Eye in the Ring

by Robert J. Randisi

There was nobody else on the street, or if there was, they were making damned sure they stayed out of sight.

  The fact that I was still conscious was due mostly to the pain I was feeling over my left eye. It was bad enough to be keeping me awake. I took out my handkerchief and pressed it to the open wound, and from then on things got kind of fuzzy. The next thing I knew, I was in Bellevue emergency, getting new stitches in my head. I had absolutely no idea how I had gotten there.

  “You’ll have a headache for a while,” I recall the doctor telling me, “but nothing but aspirin and rest will help that. You should be used to that, though, the game you’re in.”

  I said something to him, I don’t remember what, and then I remember that it was almost two-thirty in the morning when I left the hospital and headed for home.

  I was no longer worried about being lonely. I just wanted to get home and fall into bed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I’ve never owned a gun, but the following morning I wished I did, because if I had one I would have shot whoever it was that was banging on my door. Every time his fist whacked against my door, the top of my head bounced off and then came back down with a bang.

  “Okay, okay,” I called out, stumbling and tumbling out of bed. I groped my way to the door, grabbed the knob and pulled it open before I realized that I was totally nude.

  “Now, just suppose I was the Avon Lady,” Hocus said, looking me up and down. His partner, Wright, was just to his left and behind him, and he smirked at me.

  “I wouldn’t want any,” I told him. “You want to come in?”

  “It had crossed my mind,” he admitted.

  “Okay, so come in,” I said, backing up to give them room, “only close the door quietly, okay?”

  They entered and Hocus did as I asked, for which I was grateful. “I’m going to have some aspirin,” I told them. “Anyone want some?”

  “I’ll pass,” Wright said.

  “Yeah, we’re on duty,” Hocus added.

  “That’s cute,” I said, popping three of the little beggars into my mouth and washing them down with water.

  “How about some coffee? I’ve got instant, and instant.”

  Wright made a face and put a hand to his stomach, but Hocus said, “As long as it’s hot.”

  I bent to get a pan from beneath the sink and gave a groan when it caused my head to throb more. When I reached above the sink for the instant coffee, I repeated the performance.

  “Is this the way you are the morning after all your fights?” Hocus asked.

  I got the water and told him, “I didn’t have a fight last night.”

  “Yes,” he replied, “you did.”

  I spooned the instant into two cups and then looked at him. There weren’t many places to sit in my two-room apartment—with what they called a kitchenette—but Wright had cleared a chair of my laundry, and Hocus had opted for the bed.

  “You heard about that, did you?” I asked.

  “Word gets around. Why don’t you put on some pants, or something?”

  I put on my robe, the one I wore in the ring with “Kid Jacoby” emblazoned on the back in orange letters. By then the water was boiling, so I poured it into the two cups and asked him, “Sugar, milk?”

  “Just like that,” he said. That was the way I drank mine, too. I handed him his, then took mine back to the sink and leaned against the counter.

  “You come to take my complaint?”

  He sipped his coffee and shook his head.

  “That’d be a waste of paper. What’d you see?”

  I shrugged. “I got a real good look at somebody’s fist,” I told him.

  “Want to look at a lineup?” he asked, and Wright laughed.

  “Can I get you some juice?” I asked him.

  “Got grapefruit?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I told him. I opened the fridge and checked, found some languishing at the bottom of a bottle for God knew how long and poured it in a glass for him.

  “Thanks,” he said when I handed it to him.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  By that time Hocus had figured out that I was ignoring his lineup line.

  “Did you see anyone you knew?” Hocus asked.

  “I didn’t see anything but—”

  “Yeah, I know, ‘a big fist.’”

  I held my hands apart about a foot and said, “A big fist.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Fists?”

  “Are you punchy?”

  “Only half the time. Okay, there were three that I know of. I came out of the building and something hit me in an unfortunate spot,” I explained, pointing to my bandaged head. “I went down, but not out.”

  “Fighter’s instinct, huh? Fight back when you’re hurt?”

  “You got it. I guess they didn’t like it, because they ran off, two dragging one.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Then you impress easily.”

  We both finished our coffee at the same time and I asked, “You want another?”

  “I don’t think I should chance it. Did they make a move to rob you or anything?”

  I shook my head. “No, but they might not have had time.”

  “I guess. Nobody said anything?”

  “Not a word.”

  He stood up and handed me the coffee cup.

  “Jacoby, are you snooping around on your brother’s behalf?”

  “Uh, I’ve asked some questions, but I wouldn’t say that I’ve been snooping around,” I told him, and added to myself, Not yet, anyway.

  “You think the attack on me had something to do with my brother’s case?” I asked.

  He gave a noncommittal shrug.

  “You’re not convinced that my brother’s the killer, are you? Otherwise why would you be here?”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I’m convinced or not; just because we’ve got your brother in jail don’t mean that I stop investigating,” he explained.

  “That’s a commendable attitude.”

  “I do think your brother’s guilty, though. I just want you to know that.”

  “Okay,” was all I could think to say.

  He motioned to his partner, who handed me the glass he’d been drinking before following Hocus.

  “Oh, one more thing,” Hocus said, letting his partner go out first.

  “What’s that?”

  “If you do decide to do some snooping, do it carefully, huh? Don’t go barging in anywhere without thinking first.”

  “That’s number one in Hocus’s ten rules of being a good detective?” I asked.

  “No,” he answered, shaking his head, “number one is never to investigate a case that you’re emotionally involved in. Keep in touch, champ.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I went back to Bellevue, where I had been treated the night before, but this time, instead of emergency, I went downstairs, to the morgue. I told the clerk there that I wanted to talk to the medical examiner who did the autopsy on Edward Waters.

  “That’d be Maybe,” the young clerk said, then looked around furtively as if afraid someone might have heard what he said.

  “Maybe?” I asked.

  “Sorry. I mean Doctor Mahbee. He wouldn’t like it if he knew I’d called him that, you know?”

  “He won’t hear it from me,” I promised him. “Can I talk to him?”

  “Wait here. I’ll see if he’s available,” he told me. He got up from his reception desk and walked down a hallway. Waiting for him to return, I imagined that I could feel the chill given off by all of the long-dead, cold bodies that were lying down there . . . somewhere. I had a ludicrous mental image of Dr. Mahbee receiving me in a room full of opened-up bodies, and the chill had crept into my spine by the time the clerk came back down the hall.

  “Doc says he can spare you a few minutes,” the kid told me.

  “Didn’t he ask you my name?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No. Seemed to me like he was expect
ing you? You didn’t call ahead?”

  It was my turn to shake my head. “No, I didn’t.”

  He shrugged and said, “Well, he said for you to go on back. Second door on the right.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Dr. Mahbee turned out to be a handsome, East Indian gentleman of about forty years of age.

  “You’d be Kid Jacoby,” he said to me in perfect English when I entered his office. He extended his hand and I took it.

  “How’d you know that?” I asked.

  “A friend—er, acquaintance of mine warned—pardon me, advised me that you might be down here sometime today or tomorrow to view the body of Eddie Waters. I understand he was a friend of yours.”

  “He was. That friend—er, acquaintance of yours, that wouldn’t be Detective Hocus by any chance, would it?”

  He made a face and said, “The same. It’s his case, and he advised me that if you wanted to view the body, I was to allow you to do so.”

  “Well, that was very nice of him. I would like to look at the body, Doc, if you don’t mind.”

  “Whether I mind or not has no bearing on your request. Come this way, please.”

  I followed him out through another door and through a couple of partitions to a table covered by a sheet.

  “I’ve done my examination and closed him up already. Still, it won’t be a pretty sight,” he warned me.

  “Go ahead.”

  He grasped the sheet with one hand and in one motion pulled it off the table, like a magician snapping the tablecloth from a table without disturbing the table settings.

  He closed him up all right, and he’d done a nice job of it. The figure-Y incision from the chest to the stomach of the lump of flesh that once was Eddie Waters was neatly stitched closed now.

  “I’m in a business where I see lots of stitches, Doc,” I told him, “and that’s as nice a job as I’ve ever seen.”

  He looked at me with his eyebrows raised and then at the sheet in his hand. The fact that I hadn’t keeled over in a dead faint seemed to impress him. My stomach should only have been transparent, so he could see what was going on inside.

  “Excuse my theatrics, Mr. Jacoby—” he began, but I cut him short.

  “That’s okay. Doc. Us private eyes are supposed to be hard-boiled, aren’t we?”

  He didn’t answer as I stepped closer to the table to take a good look at my dead friend. A lot of the color had faded from his face, but the swelling and lumps were still visible, evidence that he’d taken a terrific beating before dying.

  “What’s the official cause of death, Doc?”

  “In laymen’s terms?” he asked.

  “Please.”

  “He was beaten to death. You can see the marks on his face. What you can’t see that I did is the damage that was done to his insides. Somebody who knew exactly what he was doing beat this man until he was dead.”

  Somebody like a fighter, I thought, or an ex-fighter.

  “You can cover him back up now, Doc,” I told him. I watched as he meticulously fit the sheet over Eddie’s body again, then followed him back to his office.

  “Is the body ready to be released?” I asked him.

  “As soon as I get word from Hocus,” he told me. “Did the deceased have any family?”

  “He had a girlfriend,” I told him, thinking of Missy. “He always said that she and I were the only family he had. I’ll talk to Hocus about sending you the okay. You can release the body to her, but I don’t want her to see him. Is that clear?”

  “It is. I’ll attend to it personally.”

  I put my hand out and he took it.

  “Thanks, Doc. If I need any other information, can I call you?”

  “Are you investigating this murder?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “I was given to understand that there had already been an arrest made.”

  “That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing further to investigate,” I told him. “I don’t happen to agree with the police theory.”

  “I see. I suppose, then, that if you have need of further information, I would be available—as long as Detective Hocus has no objections.”

  “I don’t think he will,” I told him, “but feel free to check it out with him. Thanks again for taking the time to see me.”

  “No problem, Mr. Jacoby. Good luck with your investigation.”

  I had said thanks enough times already, so I just nodded and left. I waved at the kid at the desk on my way out. That chill I’d felt in my spine had spread throughout my whole body by the time I got to the street, and the brightness of the morning sun did nothing to diminish it. I could still see those stitches in Eddie’s chest.

  And the marks on his face.

  The chill came from wondering about who put those marks there, so I stopped wondering.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When I walked into Eddie’s office—or what I suppose was my office, at least for the time being—Missy was there on the phone.

  “All right, thank you very much. I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” she said, and hung up.

  “Where have you been all morning?” she demanded. “I’ve been making calls since I got here.”

  I walked past her into the main office, and she got up and followed.

  “I just came from the morgue,” I told her. I sat behind the desk, and she got a good look at my face.

  “And they let you go?” she asked. “Why does your face look worse than yesterday, Jack?”

  I told her what had happened last night, and she took it well. She was used to it, I guess. Eddie’d taken his fair share of lumps from case to case.

  “Were they muggers?” she asked.

  “That’s the same thing Hocus asked me. As far as I can remember, nobody made a move to try and take anything from me.”

  “Well, then, why’d they jump you?”

  “I don’t know, Missy.”

  “Maybe somebody thinks you’re taking over the business?” she offered.

  “And that somebody doesn’t want me to?” I added.

  She shrugged and said, “Could be.”

  “That means that this ‘somebody’ could be the same one who killed Eddie,” I told her. “Are you admitting that there’s a possibility that my brother is innocent?”

  “It was always a possibility,” she admitted grudgingly.

  “Okay,” I said, accepting that. I put my hand on a tall stack of files and said, “So we’ve got a case in here that someone wants closed.”

  “A needle,” she commented, and I had my hand on the haystack.

  “You said you’ve been making calls,” I reminded her.

  “Yeah, mostly to clients who haven’t paid. One or two of them said they weren’t satisfied and weren’t paying. I’ve written down their names and addresses for you.”

  “And the rest?”

  “The rest we can cross off. In fact, when some of them heard that Eddie was dead, they offered to send their fee right over.”

  “What’d you tell them?”

  “I told them if they didn’t want to pay when he was alive, they could take their money and—”

  “I get the picture,” I assured her, holding up my hand.

  “Are you done calling?” I asked her.

  “No, I’ve got a few more.”

  “Okay. I’m going to go out and make some personal visits.”

  “In light of what happened last night,” she said, “you might want what’s in that bottom right-hand drawer.”

  I looked at her, then opened the drawer to see what she was referring to.

  It was one of Eddie’s guns, the .38 Smith & Wesson. I stared at it for a few moments, lying there in its shoulder holster, then slowly slid the drawer shut again.

  “I’d shoot myself in the foot,” I told her.

  “Jack, Eddie didn’t like guns either, but there were times when he knew he had to carry one.”

  “At least he knew what to do with one, if the time ever cam
e when he had to use it. No, I’ve got these,” I told her, holding up my fists, “and they’ll have to do. Let me have that list you made.”

  She handed me a list which had substantially more than the number of names she had originally indicated to me.

  “What are all of these names?” I asked.

  “I made a list of names and addresses from that pile of folders,” she told me, pointing to the pile I’d had my hand on, “because I knew you wouldn’t take the time to do it.”

  The pile she was talking about were the clients to whom I was planning the personal visits, and she was right, I hadn’t thought to write down their names and addresses. That’s why she was as good a secretary as she was.

  I folded the list and put it in my pocket. My usual attire consisted of a sweatshirt and jeans, but that was my fighter-out-of-the-ring outfit. Today I was wearing my private-eye outfit, which consisted of a sports jacket and slacks, shoes instead of sneakers. The list went into the inner pocket of my sports jacket. I wasn’t wearing a tie, because I knew if I did that it would eventually look the way David Janssen’s always looked on Harry-O. I mean, if it’s going to look like that, then why wear a tie?

  “If you had looked at it you would have seen that I arranged the list according to address, from the closest to the farthest. You can either work forward or backward.”

  “I’m starting to get some idea of who really kept this office in shape,” I told her, taking the list out again and looking it over.

  “Eddie was helpless in the office,” she told me. Her eyes misted over a bit, and I was afraid she was going to start crying on me.

  “I think you’ll find that I’ll pretty much follow in his footsteps,” I told her. She stared at me for a long moment, then smiled and ran her hand across her eyes.

  “Okay, okay, I guess if I carried him I can carry you,” she said, and I smiled back at her.

  “I’m going to get going on this list,” I told her, putting it back in my pocket and standing up.

  “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that you had a phone call,” she said.

  “You mean, you’re human?”

  She made a face and said, “Your sister-in-law called.”

  I froze up and was sure that she noticed.