The Triple Shot Box (Goodey's Last Stand, Not Sleeping Just Dead & Fighting Back): Three Gritty Crime Novels

by Charles Alverson

  “Nothing,” said Rice.

  Harry gave a short, very humorless laugh. “You’re a real comedian, Mr. Rice,” he said, getting halfway up from his seat, “but the joke is over. I’ve got things to do. So, if you’ll excuse me—”

  “I won’t,” Rice said quietly but so definitely that Harry froze. “Sit back down and listen to me, Mr. Caster. I won’t keep you long.” Without consciously commanding his muscles, Harry sank back into the booth and sat staring at Rice. His glass of whiskey was forgotten in his right hand.

  “Listen to me carefully,” Rice went on. “I’m not going to repeat myself. I’m going to be your new partner in this bar. I’m not going to put up any money, but I’m going to take half of the profits. That’s the deal I’m offering. Take it or leave it. But the only way you can stay in business and stay healthy is to take it.”

  Harry said nothing.

  “You think it over, Mr. Caster,” Rice said in a friendly tone, “and I’ll be in touch with you in a day or so. But think real hard. If you come up with the wrong answer, it’ll be bad for both of us. But I can promise you it’ll be much worse for you than for me.”

  Rice slid easily out of the booth and stood before Harry. Harry didn’t look up. He continued to stare at a point somewhere between the man’s eyes and the tabletop.

  With an expressionless nod to Marco, now alone at the far end of the bar, Rice walked out of the Lamplighter into the street.

  For a long moment, Harry remained motionless. Then he drained his glass unthinkingly and rose from the booth. Feeling only marginally in control of his legs, Harry moved to the bar, slumped to a stool and shoved his empty glass toward Marco.

  “Same again,” he said, and when he had the glass back between his hands, Harry sat looking at it, not drinking and not talking.

  Marco went back to squinting at his paper in the dim light of a beer sign. He was twenty-five years old, tall and good looking, with a lantern jaw that narrowly saved him from being handsome. Harry liked Marco, but he kept telling him he was wasting his life as a bartender and ought to go back and finish college. Marco always listened quietly, smiled and said, “I’m a bum. I like this business. It suits me.”

  Harry looked up from the untouched glass in front of him. “Marco,” he said with careful control, “do you know the guy I was just talking to?”

  “I don’t know him,” Marco said, folding his newspaper, “but I’ve seen him around a lot. He calls himself Charlie Rice.”

  “Calls himself?”

  “Yeah. But his real name is Carlo Rizzo. He lives in Guinea Gulch a couple of blocks from my aunt.”

  “What else do you know about him?”

  “Not much. He’s not big-time, but he’s got a hand in lots of action in Hudson County and a reputation as a very hard man.”

  For a moment Harry was silent. Then: “Would you say he gets what he wants?”

  “Usually.”

  “Thanks, Marco,” Harry said, adding, “Look, there’s nothing happening here tonight. I think I’ll go home. If things are slow around midnight, close up early. Just throw the cash box in the safe. We can sort it out tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” said Marco, watching Harry get his coat from the rack between the cigarette machine and the front door. As Harry was about to go, the bartender said: “Harry—”

  Harry turned in the doorway.

  “If I can help you in any way,” Marco said, “just let me know. I mean it.”

  “Thanks, Marco,” Harry said. “I’ll keep it in mind.” He turned and left the bar.

  But Harry didn’t go home. He walked to the side parking lot, got into his three-year-old convertible and sat thinking in the dark. The situation seemed real enough. He’d heard of such things. But Harry couldn’t seem to get his mind to bear on it. Too many things kept intruding: Hildy, Lizzie, the baby, the big house on Elgin Street which seemed to gobble money by the shovelful. And the sweat he had gone through to open the Lamplighter.

  All these thoughts seemed so much more real than the fact that a stranger—some hoodlum in a $300 suit—was threatening to take it all away from him. Such things didn’t happen to unimportant little people like Harry Caster, he thought. There must be some mistake.

  Harry backed the car out of the parking lot, headed it into Parker Street, and drove away from the Lamplighter. He didn’t know where he was going, but any motion seemed better than doing nothing. Without consciously directing the car, Harry drove the length of the small shopping district past butcher shop, hardware store, boutique, launderette—all the shops he’d been in scores of times. They occupied a line of mid-Victorian houses, once the best homes in Parker’s Landing but now gingerbread-dripping relics modernized with plate glass.

  “Why not one of you?” Harry asked the blank windows, all dark but the launderette and the liquor store. “Why not you, Matt?” he asked the owner of Riverbank Liquors, now sitting at home at dinner with his family while old Henry Taubman watched the store. “Why me?”

  Facing the shops was the Penn-Central train station, the lifeline of most of the commuting residents with jobs in New York City. And behind that the riverfront park with deserted bandstand and tattered, multicolored summer awnings that should have been taken down weeks ago.

  Harry turned right on Pier Avenue and headed up the gently rising slope away from the river. It wasn’t a big town, and before long Harry was parked on Hudson’s Bluff overlooking all of Parker’s Landing and a long stretch of black river.

  From the bluff, Harry could see his own neighborhood. Parkland, one of the town’s oldest areas. Some of his neighbors were still uneasy to find a family of Jews living among them, but most had accepted the idea in the last five years. He could also see Guinea Gulch, as the locals called the slightly indented area where an enclave of Italians lived. It had started out fifty years before as a barren piece of land occupied only by the shack of an Italian caretaker of one of the old estates. But now the thinly treed land was dotted with low-profile modern houses which hugged the brown earth. In recent years, more and more of the new houses built in Guinea Gulch had adopted eight-foot-high fences and offered only flat concrete walls to the outside world.

  Somewhere behind one of those little dots of light, Harry thought, lives Carlo Rizzo, alias Charlie Rice, my would-be new partner.

  2

  At that moment, Carlo Rizzo was arriving at his low, pale-green house. Moving with a light step, he pushed open a door leading from the basement garage and started climbing well-carpeted steps. But before he’d gone far, he was waylaid by a six-year-old girl in pink pajamas who clung to his leg and made him haul her bodily up the rest of the stairs.

  “Maria,” said Angela Rizzo after giving her husband a kiss, “what are you doing? You’ll break daddy’s leg.” She was a short, stocky woman in her early thirties with a pretty, broad-nosed face and spreading hips.

  “I don’t care,” said Maria. “I want to. I want to break daddy’s leg in a million pieces.”

  “I’ll break you in a million pieces,” Rizzo said, detaching his daughter gently, kissing her hair and tucking her under his left arm. As he walked into the kitchen with his squealing, upside-down burden, Angie was putting dinner on the plastic-topped kitchen table. Rizzo put Maria down and sat down at the table eagerly. “Where’s Bobby?” he asked, beginning to spoon soup rapidly.

  “He’s at night football practice,” Angela said. “He won’t be home until just after nine o’clock. I gave him an early dinner.” After Maria had been sent upstairs to get into bed and pick a story to be read to her, Rizzo leaned back at the littered table and lit a cigarette. “A great meal, Angie,” he said. “Nobody cooks lamb like you do.”

  Angela sat down at the table with her own cup of coffee. “You’re in a good mood tonight. Carlo,” she said. “Is there some word from Abe Montara?”

  Rizzo’s face darkened. “No. Nothing. Not a word. He’s still sore, I guess. But listen, Angie, I’m onto something that I think could take the
place of some of the money I’m losing since Montara has been down on me.”

  “Oh, what is it?” Angie asked like a big-eyed child.

  “You know that new bar on Parker Street—the Lamplighter? The one Vince said was pulling in the big-shot commuters. Well, it looks like your Carlo is going to be a partner in that bar. I don’t want to talk too soon, but it just could be.”

  “That’s wonderful,” said his wife, “but, Carlo, do you know anything about running a bar?”

  “I don’t have to,” said Rizzo. “It’s run by a smart Jew named Caster who seems to be doing a very good job. All I’ve got to do is give him a hand now and then and draw my share of the profits.”

  “Give him a hand?”

  Rizzo laughed. “I’m going to be Caster’s adviser, his partner. I know a thing or two about business, you know.”

  “Well,” she said, frowning, “I hope it works out all right.”

  “It will, baby, it will. Let’s go read that story to Maria. There’s some boxing I want to watch on TV.”

  * * *

  It was getting late and cold, but still Harry didn’t want to go home. There was something that wouldn’t let him. He had to tell somebody about this, somebody who would care and maybe have some ideas. So he decided to go see his oldest friend, Arnold Gerstein, a commercial artist he’d known since high school in the Bronx. Harry rehearsed how he’d tell the story all the way on the half-hour drive up the river.

  “Harry! Come in,” Gerstein said when he found Harry on the doorstep of his large comfortable house. “Adele,” he shouted, “Harry is here.” He turned back to Harry. “Is Hildy with you?”

  “No, Arnie,” Harry said, “I’m alone, and I’ve got to talk to you about something serious.”

  Gerstein, a slight, bald man with the face of an animated basset hound, responded immediately to Harry’s urgency. “Sure,” he said, “we’ll go up to my studio where it’s quiet.” He led the way up to his attic workroom. And there, perched on a stool and surrounded by unfinished illustrations, Harry told him about Rizzo’s visit.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I’m not,” Harry said. “Arnie, I’ve never been so serious in my life.”

  “Then this Rice or Rizzo or whatever he calls himself has got to be a joker. He’s been watching too many gangster movies. He can’t just move in on you like this.”

  “He thinks he can,” said Harry, “and I’m not so sure myself.”

  “Well, I’m sure he can’t. Have you been to the police?”

  “Arnie, it happened less than a couple of hours ago. Besides, what am I going to go to the police with? My word that Rizzo is trying to deal himself half of my bar? They’d think I’m crazy.”

  “You’ve got to do something,” Gerstein said. “When did this guy say he was going to get back in touch with you?”

  “A day or two,” he said.

  “It’s your problem, Harry,” Gerstein said, biting on a drawing pencil, “but if it was me I wouldn’t wait. This schmuck is convinced that you’re his pigeon, that you’re so scared that you’ll just lie down and let him run right over you. You’ve got to let him know right away that he can’t. Here, I’ll tell you what you ought to do. You ought to pick up this telephone and tell him that it’s no soap.”

  “But Arnie, this guy belongs to the Mafia.”

  “How do you know? Did he say so?”

  “No, and it wasn’t engraved on his business card, either. But I believe it. Marco, my bartender, all but came out and said it.”

  “Yeah,” said Gerstein, “and it’s to this gonif’s advantage for you to believe it. If this Rizzo can get even fifty bucks off you with this scare tactic, he’s ahead of the game. Here, I’ll look up his number. Rice . . . Rice—here it is: 232 Bedford Grove, Parker’s Landing. Do you want to dial or shall I?” Gerstein offered Harry the telephone.

  “What the hell am I going to say to him, Arnie? Lay off or I’ll have my friend Arnold Gerstein rub you out? For Christ’s sake!”

  “No, stupid, all you’ve got to do is be very cool and businesslike about it. Just get him on the phone and tell him you’ve considered his proposition but you’re not interested. As simple as that.”

  “Don’t I wish.”

  “Get yourself ready. I’m dialing.”

  Rizzo had turned the television off in the fifth round of a very dull fight and was worrying over some figures in a big black ledger when Angie answered the telephone.

  “Carlo,” she said from the hallway, “it’s somebody asking for you. A man. He asked for Charles Rice.”

  “Let me have it, sweetheart.” As soon as Rizzo recognized Caster’s voice, he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said to his wife: “Honey, could you make me a cup of coffee?” When she’d gone, he said: “Sorry, Mr. Caster, I was interrupted. You were saying?”

  Rizzo listened to Harry Caster with a perfectly impassive face. When the voice on the other end of the line ended, he didn’t say a word for nearly thirty seconds.

  “Yes, I heard what you said, Mr. Caster. I heard you very good. But I think you’re making a bad mistake. I’m offering you a good deal, and I’m sure you’ll be sorry if you turn it down.” He held the receiver away from his ear. “There’s no reason to shout, Mr. Caster,” he said in a reasonable voice. “You’d better do some more thinking. Good night.”

  “Who was that, Carlo?” Angela asked, coming into the room with a cup of coffee and a piece of chocolate cake.

  “Nobody important,” Rizzo said, and he looked at his watch. “Hey, it’s getting late. I thought you said Bobby was going to be home about nine. It’s nearly ten o’clock.”

  Rizzo drank his coffee and ate the cake silently. Not long after he’d finished, he stood up abruptly. “I feel like having a beer,” he said. “I think I’ll run down to Aldo’s for a while.”

  “All right, dear, don’t be late.”

  “I won’t. And if Bobby isn’t home in ten minutes, call up the Swensons. He’s probably over there playing Halford’s records.”

  At Aldo’s Club, near the Hudson Road, Rizzo nodded a greeting to the bartender and stepped into a telephone booth. After making a short call, he sat down at a back table with a beer and waited.

  * * *

  Harry Caster was still holding the silent receiver to his ear. “Rice…?” he said. “Are you still there?” He put the telephone down.

  “He says I better do some more thinking,” he told Gerstein. “A lot of good that did. Now that he knows I’m not going to give in without an argument, he could be dangerous.”

  “Don’t be silly. He couldn’t have expected you to hand over half of your business just like that. Without an argument.”

  “Oh, no? I think that’s exactly what he expected.”

  “If you’re really worried,” Gerstein said, “you’d better go see the police tomorrow. Just for safety’s sake.”

  “Yes,” Harry said, “maybe I will.”

  As Harry unlocked his front door, Hildy Caster looked up from the television set. “Is that you, Harry?”

  “No,” Harry said, “it’s the Boston Strangler.”

  “We don’t want any. We take from Jack the Ripper. What are you doing home? I’ll bet Marco threw you out for cramping his style with the stewardesses.”

  “There was nothing much doing, so I thought I’d come home. The stardust sisters are asleep, I presume.”

  “Yes, thank the Lord. Whatever you do, don’t disturb the sleeping monsters.”

  At forty-two, Hildy Caster was thin, still pretty, and deeply cynical. The unplanned birth of the baby Sophie the year before had done nothing to temper her habitual misanthropy, lightly disguised by a flippant manner.

  “What’s on?”

  “Robert Taylor and Greta Garbo in Camille,” Hildy said. “He’s just asked her to give up the mad social whirl for a country cottage with painted scenery. Just like you and me.”

  “Yeah,” Harry said, “well, tell her not to do i
t.” He joined Hildy on the couch. His conscious mind took in the love story, but at the same time he was trying to come to grips with his own more unbelievable situation.

  Later, in bed, Harry turned from his sleeping side onto his back. “Hildy,” he said.

  “What?” groaned Hildy, snatched back from the brink of sleep.

  “Do you remember a movie where a gangster demands money from a small businessman with the threat of breaking the place up?”

  “I remember a hundred movies exactly like that. Why?”

  “Well, I was wondering what the businessman usually does in that sort of situation.”

  “Did you interrupt my elopement with Robert Taylor just to play Cinema Quiz Time? Let me ask you one: In what obscure home movie is the husband brutally murdered for waking his lovely wife with silly questions?”

  “No,” Harry insisted, “I’m serious. What does he do? Does he pay the money? Does he call the cops? Or what?”

  Hildy was silent so long that Harry thought she’d fallen asleep, but then she spoke. “This is just a generalization, mind you, but he usually refuses to pay at first, and then the gangsters break a few windows and arms until he sees reason. Then he pays off for a while until he decides that a man has to make a stand somewhere.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “Usually the mobsters bump him off,” said Hildy nonchalantly, “as an object lesson to the rest of the business community. But then the good guys get outraged and rub out the bad guys.”

  “That’s not much help to the businessman, is it?” Harry asked. “I mean the one bumped off.”

  “No,” Hildy admitted, “but they pass the hat and collect enough money for a classy tombstone and to send his kids to a good military school.”