Cheap as Beasts

by Jon Wilson

  Cobb said, “Right now I’m trying to help you save your job. Maybe salvage your entire career. Now, tell me—”

  “God damn it!” Lovejoy leapt to his feet. As abruptly as he’d calmed himself, he was furious again. The olive skin of his cheeks had deepened nearly to the same magenta as his hat. He spun, put a foot against the front edge of the chair he’d been sitting on and sent it tumbling across the floor. Turning back to face Cobb, he hoisted his arms in a large, histrionic gesture of futility. “So, what, you’re just gonna take this faggot’s word over mine?” He tore off his trench coat and flung it to the floor. “Get up!” he told me.

  I was already rising, shrugging out of my jacket.

  “You aren’t going to fight,” Cobb told us both.

  “Sure we are,” I said.

  Lovejoy was tearing off his own jacket, still staring at me. Still livid.

  “Damn it,” Cobb said. “It’s late, and I’m tired.”

  “This won’t take long,” I told him.

  “Fuck you,” Lovejoy told me. He was rolling up his shirtsleeves as I started around the corner of my desk, and he sidestepped away from me over toward the yellow sofa. The area behind the client chairs and in front of the sofa provided perhaps fifty square feet of open floor space. Perfect for some fisticuffs.

  Cobb didn’t bother to turn his chair to watch us. “No knives or saps. No brass.”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “Joe?”

  “I won’t need them,” Lovejoy assured him.

  “Then you won’t mind putting them here on the desk.”

  Lovejoy made some sort of tsking sound, nothing like my own standby, and looked up and over at me. I had positioned myself in front of my desk, in approximately the same spot the second client chair had occupied before being kicked across the room. Rolling up my own sleeves, I returned his look, figuring my expression conveyed exactly what I was feeling: pleased and eager.

  Undoubtedly that was the bully in me rearing his ugly head again. I outweighed Lovejoy by nearly twenty pounds, and just a glance at his effete hands with their long, graceful fingers and manicured nails told you he wasn’t one for lowering himself to hit things, at least not very often.

  He came over, walking boldly right up beside me while simultaneously not even deigning to acknowledge my proximity, and hoisted his left foot up onto the edge of my desk. He tugged his pant leg higher still, exposing a short stiletto strapped to his shin. Yanking it from its sheath, he tossed it onto the desk. Lowering his foot back to the floor, he withdrew from his right hip pocket a shiny set of brass knuckles.

  “What about the Betty?” Cobb said. “And the noose?”

  “All that stuff’s in my coat.”

  Cobb beckoned to him. “Give it here.”

  Lovejoy stepped around me to retrieve his hat and coat. He tossed the former onto my desk next to his knife and knucks and handed the latter over to Cobb. The old man performed a slow and methodic search of the garment, tossing up items as he discovered them.

  Despite my previous crack about Lovejoy being the sort to carry tools, I was surprised by the extent and variety of objects that clattered atop my desk in the following minute or so. A sap, another set of knuckles, two more blades, and a nasty length of cord with handles attached at each end. It was a wonder the man didn’t rattle when he walked.

  By the time Cobb had finished and folded the coat on my desk, the flaring tempers and raging testosterone had subsided somewhat. Which is why the old man runs a twenty-man operation while Lovejoy and I do grunt work. Not that either of us was ready to back down. I had been looking forward to this for days, and Joe’s anger, though more recent and intransigent, had hardened into an icy determination.

  The fight itself proved something of a letdown. Not that Lovejoy couldn’t dance. He knew the steps, and he had the reach on me, but I was smart enough not to let us spend too much time upright. Once he’d tagged my left cheek, I tackled him to the sofa, and we bounced onto the floor. From there we grappled and poked and twisted and grunted and strained and cursed until I managed to bend him into a sort of reverse double chicken wing. We were pretty much seated, facing one another, in the middle of the floor, but with him bent painfully forward, his head tucked securely under my right armpit. His arms were stretched straight back, reaching toward the ceiling. I had them locked in a noose formed by my own arms, my hands gripped tightly to one another. His legs were stretched out to the sides, and I sat between them, my own legs scissoring his waist. He was pretty much ready to be branded.

  “Give it up, Joe,” Cobb told him. “For Christ’s sake.”

  Lovejoy actually grunted and strained his arms to try and break my hold. I reciprocated by tightening my legs around his waist. “You bastard,” he told me again, his muffled voice coming up from somewhere in the vicinity of my right hip pocket. “You goddamned fairy bastard.”

  I flexed my arms that time, threatening to wrench his shoulders from their sockets. Right up until he’d said that, I’d actually been feeling a bit sorry for him, proof that I wasn’t all bully. But I wrenched him good then, and he rewarded me by crying out and then yelling, “All right! All right! Let me go!”

  A moment later when I continued flexing my arms, Cobb said, “Declan.” Neither shouting nor pleading, just reminding me he was there.

  I opened my fingers slowly, until just the tips of one set were tugging at just the tips of the other, and then the pressure of Joe trying to straighten his shoulders pushed my arms apart in an explosive rush. I unhooked my ankles and slid my butt back across the floor. He gave up some sound between a groan and a sigh, tipping over onto his left side. Figuring he wasn’t above kicking me even after the bell had sounded, I kept sliding until I felt the sofa against my back. I leaned into it, breathing heavily and watching him try to get his joints back into alignment.

  Cobb rose, offered up a good-sized and heartfelt sigh of his own, then stepped slowly over to offer Lovejoy a hand. Scowling, Lovejoy turned away and rolled over onto his knees without assistance. Cobb put his hands on his hips. “You have to see you’re finished, Joe. Not just with me. Maybe truly finished.”

  I thought for a moment Lovejoy was going to curse Cobb the way he had me, but his good sense prevailed. “Fine.” He worked himself to his feet, staggering over toward my desk and his hat and coat and toys.

  “But not until you explain. You owe me that, I think.”

  Lovejoy spun on his heel and nearly went down. He gaped at Cobb. “I owe you?”

  “An explanation, at least. No? Why you betrayed me.”

  “I didn’t betray you, boss.” Lovejoy turned back toward the desk, propping himself up on it with both hands. His head hung heavily down between his aching shoulders. “Or maybe I did. I made a mistake. I thought I was…I thought I was doing right.”

  “No,” Cobb told him, as simple as that. “I want the truth now. No more evasions.”

  Lovejoy turned again, this time wedging his keister against the edge of my desk. “But it is the truth!”

  “It’s not and you know it. If you’d truly thought that you were doing right, you would have reported in. You would have returned my calls. And you wouldn’t have come here tonight.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Babe, it’s me.”

  I’ve suffered my fair share of indignities in life. Actually, depending on my mood, I might claim I’ve suffered more than my fair share. For instance, some things that transpired in a certain dank cell in Waterford, England, during the middle of March, 1945, while I was waiting to get shipped off to an army hospital. But watching Joe Lovejoy sit in my chair, behind my desk and make that call on my telephone damned near topped anything that came before it.

  He had, of course, relented and bared his soul, such as it was, to Walter Cobb. He explained that he and Lana O’Malley had developed a mutual admiration during his initial investigation into her father’s murder. He admitted with carefully chosen words that he had perhaps needlessl
y prolonged the investigation, insinuating that Miss O’Malley certainly knew what he was doing, and therefore tacitly, if not expressly, condoned it. He did not state categorically that he had shared her bed. He knew, as did I, that Cobb would see such a verbalization as disparaging the lady’s reputation. For all his talent and insight as an investigator, the old man was nevertheless a product of his generation. Of course, Lovejoy had obviously enjoyed many breakfasts at the O’Malley apartment.

  He was sketchier as to how exactly he had entered into relations with Mrs. Lawrence O’Malley. But I don’t think his reticence had much to do with caution. I think while he had perhaps attained the summit of that particular peak, he simply had yet to manage planting his flag, so to speak. And since his behavior seemed that of a man in thrall of the mountain, he was embarrassed to reveal how thoroughly he had been played.

  He claimed they had consulted several times prior to late Wednesday night when she had told him, in some distress, that I had attempted to blackmail her. He was again vague on the details of my exact scheme, which, again, I was willing to attribute to Mrs. O’Malley. She knew damned well I hadn’t done any such thing. Unfortunately for Joe, hearing his recitation of the tale, Cobb and I weren’t nearly as receptive an audience as he had been hearing hers.

  He laid the phony banditry all on her. And while perhaps less than gallant, I figured it had to be true. Lovejoy believed wholeheartedly the skit was performed to convince me Mrs. O’Malley was already on the hook with Marty Velasco, and that I, upon learning of the gangster’s previous claim, would look elsewhere to stake my own. Lovejoy clearly didn’t know, and I didn’t enlighten him, that the holdup wasn’t staged for my benefit at all. I was just a happy witness who had ultimately flubbed his part.

  Joe did admit to gathering the cast and writing the script and even setting the stage. In addition to Sam Rickey, Lovejoy had recruited Lyle Stout and Max Darrow. That final name had elicited a growl from Cobb. Darrow was another of his own men. Lovejoy claimed that no one had ever been in any real danger. The guns hadn’t even been loaded. I thought he ought to tell that to the bruise on my shoulder, but kept quiet because the truth is, the main thing wounded were my feelings.

  Cobb didn’t sit completely idle. He offered an assortment of questions—fewer early on, more toward the end—feinting and poking in a seemingly random exploration of what appeared to be the soft spots, checking to see if any might be widened into actual holes. But Lovejoy had stayed near enough to square that his confession held up. He’d been a louse to Lana O’Malley, not simply latching onto her as a meal ticket and plaything, but parlaying their friendship into an entrée to her stepmother, probably in hopes of trading up.

  As much as I had disliked him before, that last part had me despising Joe Lovejoy all over again. While Lana and I would never be bosom pals, mainly because she was an obsessed paranoid bitch, she wasn’t an idiot. And considering the object of her paranoid obsession, if she were ever to find out the whole truth about her paramour, she’d probably go off the rails completely.

  “Well,” Cobb sighed. “What now?”

  He had addressed me. I sat on the sofa, where I’d been since stretching Lovejoy’s arms. Remaining out of the way and keeping silent had struck me as the savviest play. Confessing was laying Joe low enough without his being reminded of the fact that I was watching. But I looked up and over at him then.

  “Now I finish him off, and we go home to bed.”

  Cobb breathed in, calming himself. “Do I need to remind you that I was already at home ready for bed?”

  I frowned. “Well, what comes next depends on him. What’s his status?”

  Cobb turned to Lovejoy, who stood looking like the proverbial deer, in this case confronted by two sets of headlights coming from two directions at once. He swung his head back and forth as he tried to decide which of us to gape at. Cobb kept looking at him, but said, apparently to me, “I think he’s ready to help you.”

  I swallowed a handful of remarks I wanted to make and told Lovejoy, “Then call your girlfriend, Miss O’Malley, and tell her it’s true. Only it’s even bigger than I let on. It blows the lid off everything.”

  Lovejoy stared at me, then switched to Cobb. “What does? What’s he talking about?”

  “My evidence,” I said. “What I found in Ramona Wyman’s room. Only tell her—”

  “What did you find?”

  “Don’t interrupt. Tell her that it’s deep, and you’re going to stay here and look it over. Tell her to call the family and see if she can’t stage another pow-wow like the one they had on Wednesday. Reiterate how big it is. How explosive.”

  “But what is it? I don’t understand.”

  I frowned at Cobb. “Clearly he’s not ready to help.”

  “But, boss!”

  “This is your chance,” Cobb explained in a calm, fatherly tone. “Do as he says.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You understand enough, I think, to do as he says.”

  Lovejoy rubbed his face, which was already splotchy and somewhat green. Rubbing didn’t help; it merely raised crimson patches on his cheeks. He gaped at me some more, gradually narrowing his eyes into squints, though whether because he glommed to my angle or merely resented taking orders from me, I can’t say.

  He took a few shallow breaths, then told the space half way between Cobb and me, “She won’t buy that you and I are working together. And she certainly won’t buy that you handed over the info willingly.”

  I could see what he was hinting at and shook my head, arching a brow in admiration. “Then sell it, my lad. She’s a chica and that’s your specialty. It’s why the old man keeps you around.”

  Cobb pivoted his head so he could look at me, all affronted dignity. “What did you call me?” He doubtless was well-aware that nearly all his men and business acquaintances referred to him in those terms. They simply didn’t do it within earshot.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Slip of the tongue.”

  And that was how Joe Lovejoy, the louse, the cut-rate Tyrone Power, the ladies’ man detective, ended up in my chair, behind my desk, on my telephone, lying about how he whooped me in a fair fight. “Yeah, babe,” he said, “Well, I guess some guys only look tough. I think you might have been right about him. He sure folded up like a queer when I got started on him.”

  I nearly pulled off my shoe and threw it at his head, but Cobb saved me the trouble by issuing a warning sound from deep in his throat that actually made Lovejoy jump. Apparently, though, Lana had her own objections. Joe’s voice grew even more obsequious. “I know, honey. I’m sorry. He’s a good kid.”

  He cleared his throat. “Listen, I want you to start calling as soon as we hang up. I’ll be here another hour at least. I got to look this thing over. It’s deep. But I tell you, everyone’s gonna want to know about it. Tell them we’ll meet first thing in the morning. First thing!” He listened some, then shot glances at Cobb and me before lowering his voice. “Me too. See you soon. Only don’t wait up.”

  He replaced the receiver in the cradle and sat back, looking so smug I thought about yanking off my shoe again.

  Cobb told him, “You shouldn’t have laid on that queer stuff so thick. You know I can’t abide that manner of talk.”

  Joe looked down at his hand, at his fingers drumming on the top of my desk. He didn’t dare look at me because he knew I had weapons far more deadly than a shoe around that office. “Sure, boss. Only, her brother really is a queer.”

  The old man set his hands firmly on the arms of his chair and climbed laboriously to his feet. He always did look ancient to me, in a wizened, elder statesman sort of way, but he possessed a measure of vitality in his office between the hours of, say, eight to six. There in my office, nearing midnight, he looked haggard and pale. “You think that should do it?” he asked me.

  I shrugged. “I think that should do something.”

  “I want Joe to remain here with you.”

  “No, sir,�
�� Lovejoy and I said nearly in unison.

  “Yes. No argument. You’re grown men and professional, licensed detectives. I expect you can act like it for a hour or so.” He paused for a breath. “Or rather like gentlemen, which would probably be better.” He pivoted his head to Joe. “Call me a cab.”

  Lovejoy picked up the phone again as I stepped over to shake Cobb’s hand and thank him for his help. He reminded me with a look and a certain edge to his voice, that I’d left him little choice. I’d suspected him of malfeasance. But I was quite willing to abase myself with a woeful smile and plenteous thanks.

  Cobb asked Joe to accompany him to the sidewalk, robbing me of the pleasure of dragging the louse from my chair but allowing me a few moments of quiet peace, back in my perch with a tumbler of whiskey and a cigarette. When Lovejoy returned, he stood just through the door from the reception room, looking over at me cautiously.

  I let him remain that way for several moments, then pointed out, “It may take a while. Have a seat.”

  He sat on the sofa, which is as far away from my desk chair as he could get in that room. Then we each pretended we were alone, me sipping my whiskey and him no doubt wishing he’d brought some of his own. After about a quarter of an hour, he said, “I expected you to fight cleaner than that.”

  “I expected you to fight dirtier.”

  Another five minutes passed before I appended, “You boxed some. In school?”

  He shrugged. “A little. And in the service.”

  I sat forward. “That thing you did with your right, after the left feint, that could have done some damage if it’d landed.”

  “Hell. Hitting you was harder on my hands.”

  I fought down a smile but pulled out a second tumbler. Splashing some whiskey into the bottom, I said, “I think this bruise I’m gonna have on the side of my neck tomorrow is proof to the contrary.”