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

  “Anyway, I gave him a real hard joint to crack.”

  “You’re a brain guy.”

  “When you say that, I feel dumb as Spat.”

  “Maybe you are.” The El cut from Ninth to Sixth Avenue. Behind its ugliness lay the bawdy beauty of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, the Paramount Building. The streets were clean. A few actors from the sidestreet boardinghouses were hoofing it, panning the new models in the auto windows. But most of the Broadway crowd didn’t get this far north, the grifters, chiselers, fakers, fags, business men on the tear.

  “Maybe you’re dumb, too.” They smiled, hostile. The white wings hadn’t neglected this grand street of America. If any dough’d been lying around, it’d been picked up.

  “We’re all dumb.”

  “You’re dumber than dumb.” He smiled. “What’s to stop pal Duffy from freezing us out?”

  “Naw. He wants other stores. Question is how much. The big boys let Duff coast. The west side’s nobody’s and he ain’t big. His mob’s all kids, hustling at the gin mills and gambling joints, doin’ odd jobs, the lousy small-time business the big boys don’ want.”

  Duffy didn’t make booze and didn’t sell it. Maybe he sold a tin of dope once in awhile. He was strictly a small stinker.

  “What the hell are we?”

  “The smallest stinkers in the world. I get griped. Christ, maybe we oughta raid a coupla big joints. Maybe we oughta cut Duffy out.”

  “He’s wise.”

  “Sure. He knows we’re afta his kids.”

  “Why does he go in with us?”

  “The dough. N’a strong guy thinks he gotta be strong all the time.” Bill nodded gloomily. “He isn’t so wrong.”

  “We’ll fix the rat.” It’d be pie. He wouldn’t monkey around with a tough mob. Duffy only had a bunch of wild kids, younger’n hell, no brains, ready for anything. Did he get it? They’d work in close to Duffy. Let the rat rook them. The idea was to get in; then they’d kick him out and have a bunch ready for anything. The kids were wild. Pep ‘em up with talk of real dough and real dames and they’d make a grab for the King of England.

  They strode below the El into the smug moneyed heart of Broadway, where schemes about making money sprouted as one walked into dream fulfillments. They’d get hold of Duffy’s kids. If things broke they’d be set. McMann suggested they get some grub and take out a pair of dames, not Madge and Bobbie; he was sick of their stuff. He turned his brutal-chinned face. “Nex’ week you’n me’ll make a call. I gotta friend with a shootin’ gallery. We’ll fool around for the hell of it. You know nothin’ about a gat? Well, you will.”

  Twice that week he stood in the long cellar of McMann’s friend, out in Brooklyn, pointing the pistol at the target. It was fun, like when he’d owned an air rifle. All you needed to know about a gat, said McMann, was to get the feel of it. Most shooting was at close range. He came in Saturday on the B.M.T. and went home. It was after seven. Cathy was cleaning up. He hadn’t seen her for a long time. He laughed. “How do you like Joe?”

  She said she liked him all right. He laughed louder. She was a good clean little thing. If Joe had any sense he could have a good time. She said she’d be back later. There was no need to leave on his account. But she seemed scared, going towards the door as he hurried forward. He smacked her soft buttock. She ran downstairs. He’d given her a send-off. Taking off his pants, he thought of the pistol practice and the holdup due Thursday. That’d mean dough. Things were moving. Duffy better watch out. He’d finished shaving when Joe came in. “Holy Christ, what you doing here Saturday, Bill?”

  “You’re early yourself.”

  “Metz let me off. I got a date with Cathy. It’s almost eight. I got to wash and dress.”

  “I wonder if you know she’s pretty.”

  “I know it.”

  “If you feel that way — How’s Metz?”

  “In the dough as ever. I saw him put a load of dough in his tin bank today back in the storeroom — ” He stopped short. “He felt good. That’s why he let me off.” He regretted the crack about money. “Don’t you be taking up anything I said.”

  “What you mean?”

  “I’ve meant to tell you a long time. The Avenue’s talking about those robberies. Wiberg, and Petrucci and Soger.”

  “You poor damn fool, do you think I’d do anything that dumb? Think I’d risk a stretch for a few lousy bucks? Get it out of your head once and for all. I’m in a racket. Sure, I’m keeping books for a bootlegging outfit, a regular job, and I’m safe as hell. I’m beating it now, but remember what I said. And give Cathy a good time.” He sounds sincere, thought Joe, but just the same I oughtn’t’ve spoken of Metz. Hell, he couldn’t phone Metz and tell him to take his dough out of his bank.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “LEROY and Greenwich,” said Joe stiffly, not used to cabs. He admired the twinkling of Cathy’s foot, piling in. The cab started down Fifth. Behind the low park wall the woods, paths, fields, lay chilled and hard bitten. Apartment houses blinked in endless rows, complacent as dowagers at a dance. She said he shouldn’t take cabs. “Don’t you be crazy. We don’t spend anything all week except a thirty-cent movie. And what do we do Sundays? Nothing. Poking about and spending nothing.” He grinned, always getting even with Bill when he rode in cabs. Cathy alone in a cab was worth something and he had Bill to thank. The twilight seeped into the streets, violet and hushed. Riding in cabs was rubbing elbows with the rich. Swell to be rich. He was getting used to cabs, this was his fourth, the heads of the drivers jutting big ears. He pulled her closer, her lips protesting, kissing her until she was limp. They sat up away from each other, breathing hard like fighters separated at the referee’s bell. She said he was too rough. He said love was rough, grabbing her again. Ten more blocks clicked off. The taximeter indicated to the nickel how much this love scene had cost Bill.

  The cab-driver thought they were just a pair of kids. Nuthin’ else. Chris’ sake. Only kissed her. He knew what he’d adone if he was back there. He’d agot his money’s worth. Any slob could kiss a girl. Hell, but them Greenwich Villagers were goofy.

  Again the boy and girl hugged with the desperation of their youth and virginity. Behind them rolled many cars. Traffic was scooting along the Drive and curving through the Park. On Madison and Lexington and Third Avenues, on all the twilight avenues of the town, in this interval before parties, before movies, the cars were traveling and the city’s thousands were hugging, kissing, making love as the motors carried them to a thousand destinations. Joe and Cathy were part of the city design, natural to the city in that twilight…. At this moment Mr. and Mrs. Gebhardt were talking of their daughter and Joe and how the two seemed to be in love; what was to be done? … Paddy was kidding a crowd of fellows waiting their next. In small rooms Madge and Bobbie were making one buck their share…. McMann and Bill were drinking beer. They had schemes. There was the paint store, there was Duffy, there were other things…. In a neat apartment Mr. Stanger was neatly informing a circle of friends of what he’d done for the sons of his best friend, how he’d given them a free flat on Leroy. “Where is that, Mr. Stanger?” asked a lady who donated to the Salvation Army. “Over in Greenwich Village,” said Stanger; “not the neighborhood for us, but for young men, hahaha….”

  “Where the hell are we?” said Joe. They were below Fifty-ninth, speeding between jewels, furs, antiques. The green traffic lights gleamed luxuriously. A few bargain shops had sneaked on Fifth, but wealth glared from most of the shop windows. Joe was so influenced he contemplated the meter with indifference. They held hands, bunching together like puppies for warmth. The cab shot below Forty-second, the Library lions dim dusky stone. Below Thirty-fourth, Fifth Avenue had many empty stores and lofts. The Flatiron Building on Twenty-third stood up like an immense distorted cut of pie, triangular, with narrow base, as if the builder had cut too stingily. The sachems and millionaires lived in the apartments below Fourteenth. Washington Square was a lonely winter waste variously surr
ounded by Knickerbocker stoops, garages, hotels. They hugged in the dark. The hack piloted them westward to Greenwich. Fifth Avenue, ducal, romantic, persisted like a dream street in their thoughts, where they had walked in sun and entered sunny mansions. He had bent her far over his clasped arms, distraught by the lovely half body of her, the tight belly, the young panting breasts. This half body, as if an entity in itself or attached to darkness or to a lower fish shape like a mermaid’s, was magical to him. His lips groped sad and tender. He loved her, desire flaming up in him not from a young man’s fancy, but from a man’s maturity.

  More like it, thought the hack, seeing them almost prone on the rear seat. If he wants to kiss her the subway’s plenty good. “O.K., mister, here you are.” They got out. The street was tunneled through loneliness. He paid and the cab swerved up Leroy to Hudson, passing their house. Maybe their ghosts were still inside the cab, waving to the house where the Gebhardts were waiting. He was tired of being poor, tired of his job, irritated that after the millionaire day he must return to a hole. Cathy said she’d have to tell the priest. “Tell him what?”

  “That you, that you held your hand …”

  He didn’t give a damn if she blushed ten years. “You tell him I kiss you and all?”

  “Yes.”

  “You cut it out. You tell him and we’re through. Love the way I feel is our business, don’t you see? I like you so much I don’t want anyone to know. You haven’t told your mother? Christ.”

  “No.” He patted her hand. That was fine. And it wasn’t the damn business of any priest. She said he mustn’t speak like that. They argued, passing the exterminating store with its red sign and drawing of a white calm rat. Oh, nuts to her. She was nuts. It’s a wonder she’d got over their petting in the cab. They walked up the stoop, and in the corridor he grabbed her again, his hand creeping to the edge of her breast. “So long. I may be down later after you eat.” Gee, he loved her. He ran up the two flights. Bill was home, smoking a cigar. “How’s Romeo?” said Bill. “I hear you been promenading with Cathy.” Joe slammed the door. “What the hell you doing home so early and on a Sunday?”

  “Take a big look.”

  “I am.”

  “The Gebhardts were surprised to see me, too. The dog’s with them. The dog was too happy seeing me.”

  Joe didn’t know what to do with his brother. He could understand him Sunday mornings, but not now. Yesterday Bill’d been home, too. Two accidents in a row. Hell.

  “If you need any dough, pop the word.”

  “Is that why you came home?”

  “You’ll have me bawling. Cut it, kid. Take it for granted I’m home. I’ve a headache.” Joe took off his overcoat. He didn’t like it nohow. Bill’s eyes were roving up and down the three rooms with the pathetic beastliness of a caged animal. Joe got scared. “I’ve been a lousy brother. I’m younger than you, but I should have spoken up like a man.”

  “What you blatting about? You’ve spoken too much as is.” He puffed thick blue clouds of cigar smoke around him like an ambush. Staring intently, Joe felt his brother was disappearing. He seemed smaller than ever to Joe. Joe felt he’d been speaking to someone running away, hearing his voice getting louder as if attempting to reach someone far away. In that second he guessed something awful had happened. Bill was licking dirt, ready for a browbeating because he’d done something rotten, like a kid caught with a sling-shot near a smashed window. The blood pumped hot and surging into Joe’s head. He turned around in panic as if the walls were bars. He thought: It’s my fault, I’m so easily led, so spineless, I just let things drift, and what’ll become of us? Then he grabbed hold of himself by the neck as it were, sitting down, speaking against whatever had happened, almost guessing what it was.

  “This is what I want to say. I should’ve said it long ago. But I never saw you during the week. Only Sunday mornings for breakfast. I hated like hell to spoil our being together when we were together. I didn’t want to argue. Nights before dropping off I’d think maybe I ought to wake you up in the morning, at six, and have it out. I never had the heart. You looked too dead.”

  “Get to it,” said Bill.

  “You’re a racketeer. You’re not a bookkeeper for any bootlegger as you told me yesterday. You’ve lots of dough. The clerks at Metz’s are talking about the robberies on Ninth. You’re in it, Bill.” He paused, sweating. Bill was sweating too. They were brothers all right, reacting in the same blind way. Oh, how sorry he was!

  “No use stalling any more. I’m in it.” It hurt to hear it. It was no relief to hear it. It would’ve been better to have continued in the old way. He glanced about the flat … Cathy, Cathy telling the priest: Oh, reverend father, priest, pope, I been necking heavy with a guy Joe; oh, priest, father, forgive me…. This went through his head, obscene, like vague disappearing smoke. And there was Bill grinning without any fun, after the smoke lifted, grinning, his eyes hard and bright as a plotting beast’s. Bill wasn’t going gooey soft or thinking: Crime don’t pay. Bill was working out a problem, hiding behind that cold wicked grin. “The milk’s spilled,” said Bill, “and we’ve got to get down to facts.”

  “What’s happened, Bill?” Something had to be done. He leaned forward, so engrossed he appeared to know all about it.

  “Before I tell you, I want you to listen. When I lost my job I tried to get another. I couldn’t, not in real estate or anything decent.” He spoke sincerely as if he’d really tried endless months, rising at six every morning like an Alger hero hoping to save a fat plutocrat from being run over, tramping the streets, chin up, determined to land honest work. “I drifted. I’m mixed up with those holdups, but don’t you worry. They’re all temporary. I’ll make a few thousand and quit. I’m cold-minded enough to do it. I’m in it like a business man, and for a short spell.” His eyes were full of malice, proud, his voice a little hysterical.

  “You’re in trouble, Bill.”

  “It’s nothing. Hell, the world’s full of crooks, but some are called millionaires.” Joe’d heard that baloney line before, of bankers being burglars; all of it was old stuff, except for Bill’s grin, the clever mocking baleful grin that seemed to reiterate: It’s all old stuff, sure enough, but I mean it. I’m the guy that means it and will get away with it. “Bill, you’re in trouble.”

  “You’re right, kid,” he said wearily, not looking up. “You’ve got to get this straight. At dawn this morning Metz’s store was broken into.” He watched his brother turn into wax, the red leaving his cheeks, becoming a waxen figure with an open mouth and popping eyes. “They cut through the partition in the rear. I’m home to tip you off, to protect you.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “It’s done. Don’t belly-ache.”

  “What’ll we do?”

  “That’s better. Tomorrow when Metz finds his bank empty it’ll break. Metz is smart. We gotta be careful. He’ll wonder how in hell anybody’d know he’s got dough in his bank. Nine out of ten don’t leave dough in their stores over Sunday. Night deposits or they carry it home. And Metz never leaves dough around. He must’ve been cracked to do it yesterday.”

  “What’ll we do, Bill? Run away?”

  “Hold your horses. Metz’ll realize it was an inside job, that somebody blabbed the fact that that Sat night, of all the Saturdays in a year, he put dough in his store bank.”

  “You took a risk like that.”

  “It’s done now.” Oh, Christ, he was crazy too. He ought never’ve involved Joe. He was crazy. “I told you. I told you all about it yesterday. Didn’t I? You knew about Metz from me. I told you.” He looked like a preacher. Who was denying it? That was one way to be, Joe exclaimed. It isn’t anything to steal. What would he do? He didn’t want to go to jail.

  “You’re not going to any jail. Take it easy, kid. For Pete’s sake, it’s nothing. I’ll help you.”

  “I wouldn’t need help if you were decent.”

  “Sure,” he said, listening to Joe dig up the ancient yesterday. “It�
�s done. Forget it.”

  “You got your bastard nerve, you bastard. Why’d you do it, you damn bitch?”

  “For the dough, you shouting idiot. Get hold of yourself, act like a man or you can go to hell.” He glared as if Joe were to blame for everything. “Metz is insured. Think I’d hook him after he gave you a job?” (He was switching into a communist all of a sudden.) “The loser’ll be a rich company. You got to keep a smart head on you. There’ll be an investigation, but we’re both safe. There’s a chance one of the clerks saw him lock up his dough. But also a chance a customer saw him. You guys know nothing. You didn’t tell a soul. Where were you last night?”

  “At the Capitol.”

  “With Cathy of course?”

  “Yes.”

  “Swell. Then what did you do?”

  “Came home and hung around in her house until about two. Then I said good-night and went to bed. That’s all.”

  “Your alibi’s perfect.”

  “I don’t need an alibi. I didn’t do anything.”

  “Alibis never harm. Gebhardt’ll vouch for you if it ever gets that far, which it won’t. All you’ve got to do is tell the truth. This morning neither of us left before twelve.” He grinned, complacent as a cat. “The cops don’t know the robbery was at dawn. All they know is that at ten this morning a guy — some kid we know — called up and said things looked fishy in the cheese store.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means our alibis are tight. We were here at ten. Metz is wise at this second probably. He won’t say much I don’t think. The cops’ve probably advised him to watch you clerks tomorrow. Now, tonight you take Cathy out. Later I’ll take the dog for a walk, bring him back, and pay a visit on the Stangers. We’ll both have perfect alibis.”