by John Roeburt
I reached and softly touched a curl.
“Ferber never looked like this,” I said.
I felt her stiffen and she smiled politely and picked up her drink. Me and my witty nothings!
After one sip she put the glass down and pushed it away. “It’s been nice, Mister Winters. But I really have to go. I have a thousand things to do tonight.”
Reluctantly, I sighed and stood up to let her out.
“Can I drop you? Like—home, I mean.”
She rose and stood next to me. Her head came up to my shoulder and I caught a faint aroma of subtle dynamite.
“You’re sweet, but no.” She smiled.
She held out her slim orchid-tipped fingers, forcing me to be formal. Her hand was soft and small in mine.
“Good-bye,” she breathed; and the way her lips played with the word it almost made it sound promising.
“’Bye,” I croaked.
I watched her glide away, following the soft, full roundness of her beneath the molded dress as she walked across the room.
My throat felt hot and dry. I ordered a double Scotch.
CHAPTER NINE
The alarm went off at nine o’clock the next morning, sending horrible clangs into my numb, hung-over brain. I almost fell out of bed shutting the damn thing off. The abrupt silence was almost as bad, with the echoes still ricocheting around in my skull, but I managed to stumble out to the living room bar and guzzle three fast drinks.
I had stayed at the Cloistered Id the night before after Valerie Coe had walked all over any better plans for the evening, then doggedly drunk my way through twenty dollars. To no apparent avail, I might add. At least, I couldn’t remember meeting anyone with any kind of lead on Ricky Parks’ killer.
Of course, I could be wrong. Everything beyond the first eight doubles was pretty hazy. The only thing I was sure of was the condition in which I fell into bed. I was stoned.
I was more than surprised to even be wearing pajamas this morning. Some night. I don’t usually tie one on like that. It must’ve been the after effects of all that platinum ice.
A hot shower didn’t do much for my head, but it slowed my pulse. After two quick Bromo’s and a tall glass of tomato juice I felt almost up to shaving, which I did, then I dressed.
I made a cup of instant coffee, and by ten o’clock I decided it was possible I might live. I dug out Monk’s phone number and dialed it while I lit a cigarette.
It was a long time before he answered. “Yeah?”
“Monk?”
“Yeah. That you, Mister Winters?”
“Right. How’s the habit?”
He mumbled something about warped humor and told me he’d figured it was I calling, and had beat the desk clerk to the phone. It must’ve been some race, since it had taken so long for him to answer.
“What’ve you got for me?” I asked.
He cleared his throat importantly.
“I got a line on the kid,” he began. “He was on smack, all right. Horse. He copped from a runner named Chico that hangs around the joints a lot. The wire says the kid had a long run. Maybe forty or fifty bucks a day. He hustled for nickels and dimes mostly, and sponged off his sister, but I’m told he was gettin’ set for a big one.”
“How’s that?”
“He’s been runnin’ his mouth lately about some big deal he’s into. Talkin’ kilo stuff, you know?”
“You find out what it was?”
“Naw. Just that he told it around he was ready.”
“Who pushes to this Chico, Monk?”
“Manny Zato. He owns the Village scene.”
“I don’t know him. Run him down for me.”
Monk sniffed a couple of times and went on in a hazy voice. Considering the sniffs, I was lucky he was coherent at all.
“Manny’s the big pusher in the Village. There’s others, but he’s the one that counts. He’s got runners all over the scene and gets regular drops mostly, from the natives. The little pushers only cop the tourist trade, you know?
“He runs a tavern on West Fourth that he uses as headquarters, like, but it’s just a front. He don’t make no bread over the bar.”
“What’s the name of the place?”
Monk giggled as if he’d been waiting for that.
“The Brass Monkey. Ain’t that a gas?”
I agreed it was a gas. “About the girl? Anything there?”
“Nothin’. All I got was the name you gave me—China McCoy. Everybody says she’s fine as wine for a junkie broad, but nobody knows where she pads.”
I sighed. Another night’s hunt through Beatnik Land for an Oriental-Mick.
“Okay, Monk. Got anything else?”
“That’s about it. Hope I helped some.”
“You did. Want me to mail the balance?”
“Uh-no. I mean, if it’s no trouble, could you leave it at a bar for me? This ain’t exactly the Waldorf I’m at. Poor mail service.”
“Okay, Monk. Where?”
After a coughing jag, he named a bar two blocks from the Id.
“Okay, Monk.”
I called the answering service. Nothing. I lounged around my pad all morning listening to records.
The late Ricky Parks was no less a puzzle. What had made a petty little hop-head suddenly important enough to be tortured to death? It didn’t figure. That the killer was a maniac was obvious, but beyond the sadistic angle to the murder there was still the fact that he’d been definitely looking for something. Something precious enough to kill for.
A dope stash? Maybe. But where would a punk like Ricky get his hands on that much stuff? And now this new bit about Ricky’s sudden solvency. Or at least, alleged solvency. The whole thing was much too involved for my hung-over brain.
By noon I decided the next sensible step was a friendly visit to the Brass Monkey—and a pusher named Manny Zato.
* * * *
As I drove past the sun-splotched shops and bars along West Fourth Street the neighborhood blinked at me with noontime sluggishness. The sidewalks were half alive for a change with a spattering of shoppers and lunch-hour strollers.
I had delivered Monk’s money to the tavern of his choice, and was now headed to Zato’s bar. As I neared the right block I slowed and glanced at the surroundings. Both sides of the street followed a quiet pattern of rooming houses and beat-up apartment buildings. A couple of grocery stores and a little drugstore glared at me through dirty windows. In the middle of the block, jammed between a couple of faded, yellow fire-traps, was the Brass Monkey.
I parked and cut the engine. The joint was quiet; a long, single-story job shaped like a tall two-by-four. All I could see through the front windows, looking under the name printed in black letters on the glass, was the front end of a bar and a couple of small tables. It looked deserted, but if Monk’s wire had been straight, that’s how Zato wanted it. I hit the street for a closer look.
The front door opened easily without tripping any loud noises or making ominous buzzes like in the movies. I shut it and walked to the bar.
The joint’s interior was just about what the exterior had promised. Besides the bar, there were a few scattered tables and a dart board on the far wall with three rusty darts buried in the bulls eye.
I leaned on the bar and watched two cockroaches play tag by the draft spigots. I waited a reasonable amount of time and then yelled, “Hey! Any service?”
Another minute went by and then the door in the far wall opened, and a greasy, little guy came out. He went behind the bar.
“We’re closed,” he grunted.
His teeth were black, and he had bad breath.
I smiled at him.
“I want to see Manny. He around?”
He got a bar rag from somewhere and blew his nose on it. “I told you we’re closed. I don’t know no Manny.”
I shrugged and turned toward the door. Nothing to do but play it by ear. I took a step and stopped, glancing behind him at the low shelf filled with dusty, unopened wine
bottles.
“Too bad you’re closed. I could sure go for a shot of that Scotch.”
I was indicating the shelf with a nod of my chin. The little man looked confused for a second and turned around to check the stock. That shelf probably hadn’t seen a good fifth of Scotch in ages.
As soon as he turned I spun around and made for the back door. I had my hand on the knob before his surprised, “Hey!” blasted out. But by then I had the door open.
The room was small and windowless. An air-conditioner was hooked up to what looked like a vent in one wall, and it hummed softly in the silence. The room was furnished like a doctor’s waiting room, with two comfortable-looking couches and an assortment of chairs and lamps. A little desk sat in the corner supporting the alligator-clad feet of a thin-looking guy with a blond crew-cut.
I closed the door behind me and crew-cut jumped to his feet. He was about six feet, lean and young with a built-in sneer on his narrow lips. He looked about twenty years old—one of those dedicated twenty year olds who usually never make twenty-five. His baby-cord suit looked almost as expensive as the one I was wearing, only it was cut in a flashy wide-shouldered, narrow-waisted sharpness that undermined the material. The kid’s tailor must have hated him.
He made it to the middle of the room in quick, nervous strides and stopped a foot in front of me.
“Cool it, pal,” he rasped. “That’s as far as you go.”
I gave him a friendly grin.
“I want to see Manny.”
The door flew open behind me and halitosis popped his head inside. He looked worried.
“Sorry, Blade,” he whined. “He walked right in.”
The kid threw him a contemptuous look and jerked his head.
“Watch the front, jerk. I’ll handle this.” When we were alone again we matched stares.
“Okay,” he said, after a minute, “what d’ya want?”
“I told you. I want to see Manny.”
“Manny don’t wanna see you. Cut out the way you came.” He paused dramatically. “I could get angry.”
“Really?”
He grinned nastily.
“It’s happened,” he snapped.
I looked behind him at a closed door leading to another room.
“Manny in there?” I asked.
The kid leaned back and rocked a little on the balls of his feet. He shook his head disgustedly.
“What’re you, some kind of clown? You better split, pal, while you still can.”
I watched him rock for a minute and then spit on the toe of one of his alligators.
“Tell Manny he’s got company, sonny. You’re beginning to bother me.”
A look of incredulity came into his pale face as he jumped back, trying to get his shoe out of the way. Obviously, this boy was used to respect.
He stood there watching me and his eyes got hooded. I dug his pupils for the first time. They were dilated like saucers.
“Mister,” he whispered, “you just tore your ass, you know that? Now you gonna understand why they call me Blade.”
His hand became a blur as it went inside the suit jacket and came out thrusting with an eight inch switch-blade already opened.
As soon as his hand had made for the jacket I was moving. I timed it with his arm, sidestepping to the left at the same second the knife came out so that I took the thrust under my right armpit as I brought a knee smashing up to his groin.
He made a soft, high scream and I brought the knee up again—twice. The knife fell and clattered to the floor as he doubled up and retched all over that pretty baby-cord.
I stepped beside him and stiffened out my right hand with the edge rigid. The shock jolted my wrist as I chopped him on the back of the neck and watched him sprawl on his face, out cold.
I straightened my jacket and stepped over him and picked up the knife. The door to the inner room was unlocked and opened without any trouble.
It was an office about twice the size of the room I’d just left, with all the plush fixtures of a Wall Street conference room. A middle-aged, well-dressed man sat behind a tooled leather desk across the room.
He glanced up as the door opened. Mild surprise covered his swarthy features. He seemed the type that never got too surprised.
“Yes?” he asked, as if he was used to people popping in like that.
I closed the door and crossed the room to his desk. I tossed the knife in front of him.
“Jack Armstrong out there says I can see you now. You Manny Zato?”
He regarded the knife for a second and then nodded and stood up. He was taller than he’d looked sitting down. Maybe six-feet-two, and big. He weighed a good two hundred and none of it looked soft. Daily workouts in his own private gym, no doubt. Or maybe he kept in shape by working over delinquent hop-heads.
He was probably in his early forties, but only the gray at the sides of his thick black hair indicated it. His face looked younger. He smiled, showing me at least twenty of his flawlessly-capped teeth.
“I’m Zato. What can I do for you, Mister—”
“Winters. Cole Winters.”
I showed him my button. His smile shrank a little, but it didn’t bother him much.
“A shamus?” he asked. “That’s a new twist. By the way, what did you do with Blade? A name, incidentally, that seems to be badly misplaced.”
I smiled and put away my button.
“He’s taking a nap in his own puke. He needs a different job.”
“He’ll find one,” he said, and I believed him. “Won’t you sit down, Mister Winters?” He waved at one of the big leather chairs close to the desk. “I’m not accustomed to entertaining gentlemen of your profession, but I’ll do my best.”
I sat. Zato sat, leaned back into the desk chair and waited patiently. He was so calm and indifferent I wondered for a minute whether Monk had given me a wrong wire. But I was forgetting my friend, Blade, out in the other room. You just don’t have people cut up if you’re merely operating a bar. They might take their business elsewhere.
“I’m here about the Ricky Parks’ murder,” I said.
“Ricky Parks?” he asked. “And who’s he?”
Fine. What did I expect? That he’d stick out his wrists and confess all at the drop of a name? I moved up to the edge of the cushion.
“Look, Zato, Ricky Parks was chilled last night up in the Bronx. I’ve got a personal grudge against the killer, and that means I’m going to find him. Parks was a gowster with a long habit, and you supplied him his kicks. Now, somebody’s going to get hurt if I don’t get some answers.”
He smiled at me and withdrew his hand from behind the desk. There was a .45 in it.
“Softly, Mister Winters,” he said. “Let’s try to keep this conversation just that, shall we?”
I sighed and settled down.
“Now,” he continued, holding the gun loosely in my direction, “what makes you think I had anything to do with this Ricky Parks? Or with dope, for that matter?”
Our positions seemed to be neatly reversed all of a sudden. I felt like a chess player who’s just realized that the Bishop he so brilliantly captured has just cost him his queen.
“Well now, it’s funny you should ask,” I said, stalling to mentally measure the distance between me and the .45. “I’m beginning to wonder the same thing myself.”
I decided it would be suicide to try it. A rather swift decision, I might add. In fact, to be truthful about the whole thing, I didn’t give it any thought at all.
The holster under my left arm was gimmicked with a spring that would throw the .38 into my hand pretty fast just by pressing my arm against the leather. But not that fast.
“Mister Winters,” he said, “you’re a very witty man, and I’m sure you do impressions, too. But I asked you a question. What brought you to me?”
“Your reputation, Manny. You’ve got hopped-up publicity all over the Village.”
He leaned back and rested the barrel of the gun on the desk. “Ex
actly what does my publicity say?” he asked.
“That you’re Mister Big on the spike-and-spoon circuit. Ricky Parks copped regularly from one of your runners, and now he’s dead. Such connections make me curious.”
He displayed his pretty caps again.
“They could also make you dead!”
Funny man.
“Carve it on my gravestone,” I said. “You’re not going to kill me, Manny. At least, not here. You’re much too careful for that. For one thing, you don’t know how many people know I’m here. People who can add if I turn up in the river somewhere.”
He sighed wearily.
“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “I don’t have the least intention of killing you. Unless you force me, of course. This gun,” he shook the .45 carelessly, “is merely a pacifier. Sort of a monitor, shall we say, to keep our little chat amiable.
“Now. As to your accusations, naturally I deny them. I could just throw you out of here without trying to convince you, but I have a few minutes and you interest me. For the sake of argument, suppose I were this Mister Big you claim I am. If I’m that big, wouldn’t it seem probable that I still wouldn’t know your Ricky Parks? After all, if I employ runners as you say, wouldn’t it seem rather inconceivable to you that I’d personally acquaint myself with an addict I was pushing to? This is all hypothetical, of course, but would that seem logical to you?”
“It would if the kid had something you wanted,” I said. “Or he could’ve welched on a bill and your boys got too rough trying to collect.”
“Mister Winters, have you ever met a junkie who possessed anything anyone else could want? The only thing an addict has is his habit. That’s all.”
“And the non-payment angle?” I asked.
He smiled again.
“Wrong again. If I was pushing to him, and he did welch, I’d simply forget it and cancel our association. Compared to the heat that a murder of one of my customers could possibly bring to me, the loss of a few dollars would seem inconsequential. And besides, if I did run an organization such as you suggest, you can believe me when I assure you that there would never be any credit involved.”
He stood up and moved to the side of the desk, keeping the gun on me.
