Catch the Brass Ring

CHAPTER FOUR

“HE’S DEAD.”

“Dead? Wanna bet, stupid? He ain’t dead.”

“Oh, yeah?”

The carrion birds had come to argue over my cadaver. They argued in piping little-boy voices and when I forced one swollen eyelid open they even looked like little boys. I groaned.

“See? What I tell you?”

I tried to spit sand, old pennies, sea water and last night’s garbage out of my mouth. During the night a pint-sized fiend had crawled in through my mouth or one of the new openings in my head and was now beating out something from John Philip Sousa inside my skull. His fellow-fiends had doused my body in alcohol and lit a match. I burned like my own funeral pyre.

“Go away,” I croaked.

Scurrying feet kicked sand in my face as one of the boys hustled down the beach. The other one surveyed me out of dubious eyes and said, “Well, he looked dead.”

I rolled over on my back and gazed up at a bright blue sky. A stiff breeze blew in over the water and except for the first kid disappearing down the beach and the second one viewing my remains solemnly, there wasn’t a person in sight. Early morning, I figured. My watch confirmed this. The hour was eight, much too early to wake up after getting your head beaten in. I groaned again for the kid to scram, but he just stood there.

“We were going digging for clams,” he said, sticking a tanned foot near my face. “With our toes.”

The other kid pounded back along the hard-packed sand at the edge of the water. A cop trailed behind him, far enough back not to have wet sand kicked up in his face. The way the cop ran head thrust up, arms bent at the elbows and pumping vigorously, knees kicking high, exactly the way it’s done in all the track meets only more so, I knew who it was. Another day had dawned. Young Billy Drake was back on duty.

“You still think he’s dead, stupid?”

Young Billy paced about studying things, sniffing like a bloodhound. He finally said, “On your feet, Frey. This is a hell of a place to sleep one off.”

“Damn you, Drake. I don’t want sympathy, I’m just telling you this because I happen to be on your beat and this is what you get paid for. Someone conked me last night, but good.”

I stood up and didn’t move while the beach and the distant boardwalk and the breakwaters thrusting out into the water like skinny black fingers all whirled like a carousel. “See,” I said. Billy examined the back of my head, probing with his fingers and making me wince.

“I wasn’t on duty last night,” Billy said, as if that could explain how this could happen on his beat. “Who did this?”

“That,” I said, “is a pregnant question. I didn’t have a chance to look. Someone worked me over with a baseball bat.”

“Uh-uh. They didn’t use a baseball bat,” Billy informed me clinically. “It looks like the work of a blackjack.”

He looked around for footprints, but the wind had tucked them away with last night’s dreams. “You can go now if you’re feeling all right.”

“Thank you, officer.”

“You want me to call an ambulance and have you taken to Coney Island Hospital?”

“You do that little thing.”

“I’m warning you, Frey, quit needling me.”

“Then act like a cop, damn it. Bert Archer was murdered yesterday. Someone either tried to kill me last night or wanted to scare me away from Tolliver’s. Both times you come along and tell me I’m drunk.”

“Where’s your shirt? Better put your shut on. The sun will be pretty strong by the time the ambulance comes and it won’t help your burn any.”

“Unfortunately, it’s in a locker at Tolliver’s.” I grinned at him painfully.

“All right, all right. Kid, you stay here.” He jerked an index finger at the other boy. “You come with me.”

They headed for the boardwalk. The boy returned in about fifteen minutes, lugging a big beach umbrella. He forced it into the sand and piled more sand high around its base and said. “The cop went to get an ambulance, mister.”

The more I thought about the trip to the hospital the less I liked the idea. I needed something for my sunburn. I thought it would be a good idea to have my head wounds cleaned, for whoever wielded the sap didn’t know his own strength and had left some cuts and gashes to decorate the bumps on my skull. Then I could use some more sleep and some good food and they’d better save their hospital beds for sick people. I’d had my fill of hospital beds in Japan.

“Listen, son,” I asked the kid who’d toted the umbrella, “how would you like to do me a favor? This is a key to locker 1418 in Tolliver’s bathhouse.” I took the key off my wrist and flexed the elastic band until he got the idea and slipped his own wrist through it. “You know where Tolliver’s is?”

“Sure.”

“O.K. They’re not open yet, but show the key to anyone you can find there and tell them there’s a man who fell asleep on the beach and sent you for his clothing. Then you get the stuff and bring it back to me.”

“Well…”

“I know the boardwalk entrance will be closed, but all you have to do is walk around on Surf Avenue and through Tolliver’s Funland. And I tell you what. Anytime you want, drop around to the Tolliver’s penny arcade and ask for Mr. Frey. That’s me. You get to play all the free games you want.”

“And my friend, too?”

“And your friend too. You bet.”

The kid scampered off. I mean, scampered. The other one smiled at me and wandered into the shallows near one of the breakwaters, poking his toes around for clams. Soon the first one returned triumphantly with shirt, trousers, underwear, shoes and socks. I dressed over my bathing trunks and was glad the night man at Tolliver’s forgot to ask about them.

I stood up while someone probed behind my eyeballs with a scalpel. Both kids went hunting for clams and I staggered toward the boardwalk. I was going to do some hunting too. I didn’t know the name of the prey yet, but I’d find out. At this moment I favored King Kellum, first because whoever had clobbered me had used the sap with authority and Kellum could probably bend el girders with his toes, and second because Kellum wasn’t as dumb as he looked and might be hiding anything behind a Mortimer Snerd expression and a Mickey Mouse voice. But the more I thought of it, the more Kellum lost his monopoly. It looked like everyone in Tolliver’s and the Lutz’s outside of Tolliver’s had something to hide. Karen Tanner either hadn’t given two hoots and a holler for Bert despite all the love letters which had crossed the Pacific Ocean or I missed something in their relationship. Dark, Irish Sheila said Vito Lucca was really a nice boy which meant she knew something about Vito which the police or somebody wouldn’t like. And there was this miasma of disagreement which kept the Lutz’s yammering at each other.

I started wishing there was a V. A.-approved school which gave a quick course in detection in ten easy lessons. I wished that and a lot of other things, none of them very practical, and by then I’d dragged my swollen legs and burning body to the front of Tolliver’s. A panel truck was parked at the curb with no lettering on it but the tail gate down and the doors swung wide. I peered in and saw a solitary cardboard carton holding down a lot of floor space when someone grabbed my shoulder and made the sunburn sting down to my ankles.

“Cut it out!” I yelled.

He let it go. “You cut it out,” he said. “Quit poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.” It was Vito Lucca. Vito looked angry.

“What have you got in there?” I said, for no other reason but to goad Vito. The lone carton looked about as deadly as a box full of eggs, which for all I knew, it was.

“I was only unloading some stuff for our pizzeria, that’s all.”

“Then why get so upset?”

“I’m not upset. I’m always cranky early in the morning. Now leave me alone, will you?”

I nodded. Vito lit a cigarette. Vito’s hands trembled. As an undercover man for someone or something he was a bust —or my imagination was running riot and maybe I did have a touch of the sunstroke. “Hey, what happened to you?” Vito, demanded, getting a good look at my head for the first time.

“You won’t believe this,” I said. “I got hit by lightning.”

Vito scowled at me. “No, I won’t.” He climbed into the truck, picked up the carton and then changed his mind. He put the carton down again, went around front, kicked the panel truck over and sped away with a clashing of gears.

Strung out flimsily like paper cut-outs all along the open front, the storm doors which closed Tolliver’s for the night were not locked. I went inside and over to the pizzeria. Vito hadn’t unpacked a damned thing in there.

If I could have found out what was in that carton and the others like it Vito must have taken somewhere inside Tolliver’s, I’d have let them bash my head all over again. I nodded to a clean-up man who shoved a push-broom across the dirty boardwalk floor in front of him.

“Good morning,” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Mr. Lucca took his cartons, would you?”

He leaned on the handle of the broom and blinked sweat from his eyes. “His cartons?”

“That’s right.” I took out a fiver and flashed it. Well, it always worked in the private eye books.

“I didn’t see nothing, mister. Some kid came and went a while back.”

Damn. “Anyone else inside?”

“Yessir. Miss O’Keefe, I think. Went down to the pool in a bathing suit. Some looker, you bet.”

“You bet. Would that be Sheila O’Keefe, the dancer?” No one had told me Sheila’s last name, but she was Irish enough to be an O’Keefe.

“The dancer, that’s her. Excuse me, mister. I got to sweep up.”

I found the stairs to the second floor and climbed them. I reached the top of the outside stairs and looked down on the swimming pool. A solo swimmer kicked up a frothy wake out in the middle of the clear blue water which was gushing in from a fountain at the far end of the pool. Otherwise, the place was deserted. Deck chairs stood in neat rows, awnings had been rolled back for the night over long lines of green and yellow benches. The sky was a cool, distant blue and when Sheila stopped swimming and began to tread water, it was so quiet I could hear the distant wail of a siren. The ambulance attendants would find a vacant beach unless the two kids still nudged the sand for clams.

Sheila looked up at the sound of the ambulance and I waved to her. She waved back and did a graceful breaststroke to the edge of the pool, climbed out and shook herself like a terrier. I went down to meet her and terriers never looked so good.

Her short black hair needed no bathing cap. It sparkled wetly in the early morning sunlight and she shook it at me and sprayed me as I reached her. She smiled. She was one big smile from the top of her head clear down to her toes, and I hadn’t realized it yesterday. She wore a one piece bathing suit black and sleek as her wet hair, strapless and hugging her like a lover. There wasn’t a point or an angle on her anywhere. She was just rounded, beautifully rounded and maybe a shade on the plump side but delicious enough to eat.

“I love to swim in the morning when no one’s around, Gideon,” she said, then squeaked like a mouse. “What happened to you?”

“It’s nothing much. It’s…”

But she had bounced away across the sand which must have been carted into the bathhouse at considerable cost and streaked up the stairs and out of sight.

It didn’t take long. Sheila returned with a little brown lunch box, sat me down on the sand and squatted on her heels next to me surveying the damage. “Umm,” she mumbled, cataloging it. “Umm. Take your shirt off.”

I took it off. I was looking at her and grinning and soon she told me to close my mouth. “What are you wearing under your pants?”

“A bathing suit, last I saw. Hey, now—”

She pointed at my belt buckle. “Take ’em off.”

I did so. Sheila opened her lunch box. It didn’t contain lunch. First aid supplies, all kinds of them.

She gave me the full treatment. She cleaned my scalp with some astringent liquid in a medium-sized brown bottle, then applied something from a small brown bottle. It stung so much I yelped, but Sheila said, “Aren’t you the baby?” and kept right on stinging me. “I ought to shave your hair off and bandage it,” she told me next. “You’re lucky. Sit still, darn you!”

I sat still. It wasn’t easy. She squeezed a pale yellow snake of tooth-paste consistency out of a tube and began to rub it on my chest. Her fingers got tangled in the hair there and pulled it and I yelped again but she kept on rubbing. My shoulders and back were next, and my arms. Everyplace she touched with the ointment I felt cool and wonderful. I wanted to object when she squirted another yellow snake on my leg and began to rub it in there, but it felt too good. I sighed and closed my eyes and let her have her way. Presently a lit cigarette got shoved between my lips and I inhaled gratefully.

“AH right,” she said, jamming things back into her lunch box, “now you can tell me what happened.”

“That’s easy,” I said. She was standing up and looking down at me, so I got up too, and wrapped my greasy arms around her and kissed her. “I just fell in love with Florence Nightingale.”

I shouldn’t have done it, I guess. But after feeling so miserable I wanted to crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after me, she came along and in a few minutes made me feel like singing.

“Hey, stop that! Look at me.”

I looked at her. I’d greased up the front of her black bathing suit and the smooth stretch of bronzed flesh that looked out over its top. She brushed herself off and the top of the suit swayed back and forth. The grease stayed put. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That was just to say thanks.”

“You’re welcome, but not for what you just did. Have a heart, Gideon. Everyone says I’m an impressionable little girl. You must feel awful, anyway. Just tell me what happened.”

“Someone sneaked up behind me on the beach last night. I never even saw him.”

Sheila scowled at me. She removed a comb from where it was tucked between thigh and bathing suit and ran it through her damp hair, fluffing it with her free hand. “You need a shave,” she said. I could see she was considering what I’d told her.

“I need some food and a long sleep first. Is there anyplace around here we can get some grub this time of morning?”

“Ben Lutz’s bar. Ben lives upstairs, so even if it’s closed…”

“I know Ben. Ben is one of my suspects. So are you, by the way.”

“Me? I don’t know whether to be flattered or scratch your eyes out. Do you think I’d do something like that to you?”

“Search me. Someone did. It was done with a blackjack, usually a man’s weapon. But even a kid could learn to use one.”

“Listen to me, Gideon. Take some advice, will you?”

“What kind of advice?”

“Just get out of here, that’s all. Go far away. Forget all about Tolliver’s and Coney Island. Please, Gideon. You’ll be doing yourself a favor. They killed Bert. Once they’re sure you’re trying to find out why, they’ll try to kill you.”

“They already tried.”

“Can’t you listen to me without poking your two cents in? Please. They didn’t try. They probably just tried to frighten you off.”

“Do you know what’s going on around this place, Sheila?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t try to find out. Gideon, for heaven’s sake. You’re the third guy I’m trying to get out of this thing.”

Her brown eyes were big and watery, on the verge of overflowing. I said gently, “What makes you think I’m your responsibility?”

“Bert is dead. Vito won’t listen to me. I’m sure Vito knows the score but he just won’t listen. It’s crooked. Sometimes they laugh at me. I’m eighteen, Gideon. I’ve been around.”

“I’m thirty.” I said in my best fatherly voice. “So have 1. Now I’m giving you the same advice, Sheila. Keep out of this. And who laughs at you?”

“Mr. Soolpovar. Karen, Becky Lutz. Everyone. Its dirty. It’s the kind of thing people get killed for. It’s a lot of money, I don’t know what. They’re all so suspicious and secretive, but they can’t hide it. Even Vito laughs at me. He… I .. .” Sheila sniffled and knuckled her nose. “Oh, damn it all… Come on, Gideon. I’ll take you over to Ben Lutz’s for some breakfast. Just wait till I change.”