Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde Read online

  Brain Guy

  Benjamin Appel

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  To

  My Mother and Father

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Also Available

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  WHO COULD he shake down for some dough? In the Italian table d’hôte he cracked the last walnuts with a spiteful feeling that the meal had cleaned him out, but who gave a damn? Eighty-five cents plus fifteen cent tip. That skunked a buck. Hell, he needed money. It’d been a jinx all day. None of his horses’d come in. The numbers’d been n. g. And pay-day was a mile off.

  The cashier took his last buck. He strode back through the palms with the warlike solemnity of a fellow returning to tip a waiter or a barber. “Thanks, Mista Tren’,” said the waiter. “You got horse for me, mebbe?” He slid the dime and nickel out from his fingers. “Horicon in the fourth.”

  The waiter appeared as if he’d been rewarded by a spendthrift.

  On Forty-second Street and Eighth Avenue he paused in the thin fog floating in from the river. It was almost nine. From the sidestreet brothels and hotels the Greeks were going to their coffee-houses for a night of gambling. Hell, he needed money.

  Eastwards Forty-second was a foam of yellow light. Following its course with his eyes, he somehow felt broker than hell. He was the crème de la crème to waiters, but the world’s biggest mug anywheres else. He thought about shaking down one of the speaks or joints that he managed discreetly as a real-estate collector. Who could he shake down without too much of a squawk? Crowds passed before him as if pinned immovable to metal strips. The crossroads of the world. The city of a million bugs chasing their behinds off for a few nickels. He was a louse, too, always broke, always in a panic to get some dough. Fastened to the fate of the metal strips, endless men and women were having their impact on his vision. Where were they going? What were their lives and what the hell was the difference?

  He pulled up his coat collar, griped with himself for being groggy. He remembered his kid brother. He’d never had a good influence on the kid. Maybe it was too bad the kid was coming to town real soon. The kid was soft. He was hard-boiled. Being soft was nothing in the pocket. He decided to shake down Paddy, feeling swell inside as if he were turning over a new leaf.

  He hurried north, playing with two pennies in his pocket. Whose fault was it he was nuts about money? It was the fault of the Big Stem, fault of the Big Stink. You simply had to have dough. Paddy ought to be good for ten bucks.

  Entering the side street, he shuddered. The El was at the end of Paddy’s block. The tenement rows with their bleak staircases, the silence mean as a beggar’s, impelled him to mind his own business.

  His hand slid along the banister. He seemed to flit upwards through a smell of cats. On each landing there was a solitary lonely light. On the third floor he knocked at Paddy’s door. The door slanted open an inch. Paddy peered out. The door edge cut down across his lips as if silencing them. The man whispered with the bitter humor of a stubborn wise-guy: “Ain’t I glad? Phenagling Bill. Hell.”

  “Hello, Paddy.” He pushed past the hostile paunch. The stench of rotten whisky stood behind him like a doorman. It was damn cockeyed. Since when did Paddy chuck parties?

  He saw all together, swiftly, the three small square rooms of the railroad flat, the peeling paint, a big trunk. A radio was howling. Two couples were dancing. The men were slim ginzos who appeared to be trying to stitch their bodies into the women. They stopped a second and glared at him with animal eyes. He didn’t like their looks. Wops weren’t up his alley. He nodded at the women. Bobbie and Madge were Paddy’s whores. He grinned. He wanted dough, but those ginzos were after girls. One of them was shouting at Paddy, suspicious. Bill was disgusted. Hell, he didn’t want no piece of those dames. The ginzos could keep them. He appealed to Paddy. “Let me see you private.”

  The mick shook his big face. Sandpapered by age, his cheeks were large-pored. “Beat it. This is private.” But just the same he led Bill into the last room, slamming the French door. They were alone even if the beds spoke for Madge and Bobbie.

  “Listen, Paddy, did I or did I not get a cut in your rent? Right. I did. And no one’s wise your joint’s here.”

  “You got fifteen bucks outa me two weeks ago.”

  “And was promised twenty-five. You think it a cinch keeping the boss from getting wise?”

  “You eat money.” Paddy confronted him with the littlest of blue eyes, his face a pokerface all of a sudden. “You lousy heel.”

  “Quit belly-aching. Give me the dough.”

  “Yeh, yeh.” He flung the door open, announcing: “This guy’s Bill. He’s O.K.” Coming out of the room that led to the fire-escape, the others accepted him. It was different from coming in off the street. Since when did Paddy chuck parties, the chiseler, thought Bill. He didn’t like it. Was Paddy figuring to pay him off in merchandise? The pimp was rubbing his clean red jowls, sidling over to him with the comradeship of one stag for another. “Bill, you’re a guy.” He pulled up his trousers so the crease’d keep. “If I weren’t a good guy myself, I’d call you a lil sonufabitch.”

  “How about my dough?”

  “Sweat for it. I did. Who’d aguess it with that good-lookin’ mug of yourn. Madge is nuts about you.” He smiled at the dancers in the cleared space. The long hairs of middle age stuck out of his nostrils. His shirt was blue silk, his manners the old-fashioned ones of a pre-war bartender.

  “All dames are nuts on me, but who gives a damn? Got my dough?” He peered sideways at the big nose and chin of Paddy, whispering: “Since when do you chuck parties? Fishy, ain’t it? If I didn’t need dough real bad, I’d get the hell out.”

  “It’d be healthier.”

  “You don’t faze me.”

  “Don’t talk so loud.”

  The radio stopped. Out on the floor Madge was telling her partner to take a good flying trip for his guts, hurrying off into the last room, where she sat down on the bed. In the faces of the women there was the strained impatience of plotters approaching a climax. Bill shivered. He felt as if he’d missed a signal. Madge’s deserted partner complained bitterly. Imagine chasing out on him. What was wrong? Did he stink?

  Bobbie hugged the other ginzo. “I won’t run off, Tony.”

  Tony laughed like a fool. He was in luck. His dame liked him. He squeezed her hand, his eyes innocent, betrayed. He was thinking of a good time, and the others, staring wickedly, thought of something else. Tony was pitted against them all.

  Bill’s heart pounded. Something was up. Even Madge, young as she was, was hep. The shades were pulled down behind her. He hardly felt Paddy’s thumb jabbing into his side or heard the leering crack. Something was up. He had stumbled into it. Whatever was to be would be soon. Bill’s hea
d ached. The silly talk was unbearable. Fascinated, sick, he observed the spectacle of a man blind to the hostile eyes, the thumbs turned down against him. The others faded from sharpness like figures in an old photograph. He knew that Bobbie and the two wops were there because they had existed a half-hour ago. But out of that time nothing was clear except Paddy and the kid sulking in the third room. These two were cut out of his agonized awareness. His back was turned on Madge, but he was seeing her in the dress the color of a green cordial. Wavering on thought like a reflection on water, he saw the thin girl face, the woman’s body.

  The two ginzos were gabbing with fat Bobbie, while Paddy’s head, colossal because all their words and motives behind the words emanated from him, nodded pale and evil, the eyes bright, the lips cold with the humor of a murderer. These two, Madge and Paddy, were the omens of what was to come. Bill puffed on his cigarette. He thought: Bobbie is twenty-five, a whore. Tony is a fool if he can’t see how she’s faking him. He was horrified at dumb Tony pawing her, his teeth a flash of life. He is to die, thought Bill; they are about to kill him, I don’t know why. It doesn’t matter. Tony and Bobbie were dancing, their veins beating blood, the woman squirming her hips. Oh, there was something cockeyed in the flat, and everybody was wise except Tony. Paddy thumped his hand on Bill’s knee. He grinned, fraudulently delighted. “You’re a corker.” He poured rye into his glass. “Why’nt you beat it?”

  “What you going to do to Tony?” He felt slimed to be sharking for a few lousy bucks when death was in the flat.

  Paddy rolled up out of his chair with the finality of one leaving on a steamer, waving the bottle of rye, gleaming brown facets of light. There was no bringing Paddy back. He was gone.

  Bill wanted to scream out: “You dumb ginzo, get the hell out before you’re carried out.” Tony was dancing at his own funeral. Twisting his eyes into the rear room, he saw Madge still sitting on the bed. He was thinking of the Irish eyes of her, the long, sweet, white limbs. In his heart there was desire and pity. Why didn’t he beat it while he had a chance? He couldn’t move from his chair, nerveless, morbidly curious, laughing when Paddy asked him if he liked the young un. Tony flopped down in a chair, Bobbie on his lap, her dress above her knees, her legs hanging. Her cheeks were blown full with song, singing in a loud nauseously sweet voice. It was to be. Now. Paddy eased across the floor, his body stiff, polite. Bill leaned forward. Paddy, who rarely raised his voice, was bellowing. Paddy was in love with noise, increasing the radio’s volume. Tony’s pal crept behind him.

  Bill distinctly heard his heart miss a beat, then another. Madge was singing, her voice all quavers. He started. Why not holler, too? Holler holler, oh, my God! Across the way, people were shouting: “Shut up, for Pete’s sake.” “Can the racket.” “Cut it.” “Get the cops.” All the potential violence of their bodies exploded into noise. Bill wheeled round. Avoiding his eyes, Madge sang with the persistence of a set-off alarm-clock.

  Dark-haired, both ginzos. Both must have hairy chests. The assassin stood directly behind Tony, stood in time itself that second like a statue on a pedestal. Paddy’s mouth was a rubbery circle changing shape. The statue moved out of inanimation. The knife was out. Tony’s pal lunged. Paddy winked at Bill as if to say: You’d hang around, huh?

  Madge sobbed. Bobbie shot off the lap of the corpse.

  It wasn’t a corpse. Yes it is, thought Bill. He was stunned to see death catch up so fast with what had been such a fine animal. A minute ago Bobbie had snuggled up against the ginzo, walling him with her fat flesh so that his face was hidden, and all there was of a man were the two legs in their trousers. The legs are dead now, thought Bill. He is dead all over and lying on the floor all over. The sleek head was on the dirty carpet. The assassin wiped his blade. Even Bobbie had no guts for this, her rouge a mask plastered on pallor. The radio sang with the complacency of a robot. “Couldn’t get you out, you sonufabitch,” said Paddy. “You’re in it.”

  Over and over again the slaughter re-acted itself, grinding his nerves like a needle stuck in a groove on a phonograph record. The chair in which Tony had sat was ventilated. Empty space cut through the middle by a decorative slice of wood. The knife had been lunged through the slit. What the hell was wrong with him? That was a dead man on the floor, no tailor’s dummy. But still he didn’t give a damn one way or the other. The wop was the pawn in a game he wasn’t hep to. He heard himself saying: “I’m not in it. But how crazy to spot Tony with all this gang about!” This was what struck him above all else. To murder with such a crowd about. That was dumb. There was a thing called the law. Tony wasn’t a cow that could be killed legit.

  Paddy was interested in the same problem. The two of them seemed to be debating in a forum. “They ain’t no witnesses. You ain’t one. Gene ain’t.” (Gene had finished wiping his knife and was dragging the trunk from the corner. He’d snapped up the top, dropping the bloody handkerchief to the bottom with a casual elegance as if it were a flower.) “The dames ain’t witnesses.”

  Bobbie crossed herself, sitting down on the bed next to Madge. Both women were leaning on their elbows, scented, lewd, hard. Bill wondered how much there was in’t for Paddy. Gene said: “I won’t be no strongarm for him no more.” He peered down at the corpse he’d been paid to protect as if remembering their business together. This was the only clue. The killing was over, ended forever. They were all safe and tomorrow would only be another day. Paddy stepped over. They lifted it off the rug, the weight running into the hips all of a sudden, lowering it into the trunk. The head hung back desperately, getting a last look. Paddy shut down the top, pulling the straps tight. He circled back to the chair, searching for stains, for any proofs that here a man had lived and died in a second. Gene lit a cigar. What was that? Christ. A fist pounded on the door. Bill gasped as if the corpse had decided to come out for another look. Paddy sat down on the trunk. “All you bastards,” he said hotly. “Talk. Damn you, talk.”

  “A swell party,” Bill said, punch-drunk. “How’re the girlies?”

  “Open up. Open dat door.” The fury of the tough domineering voice smacked through the door. Only a cop could yell like that.

  Gene let him in. He was a fat man, tramping in with a stride as if he were on his beat. “What the hell’s the row?”

  “What row?” said Paddy.

  “You got no ears? With the block callin’ the station.” His eyes circled about. “Ain’t it classy?”

  Paddy kicked his heels against the trunk. “Gwan home.”

  The cop was amazed. “You lousy pimp.”

  “You lousy flatfoot, ever hear of Kerrigan? He’s my friend. He can tell you how to spot a joint. A coupla plainclothes rats knock the dame off, then pull the marked two bucks outa her sock and they got a pinch.”

  “I’ll pull you in for riotin’.”

  “See how far it gets you.” Bill thought that under Paddy’s behind there was the electric chair. “Don’t be dumb, cop. This ain’t a joint. This feller’s the rent-collector. Ain’t that proof things are oke?”

  “What’s your name?” the cop growled.

  “Gwan, Bill,” shouted Paddy.

  “Bill, what else?”

  “Bill Trent,” said Paddy. “He collects for Stanger.”

  Bobbie giggled. They all seemed to be saying: You see what you get fooling around with Paddy, you see.

  Bill choked. Yes, that was his name. The cop scowled at Paddy, neutral. He’d find out if Kerrigan was wise. He was gone, sore at not getting five bucks.

  “Why’d you tell him my name? I’m liable to get in dutch if that cop sees my boss.” The cops had his name. He was an accomplice. He couldn’t rat. If the office got wind of this he’d be out of a job.

  “Chase after the flatfoot. Hey, flatfoot, me name is Bill Trent.” Paddy was delighted at his fun.

  “Your hot joke’s liable to cost me my job.”

  “I’ll stick a brassiere on you and peddle you to the boys.”

  “You’re funny as hell.�
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  Paddy glanced at Gene seriously. “McMann’s waiting. Tenth and Fiftieth.” He’d forgotten about Bill, speaking to him now with little interest. “Inside with the dames. Gwan.”

  Even now, Bill thought, in a fix and all, my job in the air, I pick my dames. He grinned sickly at the fool who sat down on the bed next to Madge and not next to Bobbie. He was afraid the pimp’d bawl out: “You like the young un, don’tcha?” He shook his head. It’s all happened to him, no fooling. He’d barged in for a shakedown. What a shakedown he’d got!

  Paddy switched the radio on, stretching out on the couch, his eyes on Bill. Bobbie read a tabloid. The two men and two women were silent.

  “You like the young un?” Paddy remembered. His brain was split up with different thoughts. The women and Bill could only think of the trunk, waiting for Gene to return, but he had other ideas. “I love her.” He seemed to be speaking to himself, his lips shut, his head an auditorium in which talk roared…. You were calm at the killing, so calm I admire you. You are Bill. I am Bill. You were smooth even with the cop snooping. He struggled to get inside of himself, to feel that Bill was himself, that he wasn’t an outsider to himself, but a real fellow called Bill. His job was in the air. He was a witness. Here he was sitting on the bed, the kid close to him. He was balled up. What a joke, shaking down Paddy. He listened to the radio, trying to get hold of himself. Maybe the trunk was empty? He stared at the old-fashioned trunk with its broad straps. Madge was trembling. Poor kid. She wasn’t more than sixteen. She wasn’t shivering for nothing. Murder.

  Bobbie read her tabloid with the stupendous peace of morons, the murder as forgotten as last week’s customer. She was fake. He wouldn’t touch her for anything. She was already filling in the time until the next excitement. Paddy grinned. If it weren’t for Madge groaning a little, he’d never believe the trunk held a corpse. The radio played. Bobbie chewed gum. Again Paddy ribbed him about liking young uns. And what would the boss say? “You’re fired, Bill, because the cop says you’re a rat, and didn’t you rent a flat to a pimp against my orders?” What a fix. And his kid brother coming to town. Joe was a decent young kid. Joe thought him a wonder. He was Joe’s hero and therefore had both their lives to consider. Joe was the type of kid who thinks himself independent, but invariably follows the leader towards either good or evil. He’d be one swell leader for Joe. Dear God, he prayed, let me not spoil him.