Crang Plays the Ace

by Jack Batten

  “Nice stuff, eh?” Nicky said to me. “Worth plenty.”

  “Yeah,” I said. My voice was a croak. “Very nice, Nicky.”

  Something inside my head began to swim around, and for a moment I felt faint. These two clowns were killers. It was Jerry and Nicky who’d smacked Alice Brackley. I gripped the edge of the table and waited for the weak spell to go away.

  31

  GRIMALDI HAD THE PAPER I’d brought him separated into two piles on his desk. The division was obvious: copies of the invoices on one side, Harry Hein’s computer printouts on the other.

  “You got access to a computer, Crang?” Grimaldi asked me. “And if you don’t, who was it analyzed the numbers on these invoices?”

  The four of us had reassembled in the president’s office. Grimaldi sat behind the desk, Jerry and Nicky flanked the door, and I stood in the middle. My position cast me in the role of the supplicant.

  “I have many skills,” I answered, inventing a new skill for myself on the spot. “Firing up a computer is only the most recently acquired.”

  “The concern I got,” Grimaldi said, “is suppose somebody else worked this out for you, he knows what’s in the papers.”

  “Nobody else,” I said. I wasn’t going to drag Harry Hein’s name into the proceedings.

  “Whose computer’d you use?” Grimaldi asked. “Sol said there’s nothing in your office except Mickey Mouse stuff.”

  “Sol would put it that way,” I said. “A friend’s computer. He let me into his office on the weekend.”

  Under pressure, I could fib with the best. Sometimes without the pressure.

  “What friend?” Grimaldi insisted.

  “Irrelevant,” I said. “He wasn’t around while I computed.”

  “You print more copies?”

  “Only what’s on the desk in front of you.”

  “What about the diskette?”

  “Not to worry.”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit,” Grimaldi said. “What’d you do with the diskette? The information still on it?”

  “I wiped it clean.”

  Was that the right terminology? And what the hell was a diskette? Must be the vehicle in the computer that stored information. Made sense, but had I answered Grimaldi’s question without revealing my technological ignorance?

  Grimaldi took his sweet time considering the response I’d offered. I couldn’t tell whether he was genuinely worried that someone else might be in on the computer analysis of his scam or he was merely letting me stew in my predicament. Either way, the conversation over the diskette and my usage of it was just the first and easiest hurdle. What about Jerry and Nicky, the murdering duo? Had they knocked off Alice Brackley on a caper of their own? Or had someone else directed the deed? Grimaldi for example? So many questions.

  Grimaldi spoke up.

  “If you’re lying, Crang, screw it,” he said. “Let’s get down to business.”

  He gave his words a different ring. Same hard sense of authority but with a new tone that resounded to me of finality. The words seemed to be a signal for Jerry and Nicky. They moved up behind me, fat Jerry at my right shoulder, towering Nicky breathing on my scalp from the left.

  I said, with more than a touch of haste in my voice, “The rest of the business is straight ahead, Charles. Keep the documents, fork over Wansborough’s cheque, and I’m gone.”

  “The business I’m talking about,” Grimaldi said, “is what Jerry and Nicky’s gonna take care of.”

  Jerry snickered on the right.

  “Let’s be candid, Charles,” I said, haste beginning to give way to panic. “The two creeps you’re talking about, Jerry and Nicky, these guys are killers.”

  Nicky had his turn at making a risible noise. It emerged in the range between alto and soprano.

  I kept talking to Grimaldi. “Alice Brackley’s blood is on their hands.”

  Overdramatic, but I needed something powerful in the way of effect.

  “You shithead,” Jerry said, meaning me.

  “Hit home, did I, Jerry?” I said.

  Nicky grabbed my left arm.

  “They knocked her off and walked out with the jewellery,” I said, still addressing Grimaldi. “Alice’s gold is in a locker downstairs. It’s time to act serious around here, Charles. You phone the cops and we’ll put these two goofs in the slammer where they belong.”

  Grimaldi took my vigorous proposal in the phlegmatic manner I’d come to loathe.

  Nicky didn’t.

  “Kill that broad?” he said. “It wasn’t us.”

  He was gripping my arm with the force of an indignant Arnold Schwarzenegger. I tried to yank my arm free. Unsuccessfully.

  Jerry chimed in from the right.

  “Where’s this bull comin’ from?” he said.

  The two voices pounding in my ears, one voice per ear, generated a load of outrage.

  Nicky said, “Somebody needs to be banged on for sure, it’s you.”

  “That other thing you’re talkin’ about,” Jerry said, “we didn’t steal the gold stuff downstairs.”

  “Mr. Grimaldi give it to us,” Nicky said.

  I stopped trying to wrestle my arm from Nicky’s grasp. At the same time, he and Jerry ran out of shouts. Behind the desk, Grimaldi was showing the first smile I’d seen on his face for a while.

  “Light go on in your head, Crang?” he said.

  A light the size of the beacon on the CN Tower.

  “You killed Alice,” I said.

  The words came out involuntarily.

  Grimaldi seemed to be enjoying his smile.

  “You found out she phoned me Sunday morning,” I said to him.

  One part of my brain warned I was foolish to say anything more, another part wanted to get it all out, everything that was rapidly becoming more or less clear.

  “She must have phoned you too,” I said. “The booze loosened her tongue.”

  “A drunk is all she was,” Grimaldi said. He overflowed with disdain.

  “My God, Grimaldi, the woman was your mistress.”

  “Good lay,” Grimaldi said. “But a drunk.”

  I didn’t have time to linger over the man’s attitude to Alice Brackley. It was the murder that counted.

  I said, “You got nervous about what Alice might tell me.”

  My mouth had taken over from both parts of my brain.

  “Alice knew something about the system you worked out at Ace,” I said. “Pillow talk maybe. She probably didn’t know everything, but enough to scare her when I came snooping around. She was going to spill it to me, whatever she suspected you were up to.”

  Grimaldi’s smile had run its brief course.

  “When she told you what she intended to do,” I said, “you went to her house and broke her neck.”

  “Enough already,” Grimaldi said.

  I knew I’d finally got it right.

  “What’d it take, Charlie?” I said. “Just one punch?”

  Grimaldi’s expression, like a piece of Arctic landscape, told me I’d goaded him enough. Too far. He wasn’t going to say anything more about Alice’s death. But I wasn’t ready to quit.

  “You made it look like a murder committed by jerks,” I pushed on, talking fast, maybe a little hysterically. “And you passed the jewellery along to Heckle and Jeckle here, a couple of world-class jerks by anyone’s definition.”

  My last remark caught the full attention of Jerry and Nicky. Nicky loosened his grip on my arm. He and Jerry were concentrating on Grimaldi. Jerry’s jaw had gone slack.

  “What’s happening?” Nicky asked Grimaldi.

  “Nothing’s happening,” Grimaldi said. “Crang’s pulling a number.”

  “What’s he saying?” Nicky asked Grimaldi again. “You looking to set me and Jerry up?”

  “You believe that, you got piss for brains,” Grimaldi said. His face was showing red through the tan.

  Jerry’s head had been working on another puzzle.

  “You re
ally bump that broad?” he asked.

  “Who the fuck cares,” Grimaldi said. He was scaling new peaks of annoyance. “Yeah, I bumped her. You satisfied? Now let’s do the deal.”

  He couldn’t be talking about the deal I’d come to the Ace offices to consummate. He meant a deal that Jerry and Nicky were apparently privy to.

  “Hold on, Mr. Grimaldi, okay?” Nicky said. “The jewellery’s like a first payment, right?”

  “Melt it down,” Grimaldi said. “I told you, it’s worth twenty grand on the market.”

  I’d become the forgotten man in the discussion. But the let-up in concentration on me didn’t seem to offer any advantages apart from the chance to recover from the threat of panic and hysteria. If I tried to run for it, Nicky and Jerry would be on me before I reached the door. And I didn’t fancy a plunge over Grimaldi’s desk and through the window. I needed something else. A diversion. It was a cinch the cavalry wasn’t going to rescue me in the last reel.

  “Afterwards,” Jerry was saying to Grimaldi, “after the job, we get the rest? That’s what you mean?”

  “Another twenty grand,” Grimaldi said. He bit at the words.

  “Cash,” Nicky said.

  “Yeah, cash,” Grimaldi said. Bad temper oozed from every pore. “If you assholes got no more questions, let’s cut it.”

  “You gotta understand me and Jerry’s position, Mr. Grimaldi,” Nicky said. He sounded apologetic. “Crang talks about us killing the broad, the jewellery’s hers, whatever the hell, we just kinda wondered.”

  “Right,” Grimaldi said. He had no further use for gab.

  Grimaldi took a key from his jacket pocket and fit it into the lock on the top centre drawer of his desk.

  “You shoot the guy,” Jerry said. “We drive him to the dump.”

  Shoot the guy?

  Jerry was talking about me.

  The dump? My nerves were pumping again. If these three had their way, it sounded like my final resting place would be among the debris at the foot of Leslie Street. Nothing like advance knowledge of your grave’s location to get the adrenalin flowing.

  Instinct took over. I made a move at Grimaldi’s desk, more of a lunge than an orderly dive. It was sudden enough to avoid arm-grabbing from Nicky and Jerry, and Grimaldi remained separated from me by the desk. My target was the envelope with Wansborough’s cheque. It rested beside the pile of computer printouts. I snatched the envelope, held it high over my head, and danced to the side of the desk.

  “Get that thing away from him,” Grimaldi barked at Jerry and Nicky.

  Grimaldi meant the envelope, or more specifically the cheque with all the numbers on it, and the two heavies went for it instead of for me. The difference was small but crucial. It gave me room to create my simple-minded diversion. I threw the envelope in the air. It fluttered over Grimaldi’s desk, and both Jerry and Nicky reached their arms after it. Grimaldi was busy with the top drawer. He pulled a gun out of it. In the couple of seconds that the three guys were occupied with the envelope, the drawer, and the gun, I broke across the office and out the door.

  No gunshots followed my flight, but Nicky was about four steps behind me. His boots hit the floor with thumps that sent echoes bouncing off the walls. If I kept going straight down the hall, his seven-league strides would catch me before I made the front door. I turned right down the steps to the basement. The door to the backyard was my objective. Game over if it was locked. It wasn’t. I turned the handle and the door swung outwards. Nicky was coming down the short flight of stairs two at a time. I stepped through the door and paused. Nicky hit the landing at the bottom of the stairs and flung himself toward me. My timing was gorgeous. As Nicky flew in my direction, I slammed the door on his head. Smacking Nicky with doors was getting to be a habit.

  It was fifteen yards to the first row of trucks. They were parked sideways to me, facing into the yard. I ran across the open space, and behind me I could hear Grimaldi urging on the troops. His voice didn’t vibrate with good cheer. I rounded the first truck, and before I disappeared from the sight of my pursuers, I took a swift look backwards. Grimaldi was in the lead. He had the gun in his hand. Jerry hurried along beside him, and Nicky trailed by a few yards. Nicky was holding his forehead with both hands.

  I ran down the line of trucks, and when I’d passed six of them, just as Grimaldi and company made an appearance around the first truck, I ducked left. That put me in between two of the monsters. I jumped up on the steps that led into the cab of the seventh truck in the row. I tried the door. If it were a Humphrey Bogart movie, the door would be unlocked and the keys in the ignition. It wasn’t a Bogart movie. The door failed to open and I didn’t bother checking for keys in the ignition.

  Grimaldi’s voice sounded somewhere back along the line of trucks. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Jerry’s voice answered back. Also unintelligible. I pulled myself up onto the hood of the truck and crawled over the windows to the roof of the cab. The manoeuvre put me ten feet above the ground, and when I flattened myself on the roof, I was invisible from down below. It made a temporary refuge.

  I waited two or three minutes. No noises drifted up from Grimaldi or the other two. I raised my head a foot from the roof and surveyed the territory. Grimaldi came into view first. He was standing beside the office building, gun in hand, and looking toward the row of trucks that began the next aisle over from my row. Where were Nicky and Jerry? Grimaldi must have split his trio into separate search parties. He was playing the backup man, the guy with the gun who’d ensure I didn’t get out the front way.

  I shifted around on the truck roof, trying to locate Jerry and Nicky. My truck stood in the middle of its row, seven vehicles from the office building and another seven to the garage with the bays for servicing the trucks. The garage seemed a logical place to seek my next temporary refuge. Might find a weapon in there. A crowbar, a wrench, something metal and heavy. How the hell did a crowbar get its name? Any connection with the ugly black birds?

  “He ain’t along here.”

  The voice, Nicky’s, came from immediately below me. I dropped my head so sharply that it hit the metal of the roof and made a small noise. Boing. It was as loud as a thunderclap to me. I sucked in my breath and waited. Nothing happened. No shouts of discovery. No Nicky scrambling up the truck. The noise hadn’t been as loud as a thunderclap to him. Not even as loud as a boing.

  I stayed unmoving, and after half a minute I lifted my head again. Nicky was standing beside Grimaldi at the office building. Grimaldi was waving his arm, the one that wasn’t holding the gun, apparently delivering fresh instructions to Nicky. Jerry wasn’t to be seen, but reason told me that if Nicky had been searching my row of trucks, Jerry must be on another section of the grounds. Reason went on to advise me that this was probably a good time to make my switch to the garage.

  I slid from the roof of the truck and trotted to the outside of the row of trucks, putting them in between me and the spot Grimaldi had staked out as his field headquarters. I ran down the row past seven trucks, watching in every direction for Jerry and not spotting him.

  At the side of the garage, one truck stood separate from the rest. It wasn’t in any of the tidy rows with its brother trucks. And there was something else different about it. Its windows were open. So was the driver’s door. Only one answer. It must be the truck that Jerry and Nicky intended to employ in transporting my remains to the dump after Grimaldi finished with his execution job. Must be. If the windows and door were open, the keys might be in the ignition. I hoisted myself up the step into the truck’s cab and looked across the dashboard. No keys.

  Maybe in the garage. I dropped back to the ground and hustled around to the rear of the garage and through the open entrance into one of the bays. The bay door had been lifted high overhead. I looked around for a board where keys to the trucks might be kept. I didn’t see a board or any keys.

  All I saw was Jerry.

  He had his back turned. He was in the garage and he was l
ooking for me. He held a hammer in his hand. He was trying to be stealthy. Two could play at all of those games. Another hammer, many hammers in fact, lay on a workbench that was within reaching distance of my right hand. I picked one up, a ferocious-looking instrument, and tiptoed after Jerry. He was about six paces in front of me, back still turned, and I covered the space in four fast tiptoes. Jerry didn’t hear me. There was something to be said for Rockports with cushiony soles. I hit Jerry in the centre of his head with the flat side of the hammer’s business end. He fell forward on his beard. I waited, and Jerry didn’t move. No blood appeared from the centre of his head. Clean knockout.

  I leaned over Jerry and detached the ring of many keys from his belt. One of the keys had to start the truck beside the garage. But which? There were at least a dozen on the ring. The vision in my head, as soon as I located the right key, was of making the great escape. Start the truck, drive down the rows of trucks past Nicky and Grimaldi, crash through the gates, and soar to freedom. Well, rumble to freedom.

  The only way to put my vision on the path to reality was to test the keys in the truck’s ignition. I started back the way I’d come, through the open bay door and around the rear of the garage. Before I reached the truck, I stopped, returned to the garage, and picked up the hammer I’d used to deck Jerry. I hefted it in my hand. It made me feel semi-secure.

  Back outside, I climbed into the cab of the truck and began testing the keys. It was aggravating work, slowed by the shakes in my hands and the necessity to keep a watch for Nicky and Grimaldi. I got through five keys without finding the one that fit the ignition when Nicky came into sight. He was about twenty yards away and walking down a row of trucks in the centre of the yard. As he walked, he was checking under each truck, no doubt on the lookout for my running legs. My legs weren’t running. They were in the cab of the truck and they were beginning to tremble.

  The eighth key slid into the ignition. Eureka. Soon be on my way. That was the upside of the situation. The downside was that as soon as I started the engine, I’d attract Nicky’s notice. And Grimaldi’s. No choice. I turned the key in the ignition. The truck’s motor started on two sound levels. First it burped. Then it roared. At the burp, Nicky straightened up. At the roar, he came barrelling toward the truck.