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

  At seven-thirty Hanrahan edged into the dairy store, walking directly to the rear. He knew his way. He’d been in on Sunday. He shut the door and sat down on an empty tub. The clerks were busy with a scattering of customers, but Metz trailed the visitor, returning, waiting for the customers to go. “It’s a detective’n wants to kibbitz you boys. Sam and Joe first. Then Murray.” He implied it was a trifle, an interview formal and silly. Nobody laughed. “Take it easy,” Hanrahan said to Sam and Joe. “I got a few routine questions. You’re Sam Rothbard, and how in the devil could it be anything else?” He smiled at the clerks, the big blond one and the dark Jew. “Sit down. Find a comfy tub. Now, when you boys went home Saturday, did you tell anybody that Metz was sappy enough to leave dough in his bank? How dumb that was, boys! When you own your own cheese stores, let it be a lesson. Leaving dough after he knew of the stickups in the last two months. That’s why there are so many robberies. Everybody is sappy. It’s a sappy world, and fellows with special knowledge, special inside dope, some smart feller like that, can take advantage. We detectives like such theories such as insiders with dope. It makes it easier. A lot of us are kids. Now, did either of you boys tell about sap Metz to your families, to sweethearts when you had them out on dates and getting tired hugging, told them how sappy Metz was, to kill some time before getting wind up for the next session?” He paused, smiling, his plump red face gleaming under the suspended bulb, very jovial, just one pal with a coupla others. “Personally, neither of you two boys is in it, but when boys spill the word about sappy Metz thinking a cheese-box is the Bank of England, hell, boys, such news spreads to these smart guys. Tell anyone, Sam?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How about you, Joe? Did you tell your parents or a sweetie?”

  “My parents are dead.”

  “Too bad. How about a brother, sister, some kid brother or something?”

  “I haven’t much of a family. One brother. I didn’t mention it to him or to anybody.”

  “Not even a sweetie? A big handsome kid like you.”

  “No one.” His head was singing. Hanrahan was a liar, rubbing that finger on his oily nose, his blue eyes pretending they were sleepy or tired. Hanrahan didn’t fool him, playing the dope like Metz.

  “That’s all, boys. Send the other clerk in. Maybe he was dumb enough to tell somebody.” Metz said the jailbirds could go home. Joe and Sam returned to the back room, getting into their street clothes. “Sure you didn’t tell your sweetie?” asked Hanrahan.

  “I did not.” Metz called good-night to him as if he were sorry for somebody. The night was warm. The next month might have been springtime and not February.

  After supper Joe and Cathy strolled up to Seventh Avenue into the Village, walking sedately like long-established lovers, peeking into the shops, cute as Pekingese with their candleware and batik scarves and pewter. Cathy said he shouldn’t worry, she had it straight. “Now, you know as much as me about the robbery,” Joe said. “If that detective were to question you — ”

  “I’d say you never had much money. Suppose they dig up the cab-drivers, Joe?”

  “Lucky we never pulled up front of your house.” Fooling somebody — in this case Cathy’s folks — always was handy for someone else. “I gave that bull what for.”

  “It was Bill’s money went for the cabs.” She stared at him as if to say: Bill’s a crook, ain’t he? It’s Bill.

  “You remember all I’ve said and don’t tell a soul.”

  “Not even the priest,” she promised religiously.

  He had the most cockeyed feeling. Could you beat it? He was a priest, and Cathy was confessing to him. Tall, devout, her eyes shone at him. She was his private nun. He patted her arm. She was O.K. She loved him. She was grateful to him. He’d been in a sweat all day and now expanded with his power. Heck with the cops and Hanrahan. He wasn’t scared. Every time he felt her body touch his own, he boomed with youth. His head sang, but differently than it had down at Metz’s. He was listening fevered and exultant to his own blood and the love in his blood-stream. Her promise not to confess to the priest was the real thing. He was her religion. Thinking of the demands his religion, his love, would and must make…. “What are you thinking of, Joe?” she said gently, proud to be helping him. It was like the girls in the movies protecting their lovers from the cops.

  “I love you. Honest.” It was miraculous to him that after all the Catholic youthhood of her, the candles, the choir boys, the priests intoning as she confessed to little sins, that she should stand before him so naked. He doubted his power, too Saxon, too American to really believe his love was the compensation and the cause. She wouldn’t confess. She’d switched sides. And it was because of him. Him alone. He arched his chest, appreciating who the devil he was. When he steered her past a truck or car, he did so with magnanimity, noting she’d accepted his estimate of himself, thought him grander than he dared to imagine.

  He bragged toughly: “I guess you like me. Why not? Every dame’s a woman. Even the black skirts of the nuns cover up flesh-and-blood bodies.” He was combative, cocky, Protestant.

  “You needn’t speak like that, Joe. People ought to respect other people’s religions.” But there was no heat in her; she reminded him of her mother. Gee, she was a good-hearted kid and he ought not pick on her.

  “How’s high school? How you making out?” But he didn’t listen when she itemized about her bookkeeping and Spanish, the commercial course that would train her for an office job. He was in love. He had her number. He could do anything he wanted with her. She was easy. And tomorrow there’d be Metz over again. Nothing to worry about. Hadn’t Bill said there was nothing to be worried about? He respected Bill, admiring his brother like some white-collar reading of the deeds of Al Capone. Bill was a real man. Wouldn’t be so bad to be like Bill.

  On Thursday the paint-supply store was knocked off. It was a good profit. Duffy made money, but wasn’t keen about it. Hanrahan thought: Another store collected by Billy boy. Damn Billy boy; didn’t he think there were cops in town? Damn him. Billy boy was like a kid swiping apples….

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  BILL and McMann entered the lobby of the hotel where Duffy lived. It was one of the newer hotels, a mass of clean brown stone put together when Coolidge was President. Duffy paid fourteen bucks a week for a room and bath that used to be twenty-eight. The immense lobby was a corner of old Siam or some such land where the green things are decorative and plenteous. Two murals faced each other vaguely, nice-colored, as Duffy said. Their processions of heroic figures, men and women obviously resident in a California-like climate, were undecided whether they were en route to a palace, a fiesta, to war or to peace, to tragedy or comedy; and the little people underneath in old Siam, talking in stealthy hotel groups, also seemed like mural folk, headed for other cities, engrossed in a hundred plots of sex, money, and crime, whose outcomes were also in doubt. They weren’t mural folk, but guys like you’n me’n the nex’ feller.

  Two clerks gleamed like expensive wood at the desk. Bill and McMann strode through the flora inhabited by drummers, prostitutes, vice-presidents, women in their thirties on the make for young actors, Broadway boys in dope or numbers or racing, searching everywhere for Ray and Schneck. Three fags sat discreetly in an ambush of palm trees. A plumpish eye-glassed group of business men held a couch for the glory of textiles, one composite lewd eye out for passable stuff. And standing upright, as if they were on a corner, Ray and Blowhard Schneck were smoking. The two interested parties smiled at each other. Bill and McMann took the elevator. “They’ll be right up. It’s showdown, Bill.” He removed his hat politely, nudging his hard hip and elbow against the side of a young woman, sniffing at her perfume. What a corker he is, thought Bill, always ready for anything, always with an eye peeled for life; hell, what a guy!

  They got off. “Nice, huh?” said McMann.

  “Haven’t you some business, you punk?”

  “That’s business. She was soft as chicken.�
� The long corridor, the numbered doors on either side, kept their footfalls silent. The walls seemed a hundred miles thick. “If it comes to a row it’s nothin’. The dump’s noiseproof, so the bums in one room can’t hear nex’ door with the lady nappin’ with her mutt.”

  Bill nodded, his neck trembling, almost walking on tiptoe, the shivers rolling down his back like ice. He swallowed. McMann was the devil. That was an old and true thought. McMann was always leading him into danger, and now he was banging his blunt red paw against Duffy’s privacy. “Come in,” hollered Spat.

  Like the representatives of two nations, the four men smiled at one another seriously. Duffy was wearing a purple gown, Broadway-splendid, his small naked feet in brown slippers. The trouser legs of maroon pyjamas were below the skirt. (Two to one his shirt’s embroidered with a crest, thought Bill.) From this glory Duffy’s thin face emerged with the desolate incongruity of an old hag in chic things. His eyes were hot and intense.

  “Sit down, boys. Spat’ll fix you a drink.”

  “We don’t want any,” said McMann, smiling. Spat and Bill, henchmen, paired off in a secondary feud. Spat patted his black hair, plastered down and immaculate; his suit of oxford gray was too tight for him, hugging his thighs and chest, and as he scowled, his hairy fists on his knees, he seemed in dark armor, an obscure black prince, medieval and remorseless.

  “It’s short’n to the point,” said McMann. “We all made a lil money on Metz and on the paint supply. We gotta lay off awhile cause the dicks’re smellin’ around.”

  “Sure,” said Duffy, waiting. “Why not?”

  “Why the hell not?” said Spat.

  “No use quittin’, Duff. How about uptown on biz till things quiet down on Ninth?”

  “Son-of-a-bitch, his district,” snorted Spat.

  “Sure. No one owns the west side, and even shysters like us kin make a play for some of the pickin’s.”

  Spat’s thick lips pressed into a thin white line. “Don’t you be bitchin’ at me.” He sat tense, ready to hurl forward. Duffy waved a hand of truce. “Let it go,” he commanded. What else did McMann have to say?

  “Uptown, outa the west side. I wouldn’t hijack speaks down here where we know the boys, but an uptown speak above a Hunerd’n Tenth, what you say?”

  “Nix,” said Duffy. “You’re nuts. I ain’t holding up speaks in the west side or out of it.”

  “You heard the boss,” growled Spat.

  McMann purred: “No one’s talkin’ to you, Spat. Shove your damn mug outa it. Get me. When I speak to you, I’ll look your way.”

  “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “He’s my uncle’s aunt,” said Bill.

  “Let it go,” said Duffy.

  “Thanks, Duff,” said McMann. “That gorilla of yourn’s nuts.” He grinned, insinuating everything was Spat’s fault. He appeared to have no argument with Duffy. It was only Spat. Spat, not catching on at all, grew white. He didn’t know what the hell to make of it. What was wrong with the boss? “Way I figure it, Duff, me’n Bill did you a favor with that paint supply, and Metz made a lil dough for ya. A lil dough for somea ya kids, showed your kids you were thinkin’ of them, gettin’ work for them, not lettin’ them down. Now, you oughta loan us some of the kids so me’n Bill can take a speak. Nothin’ at all’n no harm coinin’ some dough to pay for this swell room.” He paused, his lean hard body treacherous as a cat’s.

  “It boils down to one thing. No use bunking about it. You want to get hold of my kids.”

  “Like hell, Duff. Who’s tellin’ you that? Spat? If it’s him, then he’s one prime bastard liar.”

  Spat groaned as if tied hand and foot, roaring out, tormented, like a baited beast. “I ain’t been sayin’ a thing, and you quit those names, McMann, or I’ll slough you.” His fists knotted, his breath left his distended nostrils too quickly. He had no support from Duffy, whose brown eyes in the dead pokerface were completely neutral. Spat wanted to fight, but the boss wasn’t behind him. He quivered. Someone knocked at the door again. Duffy’s Adam’s apple rose and fell. “See who’s there, Spat,” he said.

  And after an interval, with names shouted back and forth, Ray and Schneck were admitted, Duffy swallowing.

  “Just a lil call,” said Schneck, wide-shouldered, ash-blond, pimpled. No other kid could lick him at in-fighting; with one hand bear-hugging an enemy he could whale the hell out of anybody. The other kid was whistling. Their call wasn’t just dumb walking, thought Duffy, not dumb walking, their call meant McMann had been chiseling, and what was he to do? Did the kids want a snifter? Sure, they’d drink, why not? — gulping down the stuff. A pink color flushed Schneck’s pale cheeks. Ray declared it was sweller’n swell. “I’ve been arguin’ with Duff,” said McMann genially, as if there’d been no hot blood, “that we’ve alla us made a lil dough and that we oughta go uptown’n knock off a speak with too much sugar. Not a joint down the west side, but outa the west side, some lousy ginzo speak — ”

  “Hey,” shouted Spat, “I’m ‘talian. Don’t be wise.”

  “Who’s wise? We mean the gink uptown. Chris’ sake, quit belly-achin’.”

  “It’s a swell idea,” said Schneck.

  “I’m against it,” said Duffy. “Who wants trouble with an uptown bunch?”

  “What trouble?” cried McMann. If you knocked off speaks, there’d be no cops to mess around, no damn Hanrahans for example. It was no trouble. None. He glanced at the kids standing behind everything he said. Didn’t Duffy catch on? Duffy wasn’t dumb. He was giving the guy a chance to crawl from under, to avoid a real showdown. He knew a way to help Duffy crawl. He’d blame Spat for Duffy’s resistance. Damn the ginzo. “Hell, this Spat feller’s been tippin’ you wrong, Duff. It ain’t no trouble, Duff. He’s against it ‘cause maybe the uptown speaks is run by wop cousins ahis and he’s a wop.”

  Spat came out of his chair slowly like a man about to die, glaring desperately at Duffy. But Duffy was unmoved, fragile, small-boned in his purple dressing-gown, his brown eyes burning but anonymous. Spat glared at the kids, his thick red lips twisting pathetically as if to say: Hey, kids, you not letting me down, we knows each other…. But the kids didn’t recognize him, and neither did Duffy, these three glancing through him or over him. His lips squeezed again into a white line. He clenched his fists, lowered his thick courageous skull into his chest, and swaggered up to McMann. “You can’t talk about me like that. You can’t be calling me names.” Duffy evaded. “That’s neither here nor there. I’m against uptown hijacking.” It was his final word.

  McMann laughed as if it were a joke, not looking at Spat weaving in front of him madder than hell, his face black, looking a little silly because they were fighting out a bigger issue. “Duff, you won’t risk your hide. You’ll be safe. Bill’n me and the kids’ll do the real work. How about it, Ray, Schneck, you with us if Duff gives the word? Real dough, kids.”

  “You bet,” said Ray. Schneck nodded.

  “There you are, Duff. It’s all set. You get your cut. We pull the job.” He laughed brutally. “A cinch, ain’t it?” He confronted Spat. “Now, you lousy bastard, you been fillin’ up Duff with all sortsa bunk, sayin’ we wanta steal his mob when we don’t. Ain’t we been givin’ you’n Duff a cut on the paint and cheese stores? Sure. But justa same, you’re a skunk, a double-crosser, with all kindsa bunk, you bastard wop.”

  Spat had been lowering his head and lifting it an odd inch or two as if it were on a chain. Now he choked, speechless, his eyes filling with blood. He knew he was being given a raw deal. They were using him for the goat, but just the same, McMann had gone too far. When Duff yelled: “Don’t fight,” his heart was cut in two by the treachery. He shot up his fist. McMann sprang back, shouting to the kids to keep off, he could handle the wop himself.

  “Don’t fight,” cried Duffy, seeing Spat as himself. He noticed the kids fading back when McMann gave the order. He saw who was boss, for them two kids at least. Bill was keeping an eye on him. Duffy
leaned back as if it were the Madison Square Garden.

  McMann’s left was jabbing away. Taller, faster than Spat, he flicked his clenched knuckles into the swarthy face. Spat rushed, head low, his eyes rolling up. McMann swiped him on the chin. Duffy groaned as Spat’s head shot back; Spat was himself. He had no pity for Spat as Spat, but was sorry for the Spat who was Duffy. He, Duffy, was getting a licking. Ray put out his foot, and Spat stumbled, fighting to get his balance like a man slipping on ice. McMann’s hard fists smashed twice. The blood ran from Spat’s mouth. He retreated, dizzy before McMann’s charge, backing up against the kids. McMann was on him. Schneck walloped him a nasty one in the ribs, propelling him forward into McMann. Spat seemed to be falling on his face, his knees angling, as McMann steadily pounded his head, ramming his fists into his eyes. Almost blinded, he retreated again. Schneck grinned, his hand clumping on Spat’s shoulder, who, feeling the new menace, pivoted. McMann uppercut his chin. Schneck dug his big bony power into the kidney. Spat almost toppled, the fist tunneling deep into his belly, his insides bored through, dynamited with vicious power. Pushed forward again by the kids, staggering like a bar-fly, his eyes swollen, seeing Duffy and Bill wavering as dark, almost invisible shapes, and more distinct but also a shadow, McMann menacing, eternal, his fists shadows, but hurting as they landed. As his consciousness was battered out of him, the fists became shadows, almost not hurting, their impacts dull, without pain. He staggered weaker and weaker, some hidden mysterious courage battling for an ideal his dead-tired body had long forgotten. He lifted his arms and slipped to the floor. McMann had at Duffy, who appeared bloodless, his Adam’s apple rising polished him off.

  McMann peered down on Spat’s bloody face, blinking a stricken heap. Spat was Duffy. Spat was himself and he was his own ghost. The real Duffy was Spat. Look what had happened to Spat. McMann wiped his face. He declared he had nothing against Spat, but it wasn’t square for the guy to be shooting his trap off all the time, wasn’t that so? Ray agreed. Schneck said a guy had to be fair or what was the use of it? “Yeh,” said Duffy.