The Split p-7

by Richard Stark

  At first he’d kept his own life story to himself pretty completely, but gradually he got so he trusted her more, and by now she knew everything there was to know about him.

  Except how to cure him of a virus.

  ‘Body heat,’ she said, getting it all wrong.

  He pushed her away and said, ‘One more phone call, all right? One more guy on the list and I’m done.’

  ‘If you promise.’

  ‘I promise.’

  But just as he was reaching for the phone it rang. He picked it up and it was Abe Clinger checking in, saying, ‘Scratch two more off the list. Bill Powell and Joe Fox, both covered for the time.’

  Kifka repeated the names for Janey to cross off on the main list, and then he said, ‘Abe, we’re running out. We got to go to the cop’s list now.’

  ‘I anticipated,’ Clinger said. ‘Believe me.’

  Kifka gave him two names and addresses, and Clinger gloomily repeated them to make sure he had them right, and then they broke the connection.

  ‘One phone call, you said,’ Janey reminded him.

  ‘That wasn’t it.’ He shoved her back and dialed another number.

  The voice that answered was fuzzy with sleep, wanting to know what time it was. Kifka told him it was practically twelve o’clock noon, and the voice said, ‘Man, I was up till all hours last night. This crazy cat just back from Mexico, he dropped around, we talked the night away; I don’t think you know him.’

  ‘Never mind do I know him, did he know Ellie Canaday?’

  ‘Sure! Hell, they used to go together, you know what I mean?’

  Kifka held a hand up in the air for Janey to start paying attention. Carefully he said, ‘What’s this guy’s name?’

  Four

  Abe Clinger was a businessman, not a crook. It was his nature to be a businessman, and only the force of circumstances had him temporarily playing the part of a crook, a temporary condition that had lasted now about twelve years.

  Television was to blame. Television was a blot and a rotten thing, ruining the eyes of young America, an insidious monster in living rooms all across the nation, showing sex and sadism, people smoking and holding glasses full of beer, destroying the livelihood of honest businessmen trying to make an honest dollar even with the minimum wage going all the time up up up and taxes getting worse every year. Even with government intervention and payments for workmen’s compensation and social security and all the rest of it, it might have been barely possible to keep an honest man’s head above water, except for the rotten box, television.

  Abe Clinger had owned a movie theater. But a movie, theater, the real thing, with a kiddie matinee on Saturday with twelve cartoons and a Western and a chapter, and beautiful dinnerware given away to the ladies on Wednesday evening, and always a double feature plus cartoon plus newsreel plus coming attractions, changed twice a week on Wednesday and Sunday. A nice friendly neighborhood theater that was like an institution almost, like the branch of the public library or the post office substation, a part of the neighborhood.

  Until television.

  Then, to make matters worse, when he burned the theater down for the insurance he did several things wrong and he got caught. His wife of twenty-six years, when she learned he’d borrowed to the hilt on his life insurance and was also letting it lapse because he was going to jail, divorced him. His two sons looked at him with disgust and reproach, said, ‘Pop’, in long-suffering voices, and went away to change their names.

  But in jail he met a couple of people who made a new life possible for him, and when he got out on parole after spending the minimum time behind bars he was pretty sure he would never be bankrupt again. There was always work in the armed robbery line for a man who looked like a businessman or a bookkeeper or a general manager or whatever in the office type the job might require. Carrying guns always made him nervous nevertheless, and he was yet to fire one of them, but he understood it was necessary in this trade, like being a Democrat in his previous occupation. Still, the new line of work had its advantages, like no employees and no overhead and no long hours, and his blonde was a hell of an improvement over the former Mrs Clinger, and generally speaking he had no complaints.

  Except he was not a detective. Snoopyfooting around after people’s whereabouts was not his line of work, and not about to be.

  So why? Parker and Kifka and the others were all doing it, working away at this like it was a sensible job of some kind instead of craziness. Pete Rudd last night had made an excellent amount of sense, but the others all talked him out of it, and if the truth be known, Abe Clinger wasn’t in all that much of a hurry to kiss the money good-bye either. As he’d said last night, twenty thousand dollars is twenty thousand dollars.

  So here he was, walking down a cold street with a gun in his pocket, playing detective like Lloyd Nolan in all the second features he used to show, looking for somebody to ask stupid questions, carrying a clipboard for a prop.

  This was an apartment-house block, a long block used up on the right side by four massive shouldered brick apartment houses, the front all acne’d with air conditioners. The one Clinger wanted was third, with a fine old stone arch over the entrance, the building number carved into the keystone of the arch, the whole thing looking like an ad for Pennsylvania.

  There was an elevator, slow, trembling, painted red inside. Clinger rode it to the seventh floor, found the door he wanted, and rang the bell. He was no longer self-conscious about giving the spiel, he’d already done it eight times in other doorways. This time, of course, was the first time with someone from the policeman’s list, but if there was one person he looked not a bit like, it was Parker, so what was to worry?

  A young man in khaki trousers and a flannel shirt opened the door and stood like his skeleton was disjointed at the hip. He said, ‘Yeah? Something?’

  Clinger held his clipboard and ballpoint pen very prominently in front of him. He said, ‘Are you the man of the house?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Apparently it wasn’t just a question, but also the answer, Clinger said, ‘If you have a minute, I represent Associated Polls. We’re running a little survey. This shouldn’t take up much of your time at all.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be selling nothing? Encyclopedias, nothing like that?’

  ‘Word of honor, I am not selling a thing. You have a television set?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Sure. Everybody has a television set. Ask a man does he go to the movies, see what happens. But everybody has a television set, even beatniks. It offended Clinger, it made him feel like the butt of a joke to have to play the role of a television pollster, but Parker was right that this was the best way to handle it. In any case, he couldn’t think of any better way.

  He said, ‘I could come in?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, what the hell.’

  Clinger smiled his thanks and went on in.

  From here on, it should be smooth sailing. The bit was, he would ask about television viewing habits, and in the course of it he’d find out whether the suspect was watching television this Tuesday night when Parker’s woman was killed. If the suspect was, then he wasn’t a suspect anymore. If he wasn’t, a few sly questions might find out what he was doing, or, if the suspect insisted on being vague about his movements Tuesday, then Clinger would so report to Kifka, and someone else would try a different lack.

  In any case, Clinger’s part shouldn’t lake: more than five minute’s and was safe as house’s.

  Except for the two bulky men who got to their feet as he walked into the living room, look their hands from their topcoat pockets, and began to walk toward him. One of them opened his mouth and said something to Clinger about showing his company identification.

  Cops, Real cops.

  The gun in Clinger’s pocket had never felt so heavy or so useless or so monstrous, like a boil on the back of the neck. Without the gun, at least it would be possible he could fast-talk himself out of this. Without the gun, at the very worst he could
clam up and wait it out and eventually be given an opportunity to jump bail because they really didn’t have anything on him.

  But with the gun, he was already breaking a law, concealed weapons; they had him as easy as pie.

  Jail. He remembered it - gray and bleak and boring, impossible to survive in twice. No money, no soft furniture, no blonde.

  He turned and ran, side stepping the man of the house, bursting through the doorway and into the hall again. Behind him, shouts and imprecations, thudding of heavy feet.

  Running, he fumbled the gun out of his pocket, meaning to get rid of it somehow, somewhere. Down the elevator shaft, in the incinerator, out a window, just anywhere. If they didn’t catch him with the gun in his possession, actually in his possession, he still had a chance.

  Behind him, the cops had already seen the gun in his waving hand and had misunderstood his purpose in holding it. They had their own guns out, and when they shouted to him to stop and to drop the gun and he did neither, they opened fire, the shots cracking out in the narrow hallway with a sound like mountains breaking.

  Two bullets buzzed past Clinger’s head, and he kept running. The third thudded into his skull, hit him in the bald spot like it was a target, and he ran down.

  The husk of Abe Clinger skidded to a stop along the hall floor.

  Five

  Little Bob Negli liked to drive, so he and Arnie bought a car with separately adjustable bucket seats. That way, Little Bob could sit far enough forward for his short legs to reach the controls, and Arnie could sit far enough back to be comfortable. Their life together was a lot of compromises and adjustments like that, and most of the time things ran smoothly.

  Except for other people. If it had been just the two of them, no one else around at all, they’d never have had any trouble; they’d have worked everything out the way they worked out the seating arrangement in the car. But there were other people in the world, and now and again they caused trouble.

  Like women. Sometimes Arnie got a hankering for a woman, and off he went to get one, and Little Bob had nothing to do but sit around and wait for Arnie to come back, with or without a dose. Arnie always chose the sloppiest, scabbiest, rottenest tramps in the world when he wanted a woman, so Little Bob always made Arnie go to a doctor for a checkup before letting him back.

  And like men. Some men just irritated Little Bob, aggravated him like itching powder, and the first thing anybody knew he’d be starting a fight. With somebody like Parker, say, who’d kill you as quick as look at you. Arnie was always after Little Bob to watch his mouth, quit picking fights, quit acting like such a troublemaker.

  So Little Bob was annoyed by the women Arnie picked to sleep with, and Arnie was annoyed by the men Little Bob picked to fight with, but these two gripes were just about the only problems in their life together. It struck them both as a small price to pay.

  Little Bob now sat in the car parked by a fire hydrant, waiting for Arnie to come back from another interview. Little Bob himself was too chancy a character to be trusted, going around asking questions of strangers. He’d be in a brawl within an hour, and that usually meant bad trouble. Being so small, he figured it wasn’t up to him to fight fair. He kept a switchblade knife close to his left hand, and a .25 Beretta automatic close to his right.

  That’s why Little Bob was doing just the driving and Arnie the questioning. Again it was a compromise that worked out fine for both of them. Little Bob liked to drive, and Arnie liked to talk with people.

  It was about two in the afternoon. Arnie had questioned four guys last night and five more this morning and had gotten nowhere. Two so far hadn’t automatically eliminated themselves with the television gambit, and Arnie had passed their names on for Parker and Shelly to check, but apparently neither of them had been the guy they were after. So now they’d run out of the other names and were working at last on the original list the cop had given Parker. Arnie was in there talking to the first of them now.

  Little Bob wasn’t pleased about it. It figured the law was watching this place - waiting for Parker to show up. Little Bob hadn’t been able to spot them yet, but they had to be somewhere around. And what if they decided to question Arnie? That would be just one more thing he’d have against Parker.

  Waiting for Arnie, Little Bob took the time to nurse his grudge against Parker. Parker had manhandled him back at Vimorama, but that was nothing. The big gripe was that Parker lost the goods, caused all this trouble. Because of a woman, naturally. Shacked up with some woman he doesn’t know anything about, and naturally she’s got enemies, and the whole thing follows like the night the day. Why they’d trusted Parker with the nick in the first place he’d never know.

  Looking out the windshield, thinking about Parker, Little Bob suddenly saw Arnie coming out of the apartment house ahead in the hands of the law.

  It had to be law, two stocky types with fat faces and cheap topcoats. They flanked Arnie on either side, and the way his hands were behind his back had to mean they’d put the cuffs on him. The cops had been inside.

  Damn Parker!

  Little Bob shifted into drive, and the car inched forward close to the curb. He knew Arnie would have seen him coming, out of the corner of his eye, and it all depended now on timing.

  There were parked cars up there. Little Bob angled out around them, glided forward, and leaned way over to his right to unlatch the passenger door and then, as he braked at the spot between two parked cars, and as Arnie made his move, Little Bob shoved the passenger door open and reached out to drag Arnie aboard.

  Arnie had moved right, lunging backward at first to throw them off balance, then bumping both and crashing on through and between the parked cars where there was just enough room for him, running like an ice skater about to lose his balance because of the handcuffs holding his hands behind his back, and just as he dove for the open door of the car the booming started, and Arnie’s face, as he dove still in midair, turned suddenly gray, and he crash-landed half in and half out of the car, and Little Bob’s reaching hand, clawing across Arnie’s lace, felt the flesh pasty and soft.

  Arnie was sliding backward out of the car, his cheek scraping back across the red upholstery of the bucket seat. The booming went on, and the windshield starred as a bullet went through, and there was nothing for it but to hit the accelerator and get out of there, leaving Arnie behind dying or dead; nothing else to do, no other way.

  Within eight blocks, twisting and turning, he knew he was clear. He slammed the car into a parking space and got out, leaving it there forever.

  Dead or dying. The whole setup shot now, shot forever. There’d never again be a team like Little Bob Negli and Arnie Feccio.

  And all because of Parker, that stupid bastard, that clod, that mindless bungler. Parker was the one to blame.

  ‘I’m going to get you, Parker,’ he said. He threw the car keys into a garbage can and walked on.

  Six

  For a man who hated to talk, being a polltaker wasn’t an easy job. Pete Rudd hated to talk.

  Like Abe Clinger, Rudd had come to his profession as a second choice. He’d started as a carpenter and cabinet-maker, and he did slow and careful work with very expensive wood. It was difficult for him to find good materials, but that wasn’t enough to drive him out of the business. What drove him out was the lack of good customers.

  Outside every large city in the country there is a highway flanked by shopping centers and discount stores, like a tow of roofed-over city dumps. In these places, in plastic or cheap wood, shoddily assembled, barren of design, can be found the sort of product Pete Rudd was making slowly and carefully in a crafty workshop with concrete floor. Rudd’s work cost five times what the competition was charging, and would last ten limes as long. He came close, a few times, to starving to death.

  He made a trunk for a customer one time, a special sort of trunk with a hidden inner compartment. The customer offered him extra money to keep the secret of the trunk a secret, and Rudd refused it; it was rid
iculous to pay Rudd to be silent. When the customer came back with an illegal proposition for Rudd two months later, Rudd looked into his empty cash register, leafed through his unpaid bills, and joined the mob that took the Regal Electronics payroll in Mobile. His job in that one was to dummy up the interior of a truck with a fake partition behind which five men could hide.

  For a while after that, the occasional robberies helped to keep his woodworking business solvent, but gradually he was doing less and less woodworking, because while the robberies solved his lack of money, they didn’t solve his lack of customers. By now the woodworking was down to a hobby and an easy cover of respectability; Rudd’s main profession was heisting.

  The nice thing about the job, for him, was that it practically never required talking. Other people, people like Parker, did all the planning and explaining. They told Rudd what they wanted him to do and he did his part not caring about how it fit into the general scheme, and when the job was over he took his split and went home.

  Sometimes things went wrong, jobs turned sour. When that happened, he went home without any money, but he still went home. He’d never been touched by the law, and he saw no reason why he ever would be.

  Which was one’ of the reasons he didn’t like hanging around here in this city this time. There was law all over the place. The take, his share of it, was only around twenty thousand dollars anyway. He could get that somewhere else before the year was up.

  But the others were all in it, so he had to be in it too. So here he was, carrying a clipboard, walking around asking dumb questions, checking back with Kifka every once in a while to tell him how he’d done so far and to get another trio of names, and then off again.

  This one was a walk-up, a furnished room. Rudd doggedly climbed the stairs and knocked on the door, and after a minute it was opened by a tall, broad-shouldered young man with a deep tan. He looked like a halfback on a college football team. His expression was suspicious as he said, ‘What is it? What do you want?’