Too Hot to Hold

by Day Keene

“How do you know? Mr. Harper is very nice. But he certainly wasn’t pleased. And us with the house and car payments to make. And fuel to buy. And school clothing for the children. Don’t you care what happens to us?”

  Brady was tempted to tell her he didn’t give a damn what happened to either her or her juvenile monsters. For the sake of peace, he temporized. “It was just one of those things. I had to have a break of some kind, do something different.”

  May sniffed. “Hmm. Housework gets monotonous, too. Are you in some kind of trouble, Jim?”

  Brady lighted another cigarette. “Don’t be absurd.”

  May persisted. “I don’t think I’m being absurd. Something is worrying you. You didn’t sleep half an hour last night.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I heard you prowling around.”

  “I wanted a drink of milk.”

  “In the living room?”

  “All right. So I had a highball.”

  “Then kept right on drinking all day.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I can tell by looking at you. Your breath almost knocked me over when I met you at the station. You’ve been in a fight. And you left your brief case somewhere.”

  Brady touched his slightly puffed lip that the bellhop and clerk had given him. “All right. I didn’t go to work. I spent the day in a bar.”

  “Why?”

  “No particular reason.”

  May’s voice was shriller than Brady had ever heard it. “I think you’re lying, Jim Brady. And if what I think is worrying you is so, God help you, that’s all.”

  Brady was angry with himself and impatient with her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  May stood up. “I think you do. What were you and Alice doing in here last night?”

  Brady answered her. “I wasn’t doing a thing. She just happened to come in while I was making a highball. And I told her to go back to bed.”

  “I don’t believe you.” May pounded her clenched fist on the television cabinet. “I think you’re having an affair with the child. I think you’re having illicit relations with her. And if I find out I’m right, God help you, Jim Brady. I’ll see that you go to prison for the maximum time the law provides.”

  Once started talking, she couldn’t seem to stop. “You might as well know right now I wouldn’t lift a finger to help you. I don’t care that for you. I just married you for a home for myself and Jimmy and Alice. I’ve tried to be a good wife. But that doesn’t include letting you play fast and loose with my daughter.”

  Brady tried to stem the torrent of words by pointing out that Alice was just a child and May laughed, thinly.

  “She’s as mature as I was when I married her father. And about the same age. Besides, what difference does that make? I know how men are. All of you. The younger a girl is the better. And after all, Alice is no relation to you. No real relation.”

  “I’m her stepfather.”

  “Also her lover.”

  “I swear not.”

  “Then why is the child always touching you and mooning around you? Why are the two of you always whispering in corners? I should have known when I came in here last night. Your faces were the picture of guilt. What were you planning? Last night’s rendezvous? After you were sure I was asleep. Where did you do it? On the sofa or on the floor?” In her hysterical anger the blonde woman stopped pounding on the television cabinet and beat on Brady’s chest. “Tell me. How long has this been going on? How many times have you been intimate with Alice?”

  The whole scene was ridiculous. If it hadn’t been so serious, Brady would have laughed.

  May continued to pound his chest. “Confess. Tell me the truth.”

  Brady caught both her wrists in one of his hands and pushed her away from him. “You’d better lower your voice or the neighbors will hear you.”

  “I don’t care if they do.”

  “How about our ‘position’ in Stamford?”

  “If I find out I’m right you won’t have to worry about position, only about how many years you’re going to get for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

  Brady was tempted to ask how anyone could possibly contribute to Alice’s delinquency. At fifteen the child was mentally and morally corrupt. He refrained. It was all so sordid, so futile.

  On impulse, he walked into the bedroom and got his good suit from the closet and picked out a fresh shirt. He had to get out of the house, if only for a few hours.

  May followed him into the bedroom and watched, her eyes sullen, as he dressed. “Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.

  Brady said, “Out.”

  “Out where?”

  Brady told her the truth. “I haven’t the least idea. Possibly one of the bars near the station.”

  “I think you’ve had enough to drink.”

  “All right. So I’ll just talk to the bartender.”

  Brady transferred his change and wallet and keys to the pockets of his good trousers, then transferred the claim check for the brief case from one watch pocket to the other.

  “What’s that for?” May asked.

  “Just some company correspondence,” Brady lied. “I didn’t want to carry it around.”

  He glanced sideways at his wife. The first of her anger over, May seemed to realize she’d gone too far. The next act in the tragic comedy would be self-pity. She took a soiled handkerchief from the pocket of her house dress and dabbed at her eyes. “You have to admit I have a right to be suspicious.”

  Brady shrugged into his coat. “Especially since you just married me for a home for you and the children.”

  May searched for something to say, and could only ask, “Will you be late?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “But you are going to work tomorrow?”

  “I imagine so.”

  Leaving her sitting on the bed, Brady walked out into the other room and got his trench coat from the hall closet and let himself into the garage through the kitchen door. He was still so angry he was trembling.

  Brady backed out of the driveway too fast and almost collided with a smart convertible cruising slowly up the street. He braked just in time and rolled down his window and thrust out his head and said, “Sorry.” There were two people in the other car, a man and a girl. With the top up it was too dark for him to see the girl’s face but the driver was young and clean-cut looking, wearing a pork pie hat.

  “Sorry,” Brady repeated.

  “Think nothing of it,” Daly smiled. “They tell me these things happen.”

  TWELVE

  AS THE BIG Viscount II circled over Manhattan, Lew Dix looked down without interest at the multi-colored lights.

  He felt old and tired and put upon. When a man had climbed as high in the rackets as he had he should be able to rest. He shouldn’t be bothered with minor details. He should be able to transfer some of the organizational responsibilities to his underlings.

  Dix tried to be fair. On the other hand two hundred thousand dollars wasn’t minor. Morgan and Daly were good men. They’d handled a dozen affairs like this without giving him any reason for complaint. If, as Morgan had said over the phone, his presence in New York was imperative, Morgan knew what he was talking about.

  Then there were the old men from Palermo. It was cool in the air-conditioned jet-powered plane but Dix could feel a thin film of oily perspiration on his forehead and cheeks. No matter how high a man climbed he was still subject to the law of omerta.

  The money had to be recovered. It had taken considerable time and sacrifice to get it together. And, at the moment, with the market as it was and nosy Senate investigating committees probing the links between certain business operations and the gangs, he wouldn’t be able to replace it without considerable financial loss and expenditure of time. And if the old men from Palermo should get the erroneous idea he was stalling, or trying to evade paying his just tribute…

  Dix preferred not
to think of it. No matter how big a man got he was just a small cog in the over-all picture. And while Daly and Morgan might, on occasion, fail to complete an assignment, the enforcers for the Mafia never failed. And no one knew who they were. One might be the barber who had shaved you for years. Or the man who ran the fruit store on the corner. Or talent imported from some far corner of the spidery empire. Or your best friend.

  The thought made the short hairs on the back of Dix’s neck tingle. Once, long years ago, when he’d been a young man, he’d had such an assignment. He could still see the shocked surprise on Luigi’s face when he’d shot him.

  He said a hurried Hail Mary and crossed himself. It was not good to think of things like that.

  The ‘Fasten Your Seat Belt’ panel winked on and Dix allowed the pert stewardess to help him with the web belt. She smelled sweet and young and reminded him of Linda Lou. Then he became infuriated. Over the years dozens of girls had carried money for him without ever losing a penny. If he remembered correctly, when the method of transference of funds had first been put into practice, back in the days of Johnny Torrio, a sweet young thing by the name of Virginia something had been the first courier. And if a reluctant little baby-faced fugitive from the South thought she could pull a fast one on Lew Dix, she’d whistled her last chorus of Dixie.

  Dix snorted his disbelief. A big man in a trench coat had climbed into her cab and pointed a gun at her, had he? He would take care of Miss Linda Lou personally. But not until after he’d recovered his money.

  The landing at La Guardia was without event. Dix didn’t want to stay in New York too long. He had to get back to Chicago as soon as he possibly could. When the cat was away the mice not only played, they nibbled at the cheese. The week he’d had to spend in upper New York State for the meet the year before had cost him a small fortune. His receipts had fallen off thirty per cent. It was incredible what dishonest employees could do to a respectable businessman. If they were not watched every minute, crooked tavern and gambling house managers, fast-talking hotel and laundry and brewery superintendents would steal a man blind. Even the two dozen or so whores in the three small houses he still operated, more as a sentimental link with the old days than as a money-making proposition, had reported that they hadn’t turned a dime worth’s of tricks while he’d been gone. And he knew better than that. That was one commodity in which the demand always exceeded the supply.

  Morgan was waiting for him by the gate.

  “You find it yet?” Dix asked.

  The younger man shook his head. “No. But we think we have a good lead.”

  Neither man spoke again until they were in the big black limousine that Morgan had rented. Then, popping one of his dyspepsia pills in his mouth, Dix said, sourly, “All right. Let’s have it.”

  Morgan drove deftly through traffic, not turning his head as he talked. “Well, as I told you over the phone, the girl claims she got into this cab and when a big guy got in and pointed a gun at her, she panicked and took off, leaving the parcel on the seat.”

  Dix snorted.

  Morgan continued. “We felt the same way. We thought the girl was pulling a fast one. We thought she had it rigged with the cabby to hang on to the money while she made her story good by letting a truck hit her and having to spend a night in Bellevue.”

  “Go on.”

  “So we made certain the parcel wasn’t on the hospital list of her personal possessions and waited until they released her when we trailed her down to Bleecker Street and into an abandoned warehouse where a paesano named Mike Scaffidi garaged his hack. When Daly and I walked in they were sitting cozy in the back of the hack and we figure she is just about to pay him off for holding the money for her. But when we haul him out of the cab and ask him where the money is he protests he doesn’t know anything about it. He claims he doesn’t even know Linda and his only connection with the affair is her getting into his cab in front of Grand Central and then coming down to the warehouse and asking for the parcel she says she left in his cab. And the girl backed his story. It was then that she gave us the bit about the big joker in the trench coat who pointed a gun at her.”

  “You talked to the cab driver?”

  Morgan was annoyed. “A little too hard, I’m afraid.”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “No. We’re clear on that score.”

  “Then why have me make this trip?”

  Morgan explained. “It’s a little complicated. While we were talking to Scaffidi we found this.” He took the plastic tag from his pocket and handed it to Dix. “It isn’t much. But it was all we had to go on. The girl wouldn’t talk. Scaffidi couldn’t. But the tag was in his pocket and before Linda clammed up she swore that the man who pointed a gun at her had been carrying a brief case under his other arm.”

  Dix looked at the tag on his palm. “I see. So you figured if there had been a man with a gun this might have come from his brief case.”

  Morgan nodded. “That’s it.”

  “Assuming Linda’s story is true.”

  “We didn’t think so at first. But now we do. Anyway, as I said, it wasn’t much to go on but it was all we had. So we drove up to this place Stamford and did a little discreet talking around and found out all we could about this guy Brady.”

  Dix read the name on the tag. “James A. Brady.”

  “Is the name familiar to you?”

  “No. Should it be?”

  “That’s what Daly and I would like to know. He’s about thirty-four or five, with a good war record. He lives in a so-so house with a faded blonde who has two children by a former marriage, one of them a hot-pantsed little bitch who almost raped Daly before he could get out of the house after he rang the bell, pretending he was selling magazines to work his way through college. She’d just come home from school and her mother was out shopping, see. Anyway from what the girl told Daly, on the surface at least, Brady is a sixty-five hundred dollar a year translator for a firm called Harper, Nelson and Ferrel. And he comes into Manhattan every morning on the train that would put him in Grand Central about the time the Twentieth Century gets in.”

  “Go on.”

  “And he left for town on schedule yesterday morning. When he left the house he was wearing a trench coat and carrying a brief case.”

  “With a name tag on it?”

  “That’s right. Daly didn’t show the girl the tag but he got the question in without her becoming suspicious.”

  “And this is the tag?”

  “We don’t know. We think so. Anyway, it connects him with Scaffidi and he answers the description of the man Linda says climbed into the cab and pointed a gun at her. And we think he has the money.”

  Dix lit one of his twisted black cigars. “Then why don’t you and Daly work on him and get it back? Why make me fly eight hundred miles?”

  Morgan told him. “Because after we talked it over, we decided the whole affair was a little too pat, a little too coincidental. Stop and figure it out. The guy comes into Manhattan at just exactly the right time. Out of thousands of cabs in the city he picks just exactly the right one. And since when do white-collared office workers carry guns?”

  Dix smoked in silence for a moment. “I’m beginning to see what you mean. You figure someone tipped him. You figure there’s a leak in the organization.”

  “Either that,” Morgan said flatly, “or it is even worse. Try this one on for size. What if one of the New York mobs has planted someone on us? Maybe Miss Phillips in your office. As I get the picture, under the present city administration and what with all those Senate investigations, things here are not only very disorganized but some of the boys are actually going hungry. They don’t know where their next Cadillac is coming from.” He continued. “Now you and I and Daly know where that two hundred grand was going. And if it doesn’t get where it’s supposed to we know what might happen. And with the three of us out of the picture the whole setup in Chicago will be thrown up for grabs. And what would be more logical than for t
he boys who caused it to happen to take over? And that’s why we phoned you.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Dix said. His cigar no longer tasted good. His heartburn was worse. The old days never really died. Not in his line of business. There was always some young wolf or pack of wolves hopeful of pulling down an old one.

  He didn’t like what he was thinking. The theft of the money might well have been planned. For the sake of the money itself and also because the men who planned it knew that at the moment he was financially overextended and would have difficulty raising another such sum. By stealing a lousy two hundred thousand dollars and discrediting him with the Mafia, it was possible whoever had stolen the money was hoping to tear down the multi-million dollar organization he’d spent his life in building. And once they’d torn it down they would step in, rebuild it and open up again under new management.

  Morgan drove through the heart of the city to the Skyway and north on the Skyway to the beginning of Merritt Parkway.

  Dix asked, “Have you been able to get a make on this Brady? Have you traced any connection?”

  Morgan shook his head. “No. Like I said. On the surface he’s a sixty-five hundred dollar a year translator. But here’s something you might think over. Both Daly and I have. A job like that is a perfect cover. He’s in a perfect position to be wired in on the rackets in half a dozen countries.” He added, sourly, “And here’s something else you might think over. We might just be up against the big boys themselves. This Brady’s father was the assistant American consul in Napoli for three years. And this Brady spent all of his summers in Palermo. He speaks Italian like he’d been born with a mouthful of ripe olives.”

  “Daly got all this from his daughter?”

  “Stepdaughter. Daly couldn’t make up his mind whether the girl was nuts about the guy or hated his guts. Either way she was willing to talk about him. But before he could get any more out of her, Mrs. Brady came home with the groceries and said they couldn’t afford any magazines and he left.”

  Dix rode in grim silence. This thing could be big, as big as anything he’d ever faced. It could mean much more than the loss of the money. Had the powers that be discovered he kept three sets of books? One for the Internal Revenue Department. One to show the Mafia accountants. One to keep track of how much money he’d really made. For while a man could cheat on God, while he could chinsey on his tithes, he couldn’t chisel on the old men from Palermo. Not for long.