Catch the Brass Ring

CHAPTER NINE

THE FIRST THING Karen said, laughing, was, “Why don’t you fight with someone of your own sex, Gid?” The second was, “Are you all right?” She slopped a wet washrag on my face until I almost drowned. The third thing, not laughing, was, “Darn, it will cost us close to a thousand dollars to fix this place up. You’re going to be a mighty expensive employee, Gideon Frey.”

“Ow,” I said. “That hurts.”

“Good for you.” Karen was wiping the cuts on my face. “Mind telling me what happened?”

“It will disappoint you. Kellum got fruity with your new change-maker, that’s all.”

“With you?”

“With that kid,” I said, pointing. Orienting myself I found I was lying on the floor, my neck arched over one of Karen’s thighs and my eyes staring straight up at her thirty-sixes. “Let me up, will you, woman?”

I started to stand. Then I started to fall. Karen had climbed to her knees and caught me under the arms and eased me down.

“I’m a wee bit dizzy,” I admitted. “Where’s Kellum?”

“Soolpovar and someone else from the bathhouse carried him upstairs. They asked what happened and then if you would press any charges. Will you?”

“Why the hell not?” I wanted to know, propping myself up on one elbow and getting shoved back down.

“Because I know King Kellum better than you do, that’s why. You haven’t made an enemy, Gideon. You’ve made a friend.”

“You are crazy nuts.”

“Do you know anything about how perverts behave?”

“Not being one myself except when the moon is full…”

“Listen, then. Kellum has a guilt complex a mile wide because of his perversion. It ain’t doing what comes naturally to most people, as the expression goes. Kellum feels terrible about it and wants to be hurt so he can expiate his sins. Not that I’ve made a study of it or anything. I just read about it once.”

“O.K. I’ll buy so far. What has that got to do with…”

“You hurt Kellum and he’ll like you for it. He’s liable to hang around you like a Pekinese lap dog.”

I shrugged, then said, “I’ve got most of the pieces of the puzzle now. I need a few more and I’ll get the picture. But I can’t make change ten hours a day and make progress, too.”

“If you quit, what will you use for money?”

“I still have some government bonus left. Don’t worry about that.”

“Why don’t you leave it to the police, Gid? This had nothing to do with murder and look what happened to you. Maybe the police are slow, but they get results. They’re here every day, poking around and asking questions and getting facts which they’ll put together and come up with a killer.”

“Look what happened to the other guy,” I said jauntily. I didn’t feel jaunty. I ached all over and the way Karen averted her eyes I must have looked a mess.

“I don’t care what happened to the other guy. I care what happened to you. I love you, Gid. Do you love me back?”

I looked at her and watched her staring at my cut face. I said, “I, uh, love you back. And your front, and your sides and top and bottom and all over. Now will you let me up? I’ve got to see a man about his wife.”

Karen let me go, all right, but not until I’d become a walking advertisement for Bandaids. I toted my freshly covered scars in the direction of Ben Lutz’s place. Now I knew how a beautiful woman felt walking down the street. Only, of course, everyone was gawking at Bandaids now.

Ben was outside lowering his awning with a long metal pole. “Going to be a strong sun today,” he said. “What happened to you, Frey?”

“You,” I repeated because it always told people to stop talking about the fight, “ought to see the other guy. Ben, I want to talk to you.”

He jerked a thumb toward the entrance. “Come on inside.”

I followed him in and sat at the bar while he went around behind it and sprayed some blue liquid at the mirror with a squirt bottle and then began to rub it clean. His eyes tried to peel off the Bandaids and see what they covered. “Drink’s on the house.”

This wasn’t exactly the cocktail hour, but Ben poured a double from a Seagram’s Seven bottle and lowered a bombshell. “Goddamn, Frey. How do you people do it? I even had you fooled, it tastes so much like the real thing. You see, Becky woke me up last night and made a confession. We don’t keep secrets, the wife and I. It makes me a little scared to hear I’m finally going to move up in the old organization after all this time.

“I’m forty-three years old, Frey. I’ve gone through the first forty-three years keeping my nose clean. But now I’m beginning to poke my nose into things. Becky says it’s the only way to get ahead. I say I don’t know, but there’s only one way to find out. Do you really think I’m ready to move up the ladder, Frey?”

It tastes so much like the real thing.

… So they manufactured bathtub brew at Tolliver’s. At least, that’s what it looked like. But what the hell, there wasn’t any Prohibition. So why go to all that trouble to get yourself a reservation at Sing Sing or some such place? I didn’t know but I could find out. All I had to do was go on convincing people I was a big wheel in what Ben called the organization. And maybe find myself floating out on the tide with the sewage that polluted Coney Island waters.

“You want to know what Becky told me? She figures you for the letter writer himself. It makes sense. Bert Archer gets ornery. He wants out. So what happens? You come along and Bert dies.”

I leaned across the bar and balled up the front of Ben’s T-shirt and pulled him toward me. “Listen, punk,” I said. “If you know anything else about Bert Archer and how he died, start talking.”

“Hey, go easy. I didn’t mean anything. I figured Bert found out Karen Tanner had gone along with the organization and he didn’t want any part of it. When he finally went to the cops he must’ve figured she’d get off with a light sentence or something. Only he was so naive you know what he did? He marched his story straight down to Billy Drake!” Ben rolled laughter around in his mouth. “Can you imagine that? Billy comes right back and tells Mr. Soolpovar and the rest of us. Naturally we tell the letter writer we’ve got a blabbermouth with us.”

“Naturally,” I said.

“The way I figure it, though, you’re not him, Mr. Frey. You’re not the letter writer. Maybe you’re his right hand man. You probably know who he is, but since he’s never come out in the open and shown himself, I guess he wouldn’t do that now.” Ben scowled. “The fact that he conducts all his business by mail means he’s someone we know only he doesn’t want us in on the fact he’s boss. I’m probably telling you something you already know, but the letter writer must be Mr. Soolpovar, or that there tangerine, Kellum. Might even be Karen Tanner. But it better not be Vito, nossir. Otherwise I’ve put my foot in something up to here.” Ben drew a line across his throat.

“You’ve left out two people,” I reminded him. “It could be either Mrs. Lutz or yourself.”

Ben laughed again. “But you’d know. You’d know and so would I. It’s got to be one of the others.”

“You’re quite astute, Ben.”

“Listen, I don’t want you to say anything you’d rather keep mum, but it isn’t Vito, is it?”

“Why don’t you ask Vito?” I said.

“Hey, now, wait a minute. I thought you said I was ready to move up and all.”

“I did. I didn’t say when. And moving up doesn’t mean horning in on the boss’ private business. You’ll be told what to do and when to do it.”

I left Ben with a bad taste in my mouth. Lovely characters at Tolliver’s, all of them — and not a one innocent. From Soolpovar through Kellum and on down to Vito and the Lutz’s there wasn’t a fragrant blossom in the bunch. Too bad about Sheila, though.

But it was Karen who left the bad taste in my mouth. From what I could gather Karen had taken over Bert’s business for him while he fought in Korea and had drifted right along with the tide at Tolliver’s, getting polluted with it. Karen was left holding the bag when Bert came back and she didn’t know what to do with it. If Bert sold out they might be suspicious of him and decide to do something about it. So he went to the cops — to Billy Drake. Great. It wasn’t bad enough I’d fallen for my dead best friend’s ex-fiancee. It now turned out she was responsible for his dying in the first place.

I took a long walk and didn’t go near Tolliver’s the rest of that day. Sooner or later I’d have to see Karen, but one part of me would want to kiss her and hold the firmness of her against me and murmur those nice things she insisted on while the other part would want to whale the tar out of her and curse and go off in a huff.

I took half a dozen ice cold bottles of High Life back to my room. By the time I uncapped the third bottle it had warmed to room temperature, so I smoked a few cigarettes and hit the sack, still stewing. I continued stewing all day Saturday.

Sunday morning I went down the hall to the communal bath and waited till the shower stopped hissing inside. Presently a small runty woman whose flaccid breasts revealed themselves wetly under a thin dressing gown emerged from the bathroom with a smile for all the world and mostly me. I wasn’t having any and it seemed to disappoint her.

“Foggy morning,” she said.

“Umm.”

“I haven’t seen you before, Mr.—”

“Jones. Willis Jones. I stick to my room where I am recuperating from a dangerous, contagious disease I contracted in the tropics.” I stuck out my hand to get it shook, but now she wasn’t buying. She backed off down the hall, grinning vacantly.

She hadn’t lied about the weather, though. An early morning fog had squatted with a thick white wetness on Surf Avenue, waiting for the sun to dispel it. I walked about aimlessly, feeling clean as the whistle everyone seems to polish, the Bandaids removed from my face, the aftershave lotion still stinging pleasantly. I figured I had some time to kill before I boarded a train for Port Washington and wound up at Tolliver’s before I realized it. My wristwatch said it was eight o’clock, far too early for anyone to be around.

Only Vito Lucca never seemed to sleep. There was his panel truck, idling at the curb, its parking lights making the mist sparkle with a million tiny leaping raindrops. Vito appeared suddenly out of the grayness, leaned in over the tailgate and straightened up with a cardboard carton. When he disappeared again I walked over to the rear of the truck and waited for him.

He returned without seeing me, reaching in for another carton. I let him straighten and then I bumped him. Surprise more than anything made him drop the carton. It landed at our feet with a great glassy clattering and sprinkled shards of amber glass over the sidewalk. Vito grabbed me and began to curse.

I pushed his hands away and put on my best I’m-boss-around-here voice. “Why the hell aren’t you more careful?”

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Frey. Listen, I thought…”

“I don’t give a damn what you thought. Do you go around breaking bottles regularly like that?”

“Have a heart, Mr. Frey. I’m the only one collecting empties, ain’t I? We always have enough, don’t we? This is the first time ever.” Vito brushed himself off and assumed his mantle of composure once again. “You just scared me, that’s all. I was sure nobody except Sheila was around.”

“You let Sheila watch while you bring in the empties?”

“She knows what’s going on, but… I wanted to talk to you about her, Mr. Frey. I hope I can lay my cards on the table. Sheila ain’t no hot pants like Allison Tolliver, but she’s got what it takes. It’s no secret I like her.”

“It’s no secret she likes you, either.”

“That’s just it. She’s got some fancy notions about honesty and things and doesn’t want me to stay in the business. She keeps threatening she’ll go crying to the cops.”

“Send her to Billy Drake,” I suggested, and smiled.

“She knows about Billy. Sheila’s got a good head on her shoulders. She isn’t willing to take risks to move up in the world, that’s all. What do you think I ought to do, Mr. Frey?”

I didn’t know what Vito should have done. But I knew what Sheila should have done — exactly what I had neglected to do. Hell, Billy Drake was a bad apple, but he didn’t personify the whole police force. Karen was right. They were prowling around every day, digging up facts. It got so there were as many blue uniforms around as proprietors’ aprons, and probably plainclothes men were meandering about with the crowds on Tolliver’s midway. So, Sheila should have gone to the cops. But Sheila was only a kid with mixed-up emotions. Someone with sufficient maturity to make decisions should have taken what he knew to the police. Someone named Gideon Frey. It had been nibbling at the back of my mind all day yesterday but it hadn’t taken a man-sized bite. A different kind of investigation by the police would uncover the moonshine machinery at Tolliver’s. Popcorn and taffy and chlorinated water teamed up to mask the odor of cooking mash, but there had to be a still and a bottling plant someplace on the premises. A few well-placed cops wielding fire-axes would find everything without any trouble. I was betting on the cellar, since it was the only place at Tolliver’s I hadn’t seen.

Then why hadn’t I taken what I knew to the police?

Damn it all to hell, I was in love with Karen, that’s why.

And didn’t want to implicate her. Lovely. Which meant I had to keep Sheila away from the cops, too, until I could make up my own mind.

“Be firm,” I told Vito in fatherly fashion. “Let Sheila know who’s boss. If she threatens you, threaten her back. She’s got a crush on you a mile wide. Tell her you’ll stop seeing her.”

“You can see it, huh? I mean, the way she feels about me?”

“Listen, Vito,” I said. I did not want anyone going to the cops until I decided what could be done about Karen. “We’ve been watching you. If you want to serve up wedges of pizza full time all your life instead of driving a pickup truck for us, just let me know.”

“Honest, Mr. Frey,” Vito pleaded. “I can take care of Sheila. She’s just got to learn a woman’s place….”

“Exactly. Don’t spare the rod.” What a father I’d make, I thought. “And take some, advice, Vito: if you have to choose between Sheila and the green stuff, well, there are other fish in the sea.” Take your own advice, Gideon Frey. I didn’t have to feel guilty about it, at any rate. If Vito decided to make a clean break with Sheila, it would do her a lot of good.

“You mean, get tough?”

“Real tough,” I said. “Whatever you do, don’t let Sheila spill what she knows.”

“I won’t, Mr. Frey. No, sir.”

“Now clean up that glass before someone comes along.”

“Yes, sir.” Squaring his shoulders, Vito disappeared into the fog and swam back into view a moment later with a push-broom and a dustpan. I waved at him cheerily and went off toward the subway. I could catch a Long Island train for Port Washington at Atlantic Avenue.

First I told myself I was eager because Allison said she knew something about Bert. Then I told myself it was because Allison was Allison. Next I told myself it was because I was going to prove Allison didn’t mean a thing to me. I began to tell myself all sorts of things and finally decided to let Allison do the telling when I saw her. You had to feel sorry for her blind husband. He didn’t see a thing.

How right I was.