by Max Lockhart
"Sure, and you'll break out like a kid with measles if you eat that junk. Now come on, or thumb a ride home," he said, dragging her along.
She tottered behind him on high heels. "But where?"
"The locker room. I gotta warn Quinlan."
"The locker room! But there'll be men in there undressing."
"Think of it as a new experience," he said, heading down the tunnel.
"Oh, doll face," called a husky feminine voice.
"God help me," he said under his breath. If it worked once, maybe it would work again.
Either God was busy, or didn't hear him over the racket of the crowd, because the next thing he knew, his arm was almost wrenched out of its socket. "Hey, sweetie," said the Blond Bombshell. "I've been looking for you. You didn't stick around after the match the other night."
Johnny swallowed. "I told you, I had to work."
"Your boss gave you the night off." The Amazon's big blue eyes narrowed into slits, and he noticed that her biceps were bigger than his. "I don't like guys standing me up."
"Hey, babe, would I do that to a hunk of woman like you?" he protested. "I was planning on us getting to know each other real well, but an emergency came up. I tried to get out of it, but my boss depends on me. I'm his main man, you know." He edged his way into the locker room.
"What do ya do?" asked the blonde.
"I'm a private eye, or rather Cleary is. That's the guy I work for. I do a lot of undercover work for him."
She ran a finger the size of a giant redwood down the middle of his chest. "Yeah? Well, undercover work's kind of what I'm interested in."
Johnny felt sweat bead on forehead and looked desperately at Dottie. "Then here's who you want to talk to. She's been with Cleary a long time. She can tell you all about it. Can't you, Dottie?"
But Dottie was staring openmouthed at a couple of semi-clad Thunderbolts. "Will you look at that. I wouldn't have thought a Roller Derby guy would wear boxer shorts."
It wasn't much of an opening, but Johnny figured it was the only one he was going to get. "Hey, Dottie, Blondie here plays Roller Derby, too. Maybe she can introduce you around. Maybe you can get your picture taken with one of the guys for the newspaper. The press is looking for some good shots of the Thunderbolts."
Dottie latched on to the Amazon's arm like a leech and Johnny slipped his leash and escaped. "Can you introduce me to that one over there with the little red hearts on his shorts?"
The Blond Bombshell was looking at Cleary's secretary like she might at a caterpillar she caught crawling up her arm. Johnny refused to feel guilty. Dottie could take care of herself.
It was bedlam in the locker room as he pushed his way through the crowd to put as much distance between himself and the Roller Derby queen as possible. The players were celebrating their victory mostly by pouring cheap champagne over each other. The place sounded like the St. Valentine's Day Massacre with all the corks popping like gunshots. It was going to be Roller Derby Day Massacre if he didn't get to Joe Quinlan.
"Hey, champ," he called over the heads of a dozen sportswriters, but Joe, charged up like a battery and red from a combination of bruises and exertion, was too busy shaking hands and punching his teammates to answer.
Shoving his way through the crowd with elbows and his heavy motorcycle boots, he finally reached hailing distance of Quinlan, who was stripping off his uniform and pulling on street clothes like a quick-change artist. "Hey, champ"—he began.
"The Wild Man comes through," interrupted Nicky Whitehorse, holding a bottle of champagne in one hand, and punching Joe in the arm with the other. "Hey, what's the rush? We got some celebrating to do."
Joe tried on a grin that Johnny thought had a long way to go before it fit. "I think I might have made a couple of enemies out there tonight."
"Shit, man, all the Thunderbolts made some enemies tonight, but none of them's in any shape to do anything about it."
"These might be," said Joe.
Johnny finally made it to within reach of Quinlan and pounded him on the back. "Way to go, champ. Easiest hundred I ever made."
Joe threw on his shirt, stuffed an envelope in his belt, and looked at Johnny. "Did you really bet a hundred?"
Johnny looked at the floor for a second. He ought to say no, let him know that Johnny Betts figured out Wild Man Quinlan was about to throw the match. Make him feel lower than an ant's knees for even thinking about it. But he wouldn't. This was Cleary's buddy, and he would be way out of line to interfere. Besides, Quinlan had played it straight in the end, maybe even been kind of a hero because he had to know that Mickey Gold was going to take him apart for welching on the deal.
"Sure I did, champ," he began, when Nicky Whitehorse popped another cork on a champagne bottle. "Son of a bitch," he said instead as he jumped backward out of the spray. "Watch the jacket, man. It's real leather."
When he looked up, Joe Quinlan was gone. Glancing around the locker room, scrutinizing the faces of the raucous crowd, he spotted Mickey Gold and Sidney Bloom pushing their way to the back of the locker room. Climbing on top of a bench, he jumped over the back of a seated Thunderbolt and headed for Gold.
"Something wrong with the floor?" asked the player, grabbing his jacket and gazing at him with eyes pink from the effects of cheap champagne and sharp elbows.
"I'm looking for Joe Quinlan. He's a buddy of mine," said Johnny, pulling his jacket from the Thunderbolt's fist.
The hulking player blinked and grinned, exposing a gum line with several empty spaces. "Out the window. Just like Wild Man Quinlan. He's too crazy to use the door like everybody else."
Johnny looked toward the back wall, and found the open window. Mickey Gold had, too, and wasn't very happy about it. Gold pounded the wall until Johnny wondered if it would stand, or crumble into dust and bring the ceiling down on their heads. He couldn't hear what the mobster was saying, but his newly discovered lip-reading ability told him that none of it was anything a Sunday school teacher would like. Sidney Bloom made some comment, a stupid one if Johnny knew the bodyguard as well as he thought he did, and Mickey threw him a look that would've melted steel down to a gray puddle. The mobster turned and started elbowing his way through the mob to the back door.
Johnny turned around and tapped the drunken Thunderbolt on the shoulder. "Is there a back way out of here?"
The player tilted his head back and emptied half a bottle of champagne, belched, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Over there," he said, turning his wobbly head. "That door the little dumpling and the big guy are opening. Goes out to the alley."
Johnny saw Mickey Gold and Sidney disappearing out the door. He wondered how Mickey would like being called a dumpling, then turned back to look at the crowd. People were thicker than fleas on a dog. He would never get out of the locker room in time to help Quinlan.
Urgently he turned back to the player. "I'll give you a C-note if you can clear me a path to the door." He grinned. He ended up losing that hundred on the Thunderbolts after all.
"All right," shouted the player, his skates hitting the floor followed by his weaving body. Putting his head down like a charging bull, he blasted through the crowd, slamming people to the left and right to the accompaniment of the sound of thick pads hitting soft flesh. Johnny followed in his wake, jumping over the crumpled, moaning bodies writhing on the champagne-wet floor.
Thrusting a hundred dollar bill at the drunken Thunderbolt who grabbed it, then promptly passed out, Johnny ran up the tunnel, out the auditorium side door and around the building to his parked Merc, taking a quick look up the alley as he passed. Joe Quinlan was standing alone facing two huge leg-breakers coming at him from one end, and Johnny didn't think it was to congratulate the Roller Derby star.
Jumping into the Merc and slamming the door, Johnny jammed the key into the ignition, turned it and pushed in the clutch. "Come on, baby, give me all you've got."
With an explosion of duel carbs kicking in, the Merc rounded the corner into the al
ley and the brilliant headlights picked up Mickey and Sidney standing behind Quinlan. "You must've taken one hit in the head too many to think you could get away with this," shouted Gold.
Joe Quinlan turned, and Sidney pulled his .38 and took careful aim.
"Get 'em, baby," said Johnny, and the Merc roared down the alley, French headlights and gleaming grille bearing down on the thugs like an avenging angel from Detroit.
Mickey and Sidney jumped backward into a stack of empty cardboard containers that collapsed on top on them, Johnny had just a second to observe that the containers were actually cartons, and originally had been filled with chili. Mickey Gold was sitting on his ass in a back alley splattered with globs of cold chili.
Johnny slammed on the brakes, and the Merc came to a shuddering stop beside Joe Quinlan. "Need a lift?" he asked, leaning over and flinging open the door.
Cleary slipped through the back door of the Black and Tan Club into the white plastered walls and polished hardwood floors of Mickey Gold's personal living quarters. His suit was dirty and rumpled, his face so long unshaven it was beginning to itch, and his eyes red and burning from lack of sleep. He felt like yesterday's garbage, and suspected he looked worse.
He was also angry. No, not angry; he was beyond that. He was enraged to the point that he saw objects through a red veil of fury. He understood now why someone would kill in a fit of passion. He was very close to that point himself. Very, very close.
He stepped backward into the shadows the barely risen sun hadn't exiled for the day and watched Sidney Bloom hurry down the stairs followed by Mickey Gold.
"Goddamn chili," said Mickey. "Even the cleaners can't eget that shit out of a sharkskin suit. I'm gonna take the cost out of somebody's hide." He brushed at the lapel of another white suit with the brim of his Panama hat held in one hand, and lugged a heavy leather suitcase in the other.
Cleary smelled the hair oil and talcum powder emanating from the mobster, and felt his eyes start to water. "You smell like a pimp, Mickey," he said in a low voice, almost a growl.
Both hoods jerked their heads around, Sidney's chin connecting with Cleary's fist. "Clumsy," murmured Cleary as he nailed Sidney again, sending him sliding across the waxed floor to collide against a potted plant. At that point the bodyguard lost all interest in the proceedings as he settled down for a long stretch of checking his eyelids for cracks.
Mickey took a clumsy swing at Cleary with his heavy suitcase. "You're out of practice fighting, Mickey," said Cleary, catching the end of the suitcase and using it to smash the mobster back against the wall, knocking his Panama to the floor.
Mickey staggered over and picked up his hat. "This is a one hundred and sixty-five dollar Panama, Cleary."
"Too bad," said Cleary, slamming his open hand across Gold's face, then hooking his arm around the mobster's plump neck.
Mickey grabbed the arm, but his street-fighting days were too far behind him. His muscle had turned to fat. "What's the problem here?" he croaked.
Cleary squeezed his arm tighter and watched the Peter Lorre eyes of the gangster bulge out a little more. "You mean aside from the fact that two of your shooters tried to rearrange my intestines last night?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." The sentence ended in a gagging sound as Cleary squeezed again.
"You used me, you son of a bitch."
"Hey, everybody uses everybody in this town. It's nothing personal,"
Cleary jerked the gangster's head backward until Gold's eyes glazed over like a three-day-old dead fish, and his voice turned into a breathless gobble. "Honest to God, they were supposed to wait until you were out of the way. You know me, I never hurt anybody that didn't have it coming to 'em."
Underneath the smell of hair oil and cologne that rose like a noxious cloud from Mickey Gold, Cleary caught a whiff of fear. Compounded of acrid sweat and a certain sourness of breath, it fed the beast Cleary knew was as much a part of what he was as his determination to be a just man. He was tempted to unleash the beast, tempted to kill Mickey Gold, tempted to enjoy twisting the mobster's head until the vertebrae cracked. But he could not. Once a man took that first step and committed that first deliberate, cold-blooded murder, there was no turning back. The beast was free and could never be caged again.
He pushed Gold away, suddenly nauseous at even touching him. "You blew it, Mickey. You had your shot and you blew it. Tucci's going to come after you with everything he's got. And as far as I'm concerned, you got it coming."
Cleary walked toward the door, his shoulder throbbing from landing on Tucci's carpet, his legs aching from jumping out a window. He felt like an overage comic book hero racing around the city in a fancy car he couldn't afford, trying to make a difference. Hadn't Chinatown taught him the impossibility of that?
"Hey, Cleary. Don't be so damn smug," shouted Mickey Gold hoarsely. "You got a bull's-eye on your back now. Just like me."
Cleary looked back over his shoulder at the gangster. "Then I'll see you in hell, won't I, Gold?"
TEN
"Thanks for saving my ass, kid," said Joe Quinlan, belching up an onion smell. "And thanks for the smothered steak dinner." He patted his flat stomach. "Gotta feed the inner man after a hard match."
Johnny figured Joe Quinlan must have three men living inside his muscular frame because he put away enough food for that many. "Running from Mickey Gold kinda gave me an appetite, too."
"Yeah, well, it works that way sometimes," agreed Joe, and then fell silent as Johnny parked the Merc in front of Eileen Quinlan's house. It was barely dawn, but there was a light on in the living room.
"I'm going to ask you something again, kid, and I want you to tell me the truth," said Joe Quinlan as he and Johnny walked up the path to Eileen's house. "Did you really bet a hundred dollars?"
"Best hundred I ever spent," replied Johnny, wondering if the drunken Thunderbolt who'd cleared the path out of the locker room still had the C-note when he woke up.
Quinlan looked up at the sky and laughed. "I think you're lying kid. When you told me that cock-and-bull story, you were looking at me like I was lower than dog shit. You knew I'd made a deal with Mickey Gold. It took me a while to figure out why you didn't blow the whistle on me. It was because of Jack Cleary. You didn't care if the crowd tore me to pieces. You didn't care if Nicky Whitehorse scalped me right there in the infield. But you cared a whole hell of a lot about disappointing Jack Cleary. You'd have stood right there and let me throw that match if it meant Jack wouldn't find out his buddy was a cheat. You're a Boy Scout, you and Jack both."
Johnny shrugged. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure, kid. You don't know a thing. Let me ask you a question." He pulled an envelope stuffed with bills out of his belt. "Supposing I had agreed to throw the match, and supposing Mickey Gold paid me half in advance. But then some kid said something that reminded me I used to stand for something, so I don't go through with the deal. Do you think I ought to give the money back to Gold?"
Johnny halted with his hand on the doorknob. "Hey, man, Gold probably cheated somebody out of that five grand to start with. Maybe he needs to know how it feels. Might make a new man out of him. Or give him a heart attack. Either way, he's better off."
"How'd you know it was five grand?" asked Joe suspiciously.
"I got a lot of skills: hot-wiring cars, opening locked doors, picking pockets. You're twenty bucks short, by the way. I figured if I saved your ass, you could pay for dinner."
Joe grinned and slapped the money against his palm. "Open the door, kid. I gotta save my life."
Johnny pushed open the door and stood back, feeling like an eavesdropper. But hell, he had been one before.
Joe walked into the empty living room as Eileen carefully set one last suitcase on the floor next to several others. "Do you believe in second chances, hon?" he asked, waving the money in the air. "What's wrong, Eileen? Why are you looking at me like that?"
Johnny could see the tiny white line
s between her eyebrows as she looked from Joe to the door. "Where's Jack?"
Johnny felt the hair on the back of his neck stiffen at the urgency in her voice. "What's the problem?"
She looked at him, rubbing her hands together as if she were washing them. "A Lieutenant Fontana called looking for him. They haven't heard from him in a couple of hours. He sounded scared. 1 didn't know cops got scared."
"Damn it!' exclaimed Johnny. "That means trouble. I told him not to do it, but he wasn't about to listen to me."
Joe's eyes switched back and forth. "What are you talking about? He's probably out on the town with some babe. It's no big deal."
Johnny turned on him, all the disgust he had felt for Quinlan from the beginning flooding back. "Didn't you wonder where Cleary was tonight? Didn't you wonder why he didn't come see you beat the hell out of the Indians?"
"Wait a minute. He don't want to come, I'm not going to twist his arm."
Johnny stuck his clenched fists in his pockets to keep from decking Quinlan. "You don't even know, do you? Or don't you want to know? Cleary went to bat for you with Mickey Gold after you messed up."
"Yeah, I messed up, but it's none of Jack's business. I never asked him to stick his nose in it. It's my problem."
"Not to Cleary, it's not. He's your buddy, Quinlan, from the time you were kids, and you don't even know him well enough to know he's going to finish what he starts. He's stubborn, remember? You said that yourself. He made another deal to get you off the hook. While you were skating and playing games with Mickey Gold, Cleary was waltzing with a killer."
"Call Fontana back, Mrs. Quinlan. Tell him I'm headin' up to Frank Tucci's," said Johnny as he headed toward the door.
Joe grabbed a handful of black leather jacket. "Frank Tucci, the mobster?"
"No, Frank Tucci, the florist. Cleary put himself square in the middle of Gold and Tucci. All because of you." He yanked his jacket out of Quinlan's grip. "You're so busy trying to outrun the past, you don't know what's going on with the last two people in the world who care about you. Grow up, Quinlan. Heroes are the guys who put their lives on the line for somebody else, not bastards like you who are trying to prove how brave they are to an audience."
