by Brad Latham
Outside, he hunted for a phone booth, but failed to find one in this part of Queens. He found one in a bar a dozen blocks away. Guy Manners answered on the first ring.
“You got something?” Manners asked.
“Yes. How long will it take you to come in?”
“Jesus, tonight?”
“Yeah, tonight.”
“Where?”
“Here in Manhattan. Paddy’s on 43rd, between Sixth and Seventh.”
“What time?”
“Whenever you can get there. If I’m not there, I’m on my way. I’ve got one stop to make first, and maybe we can catch the missing object in a pincer movement—from above and from below.”
“I’ll be there.”
Chapter 11
“That’s all you got?” Manners asked.
“That’s all you can say?” Lockwood asked.
Manners sighed. “You missed the deadline for the money today, Bill. If you pay tomorrow, we’re going to expect $76,000—$1000 a day penalty for late payment. Wednesday, it’ll be $77,000.”
“Come on! You’re the guy wants the thing back—I’m handing you Heatherton on a silver platter. How many Englishmen who belong to the German-American Bund and know military secrets can you trust?”
“I knew this was a mistake,” Manners said. For the past five minutes, ever since it had become clear where Lockwood was taking the conversation, Manners had been turned off and hadn’t looked Lockwood in the eye.
“How come it’s a mistake?”
“If I don’t tell you, you’re liable to blow the whole thing, so I’d better,” Manners said. “But if you breathe a word of this—to your boss or even Myra Rodman—”
“Hey! What’s she got to do with this?”
“I should ask you that. You’re the one who squired her about this weekend. Enjoy yourself?”
“You son of a bitch! What are you doing, following me?”
“Sometimes. When we think we can learn something.”
“Keep off my back, Manners.”
“I asked you first, Lockwood, remember? You’re the guy with the nose that’s impossible to keep out of others’ business.”
At a standoff, they glared at each other. Manners gave in and picked up his glass, drank off his rye and ginger, and signaled up the bar for a refill. It was two in the morning, and Paddy’s was at a lull. Lockwood and Manners sat at the end of the long bar, alone, and talked together in urgent hushed whispers, looking about themselves with little furtive glances to make sure they wouldn’t be overheard. When Paddy made a gesture that asked if Lockwood wanted a refill, he nodded, and the old man shuffled over with fresh glasses.
“Can you keep this quiet?” Manners asked. “You could get people killed if you open your yap.”
“Yes.”
“Heatherton is one of us. He’s pretending to be a Nazi agent.”
“He’s doing one hell of a job of pretending. Had me fooled.”
“He feeds them misleading information on military developments.”
“Such as the Northstar bombsight.”
“Yeah, but he’s got his ass in a crack now. He’s been feeding them the wrong stuff on it, and when it gets back to Germany his worth to us will be over—if they don’t put an ice pick through the base of his skull to teach guys like him a lesson.”
“Jesus! And I thought he was such an asshole.”
“He is an asshole. He’s our asshole.”
Lockwood laughed, and Manners smiled wryly.
“If that’s it,” Manners said, “I think I’m going to tottle off to bed somewhere here in town. I got another twenty-four-hour day in front of me tomorrow.”
“I guess we all do,” Lockwood said. “We’re back to square one. My boss is going to kill me when he finds I don’t even have a decent lead. We don’t know if the bombsight is even still in this country.”
“It is,” Manners said.
Lockwood stared at him in surprise. “You’re sure?”
Manners nodded. “It’s one of the things our arrogant friend Heatherton has managed to find out.”
“Then we have a chance!”
“We sure do. From what we gather, they’re afraid to dismantle it. They want to ship it back to Germany intact for a complete analysis.”
“And you know it’s the Germans?”
“For a day or so now.”
“You haven’t been all that giving,” Lockwood complained.
Manners shook his head in disgust. “You don’t understand government service, Bill. You just don’t have a feel for this stuff.”
Lockwood saw Tooths O’Grady come in the front door of Paddy’s. The big man headed right toward Manners and Lockwood.
“You’re such an arrogant asshole yourself, Manners,” Lockwood said, “I’m tempted not to let you in on where the thing is.”
Manners followed his stare and looked at the advancing Tooths and back to Lockwood.
“Where what is?”
“Where the bombsight is.”
“You don’t know where it is.”
“I know who does know. And I’m arranging for them to take us there.”
Manners stared at him, speechless. Tooths ambled up and shook hands with Lockwood.
“Want a drink, Tooths?”
The huge man’s thick face flooded with a smile, and he shook his head. “Naw—I mean, yeah, I want one, Hook, but I’m supposed to drive you to Benny.”
“Meet Mr. Manners, Tooths.”
They shook hands. Manners grimaced under Tooths’ grip.
Annoyed, Manners turned back to Lockwood. “Listen, I don’t have time to socialize with barroom buddies of yours, Lockwood. Tell me what you know. I thought we’d spelled out to you how important this is.”
“I know how important it is—$76,000 worth of importance.”
“To your country, lame-brain.”
“To my company—shareholders over countrymen.”
“Stop the wisecracks.” He glanced at Tooths. “If we could be alone a few minutes, if you could tell me who this is who knows something, I will take charge from here on out.”
“Tooths, you heard the man. He wants to come with us.”
Manners looked at the two of them in confusion. Tooths looked troubled.
“You want to bring him along, Hook?” Tooths asked.
“Sure.”
Tooths shook his head. “Benny won’t like it, Hook. I got to do things persackly the way he tells me to. He said bring you, not this man.” He looked at Manners and smiled. “Not that I have anything against you.”
“You call Benny, Tooths,” Hook suggested. “You tell him that I want to bring a friend—my Uncle Sam.”
“He didn’t say his name was Sam.”
“Tooths, here’s a nickel,” Hook told the big man. “Make the call. If there’s a problem, let me talk to Benny.”
Tooths lurched off toward the back of the bar.
“So, give,” Manners ordered. “What’s all this about?”
“We insurance dicks have our ways.”
“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. What’s the story?”
“Well, maybe we don’t, Manners. Why don’t you make up your mind whether I got anything on the ball or not, and tag along if you think I might. If not, go home to sleep.”
“You’re a wise bastard.”
“I’m sick and tired of being treated like a jerk by the guys who work for me.”
“Work for you?”
“I’m a taxpayer, aren’t I?”
Manners made a disgusted face.
Lockwood went on, “And if you don’t come, I think I can wrap up this case shortly. I think I’d like your job, then, Guy. I haven’t seen you do a thing yet, and that’s the kind of job that appeals to a lazy man like myself.”
“Forget it, Lockwood. You wouldn’t last a day in Washington.”
Tooths came back grinning broadly.
“Benny says he’d like to meet your uncle, Hook. He says he’s got an uncle na
med Sam, too, and maybe the guys are related.”
Lockwood stood up and hitched up his trousers. “Maybe they are.” To Manners, he asked, “So, you in or out, G-hole?”
Manners stood up, too, drained his glass, and set it on the old wood of the bar with a solid thwack.
“To the last weary trump, my boy. Come on, Tooths, let’s find Benny.”
Chapter 12
“A pinball machine?” Manners asked.
Benny stirred uneasily, as if embarrassed. “They said it was something that they wanted to copy.”
“Let me see if I got it right,” Lockwood said. “Vince is approached by the Toytown Amusement Company who wants this new pinball machine that’s being developed under wraps out at Northstar Refrigeration, and he has his people set up the snatch. Toytown gets a guy in there every evening, that’s this blond guy who got past the night guard night after night, till finally the time is right, and he makes off with this piece of military hardware.”
Benny made a wry face and nodded. “Something like that, Hook.”
Tooths had driven Lockwood and Mannners to a brownstone in the west 50s, which Lockwood recognized as a cat-house. They skirted the front parlor, full of the sound of a piano, the clink of glasses, and half-dressed men and women, and went upstairs. Benny was on the fourth floor, where the sounds of the party downstairs only reached faintly.
“Vince doesn’t feel so good about this, Hook,” Benny said.
“What a chump!” Manners said.
“Will you keep quiet?” Lockwood said to Manners, who glared back but kept his mouth shut. To Benny, he asked, “Will he help us find these guys?”
“He says it’s probably too late. They’re probably halfway to Berlin by now.”
“They’re not. We’re pretty sure they’re still in this country,” Lockwood said.
“Then he’ll help. He didn’t know what this was, Hook. His brother was in the 69th—remember Tino Salerno?” Hook shook his head. “He was killed about three months after we got over there. These guys didn’t come on like Germans at all.”
“Where and who, Benny?”
“353 East 53rd Street, Hook. They were mysterious, and Vince had a couple of his guys follow them back there one night.”
“Who was in on the deal?”
“Outside of Vince?”
“Yeah.”
“They wouldn’t give names, which was fine by Vince. A guy with short dirty-blond hair, looked like any businessman, about fifty-five.”
“You said ‘them.’ Who was the other guy?”
“Just a hanger-on. Vince didn’t say.”
“We ought to get over there,” Manners said. “I don’t have any men in town. They’re all out at Patchogue or scattered along the East Coast making sure this thing doesn’t leave the country.”
Benny cocked one weary eye at Hook and Manners. “You want some help tonight, I could get together a few of the boys and help you get ahold of any rats on 53rd Street.”
“Help grab the cheese, too?” Hook said, and Benny nodded with a smile.
“I might could get Smitty and his guys in by dawn,” Manners said.
“What!” Lockwood said. “You’re going to wait another few hours? Benny, get your guys. I want to go over there and pick up Transatlantic’s property.”
“Your property!” Manners roared.
“I’m paying $75,000 for it, plus a $1,000 penalty, aren’t I?” Lockwood shouted back.
“It belongs to Uncle Sam. This is my case, and I’m busting it.”
“I brought you here, and I give you the address, and I’m working—cooperating—with you, and now suddenly it’s your case. What a terrific guy you are to work with, Manners.”
Lockwood stood up. “Benny, I don’t know what I can give your men, but there’s a reward in this—and it ought to be yours and your guys if we can raid 53rd Street tonight.”
Benny smiled a crooked grin of pleasure. “Jesus, just like the old days, huh, Hook? Out at night after something.”
“How many guys can you get together?” Hook asked.
“How many you think we might need?”
“They’ve got hardware?” Hook asked.
“Sometimes I think they got too much,” Benny said.
“Can you get ten or so?”
Benny frowned. “At least half a dozen we’re talking about, right?”
“In twenty minutes.”
“I got six guys downstairs, if they haven’t worn themselves out with those floozies.”
Manners pushed his chair back with a loud scrape. “You can’t do this. The government owns this thing, and we want to do this our—”
“Take a flying leap, Manners,” Hook said.
“You want somebody to sit on him while we go over there?” Benny asked Hook.
“Sit on me!” Manners shouted. He looked ready to pop a blood vessel. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Say the word, Hook,” Benny said calmly.
“You want to come along?” Hook asked Manners.
“Come along!”
Lockwood was getting curious now just when Manners was going to have a stroke.
“Yeah, this is my party—mine and Benny’s, but we’re inviting you to come along.”
Manners sat back, puzzled and astonished. “And if I don’t, somebody’s going to keep me—a Treasury agent—here till you’re done?”
“Something like that,” Lockwood said.
Manners half-gasped, half-smiled. “Do you have any idea what the penalties are for this?”
“Do you, Benny?” Lockwood asked.
Benny shrugged.
“See, if we get it back, Manners, nobody’s going to care what we did to you,” Lockwood told him. “And if it gets away, they’re going to know we were right not to hold up things till you got your little party together.”
Manners sat back, looking beaten, and said sullenly, “I’m just to tag along, then?”
“Can we let him make the collar, Benny?” the Hook asked.
“I can’t make one,” Benny answered. “Can you, Hook?”
“Not me.”
“Then might as well bring him along. He might make things easier. Is he packing?”
“Are you packing, Mr. Sam?” Lockwood asked.
Manners didn’t answer, just eyed Lockwood blankly. Lockwood reached up under Manners’ jacket and flicked out the T-man’s .38 Special and dropped it on the table.
“Might be better if you carried it, Hook,” Benny said. “These things go off at the wrong time when excitable people carry them.”
Hook grinned and picked it up and stuck it under his belt. “Let’s get over to 53rd Street.”
By Lockwood’s watch, it was 2:45 in the morning when the three cars rolled to a stop at Second and 53rd. Under the soft glare of the street lamp, men from the first and third cars surrounded Lockwood, Benny, Tooths, and Manners, who came from the middle car.
Lockwood began, “Tooths, I want you and two—”
“Naw,” Benny said. “Tooths comes with me. You want somebody for the back of the building, use Semple.”
The little guy in the middle of the front row grinned. “They call you Hook, don’t they?”
Lockwood couldn’t help grinning back at his quick face. “That’s right. Benny’s right—I want the back covered.”
“Who’s in there?” Semple asked.
“A bunch of Nazis,” The Hook answered.
“Two guys and me ought to be able to handle a bunch of Nazis,” Semple said in a cocky way and touched his left shoulder, where Lockwood was led to understand was his pistol.
“Who do you want?” Hook asked.
Semple looked around the circle of faces lit by the yellow glare. Yellow skin and stubble stared back at him. The moment made Hook feel eerie. This was no game, but he half-thought it was. Some of these guys might not live through the night; he himself might get killed. He’d heard the stories. Nazis were supposed to be tough players. But these guys a
cted as if this was a lark, some night picnic or something. If Myra was even half-right, the German guys who’d stolen the bombsight would try to kill them and get away with it.
Semple made his choices. “Gimme Peeples and Sugar. Both youse got rods, ain’t youse?”
Sugar and Peeples nodded vigorously.
“What we’ll do is slip into the building next to it by using something to break one of the front door locks,” Semple said. He looked alive and taut, full of electricity. Hook had seen this look before, before combat back in the war. He felt keyed up and tense, as if something that hummed inside him threatened to vibrate so hard it would shake him apart, and he had to hold it still through willpower. “Then we’ll sneak up to the back of 353 and wait there till you come to the front door.”
“Not bad,” Hook said. He looked at Benny.
Benny was sucking on his lower lip, his face a mask of concentration. He shook his head and said, “No you come in the back, Semple. And take the Halfback with you. Make a lot of noise getting in—no shooting, though—we don’t want the cops coming down here shooting us. We’ll grab them when they come out the front.”
“If they got the thing,” Manners broke in, “they won’t come out the front. They’ll stay there and fight for it.”
Benny grinned. “While they’re fighting Semple, we come in the front.”
“Let Benny do your thinking for you, Manners,” Hook said. “He always had it when it came to brains.”
Manners started to say something, but seemed to think better of it.
“You guys get going,” Benny said. He shot his cuffs and looked at his diamond-studded watch. “We’ll give you ten minutes. I expect to hear noise then, because we’re going to start coming in from the front. Take Marbles with you instead of Peeples—you got your lock picks with you, ain’t you, Marbles?”
A guy off to their left with lumps all over his brow and cheeks nodded vigorously.
“Get in the front door the quiet way,” Benny said. “So don’t nobody call the cops. Now go.”
They left, and the other seven walked toward First Avenue, away from the glare of the street light. Their footsteps echoed hollowly on the pavement. No one else was about. Lockwood heard his own breathing, and he tapped his left shoulder twice, feeling his .38, and felt the weight of the other .38, Manners’ gun, under his belt. He was aware of his heart beating, and aware that he didn’t notice its beating other times. Fear again, he said to himself.
