“Sure. Where can I reach you?”
“Remember Papa Manny’s old three-floor brownstone?”
“Off Second?”
“I own it now. I live in the basement apartment.”
The Murray Hill exchange the thin one had given me wasn’t a phone. It was a coded password that got you admission into a horse parlor operating right on Broadway. It wasn’t one of the things the cops could be expected to know, not even the grafters.
But I knew. I even had the latest job. The one they gave me was three weeks old. The boy on the door winked, said, “Hi, Ryan, come in an’ spend a buck.”
The place had changed some. The loot was flowing in. The board was bigger, there was free booze at a service bar and fat chairs where the benches used to be.
Jake McGaffney came out from behind the pay window, saw me and came over. “Changing rackets, kid?”
“Not me, Jake. I like mine better. They got to be sure things for me.”
“We got a few of those too,” he chuckled. “What’s on your mind?”
I nudged his arm and steered him to the end of the pay window. “You getting touched by anybody?”
“You know this operation, Ryan. We’re not paying off. Hell, the cops know we’re operating, but we move too fast for them to line us up.”
“Nobody trying to cut in?”
“Get with it, boy. Since I played ball at the trial, uptown lets me go my own way. Sure, they give me limits and it’s okay with me. Nobody’s shaking me though. What’s got you?”
“Did you know Billings?”
“Sure. He got gunned.” Then he stopped and his face looked drawn. “He didn’t leave any tracks to this place, did he?”
“Nothing that can tie in. The fuzz had an old MU code he wrote down.”
Jake let his face relax and picked a butt from his pack and lit it. Through the smoke he said, “I’m okay then. They would’ve hit me before this if they figured it.”
“Jake… got any idea why Billings got tapped?”
“Idea?” He laughed in his chest. “Hell, man, I know why.”
“Why, Jake?”
“He had twelve thousand skins in his pocket when he left here. A nag called Annie’s Foot came in and he was riding it hard.”
“He been coming here long?”
“A month, maybe. I got a memo on him from his first play if you want it.”
“Who steered him in?”
“Gonzales. You know little Juan Gonzales… he’s the one pulled that kid outa the Hudson River sometime back and got his picture in the tabs. He was down the docks goofing off when this lady starts to scream and… ”
“Where is he now, Jake?”
“Gonzales?” he seemed surprised. “He got killed three weeks ago. He got loaded and stepped right out in front of a truck. He got dead quick. No waiting around.”
I said, “He have a family?”
“Just some dame. You wait… I’ll get you the business.”
He went behind the window and poked around in a card file until he found what he wanted. It was a short history of Juan Gonzales and when I memorized the data I handed it back. “Keep it if you want,” he said.
“I don’t need it.”
Juan Gonzales had lived on 54th, a few houses down from Tenth Ave. It was a fringe area where total integration of the underprivileged of all classes fused into a hotbed of constant violence. Lucinda Gonzales had a second floor rear apartment. The bells never worked in these tenements so I just went up and knocked at the door. It opened on a chain and a pretty, dark face peered at me and queried, “Si… who is it?”
“Lucinda Gonzales?”
“Si.”
“I want to speak about Juan. Can I come in?”
She hesitated, shrugged, then closed the door to unhook the chain. I stepped inside and she leaned back against the door.
“I can tell you are not the policeman.”
“That’s right.”
“You are not one of Juan’s friends, either.”
“How do you know?”
“His friends are all peegs. Not even tough guys. Just peegs.”
“Thanks.”
“What you want?”
“I want to know about Juan. You married?”
She made a wry face. “Nothing by the church. But this is not what you want to say.”
This time I gave her a little grin. “Okay, chicken… I’ll put it this way… Juan got loaded and got himself killed. He…”
“He did?” the sarcasm was thick. I stopped and let her say the rest. “Juan did not drink, señor.”
“What’s bothering you, Lucinda?”
“You, señor.” Her arms were folded tightly across her breasts, making them half rise from her dress. “To me you look like the one who could do it.”
“Do what?”
“Make Juan go crazy with fear. Maybe chase him so he runs in front of the truck and gets killed. All this time I have waited because I knew soon that somebody would come. They would have to come here. There is no other place. Now you are here, señor, and I can kill you like I have been waiting to do.”
She unfolded her arms. In one hand she had a snub-nose rod and at that distance there wasn’t a chance she could miss me.
“You better be sure, chicken,” I said.
Her voice was getting a hysterical calm. There was a dull happy look in her eyes that meant she was crowding the deep end and so was I. “I am sure, señor.”
I said very deliberately, “How do you know?”
“I know those of who Juan would be afraid. You are such a one. You thought he had his money when he died. He did not. Those ten thousand dollars, señor… it was here.”
“Ten thousand…” My voice was soft, but she heard it.
Her smile was vicious. “But it is not here now. It is safe. It is in the bank and it is mine. For such a sum Juan died. Now you can follow him.”
She took too long to shoot. She thought of Juan first and her eyes flooded at the wrong time. I slapped my hand over hers and the firing pin bit into my skin when I yanked the rod out of her hand. When she started to scream, I belted her across the mouth and knocked her into a chair. She tried another one and I backhanded it loose and as though I snapped my fingers, the glazed look left her eyes and she stared at me from a face contorted by fear.
When she had it long enough I said, “Ease off. You won’t get hurt.”
She didn’t believe me. She had lived with one idea too long.
“Lucinda… I never knew Juan. I don’t want his bundle. That clear?”
She nodded.
“Where’d the ten grand come from?”
Defiance showed across her face. Then it all came back again; fear, disbelief, hatred, defiance.
I said, “Listen to me, sugar. If I wanted to I could make you talk a real easy way. It wouldn’t be hard. I could make you scream and talk and scream and talk and you couldn’t stop it. You know this?”
She bobbed her head once, quickly.
“But I don’t want anything that bad. I’m not going to do anything like that. Understand?”
“Si.”
“Then once more… where’d the ten G’s come from?”
Nervously, she ran her fingers through her hair. “He came home from the docks one day and told me that soon we would go back to the island. Only now it would not be a mud hut but in a fine building that we would live. He said we were going to have much money. We would travel around the world, maybe.”
“When was this?”
“The week before he died, señor.”
“He had it then?”
“No.” She stood up quickly and stepped to the table, turned and leaned back against it. “He was getting it then, he said. He was feeling very good. But he did not drink.”
She shrugged. “He changed. He became a scared one. He would tell me nothing. Nothing at all. The same night he… died…” she paused and put her face in her hands a moment before going on, “… he came in and
took something from where he hid it in the closet.”
“What was it?”
“I do not know. It was not very big. I theenk it could have been a gun. One time he kept a gun there wrapped up in rags. He did not show me. He went out for maybe an hour. When he came back he had this money. He gave it to me and told me to pack up. Then he left.”
“Where to?”
“To die somewhere, señor. He said he was going to… how you say it… arrange things.”
“You have the dough.”
“Is it really mine?”
I flipped the rod in my hand then tossed it on top of the table. “Sure it’s yours,” I told her. “Why not?”
She picked up the gun, studied it and laid it down again. “I am sorry if I… almost shot you.”
“You could have been sorrier. You could have gotten your picture in the morning papers real easy.”
Her smile was grim. “Yes. Like Juan.” She opened a drawer in the dish closet and took out two front pages from recent tabloids and handed them to me. In one Juan was a hero. In the other he was dead.
But on his last public appearance there was an out-of-character bit for what I had been thinking. The truck driver who killed him was sitting on the curb crying.
I reached for the door. Before I opened it I said, “Did Juan ever mention a man named Lodo?”
“Lodo? Si. Twice he says this name. It was when he was very scared.”
I let go the door, all edgy again. “Who is he?”
“He was asleep when he said this name, señor. I do not know. I do not ask, either.”
I closed the door quietly behind me and went back downstairs.
It had started to rain and the street stank.
The truck that had killed Juan was one of the Abart fleet from Brooklyn. I told the harried little boss I was an insurance investigator and he told me I had 20 minutes before Harry Peeler would be in and to have a seat.
At 5:40 a short thin guy with grey hair came in and the girl there said, “That gentleman’s waiting to see you, Harry. Insurance investigator.”
“It’s about the… accident, I suppose.”
“Well, yes.”
“Terrible.” He glanced at me ruefully. “I’m finished driving, Mr. Ryan. I can’t go it any more.”
“I want you to tell me about that night.”
“But I told…”
“You’ve had a chance to think it over since then, Mr. Peeler. You’ve gone over every detail a thousand times, haven’t you?”
He moaned, “Oh, help me, yes. Yes, every night. I can’t forget it.”
“Tell me about it, Mr. Peeler.”
“How can I explain something crazy like that? It was three A.M. and nobody was on the streets. I was driving toward the bridge when this guy comes from in front of this parked truck. Right under the wheels!”
“Was he running?”
At first he didn’t answer. When he looked up, he had a puzzled expression working at his face, then he said, “He kind of flew.”
“What?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what it was like. He must have been standing there all along, just waiting. He didn’t run. He dove, like. You know what I mean. Maybe he was committing suicide. He dove, like.”
“Could he have been pushed, like?”
Harry Peeler’s eyes opened wide, startled. He swallowed hard, thinking, “He… could have been.”
“You’ve been thinking that, haven’t you?”
He swallowed again.
I said, “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have done anything to prevent it.”
He wasn’t looking at me. He was squinting at the far wall and I heard him say, “Somebody ran from behind that truck. I know it. It took a while to remember, but I know it! I was yelling for somebody to get a doctor. It was a long while before anybody came. Somebody was behind that truck, though.”
I stood up and patted his shoulder. “Okay. You feel better now?”
“Sure.” He grinned. “It ain’t good to kill somebody, but it’s better knowing you couldn’t of stopped it anyhow.”
“That’s the way. You keep driving.”
I made a double check around Harry Peeler’s neighborhood. He was a long time resident and strictly a family man. Everybody liked the guy. When I got done asking questions, I was pretty sure of one thing.
Harry Peeler hadn’t been in on any killing except by coincidence.
The rain had started again, driving the city indoors. DiNuccio’s was crowded and smelled of beer and damp clothes. Art was waiting for me, in the back. When I sat down, I said, “Let’s have it.”
“Sure. Killed with a .38 slug in the chest, two in the stomach. Now here’s an item the papers didn’t have. He wasn’t shot where he died. My guess is that he was thrown from a car. The officers on the scene first aren’t talking so it’s my guess again that he talked before he kicked off. Item two: I ran into so many icy stares when I pushed this thing that I got the idea something pretty hot was being covered up. A check through a good friend came up with this bit… there’s some kind of a grumble on where the high hoods sit.”
“What else on Billings?”
“Briefly, his last address was a midtown hotel and the name a phony. He was traced back through two others, but no further.”
“Source of income?”
“His latest room had an assortment of bum dice and new-but-marked decks of cards very cleverly packaged and stamped. He was a sharpie. A few receipted bills and match covers placed him working cheap places around here and in Jersey.”
“Ten years,” I said. “All that time under my nose and I never got near him.”
“Be happy, chum.” He flipped his pages over and scanned them, picking out pieces of information. “One thing more. I found a couple of shills he played with before he died. He was talking about having a roll waiting. He was going into big time. Nobody paid any attention to him right then.”
I thought a moment, remembering how Billings operated in the Army. “Was he flush when he played?”
“Those shills said he always had enough risk capital to entice some nice fat bankrolls.” He looked at me and put his notes away. “Now let’s hear what you have to say,” he said softly.
I shook my head at him. “This is stupid. Everything’s doubling back. It starts and ends too fast. You sure you got everything on Billings?”
“Yeah.” I waved the waiter over for a beer and then knocked half of it off in a long pull. “I’m going to guess a little bit here, but see how it works out.
“Billings was a funny guy. He used to say he’d wait for the big one to come along if he waited all his life. He foxed me out of ten grand in the army and when I got out of the guardhouse, he’d been discharged. He hung onto that roll and used it as sucker bait for his rigged games. I doubt if he took anybody for too much. That would have spoiled it. Those games were listening posts waiting for that big one. All he’d bother to make would be living expenses.
“Then a guy named Juan Gonzales, who was a small time pay-off man for a friend of mine, must have sat in, saw the roll and talked up horses. He even got Billings passed into the rooms. Matter of fact, the night he was killed he had twelve G’s on him.”
Art let out a slow whistle. “He was clean when he was found.”
“Nobody would let that lay around, kiddo. It could have been a motive for his death.”
“For twelve G’s he could get a firstclass ride in this town, not just a plain mugging.”
I said, “Now listen… this Juan Gonzales had been killed a couple weeks earlier. Before he got it he was talking big money to his common-law wife, then he got scared spitless for some reason, showed up with ten grand, handed it to her and went out and got bumped.”
“I remember the case. Front page. He had just…”
“That’s the guy.”
“In other words, your point is that in either case the motive could possibly be robbery.”
“Yeah, only
it isn’t. First because I’m in and next because there’s a lid on the deal. It’s real stupid. Everything doubles back. You sure you have everything on Billings?”
“He was buried at the city’s expense and the only bunch of flowers came from the Lazy Dazy Flower Shop. The graveyard attendant remembered the name. If you want him exhumed, dig him up yourself.”
“Sure.” I threw a buck on the table. “Keep in touch.”
My watch said 9:55 and I was tired. I found a cab outside, got off at my corner and started up toward my apartment.
The first pitch came from Pete-the-Dog who sold papers with a broken-throated growl. It came again from Mamie Huggins who waited until I passed by to put out her garbage and it came again by low whistle from the shadows across the street.
Two of them. Unknowns. They were waiting in my apartment.
I came through the back way Papa Manny always used when the police raided the old love factory he ran. I picked up the .45 from the shelf, cocked it under my arm so the click of the hammer was inaudible and stood there in the dark until my eyes were used to it.
One stood looking out the window. The other sat right in front of me and he was the one I put the cold snout of the gun against. I said, “Be at ease, laddies. You move and you’re dead.”
I stepped inside and prodded my boy. He got up obediently and walked to the wall. The other one got the idea and did the same. They both leaned against it while I patted them down and waited while I flicked on the light. Then I dumped the shells from the Cobras they carried in belt holsters and laid them on an end table. They both were too mad to spit.
The guy from the window I knew. I had met him a few days ago up in that apartment far above the city. The other was a new face. That one looked at me coldly, then to the gun. “You have a license for that?”
I grinned at him. “Let’s say a poetic one, cop. I signed a piece of paper up there the boss man says allows me certain liberties.”
“There’s only one copy and it can be torn up very easily.”
“Not for a simple fracture like this, you slob. Now knock it off. If you’re so damn dumb you can’t break and enter without being spotted you ought to join the fire department.”
The other one said, “Lay off, Ryan.”
“Okay,” I said. “So let’s hear what’s going on and get out.”
Me, Hood! Page 2
