Retribution Is Mine!

by P C Hatter

  She held another photo out of a cheetah in a school uniform. “Mazie Quin eloped the day before yesterday. Allen was fit to be tied. Mazie left in the middle of a series. She sent Viola a note about the whole affair and everyone at the agency chipped in to buy her a television as a wedding gift. Viola would have the address if you wanted to talk to her.”

  Ellen handed back the photos and set about wrangling a date. If she ever stopped modeling, Ellen could make a fortune in sales the way she handled the male on the other end of the line.

  When she hung up the phone, we grabbed our coats and headed out for dinner. I made a point of carrying her to the car so that she wouldn’t get her feet, or her shoes, wet. After dinner, I dropped her off at the hotel she’d prearranged to have her date pick her up from. But not before giving her a nice long kiss of thanks.

  After that, I stopped at a bar and called Matthew Finch.

  “Now what do you want, Kaiser?”

  “Information on a mouse by the name of Enrico Price. Everything, financials and all.”

  “Social life is easy, as for the financial, I can only go so far before the law steps in.”

  “Skirt it. You know how.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  I smiled, “You know you will.”

  “Why do I even bother arguing?”

  “It must be my sunny disposition.”

  “This is the last time, and I mean it.”

  “You worry too much, Finch.”

  I said goodbye to the bird and went outside to my car. The next stop was to one of the local newspapers.

  Only a cold day in hell would ever be able to make the newspaper stop printing, but this wasn’t one of them. The noise of the machines vibrated through the entire building as the typewriters tapped out the stories in a never ending succession.

  Squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits fueled on buckets of coffee and cartons of cigarettes scurried about in a constant blur of motion to get the evening edition of the newspaper out on the streets in time. No sooner would they be done than the cycle would start again for the morning run.

  The chipmunk I wanted was in the rewrite room in a glass enclosed office on one of the upper floors of the building. Lenny Travis was a sports editor with a nose for the seedier side of the business. If Lenny didn’t know about it, it wasn’t happening.

  Lenny glanced up from his typewriter without missing a beat when I walked into his office. “Be right with you, Kaiser.”

  I took a seat on a counter seeing as it was the only space available that would fit me. Whatever Lenny was working on must have been good if the leer on his pudgy little face had anything to do with it. Lenny pulled the sheet from the typewriter and let out an evil laugh before turning his attention to me.

  “What will it be? Tickets or information?”

  “Information on a former hood by the name of Dagger. Supposed to be a fight promoter.”

  “Glenwood housing projects out on the Island. Dagger and his buddies built an arena. Fights, wrestling.” Lenny rubbed his hands together. “The place is on my list.”

  “I’ll let you know what I find.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lenny checked his watch. “If you hurry, you might catch the first fight. You sure you want to go?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Lenny has some nasty partners. Watch your tail.”

  “Thanks for the heads up.”

  Lenny gave me a thumbs up and stuck another sheet of paper into the typewriter as I left the office.

  Back outside the snow had left a nice coating on my car and I brushed off the windshield. The plows were out in full force keeping the roads clear no matter how hard mother nature tried to blanket them.

  By the time I managed to get to the arena, the place was pack, and I had to find a parking spot down the street.

  It cost me a dollar for a back-row bench seat. If I’d come to watch the fight, I would have needed binoculars. Since I didn’t, the fact that it was right next to the hallway leading to the fighters changing rooms suited me just fine.

  I’d missed the first fight, and in the second, one of the bulls went down in round four and was counted out. Two more bulls took the ring and danced around until the seventh before anything interesting happened.

  Once we were well into the fourth fight, everyone who was going to be there had arrived. A couple of the previous fighters waltzed past my seat followed by their trainers, and I got up and followed. The crew led me to a large room lined with lockers that smelled of liniment and sweat.

  A couple of oxen, their fists wrapped in bandages sat on a bench playing cards. A lion in a pinstripe suit and smoking like a chimney stood off to the side, and I nudged him. “Where’s Dagger?”

  “Office probably. Where’s your fighter?”

  “Home sick.”

  “Can’t make any money that way.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  I exited the room and went looking for the office. Somebody was nice enough to stencil the name on a door at the end of the hall. The sound of music came from inside. I heard a door slam and figured there was another access to the room. Because of the radio, I couldn’t hear what was being said until someone started swearing. Another voice told the first to calm down and soon the door slammed again.

  The radio played on as I waited outside the door. After a few minutes, the radio was switched off, and I decided to walk in. Had it not been for his tail I wouldn’t have recognized Dagger wrapped in his mink coat. He was busy counting out the day’s receipts. The space heater beside him was running at full blast.

  Dagger was so focused on the money he heaped in front of him, he hadn’t heard me come in. He licked his thumb periodically as he counted the bills and stacked them in piles.

  I closed the door as quietly as I could and locked it. “Good day?”

  “Quiet.”

  “Dagger.”

  He froze with money still clutched in his hand. Dagger’s eyes were cold and merciless. He was a guy that was easy to hate, and a lot of people had good reason to. When he flared his hood, it pushed at his coat ruining the effect. He probably didn’t think I had a gun because he reached under the desk.

  “I don’t think so, Dagger.” I emphasized my point by knocking the .25, still in my pocket, against the door jamb. The noise was unmistakable even through the cloth. “Move back.”

  Dagger slithered back. He didn’t know what kind of gun I had in my hand, and I wasn’t about to show him. I reached under the desk to retrieve the .32 he had stuck to the underside and held with a clip. “Remember me, Dagger?”

  He may not have been the person I saw at the second shooting, but it was possible he fired the first shot. “Broadway. You missed and hit the plate-glass window.”

  Dagger hissed and showed his fangs, or rather, fang. He wasn’t harmless by any means, but he wasn’t about to test his fangs against my trigger finger. “Kaiser Wrench. What are you doing here?”

  I decided to keep his .32 pointed at Dagger and sat on his desk, disrupting his piles of cash. “Can’t you guess?”

  He flared his hood and rose on his tail as high as the ceiling would allow. “Get out.”

  “Did you forget who I am, Dagger? I’m the guy who’s hard to kill. The one who shoots first and doesn’t always ask questions. I’ve gone up against you before.” I couldn’t help smiling. “How’s the fang?”

  Dagger almost banged his head on the beam above him, he was so pissed. He was lucky I hadn’t knocked both his fangs out of his head and not just the one, the last time we brawled.

  “You’ve lost your license, copper. Go ahead and shoot me.”

  “Okay.” I shot Dagger in the tail right were his legs would have been, had he been a mammal. At least, I think so. My aim might have been a little high. Dagger screamed, and grabbed his tail as he coiled into a ball.

  “You shot me.”

  “You told me to.”

  “You’re cr
azy.”

  I set his gun on the desk and said, “There’s a mouse by the name of Enrico Price. Stay away from him, or I’ll give you another hole.”

  Too bad I was so focused on Dagger that I forgot about the other door. I wouldn’t have had two mongooses behind me. One of them stuck an automatic in my back. “Hold it right there, sunshine.”

  The other came around the desk and saw Dagger writhing on the floor. “He shot Dagger.”

  “What are you, a thief?” The mongoose was fast. He smacked me in the jaw and nearly knocked me to the floor. The one with the gun hit me as well and this time I did end up on the floor along with the money from the desk.

  “Let me take care of him.”

  The guy with the gun was way too eager, but held off when Dagger hissed, “He’s mine.”

  A mongoose helped Dagger around the desk while the one with the gun wiggled with anticipation. Fortunately for me, he wiggled a little too close. I rammed my hand against the slide and shoved it back while the mongoose franticly squeezed the trigger. Ripping it out of his hand, my knee went straight to his groin hard enough to have him singing high notes. He fell to the floor and folded in on himself.

  Dagger was dropped and mongoose number one made a dive for the .32. I shot him in the leg. He was a squealer and cried for a doctor.

  “Someone told me you were tough guys. How disappointing.” I wiped the automatic and tossed it next to the .32 and wiped that down as well before leaving it on the table. “Think you can remember to stay away from Enrico Price?”

  Before I exited the same way I came in, I said, “The doctor will have to report those gunshot wounds. I suggest you tell him you had an accident when cleaning them.”

  Dagger was crawling to the phone when I shut the door. The fun was about to start.

  CHAPTER 8

  The call from Matthew Finch woke me before my alarm clock went off.

  “Kaiser, you awake?”

  “I am now.”

  “Well, sit up and listen, and don’t ask how I managed to get this information. Enrico Price owns several businesses, and they’re all above board as far as I can tell with the time we got. Price’s personal account is where it gets interesting. And I’m not talking about his wife’s accounts or the ones he shares with her. I’m talking Price’s personal stash.”

  I heard the shuffling of paper coming from the Finch’s end of the line.

  “Six months ago, the mouse started taking large amounts of money out of the account. Once a month, always the same amount. Five G’s. Until this month, when he pulled out twenty leaving pennies in the account.”

  “Makes you wonder where it all went.”

  “No kidding. I could buy a whole lot of bird seed with that kind a dough. Price has a wife and a lot of kids. His love of them is on par with the image he portrays in his community. Unfortunately for him, he likes to play around. Add all that together, and what do you have?”

  “Blackmail? That’s it? Well, at least I know now where Dagger got the money to build his arena.”

  “As far as I can tell with the time I had, that’s everything. Are we done?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Good, and please, Kaiser, don’t do me any more favors. I think I lost a tailfeather just from the stress of paying you back.”

  “You just been sitting on it too long. Thanks a bunch.”

  I hung up, crawled out of bed, and got ready for the day. The .25 in my pocket felt like a peashooter compared to my .45, but it was all I had at the moment. Outside the sky was gray and a white blanket covered the city. The roads were clear, so I gave the parking attendant a tip to take the chains off the wheels and stash them in the trunk.

  The drive out to the Bronx would have been a waste of time if all I wanted to do was confront a mouse. Enrico Price’s house was closed up tight. A cub playing in the snow told me the entire family left in a hurry. Even the maid was gone. I gave the cub two quarters, and he ran off. Probably to the nearest candy store.

  Me, I decided to do a little breaking and entering around the back side of the house and climbed in through a window. Inside, everything was sheet covered. The electricity was off and the phone line dead. Price wasn’t planning on coming back anytime soon.

  A search of the first floor turned up nothing but my temper. Everything was clean, neat, and in place. On the second floor is where I found the door. There was the normal lock below the nob and another above. Both locks were a pain to pick. I was half tempted to break down the door.

  The room behind the door was dark, but I had a pen light. Not only did Price have blackout shades on the windows, he’d painted them over. No outside light was getting into this room. Juicy pinup calendars plastered the walls. A bed, desk, and file cabinet that held business, and insurance papers were the only furniture. Slowly, methodically, I searched through the entire room. The only thing I found was burnt papers in the fireplace.

  Using another piece of paper, I teased some of the pieces into an envelope. I made sure everything was in its place and let the door lock on my way out. Once I was back outside, I obscured my tracks and got back in my car.

  Just to make sure Price was gone, I stopped at a payphone, looked up Price’s main business address, and acted like a delivery person. Even they didn’t know where he was or when he would return.

  I got back in the car and decided to go back to the office. Like the night before, I went in the back way through the garage. The attendant was a little shaken when he spotted me.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  The otter couldn’t keep still as he talked and jumped from one leg to the other. “Policemen, Mr. Wrench. They’re in your office, and two are in the lobby. Is the pretty lynx who works for you in trouble?”

  “Could be. Don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The otter smiled and worked the elevator, taking me up to the next floor. I got off and went to the phone on the wall, dropped in a nickel, and called my own office. I heard two clicks instead of one as Velvet answered. Someone was listening on the extension.

  Velvet sounded nervous, so I pinched my nose, hoping to sound nasally, and said, “Is Mr. Wrench there?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Wrench isn’t in yet.”

  I paused and said irritably, “We have a meeting at the Green Bow Bar in Brookland. In about… an hour. If he should call, remind him of our appointment and let him know I’ll be a few minutes late.”

  “I’ll let him know.”

  I hung up and waited by the phone and checked my watch. After about five minutes I put in another call to the office. This time there was only one click. “Mr. Wrench please.”

  “Can it, Kaiser. You can come up now. The goons lit out of here straight after the last call.”

  Velvet had her feet on the desk and was sharpening her nails with a small file when I walked in the door. She gave me a big smile.

  “I can see up your dress.”

  Her smile disappeared and feet came off the desk right quick. “How’d you find out about the goons from the D.A.’s office?”

  “The otter that mans the elevator. What did they want?”

  “You. Did you shoot someone last night?”

  “Two, but who’s counting. I’m surprised that sniveling little worm had the guts to report me. Get Duke on the line. I need a drink.”

  Velvet picked up the phone and dialed. “Is it bad?”

  “Getting there.” I poured two glasses and handed her one. When she got through to Duke, she handed the phone to me.

  “It’s me. A couple of nuts from the D.A.’s office stopped by.”

  “And you’re still there?”

  “At the moment. They’re off chasing their tails. What’s going on?”

  “The D.A. ordered you to be picked up. Seems there was a shooting out on the Island last night. Dagger is dead, and you were seen in the vicinity.”

  “Dead? What do you mean he’s dead?”

&n
bsp; “Where were you last night, Kaiser?”

  “Home, in bed, asleep.”

  “Anyone with you?”

  My eyes slid over to Velvet. She downed both glasses and was refilling them. “Unfortunately, no.”

  “Okay, I’ll be in the bar up the street.”

  “See you in a bit.”

  I hung up the phone and grabbed one of the glasses. “Dagger’s dead.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “He was alive when I left. Guess they could’ve left him to bleed out. Mongoose are a weird bunch. How’d you do on your end?”

  “Won some money, drank, got propositioned, I said later, he’s still interested, and I met a bunch of people.” Velvet slipped at her drink. “Not a whole waste of time. There was some nice looking firemen who showed up with models on their arms. Allen Dale was there too, and quite drunk. He suggested they continue the party at his place in the Village. Bruce made excuses when I said I wanted to go. Your skunk friend didn’t go either, her escort was having too much fun at the roulette wheel.”

  Velvet gave me a hard glare. “Did I hear you lie to Duke?”

  “No, you didn’t. He asked me if I killed Dagger. I didn’t kill him just shot him.”

  “Now your splitting fur.” Velvet put her glass down and rubbed her temples.

  “What time did you meet Bruce?”

  “Midnight. I hate sitting at bars alone. The most disgusting males try to pick me up.”

  “That means Bruce had plenty of time to run out to the Island and kill Dagger.”

  Velvet looked at me with wide eyes. “But—”

  “Pinky is a cold one. He can shoot someone with a smile and not even blink.” I grabbed my hat and straightened my coat. “If the D.A.’s goons come back stall them. Don’t mention Duke.”

  I stepped out into the hall and ended up coming face to face with a large ox. “Well look who I found. Luckily a couple of us stayed behind.”

  Another ox came up behind me and I asked, “You got a warrant?”

  “Here.” The ox handed me the paper for me to look at. “Let’s go.”