“Maybe. Why did you punks sap me outside the hotel? Who you working for?”
“Just a job to us,” the gunman said, “we was hired. Come from Philly. Don't know a thing.”
“What's this money you were asking about?”
“You asking us?” he said, working his bloody mouth into a sneer.
“Sit on the floor, with your backs to me. Come on, move!” I cracked the gunman on the side of the head with the sap—but not hard enough to kayo him. He went down. I had the Luger in my left hand, covering the other monkey. He scrambled down on the floor beside his pal.
“Now reach forward and grab your toes—stay like that.”
They grunted and finally made their toes. Standing far enough behind them so they couldn't spin around and try anything, I swung the sap back and forth through the air. In the quiet of the office it made a faint swish sound.
“Look, fellows, I'm pooped, in no mood to futz around. You've jumped me twice, kicked the slop out of me, if you don't talk I'm going to beat your heads to a pulp.”
They didn't make a sound.
I said, “Know how your noggin is constructed? Your brain is a very delicate mass, suspended inside your skull. Know what causes a kayo? The sock on your jaw rattles the bone against your skull and that jars the brain against the bone structure, makes you black out If it gets rattled too hard, if the brain is bruised, you get a concussion. A bruise on the brain matter leaves a scar, if that's reopened by another blow, you either die, go blind, or end up paralyzed for life. That's why they don't let a pug with a concussion fight again. Or if he does, well—you know the ring deaths in recent years. Now a sap does lots more damage than a punch, sometimes it splinters the skull, a hunk of bone sticks in your brain.”
As I talked I kept swinging the sap through the air. The backs of their necks turned a flush-red, then went pale.
“Little lecture because I want you to think about all that soft spongy brain matter being rocked like this...” I socked the gunman again—lightly. “Think of it, that's two bruises your brain's had in the last five minutes. Another one and you may be blind or...”
“Cut it out!” he said, his voice a hoarse scream. “Told you this is only a job to us.”
“Honest!” the other goon whispered.
I tried to laugh. “Sure, just a good day's work!”
“We're getting a grand, must be a big deal,” the gunman said. “But it isn't the dough. Like I told you, we was hired in Philly and you was fingered to us this afternoon on the street and...
“By whom?”
“A guy called Gus. He come in from Atlantic City yesterday. We was to look around your joint for a bundle of folding money. We drive along Hudson Street for an hour till we see a Dodge sedan with a busted right headlight, give Gus what we had, get paid off.”
“Mac, that's the God's honest truth!” the other guy said. I cracked him on his balding dome. He fell over, then sat up again. I told him to grab his toes and he did, moaning. The whole mess was starting to get me a little sick.
“What kind of a story you dummies handing me? If you found the bundle, what's to stop you from crossing this Gus and...?”
“It would mean dying.” the gunman cut in. “Told you we're dealing with big stuff.”
“With Big Ed Franklin?”
“We wasn't given no names. We didn't ask for none.”
“This bundle—how much dough is it?”
“Didn't say,” the other joker chimed in. “We was to get that hunk of stone you had, then look around your office— and your wallet—for any hundred buck bills we could find.”
I was still whipping the sap about and his voice shook with every swish. He finally gulped, said, “Mac, that's the ticket, all we know.”
“When did you hit New York?”
“About noon this afternoon,” the gunman said.
“How about one in the morning, where you beat a girl to death on an East River dock!”
“You mean that one they got in the papers?” the second hood asked.
I slapped him with the blackjack and he fell on his side, shouted up at me, “What you want, us to make up a story to sell you? Like you said... don't want to get my brains... scrambled... we're leveling with you.”
“Catch your toes,” I said, pointing with the sap. “What's with this rock?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” the gunman said. “Looks like ordinary hunk of crummy stone to me. But I don't ask questions. Can I let go of my toes? My stomach and back are killing me.”
“Certainly,” I said. As he took his hands off his shoes I swatted him lightly. “But you get this.” He grabbed his toes again—but fast.
I didn't know what to think: I not only was on a merry-go-round but as Bobo said, I had a tiger by the tail and didn't know what to do with it. If Saltz found out I was holding out on him, the least he'd do would be revoke my license. I said, “Okay, get up—slowly—and keep your hands in the open. The three of us will meet this Gus in the busted Dodge.”
The gunman shook his head. “Buddy, you don't get the set-up. We ain't just a couple of hoods, we're big operators in Philly. We took this job because we had to... it was that important. They've imported guys from all around the East Coast. I'll lay you odds there's somebody watching us and...”
“Who's the 'they'?” I asked.
“You can kill me and I can't tell you because I don't know. We take orders, that's all.”
I don't know why, but I believed them, they were just a couple of errand boys. I was confused, weary, and tired of beating them, sick of all this crazy violence I'd been through. Only an idiot gets a bang out of smacking anybody. I saw a stamp-pad on my desk. “One at a time, go over and open that pad—leave your fingerprints on those papers next to it.”
“What's the idea?”
“Your calling cards—in case I want to look you up sometime in the future. Then you can beat it.”
“Beat it?” the gunmen repeated, relief and astonishment all over their bloody faces.
“No sense in licking a dead horse. We'll leave together, in case you have any pals waiting outside. Come on, make with the prints.”
From the way they left their prints, I knew they'd been printed before. I herded them out of the office, down the steps. The street looked deserted. I said, “Start walking toward Third Avenue and don't look back.”
They almost ran down the empty street. I jumped into my car and drove off. I still had the keys to their car, where-ever it was. Tomorrow I could trace it, but it would probably be a stolen job. At the moment I had only one thing on my mind—a talk with Willie Johnson, the lover-mailman.
13
It was almost two when I climbed the five flights to the Johnson apartment. Thelma was in the same housecoat I first saw her in and her eyes looked bad—red.
She squeezed my arm. “Oh Mr. Darling, you don't know how glad I am to see you. I'm simply a nervous wreck! Will kissing that woman before... millions and now.... Why in all the years we've been married I never...”
I sat down on the living-room couch, tried to think. Her chatter seemed to snow me under. Finally I cut her off with, “Mrs. Johnson—Thelma—I'm beat, tired, on edge. Got a drink around?”
“Why... yes. My, you do look... your poor face is a little puffy. Your nose—”
I dug out the wadded toilet paper from my nostrils. She gave out a mild scream and I said, “Only paper and blood. Where's the bottle of courage?”
“My... something happen to you?”
“Everything
has happened to me! You going to yak-yak me to death or get me a drink?”
She returned with a full bottle of Canadian whisky, sat on the couch beside me. I poured myself a good hooker, drank it, then poured one for her.
“Oh, Darling... that's such an odd name...”
“Skip it. Call me Hal.”
“I really don't drink, Hal. The doctor told me...”