare her?”
He nodded.
“Kids are tough, given the chance. Wash off the blood, don’t make a big thing of it, and just go on. If she asks a question, answer plain and keep it short. If you show you’re not upset by what’s happened, then she won’t have anything to react to.”
“You have children?”
“No, but it just makes sense.”
He digested this while I went to turn off the tub water. “I may have gotten it too hot,” I warned him, coming back.
“I’m sure it will be fine.”
“You need some help?”
“I can walk. Only not very fast.” He levered himself up, moving by slow considered stages, pausing at the archway between the kitchen and living room. “I’ve no right to ask you, you’ve done so much already.”
“What do you need?”
“I—I was wondering if you’d mind staying until I was finished. Those men. I’m afraid that they might know where I live.”
Chances were they wouldn’t be in any shape to come after him, and given a choice would be far more interested in me. Malone had been badly shaken, though. His fears were quite real to him. If it’d been me in his place, I’d have wanted some company, too. “No problem. Take your time. I’m a real nighthawk.”
He looked pathetically relieved. “Thank you, Mr. Fleming.” He finished shuffling to the bath and shut himself in.
I flipped through the comic books, speculating about his family situation. I could imagine when Malone was a very young man, he’d tried to cure himself by getting married, then when things didn’t work out, the split came, and it had probably been ugly. Usually any children went with the mother, though. That had happened to a man I’d worked with on the paper back in New York. The office gossip had been poisonous. He got fired, then jumped off a roof that same afternoon, the poor bastard.
I hoped Malone wouldn’t be similarly tempted after this setback. He didn’t seem the type, but you can’t always tell.
There was no reason to expect trouble, but I caught a faint noise in the hall. Someone tried the knob, then softly tapped on the door. Out of habit, I’d locked up. More curious than on guard, I opened it. A sleepy-eyed dark-haired kid of about ten or twelve stood barefooted looking up at me. She was enough like Malone for me to figure out her identity. She wore wrinkled pajamas and clutched a well-worn teddy bear. She seemed too old for such a toy, but there was a fragile air about her, a vulnerability that made me wonder if she’d been sick.
“Who’re you?” she asked, without fear.
“A friend of your dad’s. He needed a ride home from work.”
“Oh. Where is he?”
“Taking a bath. I’m Mr. Fleming. Are you Norrie?”
“Uh-huh.” She stepped into the kitchen and slipped up onto a chair. She looked at the soggy, bloodied dishcloth left on the table. “Did Daddy get into a fight?”
“Yeah. He’s all right, though.” I got the cloth to the sink and rinsed it off.
“You sure? Once someone broke his nose.”
“Not this time. He’s mostly worried about upsetting you.”
“He worries a lot.” With a dramatic sigh, she flopped the teddy bear facedown on the table.
“He said you stay with the neighbor while he’s at work.”
“Mrs. Tanenbaum.”
“She might worry, too, if she finds you gone.”
“She knows I always come here. I heard him talking and woke up. It was too early for him to be home, so I thought something was wrong.”
“You thought right, but it’s not too bad. He’ll be fine.”
“Okay. Who are you? Are you a gangster? There’s lots of them where he works, you know.”
“Afraid not. Just a Good Samaritan.”
“Oh.” It seemed to disappoint her. “Can I have a glass of water?”
I got her water. “That’s quite a fort you’ve got in there.”
“Yeah, I made it an’ the other bu
ilding. Well, Daddy helped. He cut the stuff out for me, but I drew it out.”
“So you want to be a cowgirl when you grow up?”
“No, an architect.”
That brought me up short. At Norrie’s tender age I wouldn’t have been able to make even a close guess on the definition of the word. “Sounds pretty ambitious.”
“I’m really good at drawing. Wanna see? I gotta real por’folio.”
“Sure.”
She toddled off to one of the bedrooms, returning with two big sheets of cardboard held together by a taped hinge and tied at the other three edges by strings. With great dignity, she placed it on the table and solemnly undid the ties, opening it out. I grabbed the stuffed bear and moved the water glass out of the way in time to keep it from being knocked over. Inside the makeshift portfolio was a stack of drawings in pencil, crayon, and ink.
“This is our house,” she explained of the top one, which was on graph paper. “See, I’ve got it to scale. Every quarter inch equals a foot, so if it was real size, it’d be as big as this building. Daddy showed me how to measure with a yardstick. And here’s what the insides look like. See how the rooms here are like ours but turned around. It’s Mrs. Tanenbaum’s place where I stay, and that’s how I know that it’s all backwards from our place.”
One by one, she flipped through them, her enthusiasm waking her up. She explained pictures of her house, school, and other buildings; even the Chicago Aquarium had been captured by her with some fair accuracy.
“I copied it from a postcard,” she confessed. “But Daddy says it’s good practice.”
“This is really impressive.” I wasn’t just blowing hot air. The kid had a talent way beyond her years. “It’s great your daddy encourages you so much.”
“We visit the library a lot.” Norrie shut her portfolio and carefully tied the strings. “He says I should go to college.”
“I’d recommend it.”
“But I know a whole lot already.”
“Then you’ll be way ahead of everyone when you get there.”
“Maybe they’ll think I’m a genius or something.”
