“Hey, wait!” interrupted Beezlebub, looking puzzled. “What’s this release business?”
Tod spat another stream of juice neatly into the spittoon, followed it with another gulp of whiskey, and then explained.
“It’s a system they’ve dreamed up since defense came in,” he said. “In a lot of places, they won’t give you a job unless the last place you worked will give you a release form. That’s all right. They do it so one defense plant can’t steal workers from another. Only with Griggs”—he snorted angrily—, “the only reason I can’t get a release is because I’m the best tire warehouseman around here, and he wants to keep me so I’ll always be available for work for him. Damn him!”
The amber-hued spirit sat down on the cork again, chin cupped in hands, and studied Tod. He noted the stocky, powerful build; the muscular forearms displayed by the rolled-up sleeves; the broad, strong hands, calloused with years of hard work.
“There’s a war on, isn’t there?” he demanded finally, his thin, squeaky voice barely audible in the barroom’s tumult. “If you can’t get a job, why don’t you join the army?”
The young man shook his head sadly. “Think I didn’t try, little fella? But I’ve got a bad leg; something’s wrong with the joint, and it buckles under me every once in a while. So the army won’t have anything to do with me.” He sighed heavily. “Gee! If only I could get in the army! Maybe then Molly’d forget about that rat she ditched me for!”
“Molly?” The creature on the bottle showed renewed interest. “Who’s she?”
“Ah!” Tod drew an ecstatic breath. “Honest, Beezlebub, she’s the swellest girl you ever saw. Dark red hair. Gray eyes. The best figure between here and New Orleans.
“And nice! Say, you never would believe anyone could be so sweet. Of course”—he chuckled wistfully—, “she’s got a whale of a temper, but I like a girl with a little life to her.”
“So she ran out on you!” jibed Beezlebub.
The spark of cheer that had come into Tod’s eyes at the mention of Molly Shannahan promptly went out. His face again grew long.
“It wasn’t her fault,” he defended gloomily. “Everything was all right ’til Walter Dale got a job at Griggs’.” And, by way of explanation: “Molly works there too. She’s old Jake Griggs’ private secretary.” Then, resuming the original thread: “Anyhow, this Dale guy got a job there. He’s one of these office lounge lizards—yellow hair, blue eyes, smooth line, all the trimmings. Molly didn’t give him any play at all, at first. But then he joined the army, and I couldn’t get in, and since then she’s really been going for him.” His face twisted in an unpleasant manner. “That rat! I’d like to wring his neck! Why’d they have to station him so near here, where he could get back to see Molly every weekend?”
Beezlebub snickered, while Tod spat again toward the cuspidor. As usual, the young warehouseman’s aim was true, but this time he hung his head guiltily.
“Molly wouldn’t let me chew snuff,” he explained for the second time. “She said it was a disgusting habit.”
The tiny figure on the bottle grinned wickedly. “So that’s what you call trouble!” he jeered. “Say, you’re getting off easy! You can’t complain.”
“I don’t see what else could happen to me,” snapped Tod, glaring at him and taking another slug of the fast-diminishing quart of Old Harbor Light. “I could be dead, I suppose, but that wouldn’t worry me. It’d almost be a relief.”
Again Beezlebub snickered. “That’s what you think. I could make you so miserable—”
The somewhat bleary-eyed young Mr. Barnes made an impatient gesture. “Oh, shut up! I’m tired of listening to your bragging. I couldn’t be any worse off if the black curse of Donnegal was on my head.”
Unpleasant fire flashed in Beezlebub’s tiny eyes. His piping voice jumped another octave higher in irritation.
“So you want a demonstration, do you!” he cried angrily. “Well, I’ll show you whether I can make people miserable or not. I’ll show you!”
Even as he spoke, he sprang down from the bottle and sprinted across the table toward Tod. Before that somewhat befuddled young man could realize what was happening, the whiskey spirit had jumped into his lap.
“Take that!” raged Beezlebub, unleashing a terrific haymaker straight for the pit of the brawny warehouseman’s stomach.
“Oh-h-h!” gasped Tod, starting to his feet as symptoms flashed across his brain with fiendish clarity.
“Ulllupp!”
He lunged across the crowded floor toward the door at the rear marked “MEN.”
“Call me a liar, will you?” fumed a thin voice in his ear. “I’ll show you what trouble is!”
The next instant some invisible object hooked Tod’s right ankle as neatly as any lariat. He careened sidewise across the room in a headlong fall. Then his shoulder hit the bar. The shock of the blow knocked loose his last vestige of self-control. Vaguely he saw the man towering above him beside the bar, and tried to turn away his own head. But too late!
“Ulllupp!”
“Why, you drunken scum!” bellowed the strange man. “All over my new pants!” A hand the size of a small suitcase caught Tod by the nape of the neck and jerked him erect. “I’ll teach you! When I get through with you, you won’t be able to take a drink for a month.”
Then a fist—twin of the one which had yanked him to his feet—exploded in Tod’s face in spite of all his efforts to dodge it. He felt himself sailing through the air like a paper glider. And, through it all, a piping voice reiterated: “So you’ve got a monopoly on trouble, have you? Well, Mister Tod Barnes, just wait’ til I’m finished!”
But Tod hadn’t spent five years in the rough, tough school of warehousing for nothing. Even in the brief instant between the time his feet left the floor under the impetus of the big stranger’s blow, and the moment his head crashed into the opposite wall at the end of his fist-powered flight, he somehow regained control of his arms and legs. With a wild war-whoop, he charged back across the room, fists driving like pistons. In a matter of seconds he and his adversary were rolling about on the floor in savage embrace, cheered on to battle by the enthusiastic shouts of the gentlemanly and ladylike patrons of Mike’s Elite Bar & Grill.
“Jiggers! De cops!”
Tod staggered clear of his opponent just in time to see one of the last of the customers head for the window with his—Tod’s—bottle of Old Harbor Light.
“No you don’t!” roared the embattled warehouseman, lunging after the thief. His quarry promptly hurled back the bottle. It caught Tod square in the chest. For a moment he wobbled a bit. His hands, however, instinctively caught the missile before it could fall to the floor. Then blue-coated figures were charging in through the front entrance.
Without waiting to inquire as to their object, Tod moved to a strategic position beneath the table in one of the booths which partially lined the bar-room. There he stared somewhat stupidly at the half-empty bottle of Old Harbor Light.
“Trouble!” he muttered. “Talk about trouble!”
Suddenly, as he gazed at the bottle, he remembered that he had no more money. That this was the last whiskey he was likely to get in a long time.
With a jerk he freed his belt from its loops. Pulling up one trouser-leg, he hastily strapped the bottle to his calf, praying the while that it would not make too noticeable a bulge. He had barely gotten the pant-leg readjusted when a nightstick nudged him firmly in the back and a bored voice suggested that he come out before he was knocked out.
His opponent, he discovered, already was in the hands of the law. Tod examined him with interest. He was taller than Tod by several inches, but built on the same burly plan. His black hair was slicked down as with shellac, and he wore what had obviously been an expensive suit previous to the evening’s entertainment.
“Okay, you stiffs,” said a patrolman, ignoring their protests. “Get moving. The wagon’s outside.”
It was as he climbed into the Black Maria that Tod caught the glimpse of Beezlebub’s tiny amber form. The malicious little spirit was riding on his shoulder.
“Trouble?” jeered the imp at the same instant the young warehouseman sighted him. “Trouble? Buddy, I’m not even started!”
And then, as Tod’s hand descended in a vicious sideswipe, the queer creature was gone, leaving naught but an echo of mocking laughter behind him.
Beezlebub’s ominous warning still was ringing through Tod’s brain when, some 20 minutes later, he and his erstwhile opponent were shoved into the city jail’s drunk tank. Heedless to the other occupants’ hilarious greeting, the young warehouseman found himself a seat on a strap-iron bunk and meditated sourly on his situation. His companion, however, told all and sundry about their argument in belligerent tones, the while glaring threateningly at Mr. Barnes.
“Of all the damned fool stunts for me to pull, this was it,” Tod muttered to himself. He took time out again to straighten his cap, and to scratch his head in perplexity. “Beezlebub was right. You always can have more trouble. And if Molly ever hears I got jugged for a drunk—”
Another voice interrupted this soliloquy.
“Chee!” it said pityingly. “An’ youse look like a nice young guy, too!”
Tod glanced up. Before him stood the epitome of all bleary-eyed bums.
“I don’t get it,” the younger man commented a bit curtly. “You act like I was slated to walk the plank at dawn.” The ludicrous aspect of the whole thing suddenly struck him. He managed a rather weak grin. “Cheer up, friend. They’ll let me out in the morning.”
The bum shook his head sadly. “Oh, they’ll let youse out, all right, all right. An’ den what? The woiks!” More headshaking. “Chee! An’ youse look like a nice—”
“Change the record,” interrupted Tod. “I’ve heard this one before.”
“Eh? What’s dat?” The bum swayed to and fro like a sapling in a stiff breeze. “But chee, bo, youse act like nuttin’ had happened. An’ youse as good as laid out on de slab at de morgue right now… The pathos of the picture overwhelmed him. Two of the biggest tears ever to well from human optics rolled down his purple-blotched cheeks, realistic as any Hollywood glycerin imitation.
Tod felt the hair on the back of his neck rise in a wave of jitters. “What d’you mean, I’m as good as laid out at the morgue?” he demanded in a voice that croaked in spite of himself. He swabbed the sweat from his broad forehead with a somehow trembling hairy forearm. “There’s nothing the matter with me—”
The bum wobbled closer and pawed consolingly at the brawny one’s shoulder. “Sure, chum, dere’s nuttin’ de matter. Nuttin’a-tall. Oh, chee!” He burst out with a whole stream of alcoholic sobs.
“Hey, you rum-pot, what’s wrong with you? You act like the world was coming to an end.” He heaved the bum to a seat on the strap-iron cot. “Quit the bawling. I’m all right.”
The other stared at him soddenly. “Doncha know, chum? Re’lly, doncha know?”
“Don’t I know what? What the hell’s wrong with you?” Irritation overwhelmed Tod. He shook the old bum vigorously.
“Doncha know who dat guy youse pushed around is?” Horror stalked through the rum-pot’s burbling words. “Doncha? Hones’?”
“No, I don’t. And I don’t care—”
“But Steve Kroloski, chum! Youse gotta care—”
“Steve Kroloski!” Tod’s voice skittered about among the octaves like a 14-year-old’s. He came half to his feet by sheer reflex. Every kinky hair on his head had gone stiff and straight, he was convinced, and was standing on end. “Not Steve Kroloski!”
“His hoods’ll knock youse off like that!” the bum assured him solemnly, trying unsuccessfully to snap his fingers. “Dat guy don’ care who he bumps off. Youse’ll walk outa de jail an’ dere’ dey’ll be. T’ree guys in a car. One drivin’ an’ two wid sawed-off shotguns. Chee!” He wept again. “Chee! An’ youse is such a nice—”
But Tod was not listening. He was gulping like a fish out of water, instead, and he could feel a drop of icy sweat carving a channel down his backbone, and gathering momentum as it rolled. Without thinking, he crammed a chew of snuff into his lip.
A piping voice close to his ear said: “So! You wanted trouble, did you? Well, how’d you like this? I’ll show you—”
“Beezlebub!” Tod jumped at the sound of the whiskey spirit’s voice. Before he could turn his head, however, the little imp had jumped to his knee, there to continue to mock him.
“Beezlebub, please!” begged the burly warehouseman. “I take it all back. I’m sorry I ever said it. You can make trouble. You can make more trouble than anyone or anything in the whole world. Heaven help the U.S.A. if Hitler ever gets you on his side!” He shuddered slightly. “But please, Beezlebub, let’s call it quits, with you the winner. This guy Kroloski doesn’t play. He means business! He’s the worst racketeer in the state. He’ll have me bumped off for hitting him, like someone else would drink a glass of orange juice for breakfast.”
A wicked leer contorted the spirit’s wrinkled amber features. “Oh! So now you want to give up, do you?” he chortled. “Well, Mister Tod Barnes, you’ll find I mean business, too. You wanted trouble, and I’m going to give it to you. Try and make me stop! Just try—”
Tod’s hand shot out, as if he were trying to catch an invisible fly. His fingers slapped shut. But the imp was uninjured. Indeed, he had sprung to a new place on top of the husky young warehouseman’s knotted fist.
“Try to kill me, will you!” he screamed in his high-pitched voice. “I’ll show you! Oh, just wait and see the trouble you’ll get, now. Just wait and see!”
And, with a final defiant flourish of his barbed tail, he was gone, leaving behind him a quaking young gentleman who already could visualize relatives marching into the morgue with melancholy tread to identify the shot-riddled corpse of the late lamented Theodore Barnes.
Anxious minutes passed while Tod gnawed his nails down to the second knuckle. The nervous perspiration of the soap ads soaked his shirt. Once or twice he sneaked glances across the drunk tank to where burly, black-haired Steve Kroloski, king of the rackets, sat glaring at him. Tod felt his spirits drop to a new low. He was a normally courageous young man—maybe even a little more so than most. Certainly he was competent to take care of himself in most situations. But this—this was different. For Kroloski had a reputation for viciousness and cunning that was fast nearing the point where even the FBI would be interested.
“Pete O’Hare. Knifer Chinacka. Marty Sedgwick,” muttered Tod, recalling the names of some of Kroloski’s latest victims. It was an unpleasant thought; all of them had themselves been professional killers. It was a cinch they had been better prepared to defend themselves than he would be. But they were very dead indeed—all of them. And, as a nicely sentimental gesture, one Steve Kroloski had sent flowers to the funeral of each.
“Oh!” choked Tod. “Poor Molly… I’ll never see her again.” He ran nervous, muscular fingers through his kinky brown hair, spat a stream of Copenhagen juice into a distant corner with accustomed accuracy, and gave himself up rather completely to despair.
It was while lying in this black abyss of hopelessness that his subconscious picked up the unpleasant sound of Steve Kroloski’s voice.
“Where the blank blank blank is that blank blanked mouthpiece of mine?” the racketeer fumed aloud, though addressing himself to no one in particular. “What’s that blank blank blank mean, leaving me stuck in a blank blank stinking hole like this? What’s he think I’m paying him for, blank his blank blanked hide? I’m no cheap hood, what’s got to put up with this kind of thing!” Mr. Kroloski snorted with rage and such vehemence that Tod full
y expected to see twin sets of steam pencil, dragon-like, from his ample nose. “Ah! What a hole! What a stinking, lousy, blank blanked hole! Damn! What I wouldn’t give for a drink! “
“A drink!” choked Tod under his breath. The light of hope glowed suddenly in his eyes. “I got a drink. In fact, I got a whole half-bottle of ’em strapped to my leg!”
Pulling himself to his feet before his nerve could ooze away, he crossed the tank with that peculiar loping gait so common to men who handle heavy weights. Before he had passed the halfway mark, Steve Kroloski was up.
“So help me, you come near me an’ I’ll tear you apart with me bare hands!” the racketeer grated, mayhem gleaming from both black eyes.
Tod gulped. “Look, Mister Kroloski, you don’t understand,” he answered with careful meekness. “I didn’t mean to mess you up. It was an accident.”
Kroloski’s bull neck swelled. “Oh, tryin’ to snake out of it now, are you?” he snarled. “A lot of good it’ll do you, you blank blanked blank!”
“Please, Mister Kroloski!” Tod made placatory gestures, and with some difficulty swallowed the insults. He felt confident, in his own mind, that he could lick this thug any day of the week, outweighed and outreached though he was. But the specter of the racketeer’s gunmen hung before his mind’s eye to deter him from any notion of actual attack.
“Oh, shut up! Crawlin’ on your belly ain’t gonna help you now.”
Again Tod swallowed a rising rage. “Didn’t you say you wanted a drink, Mister Kroloski?”
“A drink? My God, yes! Have you got one? Where is it? Let me at it!” The racketeer clutched the husky young warehouseman and dragged him to a seat. A moment later he was gulping down Old Harbor Light as if it were water. Then, as it turned to liquid fire within him, the big gangster drew a deep breath, based apparently on some personal theory of air-cooling.
The Devils & Demons MEGAPACK ®: 25 Modern and Classic Tales Page 43
