Catch the Brass Ring

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SHEILA LED the way down a flight of stairs in a little closet this side of Karen’s penny arcade. Sheila opened the closet’s lock with a key. Kellum was reaching for a key, too, so more and more this figured for a community enterprise. Only I never suspected Sheila was a part of it.

The first thing that hit me on the dark stairs was the odor. The chief factor without which all the elaborate plans and scientific methods in the world won’t help at all in the successful operation of a still is location. Tolliver’s scored a hundred percent with its mixed stinks. Chlorine from the pool, Italian spices, taffy, popcorn, cotton candy, the huge doughnut machine — you name it.

“The masking odor is perfect,” Soolpovar said, following us down the stairs. Someone fingered a light switch and a couple of seconds later fluorescents flickered on.

I gasped. Machinery pumped and ground, mash bubbled sluggishly out of sight in two rows of huge cylindrical vats ten feet high and a dirty gray in color. I counted twelve vats in all, connected by piping, green-molded and studded with gauges. Three men in faded surplus Army fatigues surveyed us and nodded when Soolpovar said hello, then returned to their gauges and vats.

“Tolliver’s is ideal for another reason,” Soolpovar went on, “as you no doubt realize. Huge quantities of sugar are consumed upstairs in the making of cotton candy, and taffy. The same is true of all the water in the bathhouse and steam rooms. Only grain we got to obtain on the Q.T. Pretty neat eh?”

It was neat, all right. It was ne plus ultra as the Romans used to say. It was a million bucks worth of equipment.

“Funny part of it is,” Soolpovar continued his guided tour, “most people don’t realize bootlegging is a big-time business. A guy pays a fin for a bottle of good rye, most of it goes to the government. Taxes. Make it yourself, like this, you get a four, five hundred percent profit. The government was asking for trouble with taxes so high, they were asking for the bootleggers to get started again. The guy who signs the dollar bills in Washington finds himself short over a billion bucks a year, thanks to stills like these. A billion dollars. The last couple of years the T-men took over thirty thousand illegal stills, but we won’t get caught. The T-men don’t get a rumble from us. Nothing. You know why.”

I said I knew why and paused thinking Soolpovar would take up the slack. Sheila came to the rescue by saying, “Because the entire operation functions right here. We don’t have to depend on unreliable outside contacts at all.”

“Naturally,” I said. “Vito delivers, to your outlets, so there’s no middle man.”

“Vito don’t just deliver,” Soolpovar told me. “Vito also gets the bottles. You’d be surprised how many apartment superintendents will take two bits for a whiskey bottle if the bartenders we supply can’t keep enough bottles flowing back. And let me tell you something else, if you drink some of our stuff out of a Canadian Club bottle, brother, that’s what it tastes like, Canadian Club. We do the bottling here, too,” Soolpovar went on. “Inna next room. Labels we repair or get ’em made up for us by a guy out in Jersey. The only loose cog in the whole business.”

“He can be trusted,” I said. Obviously, I was supposed to know about such matters.

“That’s the boss’ business,” Soolpovar told me. He lit a cigarette and it glowed very white under the pale fluorescents as he dragged deeply. “And yours.”

“That’s right, Soopy. You know the boss is careful and that’s why I’m here.”

“Hell, we’re taking every precaution in the book. Them pipes you see run cold water through the mash vats, so the place don’t overheat. That little thing on the wall over there — see, it looks like a torpedo tube — opens on a pipe which dumps the used mash out into the Atlantic Ocean. I get a charge every time I read how Coney Island water is polluted. I’ll say polluted!

“And we keep up production, Frey. We’re turning out a thousand gallons of hundred and ninety proof booze a day, to be watered down and sold as the real McCoy. There’s nothing wrong with the stuff, either, and that gripes the T-men every time, let me tell you.”

I began to feel like the visiting executive at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Altoona, Pa. They conducted me next into the bottling room, where half a dozen men stood around and let the machinery do its work, the conveyor belts spinning endlessly around the bottle-racks, the six racks, one for each of half a dozen different brands of popular whiskey, depositing their bottles smoothly into place, the finished liquor pouring smoothly into the bottles “with hardly a drop wasted. A man could work up quite a thirst just watching it.

Soolpovar plucked one of the bottles off its belt before it reached the sealer and offered it to me. “Try some.”

I drank from the bottle. The label said Four Roses. That’s what it tasted like, Four Roses.

“How about that now?” Soolpovar demanded after I put the bottle down. “Any complaints?”

“Huh-uh. It’s good stuff.”

That finished the tour. Soolpovar spoke in low tones with a couple of the bottlers and Sheila went upstairs. Kellum stood close to me and right along he’d been smiling when I smiled, and scowling when I scowled. More and more Karen’s prediction made sense.

I poked around a while, looking for nothing in particular but trying to give the impression of careful scrutiny. That equipment could rival what some of the smaller legit liquor outfits used to turn out their aged brew. Someone was cleaning up like mad, although I guessed the people at Tolliver’s didn’t go unrewarded for their labors.

I decided to have a talk with Karen but couldn’t find her anywhere upstairs, so I left Tolliver’s to get a bite to eat, since Vito still hadn’t opened his pizzeria. My steps took me automatically to the Lutz bar until I remembered about Ben, who had wanted to tell me something and got himself killed instead. The bar was closed, anyway. If Becky were in the back somewhere, I didn’t want to disturb her.

I tried another bar around the corner and ordered a couple of hamburgers and a bottle of beer, then got to talking with the chunky, balding guy behind the counter. Yes, he knew about Ben Lutz. Terrible thing. No, he hadn’t heard how Mrs. Lutz was taking it. Yeah, he figured today was going to be another scorcher, too. I was from Tolliver’s. That’s nice. What did I have on my mind? Another beer? Sure. Has who been selling him something? Vito Lucca? Sure, he knew Vito. Good boy, what he means, clean-cut. Working all the time in the pizzeria, out of it, delivering, picking up, you know. What kind of deliveries? He didn’t want to be bothered, Mac. He hadn’t said a thing.

Well, he wouldn’t tell every Tom, Dick and Gideon about Vito’s deliveries, that was for sure. On the other hand, I could sop up beer at more Coney Island joints, especially on a hot day.

They knew Vito almost to a man. Industrious young guy, always on the go. They knew him in the red-mirrored joints on the boardwalks, and in the side street places which served beer on tap with a fresh smell that quenched your thirst before you even sipped the amber brew. And they knew him in the commercial joints where a guy doubled as a quick-order cook on the greasy, chrome-backed grill and bartender out in front.

Did that make Vito a big wheel? Vito Lucca, pizza specialist and boy genius of the new, scientific bootlegging. Not necessarily. Vito was the errand boy, and — because Soolpovar and the others might cherish anonymity — the contact man. Hadn’t Becky told me Ben had more contacts than Vito? Then she wanted Ben to take Vito’s place, which meant that as far as Becky knew Vito wasn’t top dog or even close.

This place-1 was getting had a name. Nowhere. Sure, the neighborhood bars carried on a brisk trade with Vito. Maybe they knew it was bathtub brew and maybe they didn’t. You hear stories about bootleg boys who claimed they got the stuff tax-free outside the country and then smuggled it in.

I wondered if I ought to place a call to the Treasury Men. But I thought of Karen and I hesitated. I had to give this thing a whirl myself, first. If the law got itself cheated for another few days or more that was the law’s problem. I had my own to think about. Name of Karen.

So it was back to Tolliver’s again, and I wasn’t the only one who had that idea. The joint was jumping. People drifted from one amusement to the next, some of them munching wedges of pizza from Vito’s place. But Vito wasn’t there. One of the kids who helped out with the summer crowd dished out the slices of pie, piping hot and in portions larger than Vito would have considered necessary.

When I discovered Karen still hadn’t returned, I figured I might as well cool off with a swim in the pool. I went upstairs, but no further. Vito, who sold pizza and also dealt in the illegal liquor traffic, was in addition a woman beater.

At least, a Sheila beater.

They stood at the top of the stairs shouting, and the last thing I heard Sheila say was, “You’re impossible!”—before Vito’s right hand darted out and struck her smartly across the cheek.

Sheila looked at Vito not with anger, but surprise. “I think it’s like you’re crazy,” she said. “You’re crazy jealous, that’s what,”

Vito tried again, but I moved between them and caught his forearm. “Someone your own size?” I said. “Your own sex?” And landed on the floor on my back. Great stuff. Gideon Frey to the rescue, hitting the floor with the base of his spine and seeing stars. Vito had used judo, and the way he stood waiting for me said he knew plenty more.

I got up and barreled in at him and landed on my back again. He moved so swiftly I couldn’t tell what he was doing, but I could feel it. This time I let Vito dance and strut a little before I climbed to my feet again.

Cocky-quick he danced toward me, then chopped with a judo cut. I sidestepped and drove my own left fist at his head. He cursed and I said “temper” and Sheila said wouldn’t we please cut it out before someone got hurt.

Vito had his own ideas for cutting things out. His foot blurred up out of nowhere and buried itself in the pit of my stomach. You know how it is. First you feel nothing. Then a numbness and a hard-to-breathe feeling starts down at your belt buckle and fills your whole body to exploding. You can’t stand any longer but that doesn’t matter because you can’t breathe. You fall and roll over, clutching your stomach and retching and when you get to feel, a little better you start wishing you could puke.

I just reached that stage and the stage where I began to think it would have been fine, just wonderful, yes sir, if I hadn’t decided to go for a swim this late in the afternoon when Vito launched himself down at me and panted something about minding my own business.

I did just that. My business right now was self-protection, and while I couldn’t do anything with my legs yet but thrash them, my arms were free. Vito struck my hands on the way down, outspread above my chest. I heaved back and his torso went out of sight over my head as he fell, but his head thudded against the boardwalk floor and this was one of those fights where as soon as he yelped and sounded like I’d hurt him some suddenly I could breathe again.

He was just climbing to his feet when I hit him. Low. Low enough for the referee to wonder if it had grazed the belt and maybe warn me about the round without actually taking it away. It was payment in kind. Vito gagged and Sheila yelled and I hit him again. Same place. Other hand. He had good, flat belly muscles. My fists didn’t sink in, but they hurt him plenty. He began to sag and his mouth hung slack so I brought a right back and down and up and almost got splinters at the lowest part of the arc and then clamped his jaws firmly shut with a sharp Castanet click that would leave him with loose teeth and sore gums for a week. Down he went, tumbling loosely, indifferent to the way the hard floor received him.

“Darn you,” Sheila raged at me. “What did you have to do that for? You never want to mind your own business. Look at him.”

Blood trickled slowly from Vito’s mouth. Sheila squatted prettily on her heels at his side and dabbed at his lips with her handkerchief.

“He’ll live,” I said. “I think you’re crazy, panting around after a guy who isn’t worth it. Vito’s no good.”

“What about me? You saw the way I could show you around downstairs. I’m as bad as Vito. I’m as bad as you are.”

“Tough girl,” I said. “You look like a kid and you’re afraid people will take advantage of you, so you got to act tough. All right, you know about the bootlegging, but you don’t have any part in the setup. The people at Tolliver’s have got to know if they stay here any length of time. You think your friends will pin a medal on you for that and say, hey, this Sheila, she’s tough?”

“He’s still bleeding.” She was dabbing at Vito’s lips with the reddening handkerchief and trying to listen to me. Creases of concern marred her forehead, but her eyes were watery as Vito opened his eyes, shook his head and muttered.

“I’m all right,” he said, pushing Sheila’s hand away.

He didn’t look all right. Only enough blood remained in his face to trickle out slowly through his battered lips. The way his teeth had been jarred together, he’d be eating mashed potatoes and strained prunes for a week.

“What about Gargantua here?” he wanted to know. “You can find time to fool around with more men at…”

“Vito!”

A sneer looked foolish on his battered lips. “Don’t Vito me. First Archer, then Kellum, then this guy…”

“Kellum!” Sheila shrieked. “The rest of it I won’t argue about, although it’s not true. None of it. But Kellum!” Sheila smiled at me and told me, “Maybe you should have poked him harder.” Women. “Me and King Kellum?”

“That’s just it,” Vito whined. “It’s bad enough if you fool around with ordinary guys, but that fruit is too much.”

“I was just talking to him, that’s all. You wouldn’t understand that, though, would you? A girl can’t even talk.” Sheila turned quickly away and lit a cigarette with her face to the wall, but I grabbed her hand and tugged her toward the hall which led to another flight of stairs and the bathhouse. “If he wants to think something like that is going on, we might as well give him a little circumstantial evidence.”

“But where are we going?”

“I said I wanted to talk to you.”

“Vito…?”

“Can take care of himself. Right, Vito-boy?”

But Vito only grumbled and propped himself up into a sitting position. We left him there and went down to the beach. The sun was a scarlet smear in the west and daylight was already following it in a quick retreat from the seashore. In an hour it would be dark.

I took off my shirt and spread it on the sand and told Sheila to sit down. While she smoothed out her skirt and tucked her legs under her sideways I looked around. Clouds and a cool salt breeze had chased most of the swimmers from the beach but fifty yards to our left and closer to the water a dozen kids — none of them a day over twenty, I guessed — had spread out three blankets and were waiting for nightfall. Even at this distance I could see some of the boys wore dog-tags around their necks, young soldiers showing off to their girls, who all wore their small, sharp breasts thrust high in tight sweaters, as if they belonged to a club and this was their badge.

“First,” I said, “a question which has nothing to do with you. Do you happen to know where Karen is?”

“No, I don’t. But Karen hasn’t been getting along very well with the people here lately.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I can’t put my finger on it. Little arguments, I guess. Mostly with Vito and Mr. Soolpovar. It was like they were telling her to mind her own business and she wasn’t buying. Listen, you probably know more about this than I do.”

I shook my head. “Tell me about Karen as if I don’t know a thing.”

“O. K.” Sheila looked at me strangely, as if she were thinking, he’s not Gideon Frey after all, he’s a Martian with four arms and green antennae on his head. “When Karen first got here to take Bert Archer’s place while he was in service, she didn’t know what was going on downstairs at all. When she finally began to get wind of it, she thought Bert had been ashamed to tell her. Brother, was she mistaken. You see, Bert Archer never knew about it, either. He was a naive kid. Probably if he stayed around a while longer he’d have found out about it, but before that could happen he was on his way to Korea. Anyway, Karen wanted no part of it, but she’d promised Bert to keep his interests going for him.”

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “I figured this stuff got started after Bert was gone and Karen had a hand in it.”

“That doesn’t make sense. You knew when it started. You…”

“Go ahead.”

“Say, wait a minute! Then… then that means you’re not what everyone thinks. Hey, let me out of here!” Sheila stood up quickly, thighs flashing whitely in the gathering dusk as her skirt swirled. I grabbed her arm and pulled her down again, her knees digging a furrow in the sand.

“Let go of me. I’ve got to tell Vito. He thinks you’re from the boss.”

Sheila’s eyes swept over the sand quickly. Her best avenue of escape would be with the teen-agers, fifty-yards away. But even at this distance and in this poor light you could tell the boys were trying to see if the girls’ sweater badges covered padding or flesh and the girls were making a little like Vasco da Gama, too. Sheila flushed in virginal embarrassment and resigned herself to me.

“O.K., but you better make some sense about yourself after. As far as I could see, Karen didn’t want any part of what we were doing, but she didn’t want to implicate Bert, either. You see, it never occurred to her he was completely innocent.

“You can imagine how worried everyone was after Bert had died, since that would leave Karen free to tell what she knew. But suddenly Karen seemed to be playing along and giving more cooperation than she ever had before. First she had to worry about Bert Archer, then you came along and the same thing started all over again because we all thought you were from the boss.”

“What do you think now?” I asked Sheila.

“I don’t know what to think. If you were from the boss you would have known how long we’ve been operating and would have known everything started before Bert went into service and Karen had nothing to do with it. But if you’re just a friend of Bert’s, like you said at first…”

Sheila gazed out across the sand toward the dark, soft-hissing Coney Island surf. Light was fading rapidly, but the beach wouldn’t pull down any bright-sprinkled cover of stars tonight. Except for the lights from the boardwalk, it was now almost completely dark. “I had a man to worry about, too,” she said. She’d averted her face but I guessed she was pouting.

“Maybe you’re right about Vito. I — I’m beginning to think so myself. But you can’t end something like that overnight. Maybe it’s the old story. I’m just a kid and I wanted a man I could look up to and I thought Vito was like that at first and… You’re making me talk too much. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Shoot.”

“Just in case you didn’t know, the boss of our operations here is a pretty mysterious guy. He does business by mail, sending instructions either to Mr. Soolpovar, to Vito to Kellum or to me. Do you know him?”

“No, I don’t know his identity.”

“Do you work for him?”

“No comment.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I’ve got to find out for sure where you stand first, that’s all. Anyway, I’ve got another question. How did Kellum break his arm?”

“That was a long time ago. Vito thought we were playing around. At the time I thought it was really something, the way a boy like Vito could take on a monster like Kellum and whip him. I was really impressed.”

“I whipped both the monster and the boy,” I pointed out. “What does that make me?”

Sheila giggled. “I guess I’ve changed. As near as I can see, it makes you a trouble-maker.”

“I’ve only just started,” I said. “If the cops aren’t getting anywhere, maybe I can help them.”

“Well, you can forget about them helping you. Billy Drake and a couple of others are paid off regularly.”

“I figured as much. Now I’ve got another question. If this boss gets in touch with you by mail, how do you get in touch with him?”

“We never have to.”

“All right. After Bert Archer was separated from service, did he find out what was going on?”

“I’m not sure.” Sheila wasn’t kidding. The question puzzled her all right. “But he did have a lot of fights with Karen. They were accusing each other of — something. I don’t know what. Probably, I’d say Bert found out.”

“Where do you fit in? I mean, you said you had a crush on Bert. You once asked me if it were possible for a girl to love two men at the same time, remember?”

“! — I didn’t hide what I felt for Bert. I’m not the type. But Karen wasn’t jealous. I’d only known him for a short time after he came back, until he got killed. But I don’t think Karen would have been jealous, anyway. Whatever was between them before Bert went away wasn’t there anymore, and it had nothing to do with what they were accusing each other of. Karen was only infatuated with him, that’s all. It didn’t last and she knew it but she wasn’t sure how to tell Bert.”

“Karen wouldn’t have told anyone that.”

“A girl knows without being told, Gideon. That’s…”

Sheila was interrupted by a scream. Something like a scream, but hardly human. An animal cry that they’d never permit on television because it would scare all the kiddies.