“I want to drop back here again in a couple of hours,” he told the chauffeur. “You can kill an hour showing me Ridge-ford’s points of interest, then we’ll grab lunch somewhere.”
Benny started the car, then inquired, “What kin’a points of interest ya mean?”
“Your standard tourist attractions.”
“Like cat houses, for ins’ance?”
“Like parks and museums and monuments,” Sands said patiently.
Benny stared at him. “Wha’da’ya wanna see stuff like that for?”
Sands gave it up. “Just drive around for a while,” he said shortly.
Benny took him on a tour of the downtown section, proudly indicating what he considered Ridgeford’s main points of interest as they drove past them. He showed Sands the city’s highest-priced brothel, where “da rugs is so thick, you gotta wade upstairs, and the cheapest lay rocks you half a hunnert.” He pointed out the most exclusive gambling casino, where admission was by card only, and several of the top night clubs. In nearly every block he called Sands’ attention to some cigar store which he said was a front for a bookmaker in back.
At noon Sands said, “This is all very educational, Benny, but it’s time for lunch.”
Benny took him to a combination restaurant and cocktail lounge. A number of attractive but flashily dressed women whose heavy make-up suggested they might be show girls were lunching there, some alone and others in pairs.
“All’a strippers from the joints hang out here,” Benny informed Sands. “Wanna meet a couple?”
“No thanks,” Sands said politely. “I already know a couple.”
It was a quarter of one when they finished lunch. Sands instructed the chauffeur to take him back to Harry’s Bar and Grill.
The blond Jack was serving two male customers at the bar when Sands entered the tavern. Ginny sat alone in a booth. There was no sign of Harry Thompson.
With a nod to the bartender, Sands slid into the booth opposite Ginny. He gave her an inquiring look.
“Harry took off in a huff,” she said ruefully. “I couldn’t talk him into forgetting what happened.”
Sands shrugged. “I guess that’s that, then.”
Ginny laid a hand on his. “Will you help us anyway, Jud?”
“Help you what?”
“Get Renzo Amatti off our necks. I’m afraid Harry will get hurt.”
“That’s almost a certainty unless he changes his attitude,” Sands told her.
The blond bartender came over to the booth and asked, “You people want anything?”
Ginny told him no, and Sands shook his head.
Ginny said, “You haven’t met Jack formally, have you, Jud? Jack Carroll, Judson Sands.”
Carroll offered a diffident handshake, still a little in awe of Sands. He became more at ease, though, when Sands gave him a polite smile and said, “Glad to know you, Carroll.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you from Ginny,” the blond man said. “Sorry Harry won’t let bygones be bygones. We need everybody on our side we can get.”
“Jud will help us anyway,” Ginny said confidently.
Sands frowned at her. “Just what do you expect of me, Ginny? I can’t make Amatti lay off your husband. About the best I can do is offer some advice.”
“What advice?”
“Tell your husband to quit fighting the system. He can’t win.”
Ginny looked at him with disappointment. Jack Carroll said, “Harry’ll never buy that.”
“Why’s he conducting this crusade anyway?” Sands asked. “He has to buy supplies from somebody. Are the prices of the companies Amatti pushes enough higher to be worth all the fuss?”
“You don’t understand,” Ginny said. “It’s a matter of principle with Harry. He refuses to let a racketeer dictate who he does business with. He’d balk even if Amatti’s pet suppliers had lower prices.”
“Then he’s got rocks in his head.”
Ginny said, “That’s a funny thing for you to say.”
Sands hiked his eyebrows. “Why’s it any funnier for me to say it than anyone else?”
“Unless you’ve changed a lot, you’re just as mule-headed as my husband. You, of all people, ought to understand how Harry feels. What would you do if you owned this bar, and some gangster came around telling you what suppliers to buy from?”
Sands grinned a little ruefully. “I guess I’d tell him to go to hell,” he admitted honestly.
“There isn’t anybody stubborner than Harry,” the blond Carroll put in. “You were wasting your breath earlier when you told him he had a choice of coming around or going bankrupt paying for damages and hospital bills. He’ll go bankrupt before he’ll give an inch.”
One of the bar customers tapped his glass on the bar, and Carroll went to attend to him.
Ginny laid her hand on Sands’ again. “Please help us, Jud. Harry might even be killed.”
Sands said patiently, “You know I’d do most anything for you, Ginny. But the kind of help you want means my breaking with Amatti and going up against him. Which, aside from the trouble, kicks me out of a well-paying job. Isn’t that a lot to ask me to do for a guy who won’t even speak to me?”
“You wouldn’t be doing it for Harry, Jud. You’d be doing it for me. You shouldn’t be working for a man like Amatti anyway. There are honest jobs.”
“Sure,” Sands said dryly. “For fifty bucks a week.” He examined her for a few moments. “You happy with this Thompson guy, honey?”
“Of course, Jud. Why do you ask that?”
“This morning you made some crack about settling for second best.”
She made a face at him. “Every girl has a first love she never forgets, Jud. But it doesn’t mean she’d trade the man she finally picks, even if she had the chance. It’s just a romantic dream. If you’ll excuse my candor, you make a wonderful lover, but you’d make a lousy husband. I wouldn’t trade Harry for you or anyone else.”
“That’s flattering,” he murmured. He studied her in silence for another short period. Finally he said with a note of resignation, “All right, Ginny. I’ll see what I can do to preserve your happiness.”
Her pale face lighted up and she squeezed his hand. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down, Jud.”
Sands slid from the booth. “If you want to get in touch with me, I’m at the Centner. Ask for Sanford Judd.”
“Oh?” she said in surprise. “Why the alias?”
“It’s a long story,” he told her. “It’ll keep. Where do I reach you, if I want to phone? Here?”
“Here or at home. We have an apartment on Gaylord. It’s in the book.”
“I’ll probably get in touch with you tomorrow,” he told her.
Back in the car, he instructed Benny to drive back to the Page Building. He found Renzo Amatti in his office, and the gray-faced Joey again leaning against the bar.
Sands sank into an easy chair before the desk and lit a cigarette. “Ran into a little snag at Harry’s Bar and Grill,” he announced.
“Yeah?” Amatti said. “What?”
“Harry Thompson is married to an old girl friend of mine. Her name was Virginia Wilson before she got married. We grew up in the same neighborhood in Chicago, and she was my girl all through high school. If I wasn’t a vagabond, probably I’d have married her.”
Amatti frowned. “Still carrying a torch?”
“Not exactly. But I think a lot of her. I wouldn’t want to see her hurt.”
“Some of your former bosses told me how you go all out for friends,” Amatti said. “I can understand that. We’ll put somebody else on Thompson.”
“She still might get hurt. Look, Amatti, this is just a two-bit neighborhood tavern. The kickbacks from what Thompson buys won’t even keep you in cigar money. Why not let him alone?”
The racketeer’s frown deepened. “He’s trying to stir up the other west side tavern owners against us,” he said shortly. “The whole section needs an object lesson, and Thompson’s goi
ng to be it.”
“Suppose he agreed to stop sounding off?”
Amatti shook his head. “No dice. The other owners are watching him. If he gets away with buying from anybody he pleases, others will try the same thing.”
Sands sighed. “Well, I tried it the peaceful way. Now I’ll have to put it another way. Lay off Thompson, Amatti.”
The racketeer stared at him with a scowl. “You’re giving me orders? A guy on my payroll?”
“I just resigned from your payroll,” Sands informed him.
Amatti emitted an incredulous little chuckle. “You’re warning me to lay off?”
“Uh-huh.” Sands blew a thin stream of smoke across the desk at the swarthy man, then, deliberately ignoring the ash tray on the desk before him, dropped the butt on the thick carpet and ground it under his heel. “I’ll put it in language you can understand. If Thompson gets hurt, I won’t bother looking up the goons you sicked on him. I’ll come straight to you. If he just suffers a few bruises, you get a few bruises. If he goes to the hospital, you get the bed next to him. If he ends in the morgue, you get the adjacent slab. It’s sort of an eye-for-an-eye and a tooth-for-a-tooth deal.”
Amatti’s dark complexion grew even darker. Joey took his elbow from the bar and started fingering his lapel with a caressing movement. His still face wore a waiting expression.
Lazily Sands came erect. Without glancing toward the bodyguard, he said to Amatti, “Better tell that walking corpse you use for a bodyguard that if he gets his hand another inch closer to his gun, I’ll bounce a bullet off him.”
Amatti’s cheek muscles bunched, but he said nothing.
Still looking at Amatti, Sands said, “Either reach, Joey, or drop your hand. I’ve got a short fuse and it’s sizzling.”
Both Amatti and the bodyguard knew from Sands’ expression that he wasn’t merely making a bluff. It was obvious he wanted gunplay. Amatti was no coward. He must have at least suspected that Sands’ intention was to put bullets in both if shooting started. But by not even glancing at Joey, he left the decision up to the gray-faced man.
Joey’s muscles tensed and an eager expression grew in his eyes. Sands stood with both hands hanging loosely at his sides, ignoring him.
Suddenly Joey’s hand dipped under his coat. It came out with a snub-nosed revolver.
Sands’ right hand moved too, so incredibly fast that the movement was barely detectable. Flame spurted from his thirty-eight special.
Joey’s gun thumped to the thick rug and his left hand instinctively clasped his right bicep. He stood swaying slightly, his mouth drooping open and his face registering shock.
Sands gazed coldly down at Amatti. The swarthy man’s forehead became beaded with sweat, but he stared back steadily.
Sands said sardonically, “You can relax, Amatti. I only pushed it because I believe in object lessons too.”
He backed to the door, felt behind him for the knob and drew it open. His hand moved again and the gun disappeared. With a bleak smile he backed from the room and quietly closed the door behind him.
Apparently Amatti’s office was soundproofed, for no one in the smaller offices along the hall even looked up as he passed. Without hurry he moved through the main office to the elevator.
As the elevator doors started to close, the middle-aged receptionist smiled at him.
CHAPTER VIII
BRIDGET O’ROURKE was behind the desk when Sands entered the Centner. She looked a little embarrassed when he stopped and asked, “Wake up with a hang-over?”
“Only a little one,” she said. “I want to apologize for last night.”
He hiked his eyebrows. “Why?”
“For a couple of reasons. For one thing, I drank too much.”
“My fault,” he assured her. “I should have warned you that mint juleps are sneaky.”
“I don’t feel too guilty about that,” she conceded. “But I wasn’t very nice afterward. It’s really none of my business how you earn your living.”
He grinned wryly. “If it makes you any happier, I’m not working for Amatti.”
Bridget looked pleased. “I’m glad you took my advice.”
“Oh, it wasn’t your moral lecture,” he said. “I took the job, but Amatti and I had a falling out a few hours later. So I quit. I’m not a reformed character.”
She looked at him strangely. “Do you want me to think badly of you?”
“No, but I’m not going to fly under false colors just to get back in your good graces. Most of my adult life I’ve been involved in some phase or other of professional gambling. Probably I always will be. I don’t want to be reformed. So you’ll either have to accept me as I am or by-pass me.”
She flushed slightly. In a prim voice she said, “I told you it’s none of my business how you earn your living, Mr. Judd.”
“Then we’ll have a nightcap again tonight?” he asked with a grin.
She examined him for a moment, then smiled back. “A nightcap, if you’d like. Not several.”
“See you at ten,” he said cheerfully, and went on up to his room.
Taking out his wallet, he counted his money. After reclaiming his watch from the pawnbroker, he had had a little over three hundred and seventy dollars. It was now reduced to less than three fifty.
He tried to analyze what it was that had caused him to blow a well-paying job for a matter of principle. Long ago he had come to the cynical conclusion that crime did pay, if it was organized crime. The lone criminal—the stick up man, burglar, embezzler and that ilk—usually ended behind bars. But those who attached themselves to politically protected machines, such as Amatti’s, seldom ran afoul of the law. Even if they did, they could bank on political strings being pulled to free them, and on top legal talent to defend them.
Jud Sands hadn’t blindly thrown his lot on the side of the racketeers. It had been a deliberate choice, after careful consideration of the odds. And in making his decision, he had imposed some strict rules on himself. The first was that he would commit no crime, for any fee, which might bring a long prison sentence. He would risk a misdemeanor charge for gambling, or risk an assault charge by acting as a strong-arm man. But he wouldn’t have any part of rackets such as narcotics, which might involve a felony rap. He carefully kept himself on the edge of the law, without ever moving over into what society considered serious criminal activity.
Because he was both loyal and efficient, his employers usually accepted his self-imposed limitations. When they didn’t, he simply moved on. But up to now his limitations had been based on the practical desire to avoid serious trouble with the law, not on moral principle. It puzzled him that he had stuck his neck out so far for Ginny.
He wasn’t in love with the girl, he assured himself, though he once had been in the dim past. It should have been enough to assuage his conscience merely to refuse to handle the matter personally, and let Amatti assign someone else to Harry Thompson. Why had he felt impelled to go all out in Ginny’s defense?
It didn’t occur to him that the practical rules of conduct he had laid down weren’t entirely pragmatic, but reflected a rigid code of ethics he wasn’t even aware of. Though he considered himself virtually conscienceless, there were a remarkable number of things he wouldn’t do, even when no risk was involved. Last night’s refusal to take advantage of Bridget when she was drunk, for example, had no practical consideration behind it. It had been the instinctive reaction of a man who, somewhere in his remote ancestry, had a deep Puritan strain.
After mulling over his motives, he finally came to the conclusion that his behavior stemmed from the same bullheadedness that had made him call Mark Fallon for second-carding in the Miami poker game.
With only three hundred and fifty dollars to his name, he would have to live carefully, he thought. He wondered if he could afford the luxury of renting a car. Then he shrugged. If he was going to be of any help to Ginny, he was going to need transportation, and he could hardly use Benny as a chauffeur any more.
This time there were a number of customers in Harry’s Bar and Grill. Jack Carroll, busy behind the bar, nodded toward the kitchen and said, “She’s back there.”
Sands walked into the kitchen. He found Ginny, wearing a white apron, frying a pair of hamburgers on a grill.
“I thought Harry was the cook here,” he said.
She gave him a wan smile. “Just mornings. Then he takes over the bar at six, when Jack goes home. So afternoons and evenings I handle the kitchen. When your husband owns a tavern, you work as hard as he does.”
“Harry won’t be back till six then?”
“Probably not. He usually catches a nap at home afternoons.” Examining his face, she asked dubiously, “Did you want to see him?”
“Not particularly,” Sands said. “I just wanted to know when to expect Amatti’s men around. They won’t show until the boss is on duty.”
Ginny’s eyes widened. “Is Amatti sending someone else here?”
“I imagine. I can’t say for sure, because I’m not in his confidence any more. I quit.”
Ginny’s eyes searched his face. “I’m causing you a lot of trouble, aren’t I, Jud? I didn’t like you working for a man like that, but I really had no right to ask you to quit your job.”
“It’s done now,” Sands said. “Don’t worry about it. I warned Amatti to leave this place alone, but he doesn’t back down easily. I thing he’ll call my bluff just to prove he isn’t afraid of me. You might get a formal call tonight.”
Behind him Jack Carroll’s voice said, “You think there’ll be trouble, Mr. Sands?”
In six weeks of running from Mark Fallon’s guns Jud Sands had developed an edginess to unexpected sounds and movements. He had whirled and his hand was touching his gun butt before he realized it was only the blond bartender in the kitchen doorway.
“You move too damned quietly,” he snapped.
Carroll looked taken aback. “Just came after the hamburgers,” he said amicably. “I didn’t know it was a private conversation.”
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