by John Roeburt
“It looks like a real beauty. I was hoping you could have it for me some time today.”
“I’ll try. Don’t like the Chevys, huh?”
“I was looking for something with class. A pre-war Caddy or something, but cheap. If you can get hold of a sap too, I’d be much obliged.”
“Have you found something, Jason?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, you can leave it to Guido. I get through here this afternoon, I’m gonna go downtown and keep listening. I’ll get the rumble for you. Reach you at the brother’s place?”
“No, better not.” Thanks to Julia, I wouldn’t go back there. “You have any messages, call this private detective, Tad Barrett. Don’t forget, I’m relying on you for the artillery.”
Guido nodded, then put on his salesman’s smile again as the owner of the lot waddled out of his shack. “Why don’t you have a cup of coffee, friend, and think it over?” he wanted to know.
“I want to shop around a little,” I said.
* * * *
Forty minutes later, I was prowling the bars on Fifty-second Street. Anything but a bar or a cheap nightclub along that drag was there strictly by mistake and probably wouldn’t last out the season. But I didn’t want company and I didn’t want to remember. I only wanted to get lost for a couple of hours, then start all over again. How would a professional go about it? I didn’t have the faintest idea. I just knew that somewhere in this city of eight million people there was a killer who had killed twice for the Kincaid papers and would cheerfully try for three if he thought it would do him any good. I had to find him.
But first I had to stop remembering for a while. Remembering Jo-Anne.
I made a considerable dent in the bourbon reserves of three bars. Maybe I couldn’t quite walk a straight line after that, but I was still thinking up a storm and getting nowhere. I switched to Calvert’s the way the ads tell you, with no better results. I thought maybe if I got in touch with Doc Kincaid and asked him for a list of people who had answered his questions I’d be able to find out if the killer had broken his code. It seemed like a fine idea, but I wasn’t buying any of that, either. It was the professional way to go about things and it might bring results in a month or two or twenty, but I didn’t have the time. I’d drink myself into an alcoholic ward long before that.
But Tad Barrett might like the idea and might be able to do more about it with a whole staff of trained operatives.
Jason Chase, you are a genius. You must drink to this brilliant idea. You must. You will. But the barman shook his head.
“What do you mean, I’ve had enough?”
“I mean, I don’t think you ought to take another. Not here.”
“That’s ridiculous, my good sir.”
After enough of them, they had begun to taste like tea. I got up and staggered outside into the crisp cold air. My head was foggy and somewhere up there alongside the TV tower on the Empire State Building.
But by the time I walked to Barrett’s, the head was clearing; and I was back to remembering.
Barrett was reading another pocket-sized mystery job with a lurid cover showing a female with incredible breasts being scared silly by a trenchcoated silhouette complete with sawed-off shotgun.
“Come in, Chase,” he said. “What the devil happened to you?”
“I look that bad, huh?”
“Your breath smells worse.”
“I was trying to forget, a little. Friend of mine call? A fellow by the name of Guido?”
“Right. He said something about having the stuff.”
“When can I pick it up?”
“He said he had something else, too. Information. He thinks he knows who did the job on Miss Stedman.”
“What!” I was standing up and shouting. I didn’t know who they were. They were still nameless. But I could almost feel my hands around their throats.
“Take it easy,” Barrett advised. “He wants you to meet him tonight, in Brooklyn. He says that’s where they hang out. He wants you to pick him up at 8:30 tonight. A place called The House That Jack Built.”
“I’ll find it.” I stood up and shook hands with Barrett. “Maybe I ought to take you along. But I want to go it alone. I’ve got reasons. Can you understand that?”
“Sure. But will the cops understand?”
Without answering I walked out. I wandered over to the midtown Y.M.C.A. and got a room. I went back outside and bought a cheap razor, some soap, a toothbrush and toothpaste. I scrubbed and lathered and scrubbed some more. I took a shower as hot as I could stand it. I was trembling now not with fatigue but with anticipation. Guido had something. A lead.
A couple of hours of sleep did me more good than all the wonder drugs ever discovered, and a dinner of pot roast with all the trimmings at a restaurant across the street completed the cure. At 7:30 I found the subway and headed down south to Brooklyn.
* * * *
The House That Jack Built proclaimed itself with a blinking neon sign. First it said The House in yellow, then That Jack Built in red, then the whole business in blue, then all over again. It held down a corner near where Nostrand Avenue crosses Flatbush Avenue, a couple of blocks behind the campus of the big, free city college there. There was a Bud sign in the window and a second floor that was dark. I’d arrived a few minutes early but walked inside anyway. The place smelled of stale smoke and staler beer. A juke box competed with two five-cent bowling machines to see which could make the most noise.
I found Guido waiting for me in back, where the booths curved around behind the U-shaped bar. I sat down across from him and smiled while he handed me a package wrapped with brown paper! “It’s a .45,” he said. “Sorry it hadda be so bulky, Jason, but it’s all I could rustle up.”
“That’s fine,” I told him.
“And a sap. Man, you should see it. Weighted perfect. You only have to go flip”—Guido turned his hand over on the table—“and she slaps around hard enough to crush an elephant’s skull. You’ll like it, Jason. Drink?”
I ordered a beer while Guido lined up a third empty Blatz bottle with two others on the table. There was an electric feeling inside me. It was tingling down to my fingertips and made me want to go fifteen rounds with the champion slugger of The House That Jack Built or any other place. “What else have you got?” I asked.
“All sorts of contacts, Jason. Guido’s been around. You already heard up the river, huh?”
I’d heard.
“Talk,” I said. I hunched forward and peered at him and tried to read something in his dark face. He was keyed up and tense himself, but not scared.
“Barrett tell you?” he wanted to know.
“He told me you thought you found them.”
“They’re tough guys from the old days, Jason. I knew them a little. Mean boys. It should be your pleasure never to have anything to do with them.”
“I’ll have plenty to do with them.”
Guido shrugged. “I got you down here in Brooklyn because this is their hangout. Also a place over on Livonia Street. After you think about it a little maybe, you can go to the cops and tell them.”
“You got any proof?”
“Only a rumble.”
“So the cops are out. Look, you don’t have to go into this with me. I wish you wouldn’t. Just tell me who they are.”
“One is Five O’Clock McGuire. The other is Puggie LaBetta from Bensonhurst.”
“Okay,” I said. “Now I know. You can blow, Guido.”
“Who fingered the girl, I ain’t sure. But Puggie can tell you. Or Five O’Clock.”
“I don’t know how to thank you, Guido.”
“Me you don’t have to thank. I ask around a little from friends, I get to hear things.”
“Do they know you’ve been looking? Puggie and Five O’Clock?”
“You think I’m an amachoor?”
“Not you, Guido. I shouldn’t even have asked. I owe you something for this. Any time you…”
“You don’t
owe me. I already told you. For my friend Jason it is a real pleasure.” He sipped beer. “But listen. Please don’t go over there. To Livonia Street. Sometimes Puggie and Five O’Clock come to this place. It’s a new hangout for some of the old crowd, but down on Livonia Street they’re at home. They could tap the sidewalk like cops do with nightsticks and the hoods would come running to help them from all over. Here at least some people will be neutral.”
“But you said they hang out there.”
“They do. They run a numbers game in a pool room. But the cops are going to raid there soon, I hear, so maybe they’ll all start drifting over to The House That Jack Built for a place to stay. All the gunsels, Jason. Better not to start anything there or here. Better you should call the law.”
“Just come on outside and point my nose in the direction of Livonia Street, will you?” I said.
Guido shrugged and must have told himself it was useless to argue. I took the check and paid for our drinks, then we went outside into Nostrand Avenue.
An electric bus rumbled by, blue sparks flashing on the wire above it in the darkness. Some of the college crowd had gathered for the evening in front of a luncheonette two stores down.
It was nine o’clock and very cold, with a wintery clearness in the air so the dark cars parked along the curb were gleaming black under the street lights. Snow was banked dark and dirty against the curb.
“You take the bus toward New York,” Guido said.
I looked where he pointed. I turned back and started to say something. Behind him I saw a car wheel around the corner, a black job which looked like an Olds, and come cruising slowly along Nostrand Avenue. When it came abreast of us, the back window rolled down. There was a man in front driving, another in the rear.
Something poked out of the rolled-down back window as the car crawled by.
I dove for Guido, but he was yelling already and throwing himself toward the sidewalk. A sub-machine gun hammered and roared and I could see the bright angry muzzle-flashes. I spun slowly, as in a dream. I could see the slugs kicking off the brick wall behind us, and I felt the pavement slap up against my hands and dirty snow in my face.
The plate-glass window of The House That Jack Built exploded with a roar as loud as the sub-machine gun, then something struck my shoulder and scalded, flipping me over on my back like the kick of a mule. Guido screamed once and his face was a bloody, shapeless ruin.
The Olds’ tires squeaked and skidded in the slush. Except for that, it was very quiet. I fumbled with the package Guido had given me and ripped it open, clawing inside for the .45.
I started pulling the trigger as the Olds’ tires finally held and it lurched forward. I got to my knees and kept firing, the .45 bucking savagely in my hand. The Olds jumped as one of the rear tires blew, then skidded sideways fifty yards down the block and plowed into a parked car. I got up and started running but I could see the doors opening and the shadows of the men inside the Olds sprinting down the street. The .45 clicked in my hand, empty. The Olds was empty too.
My legs wanted to dance in all sorts of directions, but I made it back to The House That Jack Built, and Guido.
He was still lying there where he had fallen, one hand over his face as if he were trying to protect it. Some of the college kids had come over and a girl was whimpering softly. I looked at Guido’s face and didn’t even have to feel for his pulse.
“Hey, mister. You’re hurt.”
“Take your hands off me,” I said. “I’ve got to get them.”
“You better stay still. You’re bleeding all over.”
I staggered back down the block towards the Olds. Far off I could hear a siren shrieking shrilly, coming closer.
The Olds’ front fender was crumpled against a hardtop convertible parked in front of a butcher shop. I looked inside again and found nothing. I banged the glove compartment open with the butt of the .45 and groped around. There was a map of New York City, a pair of gloves, a little billfold with a plastic window which displayed a registration card. The letters swam in front of my eyes. I tried to steady them and realized my hands were wet with blood, smudging the plastic window.
Footsteps pounded down the street. I had to take off after Puggie and Five O’Clock. They had been wise to Guido, after all.
My left shoulder was numb. I couldn’t move the arm. I opened the door. I had to take the bus to Livonia Street.
Two men caught me as I tumbled out of the Olds. One of them began ripping the jacket away from my shoulder. The siren wailed on top of me. Then cops were all over the place.
Names were taken. I said I was guilty of rent gouging. I said it over and over again until they had eased me down to the sidewalk and rolled up someone’s coat under my head. Then I passed out.
Chapter Twelve
It was a large square room, the walls painted green, the windows high but closed now against the pelting, icy rain. I was aware of the rain first, rattling against the windows, then the moaning of the little man who lay across the room from me in the only other occupied bed. He was sleeping and moaning in his sleep and under the sheet you could see the hard outline of a plaster cast from his neck down.
After a while a nurse came in with a tray of fruit juice but noticed the little guy was asleep and started walking out again.
“What about the non-paying customers?” I said. I wasn’t really feeling too bad. Only tired, with a dull ache in my left shoulder and a stiffness in my left arm.
She’d forgotten how to smile, professionally or otherwise. She said, “Well, I see seventeen is awake.”
She walked toward the bed with the tray of fruit juice balanced on one hand. I thought she was going to give me a glass of the stuff, but at the last moment her skinny hand darted into a pocket of her nurse’s whites and came up with a thermometer which was then driven between my lips.
“Seventeen would like to know exactly where he is,” I said.
“Keep your mouth closed, please.”
“Mole kmph ym.”
“That’s better.” After a time, she plucked the thermometer from my mouth, held it up, studied it, and wrote something on the chart at the foot of my bed. “The doctor will be here shortly,” she said, and left the glass of fruit juice on my bedstand.
I leaned over and sucked. Sour grapefruit stuff.
“Guido,” I said out loud, quite suddenly. “God.” And then it all came rushing back.
A white-smocked doctor entered the ward, nodded, squinted anxiously at my bandaged shoulder.
I obliged him with regular breathing when he applied a stethoscope to my chest. I coughed when he said cough. I looked at the ceiling while he examined the whites of my eyes.
“You are in the proverbial pink, Mr. Chase.” He beamed. “Another week in bed and you’ll be a new man.”
“A week!” I roared. “I can’t stay here a week.”
“Oh, you must. It was a flesh wound, but you took a nasty fall. There’s been a slight bone separation, you see. Between the humerus and the scapula. Be glad this isn’t a private hospital, where they’d hang on to you ten days or two weeks. Here at Kings County, we don’t have the bed space. Now, if you’re feeling as strong as you look…”
“I feel like a million bucks, doc. I could get out of here right now.”
“Hardly. However, if you’re feeling that good, some men from Kings County Homicide have been waiting here to see you.”
I sighed, while the doctor went to summon his fellow city employees. Kings County Homicide. At least it wouldn’t be Pop Grujdzak.
All three of them wore civvies. Two were tall and hefty. The third was broad and red-headed. They commenced firing questions, the two tall men on either side of me, the fat one at the foot of the bed studying my medical history. “Did you see the men in the car?”
“What were you doing in Brooklyn at the time, Chase?”
“Where’d you get the .45?”
“It’s a violation of the Sullivan Law, you realize?”
�
��You knew Guido Isaac in prison. Was this the result of some prison fight?”
“Funny how you and Guido should get together right after you got out!”
“What were you planning, Chase?”
“Cut out that crap!” I yelled. It got through their grease-gun tactics. They all shut up at once and I could hear the man across the room still moaning. I said, “If you’re going to play that once-a-criminal-always-a-criminal routine with me, you know what you can do. I’ll cooperate with you guys because we’re all after the same thing, Guido’s killer. But if you want it that way, I’ll start hollering for a lawyer, and that’s a promise.”
“We didn’t mean anything like that, Chase.”
I did some fast thinking. Exactly how much should I tell the Kings County boys?
“Well,” I said, “you probably know about the Stedman murder in New York.”
“We know. We checked you and Guido with B.C.I. and your name popped up in the Stedman case. Had a long talk with Grujdzak about it.”
“We’re old friends,” I said.
“Friends, huh?”
“Well, Jo-Anne Stedman was a friend of mine,” I said. “She considered herself responsible for the theft of certain important scientific papers and for another murder…”
“We know about that one too. Phyllis Kirk. Keep talking.”
“It bothered her, so she went looking.”
“And got killed for it? Chase, why can’t you people realize we get paid to look and have been doing it for years and can do it much better than you? It would save an awful lot of trouble.”
“I felt I ought to do something for Jo-Anne. Not hunt me a killer or anything like that,” I lied. “Like you say, that’s your department. But I thought I could get those papers back.”
“That’s interesting. How?”
“Through Guido. He had contacts you’d give your eyeteeth for. He called me to Brooklyn and you know the rest.”
“Did he give you anything solid?”
I couldn’t answer that until I found out how much the police knew. I said, “What about the murder car?”
