Catch the Brass Ring

CHAPTER THREE

“I ONLY WANTED TO TALK to you,” I shouted over the slap-slap of flesh-on-flesh and the grunting noises.

“With you in a minute.”

“He… wants to… talk,” Pudgy said gratefully. “I can wait… I guess.”

Paul Bunyan wiped his hands on a towel hanging from the side of the table then came over and looked down at me. I’m six feet tall, “Well, talk.”

“This is where Bert Archer died, isn’t it?”

“Huh?” He had a huge brow slung low over eyes so wide spaced he probably could almost see a full three hundred and sixty degrees. His highbridged nose had been broken and smeared against his face over a small, thin-lipped mouth half-pursed as if always on the verge of whistling. “Who wants to know?”

“I’m with Nationwide Insurance,” I said. “We’re trying to ascertain whether the beneficiary gets paid double indemnity or not.” I realized that was a mistake too late. I’d be seeing more of Paul Bunyan and while he didn’t look like the younger generation’s answer to Einstein, he still could put two and two together in a way that would tell him Nationwide Insurance investigators don’t double as money-changers in penny arcades.

“Say, you don’t waste any time.” Nature had broken the illusion with Paul Bunyan’s voice. He sounded more like Mickey Mouse.

“I’ll send a salesman around to see you if you’re interested, Mr….”

“Kellum, friend.”

“That accident with your arm could have been covered by my company, Mr. Kellum.”

“Say, how did you know about that?”

“Company secret. We get around.”

“I’ll say.” Kellum cradled his newly healed arm in his other hand and drummed baseball bat fingers against the bone.

“Sure,” I said. “Could I see the place where Archer died?”

“I wish you could, friend, honest. Only the police closed off that room. But say, if you’re with an insurance company the police will let you in.”

“Hell,” I said confidentially. “Just between you and me, I’d as soon take a swim in your pool. If you could tell me what happened how could the company know? After you’re at this game a while you get to learn all the tricks.” I peeled a five dollar bill off the three hundred dollar roll the government had given me as a token of its appreciation for services rendered and slapped it against Kellum’s big wet palm. “You can start talking anytime.”

“My pleasure, friend. There isn’t much to tell. You see, it was just before noon when it happened. We don’t have our steam rooms open for business till afternoon, but the gang from Tolliver’s can use them any time. That Mr. Soolpovar, he’s number one.”

“You in Korea?” I asked. Number one is strictly a south-side Korea expression.

“Listen, would you believe it? The army wouldn’t have me.” Kellum giggled. “I should worry.” He clop-clopped around the room on his clogs. The pudgy man, who had donned a pair of shorts, winced when he thought Kellum was returning to the wars, but the big guy only wanted a pack of cigarettes from a wall shelf. He lighted two and gave me one, just like I’d do for a girl and I thought I had him tagged right for sure. As for the number one, I guess you come back from a place like Korea and you can’t believe that somehow the expressions picked up there have beaten you back to the States.

“Anyway,” Kellum told me, “it’s not unusual to hear the steam even early in the morning. This was almost noon and it was hissing away and I didn’t think anything of it, not until one of the cleaning men we use to get the rooms ready for the afternoon came rushing in to me and says there’s a guy in there from Tolliver’s and he looks dead.”

“In where?”

“In room three. It’s locked now. If you know where the knobs are you can regulate the steam from inside. We have no secrets from the Tolliver’s gang, you understand? Well, there was this figure inside and so much steam that I couldn’t go in after him right away, even though I opened the door and let the steam out. By the time I got in it was too late, that’s all. He’d turned the nozzles all the way for some reason. I found him on the other side of the door, like he was trying to get out but the steam overcame him first.”

“How do you figure it? We don’t pay anything for suicide.”

“Suicide? Suicide? I hadn’t thought of that. Say, listen, Bert Archer wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

“No? Did Archer use these steam rooms very often?”

“Now that you mention it, no. I never remember him taking a steam bath before.”

That was the hunch that might spell a lot of trouble for someone. Bert used to talk about Tolliver’s once in a while, when he wasn’t dreaming of Karen. He never liked steam rooms, couldn’t understand what people saw in them. I said suicide but I didn’t think suicide. And definitely no accident. I thought murder.

“But that proves it was an accident,” Kellum went on. “Suppose Archer didn’t usually use the steam rooms but decided to try them. He wouldn’t know what was a safe amount of steam and what wasn’t. Sometimes the rooms are opened up to make one big steam room when it’s crowded, then all that steam wouldn’t hurt a fly. But closed up in room three, poor Archer didn’t have a chance.”

I figured Kellum would gab like a woman if he had something to gab about. It suited my purposes just fine. I said, “This is strictly confidential, Mr. Kellum. I guess I can trust you, though.” I leaned close and whispered so the pudgy customer wouldn’t hear. Kellum embraced my shoulders with wet-hot hands and became mildly excited. If I hung around here much longer I knew I’d have to poke him, so I talked fast. “My theory is that Mr. Archer was murdered,” I said. “Whatever you do, don’t spread it around. But if you find anything out, we’ll pay you.”

I stepped away and watched him drop his arms to his sides with regret. He’d left white handprints on my shoulders. Lovely fellow. Unless I missed my guess he’d have a woman’s compulsion to bend every ear in Tolliver’s with my murder theory in no time flat. But I still had to tell him I was Gideon Frey, a coin-changer at Karen Tanner’s penny arcade. My fey-winged Paul Bunyan would react like a woman scorned but I had more important things to worry about. I wanted the murderer to know exactly what Gideon Frey thought.

“You’re no dope, Mr. Kellum,” I said, grinning at him. “You probably wondered how an insurance investigator could get here so soon after Archer’s death.”

“Say, that is a point.”

“You probably were too polite to question it.”

“I like to mind my own business.” I couldn’t tell if Kellum was trying to bide his alarm or if a storm was brewing. “I’m not an insurance investigator.”

“No?”

“You must have known it all along. All that muscle and you’ve got a brain, too.”

Kellum strutted. The pudgy guy retreated into a corner. It was going better than I thought.

“I took advantage of you,” I said. “My name is Gideon Frey. I’m a friend of Bert’s and I’m working with Miss Tanner in her penny arcade.”

“Well, you did have a pretty convincing line, I must say.”

“Then you’re not angry?”

“Why should I be? I’ve got to hand it to you, Frey. Actually, I took you for a private detective.”

I’d be the last to deny it. “You’re smarter than I thought,” I said. “All this is on the Q.T., of course.”

“Certainly.” We shook hands. I made a good try at squeezing back but lost.

A short man with a hard, stocky body and huge ridges of muscle between his bull neck and sloping shoulders clomped into the room in trunks and clogs. “What’s on the Q.T.?” he demanded. “What’s going on, King?”

King? I almost burst out laughing. King Kellum spent all his time on the make for queens. Well, it figured.

“I’m Gid Frey,” I said. “Maybe Miss Tanner…?”

“Yes, she told me about you. Glad to meet you. I’m Janus Soolpovar.” Soolpovar had short-cropped graying hair bristling up over a narrow brow and close-set eyes which protruded. We shook hands. “A terrible thing about your friend,” Soolpovar sympathized. “I’m sorry, Frey. Truly sorry.”

“It must have been quite a shock to Karen.”

“She’s not the kind of girl who shows it. I wouldn’t judge her too harshly by her actions, Frey. Meanwhile, you want to use any of the facilities around here, they’re free. That goes for the dames, too, ha-ha.” Soolpovar didn’t laugh; he spoke the sound of laughter. He had even white teeth and not an ounce of spare flesh on him. He paced about the room and his bull neck thrust his head forward like a rooster’s with every step. “All kinds of dames pay their four bits to come in here,” Soolpovar went on. “Most of ’em are desperate, see? The summer’s the time to make ’em, don’t you make any mistakes about that. They don’t mind a little sweat, it gets ’em excited. Ask an old stud horse like me, I know.”

Kellum examined his fingernails with a complete lack of interest. This conversation left Kellum as cold as the inside of a deepfreeze, but Soolpovar was probably on testosterone by now and would have lewd pictures pasted on the ceiling over his deathbed. They made a balanced team here in the bathhouse, all right.

Picking up my gear from one of the empty tables, I said, “Does anyone know where I can find locker 1418?”

Smiling, Soolpovar drew me a mental road map. I thanked him and headed for the locker. Sure, I’d found out what I could here in the bathhouse but it was a hot day and I thought maybe a swim would make me feel better. I stripped, climbed into the woolen shorts which were a size too large.

Soon I was waiting on a shuffling line while a plump girl with breasts as big as basketballs stamped an identification tag on the backs of our hands with invisible ink which she claimed could show up under some kind of purple light gadget. Then I walked out under the boardwalk and onto the footprint-rippled brown sand. A sea of bodies, mostly female, lay out there on blankets and under big green and orange umbrellas. A lot of them were lookers, but taking it all in was something like trying to down a bottle of good whiskey all at once without pausing for breath. You can spoil the effect.

I found a spot big enough to stretch myself out down pretty close to the water. They don’t have breakers at Coney Island. The gray water sloshes up sluggishly on the sand and then recedes, leaving a thin greenish scum. Kids splash and yell. Old ladies do something special called dunking, lowering their bodies waist-deep in the waster so that the bathing-suit skirts billow out about their fat-dimpled legs.

I stood up to do some swimming, then decided on a cigarette instead. I started smoking it in bright, hot sunlight.

I opened my eyes again and it was raining. Quite a cigarette. The sun had set and rain clouds had gathered and it was almost completely dark in front of me, out over the water. I was all alone on the beach with rank on rank of trash baskets marking right up to the water’s edge and illuminated only when lightning ripped jagged cracks in the dark sky.

I felt awful. My skin was dry and parched and I wanted to peel it off. I couldn’t see but I knew I had a sunburn a boiled lobster would have been proud of. I was drenched and miserable and hungry and I could picture how all the parents must have told their kids earlier in the day, “See that man? The red one? He’s getting sunburned and you mustn’t ever do that.” But the dopes didn’t bother to wake me up and then everyone got chased indoors by the quick summer rain.

Everyone but me.

I stood up and groaned because the rain was still falling and felt like needles on my crisp skin. Something exploded inside my head and I thought of sunstroke and sat down again: It wasn’t sunstroke. I heard movement in the sand behind me and I tried to turn around by my head got detonated again. A soft thinking sound ushered in the pain.

I climbed to my knees and shouted but only a tired whisper escaped my lips. Something struck my face and tried to push all the features clear through to the other side of my head. It didn’t work because I flopped over on my back and found I could still breathe. A shadow hovered there in front of me, watching, indistinct in the gloom. My hands came up, fluttery and weak in front of my face, and got themselves smitten.

Then the thunder crashed in my ears and the lightning lifted up my eyelids and peeked behind them. Whoever had worked me over did a good job and I fell through the sand and through the bedrock and kept falling and my last thought was Oh God, Korea is on the other side….