“Hello, Mike! How’s tricks?”
“Oh, hello, Jerry. For gosh sake! What are you doin’ way up here?”
He ambled across the road, his heavy patrolman’s brogans making a slow slap-slap on the frozen pavement. The girl beside Tracy slid her automatic back into her expensive evening bag. It was like a pleasant family reunion. Gloria smiled, Jerry smiled, the cop smiled.
Jerry got out of the cab and closed the door. The traffic light changed to green, but Jerry didn’t get back. The cop looked puzzled. So did the driver of the taxi.
Gloria bit her lip, said harshly, “Good-by, Mr. Tracy. It was so nice to meet you. Go ahead, driver! What are you waiting for?”
Her face, framed in the open window, was stiffly menacing. “Remember that slight difference I spoke of, Mr. Tracy,” he called. “I’ll see you later—or perhaps someone else will.”
Tracy shrugged imperceptibly. He watched the crimson tail-light dwindle around a curve like a blood-red will o’ the wisp.
“Flag me the first empty cab that comes along, Mike.”
“Boy, that was an expensive blonde! She looked sore. How come you’re leavin’ her?”
Jerry chuckled suddenly. “She lured me into a cab and tried to get fresh. I wouldn’t mind if it was Spring, but—”
“She could get fresh with me any time she liked,” Mike said, his eyes thoughtful he held up his gloved hand presently and halted another cab. “So long, Jerry.”
At Tracy’s order the cab left the park, turned into Fifth Avenue and headed swiftly south. Tracy glanced at his watch, saw that he had plenty of time to get down to Greenwich Village. He felt better. Still, that gun of Gloria’s was no phoney! She certainly had meant business.
The brownstone house was on Brixton Street, a quiet cul-de-sac where the village plays crooked tag with Varick Street. Jerry Tracy covered the last two blocks on foot, walked past the joint on the opposite side. He thought of it as a joint purely through habit. To him, any edifice from the St. Regis to the Automat was either a joint or a dump.
Actually, the brownstone looked respectable enough; a high front stoop and area-way, neat blue shades drawn halfway down on the windows; a couple of empty ash cans at the entrance to a clean paved alley that went down six steps behind a grilled sidewalk gate.
There weren’t any lights on in the house, nor any enameled name plate in the parlor window. That was the only difference from its somber neighbors. Most of the others showed doctor or dentist signs. If this quiet dump with the side alley was really a blackmail spot, the canny Doctor Stoner had picked his number with a shrewd eye for conservative privacy.
Tracy continued to the corner, braced himself against the sweep of the circling wind. Nine-ten. Twenty minutes leeway before Al Redman was due to spend Jerry’s grand. The Daily Planet’s shivering columnist crossed the street, came back on the proper side. What a sap he was to be wearing a Chesterfield! The thing felt like cold tin against his ribs.
He tried the grilled alley gate, found it unlocked, went through and down the steps. He was old enough at the skulking racket to know that witnesses never noticed a casual pedestrian. The muggs who hesitated and peered and tiptoed were all long since in the can—or acting thug roles for the movies.
There was a small yard in the back hemmed in by a high board fence. The cellar door was locked. Windows all dark; shades half drawn, same as the front. But there was a light shining from one of the side windows.
Tracy found a wooden tub filled with empty bottles. He laid the bottles on the ground and carried the tub back to the alley. By standing on it and stretching, he was able to hook his fingers over a stone sill. The window at the head of the alley was built dormer style, and its massive bulge screened him from the view of any chance passerby on the sidewalk.
He chinned slowly, peered through the dusty lower pane. Dark velour curtains left a vertical three inch gap. Through it Tracy could see nothing but a brightly lit unfurnished room and the white blur of a knob on a closed door.
Gingerly, Tracy drew up one knee and anchored himself on the cold stone of the outer sill. He still had about fifteen minutes before Al Redman arrived with the ransom money. If Jerry could get inside, witness the transaction from concealment, he’d have no qualms about showing himself to the wise Doc Stoner.
Pistol fire would make things just as tough for the sleek psychoanalyst as it would for Tracy. There’d be a dangerous moment or two; then Jerry and Stoner would get down to brass tacks and talk business. Jerry was no white knight for the general public. He’d offer Stoner an even swap: You lay off Al Redman, and I’ll lay off you!
He put even pressure on the lower window, and to his delight it moved slightly. Unlocked! He lifted it steadily, inch by inch. Eagerly intent on masking any betraying squeak from the warped frame, he forgot completely about the possibility of an alarm.
The staccato clamor of a bell froze him into startled rigidity.
Instantly, he lowered his body, hung like a taut pendulum. But inside the brownstone dwelling things were happening with startling speed.
The door of the lighted rear parlor burst open. A tall figure was visible, bounding toward the opened window. A black mask where the man’s face should have been. A gun in his hand. And on the clenched hand—Tracy saw the thing with instinctive, photographic clarity—the bluish outline of a small crescent-shaped scar. The acid burn that Al Redman had sworn was on the back of Dr. Stoner’s aristocratic hand!
Tracy’s dropping feet hit the wooden tub and he bounced, crouching, to the pavement of the alley.
Stoner was leaning out the window, his gun a dull glitter. Tracy felt his back crawl as he raced pell-mell for the alley steps that led upward to the sidewalk. But Stoner fired no shot. Instead, Tracy heard the short, bubbling bleat of a whistle.
He was half way up the steps when he heard it. It brought sanity back to his panting body. A signal! An ambush!
The thought halted Tracy’s flying legs.
Peering through the grilled gate, he saw a figure rising noiselessly from behind the newel post of a stone stoop. The head was bent queerly askew like the pose of a violinist. Its cheek cradled the stock of a rifle. The rifle was short-barreled, with an ugly protuberance clamped to its muzzle.
As Tracy threw himself backward, flame spat in a thin streak from the silenced rifle. There was a muffled plop-plop plop-plop like a series of wheezing coughs. Bullets whizzed through the bars of the alley gate and chipped stone from the wall of the house.
Tracy gave a strangled yell as he plunged backward down the alley steps. The sound was involuntary, ripped out of him by fear. But he had sense enough to realize that his yell might make that possum dive of his look like a natural.
He pitched limply down the steps, rolling over and over like a dead man. Spread-eagled at the bottom, he held his breath, his body slack against the freezing pavement.
He knew that the killer was at the gate, staring down at him. He could hear quick, eager breathing. Then there was a soft patter of retreating feet, followed by the faint slam of a car door.
A motor roared. Gears clashed with rattling urgency.
Tracy bellied cautiously up the alley steps. His eyes, level with the sidewalk, caught a swift glimpse of a vanishing coupé and the man behind the wheel. A plump, dough-like face on hunched, heavy-set shoulders.
Car and gunman were gone in the shrill whine of an accelerating motor. The whole affair had happened with extraordinary precision. Except for the ugly chipped spots where bullets had drilled the alley wall, there was no evidence to show that murder had missed a very frightened little newspaper guy by a margin so narrow that Tracy’s heart seemed to be beating way up near his tonsils.
He glanced backward along the alley. The window was closed. Stoner had evidently vanished the moment he had blown his signal whistle. Tracy had recognized the dough-faced gunman with a gasp of wonder. He was a man whose bullets Tracy had never dreamed he would ever he called upon to dodge.
Yet,
thinking about it as he lay crouched against the alley steps, Tracy could see how logically a guy like Tick Anderson fitted into the picture. A little business deal, that was all. “Strictly business,” was Tick’s favorite motto.
Tracy’s derby was still lying upside down on its crown where it had wobbled. He scooped it up, jammed it tremulously on his head, made a quick sneak for the sidewalk. No pedestrians in sight.
Wind nipped eastward at him from the Hudson like an iron claw. He hurried to the corner, his eyes peeled to snare a rolling cab. A belated pat at his hip pocket told him that he had lost his .32 somewhere back in the alley, but he was damned if he was going back to get it!
He was waiting there breathlessly, his shoes scuffed, his Chesterfield rumpled and dusty, when he caught sight of the crimson neon light of a shoe shine parlor. It reminded him that he looked like a bum. He went in grimly, had himself shined up and brushed off.
The Greek attendant looked curiously at this pint-sized little dude who had all the ear-marks of a booze spill in the gutter, except that he was obviously a long way from being drunk. Sorta angry looking, too, the Greek decided. He made no comments and was rewarded with a tip that made him bow low at the waist.
Four minutes later Jerry Tracy was in a cab rolling north.
“Blue Grotto,” he told the driver. Tick was probably back there by this time, sipping a very dry Martini at his favorite table. His car garaged, his rifle parked, and an alibi handy in case he needed one.
Try as he would Jerry couldn’t summon up any vicious anger against the guy. It was like hating a paper-hanger because he hung paper. Rub-outs were Tick Anderson’s business. Everybody in town knew it, including Tracy.
Outside of that, the guy was as cheerful and friendly a mugg as you’d want to meet in a week of Sundays. The fact that he and Tracy were casual pals, bumping into each other at prize fights and hockey matches, had nothing to do with the main idea.
Tick would have bumped the Mayor of New York if the proposition was right and the dough was laid on the line. His code of ethics was simple: If suckers got themselves lined up for a kill, that wasn’t Tick’s fault. He considered himself a high-class merchant same as Rogers Peet. Only Rogers Peet sold pants and vests.
The Blue Grotto was a bright glitter just north of Times Square, where Broadway cuts a slashing chunk out of Seventh Avenue.
Tracy said “Hello, Andy!” to Manhattan’s toothiest doorman and got a delighted, “Hi, Jerry, howth tricth?” Andy’s uppers and lowers were brilliant to look at, but they made his speech a little disconcerting. An ex-pug, he’d had most of his real teeth extracted by leather. Drunks sometimes amused themselves by paying Andy to hiss. Tracy had immortalized him in the column as “the sthpittin’ image of an admiral.”
“Tick Anderson around?” Tracy asked.
“Yeah. Inthide thomewhere.”
Within the blue-glass front of the joint, noise hit Tracy like a hot, pulsing wave. Manny Bloom and his Tooting Troubadours. Clatter of dishes, clink of knives and forks. Fat, gravy voices. Lean, querulous voices. “ … so I sez, sure I’ll take thirteen weeks on a network program. But I ain’t woikin’ for apples. … ” Broadway with a napkin under its chin. “Hello, Jerry. What’s the rush? Who d’you like in the third tomorrow at Hialeah Park? Sheik?”
Tracy plodded past them with his glazed celebrity grin. Some were tramps; some were the real McCoy, good guys; but he didn’t have time for any of ’em tonight. He had a little business with Tick Anderson. He could see Tick already, exactly as he had expected to find him—large as life at his regular table in the corner, his doughy face staring quietly at the dry Martini in his hand.
“Hi yuh, Tick.”
The face jerked upward at Jerry’s breezy salutation. For a second the merest flick of a frown darkened his eyes. Like a cloud blowing across a blue lake. It was gone instantly and he was up on his feet, his beefy hand extended in welcome.
“Jerry, you little bozo, it’s good to see yuh. You don’t know how damn good it is, pal.”
“Maybe I do, Tick. How’s for a Martini?”
“Sure thing. Sit down, pal. Hey, waiter! Hey, you with the tray! Double Martinis here. Dry, or you kin take ’em back!”
Tick Anderson beamed. He was like a host in a tavern. Twinkling, cheerful, genuinely pleased with himself and with Tracy. The only flaw in the picture was a certain embarrassed reticence in the back of his blue eyes. The drinks came and they touched rims and sipped.
Smilingly, Tracy pinned him down to the murder attack. Smilingly, Tick admitted it.
“How come, Tick? Any special reason?”
“How the hell would I know?”
“How much did I bring?”
“Five grand.”
“It’s nice to know that I rate a top price,” Jerry said quietly. “I hope it wasn’t C.O.D.”
Tick said reproachfully, “Now, Jerry! You know me better than that. I get it in advance, rain or shine.” His pudgy hand reached out, patted the fingers of the columnist that were twined loosely about his glass stem. “I’m damned glad, pal, that it didn’t rain tonight. Listen, kid, why don’t yuh gimme a friendly break? Why don’t you blow town for a few days?”
“You think there’ll be more rain?”
“I dunno, pal. If there is, I hope to geez you’ll show a little sense and duck.”
“It wouldn’t be ethical, I suppose, to ask you who the paymaster is?”
Tick said again, with the same embarrassed inflection, “Now, Jerry!” He played with his empty cocktail glass.
Tracy changed the subject abruptly. “How’s Jane?”
“Swell. Gimbel’s gave her a raise last week. She’s got three dames under her now. That kid’s got clever ideas, Jerry. She oughta be runnin’ a high-class—you know, snooty—little dress shop of her own. She could clean up in no time.”
“She looked a little thin the last time I saw her, Tick.” Tracy’s voice became casual. “It’s a damn shame she won’t let you—”
“Yeah.” The enthusiasm faded from Tick’s eyes, leaving them pinched and morose.
Jane’s eyes were a lot like her brother’s, Jerry remembered. Same shade of blue. So bright and alert that they were startlingly like blue enamel when they flashed on you in a smile. But there was no doughy flesh in Jane’s countenance. She was thinner, taller than her gunman brother, with high cheek bones and a kind of delicate tension around the lips that had missed her brother altogether.
Tracy was one of the few people on Broadway who knew that Jane existed. She lived in a cheap walk-up flat in the Seventies, adjoining the El on Columbus Avenue. Worked in Gimbels and made twenty-three-fifty a week. She was the only thing on earth that Tick Anderson really cared about. Tick cared enough, Jerry noted, for his jaws to go ridgy like iron at his helpless inability to do for her the things he wanted to do.
“Yank her out of Gimbels!” his jaw said. “Get her out of that —— tenement flat!”
But Jerry knew that while life ran in either of them there’d be no dress shop, no cosy apartment, no neat little Packard for Jane Anderson—not unless she bought ’em out of twenty-three-fifty a week at Gimbels.
Even Tick knew that now. They each had their blind spot and it was no use arguing. Over two Martinis Tick could prove logically that his occupation, while illegal, was as fundamentally honest and necessary as that of a garbage man. Furniture and clothes wore out their usefulness and guys were paid to lug it away. Saps got in bad with big timers. Ditto.
For the life of him Tick couldn’t see a hell of an inch of difference. He’d been complimented by cops for some of his jobs. On vague hearsay, of course. But Tick could never make Jane see his point.
Jane’s code of ethics was as peculiar as his. She’d have rotted in jail before she’d have tipped the police to any phase of Tick’s methods of livelihood, but she wouldn’t take a dime from any of his earnings. From the time that Tick had swung into the big money, Jane had resolutely stuck to Gimbels and her walk-up flat on
Columbus Avenue. They saw each other often, loved each other devotedly, but—well, no use arguing. …
A waiter came by, caught Jerry’s nod and the two had another drink. Smilingly Jerry reached for his Chesterfield and derby which he had parked on an unoccupied chair against the wall.
He said in a low voice, “I’ll try to remember to duck in case it rains later on. But I still think you’re silly, Tick, to spray at guys that write columns for newspapers. It might some time cause trouble for Jane.”
Tick’s hand moved like lightning from its cushioned laxity on the table cloth. His fingers clamped on Tracy’s wrist, bit until the pressure hurt like hell. The muddy cloud had drifted over the blue lake of Tick’s eyes. He didn’t raise his voice, but there was ruthless menace in the jut of his head.
“What do you mean by that crack?”
“No crack,” Tracy said, his lips compressed a little from the pain in his wrist. “Just advice.”
“Listen, mugg. If you’re thinkin’ of putting the heat on Jane—If you raise a single lousy fingernail to cause that kid any trouble—”
“I’m not. You know me better than that.”
“I don’t know nobody where my sister’s concerned, pal!”
“Let go, sap,” Jerry breathed warningly. His head, twisting partly aside, had given him a quick glance at two men who were hurrying toward the alcove table. Tick let go his grip instantly, faked a grin.
“Well, so long. Keep your neck in, pal.”
Jerry rose, resisting the impulse to rub his aching wrist. Doctor Stoner and Hadley Brown were standing together, just back of Tracy’s chair, glowering at the Daily Planet’s columnist. Tracy wondered whether either of them had heard those last tense interchanges between himself and the moonfaced gunman.
He saw Stoner’s glance and Brown’s, too, move past him toward the now placid figure of Tick Anderson. Tick stared at both of them as a subway guard might stare at a couple of passengers on his car platform.
“Take it easy, Hadley,” Dr. Stoner said in his suave, perfectly modulated voice. “Remember we want information, not a scene.”
Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter Page 62
