Ax

4

Danny Gimp was a stool pigeon, and as an informer, he felt that the American aversion to rats was part of a conspiracy begun in elementary school and designed to deprive him of a profession at which he was a master. He had often thought of hiring a press agent or a public relations man to construct a more acceptable public image of himself, but he had the good sense to know the aversion was too deeply ingrained in the American spirit to be changed by a mere manipulator of images. He could not understand why people felt it was wrong to tell tales about other people. Nor could he understand why a largely law-abiding citizenry had adopted as one of its hidebound codes a precept that had originated in—and was strongly encouraged and enforced by—the underworld. He only knew that if a person saw someone doing something wrong, he was reluctant to go to the authorities with his information. And whereas Danny knew that part of his reluctance was caused by fear of reprisal, he further knew that most of the reluctance was caused by the code: Thou Shalt Not Tell.

Why not?

He enjoyed telling.

He was a gossip supreme, his ears keenly attuned to every stray piece of information that wafted his way on the unsuspecting air. His mind was a complex of compartments and cubbyholes, each storing kernels of seemingly worthless information which, when evaluated, added up to a meaningful fund of knowledge. He was an expert at sifting and sorting, collating and cataloging, all tricks he had learned as a boy when a bout with polio had caused him to be bedridden for the better part of a year. When you can’t leave the bedroom, you begin to think of ways to amuse yourself. Danny Gimp, considering his talent for amusing himself, might have become a banker and the mastermind behind an international cartel if he hadn’t been born and raised on Culver Avenue, which was not one of the city’s garden spots. Having been born on Culver Avenue, and giving the devil his due, he also might have become an international jewel thief or—what is more likely—a pimp. He became neither. He became, instead, a stool pigeon.

His real name was Danny Nelson, but no one ever called him that. Even mail addressed to Danny Gimp was delivered to him by his faithful mailman, who thought Danny was a World War I veteran who had been wounded in the Ardennes, rather than a stool pigeon. As a matter of fact, there were very few people who knew that Danny Gimp was a stool pigeon, it being a necessity in the profession to keep one’s activities quiet, lest one discover one night that several hired guns were after one, objective, homicide. Being chased by gangland torpedoes, very old-hat terminology for guns, is not entertaining even if you do not limp slightly. When you do limp, it is difficult to run very fast, so Danny decided it was best to avoid any friction between himself and either oldhat torpedoes or fashionable guns, thereby eliminating foot races through the city streets.

Danny told everybody he was a burglar.

This made him socially acceptable, and it also encouraged other assorted thieves to open their hearts to him. Every time they opened their hearts, Danny opened the voluminous filing cabinets inside his skull and began collecting information, dropping bits and pieces into place here and there, making no attempt to evaluate, sorting and filing as he went along, hoping all of it would make better sense later.

A twenty-two-year-old hood might tell Danny that he needed a new right rear tire for a late-model Oldsmobile, does Danny know a good fence? Danny does indeed know a fence—not a good one, actually; actually he has done time in at least three state prisons, so how good can he be?—and while he is asking the man about a tire for his young friend, the fence casually mentions that a fur warehouse on Tenth Street was knocked over on Tuesday night, with the night watchman taking a slug in the forehead, unfortunately killing the old man. Danny clucks sympathetically, and the next day he sees his young friend’s wife—who used to be a hooker but who has graduated to the big time since she now has a husband who can keep her in heroin—and lo and behold, the wife is swathed in what appears to be 400 yards of natural let-out ranch mink. Danny has never known the precise meaning of “let-out mink,” but he suspects that this particular mink was let out of that warehouse on Tenth Street by none other than his young friend who now needs a new right rear tire for his latemodel Oldsmobile. He reads in the newspaper the next day that the night watchman must have got off a few shots at a retreating person or thing before his untimely demise, his service revolver having been found with only two bullets in it. When Danny sees his young friend he asks him how come he needs a new right rear tire. His friend says, “I picked up a nail on the parkway.” Danny looks at his friend and wonders why he doesn’t simply go to a garage and have them repair the tire, if all he picked up in it was a nail? There is the possibility, however, that the nail has really done big damage to the wheel, making it necessary to replace it. Danny is willing to give his friend the benefit of the doubt; after all, if replacement really is necessary, he knows his friend would automatically go to a fence for the merchandise.

Fences are the best discount houses in the city. They sell anything you might need, from Westinghouse portable television sets to Smith & Wesson portable .38 revolvers, and at very good prices indeed. Even square citizens in bad neighborhoods utilize the services of a fence, so why shouldn’t a cheap hood like Danny’s young friend, in dire need of a new tire, go to a fence—even if there isn’t anything suspicious about why he happens to need a new tire?

A good stoolie never jumps to conclusions.

He collects, he sifts, he collates, he waits.

A week later Danny runs across a fellow who has just come in from Chicago where he has been for several days. The fellow is carrying a very big bundle. That night Danny sees the Chicago fellow and also his young hood friend riding around in the Oldsmobile together, the right rear tire replaced by now. The next day Danny’s young hood friend is sporting a very big bundle, and the hood’s wife is on a heroin-buying jag that will keep her stocked until China runs out of poppy flowers.

What Danny reports to the police is that he believes his young hood friend broke into the warehouse with his Chicago pal, was shot at by the night watchman, who put a hole in their right rear tire and who received a hole in his forehead in return. He further tells the police that he believes the furs were dumped in Chicago and that the two thieves only recently split the cash received for the loot.

For his services Danny gets ten bucks from the detective to whom he divulges this. The ten bucks comes out of a fund loosely described as “Petty Cash.” Neither the detective nor Danny report this exchange on their income tax.

It was not at all surprising that very few people knew Danny was a stool pigeon since he could very easily have passed for a burglar or a mugger or a check passer, or any one of a number of criminal types, all of whom looked exactly the way Danny looked, which is to say they all looked like normal everyday human beings who were honest citizens. Except they happened to be crooks.

Danny didn’t happen to be a crook. He was as honest as the day is long. He only said he was a crook.

He had, in fact, spent five years in a prison in California when he got convicted in a criminal case out there back in 1938. It was this prison stay which convinced everyone that Danny Gimp was indeed a practicing burglar, especially since he told everyone he’d been serving a five and dime on a Burglary One conviction out there. This happened to be true. But actually he’d only gone to Los Angeles for his health.

He had been bothered with a persistent cold and an accompanying low fever for perhaps two months when his family physician suggested that he go out to California to get some sun and some rest, away from his normal city pursuits. Danny had just helped the bulls of the 71st to crack a particularly difficult whorehouse setup, and the bulls (in tandem with some Vice Squad cops) were grateful to the tune of 500 bucks for his assistance, mainly because five of them received promotions out of the crackdown. Danny, flush with his $500, running this low fever and coughing all the time, went out to Los Angeles.

Ah, land of glamour and mystery. Ah, city of sun and stars. Ah, cultural citadel!

He got arrested four days after he arrived.

The way he got arrested was very peculiar, since he had no idea he was committing a crime at the time. He met a fellow in a bar on La Brea and they began drinking and telling jokes, and the man asked Danny what line of work he was in and Danny said, “Communications.” The man thought this very interesting because he himself was in a line of work he described as “Redistribution,” and they had a few more drinks and it was then that the man asked Danny to accompany him to his house where he wanted to pick up some more money so they could continue their fun and revelry, drinking and talking shop and laughing it up in good old LA.

They drove up the Strip past La Cienega and then the man turned his car up into the hills and they pulled up in front of a good-looking Spanish-type hacienda house, all stuccoed and tiled, and Danny and the man got out of the car and went up to the back door which the man opened. They didn’t put on any lights because the man didn’t want to wake his brother, he said, who was a manic-depressive and lived in the back room.

The very polite Los Angeles police, all of whom had studied under Joe Friday, picked up Danny and his friend as they were leaving the house. Danny’s friend had not only taken several hundred dollars in cash from the bedroom of the house which (surprise!) was not his house at all, but he had also managed to pick up a diamond and ruby necklace which the police valued at $47,500.

Ah, land of glamour and mystery, citadel of culture.

Danny told the judge he had met the fellow in a bar and had only accompanied him to his…

Sure, sure, the judge said.

…house there in the Santa Monica Mountains because the man wanted to…

Sure, sure, the judge said.

…pick up some money so they could continue their evening of fun and revelry, drinking and talking shop and…

Sure, sure.

…laughing it up in good old LA.

A minimum of five and a maximum of ten, the judge said.

What? Danny said.

Next case, the judge said.

It wasn’t too bad. Danny lost his cold in stir, and also his accompanying low fever. He learned in stir that a stool pigeon is called “a snitch,” a piece of juvenile terminology which convinced him more than ever that the code against informing began somewhere in the lower grades of school. He also derived from prison the single “reference” that would be invaluable in his later working days. He could in the future, when talking to or listening to an assorted number of thieves, announce in all honesty that he had served a rap for burglary in a West Coast pen. Who then could possibly imagine that Danny Gimp was an informer, a stoolie, a rat, a tattletale, or even, God forbid, a snitch?

Steve Carella could.

He found Danny in the third booth on the right-hand side of the bar called Andy’s Pub. Danny was not an alcoholic, nor did he even drink to excess. He simply used the bar as a sort of office. It was cheaper than paying rent downtown, and it had the added attraction of a phone booth which he used regularly. The bar, too, was a good place to listen—and listening was one-half of Danny’s business.

Carella scanned the joint as he walked in, spotted Danny immediately in his customary booth, but also saw two known hoods sitting at the bar. He walked past Danny without so much as glancing at him, took a stool at the bar, and asked for a beer. Since cops emit a smell that can be detected by certain individuals, usually lawbreakers, the way certain sounds can be detected only by dogs, the bartender gave Carella his beer and then asked, “Anything wrong, Officer?”

“Just felt like having a beer,” Carella said.

The bartender smiled sweetly and said, “Then I take it this is an off-duty visit.”

“Mm-huh, that’s right,” Carella said.

“Not that we have anything to hide here,” the bartender said, still smiling.

Carella didn’t bother answering him. He finished his beer and was reaching into his pocket for his wallet when the bartender said, “It’s on the house, Officer.”

“I’d rather pay for it, thanks,” Carella said.

The bartender didn’t argue. He simply figured Carella was a cop who took bigger bribes. Carella paid for the beer, walked out of the bar without looking at Danny, pulled up his coat collar as he reached the street, walked two blocks downtown heading into a biting, bitter wind, then turned and began walking uptown again on the opposite side of the street, with the wind at his back. He ducked into a doorway across the street from the bar and waited for Danny Gimp to come out. Danny, who was playing this a little too goddamn cool for a January day with a twentymile-an-hour wind blowing, did not come out of the bar until some ten minutes later. By that time Carella’s toes and nose were freezing. He slapped his gloved hands together, pulled his collar up once more, and began following Danny. He did not overtake him until the two had walked almost seven blocks, one behind the other. Falling into step beside Danny, he said, “What the hell took you so long?”

“Hey, hi,” Danny said. “You must be froze, huh?”

“This isn’t exactly Miami Beach,” Carella said.

“Worse luck, huh?” Danny said. “Did you happen to glom the pair at the bar?”

“Yeah.”

“You make them?”

“Sure. Augie Andrucci and Pinky Deane.”

“Hey, that’s right,” Danny said. “Well, they made you, too. They spotted you for a bull right off, and they gave the bartender the eye to find out what you were doing there, and they didn’t buy none of that off-duty crap for a minute. So I figured it was better I stick around a little while instead of rushing right out here, you dig? Because, in my line, you got to be a little careful, you dig?”

“I dig,” Carella said.

“How come you didn’t call?”

“I thought I’d take a chance.”

“I prefer that you call,” Danny said, seemingly offended. “You know that.”

“Well, the truth of the matter is that I like hanging around on street corners when it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” Carella said. “That’s why I stopped by and then went right outside to wait for you.”

“Oh, I see,” Danny said.

“Yeah.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I got to protect myself.”

“Next time I’ll call,” Carella said.

“I’d appreciate it.”

They walked in silence for several blocks.

“What’s on your mind?” Danny asked at last.

“A crap game,” Carella answered.

“Where?”

“At 4111 South 5th. In the basement.”

“Regular or one-shot?”

“Regular.”

“Floating or stationary?”

“Stationary.”

“The same place each time?”

“Right.”

“Which is the basement of 4111 South 5th, correct?”

“Correct,” Carella said.

“Which also happens to be where somebody got his head busted Friday, also correct?”

“Also correct,” Carella said.

“So what do you want to know?”

“Everything about it.”

“Like?”

“Who played and when? Who won and who lost?”

“What’s the dead man’s connection with the game?” Danny asked.

“He ran it.”

“What was his cut? Usual house cut?”

“I don’t know. Find out for me.”

“You said this was a permanent game, huh? And the same place each time?”

“That’s right.”

“You talked to your sergeant on the beat yet?”

“No.”

“You’d better.”

“Why?”

“Chances are he knew about it. He was probably cutting the pot along with Lasser.”

“Maybe. I’ll get to him on Monday.”

“I’ve got to tell you…” Danny started.

“Yeah?”

“I haven’t heard a word about this, not a peep. It’s your notion somebody in the game chopped him down, is that it?”

“I don’t have any notions yet, Danny. I’m fishing.”

“Yeah, but why fish around a crap game? Dice players don’t usually go chopping a man down with an ax.”

“Where else do I fish?”

Danny shrugged. “From what I read in the newspaper, Steve, it sounds like a nut.” He shrugged again. “You got a nut? Go fishing around him.”

“I’ve got one. I’ve also got her son, who draws pictures and never leaves the house. And I’ve got three old cockuhs who survived the Spanish-American War and who are sitting around waiting to drop dead themselves any minute now. I’ve also got an underpaid Negro who knows how to use an ax, but I don’t think he used it on our man.”

“And you’ve got a crap game.”

“Right. So where do I fish?”

“The crap game.”

“Sure,” Carella said. “A crap game makes sense to me.”

“Don’t lean too heavy,” Danny said. “This might be a game full of guys from the building—they come down once, twice a week, just to pass the time.”

“Could be, sure.”

“Or what it could be,” Danny said, “is some nice respectable businessmen from downtown. This is their one night a week to howl. They come shoot craps in a slum basement instead of drinking or chasing after dames.”

“Sure, that, too,” Carella said. “Or it could be a bunch of hoods who’ve got no place else to play and who give George Lasser a cut for letting them use his basement.”

“Mm, maybe,” Danny said.

“In which case, an ax murder isn’t so very far out, is it?”

“An ax murder is always very far out,” Danny said. “You know any pro who’ll use an ax? Impossible. You’re dealing with amateur night, Steve. That’s why I’m telling you not to lean so heavy on the crap game. I mean, even if the game was full of the worst hoods ever walked this city, who do you know’s gonna use an ax on a guy?”

Carella looked suddenly troubled.

“What’d I do?” Danny asked. “Screw it up for you?”

“No, no. But I’ll tell you what I don’t like about this crap game, Danny. It’s against the law. That makes everybody in it a lawbreaker. And if they’ve all broken the law already...”

“Aw, come on, Steve,” Danny said. “Gambling’s a misdemeanor.”

“Even so.”

“So a dice player’s gonna suddenly pick up an ax? And brain somebody with it? Aw, come on, Steve.”

“You don’t buy it?” Carella asked.

Danny was quiet for a long time. Then he shrugged and said, “Old Chinese saying: ‘Play with dice like play with blonde. Man never get out what he put in.’ ”

Carella smiled.

“So who knows?” Danny continued. “Maybe there was a heavy loser in the game, and maybe he got himself an ax someplace…”

“In the shed behind the building,” Carella said.

“Sure, and he decided Lasser was the one to blame for his bad luck. Pow, goodbye janitor.” Danny shrugged again. “It could be. Guys go crazy over dice, the same like with a broad. But I don’t figure it for a pro. A pro puts a bullet in the old guy’s head, plain and simple. Or a shaft in his back. But an ax? I mean, Jesus, that’s pretty disgusting, ain’t it? An ax?”

“Will you listen around?” Carella asked.

“I’ll get back,” Danny said. He paused. “I’m short, you know.”

“So am I,” Carella said.

“Yeah, but I live dangerously.”

“I had to put in a new muffler,” Carella said.

“Huh?”

“On one of the squad sedans.”

“So? You had to pay for that?”

“Petty Cash had to pay for that.”

“Where does this ‘Petty Cash’ come from, anyway?” Danny asked. “Does the city honor your chits, or what?”

“We push dope on the side,” Carella answered.

“Listen, I’ll believe you,” Danny said.

“When will you call me?”

“As soon as I’ve got something. Listen, Steve, no kidding, I’m real short. I could use some…”

“Danny, if you come up with something, I’ll come up with something. I’m not stalling you. The cupboard is bare right now.”

“Boy oh boy,” Danny said. “Two bare cupboards in the middle of January. It’s enough to make you quit police work, ain’t it?” He grinned, glanced over his shoulder, shook hands with Carella briefly but firmly, and said, “I’ll give you a ring.”

Carella watched as he limped away. Then he put his gloved hands in his pockets and began walking the fifteen blocks back to where he had parked his car.