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

  They walked silently up to Hudson Street, the poor-folk shops were closed, the delicatessens, the butchers’, the corner chain stores with their gilt signs. In front of a coffee-pot four or five boys were stamping their feet, smoking. They spotted the dame and the boy-friend. The dame was oke, not classy dressed, but oke, a good build, none of your chickenbones. The boy-friend was a hefty kid, nice-looking. “I knew that dame in school,” one of them said. “Boy, was she the iceberg! N’now she’s flopped. They all flop.” He laughed like a philosophic rake.

  “Where we going?” said Cathy. “To the fish teayter or the Museum?”

  “No fish teayter for us. We’re stepping up to the Bronx. You on?”

  “Sure I am.”

  “Thatta girl.”

  “The Bronx’s all Jewish and Irish,” she said. “It’s Abie’s Irish Rose.” They laughed.

  “I’ve never been there.” He grinned at Cathy glancing at herself in the mirror of a chewing-gum machine on the El platform. “Jesus, you can beat any ten girls blushing. You want to grow up.” But he felt swell for him to be the reason.

  “Don’t kid me. You like me the way I am.”

  Hell, you couldn’t guess what a woman’d say next. The train crashed in. The steel wheels stopped rolling. They sat down in one of the double side-seats, putting their feet on the seat in front. It was riding in a private compartment. The conductor made a face. “He’s a donkey. Cmon, lemme hold your hand. Carl holds your hand and you say nothing.”

  She laughed. “That donkey’s watching us.”

  “I can lick any mick alive.”

  They sat close together, Cathy next the window. The El started up the tracks, slicing the district like a knife through butter. On either side, tenements lined the tracks. They went calling on many homes. A longshoreman was smoking a corncob in one window. A gray fat woman was leaning out of a top story, watching the train with the implacable curiosity of a small-towner. A kid gripped her doll as if the El were the bogy man. They stared into the privacy of lives, seen and forgotten. A young woman arguing with an unknown. People eating. But mostly the windows were curtained, and they seemed to be sneaking by at night.

  Joe squeezed her palm. Holding hands was nothing. Not after you kissed a girl. Holding hands had been some stuff walking down the Museum aisles. Now it was nothing. He’d kissed her. His breath came hard, thinking about it. He wanted to take her in his arms and hug her to death, kissing her pale face all over. His eyes were far away on the sun-gilded tracks flashing by. Tall semaphores with red and green flags rocked by them. The El stopped; the conductor bawled: “Fiftieth Street. Nex’ storp, Fifty-ninth….” People slid in and out. A young man took the double seat across the aisle, riding backward so he could sneak a look at Cathy. He was a sensitive fellow who always picked his seat within sight of a pretty woman so he could while away the gripe of the long ride. He lived in the Bronx and wondered whether Joe and Cathy would get off in the Eighties. They looked like Irish-German-American somebodies living on Amsterdam Avenue. He glared sadly but with resolution at Cathy’s slim legs and flushed bright face. She liked her fellow. Hell, he thought.

  Joe sobered up with the audience. His heart pumped like a son-of-a-gun but he was getting used to his excitement. His shoulder touched Cathy’s. She was leaning her elbow on the sill. His shoulder was so wide his body didn’t touch her anywhere else. He put his arm about her, yanking her towards him, his teeth wanting to rattle when he felt her hip and side press into his own. That’d give the nosey guy something to think about. Did he like Cathy, not even knowing it until today? “I love you.”

  “You’re kidding,” she said.

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.” Her yellow fringe of hair was smooth beneath her blue hat. He hadn’t known he loved her until he kissed her in the hallway. What a sap he was! He’d been making blunder after blunder about love for weeks. What a sap! Every time the El ground steel against steel, or jerked ahead after stopping, she let her body’s soft natural impact caress his own. It was the first time she let her body do what it wanted. Up to this Sunday she’d flexed herself so that she wouldn’t bump him when the train started. They sat close, happy, united, gazing foggily out of the window at the press of grim hard poor lives through which the El was roaring like an artery. Now they were climbing higher above the street, peering into the fifth-floor windows, reading the stone lettered inscriptions carved near the roofs. The Shenandoah. The Glenby. 1895. 1904. They were riding through the long-ago when these houses had been stylish. On the right the roofs flashed their tar coverings. Beyond the chimneys were the trees of Central Park. Eastwards the tenements and boardinghouses were gradually giving way to the canopies on Central Park West. Much to the young man’s surprise they didn’t get off. At 110th Street, the tracks shot round in grand curves, the El ready to fly off in space. Walled behind the heights of 110th Street, the Park was left behind.

  “Morningside Park,” said Cathy. “We had a picnic there once.”

  St. John the Divine. Tall arches, brave spires, and steel scaffolding. The central green coppery dome was a beauty.

  “Down there,” said Cathy, “are the Negroes.”

  The conductor growled: “Hunerd’n Sixteenth.” New York shoved its black faces against the windows. It was as if he were on a river liner penetrating a jungle full of savages. Big blacks. Coffee arms like hams. Rows of kid heads. Browns and yellow-browns. With here and there an Irishwoman’s head where the white race was continuing triumphant. Joe wanted to know why the whites didn’t move out. Cathy said the rents were cheap. Now and then, in a Congo tenement, a mulatto with a thin white-featured face hurt him somehow. So white and yet a Negro.

  The young man concentrated on Cathy. He made the trip every day. Negroes were nothing new. A pretty dame was something else. Joe gripped her hand; greater than all the novelties of the far-away, he sat holding love in his hand, the five fingers of Cathy, a Woolworth ring on the finger next to the pinky. She said she was glad he and Bill hadn’t gone out today. She was glad to be with him. Bill was always busy, wasn’t he? Sure he was. Bill was a high-power business man with cockeyed hours. Bill was smart. She glanced at him, baffled by his tone.

  “Have your parents ever discussed Bill?” He smiled. “Not that I’d blame them. He’s skating on thin ice. When we were kids Bill could do anything on ice.” Ten bucks of Bill’s smart money was in his pocket. He was sore. “We’re taking a taxi back.”

  She was stupefied at his princeliness. He mustn’t. A cab from the Bronx’d cost three dollars almost.

  He told her to mind her own business. He had plenty of money. Bill made a lot as a bookkeeper. He wouldn’t waste his dough but Bill’s dough was different. Anyway, he was the boss. He looked like Bill with his eyes sharp and commanding, his chin thrust out. A slow creeping languor weakened her bones. She was soft as jelly. Three dollars, my! The young man was disgusted. That couple, hell. They looked engaged, having fun together. Damn. These poor Irish-German-Americans had fun when they were young. No waiting for them. They lived. The young man was a German. He attended New York University Heights Branch. The girls he knew couldn’t be got, coached by their old ladies to lie low until they got a wedding ring. The young man hated to fork over two bucks when he got hot. It wasn’t decent, romantic, or profitable. It made him taste rubber. He didn’t like it. Damn those poor people who were regular pagans. He had eighty-two cents in his pocket. Damn the poor. A cab wouldn’t be bad. In a cab he could make love. It’d be worth Bill’s dough. He worked ten to twelve hours for two bucks. Bill’s dough was easy, a different kind of dough. He’d like to make it himself. Gee, what a city New York was! You needed dough in a city like New York.

  Cathy thought he looked a lot like Bill.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  PUSHING open the door of the pool parlor, Bill forgot about Joe, the poor kid. All the way uptown he had confused Joe with the dog, sorry for both with the luxurious regret of one intending to do nothing about matt
ers. What could he do? The big yellow lights flared down on the tables, picking out highlights on the ivory balls. The proprietor, a lanky man wearing a striped shirt with plain white attached collar, yanked up his lowered eyes from the Sunday sports section. “Howza boy?” he said.

  “McMann here?”

  “In there.” He jerked his thumb to a door in the rear. He put the wrestling dope aside, staring at Bill as if to get his mug down once and for all. A couple of lazy pool-room boys, hanging around for a sucker, drinking pop with the phlegmatic calm of petty gamblers, gave him the once-over as well. He felt photographed, important, uneasy, thinking for the last time of poor Joe. McMann had been arguing with Duffy and Spat, sitting in a chair tilted against the wall, smoking a cigar as smoothly as a junior executive. Bill was embarrassed by the convergence of cool measuring eyes, almost as impersonal as the eyes of cameras. He pulled his lips taut on his clenched teeth, grinning, seeing Duffy and Spat the first time, silently figuring what there was to him. McMann was as stony as the others, as if he were taking judgment too. Duffy was a skinny man with a dead white face, his hands long-fingered and corpse-like, his brown eyes flecked with fire, the only things alive in his burnt-out energy. Spat’s mouth was crooked; shouldered like a wop laborer. They were each about twenty-five.

  “No use stalling,” said Duffy. “Schneck rode that cab for you. He shot off his mouth about it.”

  “And said what swell workers you guys are,” said Spat.

  “What about it?” asked McMann.

  “You’re using our kids,” said Duffy.

  McMann smiled like a conscious good fellow. “Let’s get together. No stinkin’ aroun’, Duff. We get the dope and the kids pull the job off. That’s on the square.”

  “You’re trying to start a mob by using ourn. Hell with that.” His eyes blazed at both of them, the freckles on his nose standing out dark. He pulled up his trousers, showing ankles small as a girl’s.

  “We’re not trying anything of that sort,” said Bill.

  “That’s what you say.”

  “Let me speak. We’re on the square. It happens I’m wise to plenty jack. I know when, the hour when the storekeepers got it.”

  “Yeh,” bawled Spat, his big chest wanting to burst from his tight vest. “It’s no secret who’s workin’ the avenoo.”

  “Schneck musta told you lots,” said McMann.

  Spat glared like a wild stupid animal. “Huh? Don’t have ta tell us. It’s you’n him.”

  “So what?” said Duffy. “What you driving at?”

  Spat smacked his fist on his knee. “It can be done.”

  “You’re thick,” said Duffy.

  Spat was dumb as a whale, thought Bill. Duffy was the guy to win over, Duffy the corpse, with his small brown eyes darting swift as if trying to escape his inert body. It boiled down to this, Duffy declared. He didn’t doubt their dope was O.K. As Spat had said, the town was wise to their raids. He didn’t begrudge them a cent but when it came to horning in on his kids. And he didn’t want to split with anybody. The hell with it. Suppose they took the dope and the kids pulled off the jobs, the risk’d be his, Duffy’s. He didn’t want none of it.

  “What you crabbin’?” said McMann. “You know damn well you’n Spat play safe.”

  “So what?”

  “You got a mobba hustlers.”

  “They’re mine.”

  “Who says they ain’t?”

  “What of Schneck driving that cab for you?”

  That was an accident. Nothing else. Sure it was, said Duffy, hitching up his trousers. Say the kids don’t get nabbed, they break clear. They got to be paid. Spat and him had to be paid. Then McMann and Bill had to be paid. Christ, they weren’t holding up any banks to get enough dough for such a mob. And with the depression, those storekeepers didn’t have so much. Bill felt better. Duffy might be convinced or he might pretend he was convinced. He’d never forget about Schneck, but the easy money might win him over.

  “Yeh,” said Spat. “That’s the point. Too many guys to share.” He didn’t fool anybody into thinking he was smart. He nodded his thick head with the small ears pinned tight into the hard bone.

  “Suppose I find a ten-spot in the gutter,” said McMann, “and split it four ways. That ain’t much, but why turn it down?”

  “What’s that gotta do with it?”

  “Spat, you’re a lunk. Ain’t it pickin’ up dough?”

  “Don’t you call me lunk.”

  “I was kiddin’.”

  “Cut it.”

  “Aw right,” said Duffy. “For the sake of the hell of it, a coupla kids stick up a store. They net some dough. How much? O.K. Let’s say two hundred. Them kids are worth fifteen each.”

  “Ten,” said McMann.

  Spat sneered. “You wouldn’ work for no lousy ten.”

  “I ain’t no lousy green kid.”

  “Aw right. Fifteen each. Thirty for two kids. One-seventy left. Spat’n me keep a hundred. You guys get the rest.”

  McMann poured drinks, the bottle staunch on the round table, surrounded by their glasses and Spat’s fists. “You’re beginnin’ to talk. Them kids are mopin’. You gotta slip ‘em a fiver once awhile to keep ‘em goin’.”

  “Gotta keep ‘em satisfied,” said Spat like a father. “Gin we give ‘em. If they don’t fix themselves up, we gotta get ‘em a dame to line up. Those kids are good.” Duffy puffed at a butt, the tiny coal brighter than his eyes.

  “Necessities of life,” Bill said.

  “Sure,” said Duffy.

  “What’s wrong then, with them earnin’ their keep?” McMann had him there.

  “Well,” said Duffy, “it don’t pay for a coupla smart kids to get nabbed for ten cents.”

  The kids were plantation Negroes, thought Bill, the plantation the town of the Big Stink. The kids were worth so much a head. They were worth dough. He and Mac’d never get anywhere without help. Mac was right. No use puking around. The big gamble. Duffy’s kids were the stake. With them he might make a few grand. “What’s keeping you back, Duffy? Is it you think we’re trying to start a mob by stealing yours?”

  “We think what we want,” said Spat.

  Duffy, languid, hardly moved. What a pair they were, thought Bill, a corpse and a wild man! “I said it. Ain’t it so?”

  “No,” hollered McMann. “Who wants your kids? We’ll give ya the dope in advance.”

  “Go on.”

  “You pull it off as if it’s your job. We’ll take a chance you don’t pull no doublecross. What more you want? Ain’t that square?”

  Bill thought it wasn’t so hot. They wouldn’t get more’n some change out of an arrangement like that. Was Mac nuts?

  “Why you so square?” said Duffy.

  “ ‘Cause I’m a square shooter. Ask Paddy, anybody.”

  “I’ll ask Bill. Hey, Bill, your pal square?”

  “I don’t know.” He laughed.

  “It sounds good,” said Duffy. Spat’s fist reached for the bottle. Bill, catching McMann’s eye, wanted to speak with his eyes. Oh, if he only could! His stare said: They’ll doublecross us. But McMann was pinkfaced, cold, unreachable. Duffy said the proposition suited him. It looked on the level. It proved they weren’t trying to hook his kids. And the times were bad. Spat heeled his boss, insisting the times were lousy. Why, they had eight kids and a bunch of others and there wasn’t work for most of them. When a kid had the chance for something better, he lammed out. Last week a kid got a respectable job, running errands for a whore-house at fifteen a week. Showed what things are. Two years ago that same kid was knocking out forty slugs working twice a week, rest of the time free for whoring.

  They grinned at Spat, even Duffy’s lips snarling upwards, incredulously amused at the harangue.

  “Why don’t you quit?” said McMann.

  “Me?” He waved his hand in a grandly stupid gesture of pride. “I count. I’m a book. I got sidelines. I’m in numbers. I make eighty a week average.” Duffy was smilin
g like a dead man. He wanted to know what the dope was on the first job. Bill didn’t like his lazy voice with the vicious devil hiding behind his restless eyes. What the hell was wrong with McMann? McMann stared at Bill. “Give’m the dope. We’ll see how he makes out. Bill’s the brain guy, Duff. He figures the dope.” Duffy was interested. “Yeh?”

  I’ll give him a joint in the neck, thought Bill. No gold mine for that bastard. And Mac calling him brain guy to boost his reputation. What for? “This store’s on Ninth near Thirty-sixth. A paint supply. He’s got two men working for him, but don’t pay them on Saturday. Thursday morning he pays all his bills. At ten o’clock in the morning. The money’s in a little bank in the rear. He’s usually got a couple hundred for bills and salaries. When he draws the dough from the bank he takes some for his wife. A week from this Thursday he pays his rent.”

  “I don’t like that business about the bank. That why you give us the job?”

  “You want it on the counter?” said McMann.

  “This job’s lousy. If he don’t open up at a gat, what then? Naw. It’s n.g.”

  “Why’nt you let me finish? I’ve real dope. The kids’ll be outside. The first collector drops in to get paid. The boss opens the bank. That’s the time to knock him off. You get what he has in the bank, plus what the collector has.”

  “You’re a brain guy,” said Duffy.

  “It gives me a headache.”

  “That job would need three kids,” Spat declared. “Two to cover the paint guy and the collector. One outside to lay puts.” “Four kids,” corrected Duffy. “One at the car, one outside the window, two inside.” It was a good layout, but risky. He wanted twenty bucks for each kid, everything over to be split fifty-fifty. Duffy walked out, followed by Spat, led like a bull.

  “How’s Madge?” said McMann. It was a Duffy joint and they were going to pull an act for anybody snooping.

  “I haven’t see her in weeks. You ask me about her too often. You making a play for her?”

  “That skinny kid?” He winked, the outer surfaces of his red eyes glinting jovially while the body of each, set hard in his laughless skull, shone angrily. When they were hurrying east to Broadway, McMann cursed his heart out. That bastard Duffy. The world’s crookedest skunk. He wouldn’t trust him for a jit. They’d get rooked sure as hell. But they’d get some dough out of it. Could they pick up dough for nothing? You didn’t see dough lying on the streets. That’s why he went partners with that louse.