by Keene, Day
I pushed through the swinging doors out onto the sidewalk. Lower South State Street was dark but I could see the bright lights of the Loop.
I thought I’d tie on a good one. I’d get so drunk I wouldn’t know straight up from shooting. Then after I saw the lawyer in the morning and made arrangements about the kid, I’d push on to the Coast.
A big man detached himself from the shadows of the building and walked over to where I was standing. Corson had his last year’s Leghorn, or maybe the year before, pushed to the back of his head. He looked somehow shabby in the apron of white light escaping the glass doors of Central Bureau. Anyway the guy’s honest, I thought. A captain of homicide could clip plenty in this mans town.
We stood a moment, neither of us saying anything. Then he took off his hat and ran a hooked forefinger around its stained sweat band. “You going to prefer charges against me for roughing you up?”
I told him. “No. You thought you were doing your job. Preferring charges against you would be like some recruit preferring charges against me for belting him a small one to remind him a dirty rifle could cost his life some day.”
I liked him better when he grinned. “I thought you weren’t supposed to clip ’em in the new Army.”
I grinned back at him. “You aren’t.”
“Yeah. I get what you mean,” he said.
I started on, turned back. “You could tell me one thing, if you would.”
He put up his guard again. His face and eyes were as blank as the side of a scaling wall. “What?”
“How come you’re still working on the Stein case with the works in the closed file? And don’t give me that malarky about the insurance companies eating on your tail.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Maybe I don’t think Mona killed Stein.”
“In spite of her confession?”
“In spite of her confession.”
I waited for him to amplify his statement. He didn’t and it was obvious that he didn’t intend to.
“Oh,” I said softly. “I see.”
Then I walked north on State Street, looking back over my shoulder from time to time, as if what he’d just said was a secret between us.
Chapter Four
THERE WAS a girlie show not far from the corner of Congress Street. I stopped and looked at the life-sized pictures on the walk. If all the clothes on the babes were sewed into one rag it wouldn’t form a big enough flag to form one Maggie’s drawers.
The inevitable pee-eye sidled up to me. “Like to see a girl, Sergeant? Looking for a good time?”
“No, thank you,” I thanked him. “I’m allergic to prophylactic stations.”
He gave me a dirty look and moved on over to talk to a high school punk. I walked north toward the Loop.
The sour taste of the hot dog was gone. When a hard-boiled, heavy-fisted detective like Corson admitted some doubt as to the guilt of a party, he, himself, had investigated, the chances were Mona wasn’t as black as her case file indicated.
I was almost to Van Buren Street and the south boundary of the Loop when a sharpie in a loud sport coat opened the door of a blue Club DeVille parked at the curb and stepped out on the walk.
“Going our way, Sergeant?” he asked me.
He had a high effeminate voice. I thought at first he was a fruit and started on. Then I stopped. I felt a gun barrel bore into my ribs.
“Which way are you going?” I said.
He prodded me to the door of the car. “You’re Sergeant Mike Duval?”
“I am.”
“Then get in. Joe wants to talk to you.”
“Joe Who?”
“Joe LaFanti.”
One hand on the car door, I hesitated. “What’s he want to talk to me about?”
The driver, a big, smooth-shaven, good-looking lad, with a smile almost as oily as his hair, asked, “Does it matter, Sergeant? You heard Tommy. I want to talk to you. Now get in or we’ll cut you down right here on the walk.”
I got into the car.
LaFanti’s apartment was something. It was near the Loop, overlooking the Drive along the lake, rightly nicknamed the Gold Coast. It occupied the whole fourteenth floor of the building. The high-beamed studio living room had a big stone fireplace at one end and a balcony at the other. Door-sized casement windows opened onto a landscaped set-back terrace. The hum of traffic on the Drive below was only a pleasant blur.
“You like it?” LaFanti asked me.
“It’s quite a bunker,” I admitted.
One of the hoods who had been in the car, a blond lad by the name of Hymie, chuckled, “He’s okay, huh, Joe?”
LaFanti told him to shut up. Another one of his boys, a gun punk whom LaFanti called Gordon, opened the doors of a portable bar and LaFanti asked me if I wanted a drink.
“Make mine light,” I told him, “I just had three big hookers with First Assistant State’s Attorney Olson.”
LaFanti laughed, “A name dropper, eh?”
Hymie laughed, too, and asked me if I liked the Army. I said I liked it fine and he said, “I tried to get in in ‘42 and then when this thing in Korea broke out.” He sounded a little sad about it. “But they wouldn’t let me in on account of my record.”
I finished my drink and set the glass on the portable bar.
LaFanti motioned to a leather chair. “Now sit down, Duval, and tell me all about it.”
I sat well forward on the chair. “All about what?”
“About your visit with Mona.”
“Why should I tell you?”
He told me, “Because if you don’t, I’ll have the boys beat on that saddle-leather puss of yours until it’s even more unattractive than it is now.”
I looked around the room. Outside of LaFanti there were four hoods in it. All of them with the exception of Tommy were big men. All of them looked like they knew their business.
“What do you want to know?” I asked LaFanti.
“She shot off her mouth, of course?”
I said, “Outside of giving me her lawyer’s name and address, so I could make some arrangements to support my brother’s kid, she didn’t say a dozen words.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s so. I wasn’t even alone with her. There was also a matron, Warden Kane and a prissy little guy with nose glasses who said he used to be a colonel of M.P.’s. You can tell me one thing, though.”
“What?”
“The kid is my brother’s?”
“So Mona says.” LaFanti seemed amused. “You red-haired guys. Mona was all chumped off over your kid brother. She was all for going straight and keeping the home fires burning for him until he got back from Korea.” He flexed and unflexed one of his big hands. “Until I talked some sense into her.”
I felt better than I had before. Mona loved Johnny. It was his kid.
LaFanti said, “To get back to what we were talking about. Mona did shoot off her mouth?”
“All she said was to think of her once in a while.”
His smile continued oily. “Why try to lie to me? I know dames. I’ve been lied to by experts.” He took a wallet from the breast pocket of his coat and began to count out fifty-dollar bills. “I could get the information for nothing. But because you didn’t crack wise to either Olson or Corson, I’m willing to do right by you. Say when, Sergeant.”
I told him what I’d told Corson. “You’re over my head, fly-boy. Come in for a landing.”
“What did I tell you?” Gordon asked. “All small-town punks are would-be sharpers. He’s going to stick you for plenty, Joe. Then I wouldn’t trust him twenty feet.”
Hymie said, “Maybe the guy is leveling.”
They all laughed at that. “The guy,” Tommy said, “is smart. He’s making the mountain come to Mohammed.”
LaFanti stacked the bills he’d counted out on the arm of his chair. “I’ll tell you what, Duval. I’ll set you up in whatever kind of business you were in before you went into the Army.
What did you do?”
I grinned at him. “I went to high school, but I don’t think I’d care to own one.”
Only Hymie laughed.
LaFanti put the money back in his wallet. The corners of his mouth turned down. “You’re asking for it.”
The fourth hood slipped a sap from his pocket. I hadn’t heard his name called but he was wearing a baby-blue tie with the letter N hand painted on the wide part. He stood tapping the sap in the palm of his hand, looking at me.
“You’d better just keep on looking,” I warned him.
LaFanti got to his feet. He licked at his thick lips and looked from me to the lad with the sap.
“Think it over, Joe,” Hymie warned him. “Don’t get us in no deeper. This guy ain’t a punk. If he doesn’t show on schedule, the whole goddamn United States Army is going to be looking for him.”
LaFanti continued to lick at his lips. “Yeah, I know. That’s why I tried to buy him off. But we can arrange the other if we have to. There are always accidents. Maybe he could go swimming or something. Maybe dive off the breakwater and maybe hit his head on one of the rocks.” He walked across the room away from me. When he turned back he was holding a long-barreled .38. I could tell by the way he held it that he knew how to use it.
“Okay. Let’s have it, Duval,” he said. “What lies did the dame tell you about me? And where did she stash the diamonds?”
I was truthful with him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
LaFanti nodded at the lad wearing the baby-blue tie. “Soften him up a bit, Norm.”
Norm came in fast, swinging the sap. I brought my knees up to my chest and gave him both feet in the belly so hard he went through the fireplace screen into the big stone fireplace.
LaFanti’s admiration was begrudged. “You’re tough, all right,” he admitted.
Norm came out of the fireplace tugging at a gun in a shoulder holster. “Let me shoot the son.”
LaFanti waved him back. “Start talking, Duval, or I might let him do just that. What lies did she tell you about me?”
I stood up in front of my chair. “She never even mentioned your name.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth.”
“I get it now,” he said. “No wonder you didn’t tell Corson. You’re figuring on keeping the ice for yourself and holding the other over my head.” He pointed his gun at the button on my tunic, second from the bottom. “Okay. Take him, boys.”
While he and Norm covered me with their guns, Hymie and Tommy took a couple of slow steps toward me. I got out from in front of the chair and backed away, wishing I knew what LaFanti wanted me to tell him. As I backed, I knocked over a little end table and a silver-framed picture clattered to the parquet flooring.
Still in motion, I glanced down at it. It was a picture of Mona. It looked like her and it didn’t. In the picture she could be a pin-up girl by Varga. She was all lines and glitter and flame. Her evening gown just bordered on being immodest. I’d never seen a better filled bodice nor a deeper cleft. It was no wonder Johnny had been crazy about her. He’d have been crazy if he hadn’t fallen for her. But the death house had done things to Mona. She wasn’t glittering now. She was a meek, scared kid, mostly eyes. Somehow I liked her better than I did her picture.
When I’d backed as far as I could, I told LaFanti, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to know or what Mona is supposed to have told me. But if you’re figuring on taking me, let’s get it over with. Come on.”
He said, “Don’t mark him any more than you can help.”
Tommy and Hymie came first. I cow-kicked one and broke the other’s arm. Gordon was tougher and smarter. He danced in, swiped the side of my face with a gun barrel and danced back before I could get my hands on him.
I picked up the end table I’d knocked over and threw it in his face. Before he could get it out of his eyes, I stepped in fast and gave him the side of my hand just above his kidneys. He dropped his gun and screamed he was maimed for life. I brought my knee up to his crotch to try to make certain he was and he stopped screaming and held himself with both hands.
“You’re good,” LaFanti admitted.
So was he. He looked soft but he wasn’t. I tried every trick I’d learned in dirty fighting and he blocked them with barroom counters. Guys who drive Club DeVilles and live in penthouse apartments usually know their trades and he knew his.
He could have shot me. He didn’t. He handed his gun to the lad in the baby-blue tie and beat me back to the wall with a flurry of hard lefts and rights, any one of which would have knocked me out if they had landed where he was trying to put them.
I went limp as in Judo, then tried to knee him. He caught my knee in his right hand and we went to the floor together and bumped across it back the way we had come, he riding me, then me riding him.
Tommy and Hymie were on their feet. Together, with Norm and Gordon, they walked along beside me, taking swipes at my head whenever I showed on top.
I couldn’t take much of that. I didn’t. There was a whoosh, as one of them landed a solid blow on the back of my head and I took off like a guided missile. As the flares began to die out, in the distance Hymie said, “I betcha. I betcha the guy is leveling. I betcha the dame didn’t talk.”
Closer now, LaFanti grunted, “Don’t be a chump, Hymie. You’re thinking like a square. Of course, she talked. And unless we get rid of Duval, we won’t be safe until after they pull that switch.”
I opened my eyes and Tommy swished, “Look out. He’s coming to.”
LaFanti was standing over me. “Go back to sleep,” he said.
To be sure I did, he drew back his foot and kicked me in the jaw.
Chapter Five
THE ROOM was dark with a cool breeze blowing through it. I could hear a faint purr of traffic and, even that high up, the swish of the lake against the rock breakwater.
Moving was an effort. I was lying on a bed, untied. I lay figuring that one out for a long time. Then I decided LaFanti had been afraid a rope would mark me. Even a dumb park cop might wonder why a drowned swimmer had rope burns on his wrists.
I lay feeling through my pockets. I still had my wallet and my keys. The envelope holding my rating, travel orders and re-enlistment papers was still in my breast pocket. From what I could tell by feeling, I still had all my teeth. I could feel a smear of clotted blood and a sore spot here and there, but with the exception of the boil on the back of my head, I didn’t feel too bad.
I swung my feet over the side of the bed and sat up. The night was as black as the room. I walked to the open window and looked out. Outside of the white froth where it broke on the rock breakwater, the lake looked like a sheet of dark purple glass. A steady stream of cars, heading both north and south, jammed the Outer Drive from curb to curb. There were people on the walks and on the rock breakwater. All the help I needed was only a few hundred feet away. A few hundred feet straight down.
I sat back on the bed and gradually my eyes began to pick out objects in the room. Besides the bed there was a dresser, a highboy, and some chairs. A thin oblong of indistinct light outlined a door on the south wall. I took a chance it might be a bathroom. It was.
I used the facility, then ran cold water in the bowl as I looked at my face in the mirror over the wash stand. The several beatings I’d taken hadn’t improved it.
“Funny face,” Mona had called me.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, wishing I was smarter than I was. Something was awful screwball somewhere for a hot shot like LaFanti to be as frightened as he was. Then there was what Captain Corson had said.
“I don’t think Mona killed Stein.”
I washed most of the blood from my face and hair and sat on the throne as I toweled them. If LaFanti had killed Stein he had reason to be afraid. On the other hand no girl, at least no girl in her right mind — and Mona hadn’t impressed me as being crazy — no matter how much she loved or was afraid of a man, was go
ing to walk that last mile willingly. Not when all she had to do to get a pass was open her mouth and name the lad who should be walking it.
I wished Johnny was still alive and in the bathroom with me. Even if he had been seven years younger he’d always been the quick one in the family. He’d never even had to crack a book at home to stay on the honor roll. I’d been lucky to get through high school. I’d studied my fool head off and probably wouldn’t have made it even then if they hadn’t needed my weight on the football squad. It had been the same in the Army. I’d lucked my way into my stripes and rocker by being too dumb to know I was too dumb to be a technical sergeant. I had plugged nights and read the manual while the other guys had been having fun in the beer hall. I had been the first eager beaver to volunteer for dirty patrols, not because I was brave, but because I was afraid the C.O. would find out how dumb I was and wash me out of the only way of life I’d ever really enjoyed. But one thing was for sure: what I learned stuck with me.
I started to get up and walk back into the bedroom.
It was then I heard the girl crying. It wasn’t loud and she wasn’t really crying. Her breath sucked in jerkily and came out in dry sobs, as if she’d been crying a long time and was tired. I tried to locate the sound. It was coming through a grilled ventilator high up on the wall of the bathroom. The way the ventilator was placed, on a small air shaft, the girl could be on the same floor with me or in one of the apartments on a lower floor.
I wondered who she was and what she was crying about. Her dry sobbing gave me the creeps. I walked into the bedroom and located the outside door. I expected it to be locked, It wasn’t. It opened into a dimly lighted hall. I tiptoed down the hall and looked through a wide arch.
Tommy and Gordon were sitting under bridge lamps, one of them reading a newspaper, the other a girlie magazine with an undraped babe on the cover. Tommy’s left arm was in a sling.
As I watched them Tommy looked up from his newspaper and said, “I don’t like it. There’s going to be hell in a little white pot when Duval doesn’t show. A soldier with twelve years in and all the decorations he has just doesn’t go AWOL.”
