The Men From the Boys - Ed Lacy

“All right, Bill,” I said getting up. “I didn't know you were so busy. Matter of fact I did drop in to talk about Lawrence. He wants to be a cop and I don't want him to have a bad time of it because of me.”

Bill sort of groaned and sat down again. “Don't talk to me about these auxiliary cops. They're driving us nuts.”

“Why?”

“Look, if you ask me this is all a lot of crap—if they think New York City might be bombed, then build air-raid shelters, real shelters. In a real bombing what the hell good will a batch of jokers in white helmets do, or all these drills and the rest of it? Ask me, it's just to keep the people on edge. But nobody asks me. The point is some boneheads downtown made a mistake assigning these tin cops here. This is a water-front section. They belong uptown where things are quiet. Don't worry, they won't be here long.”

“I thought they had their own setup?”

“They do, up to a point. They got some stuffed do-gooder that's a major or some damn thing in charge of them here, and he's such a strutting jerk, somebody is due to clip him. Most of them are crackpots anyway.”

“Lawrence is a bit cop-happy, but otherwise he's a serious kid.”

“Marty, I'm not saying they're all jerks, but you know what happens when you get volunteers. Everything is tossed in, including the bottom of the barrel. For every sincere kid like Lawrence, you get a dozen uniform-happy characters who are only looking for a chance to get away from their wives, walk around looking important.”

“Me, I don't think there will be a war, but you can never tell. But to get back to Lawrence, watch out for him.”

“I will. He's an intelligent kid.” Bill looked up at me. “Since when did you get so fatherly over him?”

“Since last night. He wants to be a cop, a real one, and I have a hunch he's eager beaver enough to build himself up, pass the exams. All right, with my name he's starting with two strikes and I don't want him to do anything that will make him look foolish now, when he's on this volunteer-cop kick. Last night he was all excited about some crazy butcher and a phony holdup.”

“I know, he came to me with that. He's green and full »f too much pep—thinks he has to prove himself, live up to the Bond name, all that. Don't worry—as an auxiliary there isn't much of a jam he can get into.”

“He can make a false arrest, like he almost did with that wacky meat chopper. Bill, he's a silly kind of kid and well... kids today can't take care of themselves the way we did.”

“Bull. Marty, the kids today are a lot smarter and tougher than we ever dreamed of being.” He stood up again. “Don't worry about him. Couple of weeks and he and the rest of these tin badges will be way uptown, putting in their hours directing traffic, or something. While he's here, I'll keep an eye on him. Marty, when this Anderson mess blows over, I'll have you out for supper some night and we'll talk.”

“Marge would sure love that; she could never stand the sight of me. All right, Bill, don't call me, I'll call you,” I said, and walked out. I heard him say, “Now, Marty, I told you I'm swamped ...” as I walked down the stairs.

On the way back to the hotel I had a sudden longing for watermelon and stopped in at the corner coffeepot. I told the old-bag waitress to give me a double hunk and she asked, “What you doing, Marty, eating for two?”

“That's it.”

She thought it was funny and showed me all her bad teeth in a laugh. “Something as big and ugly as you pregnant!”

“Honey, you don't know how much pregnant,” I told her.

I washed down the bad taste in my mouth with a couple of glasses of iced coffee and I was belching before I reached the hotel lobby. Lawson nodded at the office behind him, said, “Mr. King is quite upset over that rug. He wants you to call him.”

“Tell him I couldn't care less,” I said, walking past the desk and into the hallway that took me to my room.

There was no sense in stalling. I locked the door and took off my shirt, tie, and shoes—to be comfortable—then I sat down and wrote a short note to Flo telling her about my gut. I didn't know why I wrote her, she wouldn't give a damn. But then I had to leave some sort of note.

I got out my Police Special. A gun can be the most beautiful or the most ugly thing in the world—depending upon which end you're looking at. Right now it looked ugly as hell.

I sat on the bed and put the muzzle in my mouth, tasting the oil. In a few seconds King would have another rug to get himself in an uproar over. For some reason that seemed funny to me.

For the first time in days I smiled—if you can smile with a gun between your teeth—as I pushed the safety off.

Two

At five after ten that night Dewey pounded on my door. I was in a drunken haze—I'd knocked off over a pint in an effort to get up courage and as usual liquor had let me down; all that happened was I went to sleep for a few hours.

I stumbled out of bed and never felt so awful, worse than when Art told me I had cancer—for the first time in my life I knew I was a phony, a damn coward.

I couldn't understand it; I'd risked my life plenty of times without a thought. I'd even played Russian roulette once when I was young and well crocked. “If you're not afraid to die, then there's nothing to be scared of” was the motto I'd lived by, yet when my own personal chips were down, I didn't have it—I didn't have it at all.

All right, if I didn't have the guts to do it myself, I'd have to figure out some way of getting killed, because I sure wasn't going to take the slow torture of cancer. It wouldn't have been so hard to stop a bullet when I was on the force, but now... Who the hell bothers shooting a house dick? A lousy...?

Dewey knocked again, said softly, “Marty, the cop is here, your son.”

“All right, all right.” I went to the bathroom and washed out the taste in my mouth with tooth powder, ran some water over my face and hands. I slipped on my pants and opened the door. Dewey asked, “What's the matter with you? I been buzzing all night.”

“I'm sick.” The cold water had done the trick, I was pretty sober.

He looked past me and saw the empty pint beside my bed. “So I see. You're a fine one, not even giving me a taste for my cold. Things went smoothly tonight.”

“Yeah?” It was a welcome shock to realize from now on I didn't have to give a damn how anything went—except to figure out a way of dying before the damn cancer got me on a slab.

“Business been pretty fair with the girls. Must be due to it getting a little cooler tonight. What about your son? Don't help things having a cop hanging around the lobby.”

“You mean he's in uniform?”

“No, but I know he's a cop. I don't like it.”

“Forget him—send him in.”

I kicked the fallen soldier under the bed, straightened up the sheets a little, waved a towel around to get the sweaty stink out of the air.

Lawrence came in, said, “The character out at the desk tells me you're sick.”

“Heat got me down. Take a chair.” The kid had a crew cut like Lawson, was wearing a polo shirt and slacks. He looked better out of uniform. Except for his scrawny neck, he had a neat build for his size.

He slapped my bare stomach. “Still got your rubber tire. Remember how you used to tell about the times you were in the ring and the other guy would waste his punches on your pouch, leave your chin alone, and how you could take it down there all night long?”

I said yeah and looked down at my gut, the fat and the muscles under that, and now under the muscles a lousy tumor waiting like a booby trap. I sat on the bed, changed the subject with, “What's new on Cocky Anderson?” I winked at him. “Speaking of remembering, when you were a young snot you clipped out crime stories like other kids did baseball pictures. What's your dope on this one?”

He winked back. “Okay, keep on riding me, Marty. All I know is what the papers have. Medical examiner claims Anderson had been dead for about twenty-four hours when some youngsters stumbled on his body. The papers say Anderson hadn't been around his usual spots for the last few weeks, but then he'd been a difficult one to keep tabs on. That's about all. Oh yes, they think he was shot someplace else, then dumped in this lot.”

“Bochio still shouting off his mouth down in Miami?”

“Sure. The papers have him saying he's sorry somebody beat him to the killing. Bochio's daughter is reported to have collapsed. I suppose you knew Anderson? What is—was— his name, Rocky or Cocky?”

“Both. He came out of the army a pork-and-bean middleweight, but smart enough to give up the ring. Then he became a muscleman, had some luck—sort of a throwback to the old-style trigger-happy hood, except he used his fists. That's when they started calling him Cocky Anderson, way he used to swagger around. For a time he was a syndicate cop, then branched out on his own, bucked them. He was rough—and dumb.”

“What's a syndicate cop?” the kid asked—like a kid.

“A punk a little more rugged than the other creeps, keeps them in line. You all out to solve the big murder too, Lawrence, like a movie dick?”

He sat down on the bed beside me. “Gather you don't think much of me as a prospective policeman, do you, Marty?”

“What I think is anybody is a fool to become a cop. Talked to Bill Ash today. He says you volunteer coppers get in his hair, that you're a bunch of screwballs,” I said, wondering why I was baiting the kid.

“I wouldn't go that far; we're a fair sampling of any bunch of volunteers. You have the sincere fellows, some jerks, and a few angle lads—wanting to get in on the ground floor, hoping this will be a good thing, moneywise, in time. For the higher-ups, there are some good-paying jobs, the usual political plums.”

“Think your night stick will beat an atomic attack?”

He grinned again. “I know what Lieutenant Ash thinks, and in a way he's right—if we really expect a war we should build shelters now. But then, even a little preparedness is better than none at all. Hell, Marty, you know why I'm in it—gives me a taste of being a cop.”

“Are you still working on the big liverwurst mystery?”

“Yes. And I'm convinced I've come up with something. I came to tell you about it. I went up to see where Lande lives. He seems to have come into money recently. The janitor of the building was the talkative type, told me Mrs. Lande has blossomed out with a mink coat and her own Caddy. All within the last month. Before that the janitor claims he had to remind them to come up with the rent.”

“You fool, the janitor will tell Lande you were asking about him and he'll complain downtown and they'll take away your tin badge, maybe even arrest you for impersonating a policeman!”

Lawrence gave me a wise smile. “Marty, I'm studying to be a lawyer, I'm aware of the law. I told him I was an insurance investigator making a routine check, and to keep it quiet. The point is, you see what all this proves.”

“I don't see nothing.”

“It proves he could have been robbed of the fifty grand.”

“And the two clowns who are supposed to have done it returned it a few hours later with a sorry-opened-by-mistake note!”

Lawrence looked at me like I was backward. “Once we establish that it is possible he had the money, it gives credibility to his original story—that he was robbed. By the way, did you read in the evening papers where two young hoodlums from the West Side were shot to death in a gas-station holdup outside Newark early this morning?”

“I didn't read that, Mr. Holmes. In fact I haven't read the evening papers. But what docs it prove?”

“I don't know that it proves anything yet. But struck me it was a coincidence they were both shot through the heart, one bullet each. Fellow has to be quite a marksman to do that in the heat of a stick-up. Another thing, no witnesses.”

“There'd hardly be any witnesses early in the morning. When would you expect them to hold up the joint—when it was crawling with customers?”

“Merely a thought,” Lawrence said in that precise way he had of talking. “Two young punks rob and return fifty grand, and a dozen hours later two young punks are shot dead. Seems to me the only reason they returned the money would be because they were frightened—frightened of somebody powerful enough to kill them. According to the papers, and I read them all, their description fits the one Lande first gave me of the holdup men. Of course that's a general description. I asked the Newark police to let me see the bodies—they refused. Oh, yes, the gas-station owner has a record, did time for assault many years ago. But he has a permit to carry a gun and he...”

“You'd better cut this, kid, before you hook up every crime in the country with a robbery that never happened to your batty butcher. I suppose you saw the butcher, asked him to identify the bodies?”

The boy actually blushed. “Why, yes, I did suggest it. I dropped in late in the afternoon, after I read about the killings. You recall I said he was so nervous yesterday? Well, today he was all corny jokes and full of good cheer. Wanted to give me a thick steak. But when I asked him, as a citizen helping the cause of justice, to go over to Newark and look at the bodies, he blew a gasket. Shouted I was trying to make a sick man have another stroke, told me to get out.”

“'... a citizen helping the cause of justice'... Goddamn! I— Lawrence, you're one for the books, the joke books!”

“What's the joke? If he was really interested in helping ...?”

“Lawrence, first off, nobody likes to look at a couple of stiffs, much less ride all the way over to Newark to do it. Secondly, since the butcher denied there ever was a holdup, why should he agree to look at a couple of dead punks?”

“There're two sides to every coin and the reverse side of this one is that Lande is scared, that he knows the two dead men are the same ones who robbed him. Okay, laugh if you wish, but that's my opinion of the case. I think there's something in all this. Tomorrow I'm going to have a talk with Lande's driver.”

“I hope you're not giving this cock-and-bull story to Bill Ash.”

“He's too busy on the Anderson killing to see me.” He stood up. “Dot was glad I talked to you yesterday.”

“Was she? Has she changed much?”

“No. At least not that I've noticed or...” He saw my gun on the dresser. I'd forgotten all about the lousy thing. “What are you doing with this—planning to kill somebody?”