Enforcer

by Sydney J. Bounds

  ENFORCER

  Sydney J. Bounds

  © Sydney J. Bounds 1990, 2006

  Sydney J. Bounds has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published by F.A. Thorpe, 2006.

  This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – Bone-Breaker

  Chapter Two – Kid Stuff

  Chapter Three – Pick-up on Basin Street

  Chapter Four – Peeper

  Chapter Five – Black and Blue Client

  Chapter Six – Bodyguard

  Chapter Seven – Rip-Off

  Chapter Eight – Snake Dancer

  Chapter Nine – Target for Tonight

  Chapter Ten – Alley Corpse

  Chapter Eleven – The Fix

  Chapter Twelve – Southern Comfort

  Chapter Thirteen – Quick Burner

  Chapter Fourteen – ‘Queen of the South’

  Chapter Fifteen – Bank Score

  Chapter Sixteen – Live Bait

  Chapter Seventeen – Set-up

  Chapter Eighteen – Killing Ground

  For more information about Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher, please visit www.endeavourpress.com

  For weekly updates on our free and discounted eBooks sign up to our newsletter.

  Follow us on Twitter and Goodreads.

  Chapter One – Bone-Breaker

  The trumpet cut through a fog of tobacco smoke like a knife through flesh.

  Washington T. Diamond leaned forward on a hard wooden chair placed behind and to one side of the Joe Baker Rhythm Quintet on a raised platform at the back of the long room.

  A quick four-bar beat set his feet tapping. Joe was in great form, and the way he hit the top notes made Diamond’s thick black fingers dance on the valves of the trumpet cradled in his lap. His eyes shone with anticipation as he waited for the bandleader to cue him to come in. So it was amateur night . . . it was still no small honour to be invited to sit in at a session with professional jazzmen.

  The Black Swan, off Bourbon Street, rocked to an integrated blast of sound; the animal growl of muted trombone, the blare of Joe’s horn, shrilling clarinet, a solid rhythmic beat from the drummer and a twanging banjo. The individual sounds merged to make the club’s barn of a hall throb like a cat on a hot tin roof as the band belted out Dixieland jazz.

  Candlelight gleamed on brass instruments. A waiter holding a tray of drinks above his head pushed between close-set tables to reach the dais. Fans clapped and stamped their approval.

  The air was humid; a sheen of sweat glistened on Diamond’s chocolate-dark face and his brightly-coloured Hawaiian shirt stuck to his skin. He was only half-aware of the crowded tables, swaying bodies and tapping feet as he pursed his lips ready for the mouthpiece as Chelsea stepped up and grasped the microphone stand in both hands.

  Brown-skinned Chelsea Hull was small and busty and glowed in a dazzling orange gown. Her shoes beat a tattoo and her hips swivelled on roller-bearings as she unhooked the mike and cradled it close to her lips. Her smile was like an arc-light suddenly switched on.

  The quintet finished improvising and swigged beer and took puffs on half-concealed cigarettes, then swung into the opening bars of Chelsea’s number. Joe Baker wheeled around and flourished his horn at Diamond.

  Washington T. Diamond came up from his seat as though on springs, trumpet lifting, tall and solid as a grizzly bear. His broad face split in a grin, flashing white teeth, and he blew a slow sad accompaniment to Chelsea’s throaty singing:

  ‘I’m just a gal without a home,

  Just a poor gal got no home,

  Got no lover to take me home,

  A poor sad gal ’vermore to roam.’

  Diamond took a solo after the verse, feeling relaxed and on top of the world. Using a mute, he produced a sound full of sorrow, a lost soul moaning in the night. Then a waiter tapped his arm and whispered, ‘Phone, Wash.’

  Diamond frowned at the interruption and carried his horn with him as he edged between tables to the bar and picked up the telephone.

  ‘Yeah?’

  The voice at the other end of the line was carefully neutral, a grey voice owned by a grey man.

  Diamond listened to instructions, said, ‘Yeah . . . okay . . .’

  Replacing the receiver, he moved back through the tables to the bandstand and handed Chelsea his horn.

  ‘Got to work, baby.’ Her lips made a moue of disapproval. ‘Greco?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘See you later, Wash?’

  Diamond nodded as he slipped on a lightweight jacket. ‘My place, okay?’ He straightened his gaudy tie and left the club.

  Outside, the air smelt of pizza, hamburger and spicy Cajun food, and the dark of evening fluoresced with red, green and blue neon. Bourbon Street seethed with tourists looking for a good time.

  All thought of jazz faded from Diamond’s mind and his face became serious as he turned into a narrow street leading down towards the river. He hadn’t used his car for the date at the Black Swan and loped with a pantherish grace through the underbelly of New Orleans’ French Quarter, past porno and sex shops and strip shows. The whole section was a plastic and concrete jungle, different from Vietnam, but just as dangerous for the unwary.

  The clinging humid heat meant that windows remained open, an invitation to thieves, and a drifting sea mist offered cover for their activities. Street lamps were sparse and shadows gathered between them. Pushers and hustlers and pimps, white, brown and black-skinned, lingered in doorways. No one bothered him as he passed, silent and wary; his size discouraged muggers.

  A police car was parked at an intersection and, beyond a row of old buildings with dark shutters and wrought-iron balconies, a neon sign flashed its message:

  NICK’S ARCADE

  Open Twenty Four Hours Every Day

  Even before he reached the wide open doors, he could hear a ceaseless mechanical clatter of slot machines.

  The interior was crowded; row after row of silver machines were played by middle-aged women, teenagers in stonewashed jeans and school children, feeding coins in a steady flow and pulling handles with reflexes as mechanical as the machines they seemed part of. Their expressions grim, oblivious of the real world outside, they might have been robots. A player hit the jackpot and a stream of quarters tinkled when the machine paid off — to be fed straight in again. Diamond’s nose wrinkled in distaste as he passed an older woman standing in a puddle; with blue-rinsed hair and rings sparkling on her fingers, she appeared unaware of her incontinence.

  He carved a path through the crowded aisle to an office at the rear.

  Nick sat behind a broad desk, his paunch pushing a soft chair back against the wall. His black and gleaming hair contrasted with an unhealthy pallor of skin; a sweat-stained shirt was open at the neck, his tie loosened. He gave a brief nervous smile of recognition as Diamond approached.

  There were two other men in the boxlike office. The money-changer, grey-haired, with a worn leather satchel slung by a strap in front of him; and a youth wearing a brown leather jacket studded with metal stars.

  Diamond automatically noted the position of each and then ignored them. He towered over the manager of the arcade.

  ‘Mr. Greco sends a message —’

  Nick interrupted hurriedly. ‘Listen, I can explain. It’s just a simple misunderstanding —’

  Diamond’s focus of attention shifted as, through the racket of the slot machines, he heard the faint click of a switch knife. The youth began to pick his teeth with the four-inch blade, his expression bored and his macho stance picked up from street films.

  �
��Put it away, kid, or I’ll ram it down your throat.’

  ‘Says who?’

  Diamond stared him down, baring his teeth. The youth regarded the large and menacing size of him and retracted the blade into its handle. His sneer froze. Diamond gave his attention back to Nick.

  ‘Mr. Greco sends a reminder to keep your fingers out of his till. He doesn’t like managers who take their cut before handing over the cash.’

  Nick spread his hands, palms up, in supplication. ‘If you’ll just listen —’

  Diamond kicked the office door shut. ‘We don’t want to disturb the customers, do we?’

  He reached for Nick’s nearest arm with big hands, lifted it and bent it backwards. The arcade manager’s face turned abruptly pale and he came out of his chair, following his arm.

  ‘No, don’t . . . please!’

  Diamond placed the arm across his knee and continued to bend it against the elbow joint, effortlessly. Nick pored sweat and gave a scream that was lost in the clatter of slot machines. His arm snapped like brittle toffee and he slumped in a dead faint. Diamond let him fall as though he were an empty sack.

  He glanced casually at the old money-changer and the youth, who had suddenly lost his macho toughness.

  ‘When Nick comes round, tell him Mr. Greco said to stay in line.’

  He opened the door and walked from the office, bulled his way through the crowded aisle and out to the street.

  *

  Chelsea Hull left the jazz club carrying Diamond’s trumpet in its case, climbed into her white Datsun and drove away. The night was hot and airless, but the mist had cleared and the sky was sprinkled with stars.

  She turned down a narrow street where apartment dwellers sprawled on sidewalks, and felt for them. She could remember a time, before she got regular well-paid work as a singer, when she too could not afford air-conditioning.

  And before that as a country girl, the poverty, growing out of her only dress and holes in her shoes, the rats and continual hunger — days when a half-loaf of stale bread was a feast.

  When she was young she’d always enjoyed joining in the gospel singing at the black church, and that had started her off. Then she’d heard records of Jessie Smith and Billie Holiday and those blues singers revved her up till her blood ran hot and she knew what she wanted to do with her life.

  She was fourteen when she left home and hitched a lift to New Orleans. Her first job had been with a third-rate band that gave her experience and barely enough to survive on till she moved to a nightclub. And that had been a stepping-stone to the Black Swan, where she’d met Wash and they’d hit it off right from the start.

  Chelsea reached North Rampart Street and the statue of Satchmo at the entrance to Armstrong Park, and swung into a tiny square where a shiny new condominium towered above the older buildings.

  She drove down a winding concrete slope to an underground garage, parked, and took the elevator up to Diamond’s apartment. She let herself in with her own key, shivered in the icy blast of air-conditioning. It was an expensive bachelor pad, but he got paid a lot of money as Leon Greco’s enforcer.

  Chelsea gave a small troubled frown. Greco was one mean man from what she’d heard and she felt glad he didn’t have a stake in the Black Swan. But, at least he paid real money.

  She switched on the lights, placed Wash’s trumpet case on a low table and went to the window. She stood a moment looking out across the city at the glittering grid of a thousand lighted windows and the dark crescent of the Mississippi, then drew heavy drapes.

  Everything in the apartment was neat and tidy, books stacked on shelves, records in their sleeves. The carpeting was wall-to wall and luxuriously thick, furniture sparse but high quality. She put Ella’s version of Stompin’ at the Savoy on the turntable and hummed along with it.

  She looked in the bedroom and the wide double bed was as tightly made as any in a hospital ward. The tiled bathroom with sunken tub was spotless.

  Chelsea was inclined to be offhand about her own housekeeping, but her man seemed ready to take off at five minutes notice. She guessed that was what the army did for you. But he was a good lover and, if she disapproved of his job, she kept her mind off what he might be doing.

  He was big enough — and strong enough — to take care of himself.

  When she went through to the all-electric kitchen with its stainless steel fittings and outsize deep freeze, a short-haired ginger cat rubbed against her leg and miaowed plaintively. Two kittens peeked warily from beneath the stove. She sniffed at the smell from the kitty-litter tray; Chelsea didn’t much like cats but she knew Wash did. The ginger cat began to claw demandingly.

  ‘Get away, damn you.’

  The door opened and Diamond walked in. ‘Love me, love my cats, baby.’

  He opened the fridge, used a can-opener and tipped cat-food into a dish.

  The Ella Fitzgerald record ended and the machine switched itself off. Chelsea ran water into the bathtub went into the bedroom and turned back the top cover. She slipped off her orange gown and sat on the edge of the bed in a white bra and bikini pants.

  Diamond leaned against the doorframe, smiling his approval of her shapely coffee-coloured legs.

  She reached behind to unfasten her bra, and paused.

  ‘If all you’re going to do is stare,’ she said tartly, ‘I might as well go home.’

  Chapter Two – Kid Stuff

  Even though the old Plymouth was parked in shade, and the front windows were wound all the way down, the interior still felt like an oven. Detective Fred Cave sat behind the wheel, one arm resting on a window frame, looking out across the levee to the docks along from Canal Street.

  He had a cheeseburger in one hand, a can of Heineken in the other and indigestion. Since his wife had left him, he seemed to exist solely on fast food; but at least he was out of the office. Anything was better than sitting at a desk typing up reports in triplicate. He wondered what he would do when he retired — if he retired — a job in security? Set himself up as a private investigator? That might bear thinking about.

  Cave was short and thin with a face as wrinkled as and the colour of a walnut. His suit needed pressing and a battered Panama was pushed back to reveal receding hair. His expression looked as sour as his stomach felt.

  From time to time he let his gaze drift across the area, but it was not the wharves and cranes nor the cargo ships that interested him. He was parked across from an old warehouse, now converted for use as a factory churning out video pornography.

  Roach was the name of the nominal owner, but Cave knew he was only a front for Leon Greco. It would be nice to pick up Greco some day, but Cave had no illusions; a smooth-talking lawyer would spring him faster than the speed of sound. Greco, a man with his fingers in a lot of pies, kept a safe distance from anything that might implicate him. A careful man who worked hard at earning his nickname: ‘The Fox’.

  The Plymouth’s door opened quietly and a skinny man wearing denims and an off-white shirt slid into the back.

  ‘D’you have to park where you’re so easy to spot?’ he complained. ‘I don’t want everybody to know we’re doing business.’

  Cave didn’t bother to answer. He watched his informer in the rearview mirror. ‘Breeze’ wore his sandy hair long and floppy to hide a lop-sided face. At one time, Greco’s hard men had worked him over and Breeze, vicious as only a small-time crook can be, sought any way to hit back, even to informing the police.

  ‘The Fox ain’t so clever any more,’ Breeze said in a voice that revealed considerable satisfaction. ‘More than one of his managers is ripping him off.’

  Cave slung the rest of his burger away, drained his beer and set the can on the floor between his feet. He fished a packet of Marlboro’s from his jacket pocket, lit two cigarettes and passed one back.

  ‘So?’

  Breeze took a long drag and feathered smoke. ‘So he has to clamp down real hard, and soon, or —’ The informer made a chopping motion with one hand.r />
  ‘I heard about Nick.’

  ‘Yeah, Wash took him.’

  Cave gave some thought to Greco’s negro enforcer and wondered if there was any way of getting at him.

  ‘Is that all you’ve got for me?’

  ‘Jeez, what more d’you want? Now’s the time to pull out all stops and hit the Fox good.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Breeze slid from the back of the car and vanished into the crowd swarming towards the ferry. Cave admired the way he pulled his invisible man stunt, began to cough and stubbed out his cigarette. He brooded on what he’d just heard.

  *

  Diamond came from the bathroom and looked down at Chelsea, still asleep in bed. The drapes were drawn back and sunlight streamed into the room, giving smooth brown shoulders a golden glow. Her Afro-styled hair and eyes were covered by a pillow and, curled up, she looked petite and defenceless and aroused his protective instinct. He had a gut feeling that this girl was going to mean more to him than a casual sleeping partner.

  The telephone rang and he grabbed it on the second ring, before it could wake her, and glanced at the wall clock. He was late this morning.

  The carefully neutral voice of Leon Greco said: ‘Pierre’s, the restaurant on Decatur. You know it?’

  ‘Yeah, I know it.’

  ‘Pierre borrowed money from me and he’s behind with the interest. He lives above the restaurant. Lean on him for me — point out that I take money seriously. I’ll call you there.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Diamond dressed quickly, fed the cats and kissed Chelsea lightly. She stirred in her sleep but did not wake. He left the apartment, took the elevator to the underground garage and joined the traffic on Rampart. It took his Mustang twenty minutes to cross Royal and Chartres, then he wasted more time looking for a parking slot.

  Eventually he locked the car and started walking. It was going to be another hot day. He turned into Decatur Street, passing tourists staring into the windows of art galleries. Above their heads, he saw a painted signboard, gilt-on-black: