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

  Joe opened the door. The dog shot his groggy head up, his bright eyes watching. He sprang out of the box, leaping to Joe’s hand, his tail like a fly-swatter. Joe sat down in his coat, taking the dog on his lap. The dog licked his ears. “Did you see Stanger?” he asked.

  “No. That mutt can smell a key in a lock.”

  “You didn’t see him?”

  “How many times do you want me to say no?”

  “Why not?”

  “Joe the Sherlock. I thought too much of an alibi might look queer. I haven’t seen Stanger since the holidays. Why call on him just the day Metz got hit? The Gebhardts saw me take the dog out, saw me make a face over my headache.”

  “Why’ve you got a headache today?” He put the dog in its box, patting its head and staring at his brother.

  That was a hit. Best to laugh it off. “It’ll be all right. It’ll blow over.”

  “Maybe I ought to quit; that is, if I don’t get sacked. He’s treated me decent and I feel cheap.”

  “So that’s what’s eating you?”

  “I’m quitting.”

  “You can’t quit.” He shouted, bitter, crafty: “Can’t you realize that’d give everything away? Who gives up a job these days? Do you want the pair of us thrown in jail?”

  “Hell,” said Joe.

  “You stubborn damn fool, want to squat in jail?”

  Joe wanted to slam the swine. Things weren’t so easily done. He suddenly caught on to the decorum, the routine necessary for successful criminals. They must act innocent. He was licked. “Find me another job. That’d be a good reason to quit.”

  “My eyes are open.” He was sorry for the kid, averting his full glance, observing him covertly. “Want to go over tomorrow?”

  “I’d like to die or run away.”

  “Cut that talk.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t sneak out on you. I’m your brother. I’ll look dumb and innocent for a hundred priests.” (Cathy confessing to priests he put his hands here and there. Joe the accomplice, Bill the crook.) He laughed.

  “Snap out of it.”

  “When Cathy asked me how you were making out I said you got a raise. Christ, that’s funny.”

  “You’re cracked. Don’t tell that dame so much.”

  “Don’t you order me. You can go to hell.” They glared at each other like foreigners met for a common purpose, but hating each other’s difference, thinking of tomorrow, hating. “I’m going to bed. It’s still early bird for me.”

  “Maybe it’ll do you good.”

  “Well, this was one Sunday we saw each other.”

  “Rest your bones.” Poor Joe was beaten. He bit deep into his cigar butt, feeling the tobacco. Jesus, he thought, it’s no good, it’s just no good.

  When Joe awoke Monday morning to shut off the alarm, Bill heard the jangling for the first time in weeks, raising himself on elbow, squinting at Joe through one eye. “Hell, my right eye feels pussy. I left a slip on the dresser when you went to bed. It’s my phone. You can reach me there afternoons, case you need me.”

  “Get back to sleep. I know what to do.”

  “Play mum, kid.” The brothers looked steadily at each other in the icy cold room. Joe dressed swiftly, his head singing as if with fever. What’d Metz do? “Set the clock for eleven,” Bill said.

  Metz surveyed his three clerks. He himself hauled the bucket of water to the sidewalk. “O.K.” He smiled insipidly, his eyes invisible behind the thick glare of his glasses, his black eyebrows lifting. They worked as always, sloshing the window, their raw wet hands scalded by the wind. Ninth Avenue was a meager town beneath the flat hopeless sky of January. Inside, the safe in the rear, high as Joe’s chest, stood against the wall, “S. Metz, Cheeses & Dairy” engraved on it in gilt. The safe was closed, the jaws of the two clerks and the boss shut as firmly as the steel door. No one said anything. They just worked. Joe carried tubs of butter, later waiting on the customers, cutting cheese, making change, trying to act as if nothing had happened the day before. He felt punk, thinking of Cathy to help him forget.

  He imagined the melancholy eyes of the clerks were staring at him when he wasn’t noticing. They didn’t call him Der Starker as often as they had. Only Metz, grinning affably, wearing his straw hat, seemed at all the same. Foxy Metz. All morning his head was singing. He listened for his heart. Did it beat faster? Concentrating on his work, cracking jokes with the ladies, hearing them compliment him for his looks, bored as if he were an old man and his beauty crumbled thirty years ago. He had no use for a woman. That’s how he acted, hardly distinguishing between even the regular customers, blundering. He said: “Is that all, Mrs. Murphy?” when it should have been Mrs. Martin, saying Mrs. Skoularekes for Mrs. Skolpas. Each time he made an error, his head swelled to immense dimensions, his heart like a pounding hostile fist in him. Surely Metz had noticed, or one of the clerks next him at counter. Each time he smiled at the surprised customer. “Why, Mrs. Martin, you didn’t think I didn’t know who you were? I thought I’d kid you along.” And Mrs. Martin, a big Irishwoman with a peaked nose and the grim lips that somehow go with hefty Irish ladies, had smiled as if he were courting her. He was very handsome, fresh-colored, Amurrican down here on Ninth with the Jew shopkeepers, the Greeks, the shanty micks, the ginzos and Dutchies. As for Skoularekes-Skolpas, he had whispered to the nearest clerk: “Christ, Murray, I can’t get them Greek names straight.” He didn’t fool himself, however. He’d never made mistakes before. They must know it, pitying him as they put orders in brown bags.

  He was a rat in a trap, a rat caught in a cheese store. His head was singing. The shelves crowded with canned goods, the clerks, Metz, all these known things were far from him, as if he were diving deep in water, gazing with strained eyes towards a lost and mysterious world. Things were so far away he knew he didn’t belong. He was an outsider, the sharp precise outlines of human beings blurring as if he had the grippe. His head sang, and all the morning he listened to the sick song, wondering when the break’d come, hoping it’d be soon. They must know. They were playing with him like cats. That was it. Metz didn’t say boo, watching him. Why didn’t he send him to the market? The long free ride in the truck, the driver unable to spy on him because he’d be driving and keeping an eye peeled for cops and goofy drivers. That’d be swell. If only they sent him out! The pattern of their eyes, inimical, curious, the three pairs of eyes piercing him all over so there was no escape, worried him to death. They were waiting for him to monk up. He’d fool the bastards. He began to whistle, grinning at the fraudulent music issuing from his dry lips. He moistened his lips, but song wasn’t in him.

  Walking in the narrow space behind the counter, brushing against the secretive bodies of the clerks in passage, he thought he’d go bugs. They didn’t goose him and he didn’t goose them as he passed for a can of salmon for some customer. The customers dropped off. It was time to eat, the clerks forgathering in the rear, slicing cheese, smearing on butter, eating lunch in the usual panic, as Metz grinned, saying nothing, but seeming gabby anyhow with his smile and eyebrows and pantomimic hands. They talked of the trade, kidding Joe as if there’d been no robbery. He was frightened more than ever, suspecting they were doing their best to make him feel at home. His roll and cheese had no taste, a vague mush his teeth bit into until the bite was semifluid like a heavy syrup which he swallowed hatefully.

  The sun slanted from high noon, the street outside was sunny, colored with the shawls of women and their wintry red cheeks. How long would it keep up? It wasn’t fair. It was dirty cheap. Then Wiberg strolled into the store, and Metz waited on him. Wiberg hadn’t come to buy, but to brag, the two clerks peering from him to Joe. Wiberg snorted how misery loves company, don’t you know, hahaha; so Metz was stuck too, and Soger said it was Metz next like in a barber shop, and so he got his shampoo and schnozzle lifted. But Metz was lucky. He wasn’t socked on the bean. Wiberg grinned, patiently demanding that Metz give him the story. “I couldn’t get off till now. Sometimes I
sell some dresses and then I know you busy. Hanrahan come here? He find out nothing. Already he speak to Soger and me and Petrucci. He knows to ask questions, but he finds nothink.” There had been no one to stop the exuberant fat man. Metz grinned, baffled. Joe thought this time Metz was really dumb, without words. He watched the boss twist his lips from old habit, idiotic as ever, but licked, speechless. The clerks exclaimed, excited, what the hell had happened? Wiberg was kidding. And finally, like an awakening dreamer, Metz said: “What robbery?”

  Wiberg’s admiration was colossal. Metz said the boys didn’t know till this very minute. Wiberg roared at the joker. “Everybody see the cops yesterday. The cop on the beat tell Soger. What a liar, the clerks don’t know!” Metz insisted it was the truth. Hanrahan’s case was ruined by this blabby Austrian. What could you expect from an Austrian Glitz. Well, sooner or later Joe must’ve known. He smiled at Joe shouting with the others. Oi, a shame. He’d known all morning Joe was in it. He was sorry. “Huh, Metz,” cried Wiberg, “you sneak, you watch the boys; one of them is the goneph.”

  “Go home to your wife,” said Metz.

  “All right, I see you later.” Joe almost dropped to the floor, his thighs leaning hard against the counter. He had the idea that Wiberg even while joking had snapped out of his fog, guessing Metz had a reason for hiding the robbery from the clerks. Wiberg, speaking the truth with blubbery good humor, the words lost forever, had pulled up, thinking: That’s the reason. Metz is watching the boys. That’s why he left so quickly. They were wise.

  Metz rubbed his hands, folding them over the small bulge his belly made in the apron. “Yeh, them crooks. They bust open the safe yesterday. Why tell you boys? What’s the use? And them cops know what? I tell them yesterday it’s the racketeers, them hangouts.” They all wished for a customer to come in, the clerks irritated and uneasy.

  “A half pound salt butter,” said a German lady. Joe sliced it out of the tub, dumping the yellow slab on a piece of paper.

  “You wasting your time here, Joe,” said the lady. “You should a job in the movies get.”

  “I will one of these days. The cheese business is slow.” Other customers dropped in. Metz was sorry that later on he’d have to phone Hanrahan and inform the bull the beans was spilled and what was to be done? Joe wrapped up the package. Anyway, this was excitement, something doing. He had belly-ached about the sameness of his work, but this was something like. His eyes glinted. He felt a hot kinship with his brother, almost without regret. This was something.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHEWING a toothpick, Hanrahan marched into Stanger’s office, pointing his nose at the girls. “The boss in?” He flashed his badge, holding it in his fat moist palm, continuing his stride. The girls whispered; the detective entered the last frosted window. The window said: PRIVATE, but those cops were corkers.

  “How do?” said Hanrahan, unbuttoning his overcoat, dropping his bottom into a big leather chair. He slanted his derby further back on his wet brow. He seemed to have eaten a heavy dinner, smoking his cigar with the enjoyment of a man whose belly is full. He explained who he was. It was nothing important, but had Mr. Stanger heard of the recent robberies on Ninth? “Sure you have. I’m in charge. Do you know your firm collects rents from all four parties that’ve been stuck? That’s coincidence. You must do a big collection.”

  “Are you implying anything?”

  “Take it easy. We’ve been looking the clerks over at Metz’s — two Jewish boys, Murray Hecker and Sam Rothbard, and a kid, Joe Trent.” Stanger’s pale eyes glared at the detective. “I can’t say this interests me very much.”

  “That’s funny. They’re all your tenants. Maybe you want your firm to get a rep for being a jinx?” He breathed greasily as if bloated. “Hell, what a meal does to a man! My doc says if I don’t cut out meats, my kidneys’ll go bad. I’ll be in the red. Ain’t that funny?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “That’s being sensible. I’m investigating the Metz clerks, as we think it may be an inside job. Maybe not. Therefore, just investigating, I found out Joe’s a brother of a collector you had here some months ago. Nice boys, are they? Co-operation, Stanger, you bet. Wouldn’t be nice if Soger and the rest complained to their landlords the agent’s not co-operating.”

  “They’re sons of my best friend. I let Bill go because business was getting rotten.”

  “Bill working?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t they visit?”

  “They’re proud boys. I saw Bill for a few minutes during the holidays. I let them have a flat in a house of mine rent-free.” (Oh, Poppa Trent, hear what I did for your sons, oh best friend!) “I believe that they avoid me because they’re obligated.”

  “Is Bill working?”

  “I said I don’t know.” Hanrahan stuck a fresh toothpick between his teeth. “I know why Bill was sacked.”

  Stanger blinked. “Really?”

  “Really. A copper found out he was buddies with a pimp, proud boy though he is, a proud broth of a boy, as the Irish say. Maybe he had a racket shaking down pimps and fellers like that. He wouldn’t be the first real-estate feller.”

  “You cops can’t afford to talk.”

  “A Republican? Listen to me. The four stores robbed were collected by that proud feller.”

  “Are you implying he’s mixed up with these robberies? I don’t believe it.” Stanger was affected, pallid, his nervous indigestion working up on him.

  “I investigate. Don’t get hot, mister. Maybe we’ll see each other again. I just wanted you to know why you sacked him. See? I like to get the truth right off the bat. I believe in co-operation between real-estate agents and the law. Maybe I’m a sucker?”

  “I’ve always co-operated with the police.” Stanger wiped his brow. Ought he to dispossess Bill? What a nuisance! No use doing that. If they proved him guilty, that’d be different. If Bill were guilty, the law’d serve the dispossess and provide new quarters. He might be innocent.

  “S’long. See you again, Stanger.”

  At a cigar store he contacted headquarters. He was informed Metz had phoned. He hung up, dropped another nickel in the slot, chewing on his frazzled toothpick. Metz said: “Gimme your number and I call you back tonight, Hannah.” Hanrahan called off the number and hung up. There was a delay; then the phone rang. Metz was sorry to keep him waiting, but he’d sent Joe out to the market to get rid of him. Metz told how Wiberg had spilled the beans. What should he do, sack Joe?

  “Nope,” said Hanrahan. “I’ll be in later to quiz the joint. S’long.”

  “Not in business hours.”

  “I’ll come in at six. Seven?” He frowned, listening to protests. “Half past seven, then.”

  “Good-by, Hannah,” said Metz.

  Hanrahan laughed. The little Jew was funny. He hung up. Sure as God made apples, that Bill Trent was the boy.

  Bill ran up from the pay booth in the hall. “How about a Hanrahan dick?” he said to McMann.

  “What’sa matter, you see a ghost?”

  “He’s in charge.”

  “Who tole ya?”

  “My kid brother over at Metz’s. That guy Wiberg barged in and said Hanrahan’s in charge. The kid says the phone rang late, and after that, Metz sent him down to the market. That’s why he called me.”

  McMann heaved the Daily Mirror up in the air, celebrating. “You never tole me you had a kid brother workin’ for Metz. You keep things close.”

  “Must I tell you everything?” He felt stronger than McMann, more resourceful. He wondered whether he was outgrowing McMann. “What sorta bull is Hanrahan?”

  “Honest. Honest dicks are smart. Smart ‘cause they’re honest. He ain’t got a thing on us. Your brother’s safe. What you wild for?”

  “Do you know that a dick must know about me? All four joints were hooked when their bosses were in the dough. I collected all of them. It points to an insider. To me.”

  McMann laughed; he’d
thought of that years ago.

  “You never told me.” That was because he kept things under his hat. Bill wasn’t the only guy. Why worry? If Hanrahan couldn’t prove anything, he was safe. Let him guess it was Bill. “That dick’n five others is wise I hock cars night’n day, wise I’m in this’n that. They knows it like I knows it. That ain’t knowin’ nothin’. Kin they do a damn? Naw. That means they knows nothin’. But after the paint supply holdup on Thursday, they’d lay off the stores until the stink died down.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t take the paint supply.”

  “Too late. Duffy’s het up. It’s the big chance. Hookin’ Metz’n now the paint supply, and them kids’ll eat outa our hands.” He seemed happy, mentioning speaks uptown they’d tackle next. They’d go for real dough, borrowing Duffy’s smartest kids, to lump some of the speaks above 110th. And gambling houses.

  They had Joe between them, sitting in the room, blocking one from the other like a third person. Bill thought: I let it slip, I was so damn excited. What a brain guy! He listened as McMann explained how no cops’d bother them about speaks. They’d be safer than now. Bill laughed. The full tide was pulling out, the tide he’d created like God. Now the flux of events, the future he’d set ticking like a wound-up watch, dwarfed the creator. Out to sea, and God alone knew where….

  Neither was very excited about clipping a speak. It was nothing. That was all. McMann picked up the tabloid, glancing up eagerly. “Here’s where some ginzos had a clubba their own. That’s swell. Hey, guy, we’ll have a club any day now. We’ll spring the idea on the resta the kids. Schneck and Ray is nuts about it.” Already he seemed to have sneaked control of the kids from Duffy, to have a clubhouse. Bill felt it’d all happened.