by P. N. Elrod
There were more guys here, but they moved, clearing my view to Gordy’s massive desk. Behind it, sitting easily in the huge chair, was the man I assumed to be Whitey Kroun. He was lean and long-boned and even at a distance I felt a powerful presence about him. I tried not to let Gordy’s summing up of “scary” influence me, but it was hard going. What I picked up the strongest came from the men around him. These were some of the toughest guys in the mob, and they were giving Kroun plenty of space.
He focused wholly on me as I crossed the room to stop before the desk. There was a radio on it playing dance music. It was out of place, and I questioned why it was there now, then remembered it was a way of foiling eavesdropping microphones. Some of the smarter guys in the gangs knew that the FBI tapped phones. It was illegal as hell, but still went on. If the phones had wires, then so might the walls. That made Kroun smart or paranoid or both.
I couldn’t tell what kind of impression I made. His eyes were warm brown, a solid opposition to the cold cast of his craggy face. He couldn’t have been much into his midforties, his brown hair going iron gray except for a surprise streak of silver-white that cut oddly across the left side of his skull, obviously the source of his nickname. He spent a long slow time scrutinizing me, which I imagined was supposed to be unnerving, but I’d long grown immune to that kind of thing.
Certain protocols were to be observed, though. He was the big boss. So as not to let down Gordy in his own place I had to show respect.
“Mr. Kroun.” I took off my hat, holding it straight at my side. Humble.
“Fleming,” he said. No “mister” in front, but that was all right. I knew his voice, which was deeper for being undistorted by the long-distance wires.
“Glad to meetcha.”
“We’ll see.”
Opening courtesies—such as they were—finished, the guys standing nearest made more space around me. There was one chair square in front of the desk that was evidently to be my very own hot seat. It put about seven feet between me and Kroun, hardly suitable distance for a private conversation. Maybe he was going to go for a public dressing-down. It didn’t seem to suit the situation unless he wanted plenty of witnesses to see me killed as an object lesson.
Hoyle and Ruzzo were nowhere in sight for the show, but I spotted Derner, who was the club’s general manager and also in charge of the day-to-day running of this mob’s business. Since the run-in with Bristow, Derner and I had had discussions over what to say about it. Derner would stick to the script we’d agreed on; it was in his own best interest to let me take the fall for him, too. He’d probably already been questioned thoroughly while I’d been down in the main room. He was projecting total neutrality. Smart guy.
Strome stood off to my left, hands clasped in front of him. Mitchell was behind me.
“Sit,” said Kroun. To me.
I unbuttoned my overcoat, put my hat next to the radio, and took the chair. The immensity of the desk was before me, and looking across that dark ocean of wood, I realized that Kroun was not overwhelmed by it; he had a surfeit of authority packed into his lean frame. It wasn’t anything physical, but you could feel it coming from him like the low hum a radio gives when the sound is down.
More staring. He was good at it. No one moved. It was disturbing, like being in a zoo cage with a lot of meat-eating animals who’d figured out I was on the menu.
“You’re just a kid,” Kroun finally said. To someone with his no-doubt colorful past giving him more than enough experience at life and hard times, I would be young—ridiculously young—to have been placed in charge of Gordy’s organization.
I lifted one hand a little, palm up. “I’ve proved myself. Ask them.”
Some of the men stirred, possibly reluctant to admit anything in my favor.
Strome jerked his chin. “’S true, Mr. Kroun.” That was a surprise. He’d been told to keep shut, the same as Derner. I’d not expected any volunteered support. “He’s stand-up.”
“Oh, yeah? How so?” Kroun continued to study me, his dark eyes almost hypnotic.
“He took the worst Hog Bristow could dish and came back swinging.”
“So I heard. Swung so hard he killed him. The other guys, too.”
“Hog went buckwheats on him. I saw. Fleming—”
“Buckwheats,” Kroun repeated.
“Yeah. Ugly.”
This was news to a few of the men and sparked a whispered reaction among them. Giving a guy the buckwheats treatment was to kill him slow and painful. It was an object lesson, not so much to the victim, but to others who might dare to cross the mob. But sometimes it was for the satisfaction of the killer.
Bristow had thoroughly enjoyed trying to turn me into a permanent corpse. My changed nature had worked against me, keeping me screaming and aware long after a normal man would have found merciful release in death.
I could almost smell my own blood again. I flexed my hands, but they were quite clean and whole, not the skeletal claws I’d used to drag myself across the slick concrete floor to…
Bracing inside, I waited for the wave of nausea, for the shakes to return. Now would be the worst, the absolute worst time, for them to hit, so of course they would. There’d be no sympathy from this bunch. They’d see my real face, learn firsthand what Bristow’s knife work had done to me….
“What’s the matter?” Kroun gave me a narrow look. “You sick?”
“Not much.”
I breathed in warm air that smelled of booze, stale smoke, sweating bodies, bay rum aftershave…and blood. Not a ghost scent from my imaginings, nor the fresh stuff of a flowing wound, but the muted kind that lurked beneath the skin. It was always present, but I wasn’t always aware, like the way you ignore traffic noise. For a few deep and profound seconds it struck me that every one of the tough guys crowding this room, the muscle, the sharps, the thieves, the killers, from Strome to the boss in charge, were all little more than walking bags of blood. I could feed myself sick on any of them. They had no way to expect it, no way to stop me if I made up my mind to do it.
Even the biggest, deadliest, meat-eating predator was my food.
So it had proved at the end when I’d killed Bristow.
I held on to that most interesting thought, sat a little straighter, and slowly breathed out again.
Well. How about that? Not one hint of tremor in my whole body. Skating so close to the memory should have had me doubled over and whimpering again, but it was like a switch had been flipped, and I was in control.
For how long I couldn’t say.
Kroun still watched me, hardly blinking. “He doesn’t look like he’s got so much as a stubbed toe.”
“He was hurt bad, Mr. Kroun,” Strome continued. “Derner saw, too.”
“I’m a fast healer,” I said.
“Convenient,” said Kroun. “What’d you do to get Hog Bristow pissed enough to go buckwheats?”
“Being stand-up for Gordy. Hog jumped things when he shot him out of hand like he did. I stepped in. Hog didn’t like it much.”
“What’d you think to get out of it by helping Gordy?”
“I wasn’t thinking to get anything. I stepped in because that’s what you do for friends.”
“You had a two-grand hit out on Hog.”
“Not a hit. That was a reward for finding him, nothing more. If you’ll recall, I told you several times over the phone I wanted to keep Hog alive. I knew what kind of trouble it would make if he got killed. But at the end he didn’t give me any choice.”
Kroun’s brown eyes were odd in this light, hard to look at, with strangely dilated pupils like holes into hell. He must have known their effect and used it plenty. “And that may just be something you came up with to cover yourself with me.”
“You talked to Derner? Then you know it’s what happened.”
“Doesn’t matter. Someone has to pay for killing Bristow. You’re it.”
Still behind me, Mitchell shifted, and I felt something pressing cold against my skull.
I turned only enough to confirm it was a gun muzzle. One trigger pull and my brains would be all over Gordy’s rug.
I nodded. “No problem.”
“What?” Must have been a disappointment to Mitchell, me not being terrified. I just didn’t give a damn. After surviving Hog Bristow there was little that could scare me these nights. Just myself.
My reply was to Kroun, not the hired help. “I know the rules.”
Kroun watched me closely. I still had that strange serenity gripping me. He was food. Walking, talking food.
I smiled at him.
“You think I won’t?” asked Kroun.
“You’ll do what you have to do. But one question: after I’m gone is Gordy still running things? I’d hate to think I went through all that shit with Bristow, then got scragged by you and it be for nothing.”
No one spoke, but another murmur ran through the room about that fine point. I could feel all of them looking at me. Impossible to tell what they might be thinking.
The simple response for Kroun would be something smart-sounding and harsh, but he didn’t do it. “You’re ready to die?”
I shrugged. “During my time with Bristow I kinda got used to the idea. If you need to kill me, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. I just want to make sure Gordy gets something out of it.”
His dark eyes flickered once. “You sound like you got an angle to bargain with.”
“Maybe.”
“What would that be?”
“Nothing you’ll want to share with so many ears flapping.” Even with the radio to mask most of our talk, there were plenty of listeners at hand. Too many for a paranoid man.
He thought it over. They’d seen Jack Fleming the wiseacre, not the wiseguy, called on the carpet and giving respect to the boss. Kroun had made his point. He shot a look to Strome and signed to Mitchell. The muzzle went away. Strome told the boys to leave.
There were protests from those who knew the best part of the show was about to take place. Others flatly refused, standing firm, arms crossed.
Kroun stood up. There was nothing threatening to his posture, and the lines of his natty brown suit were undistorted by hidden firearms of any size. Many of the guys here were taller or wider or both, but to a man, they fell silent. He didn’t make a sound either, just looked at them while the radio blared. He was quite still, just his head moving enough so he could rake them with those intense dark eyes.
Damned if it didn’t work. Some grumbled as they left, but they filed out. Derner, Strome, and Kroun’s man Mitchell remained.
“Private enough?” Kroun asked. He turned those eyes on me.
“If you trust your guy like I trust Gordy’s.”
He gave a short grunt. Couldn’t tell if it was a laugh. He came around the desk to look down at me. “What’s your angle, kid?”
“You. You being smarter than you let on to me over the phone.”
“Oh, yeah?” He hitched one hip onto the desk.
“For which I want to apologize. I got a mouth on me, nothing personal. Whenever you called things were running tense on this side, so I was talking short without much time to think things through. But that’s changed, and since then I’ve seen what was going on more clearly.”
“Which was…?”
“For starters: why your boy was sent here in the first place. Gordy told me Bristow had powerful friends he’d convinced that he could do a better job of running the Chicago operation. Gordy was expected to hand it over. If he didn’t, he’d be killed or in the middle of a gang war. That, Mr. Kroun, was…extremely brainless.”
“Uh-huh.” He wasn’t agreeing, only encouraging me to continue.
“You guys had to know Gordy would never roll over for the likes of Bristow. Now it was either New York being stupid and for the hell of it putting him and Gordy in the same pen like a couple of fighting dogs just to see what happens or…you had something else going.”
“Which was?”
“Playing Hog Bristow to the limit. You sent him out here, apparently to give him what he wants, then Gordy does what he’s best at: listening, collecting information. He got plenty out of Hog every night until the guy was too drunk to talk. And all that time Hog is feeling sure of himself because he has New York to back him up and thinks Gordy’s got no choice about handing over the operation. But I’m betting that every night Gordy called you up afterward to give you an earful.”
“This is what Gordy told you?”
“All I heard from him was the first part, that Bristow takes over or Gordy dies, which struck me as fishy. I went along with it since Gordy’s a friend, and the talks were taking place at my club. He probably thought that was all I needed to know. The rest of it…well, Hog Bristow was a loudmouthed drunk and dangerously dumb, certainly the worst kind of man to put in charge of anything. Guys like him are a liability and never last long. You either let them go—one way or another—or send ’em someplace where they can’t do any harm. But for some reason you couldn’t do that with Hog. You had to find a less direct means to bury him. My guess is he’s got important relatives protecting him, or he had to know a lot of stuff, damaging, dangerous stuff. The only man you could trust to shake it out of him was Gordy.”
“Maybe.” There was a subtle change in Kroun. He gave no clue on whether I was hitting home or not, but was listening hard.
“Gordy did his job, but Hog got impatient and frustrated. He set deadlines, forgot them, then set more, but eventually he had enough and made his hit. He wasn’t supposed to, but someone back home knew him well enough to gamble he’d sooner or later go over the edge. Gordy must have known that would happen, but not when. The night of the shooting we thought Bristow was too drunk to know which end of a gun to point. Maybe he had one of his boys do it for him, but the result was the same. He’d overstepped the rules and could be considered a legit target in turn.”
“Gordy put himself in front of a bullet so as to do all that?”
“He didn’t intend to get shot; he’d have some alternative planned out, only Hog threw a wrench into the works, surprising everyone. Then I got into the middle of things—”
“Yeah-yeah, and he went buckwheats on you. Except you don’t look hurt.”
“I’ll be glad to show you my scars when the bandages come off. In the meantime, I get a cigar for hitting the bull’s-eye.”
“Ya think?”
“I know.”
“It’s a sweet story, kid, but that’s not enough of an angle to get you off the hook. We wouldn’t like any of it generally known, but blabbing it around won’t help you.”
“’S nothing I wanna do. Your boy came out to take over this town, and him being stupid got himself and the others killed. Someone’s supposed to pay for it. Gordy’s in the clear, which is fine with me, so I’m the one who’s elected. I get that.”
“What if Gordy was the one who set you up from the first to take the fall?”
I laughed out loud. I laughed long and heartily, right in his face. And damn, it felt good. “Oh, no. That was my own doing. Before I ever got involved, Bristow didn’t like my looks, and things went bad from then on with us. If I’d been more on the ball, I might have sidestepped him, but it didn’t work out that way, which was my own bad luck. Well, I took it on the chin good and hard, and what I am thinking is that I’ve paid for killing him and his boys. I’ve paid several times over. What he put me through has to count for something. I survived it; I’ve earned the right to live.”
“If he went buckwheats on you even halfway,” said Mitchell, bending close, “you wouldn’t be sitting here. And you sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you did downstairs.” I’d forgotten he was behind me. As if that mattered.
“What happened downstairs?” Kroun asked him.
“He punched out a guy who was getting rough with one of the chorus girls. Never saw anything move so quick.”
“That was adrenaline,” I said. “I paid for it afterward, which is why I was in the john for so long, or did you fo
rget that part?”
Mitchell wasn’t buying. “From what we heard Bristow skinned you alive. Even if you got through it, you should still be laid up in a hospital.”
“What d’ya want from me? I said I healed fast.”
“Prove it.”
“Okay. Seeing’s believing.” I stood and shrugged carefully out of my overcoat as though I were in discomfort and stiff. “Mr. Kroun? In the washroom, if you don’t mind. These mugs don’t need to gape at the freak show.” Without waiting for a yea or nay, I moved slowly toward a door that led to the toilet. I went in, swatted the light on, and stood well out of their view. It was a big room, bright, black-and-white tile, a hefty tub. Gordy occasionally stayed over when work demanded, and he liked his comforts.
In the office the radio volume went up. Loud. Good. We’d have privacy from the boys listening in. Hopefully, they would stay out. All my worst scars were on the inside, but that wouldn’t count with this bunch.
After a minute, Kroun came to the door and stepped through. He’d produced or borrowed a gun from someone and held it ready in one hand. Talk about being cautious. He waited, head tilted slightly, and holding very, very still. He didn’t need a gun to fill the place with himself.
“Well?”
“No tricks,” I said wearily. “Just the truth.”
“Which is…?”
“That Bristow chained me upside down from a meat hook and…” I stopped there, the words clogged in my throat. Weakness showing. Not something I intended. “Oh, jeez.”
“Just show.”
I had my suit coat open, but my hands hung straight at my sides as I looked steadily into his eyes. “I want you to listen to me, Mr. Kroun. Listen hard…”
He wasn’t the only one with an effective stare.
It didn’t work immediately. He might have had a drink earlier. He stared in puzzled annoyance for a moment as I focused hard on him and kept up the soothing drone that would put him under. Then he gave a small headshake and blinked once, twice, before his eyelids sagged to half-mast. I had him hooked, landed, gutted, cooked, and on the plate. His gun was pointed in the wrong direction, at me. I calmly told him to please put it away, and without fuss he shoved it into a pocket. His eyes were flat and dull. Perfect.
