“What is it, LeVine?” asked Savage.
“Take a gander at the animal life in front there.”
Some very familiar thugs, heavies, and free-lance muscle were crowding the doors leading to the studio building. I recognized the Rover Boys who had waited for me on that afternoon in Sunnyside, and the tall and silent men who had infested the lobby of the Waldorf. All stood looking up and down the street, their eyes peeled, their hands stuck deeply and ominously in their pockets.
They were waiting for us.
I pulled Savage into the entrance to a Blarney Stone corned-beef-and-booze joint.
“You see someone you recognize?” he asked me.
“There’s an army of thugs nesting outside the doors. Some of them I know, the others I don’t want to know.”
He removed a handkerchief from his handsome navy blue suit and mopped that elegant brow. “This, as they say, is the cutting edge.”
“Whatever,” said the detective.
“What’s their game, LeVine? Kidnap?”
“Too much possible publicity. They’ll try and detain us.”
“Do we turn back or make a run for it?”
“Neither. If we run, we’re as noticeable as camel drivers. Not to go is out of the question.”
“If we hold flags,” Savage said with a grim smile, “perhaps they’ll mistake us for tourists.”
It was fantastic.
“You’re a genius, Mr. Savage.”
He shook his head. “I was joking, Jack. It was an idiot idea.”
“The flags were, but not the tourist bit. We’ll get on a sight-seeing bus. They all stop at Radio City.”
“How do we get one from here?”
“Don’t move from this spot until I wave you over.”
I pulled my hat low over my brow and fought past the crowds. It wasn’t such a long shot: the buses stopped at Radio City every half-hour or so, so the hicks could tour the radio studios and see a show. We would blend right in. The problem was time.
And then it wasn’t. When I peered down 50th Street, I immediately saw a big beautiful Gray Line Special with lots of glass and SIGHT-SEEING and fifty rubes craning their necks for a glimpse of Walter Winchell crossing the street with a “Press” card in his hat and a notebook in his hand. The bus was moving slowly down the block as the light turned green. No good. I could never flag it down.
The light wasn’t a very long one, but the Gray Liner was only six cars away from it and moving. Five cars. Three cars.
Suddenly a cab, bless its miserable driver’s heart, stopped dead in the center of the street to pick up a fare. The fare took his own sweet time as the bus driver leaned on his horn. The hackie got the fare, turned off his roof light and moved up. The bus followed.
Still green. Now green and red. Turning. Now red. The cab ran the light and the bus jolted to a stop. The driver’s window was open.
“You stopping at Radio City,” I called to him.
He turned his head and stared at me, a toothpick jutting from the side of his face. Except for the lumber, he looked well-groomed, even theatrical.
“Last stop, bud.”
“Let me on.” I whipped out my inspecter’s shield. “Police business.” I started sweating the green light again.
“Sorry, can’t.” He turned away.
“One block, official business. Me and the lieutenant.”
“I don’t understand. You on the level?”
I decided to get angry.
“I’m on the level and there’s nothing to understand, not when it’s official police business.” Light was still red. “You double-park these boats all over town and we give you more breaks than you’re worth.”
He grinned. “I guess you guys have done me some favors.” Then he leaned over and the door squeaked open on the other side. The light turned green. I ran around the front and waved over Savage. He came over double-time. Cars started honking.
“Hurry up, eh?” said the driver.
Savage got in, I followed, and the driver slammed the door shut.
A bus full of hayseeds gazed at us. Savage and I went to the back and grabbed a couple of seats.
“Christ almighty,” he whispered.
“It’ll work. It’ll work.”
The bus rolled across Sixth and slowly came to a stop outside Radio City. The driver pulled down a little hand mike.
“Ladies and gentlemen, your last stop on the Gray Line Blue Ribbon Tour of Manhattan is fabulous Radio City in Rockefeller Center, where many of your favorite radio programs are broadcast each and every night. We’ll have the pleasure of touring the actual radio studios.”
Oohs and ahs from the hicks—mainly middle-aged and dressed to floor the big city. I took a peek out the window. We were parked right at the entrance.
“Take a look,” I told Savage.
They were in raincoats, bulging raincoats, these men with the bent noses and cauliflower ears, the palookas, the schtarkers. Others were less obvious: clean-looking, if thick-necked, candidates for the G-Man Training Center.
“How do we get off?” whispered the banker.
“Slowly, and in the middle of the group. When we go through the doors, we accelerate and go for the first open elevator door.”
“Tonight, for example,” the driver went on, “we’ll have the special privilege of attending a live broadcast of none other than that sixty minutes of music and fun, ‘The Pepsodent Hour.’” This guy thought he was Harry Von Zell, and the explosion of noise that followed his announcement was incredible: a din and babble and chatter of such force that a couple of the uglies looked up into the bus.
“Get down,” I hissed.
Savage and I hunched over in our seats. A couple across the aisle stared at us like we were Loeb and Leopold.
“Police business,” I whispered to them. “Please act naturally.”
The couple turned and faced forward, little smiles fixed on their faces. Husband, a fat baldie of about fifty, whispered to Wife, a garden rake of the same age, and she chuckled and shook her head. Big doings in the Big Apple.
“Seats for these broadcasts are hard to come by,” said the driver, “but your Gray Line ticket includes a reserved seat—front row center—for ‘The Pepsodent Hour.’ So, if you will, we’re running a little late, step lively out of the bus and follow me into the lobby. We’ll tour the fabulous Radio City broadcast facilities and then air time, Pepsodent time, is ten o’clock.”
Everybody started scrambling out of their seats, including the president of the Quaker National Bank and myself. We elbowed our way into the middle of the group, in back of an obese and varicose-veined lady of around sixty.
“How come you come in so late?” she demanded of me.
“Police business,” I said, lips barely moving. “Face front and you don’t know me from Adam.” I bit the words off. Her eyes got a little crossed and she turned toward the front.
“Jesus Christ,” Savage whispered into my ear.
“We take it nice and easy,” I told him from the corner of my mouth. The group started forward. We got near the front.
“Anyone looking?” the banker murmured as we neared the doors.
“Not that I can see. They don’t even see these buses, take them for granted.”
Savage and I got off and kept our faces held rigidly to the front. The thick-necked men were either scanning the street or whispering into each other’s ears.
We followed the other tourists like elephants plodding around a circus ring, trunk to tail. It took maybe three seconds to reach the doors and we were a half-second away when I heard a hoarse bellow: “THAT’S THEM—WITH THE RUBES!”
“Move it,” I snarled at Savage, and we pushed hard through the revolving doors. I knocked the fat lady over and reached out to guide Savage around her fallen carcass. When I looked over my shoulder, four or five of the gorillas were frantically groping their way through the three sets of doors.
“They’re coming, LeVine,” gasped the banker
.
“Time to use that forty-year-old body. Straight ahead!”
We sprinted across the black marble floor at full tilt, heading toward a bank of elevators that stood thirty yards away. The lobby at Radio City consists of a lot of small shops divided by long corridors broken by regularly spaced banks of elevators, eight to a set.
Tourists choked the corridors and we kept knocking people around, drawing shouts and curses that fell on stone ears. The murals on the wall—MIRACLE OF RADIO, OPENING OF ERIE CANAL—swam past in a pastel blur. The thugs were gaining. There were fifteen yards, tops, separating us.
“Oh God, LeVine,” Savage said suddenly.
At which point a phalanx of wounded vets, in uniform, came rolling in wheelchairs from a side corridor and blocked us off. Behind them, two more rows were moving forward with surprising speed. The men looked pleased at their progress. A nurse smiled at us.
“Please let us through,” I croaked.
“What?” She didn’t understand. Nobody understands simple English words at moments like that. It’s just too difficult.
A vet heard us though and brought his chair to a quick stop, leaving a gap of maybe two feet. I raced through, holding Savage like a pull toy, and steamed toward the first bank of elevators. As we passed through, I heard a dull metallic noise as the wheelchairs closed their ranks again.
I turned to see our pursuers blocked off, six men with mashed-potato faces rendered helpless by an armada of wheelchairs. The vets were coming out in pairs now: a double phalanx of steel and spokes. I continued running, just as the vets broke ranks again and let the thugs through. Two of them squeezed past and turned on the speed.
We reached the elevator bank. All the doors were closed. No lights were on. The next bank was another thirty yards away.
“God almighty!” I tugged at Savage and turned down the corridor. The two men were twenty feet behind us. We ran hard. Savage knocked down a child and almost stopped, but I pulled at him. We were five yards from the next set when I heard a voice saying “going up” and saw a pair of doors closing.
“Hold it,” I bellowed and practically carried Savage into the elevator. The car was jam-packed.
“Comfortable?” the jockey crooned.
“Let’s go,” I grunted.
“He’s giving orders,” he joked to the others in the car. They chuckled appreciatively. “I love it when people give me orders.”
The two gorillas turned the corner and raced toward the elevator. My heart had stopped beating.
“Sorry gentlemen, full up,” the jockey told the uglies, then powered the doors shut before they could stick their paws into the car.
We started up, taking the first twenty floors nonstop. My ears popped. I turned to Savage and smiled.
“A lively start.”
He returned the smile, but weakly. There he was, immaculately dressed in a navy blue suit with the faintest gray striping, a superbly raised, educated, and groomed man of fifty-two, on the lam. It was a novel experience for Savage, and he was handling it better than I had any right to expect.
“I feel terrible about the child,” he said, wiping his brow with a spotless hanky. “He went down hard.”
“He bruised his knee. Stop worrying. You haven’t seen anything yet.”
The elevator was full of tourists, agitated at the prospect of gaping at an actual radio broadcast. Most of them got out at twenty-five, where engineering facilities and dressing rooms were located. Savage and I stepped aside to let them out. I felt myself tensing up all over again as the jockey took the short hop up to twenty-six. Savage bit his lip.
We emerged on twenty-six looking for Studio 6H. I had called Feigenbaum that afternoon to let him know Savage and I would actually be there. He had been confused—why appear, if no broadcast? I had told him an appearance was necessary, period. He said he’d be in 6H, waiting.
In Studio 6A, “A Date with Judy” was going out over the airwaves and a thirtyish doll with a blonde rinse was making like a fifteen-year-old bobbysoxer. Four men and a woman were standing in back of microphones over in 6B, getting ready to do “Mystery Theatre.” They thumbed through their scripts, joked with each other and with the engineers. It looked like more fun than the real thing. I wanted to tell them so. 6C was a little room used for news broadcasts.
And then there was 6D, a huge, drafty room used for live audience broadcasts and the site of “The Pepsodent Show.” Some musicians were already up in the bandstand, tuning up and swapping dirty stories. My destination, 611, was actually off 6D, but in order to get there you had to go the long way, around the “L” of the corridor to its end.
Savage and I turned the corridor.
They were all over the place: more muscle, more black shirts and white ties. They stood around casually, chatting with each other or just cracking their knuckles.
“Get back,” I whispered to the banker, but he had turned the corner and was spotted.
“It’s him,” someone shouted.
“This way.” I grabbed Savage and pulled him to a fire door a few yards away.
We ran through the door and down the stairs, yanking open a bulky door and emerging on the twenty-fifth floor. A pretty guide was leading a gaggle of hayseeds through the wonders of radio. They walked down the sleek, well-lit corridor toward us.
“Right this way,” the freckled redhead was saying, “are the dressing rooms, used by performers who take part in those programs done before a live audience. Tonight, for example, the stars of The Pepsodent Show,’ Charlotte Greenwood, Marty Malneck, and the Hits and Misses will all make up in these very dressing rooms.”
Behind us, I heard heavy footsteps clumping down the stairs, two at a time.
“Dressing room,” I told Savage and pulled him by the sleeve. We streaked down the corridor, to the delight and laughter of the tour group, who thought it was staged for their benefit. The guide, with her turned-up nose, examined us quizzically, then led the group past the fire door, just as it opened. Two burly men emerged and looked from side to side. Savage and I, obscured from view by the herd of tourists, flattened ourselves against the wall. The two men ducked back down the stairs.
Savage and I walked into the dressing room, a long narrow area broken up by partitions. It was deserted.
“Let’s sit in the back,” I said.
We sat down heavily on a bench, breathing hard.
“LeVine, this is impossible,” Savage finally gasped. Sweat glistened in fine diamonds on his forehead. “We’re blocked off. Let’s just try and get out in one piece.”
“The hell with that. We’ve gotten this far. All we have to do is get into that big studio, cut through a small stretch of corridor and we’re in. It’s a matter of timing.”
“But they spotted me the second …”
The door of the dressing room swung open. I held my breath.
A young man entered, a scrubbed and combed lad of perhaps twenty. He wore a red-and-white candy-striped sports jacket, white slacks, and white shoes. A straw hat adorned his head.
“Can I help you?” he asked pleasantly.
I stood up. “LeVine, Associated Press,” I told him, flashing one of my numerous press cards. “And my partner, Smokey Savage. You with the Hits and Misses?”
He nodded. “Since last year. Sit down, please, gentlemen.” He pulled over a chair. “I was 4-F and always thought I could carry a tune. Came down here from Hartford, auditioned for the H & M and they took me right on. You doing a story on us?”
“I’d like to. A Sunday piece.” I fingered the sap in my pocket.
“Well, let me see what I can tell you.” He got up and spun around, holding his hands against the back of his neck. He was a sweet kid, if a little fey. I didn’t enjoy stepping forward, pushing his hat over his eyes and cracking him on the back of the skull.
“JACK!” gasped Savage.
The kid was on the floor, good for an hour of rest and a day of headaches.
“Had to be done, Savage. Help me w
ith the suit. It’ll fit you like a glove.”
Savage knelt beside me. “You expect me to …”
“It’s the only way we’re going to get in there.”
“We’re both going to dress up?”
“Of course. Next kid comes in, I’ll have to sap him, too. Means and ends, Mr. Savage. It’s a bad world. Now let’s step on it.”
In two minutes, Savage was a Hit and Miss, and junior was sleeping in a broom closet with a gag in his mouth.
“He’ll stay out?” asked the banker, who had gotten quickly accustomed to knocking people unconscious. He stood in front of a full-length mirror. The outfit was a little small, but not enough to draw any stares.
“God, this is ridiculous,” he said to the mirror.
“It’ll do. Stay out of the way, back of the partition. I don’t want you spotted.”
Savage ducked out of sight just as the door opened again. Another Hit and Miss waltzed in, this one a little longer in the tooth than the first victim of LeVine’s duplicity.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
“Jack LeVine, AP.”
“AP?” He didn’t believe me any more than if I had said I was Sam Goldwyn. “C’mon, take a powder.”
“You don’t like newspapermen?”
“I don’t like shit artists and I can always spot one. I don’t know what you want and I don’t care. People come in here …”
A knee in the groin slowed him to a gentlemanly walk, the sap finished him nice and easy. Savage came out and dragged off the Hit’s clothes, gagged him and locked him into the crowded closet. We were getting pretty good at it.
“I didn’t know this was going to be so damned ugly,” Savage said softly, as I hopped out of my slacks and into the white ducks. I put on the shirt, bow tie and jacket, then squeezed into the shoes, before putting my clothes up on a hanger.
“Fucking shoes,” I mumbled.
“Too small?”
“It’ll look like I’m walking on coals.”
We walked—Savage walked, I hobbled—to the door. The banker turned around.
“Will our clothes be safe?”
“Probably. It’s the least of our worries. You have your wallet?”
“Certainly.”
The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery Page 17
