The Talmage Powell Crime Megapack

by Talmage Powell

  “Nothing,” MacLaren agreed, “gives anybody that right—except you, John. But as long as this world stands the right guys are going to have to keep swatting back the ears of the wrong guys. To hold them back. Safety and freedom are like gold—you got to keep ’em polished.”

  Brennan sat down heavily and reached for a cigarette. His hands were trembling. “Then a let Joe polish a while!”

  “But a lot of Joes can’t,” MacLaren said quietly. “They try, but a lot of them are like Donnavan. He polished his life right out of his body, Brennan, fighting the wrong Joes here while you were trimming them over there. That job over there is done now, but Donnavan is still dead. We’ve drawn a blank on Donnavan’s kill—but you could get the guys who killed Donnavan. And the wrong Joes who are going to hurt a lot of other people, every day, every year. You can do it because you’re Brennan. I guess that’s the answer to your question, John. The way you got born. The way your brain thinks and your body moves. Some men are born with music in their fingers. For every one of those a hundred are born who try but fail. Just like a hundred Donnavans are killed trying to stop the wrong Joes while only one Brennan is born.” Cigar smoke gushed from MacLaren’s heavy mouth. “So it ain’t a job you can pick up or turn down, Brennan. It’s something you got born to do!”

  “Like hell,” Brennan said harshly. “If I got born for it, then I’m dead and come to life again. I tell you I’m through, MacLaren! I’m going to Chicago and sell insurance, and be one of the right Joes the Brennans are keeping safe!”

  The silence hung a long while this time. MacLaren and Brennan looked at each other; then Brennan looked away, and MacLaren said heavily, “Well, here’s hoping you have a good time living with yourself.”

  Brennan bared his teeth to snarl back, but the other picked up his hat, went out the door, and a few moments later Brennan heard the hum of the elevator.

  He felt the slim, soft hand glide into his. He turned on the couch and looked into hazel eyes. He could read nothing there. “You’ll like it okay, Jean? Being the wife of an insurance salesman?”

  She laid her head on his shoulder so that her lips touched his neck lightly just above his shirt collar. “I’ve waited too long to want anything except to be John Brennan’s wife,” she said, and if there was a hint of a hollowness in her voice. Brennan made himself not notice it.

  “Swell,” he breathed, “we’ll set ’em on fire.” But the heartiness in his voice was almost like laughter in a tomb. Sweat beaded his brow, his upper lip, though the apartment was cool. The words of MacLaren were running around in his brain—Donnavan dead—the right Joes… Damn MacLaren anyway! Why did the old fool have to come here tonight, Brennan’s homecoming night?

  “Baby,” he told Jean, the suddenness of his voice startling her. “We’re forgetting. This is a special night, a hell of a special night. Which club do we hit first?”

  Coming out on the street was like walking into an oven. They strolled down Mount Royal, passing the patch of grass and benches the city fathers called a park. Young couples—and a few older ones, too—occupied the benches, lost in worlds of their own. Right Joes, Brennan thought. Like gold, he thought, polish safety and freedom—born for it.

  He turned his face away, gripped Jean’s hand. His wife’s hand, he reminded himself. They’d stood in City Hall and been married only a few hours ago. After all the months of waiting, the months of lying in the hospital when all the other Joes were going home—or nearly all of them. Some had been there in the white-walled ward with Brennan; some were occupying enemy territory; some weren’t ever coming. Don’t forget the Joes who stayed, America, he’d thought.

  And now, walking down Mount Royal he was hurrying his new wife to a little place he knew on Charles. Somehow her hand felt cold in his.

  A man could walk past the Tic-Toc Club and never know it was there. A plain crystal door opening from the sidewalk gave entrance to a flight of heavily carpeted stairs. At the head of the stairway was an El and, turning there, Brennan and his dark-haired wife were in the Tic-Toc. To their left was the check room with a pert blonde. To their right were doors leading to the lounges. Ahead was the chrome and blue leather bar and beyond that the club with its small tables, soft-footed waiters, and dance floor large enough for a dozen couples of midgets perhaps.

  Brennan checked his hat. The place was filled, but not jammed, not roiling with people like a beehive. Brennan and Jean filed through the bar and a waiter showed them to a table.

  Brennan smiled at his wife and said, “Dance?”

  “I’d love it.”

  But after a moment of milling on the small floor, she clutched him hard. She was trembling a little and there might have been a stifled sob in her voice. “John, I—we’re trying too hard, darling. We’re rusty on our dancing. An old married couple!” she finally managed the laugh. “Let’s have a drink.”

  “Let’s have a lot of them,” Brennan agreed. Back at their table, he was seating Jean when he felt the presence at his elbow. Brennan turned and for a moment he didn’t recognize the face. It had been an old face the last time he’d seen it; now it was ancient, heavy, hanging, topped with milk white hair. Brennan said, “Giovani!”

  “Hello, John,” Giovani smiled. “Glad to see you back. Order up—it’s on the house.”

  Brennan moved around to his chair. He introduced Jean; then asked, “On the house?”

  Giovani’s slow smile came again, ghostly in the valleys of his face. “The Tic-Toc belongs to me now,” he said. “Hard work, and all that. They’re real things.” He hesitated a moment. “I want to give you the best tonight, John. I’m never forgetting what you did for my son, Tony. I was a poor bartender here then with a sick wife and a bewildered boy who had nobody to look after him, keep him straight. Nobody but a guy named Brennan.”

  A guy named Brennan. Tony. Another life, now dead; even the embers of it held no glowing coals. “I didn’t give Tony a break to be remembered,” he said. “He was a good kid, deep down. Just like you say he was—bewildered.”

  “Sure,” Giovani said, “Tony was a good kid—but it took you, Brennan, to show him the strength in your arm, then slap him on the back and help him find a job. I don’t know what the Giovanis in this world would do sometimes without the Brennans.”

  “You’d get along,” Brennan said, fingering the stem of his cocktail glass. “And how is Tony?”

  Grey tinged Giovani’s face. “You ain’t heard? No, I guess not. Tony is dead, Brennan. No—wait—sit still. Don’t tell me you’re sorry. I know you are; we’re sorry, all of us. But he died in Italy, Brennan, back on Anzio. I guess it was somehow right for Tony to die there in Italy—if he had to die. No—sit still. This should be a glad night for you, John.” Giovani wheeled, strode quickly to the bandstand. He signaled the drummer and the lad on the skins rattled the glasses on the tables with a crashing roll. Giovani held up his hands, smiled his wan smile that could never be quite right with his kid one of the Americans who wouldn’t be coming back.

  Giovani said in the silence that rippled over the place, “Friends, all of you are my regular patrons. Giovani, he try to maka da place lika de beeg happy family,” he grinned over his Italian accent, dropped it again and went on, “Many of you will remember a certain man by sight. All of you have heard of him—if you’re residents of Baltimore. You remember that he gave every man a break, fingered criminals with a touch of magic and had his name in headlines more than once. He is as indispensible to society’s health as a dose of good old-fashioned castor oil. A cop. An ex-soldier. Our newspapers have informed us from time to time that he has won the Purple Heart, the Silver Star. You—”

  Somebody in the crowd said, “Brennan? John Brennan?”

  “Right.” Giovani laughed. “He’s just introduced me to his wife, and since the Tic-Toc crowd is one-a beeg happy family, I think we owe the newlyweds a toast.”

  Reluctantly Brennan rose to his feet. He felt Jean’s eyes like stars upon him. Light flared up, and he
was surprised at the faces he saw and remembered. Nicholson over there, a bigwig in politics. A straight guy who’d innocently been in a terrific jam once with a blackmailing dame. Nicholson waved, beaming. And at the corner table near the dance floor—Andy Mondello was scowling darkly. From the way he dressed now and the looks of the blonde with him, Mondello had been running things pretty much his way recently. A bad lad, that one.

  Then somebody who was drinking that toast, some Joe at a table on the fringes of the crowd said, “Welcome home, Brennan! You’re one Johnny that ain’t putting up his gun!”

  The words rumbled and rolled in his mind like gunfire in a dark cavern. He felt himself putting his knuckles on the small table, heard words tearing out of his mouth.

  “And who the hell says I ain’t? You’re telling me how to run my life?”

  “But Brennan—” Giovani began. “He didn’t mean—”

  “I know what I’m saying,” Brennan said harshly, realizing that for a moment he hadn’t, but unable to backtrack. He glanced about at their frozen faces. His teeth went on edge. Condemning him. Calling him rat. Rat was he? How many of them could face the things he’d faced all his life? Watching him like Romans glaring at a faltering gladiator. Expecting things of him, things they couldn’t do themselves. His throat constricted.

  He choked off, stood trembling. Life still existed on earth, but he wouldn’t have known it from this room. No one moved. No one breathed even, it seemed. They simply sat and stared, not knowing how to take him and he cringed a little and felt the heavy beads of sweat gathering and dropping off his nose. Then he grabbed Jean’s hand, hurried toward the check room, wanting to run, or turn and curse.

  Then he heard the first sound behind him. It was one person clapping his hands, softly applauding John Brennan—Andy Mondello. Andy was standing on his feet, laughing, applauding. Then Giovani finally got the orchestra going and Brennan clutched Jean’s hand and ran down the stairs. He ran harder toward that front door than he’d ever run in his life. And Jean clutched his fingers and sobbed a little.

  By eleven o’clock he was beginning to have trouble navigating, and by midnight, when he and Jean blew into the Century Club, the double bourbons he was inhaling had begun to numb him and make him feel a little sick. But it wasn’t a whiskey sickness, and he wished miserably that it were.

  They’d kept running into people. Marcellene Grayson, for example. She’d come over to their table in Twenty-One. Rich, blonde, svelte, she had everything a woman could want. A serious-faced nice looking guy had been with her. Her husband. And she looked as though she deserved a guy like that now. Once she hadn’t. She’d been an excitement-crazy kid, going straight to hell, chasing around with a young punk because she thought it was fun. Maybe she’d even tampered with dope a little, Brennan never knew for sure.

  He knew only that when the punk had killed a man and their paths had crossed, he’d shown Marcellene Grayson exactly what she was headed for. The punk had drawn life and Brennan had scared hell out of the rich Miss Grayson, given her a tongue-lashing, and made her believe he was ogre enough to send her to the penitentiary if she didn’t act like a lady.

  So tonight when she’d seen John Brennan, moisture had come in Marcellene Grayson’s eyes, and her husband had shaken Brennan’s hand; it was at that point that Brennan had got the hell out of Twenty-One.

  Now, watching a juggler in a tan and green silk outfit do his act in the Century Club, Brennan wondered how much longer it would take him to get drunk.

  Beside him Jean was silent. Then she was saying something about being back in a moment. He nodded hazily and was aware that Jean had left the table.

  A pang went through him. He wasn’t being fair to Jean. A swell damn homecoming! Everything was wrong. So very wrong. He shouldn’t have planned any kind of short vacation in Baltimore. He should have kept right on moving, to Chicago and a nice, quiet, safe insurance job, where he could look at a cop and say “Sucker! Keep on being a civil servant—but if you every try to climb off the grinding treadmill of sordid life and sudden death and be a normal human, watch them kick you in the teeth!”

  The floor show continued in a clatter of orchestral sound and a blurred line of girls in abbreviated costumes. Someone sat down at his table, and Brennan thought it was Jean. But when he looked up, he saw a man. A very small man, with a pointed face that was shriveled and wizened, with pointed ears and a darting, pointed tongue.

  The man’s mouth was jerking spasmodically at the corner. He said, “Brennan! Thank—”

  “You’re Mouser Cline,” Brennan remembered.

  The little man’s eyes lost some of their wildness. He seemed less out of breath. “Yeah, that’s me, Brennan. You’re a great guy for remembering.”

  Brennan was stonily silent.

  “I been chasing all over town,” Mouser said, his eyes darting to the door. “Huntin’ you, Brennan. It’s all around that you’re back. In the paper and everything.” He reached out one claw-like, quivering hand, clutched at Brennan’s sleeve. “You’ve got to help me, Brennan. You’ll give a guy a break and not tell him to peddle his papers.” Mouser wheezed, daubed his narrow, pointed forehead with a handkerchief. “I’m still running my book, Brennan, like always. Straight and square and giving the suckers a break. I—It’s about the only thing a guy like me can do—but I do it clean.”

  “And somebody’s after your scalp?” Brennan asked coldly.

  “That’s right,” Mouser sobbed. “Andy Mondello has been putting the finger on the bookies, making them run things his way. His way means a crooked way, a lot more money, and Mondello gets his share. But I don’t play that way, Brennan. Since that time you took your own time to talk to a judge for me, I tried to play the game like Brennan would. It ain’t cost me yet—but I don’t want Mondello to bury me in the bay, Brennan.”

  “I ain’t a cop,” Brennan said stonily, “You’ll get along without me, Mouser. I’m through.”

  He slammed up from the table, twisted his way out of the club. Faces turned to stare at him, and Mouser Cline’s voice was rising, bringing a waiter and a pair of bouncers on the double: “I can’t help needing you, Brennan. You’re murdering me—”

  * * * *

  Brennan sat in the dark apartment for a long time, stone sober, his head in his hands. He wondered where Jean had gone when she’d left their table in the Century Club. But it didn’t matter. Waiters had seen him leave, the hatcheck girl. They’d tell Jean he’d gone, and she would come on here, to the apartment.

  He lighted a cigarette and it tasted flat. He turned on the radio, clicked it off again before it had warmed. Then he heard a key in the door. The click of her heels, the sound of her breathing. “It’s just me, baby,” he said.

  She flicked on the light.

  “They told me you’d left the Century Club,” Jean said. “So I came on here. I didn’t know that I’d find you here.”

  “I wanted to pack,” he said. “We’re leaving for Chicago as soon as we can get a train.”

  She opened her bag, drew out an envelope, handed it to him.

  “What’s this?”

  “Tickets to Chicago,” she said. She was quiet a moment and tears welled up in her eyes. “That’s where I’ve been, John. I—I guess I knew we’d be leaving for Chicago tonight.”

  He stood with the tickets in his hand, looking at her. He saw the unbidden tears in her eyes. He saw a stranger. He saw that a part of her, somewhere tonight, had died. She hadn’t been a stranger when she’d met his train.

  He saw she wasn’t going to say anything more. She had bought tickets, two of them. She was going with him, that part of her that hadn’t died. Without complaining. Without arguing, without a word of regret on her lips. Going because she felt she had been born for this, to be John Brennan’s wife.

  All night he’d been thinking only of himself. Maybe it wasn’t so hot to be in her shoes, either, being born for something and not flinching from it, not running.

  He turned and s
tared out the window. A few lights met his gaze. But his mind was seeing something more; the dingy part of Pratt Street, the milling crowds on East Baltimore, the newsboy and bur-le-cue barker and penny arcade crowd. Johns Hopkins and life and death.

  Giovani and his kid Tony. Tony had died, sure, but every man had to die, and Tony might have died in the electric chair, or lived bitterly in and out of grey prison walls. And for all her wealth Marcellene Grayson could have died in the gutter, along with a poverty-stricken, uneducated pack of ratty little guys like Mouser Cline.

  He saw a red-headed rookie named Donnavan, polishing a nutty kind of gold with his life’s blood, and rows of white crosses over men who’d been fighting side by side with Donnavan even though oceans and thousands of miles had separated them.

  He saw Inspector MacLaren out in the night, heard the aged man’s words: It’s the way you got born, Brennan, the way your brain works and your body moves. And Mouser had said, You’re murdering me…

  He could take no credit for having these things Mouser didn’t have, either. He’d just got born that way. It wasn’t as if he’d created something with his own hands to have and to hold exclusively.

  Donnavan had tried to give, but hadn’t had it, only his life. And Brennan knew in that moment that a man who had those things, those workings of his brain and movements of his body, had no right to withhold them. No more than he did the air mankind breathed.

  And if he withheld those things—what was it MacLaren had said? Here’s hoping you’ll have a good time living with yourself…

  He would have a rotten time, Brennan knew now. Wondering how many Marcellene Graysons were sliding in the gutter; how many Giovanis were knowing their boys were going to the electric chair; how many Mouser Clines he had condemned to death and how many Mondellos were riding roughshod through life… And knowing, living with himself in the long years ahead, that the Donnavans had bled for nothing.

  Sure, he couldn’t do much in one lifetime, and he himself would die one of these days. But there’d be others born his way, lots of them, if he helped to make it possible now.