by Ralph Dennis
“Now, you dumb shit,” he said, “now I’m going to break your balls.”
I backed up, feeling for the steps. Below him, another man moved into the light, a shorter man, broad and thick across the shoulders. Dark skin. Mex or Puerto Rican. Big hands up and out in front of him. No pipe. This one would depend on his strength.
Below, beyond them, a slight increase in the tempo of the rain and a cool chilled breeze. Hump came in fast and low, no sound, just a flash of movement. The short, broad one knew he was there first. He whirled around and Hump hit him twice. A right to the head and a left low to the body. The force of the blows threw that one into the tall one with the pipe, jostling him. The tall one divided his attention then, turning to his side and putting the pipe toward Hump. It was all I needed. I stepped down and swung a right deep into his kidney. It staggered him, buckling him at the knees. The pipe dropped out of his hand and clattered on the dark hall floor below. He grabbed the railing with both hands, trying to hold on until he could recover from the pain. I moved closer. Beyond him, Hump grabbed the short one and lifted him and turned him. He rammed him into the door. The glass part of the door shattered from the impact, showering the floor with fragments.
The tall one still couldn’t move. A cripple and I didn’t care. I leaned in and hit him in the same kidney. What came out of his mouth was part scream and part grunt. He held onto the railing with one hand and fell to his knees facing me. I think he would have begged if he could have brought the words up. I didn’t give him time. I kicked him in the face and he went rolling down the steps toward Hump.
I watched him hit bottom and then I went up the steps to the second-floor landing. I turned right and moved down the hall. The door marked with a tarnished 8 was open. I went in. Empty. No furniture. A jar lid on the windowsill was full of cigarette butts. The window overlooked the street. So he’d been watching.
Hump waited for me at the bottom of the stairs. He nodded toward the one he’d broken up. “Shorty’s out and not saying much.” He stuck out a shoe and nudged the other one. “Tall Stuff’s not talking either. Says he just got word a man with a lot of cash would be coming here. The call gave him the time and the whole setup with apartment 8. But he says he doesn’t know who made the call.”
“Who called you?” I leaned over him.
“Fuck off.”
“Frankie call you? He set it up?”
He didn’t say anything. I guess that could mean yes.
“Where’s Frankie now?”
Tall Stuff lifted a hand toward me. Blood ran down his hand. He’d landed in the broken glass and made a mess of himself. I could see the bones and the tendons. He turned the palm toward him and looked at it and passed out.
Hump and I left him on the floor with the other stud and walked through the steady rain toward Sixth Avenue. Somewhere over there we’d find a bar where we could get a stiff drink.
“How?”
I didn’t know. It was Thursday morning and we’d been in New York since Monday night. The night before, after we’d had the brawl at the apartment house on Eighth Avenue, I’d placed a call to Beth Fanzia. So far there’d been no new try on Edward. He was staying in the Towers, close to home, but I didn’t think we could stay in New York much longer if we didn’t find Frankie. It was expensive as hell, and a hard place to find anyone who didn’t want to be found.
“I’m open to a suggestion,” I said.
“One possibility,” Hump said. “Tuesday morning you made the rounds and left notes for Frankie.”
“Four places,” I said.
“Maybe he doesn’t use all those places anymore. Maybe he’s down to only one of them.”
“How do we find that out?”
“Easy. We backtrack and see if any of the messages weren’t picked up. And we see which one was.”
“Foxy,” I said.
It was easy. The countermen at the two sandwich shops said they hadn’t seen Frankie. I picked up the envelopes with the Tuesday messages in them and passed them each five. At the newsstand on Sixth Avenue it was the same. The old man there returned the note and admitted, when I passed him a five, that he hadn’t seen Frankie for more than a month. That left the clam and oyster bar off Eighth Street. It was the only one left. It had to be the right one.
By noon, we’d set up shop in a cafe and bar across the street from the clam and oyster place. We’d bought ourselves the table near the front window. It cost us a ten and the promise of more to come. The waiter kept us in beer and the food wasn’t bad, either. About two, I had the baked stuffed shrimp and Hump had a steak.
Even in the chill the place across the street was doing a good business. There were a few tables out in the open and the customers waited outside until the trays of opened oyster or clams were brought out to them. Then they’d shiver and throw their heads back, sucking the shellfish from the shells.
It was a long wait. It was getting to the fall darkness, the gray part of the day, when I saw Frankie strutting down the street, not a care in the world. He was dressed the same, blue jeans and a denim jacket. The way he approached the oyster bar, without precautions, I guessed he might be a little high. Or perhaps he’d called and found out that no one matching my description had been by.
After he entered, pushing his way past a couple of girls who were swallowing about a dozen oysters, I nodded at Hump. I dropped a twenty on the table and waved at the waiter. Outside the door, on the sidewalk, we split. Hump angled across the street. He headed toward a dark doorway we’d picked out earlier. It was in the direction from which Frankie had come. I went in the other direction. I’d cover the other end of the street. I backed into the doorway of a laundry and leaned against a scarred door frame.
Frankie came out after about ten minutes. He had an oyster shell in each hand and he stopped beside one of the tables and put a drop of Texas Pete on each oyster before he sucked them down one after the other. After he threw the shells into a barrel, he turned and walked down the street the way he’d come. He didn’t look back. I left the doorway and headed after him. I’d made up some of the distance by the time he reached the doorway where Hump was. Hump was a blur coming out of the darkness. He wrapped an arm around Frankie’s neck and pulled him into the doorway. I reached them in time to hear Frankie say, forcing it out against the hard ridge of forearm under his chin, “Take the money.”
“Relax,” I said.
Hump released Frankie and spun him around. He slammed against the door. “Be still,” Hump said.
“Oh, it’s you two. I’ve been looking all over town for you.”
“Sure you have.”
Frankie leaned toward Hump. Hump stiff-armed him and threw him against the door again. “I told you to be still.”
“Why were you looking for us?” I edged over until I was shoulder to shoulder with Hump.
“I wanted you to know that it wasn’t my fault last night.”
“What?”
“Setting you up. Jim, they fooled me. They had me set up the meet with you and then they held me over in a room in the East Village so I couldn’t warn you.”
“Is that a fact?”
Hump nodded at me. “This pig is sweating.”
“I guess we make him nervous.” I patted Frankie on the shoulder. “We make you nervous, old friend?”
“It’s not that. I thought you might not believe me.”
“I believe you.” I elbowed Hump. “We believe him, don’t we?”
“All the way,” Hump said. “If I didn’t, I’d stomp him into pig shit.”
“See? Hump and I thought you might have something to tell us.”
“Huh?”
“What you had for us last night,” I said.
“That? It was probably a pack of lies.”
“We’ll laugh in the right places.”
“Like on cue,” Hump said.
“That Count, whatever his name was, it wasn’t him. It was somebody else.”
“Who?”
“
He didn’t say.”
“Who didn’t say?”
I could smell the greasy sweat on him. “I can’t tell you that.”
“You more afraid of him than you are of us?”
“Hey,” Frankie said, “I thought we were friends.”
“Past tense,” I said.
“Last night was not friendly,” Hump said.
“All right.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “It wasn’t anybody from New York or overseas. It was somebody from out west.”
“Where?”
“Just out west. Some guy with a lot of money to spend.”
I nudged Hump. “You believe him?”
“I’d like to talk to his asshole buddy, the one who helped set us up.”
“I can’t do that,” Frankie said. “You’ll be going back to Atlanta but I got to stay here and make a living. Or just keep living.”
“He scare you or buy your ass?”
Frankie said, “Some of both.”
“See what he’s carrying, Hump.”
Hump put his left hand on Frankie’s throat. He held him upright while his other hand patted him down. He found the roll in the right front pocket of Frankie’s jeans. He passed it back to me. I stepped out of the doorway so I’d have enough light to do a count by. Just a rough total put the sum up near seven hundred. I counted out my three hundred and pocketed it. I stepped back in the doorway and stuffed the rest of the roll into Frankie’s shirt pocket.
“I took mine back,” I said. “I don’t think you ought to make a profit on me.”
“What were we worth on the market?” Hump asked.
“Five hundred.”
“Cheap for two people,” Hump said. “What do you want to do with him, Jim?”
“Nothing. I don’t want any marks on him. I think his other friends will be looking for him. If they aren’t already. After what happened to Short Stuff and Tall Stuff, they’re going to wonder if Frankie didn’t turn right around and job them to us.”
“That’s neat enough for me.” Hump dropped his hand and we backed out of the doorway. Frankie came after us. He caught me by the arm. “You really think they will? Come after me?”
“Sure. Right now they’re thinking how bad the whole thing smells. I was supposed to be alone and I wasn’t. And his rough boys got roughed.”
“What do you think I ought to do, Hardman?”
“Sweat.”
Later that night we flew back to Atlanta.
CHAPTER NINE
After we got past the desk guard on the Templeton floor, Hump went looking for Edward. I’d put him up to it. I wanted him to keep Edward busy while I did some pushing and pulling at Beth. If I didn’t find out what I wanted to know, there was still Edward. I’d rip some skin off him until I got the facts.
A breakfast cart was set up in the living room of Beth’s suite. She was having a late breakfast: poached eggs on wheat toast and hot tea. I shook my head at the offer of a cup of tea from the pot and mixed myself a short drink of bourbon at the sideboard.
“Beth, I think you know who wants Edward dead. He’s from out west and he’s rich enough to spend any amount to get the killing done.”
“I don’t know any such thing.”
“What do you know about Edward’s life during the last thirty years?”
“Very little.”
“I’ll take what little you know.”
“I can’t tell you. It’s too personal.”
“So is being dead.” I looked down at the drink. “I know that Edward deserted the navy back in 1943.”
“It wasn’t that way at all.” There was fire and anger in her now. It flared out at me.
“Tell me how it was.”
“Edward did that for me. That’s all I can tell you.”
“It’s not enough. Look, dammit, whoever wants Edward dead wants it done if it takes another year. Or five years. We can hire an army and buy us some automatic weapons and we can turn this floor into a stockade. And it still might not be enough.”
“What you said, a rich man out west. I hadn’t thought about that in years. I swear I haven’t.”
“What was it about?”
“It’s hard to tell you. Especially you.”
“Shit, Beth, you want to wait until Edward’s dead and buried? You want to wait until you’ve ordered the stone? ‘Beloved Brother,’ that kind of shit.”
“You can be rough, Jim.”
“Tell me about it.” I knew my face was hard, knowing I wouldn’t get what I wanted unless it was.
“I was fourteen and Daddy was busy in Washington. It was the second year of the war and it wasn’t going well. Daddy was a dollar-a-year man.”
I nodded. While I listened, I was doing some figuring in my head. Fourteen in 1943. That meant she was two or three years older than I was.
“So Daddy sent me out to stay with an old friend and his family out in Oklahoma City.”
The strain was on her. It broke the smooth skin and put the lines and wrinkles where they were supposed to be.
The friend was a man her father’s age, in oil. Big in oil. His wife was a sweet woman, a kind woman. And there was a daughter, Francine, who was about Beth’s age. But the man had a male ruttiness to him and Beth didn’t really know what sex was. It was an innocent time then and what a girl knew, she had heard from girls her own age, or she got from those Hollywood movies of the time.
Beth found in that man the kind of father she’d never known in old Rufus Templeton. It had been beautiful and warm until one night when all the fun and tenderness changed and he’d hurt her and hurt her and hurt her and when it was over she wasn’t a virgin anymore and she knew what sex was. For a few nights after that, he visited her late when his wife and daughter were asleep and he’d taken the last shreds of her maidenhead, until she forced him away by threatening to tell his wife and daughter. After that, he stayed at a distance. But by then the damage had been done. Within two months she knew she was pregnant and she didn’t know what to do about it. She couldn’t talk to the man’s wife or daughter and she couldn’t talk to him.
What she settled upon was done in desperate shock. She told the family she was going to San Diego to see her brother Edward before he shipped out. She drew all her money out of the bank and caught a bus. Edward was supposed to be at the destroyer base. When she reached San Diego, she found that he’d left, shipped north to Treasure Island, the naval station in the bay between Oakland and San Francisco. She followed him there by train. In time she found him and though it was hard, she blurted it out to him. He was in a violent rage for almost an hour. Then he calmed down and started checking around. Finally he found an officer who knew about a doctor who’d perform the abortion for a thousand dollars. Time was running out. He was on the ready list.
The abortion was done. Still, it was not an easy time for her. He couldn’t leave her alone in the city. He had to stay with her until he was sure there were no complications. It was a week before he was sure she was past the worst of it. By then his ship had left and he was A.W.O.L.
When she asked what he was going to do, he wouldn’t say. He said he’d figure out something. He’d placed a call for her to Washington and she’d said she didn’t want to go back to Oklahoma City, lying and saying she didn’t get along with the daughter, and her father had been angry but he had arranged for a seat for her on a train heading back east, back to Atlanta. On that train she’d cried almost all the first night. The memory that she carried for years was before her, of Edward standing alone on the platform of the Oakland train station, waving at her and trying to smile, knowing he was in trouble, and that he couldn’t tell the real reason why he’d missed his ship. And even if he could, not knowing if it was a reason the navy would accept.
And that was the last time she’d seen him until he’d appeared in Atlanta a few weeks before.
“Who was the man in Oklahoma City?”
“Alec Troutman.”
“Him?” I’d heard of him. He was still on
e of the big names in oil. Just before the war he’d hit one of the big oil fields in Texas and after the war he’d branched out into Arabian oil. I had seen an article on him a few months back that put his wealth at nearly five hundred million and still growing. I remembered a picture of him too, one that had been in Time or Newsweek. He was around eighty-five now, his face dark and angry-looking. But he’d aged well and he didn’t look much past fifty.
“Did you see Troutman … after that?”
“No. I didn’t have to. He and Daddy had a falling out over some off-shore leases and they didn’t see each other after that.”
“Your father never knew?”
“You’re the first person I’ve ever told.”
I carried my drink over to the sideboard and put the glass on a tray. “Why now? If Troutman wanted to hurt somebody, why would he wait until now? And why Edward? Why not you?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Maybe Edward can,” I said.
“I don’t want you to talk to him, Jim. Please don’t.”
“I’m sorry, Beth. I really am. The thing is, I need to know if there’s some connection between Edward and Troutman.”
“I think you want me to hate you.”
“No.” I moved over to her and tipped her face back. There was a misting of tears in her eyes. I kissed her on the mouth, tasting her salt or mine. Gentle. Oh, that was a gentle and kindly kiss.
The door to Edward’s bedroom was closed and locked. I rapped on it a couple of times and Hump opened it. There was smoke in the air and the smell of the kind of wood-burn that a dull saw makes. Hash.
Hump waved me in. “Edward’s got some A-1 hash. We’ve been giving it a tryout.”
“How is it?” I stepped through the doorway and Hump closed the door and locked it behind me.
“It’s like beating yourself with a big stick,” Hump said.
Edward was stretched out on the bed, with the hash pipe in the cup of his hand. I scooped up a chair on the way to the bed and plopped it down where I could face him. “I’ve been talking to Beth.”
