“I don’t think anybody said they were going to take away your office, Mr. Butler.” Eileen opened the door and held it there. Time to go. “Afternoon.” I turned and walked out, chucking the redhead under her chin.
“Stay as sweet as you are, Eileen.”
“Get lost,” she said, showing me all four rows of teeth.
I left the Schubert Building feeling a little like a mogul and the uniformed turkey downstairs smiled at me—doormen and guards can judge how much is in your wallet by the way you walk or something. It’s uncanny. I decided to hold on to the cash rather than stick it in my office safe, figuring it would help intimidate the boys at the poker table that evening. When three Sunnyside low-stakes gamblers get a whiff of sawbucks in the air, their game gets affected. It has to.
Which is why I only lost five bucks that evening, at least two or three below par for me. I’m not the most effective poker player in the world for the simple reason that I smile whenever I get a good hand. It’s what they call a reflex. So the hundred didn’t do me all that much good on Friday night.
But it did me a lot of good on Saturday, beginning at 3:00 A.M., when I heard soft pounding on my door and someone whispering, “Mr. LeVine, Mr. LeVine. Jack LeVine?” I got up slowly, not all that sure I was hearing right, but the beating on my door got more insistent and I didn’t want to wake up the whole building. Peering through the peephole was, as always, useless, and I was so foggy and crusty-eyed that I wouldn’t have recognized Rita Hayworth standing naked in the hall. It wasn’t Rita anyhow. It was some guy who asked me to please let him in because he had to talk with me. He realized it was a funny hour but his life was in great danger. Another hour and he might be dead. I wasn’t sure that I was doing anything right but I let the guy in.
He said his name was Al Rubine.
I UNLOCKED THE DOOR and Rubine came through it like he’d been shot out of a circus cannon. He went to the living-room window, opened the Venetian blinds a little, and looked down into the street, just like in the movies. He was breathing hard and perspiring like a guy laying asphalt at high noon.
“Thanks for letting me in, Jack. I appreciate it.” He sat down on the living-room couch, took off his hat and turned my big three-way lamp to low. I just stood and looked at him, still more asleep than awake.
“I’ll make some coffee,” I told him and somnambulated into the kitchen, trailing the cord of my white terry-cloth robe. I fussed with the kettle, got a high flame going and stuck my head out of the kitchen archway to size Rubine up. He sat short and squat in dark slacks, an open sport shirt, and tan lightweight sport jacket. A pinkie ring adorned his left hand. He had a few black hairs combed carefully across his head, but in a stiff wind he’d be as bald as I am. Rubine’s high-cheekboned face was a blank: his nose had been broken a few times, his lips were thick, his skin sallow, and his eyes had been turned off a long time ago. Al Rubine looked like a smalltime crook. And he was in my apartment at a quarter past three in the morning, huffing and puffing like a marathon runner, because he was a small-time crook who found himself in the big time and wanted to get the hell out before he wasn’t in any kind of time at all. Rubine looked very unhappy sitting on the couch. I watched him slick back his side hair with open palms and try and keep his hands still enough to light up a cigarette.
The kettle let loose with a sharp whistle and I turned it off before Mrs. Freundlich upstairs got concerned and started sticking her head next to the steam pipe for a listen. I filled the top of my “Dripmaster” with enough water for eight cups. It might be a long time before the sun came up and Rubine and I had finished.
“How do you like your coffee?” I called from the kitchen. “Light or dark, Rubine?”
“Black, no sugar. Call me Al.”
“Al it is.” I methodically set up two cups and saucers, trying to work myself awake before I started talking with this prince. Just to keep Rubine on his toes, I chucked him a question.
“Who’s chasing you, Al?”
Rubine started and looked toward the kitchen. He ran his hands through his pockets a couple of times, like a mechanical man.
“Jack—mind if I call you Jack?” and he flashed an uncertain grin that started out a smile and ended up a grimace. “I can’t talk this way, you in there and me out here perched like a goddamn canary. You come in here, Jack, we can talk, whaddya say?”
I grunted and sat down on a stool in the kitchen, listening to the coffee drip and looking out of the open window. It was still pretty warm and there was a full moon that cast rays of pale, thin light on the roofs of Sunnyside. No cars were moving, the street lamps were all alone, and the block was so still and sweet that it was almost worth being up. Almost. I guess I couldn’t kick. If I lived in London, I’d look out my window and see nothing but ruins. All I had to worry about was a nervous blackmailer playing with his cuffs in my living room. I waited, jiggled the top part of the coffee pot and filled two cups with steaming java, putting a little sugar in mine. By the time I paraded out to the living room like a good host, I was almost awake.
“I’m here. So who’s chasing you, Al, and why’d you come to me?” I put the cups on the coffee table, sat down in an overstuffed chair to the right of the couch and lit up a Lucky.
“Second part first, okay Jack?” The smile was fast and thin, like a neon sign on the skids. “I came to you because there’s a poor lady lives next door to me in Smithtown. When I pull out the other night, I tell her to let me know if I get visitors and who they are. I give her a number where she can reach me and fifteen bucks.”
“I only gave her five.”
The smile lasted a little longer this time. Rubine’s teeth were as big and yellow as Seabiscuit’s. “That’s why she told on you.”
I shrugged, a good loser. “Must be. I can’t blame her, she looked like she hadn’t seen much dough lately, if ever.”
“I’m with you all the way on that.” Rubine lifted his cup and let the steam fill his broken nose. “Prosit, Jack.” He sipped the coffee very delicately. “Delicious, my compliments to the chef.”
I yawned a little more sleep out of my system and swallowed some coffee. It was excellent. “You still haven’t told me who’s chasing you, Al.”
“Everybody.”
“I was supposed to meet you yesterday—rather, I was supposed to meet somebody called ‘Friend of the Arts’ yesterday—and pick up some stag films. All I found was a picture of Dewey and a banker.”
He was going to take another sip, but his hands got a little shaky and he put his cup down. “Sounds interesting.”
“Fascinating, in fact. But where the hell were you?”
“At a place you can be in a couple of hours, if you’ll take me. I’d like to go and you’d like those films.”
“You stashed the films in another hideout? Why?”
Rubine tried the coffee again but his hands didn’t work and it spilled onto his pants.
“Jack, let me tell you straight,” the words came out in a rush. “All I want is to get my ass into Canada before I get croaked. The films are yours, I don’t give a shit. See, this pal of mine and me got in a blackmail scheme and we were backed up by some very big people who needed some big things done. We were just messenger boys, I swear to Christ.”
“The other guy was Fenton.”
“On the nose, Jack. Duke Fenton. Duke started figuring he could put the squeeze on these guys, and got killed so fast that it’s positively scary. Get me? I figure I’m in for the same treatment on account of being Duke’s partner and knowing the story.” He leaned forward. “Jack, I could put the finger on so many people your hair would stand on end.”
“I don’t have any hair.”
“Your scalp then.” He just said it. He wasn’t even trying to make with the jokes. “The way I see it, Duke and I were set up for suckers the day we got hired. When Duke got cute, it just meant he got the payoff first.”
“Al, who are these guys?”
Rubine shook his head.<
br />
“Jack, you’re a nice guy but you could make a fast bundle of cash letting them know where I was. I can’t tell you that. I hardly know you, for Crissakes.”
“How much dough you figure I could get by turning you in?”
“The kind of dough where you could move from Sunny-side to Park Avenue, that much dough.”
“I like Sunnyside, but I know what you mean.”
“You’re not so dumb.” Rubine slapped my knee. There was a lot of perspiration on his upper lip and he needed a shave. “Just kidding, Jack. You’re one of the smartest guys in the business.”
“I was coming to that. What do you want from me?”
“Not from, Jack, for. I want you to drive me to New Kingston, New York, that’s five, five and a half hours from here. There I got the films stashed away in a farmhouse that Fenton’s aunt lives in. I left my car in Margaretville. That’s five miles away. You get the films, I pick up my car and disappear.”
“Why didn’t you drive down here?”
“I was afraid of getting tailed to your house. Nobody’s tailed me yet but it’s bound to happen and I’m scared for real, pallie. So I dropped the car off on a side street in Margaretville and caught the late bus down here. It’s summer season starting, so they run a couple of buses to the city every day.”
Rubine was filling me with useless information. With my brain still clumsy, I groped for the right questions before getting completely lost.
“Al, why are you giving me those films?”
“I can’t think of nobody else, sweetheart.” He had a lot of things to call people. “You’re an interested party, right? You were the guy came all the way out to Smithtown, so take ’em. And it’s a nice ride up there.”
“At 3:30?”
“It gets light out early these days.”
I had nothing better to do and after three cups of potent coffee I could have gone over Niagara in a barrel faster than I could have gone back to sleep, so I shuffled into the bedroom and got dressed in brown corduroy pants, a yellow pullover sport shirt, my ancient khaki jacket, and a camel-colored cap. When I returned to the living room, Rubine was all ready and waiting by the door. And pointing a gun in the general direction of LeVine’s generous and forgiving heart.
“Goddamn son of a bitch,” I said, angrier at myself than at Rubine.
“Hey, don’t get mad, pallie, it’s just too risky without. Like I said, you could make a lot of dough taking me to the right people.”
“Especially if I don’t know who they are.”
“Maybe you don’t, maybe you do. What do I know, right? Put yourself in my position; you got to watch yourself, am I right?”
“You’re afraid I’ll take you to the cops. That’s it, isn’t it, Al? You probably had a thousand reasons for knocking off Fenton. Once they grabbed you, the case would be closed.”
“Sure. That’s why I’m giving you the films, because I wanted them so bad that I killed my own partner for them. You’re talking stupid, Jack.”
“Maybe you wanted the films all for yourself and then found you were in too deep. Maybe you’re not giving me the films at all. Maybe you’re just a prick who likes to flash guns around.” I turned my head to the right very fast and suckered Rubine into doing the same, giving me the chance to grab his wrist with both hands and slam it into the steel doorknob. The gun fell to the floor and Rubine didn’t even go for it.
“It isn’t loaded, Jack,” he said, looking like a dog caught crapping on the rug.
“Then you’re a bigger schmuck than I thought, Al. You can get hurt threatening people with empty guns.” I put the little Colt in my pants pocket. “You still want to go to New Kingston, or is this going to spoil the whole trip for you?”
Rubine rubbed his wrist and shook his head. “No, I still want to go. Last night, I realized I didn’t have anything to put in the gun. And I need it, believe me. I’m not being chased by no nuns.” He stared at me with sad brown eyes. “This might sound stupid after what just happened, but could you lend me a little ammo?”
“How about I just give you five thousand bucks to buy some and trust you for the change. Let’s get out of here already.”
“I’m serious, Jack buddy.”
“Maybe I’ll help you out once I’ve got the films and you’re ready to scram over the border. But nix until then, Al. I seem to remember your once pulling a gun on me.”
He ran his left hand through his bit of hair and stuck the injured hand in his jacket pocket for a rest. “Don’t think I don’t understand, Jack.” He fussed with his collar. The guy was scared, that was no act. But he was as predictable as a hophead in the five-and-ten. “I just don’t want you to think I don’t understand,” he repeated.
“I think you understand. Okay?” I nodded toward the door and he opened it. I shut the lights and locked up. We walked down two flights of stairs into the quiet little blue-and-marble lobby of my building and out to the street. The sky had lightened almost imperceptibly, from black-blue to blue-black. It was nearing four o’clock and except for one gray tomcat, the street was as deserted as the far side of the moon.
“Christ, you can hear yourself think,” Rubine said.
“Can you hear anything?”
“Hey Jack, don’t break my balls. Things are bad enough, I don’t need that.”
“I’ll be a regular angel, you’ll see. My car’s across the street, the white Buick.” We walked over and I opened the door on the driver’s side. Rubine slid in, lit up a cigarette and started whistling “It’s Only a Shanty in Old Shantytown” while I started the engine. We embarked: two unlikely playmates off to New Kingston, New York, at 3:55 A.M. on a Saturday morning. You figure it out.
IT’S A LONG TIME getting up to the Catskill mountain region where Rubine had stashed Kerry Lane’s films. Not an unpleasant drive, to be sure. On a brilliant afternoon in May with a good woman, it’s probably a hell of a way to spend your time. Before dawn, with a whistling blackmailer afflicted with bad breath and the fear that most people wanted to kill him, it was something less than a joyride.
“You probably want to know how I got into this racket,” Rubine said as we entered the Palisades Parkway in New Jersey—a right turn off George and Martha Washington’s bridge. He hadn’t said anything until then, about forty minutes, and I’d hoped he was asleep.
“Not unless you’re going to tell me about this case, Al.”
“I might,” he said, suddenly cheered by the knowledge that he did, after all, have some information of use to me, suddenly feeling like something more than a third-rate shyster on the lam. “I might if you’re good to me.”
“What do you want me to do, lick your ear?”
He lit up an Old Gold. “Jack, stop being a goddamned hardboiled egg and enjoy yourself. I can do you some favors.”
“So do them. Why were all those newspapers scattered around that house in Smithtown? You working for the War Department on the side?”
Rubine started coughing and managed to rasp out, “Hit my back,” which I did until he wheezed and hocked to a stop.
“Wheew. Smoke went down the wrong pipe.” He coughed quietly a few times, his face going from red to white, like one of those fancy jukeboxes with the swirling color changes.
“Al, the newspapers. You were going to help me out.”
“Not on that, pallie. You’ll figure it out, though. It won’t take you long. Not a guy with your rep.”
“You’re making me blush.”
Rubine chuckled.
“You know how I got into this racket?” he said again, like it was the first line of a song. “Funny thing, I hardly know myself.” He shook his head, in acknowledgement of the mysteries of life. “How old you think I am?”
“Eleven.”
“Come on, serious.”
I took a quick look.
“Mid-forties.”
“I’m thirty-five years old, Jack. Ain’t that a pisser? Thirty-five years old.”
“You don’t look so
hot, Al.”
“That’s for goddamn sure. I been going with this tomato for four years. When she met me, I had a full head of hair. Now you can use my scalp for a mirror. All the time she’s on me about it. Wants me to get a toup. You get that, Jack? About the hair? You’re a little thin up there. You got a girl bothers you about that?”
“No. She likes it. Reminds her of a beloved uncle.”
“Well, you’re a lucky guy.”
“That’s what everybody tells me.”
“Yeah. I got to agree with them.” Rubine fell silent, then cranked up his life story again. “When I was eighteen, eighteen years of age, I left New York and went to Detroit to help my Uncle Irv, who was bringing in hooch from Canada. I was a dumb kid from Bensonhurst and that was just fabulous back then,” His voice grew soft and wistful. “Plenty of cabbage, plenty of broads, house right on the lake. Private dock. Sound good?”
“Fabulous.”
“I don’t know if you’re serious or not, Jack. It’s hard to tell with you.” Rubine shook his head, trying to figure out why I was such a bastard. He gave up and went on: “Then Prohibition ended and we were out on our asses. No more broads, no more parties, no more house right on the lake. A lot of shines were starting to move into Detroit, so Uncle Irv figured he’d get some action on the numbers and loan-sharking. But he didn’t figure fast enough and wound up in the driver’s seat of a Chevy parked on the bottom of Lake Superior.”
“Tough break.”
“He was a great guy, my Uncle Irv, a straight shooter. Not like this son of a bitch I’ve been working for.”
I was quiet and Rubine picked up the note of expectancy in that silence, and realized he was talking too much. He lit up another cigarette and inadvertantly blew some smoke across my face. I coughed.
“Jesus, Jack, I’m sorry. I thought you were a smoker.”
“I am.” But he had already thrown his Old Gold out the window.
“When you’re driving, it’s tough enough without people gassing you, am I right?” Rubine asked, and despite myself, I was really starting to feel sorry for this poor little chump. So full of apologies and regrets. A born pawn. A born messenger boy.
The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery Page 6
