Catch the Brass Ring

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS A STICKY hot carnival day, the sun sweating down on Surf Avenue, Coney Island, through a murky sky and wringing people out like wet washrags. Even the fat blue-bellied flies swam through the heavy air in slow circles before homing in on the watermelon rinds and corn cobs in the gutter.

It was the kind of day you wanted to shut your ears to the clattering el trains, the carousel organs brassily gargling Lathi music and waltzes, the clanging gongs, the rat-tat-tat from shooting galleries, the staccato chants of the pitchmen, the steady throbbing hum of a million perspiring people dragging themselves from one fun house to the next.

Unless you were feeling great you wished you could pull down God’s window shade and then lift it and look out on a different, cleaner world. I was feeling great.

I found a bar and grill sandwiched between a freak show which offered a thousand-dollar reward if you failed to see Trina the Turtle Girl as advertised and a gift shop crammed with feathers and cheap jewelry glaring out at the street with pinwheel eyes. Inside, the bar had a cool beer smell and I started chasing gin and tonics with gin and tonics and I was feeling better all the time.

I stabbed a finger in the barman’s direction and asked him, “Where’s Tolliver’s Funland?”

He was tall, that barman, with the name Ben stitched in blue on his white shirt. He had the look of a cadaver, thin and leathery, with a nose so long and drooping he could probably stick out his tongue and touch the tip of it.

“You looking for someone special at Tolliver’s?” Ben demanded.

“Yes, an old friend of mine. Bert Archer.”

“Bert’s a nice guy.”

“The best.”

“He’s not in any trouble, mister?”

I shrugged. “Not from me.”

Ben wiped his hands on a dishtowel, rubbing the sweat-matted hair on the backs of his fingers until it dried and curled. “It’s a coincidence,” he said. “I’m on my way down to Tolliver’s, too. I’ll take you.” His head swiveled on a thin, veined neck and he showed me a side view of his bobbing Adam’s apple while he shouted, “Hey, Becky! It’s all yours.”

A fat woman waddled out from the rear of the place. She wore dark slacks and the heat had pasted them to her. She wore a white man’s shirt like Ben’s, with the name Becky stitched over the big left breast which undulated as she walked. “I’ll be back soon,” Ben told her. “Going to Tolliver’s.”

“Tell them what I said, Ben.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all you ever do, think about it.”

“I don’t want any trouble.”

“That’s the trouble. You don’t want any trouble. It’s so damned hot we should have air-conditioning. Can we afford air-conditioning?”

“I think I ought to keep my nose clean.”

“We should take a vacation up to Blue Mountain Lake or someplace. Can we afford it?” Becky was raising her voice.

“It’s too hot to argue, Becky. We got customers.”

Becky looked at me. “I’m sorry, mister.”

I winked at her, then glanced at the stitching over her breast as if I’d seen her name for the first time. “That’s all right, Becky,” I said. “This heat would make anyone want a vacation at Blue Mountain Lake or someplace.”

“Don’t get her started on Blue Mountain Lake,” Ben pleaded, leading the way outside. “Tolliver’s is three blocks up, by West 12th. Friend of Bert Archer, you say?”

Most of the pitchmen didn’t direct their spiels at us. They must have recognized Ben. “We fought together,” I said. “In Korea. Third Division.”

“If you’re really a good friend of Bert’s, you can give him some advice. I get to know things, but I don’t talk much, understand?”

An old woman, fatter than Ben’s wife, wanted to guess my weight, my age, my first name, occupation, state of birth, girl friend’s name, favorite food, hobby, anything. She sat, sweating and unabashed, in her big chair-scale. She tipped it at a sylphlike two hundred pounds, the needle quivering as she rocked back and forth.

“What kind of advice?” I asked Ben as we crossed the street and he waved to a young kid at the mike in a pokerino joint.

“Good advice, the very best. Tell Bert to get out of Tolliver’s, out of Coney Island, even. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I usually mind my own business, but Bert’s a nice guy.”

I didn’t know whether to believe Ben or not. It was too hot and I still felt too good to care much. I said, “Has he done something wrong?”

“He’ll know what if you tell him, mister.”

“Call me Gid. Gideon Frey’s the name. I can’t very well tell Bert to leave Tolliver’s, Ben. You see, I’m going to work for him there.”

“Oh, no. I should have kept my big mouth shut. I always put my foot in it.” Ben grinned sheepishly, but underneath he seemed alarmed.

On the corner of West 12th, a crowd had gathered. A white-smocked boy who couldn’t have been out of high school very long sat at a bridge table, staring indifferently at a rack of blood-filled phials in front of him, twisting a length of thin rubber tubing in his fingers. An overheated car was parked at the curb, its hood up, double microphones bolted to its roof blaring a man’s voice. He said I had four or five quarts of blood in my body, he said it was the most important thing I had, more important than time or money. He said all they wanted to test was five cc’s, a mere spit in the bucket. It was for my own good only, a public service. The guy in the smock told a twelve-year-old kid he was too young for that kind of thing and the kid said, how do you know, smartie.

The crowd outside Tolliver’s was bigger, but quieter. It was so still you heard more noise from two blocks away. The gin had come through my pores and plastered my shirt to my back. It must have lingered on my lips, too, for when I asked someone what was up he averted his face and jerked his thumb toward the two green and white police cars and the emergency ambulance at the curb.

A cop walked by and I tapped him on the shoulder, but his eyes stopped me with a mind-your-own-business look. I pushed after him through the crowd, Ben, following in my wake. The place had no doors, but a cop stood between two of the pillars supporting the first-story roof.

“You can’t go in there,” he said.

“No?”

“No. Those that are inside stay in. Those that are outside stay out. Orders.”

I peered inside. All the rides had shut down. Faces stared out at me, nervous and pale, female and male, all looking identical. The brilliant masses confronted with the unexpected. Gideon Frey, I thought, you are a no-good snob.

A dark-haired girl sat on the sidewalk just outside the place, her back propped against one of the green and white pillars, her knees drawn up and circled by her arms. She cried softly but steadily, eyes opened wide and fastened on her knee-clasped hands without seeing.

I hated to bother her, but she probably was from inside and knew what was going on. I was still bursting with enthusiasm and a little high and dying to see my old friend, Bert Archer.

“I’m looking for Mr. Archer,” I said. “Bert Archer?”

I think the girl heard me. She started crying louder. The cop said to me, “O. K., Mac. Let her alone.”

The girl glanced up at me and kept on crying. It caught on a sob and changed to hysterical laughter.

“You’re about an hour… late,” she told me. “Bert Archer is dead.”

I heard a sharp sucking in of breath behind me. I whirled and got stared down by a matronly woman who’d caught my swinging elbow in a compromising spot. Ben had vanished.

The girl was honking her nose in a big man’s handkerchief someone had given her. She made no attempt to stand up, so I squatted on my haunches at her side. Someone had crept up behind me and shoved just when I’d stood up high on the top of the world with a pair of rose-colored glasses you needed a valise to carry. I yelled, “What the hell are you talking about? Do you know Bert? Goddammit, how do you know he’s dead? I only spoke to him on the phone this morning. Goddammit.”

A hand closed on my shoulder and a voice said, “Uh-uh. Cut it out.”

I looked up at a cop in a new, starched uniform. He had a baby face. If the uniform had been boy scout khaki you might have figured he was a little old for that sort of thing, but only a little. Blond hair peeked out from under the visored cap, baby blue eyes appraised me. I suddenly thought if they let boys like this on the police force I was getting old but I’m only thirty.

“Did you know Bert Archer?” the young cop asked me. Waiting for my answer, he removed his cap and ran the fingers of one hand through his blond hair like the teeth of a comb. I’d have bet he spent a lot of time preening in front of a mirror.

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s got no right to talk like that about Bert Archer.”

I’d squawked right into his baby face. He turned away from the gin fumes distastefully and said, “Brother. Did you tie into one. Drinking alone?”

I shrugged.

“Listen, mister. We have enough trouble now. Don’t make me run you in.”

“What’s she got against old Bert?”

“It will come out in the coroner’s inquest.”

The girl kept on crying. The cop just looked at me, trying to decide whether to run me in or not. I took deep breaths and became drunker by the minute on stuff I’d downed half an hour ago. The heat, probably.

Other cops drifted in and out of the crowd, disappearing into Tolliver’s Funland. The ambulance attendants entered their buggy and took off, siren wailing because they were in a hurry to sprawl out on their cots at the hospital until another call came. Soon another vehicle slipped into their spot at the curb, looking like a cross between an ambulance and a panel truck. Two men climbed out with a big wicker basket, and that should have sobered me. It made me higher. I lit a cigarette and dragged it down to an ember in a minute flat, thinking that would help. I wound up as high as and with a sore throat.

Tolliver’s Funland swallowed the basket and its attendants. Another crew of men came out with cameras and flash attachments, talking about the weather and how the chiefs wife was probably going to have triplets, she looked so big in her seventh month. When the basket boys hit Surf Avenue again they had to struggle with their burden. The blond cop strutted about, patting his nightstick against the palm of his hand and clearing an aisle through the crowd.

I lurched over to the heavy basket and lifted the lid before anyone could stop me. My tongue was so thick I didn’t think I could clamp my teeth shut in front of it. A lady or a eunuch in the crowd screamed.

The cop’s nightstick crushed my fingers against the wicker. “Cut it out, mister,” the blond kid said.

“That’s Bert,” I said. “Christ, that’s Bert.”

The dark-haired girl honked again. The wicker basket bobbed on through the aisle in the crowd.

“I have a good mind to run you down to the precinct,” the blond cop told me. “Just who do you think you are?”

“Forget it. I was all ginned up. I’m sober now.” And I was. Looking inside the basket had flushed the gin from my brain. It was Bert. Bert had fought with an infantry platoon through the hills of Korea and stayed alive despite the best efforts of the gooks so he could return to Tolliver’s Funland in Coney Island and get himself killed.

“What’s your name?”

“Gideon Frey. I’m sorry, officer. Bert and I…”

“Where are, you from?”

“Camp Kilmer. I just got separated yesterday. What happened in there?”

“Mind your own business.” He tried on a sneer for size but the way I looked at him said it was five years away from being perfected.

“I’m his friend. I’ve got a right to know.”

“You veterans are alt alike. Think the world owes you a living. Why don’t you wise up and act like other people?”

“What’s the matter, the Army reject you?” He had a way of bringing out the worst in me. Besides, if I didn’t act nasty I was going to sit down on the sidewalk near the dark-haired girl and bawl like a baby.

“How well did you know the deceased?” The cop was scribbling in a little pad with a mechanical pencil.

“We built the best damned kill-proof bunker in Korea,” I said. “We swapped stories and dry socks and C-rations. We got scared together and went out on patrols together.”

“Had you seen him earlier today?”

“Go practice your questions on someone else,” I said. It surprised him so much he stuttered over it three times before he told me to answer his questions and shut up. He stuttered some more when I informed him it was impossible to do both.

“I’m going to run you in,” he threatened me.

“O.K. If it will make you happy. But get this straight. The guy who died was my friend. Bert Archer. It doesn’t mean a thing to you but it means a lot to me. Are you from Homicide?”

“No. They told me to get names and addresses.”

“Fine. Then get them. Any questions you ask they’re going to ask all over again, only better. Why don’t you just run along and stop the kids from throwing candy wrappers on the beach?”

His knuckles whitened on the grip of the nightstick. “I’m going to run you in.”

“Am I your first?” I wanted to know.

I was striking out blindly. Later on I was going to have to live with the thought of Bert being dead. Now I couldn’t.

“I’ll ask the questions!”

I lit a cigarette and blew smoke in his face, making him cough. I offered him one and he reached out to take it, but I withdrew the pack and said, “Careful. You’re on duty. You’ll never make wolf scout this way.”

“Where do you live, wise guy?”

“I told you. I bought some civilian clothes and came straight here from Camp Kilmer. My duffle’s in a locker at Penn Station. I was going to report to Bert and start working here, then worry about a place to live.”

“Don’t get snotty. Then he hired you?”

“We were friends. We were going to work together and open our own Tolliver’s some day.”

“The people here wouldn’t have liked that.” It wasn’t the cop, but a throaty woman’s voice, sort of like a younger Marlene Dietrich without the Kraut flavor. She was standing close to us in the crowd and maybe she’d been there listening a long time. Wearing spike-heeled shoes that swelled her insteps out in full, rounded curves, she was my height, an even six feet. I don’t know what made me start at the bottom and work my way up, but I did and she had it all and I kept on liking it better and better until I saw the face. Don’t get me wrong. She was beautiful, if you like your women tanned with high cheekbones and flesh drawn taut over them and white-blonde hair longer than it’s supposed to be worn today and eyes under arched brows a deep blue like the eastern sky on a clear day just after the sun goes down.

But I’d seen her dog-eared photograph a hundred times on the southern slope of Hill 311 in Korea, a hundred more times on the crest, and half that on the northern slope before we’d both been hit by the same round of artillery fire and talked about how much better our own bunker was than the one we’d commandeered from the Reds while we waited for the doc to stop the bleeding and kill the pain in the aid station. And I saw it another hundred times, that picture, when we lay bandaged and doped on canvas cots in the field hospital with two Negroes calling across the squad tent, “Hey, this is better than the Waldorf-Astoria!”

This was Karen Tanner who Bert said he was going to marry. The way Karen looked, smiling and interested, she had just arrived and no one had told her about Bert. “You must be Gideon Frey,” she said, offering a long-fingered hand for a quick, mannish shake. “What’s all the fuss about? I’ll vouch for him if he’s in any kind of trouble, Billy. So will Bert. This is Bert’s friend from Korea.”

Billy was the cop. Billy mumbled something and showed Karen his clean white teeth, then busied himself attending to the dark-haired girl who was now on her feet but still sobbing. And that left me.

Strip him of dry socks, or good boots or anything you need, notch his dogtags in his teeth, roll him in a blanket and wait for the boys from graves-registration who wore cleaner fatigues on which you could still see the herringbone twill pattern. Only this was different. This wasn’t Korea.

“Bert’s talked about you a lot, Mr. Frey.”

I muttered something and tried to figure out how to tell her. Then she surprised me.

“I’ll be frank with you, though. We’ve only got a small concession in Tolliver’s and, well, you’ve heard the old expression about three being a crowd. Don’t misunderstand. If Bert has his heart set on you working here, that’s that. I thought you’d like to know before you start it would be an unnecessary expense, that’s all. Now will somebody tell me what’s going on here? What happened to Sheila?”

Sheila must have been the dark-haired girl. The cop had her in tow now, patting her back and stroking’ her hair and telling her to take it easy.

One of the almost-white eyebrows arched high and furrowed Karen’s broad forehead. “Something bad? Did we have a fire in our concession? I always told Bert some of that equipment would burn like tinder. I don’t see any fire engines.”

“No fire.”

“Then stop playing guessing games with me. If you’ve got something to say, say it.” Karen was neither angry nor arrogant. Haughty, you’d call it. Bert had been a quiet, bookish guy who belonged in the Infantry about as much as he belonged in Coney Island. I began to wonder how he’d hit it off so well with a haughty blond who would have towered over him in her high heels, who could outstare him, out-talk him and — looking at the strong curves of her body — very possibly outfight him.

“I don’t think this is the time or place,” I said.

“I don’t care what you think. If you don’t tell me what’s the matter, someone else will. You’re not exactly winning friends and influencing people on our first meeting, Mr. Frey.”

“All right. O.K.” We had an interested audience. Pleasure-seekers. They riled me right then. So did Billy-boy and Karen. I still felt like hurting someone else because I should have been drinking over old times with Bert. I said, “They just carried Bert out of Tolliver’s. He was dead.”

Karen’s deep blue eyes got big. She brushed a stray lock of hair back from her forehead where it had been matted with the sultry heat, opened her pocketbook and took out a silver cigarette case. I offered her a light and she took it and inhaled without saying anything. I wished she’d scream or rant or throw a tantrum.

“I knew it,” she said so low I hardly heard the words.

“So did a guy named Ben Lutz,” I shouted. “That makes two of you. But Bert probably didn’t know it because Bert’s dead. Was he murdered? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“If he’s dead he was murdered, Mr. Frey. Please leave me alone.”

“What do you mean, you knew it?”

“I said leave me alone!”

Billy had finished with the dark-haired Sheila. He tapped my shoulder and I told him to keep his hands to himself again. He said, “You’re coming down to the precinct with me, Frey.”

“Yeah? What for?”

“For what you did to the basket. For disturbing the peace. For anything I please.” Billy whispered the last part of it. I was the only one who heard him.

“I wasn’t disturbing the peace,” I said. “Was Bert murdered?”

“I can’t say anything about that,” he told the crowd importantly. “It might have been an accident. Might have been suicide. Might have been murder. That’s for the coroner to say. Ready, mister?”

Another cop poked his head out of a prowl car at the curb. “Do I shut her or leave her overheat, Billy? It’s a hot day.”

I bent and tied my shoelaces. I was feeling nasty. I wanted to rile him. When I straightened up I butted his chin with my head and heard his teeth click together. “I’m terribly sorry, officer,” I said.

He stuck a handkerchief between his lips and prodded me tentatively toward the prowl car. “Damn you…”

I looked back hoping Karen would at least show some signs of crying. She merely crushed out her cigarette and turned to walk inside Tolliver’s. She had long legs and a lovely behind but right then I hated every part of her.