by John Roeburt
“Fine. Now explain it to me.”
“The boy on the bed?”
“What else?”
She took a deep breath and said, “He’s my brother.”
Nobody spoke for a minute. I stared at her. I saw a tear hesitate near her eye, then topple down her cheek. “His name’s Ricky and he’s my only family. He’s been an addict for a year, and I can’t help him.”
She was more tearful now and Bradley put his arm around her. She cuddled and cried against him.
“So you see, Winters,” he said bitterly, “you’re not such a hot-shot shamus after all.”
He made a point. I agreed with him.
Louise withdrew from him and blew her nose on his handkerchief. She composed herself and went on in a shaky undertone:
“Ricky’s sick. I’ve pleaded with him to turn himself in, but he refused. He needs over forty dollars a day to support his habit. If he doesn’t get it he goes through agony. I know. I’ve watched him.” She glanced at Neal and lowered her eyes. “The money I’ve accepted from Brad was all spent on drugs for Ricky. If I hadn’t got it for him he’d have stolen it. When he’s sick he’ll do anything. I know I was wrong to lie and accept money from Brad to give to him, but I had no choice. I tried scaring him, by telling him I’d turn him in if he didn’t do it himself. But that didn’t help either.”
Her voice became a whisper.
“What else could I do?” she murmured. “He’s my brother. My father died when Rick was a baby, and Mother was killed in an accident three years ago. I’m all he’s got left. And if I don’t stand by him, who will?”
She looked at me as if I had the answer. All she saw was sympathy.
I eyed the couple and felt like a heel.
“Winters, I’m going to ask you a favor,” Bradley said. “I know you’re under obligation to my father, but I’m asking you to let this ride a few days.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“By then, maybe Louise and I can talk Rick into taking treatment.”
At that moment the waiter came. I ordered a Scotch to get rid of him. Bradley and Louise declined.
“What do you say?” Bradley asked.
“All right. Agreed. You want help with the kid?”
Louise’s face lit up hopefully.
“Oh, would you?” she asked.
“Why not? I know a couple of guys on the Narco Squad, and maybe I can do something about getting him into Lex after he gives himself up—that’s a place where addicts take the cure.
She reached over and took my hand. “Thanks, Cole. I knew I was right about you.”
I squeezed her hand and smiled at her. “Forget it.”
I looked at my watch.
“It’s about six-thirty. Where’s your brother now?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Brad picked me up at work and we came here. I haven’t been home. Ricky has a walk-up flat here in the Village, but he has a key to my apartment, and he’s liable to be there any time of the day or night.”
“Do you think he’s there now?”
“I don’t know. I called earlier, but there was no answer. I gave him money this morning, so chances are he’s high.”
“He’ll show when he needs a fix. Stall him and call me. I’ll talk to him.”
Neal rose, took Louise’s hand.
“I hate to leave you like this, honey, but there’s someone I’ve got to see, and it won’t wait. You’ll take her home, won’t you, Winters?”
“Yeah, sure,” I mumbled.
“Who do you have to see, Brad?” she asked.
“My father,” he said.
“Brad, no!”
“Yes, honey. I won’t mention your brother, but it’s time Dad and I had a talk.”
Louise subsided reluctantly.
“Thanks for taking her home,” he said. He bent and kissed her on the lips. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I smiled at Louise when he was gone, trying to melt some of the sadness on her tear-streaked face. She looked very small and vulnerable all of a sudden.
“Alone at last,” I grinned. “Shall I call the waiter or do you want to go home?”
Her lips curled slightly, softening some of the gloom. “I’d better go. I don’t want to miss Ricky if he shows up.”
“Good idea. If you’re ready, let’s go.”
I couldn’t help giving the crowd a fast, thorough once-over on the way out; but Valerie Coe wasn’t there.
* * * *
I stopped at her apartment and left the motor idling. Louise put her hand on my arm and looked up at me with those expressive green eyes. “Thanks again, Cole. For everything.”
“Don’t forget to call me if he shows. The number I gave you is my answering service. They’ll locate me.”
“I’ll call.”
She opened the door and I shifted the Jag. She got out and was about to leave when something I couldn’t see caught her attention and she stopped. Her face was flushed when it appeared again framed in the car window.
“Cole, look!” she said, pointing upward.
I bent down and followed her finger. The shade was drawn in the window of her apartment. A narrow shaft of light escaped through the slit between the shade and the window sill.
“It’s Ricky,” she said.
I killed the motor and climbed out beside her. “Good,” I said, taking her arm and leading her toward the steps. “This makes it easier.”
She stopped at the bottom step. She was trembling. “Cole, you’ll—go easy?”
I nodded and we entered the hallway and climbed the stairs. I tried the door to the apartment while Louise fumbled in her purse for her keys. I didn’t really expect it to be unlocked, but it surprised me by swinging open. I got a quick look inside while she was still hunting in the purse, and it was enough to make me grab her roughly and throw her against the wall. Her purse fell to the floor with a thud.
“Cole, what—”
“Sorry, baby,” I said, feeling the sweat begin to trickle down my side. “You can’t go in there.”
“Can’t go? Cole, what’s wrong?”
Her face turned chalky as she stared at me.
“What’s wrong? Tell me!” she urged.
I grabbed her shoulders and felt the tremor running through her body. “Take it easy. It’s your brother—”
She screamed and broke loose, ripping her jacket, and lunged inside before I could grab her. The force carried her to the middle of the room where she stopped suddenly as if struck by a physical force. Her shriek was loud in the silent room before she crumbled to the floor at her brother’s feet.
I closed the door. The room was a ransacked chaos of toppled furniture. An icy horror crept up my back as I stared at what was left of Ricky Parks.
He was sitting in the middle of the room with his hands and feet tied to the rungs of a kitchen chair. His body was completely naked and covered with caked blood. His head was bent back across the top of the chair with his eyes staring in empty shock at the ceiling. What used to be his mouth was now a gaping crater of blood where someone had used the crimson-stained hammer lying on the rug. His chest was a brutal network of long, shallow cuts criss-crossing a dozen times down to his bloody stomach. I felt my guts turn over as I saw the cause of most of the blood. The killer had appeased a private, sadistic hate for all manhood with the razor-sharp blade.
CHAPTER SIX
Homicide Lieutenant Paul Javitts paced the living room floor. I had known Paul a long time, and I knew that the nervous pacing habit of his only exerted itself when he was seriously moved. The lab boys and the photographer had completed their grisly tasks and departed. Louise was sleeping under a sedative in the bedroom.
Ricky’s body was stretched out under a blanket.
He stopped by me and rubbed his forehead.
“Let’s have it again, Cole!”
I repeated everything for the second time, covering everything from my interview with Alistair Neal to the discovery of the
body and my subsequent call to Homicide.
Javitts nodded when I finished, and looked at the mound under the blanket.
“We’ve got a fiend on our hands, Cole. A madman. You got any theories, you better spit ’em out. This is no time to be cute with me.”
“You know me, Paul. Maybe I’ve held out in the past, but this is different.”
“The kid was a user. Anything there?”
“I don’t know. I just found out he was on it. Whoever did it, though, was bent on finding something. He shook this place down like a pro.”
“You figure the kid was tortured for information? A dope stash, maybe?”
“It’s as good as anything. I’m thinking out loud.”
“Cole, did you take a good look at that kid?”
I swallowed the bile that started up again. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“He wasn’t tortured for information. That kid was systematically mutilated by a monster. Maybe the killer was looking for something. The looks of the place indicates that, but that boy wasn’t tortured because he would not talk. This was done for kicks!”
He fumbled for cigarettes. We both lit up. “What about the girl? She say anything that might fit in?”
“Uh-uh. Just that he’d do anything to get his fix. He’s got a flat in the Village, by the way.”
“We’ll get the address from the girl and check it out. Tomorrow. The doc said she’d be out till morning.”
I thought about Louise, glad she was spared temporarily by the drugged sleep.
“She’s going to flip when she wakes up,” I said. “Her brother was all she had.”
“There’s a nurse coming. She’ll stay overnight.”
I nodded and got up. “You need me any more?” I asked.
“I guess not. Why, what’s your hurry?”
I looked at the blanket-covered body I’d promised to help. “I made a promise, and I can’t keep it by sitting here talking to you.”
Javitts glanced at the body and nodded. “Okay. But keep in touch, hear?”
“Right.”
I looked in on Louise. She was lost in a deep, peaceful sleep, and her pretty features made her seem very young and unprotected—and wide open to the sadistic whims of somebody’s twisted mind.
* * * *
The noisy crowd of a couple of hours ago was gone, and the Id was quite empty when I got there. It was nine o’clock. There were only three men and a girl at the bar and a few coffee-sipping couples in the back booths listening to a poet lamenting on the jukebox. The little redhead was vacantly pouring a shot for one of the men. I parked myself next to the youth at my end of the bar and waited.
She corked the bottle and put it back on the shelf on the way over to me. She was still hiding behind that blank stare.
“Ballantine’s,” I ordered, when she was in front of me. “Double, on the rocks.”
She blinked her eyes once, which was supposed to mean she understood, I guess, and went back to the middle of the bar. While I waited, I glanced at the kid next to me.
He was in his late teens, twenty at the most, with a long, lanky frame slouched against the bar. His black chino pants were tight and pegged so small at the bottom he must have had zippers inside the little cuffs that hugged his black suede desert boots. The same pattern continued up the rest of his lean body, including a black corduroy shirt and the coal black mop that covered his head, protruding in trained carelessness down over his narrow forehead. His face was wise for his age, and his hooded eyes looked greedy.
The redhead brought my drink.
“Ricky Parks around?” I asked her.
She parted her lips and I caught a glint of gold.
“A dollar twenty,” she chanted.
I gave her a five.
“Keep what’s left. You didn’t answer my question.”
Her eyes didn’t focus as we traded glances. “Crazy,” she said, and gave up the effort. She went back to the middle of the bar with my five.
The kid beside me turned around and rested his elbows on the bar.
“You lookin’ for Ricky?” he asked.
His eyes were still veiled, but he’s seen me give the girl the five and the greed showed behind them.
“That’s right. Know where I can find him?”
“Maybe. Like, what do you want him for?”
“I’ve got a package for him.”
His eyes dropped to my suit and swiftly shook me down. Now I was almost certain about my first guess.
“He ain’t here right now,” he said, bringing his eyes back to mine. “Is this—ah—package important?”
“To him, yeah.”
He chewed his lip for a minute and I could picture the hustling mechanisms whirling in his head.
“Look here, man,” he said, “I’m gonna see him later. You want I should like, deliver it for you?”
I shook my head.
“You know better than that, man.”
“It’s a drop, right?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Okay. So maybe I can put you on to somebody who knows where he is. What’s it worth?”
I pulled my wallet, put a ten on the bar.
“If you can help,” I said.
His eyes dropped to the bill and remained. Sweat formed on his brow and I knew he was already seeing the two “nickel-bags” of heroin the sawbuck represented.
“He’s got a girl,” he said. “China McCoy.”
“Where’s she live?”
“I don’t know, but she’s always around at night lookin’ to cop. If you hang around she’ll show. Sometimes she plays the other joints on the street.”
“You see Ricky today?”
“He ain’t showed. See China. She’ll know.”
I slid the ten over in front of him.
“Thanks. I’ll keep her in mind.”
He pocketed the ten and sighed. He didn’t look nervous enough to be in real need of the money, but like all junkies it was enough just to be sure where the next jolt was coming from.
“You know Ricky well?” he asked.
“Well enough.”
He chuckled, privately.
“I hope you get paid in advance,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Ricky. He’s a creep. If you’re willing to give me a dime just to get a line on him you must have more than just a couple of bags. And if that’s the bit, Ricky-boy must really be into somethin’ all of a sudden. And that sure don’t sound like the Ricky I know. He’s a small-time hustler with a habit a mile long. He’s got over a year’s run going for him.”
“So?” I asked.
“So I hope you know what you’re doin’, that’s all. If you’re dealing like I think you are, you’re pushing to a jerk. He’s one of those petty creeps, shaking down drinks and bustin’ in windows to get the bread for their smack. You ought to see him in action around these coffee joints. Anybody who leaves change on the bar when he’s around is asking to be taken. And if you got a broad with you, forget it. She better hang on to her pocketbook like it was gold.”
“I take it you and he aren’t exactly buddies.”
“Different class, man. He ain’t nothin’ but a spike-happy zero.” He leaned over against me and dropped his voice, conspiratorially. “But now you ask around about me, Jack. I’m good people. Ask somebody about Charlie Cool. I can get bags worth of credit anywhere. You ask, and then if you’re back around here again maybe we can get together, huh?”
I told him maybe we could and went back to my drink. At least I’d bought a name—a start. The next thing was to find China McCoy.
* * * *
I divided the next four hours between the dozen or so coffee houses and cellar clubs in the area around the Id. I met junkies, queers, hustlers and bearded pseudo-intellectuals, but not China McCoy. Many knew her but no one had seen her that night or knew where she lived. I hated to quit, but the smoky noise of too many crowded cellars had got me. Around one o’clock I finall
y decided that Ricky’s girl friend had evidently scored for enough dope the previous night to keep her stoned for two days.
I got the Jag and went home.
The aspirins I took later helped to soften the dull thud that the Ballantine’s had put in the back of my head. As I finally fell into bed, after the added inducement of two Nembutals, I was positive that someone had sneaked into the bedroom and traded my mattress for a cloud.
I closed my eyes and was slipping into oblivion when the phone rang. I searched blindly on the night table, grasping for the phone.
“Yeah?” I grumbled, when I finally found it.
“Hi, scrooge. What’s the matter, somebody tear one of your suits or something?” It was Toni. Who else could be happy at two in the morning?
“Hello, idiot,” I sighed. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re sick?”
“Sure,” she cooed, “my analyst. What are you doing?”
“Trying to sleep. Good-bye.”
“Where’ve you been? I’ve been calling since lunch.”
“Well, don’t call any more. I’m beat.”
She shuddered dramatically on the phone. “Whew! What a grouch. Still love me?”
“Toni, my eyelids feel like they’ve got weights on them. Give me a break, huh?”
“Want me to come over and rub them?”
“No. Hell, no. I told you I’m beat. Okay? I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She sighed. “Okay, chicken. But you’ll be sorry.”
“So I’m sorry. ’Bye.”
“’Bye.”
“Toni?”
“M-m-m?”
“What are you doing up?”
“Huh? Cole, you’re nuts.”
I stretched my legs and it felt wonderful.
“I’m home,” she said. “In fact, I’m in bed, too. Were you worried?”
I smiled lazily. I was falling asleep. “Uh-uh,” I murmured. “Just checking.” Drowsily, I pictured her smile at her end.
“I like that. It means you care. Sure you don’t want me to hop into the Bird and fly over?”
I was fighting a losing battle with the pills. My head felt peacefully dense and I couldn’t have lifted my arms if I’d tried.
