Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde Page 18

  Bill laughed (he had had three whiskies at the bar, drinking them down in jig time and blabbing about the dame who’d jilted him. Holy hell, what a peach she was! “Gimme another shot. Maybe I’ll get another date. Guess I will….” The barkeep had smiled, a low-built block with rotten teeth, but so wide and friendly a smile he appeared to have a good set anyhow. The men at the bar said nothing. One of them sniffing at the lousy drunk. The other guy, the fellow who answered the outside door, grimacing, a middle-aged Irishman with a hat worn straight on his head and looking like a cop…. “She threw me down.”) and laughed, obeying McMann’s instructions to be noisy, laughing so they wouldn’t perceive him as a quiet dog. (Only the guys holding their traps are remembered, McMann had said.) He imitated a guy with a bad jag on. Before he’d hung up the receiver he’d practically shouted: “How about a date, kid? You know where to meet me.”

  He staggered from the booth back to the bar. “I got a date with a peach. Meeting her in a minute. Gimme a shot.” He drank, listening to his heart beating out the time, ticktocking like a machine. Nobody came in. What a swell way to build a reputation. The brain guy. He was nuts to let McMann talk him into taking chances. Showing off to convince the damn kids when they were convinced without any Nick the dare-devil stunts.

  The fat man at the table swished over another page, one of those old men who take to drink because they can’t fool around with the women any more and need some fun, hating to settle down. The three kids were arguing about a hockey match. The ginzo bawled out: “Say, you boids, shut up for Pete sake, will ya?” The customers at the bar went off. Leaning heavily, Bill gazed into the opposite mirror. Down the end of the mirror, the Irishman’s reflection was reading a newspaper, folded neatly on the bar, the brim of his hat low, his ears pointed for the doorbell. The ginzo yawned, mentioning to Bill with the incoherence of bartenders addressing dopey customers and guys shot under: “Yeah, women. Yeah, women they are. Yeah.” He wiped the bar, fetched the kids four beers, one each, the extra one for the skinny braggart who could drink two to everybody else’s one.

  How long did it take for that car to come? He hated the idea of ordering another whisky. His head hurt. The stuff was lousy, lousier than hell. Again he belly-ached about his girl, obnoxious to himself. The kid who could drink two to everybody else’s one was rushed into the toilet, where he puked, and brought back by his buddies like a conquering Cæsar from the wars, the ginzo grinning, the fat old man to whom this was excitement and life and youth exclaiming like a philosopher that you shouldn’t mix drinks. The Irishman looked up once, turned the next page of his paper as if he were the weariest bloke, sick of kids among other gripes. Just as things were settling down, the doorbell rang, everyone wide awake, the old man, the barkeep, the Irishman hurrying to answer, the kids laughing, the one who’d puked glaring with yellow eyes bathed in nausea and disillusionment. They’re here, thought Bill. God. It was snappy once it started. But in the interval, the split second before the gang entered or the customer — it might be a customer — Bill’s mind was one dark flash, unhuman and telepathic as a voice sent over a wire. He seemed to see Madge, whore Madge getting the call, she got the call, whore Madge hurrying out past showcases, syringes, a soda fountain, perfumes, hurrying to the car where McMann sat with the kids, McMann shooting down to the speak, when’ll they come, what the hell, Hanrahan, it wasn’t Hanrahan but the Irishman backing in, hands high above his head, retreating before a round steel eye pressed into his belly. McMann held the gun. Schneck and Mike heeling behind him.

  “Get the hell up against the wall. Alla you. Snap it. Cmon, wop,” cried McMann. The barkeep smiled, then his face fell into a grim angry mouth, popping out from behind the bar, joining the quaking old man. “Hands over your damn heads.” The old man lifted his hands, gripping his paper. “Drop it.”

  In the silence Bill listened to the paper dropping. He stood next the old man, the bunch of them rounded up by Mike, lined up with the kids, the one who’d puked suddenly appearing ill again as if biting back another spasm, Schneck ducked behind the bar, pulling open the cash register, stuffing the bills into his pocket. Rolling out, he joined Mike. Both of them pointed squat guns. Schneck, his chin white as ice, but resolute, went through the pockets of the customers. Two fives from the old man. Schneck dropped the silver to the floor, pocketing six bucks from the three kids. Their watches flashed a second and were gone. The ginzo surrendered a fat roll, a stickpin, a ring. Bill lost his wallet and watch, the Irishman a wallet, ring, and Colt revolver. The pockets of Schneck’s overcoat were the common repository as property changed hands in a split second, the air hot and dead, the Irishman blanched and ferocious, the ginzo staring. As if opening his eyes, Bill suddenly realized what he’d known all along. All three stickup men were wearing black masks, McMann aiming his gun at the Irishman’s belly, Mike, Schneck. “Alla you guys stay put or I’ll bang your guts.” McMann retreated like a phantom, walking backwards with his assistants as if they were a different breed of men. Schneck’s shoulders filled the doorway, then Mike’s; finally McMann like the last vanishing apparition in a dream was framed for all their hate to see, going out of sight. He was gone.

  The fat man held his hands overhead, his face round and pale, his eyes excited at being young again for a second. The ginzo snarled: “Bastards.” While all of them were rooted, reaching for heaven, the Irishman moved courageously, seeming swift because they were stones, peering out at the door, his body pressed to the wall. The car started up with a swift chugging. The Irishman rushed out, rushed in. “Clean gone. The tail-light off.”

  The skinny kid puked, gazing down at his own nausea. Christ, cried his friends, laughing a little. What a holdup and looka what the louse had done, looka the damn louse! The barkeep mopped up the mess, pouring a few drops of C.N. “You kids get goin’. N’ forget it. You wouldn’ sick the cops on us?”

  “What about our dough?”

  “My watch.”

  “Hell,” said the barkeep, “you saw what they hooked on me. Between us two your Ingersoll’s not much. Forget it’n see me tomorrow. Gimme a chance to square it. I’ll make it up.” They departed grumbling, grinning at the sick kid. The fat old man was a steady. They said nothing to him. He asked about his dough. “You no lose, mister, you know me long time.” The old man said O.K. and left. The ginzo put the mop away. He and the Irishman surrounded Bill.

  “Hell,” cried Bill. “Lose my girl. What a peach! Lose my dough and watch.” He breathed his whisky breath at the hard faces to prove how drunk he was.

  “We only seen you here a coupla times,” said the Irishman. “How do we know you ain’t in’t?”

  “Ain’t in what?”

  “You know what.”

  “You’re crazy as hell.” He stared at the ginzo’s lips jutting out dark and red, at the Irishman’s pale sweaty face, furrowed and crafty. “You seen ‘em take my stuff. And what about the other guys?”

  “We don’t know you.”

  “Don’t you pick on me. Hell with that. How about the fat guy, them puking kids?”

  “They’re nothin’. How about you?” The Irishman’s body bulked between the door and Bill. “Who’d you phone?”

  “My girl.”

  “You sure?”

  “I can prove it. Here’s the number. She always waits for my call in a drug store.”

  “I thought she kicked you out.”

  “This is another one.”

  The Irishman pulled out a nickel. “The boys left me something. Call that number. The women like you, huh?”

  Bill laughed at the fear crawling in him, stepping into the booth, praying. He bit his tongue, trapped in that narrow space with their bodies crowding close. Lucky they had no guns. He’d once seen a knife kill a man up in Paddy’s flat. He dropped the nickel, a voice answered. It was the drug-store man. The Irishman took the receiver, his body squeezing against Bill’s. “Just to settle a bet, mister. O.K.? A frienda mine said he spoke to his girl in your drug store a
while ago. We think he’s the bunk. How about it?” The drug-store man said about twenty minutes ago one of the phones had rung and a girl had answered. “What sorta girl, mister?” The drug-store man tittered. A very young girl, pretty, and he lost his bet, lots of girls and fellows used his place as a headquarters. They came out of the booth. “You got your damn nerve,” said Bill. “It ain’t my fault you got stuck up. First you rob your customers with stiff prices for lousy stuff and then you blame your hard luck on them. Howda I know you didn’t fix this stickup yourself?”

  “Cmon,” said the ginzo. “Times are hard and why give us trouble? Stickups do us no good among the trade.” He smiled, his sleek clean-shaven skin stretched tautly across his oval face. “We’ll feed you all the stuff you want. On the house until you figger we’re square. Don’tcha blame us. We’d awondered about the pope himself if he was here.”

  Bill lifted up his collar. “That’s a go. I had near ten bucks. Hell, I ain’t got a cent for my date.”

  The Irishman tapped his arm. “I’m comin’ along to see the dame. You won’t mind, will ya?”

  The ginzo laughed. “Course not. Why’n hell should he when he’s gonna lap up all the stuff he wants?”

  Anything to get out. “Come along, weisenheimer. See the dame, but I wouldn’t come here again on a bet.”

  “O.K.,” said the ginzo. “You don’t want free stuff, you don’t havta.” Bill and the Irishman walked up the dark street. The wind was icy. Bill felt better. The mick had no gun. Even if Madge beat it, he could knock the guy over; at least he had a chance. Under the Neon sign of the drug store, inside the entrance, Madge was tapping her heels. Soon as she saw Bill she rushed out. “You keep me waiting, you stiff.” The Irishman apologized. Guessed he was wrong. And it was free drinks. He retreated, murmuring vaguely about free drinks. Bill put his arm about Madge, kissing her.

  “What the hell?” she said. He slapped her arm. “That was close,” he said, patting her hand. Her face had been cold, a formal design with the lips painted darkly, surprise checked, her eyes deep with the color of it. “What was close?”

  “The closest shave a fellow could have. Don’t look back.” He hurried her along down a sidestreet towards Broadway. Long rows of slummy apartment houses, dim lights in the vestibules, lit their path to the glare of the avenue. He whistled a cab. “Loan me a couple bucks till I get my cut tonight.” The cab jerked forward. His hand cupped her knee.

  “Sponging, huh?”

  “I said you’d get it back.”

  “Hell.” Her face was like a child’s in the semi-dark. She was wearing a brown coat in which her legs seemed longer than ever. “What close shave?”

  “That guy with me was from the speak. They guessed I’d tipped the guys off. Lucky Mac worked things out so carefully. Lucky I had a date with you. Lucky you spoke at the drug store.”

  “I was worried when the drug-store fellow told me about some guy wanting to settle a bet.”

  “If you’d a stood me up I’d’ve been forced to slough that investigating committee on his beak.” The tires were zizzing him away from peril, the winter streets slipping by in big black squares, nameless and distant. He relaxed, his fingers on her cool naked thigh. He didn’t kiss her, smoking his butt. Through the thin blue haze, his lips were apart. He might’ve been exclaiming: Oh, what a break!

  “It’s cold,” she said, edging closer to him. She didn’t get him at all. What the hell! It was all over with, he was out of it all right, what the hell was he moping for? She decided he was worrying about his share of the stickup. That was something she could get. She asked him about it. How much was his cut? He thought it ought to be pretty big. Damn right. He’d been close enough to real trouble for a good cut. He was soft in the brain to take the chance. Damn all hell. One of the kids could’ve been in the speak. Why him? He didn’t expand the idea. He thought McMann was out to get rid of him, to get him in dutch, to get him killed. If McMann had been necessary to him in the beginning, he’d been necessary to McMann. But now they were blowing up big, the kids were practically their property; the burglary of Metz, the stickups of the paint supply and the speak, clinched it. They were shooting up with talk of a clubhouse. What the hell did McMann need him for? The hard red face of the bastard, the small red eyes never twinkling, never mad, but always cool and plotting. The damn devil. McMann didn’t need him, and when a devil didn’t need a guy…. He wiped his brow, remembering the terror, the ginzo and the mick wedging him into the phone booth like a rat backed up against a wall by two cats, their breaths hot, their eyes hot with blood lust. He must’ve been punch-drunk not to have felt the terror of that, ringing the drug store, his life worth zero. Madge, her thigh against his own, thought she’d worked him up at last. He was shivering. She thrust her hand against his chest. Suddenly, out of fear and hatred, he smacked her across the face. She bolted back into her corner of the cab, glaring. “Cut it,” he said.

  “You bastard. What you mean sloughin’ me?” She couldn’t get him. A minute ago he was steaming up a lather and now he was an iceberg, sloughing her, the nervy bastard. He was a funny guy, damn him. A queer. A phony. The different guy, the swell guy. He was funny. Gee, she loved him even if he was a queer, sloughing her for nothing at all. Her eyes were moist. For the first time in months she felt a passion, a love, an emotion known when she’d lived out in Brooklyn and lined up for a guy she liked extra, getting nothing out of it but her pleasure. Now again, after the professional routine, the onslaughts of a thousand men built the same way, this passion swelled her breasts and lay between them like a rare flower. She breathed harshly, haunted by the quest, the search for happiness and a swell guy fulfilled, her lips hanging, her eyes larger and overwhelming her entirely like two huge misty pools from which in some mystic way her body flowered. She leaned towards him, forgiving as a beaten dog.

  He was sorry he’d cracked her, puzzled at this yearning giving of her. What the hell was she acting for? She looked like a dope, a school kid. So that was it. Both of them misunderstood passion. She thought he was a funny bird, loving him because maybe he was the swell guy every dame dreamed of, the swell guy who was different, who had class, something. He thought she loved him because he was brutal. It was a cockeyed feeling, the reasons and the underlying emotions tangled up in one dark rose of love. The cab hurled along, its horn screeching. The streets were left behind like many yesterdays. They seemed to come to one another from across the city, each from some lonely place, no longer thinking or wondering why it was so.

  She slipped him all her dough, sixteen bucks. He paid the hack, grabbed her arm, walking languidly against the wind, their thighs grazing. They registered at the desk of a small hotel in a sidestreet off Sixth Avenue. The street was full of restaurants, lobster joints, ginzo spaghetti houses. The three hotels in the block catered to fast-time crowds, small stone buildings that had known prime twenty years ago, even then decadent, as if somehow they could never be up to date. Grifters, racketeers and their molls, lived here. Bill had no baggage. He’d been here before, in this musty lobby with the boys scanning the form sheets. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “Don’t be long, honey,” she said.

  He glanced back at her from the door. She was standing at the end of the faded carpet, a little to the right of the desk and the impassive hotel clerk, a young ambitious man trying to uphold the grand tradition of hotel clerks in this joint, smartly dressed, polite as a diplomat; Bill’s eyes swift across the lobby, the slick boys reading, two men heeling two doll-like dames, his impression was of something smooth as grease rubbed across the dank woods of the old hostelry. Madge smiled, her lips without any wild red. Lipstick was over his mouth. He took out his handkerchief as if signaling he’d be back soon. His stupid heart was beating and he thought of it with an old cynicism, stepping briskly. She was nuts about him because he’d slammed her. The secret of his success was a sock in the puss. Holy hell, just a caveman. But she was nuts about him. That was something among all his troubles
. His head rang. The glitter of Broadway, like perfect teeth shining in the mouth of a diseased hag, dazzled him. He was awed by the city, this warren of six million lives, oh, little loves, little lives hoping, sweating towards the alluring promise of wealth and fame. Oh, to win, to come out ahead, to beat the racket. Christ, all he wanted was a few thousand. A fat chance with Hanrahan after him, with McMann and his sneaky brain-guy stratagems. Damn it, he ought to be glad someone, even a little bat like Madge, cared for him. She was his other self found again, his dark sensual self lost from flesh and returned in heart.

  He hopped a cab, rubbing the handkerchief across his mouth. It stained red, the smudged color the blood of another time. Madge. Madge. He smoked furiously, aching to be with her, thinking of her legs, the cool thighs, the small young-girl breasts, with a new appreciation. She was more than she used to be. She was the world because she cared for a guy called Bill. Groggy, exultant, he paid the fare. The cab shot away, the tail-lamp a retreating sad eye. Twenty-third hid in the dark mist of February as if no soul lived in any of its houses.

  McMann had been drinking with the kids, all of them surrounding the bottle of rye. The kids were celebrating, boisterous with success like a winning football team on Saturday night.

  “Here’s the brain guy.” Schneck staggered over to Bill, his huge body like a wrestler’s, his breath dark brown with whisky smell. He circled his shoulders fondly, his face pale and strong as a butcher boy’s. “Want your cut, huh? We’ll give ya a cut like the rabbi.” Bill took the drink McMann offered. Mike declared he could kiss Bill. He thanked them for the compliments, nodding at Ray’s buzzings. Ray looked more than ever like McMann’s kid brother. Mike blabbed of the swell kicks he was going to buy, three pairs of kicks at one clip, that was him all over, a sport. Their talk swung in low heavy circles. Schneck laughed, and in one triumphant voice all three kids were boasting of what a pipe the stickup was, what a swell guy McMann was, what a swell guy Bill was, of the best, both of them. This exultation of the mosquitoes filled his ears with irritation. This exultation was precisely what McMann wanted. Red devil with the real sting. Bill stared at the enigma of McMann, without comradeship, chilled, hostile, preparing. He told them of what had happened, his close shave. He could’ve been dead as easy as hell if the coin hadn’t come up lucky.