Black Mask (Vol. 23, No. 4 — August 1940)

Rats Breed Rats by G. T. Fleming-Roberts

In which a tough cop and a sentimental newshound gamble against death with the soul of a killer’s kid for table-stakes.

Nobody knew better than Detective Sergeant Bill Teed himself how he got all the breaks in the capture of Benny Hango. In the first place he just happened to be watching a group of boys pitch pennies in front of the Alpha Café that night. He was interested in the sport because down in the detectives’ room at headquarters he was no mean penny-pitcher himself. He was watching these kids when Pop Walker appeared at the screen door of the Alpha and said to Bill Teed: “You are pretty smart, aren’t you?”

Teed couldn’t answer that question himself, so he followed Pop Walker back into the café. Pop had a big Alpha Café napkin tucked under the latest acquisition in his collection of chins, and the creases at the corners of his mouth held evidence of dinner. It was said that Pop Walker was digging his grave with his teeth, which was not strictly true because the teeth he used were false. Pop Walker asked Bill to have a cup of coffee with him.

This Pop Walker had been police reporter on the Courier for twenty-odd years and he sometimes scooped the police as well as his rivals. Also, he was no one to hand out undeserved orchids. He had implied that Teed was smart at a time when Teed was feeling anything else but. Teed had been looking for and not finding this Benny Hango who was wanted for the murder of a teller in a bank stick-up that had occurred two days before. That Pop Walker had said Bill was smart when Bill didn’t know what he had done that was smart, was no better than being utterly dumb.

“Why,” Pop said, adding sugar to his coffee until heaven help the dishwasher who had to clean out his cup, “you’re smart to be watching Benny Hango’s son.”

The fact that Benny Hango had a son had either escaped the police record or was considered of no importance to detectives. Teed had never heard of Benny Hango’s son. All he had to go on was that the D. A. had a witness who would identify Benny Hango as one of the stick-up men and the murderer of the bank teller. But Pop Walker knew about Hango’s kid. In fact, he said, the kid was out in front now pitching pennies.

Looking out the café window, anybody who had ever seen Benny Hango could pick out his kid from the others. The kid was maybe fifteen years old, but looked older in the face and younger in the body. He was slope-shouldered, skinny, undersize. He had his dad’s thin, angular nose, his dad’s glossy black hair, his dad’s close-set dark eyes. His mouth, though, was a finer thing than his dad’s.

Teed turned from the window thoughtfully pulling his chin, which was a good deal longer than all of Pop’s facial terrace. “Pop, why in the deep dark hell have you been keeping this under your toupee?” He thought, damn it, if this was anybody else but Pop you could call it withholding material evidence.

Pop’s short brow got worried with wrinkles. “Well,” he said slowly, “I like kids. I been watching this kid of Benny Hango’s for several hours, What I intended to do was see if he’d lead me to Benny’s hangout, and then I could report the hangout to the police and just leave the kid out of it. You know how I’ve always wished I had a son.”

“Yeah,” Bill admitted. He got up to go to the door, but Pop got hold of his coat-tail. “You wait,” Pop said. His face was wrinkled up as though he had been eating green apples. “There’s no use pulling up a weed if another grows right up in its place. Isn’t that true?”

“Yeah, but—”

“There’s good in that kid, Bill. But if he gets in dutch with the cops right about now, he’ll grow up hating cops. And that’s a good way to get off on the wrong foot — hating cops.”

“I’ll buy the kid a lolly-pop,” Bill said.

Pop said: “You just think of Hango’s kid as though he were your own. You give him a break and keep him out of it entirely. That kid ought to have his chance. You’re going to fry his old man for murder, don’t forget, and if you approach the kid with your usual nightstick diplomacy the kid will get the impression that his dad is a martyr.”

Bill Teed spread his hands. “O.K. I said I’ll go easy on the kid. I’ll even hand him over to you and you can cuddle him to your bosom if you want to. Only I got to get Benny Hango or my own kids will be provided for by a relief ticket.”

He jerked out of Pop’s grasp and went out to look the kids over. The more he saw of Benny Hango’s kid the more he saw of Benny Hango. The kid was just a miniature of his old man. At the penny-pitching, Hango’s kid had been winning steadily, so there was no complaint from the other boys when he pulled out of the game.

Teed followed the kid, watched him visit a serve-self grocery where he bought bread and milk with pennies he had won and stole some cookies. From there, the kid went to the basement entrance of a deserted building that walled in one end of a parking-lot. Teed followed along and eventually located the kid and Benny Hango in the furnace-room of the building, and through the door of the fuel cellar, where Teed was hiding, he could hear the two talking.

Teed approached the door. What he heard gave him the idea that Hango was wounded. And that was his second break.

“Lemme take your rod and get a doc for you,” the kid was saying. His voice was just like his dad’s except that it was an octave higher.

“I’m O.K,” Hango said. “You help me outta here tonight and I’ll get some of the dough and blow. You been a damn good kid, Joey.”

“But the bulls—”

“The hell with them,” Hango said. “What did I do in the Peoria job? It’s a sweet set-up, in Peoria. The joint is cased. We go in, clean out the cages. Coming out, what happens? Right in front of me is a cop. I give it to him in the belly.”

At this point, Bill Teed pulled his revolver and shoved open the door. Benny Hango, dark, dried-up little stick of dynamite that he was, lay on a bed made of burlap sacks. His right trouser leg was slit and his leg was bandaged above the knee with rags. His gun was on an up-ended orange crate about three feet from him. Joey was on the other side of the orange crate and a little to the left. A candle was stuck in the regulator chain of the furnace, and that was the only light there was. The open bottle of milk was beside Benny, and he had a chunk of the bread in his hand.

Bill Teed couldn’t be seen easily because he was at the edge of the circle of candle-light. If it hadn’t been for the kid, it would have been a cinch. “Put up your hands, Benny,” he said. “Try anything and you’ll get what the Peoria cop got. You’re under arrest.” He advanced to the edge of the circle of light and a little beyond.

Hango’s kid said: “A dirty copper!” He looked from Teed to his dad as though he expected Hango to make a super-move. Benny looked at his gun and evidently couldn’t decide on a super-move. Hango’s kid couldn’t quite understand this. He repeated, tossing in a few more adjectives, that here was a dirty copper.

Benny Hango sat up slowly and raised his hands. His hard eyes flickered into the candle-light. And then Benny’s kid pulled the surprise. He came up from a squat to a standing position and Bill thought the kid was going to try and reach Hango’s gun. Bill took a quick step forward and got the kid by the hair. Joey Hango simply stuck out his foot and pushed the orange crate over toward his dad.

The gun went with the orange crate, and Benny took it out of midair as it fell. He brought the gun around toward Bill Teed. Bill Teed was a hard man to gun because he was thin and fast and kept his nerves in cold storage. Besides, he had a wide edge on Hango. Bill got in the first and last shot and it took Hango through the right arm. Hango dropped his gun, and his face crimped with pain.

Bill Teed came down with both knees into Hango’s middle, drove the killer’s breath out of him. He got out handcuffs. Hango’s half-pint kid came tearing in, his thin arms going like windmills, his lips naming the cop. Bill flicked the kid a glance, saw the wild, berserk gleam in his eyes. He warned, “Keep out, kid,” then grunted explosively as the kid’s dad landed a short blow to his middle.

Bill Teed slapped his gun barrel to the side of Hango’s head to stun him while he got the handcuffs on. Joey shrilled: “You leave my old man alone!” He beat both fists into the small of Teed’s back. Teed brought his right elbow back sharply and the point of it cracked to the kid’s chin. The kid went flat, and the crack of his head against the floor had more to do with keeping him quiet than the blow. Bill brought the dazed Hango’s wrists together and clamped the cuffs in place.

Teed stood up, turned around, looked at Joey. He said: “It’s tough, kid.” Joey didn’t say anything. His dark eyes were glassy, his teeth ground together. The kid was dazed but he was coming out of it.

Teed heard the popping of coal particles under foot, looked up, saw Pop Walker coming through the door. “I called headquarters,” he said, “as soon as I saw where you were going. There’ll be a wagon for Hango. I’ll take the kid with me.”

Joey Hango sat up. He said shrilly: “I’m going with my old man.”

Teed shook his head. “You won’t like it there. We’re giving you a break. Haven’t you got enough sense to take it?” He went over to Benny Hango, grabbed him by the handcuffs. “You get up on your feet, Benny. If you were planning to lam out of here tonight I guess you can walk as far as the police car.”

Hango got to his feet. Sweat stood out on his thin, ugly face. He took one step with Teed and stopped. He hitched himself around so he could divide what he was going to give out between Teed and Pop Walker. “Get this,” he said. “That’s my kid. No damn thing you can do or say can take him away from me. If I take the squat for this, you two mugs are gonna hear from my kid, see?”

Joey Hango was hit hard, seeing his old man taken by a single cop. He didn’t seem to notice the affectionate arm Pop Walker threw over his shoulder. He kept his head down and the lower lip of his fine mouth was trembling.

Teed gave Benny a jerk. He said: “I heard that kind of mouthy fireworks from tougher mugs than you. But when you face the chair—”

Benny Hango cut through with a laugh. “You know what I’ll do if it comes to that? Spit inna warden’s eye. Let’s go. So long, kid.”

As Teed and the killer moved off toward the door, Joey tried to break away from Pop Walker. His voice, broken, sobbing, cried out: “I wanna go with my old man!” His puny fists lashed out at Pop Walker’s moon of a face up there just beyond reach. Walker hung on to the kid.

Benny Hango, down at headquarters proved he was tough stuff. He couldn’t be broken. The cops had an air-tight case against him for murder, but they couldn’t get any information out of him as to whom he had been with on the bank job. Benny Hango might have been a rat, he had a rat’s animal courage now that he was cornered.

All during the trial, Benny Hango’s son lived at Pop Walker’s apartment. Teed couldn’t understand that at first, unless Joey Hango was just getting a big kick out of sleeping in a bed and getting his meals regularly and not having to steal the money he spent. Pop Walker was gone on the kid. He gave Joey money and told him to go down and buy himself a new suit. Bill Teed just shook his head and told Pop he had said good-bye to fifty bucks and the kid, too. But the kid came back, dolled up in the damndest pool-room regalia Bill Teed had ever seen. The kid even had a derby hat.

Joey Hango would sit around the apartment all day while Pop Walker was covering Hango’s trial. He didn’t seem to be interested in what happened to his old man.

One day when Pop Walker and Teed were eating at the same lunch counter, Pop told Bill that he had put Joey on the honor system. The kid would do whatever he thought he wanted to do and could go anywhere, only he had to tell Pop about it when he got back. As he told this, Pop’s round face became radiant. He was going to make something of the kid, he said.

“Yes,” Pop said, chuckling, “the little devil got mixed up in a pool game at Rudy’s the other night. He lost six bits. He came home and told me about that. And when—”

“Did he tell you that he played at Rudy’s with a member of the Jigger Cullem mob, a gunman named Spig Morrava?” Bill asked.

The radiance of Pop’s face dimmed a little. “Not Joey,” he said. “Somebody else was. Morrava was there, but Joey didn’t have anything to do with him. He told me.”

Bill looked at Pop. He forced a laugh. “I was just kidding.” But he wasn’t kidding. He had seen Joey with Spig Morrava quite frequently. He had seen Joey give Morrava money — money that Joey got from Pop Walker. The way Bill figured it, Benny Hango had been working with the Cullem mob on that bank job. Jigger Cullem and his boys were just about broke, Bill thought, for they were unable to spend the hot loot they had taken from the bank. They were picking up money for food where they could find it, waiting for their loot to cool off.

Bill figured that was why Morrava was patronizing the Hango kid — because the pocket money that Pop furnished Joey could be used toward buying the Cullem mob food and drink. But Bill couldn’t tell that to Pop Walker just then. Pop would have taken it too hard.

The trial of Benny Hango came out the only way that it could and the date for his death in the chair was set. Benny didn’t take his sentence lying down but tried to climb the judge’s bench and tell everybody off. You couldn’t tell, though, whether this was defiance or a sort of yellow-livered hysteria.

You could see Pop Walker’s hand in the stuff the Courier printed about the trial. Pop was trying to make things easier for Joey Hango. Joey didn’t seem to care one way or another. He continued to live off Pop and pal around with Spig Morrava.

“What do you intend to do with the kid?” Teed asked Pop.

“Well, as soon as all the publicity has died down and there’s no chance of Joey being recognized as Benny’s son I’m going to send him to a military school. I’ll make a man of him.”

Bill thought: “Maybe you are if Morrava and Jigger Cullem don’t make something else out of him first.”

Then there was that night when Joey Hango tried to break into a grocery store with a key somebody had given him. Bill had been following the kid and collared him before Joey got the door open. Somebody was covering for the kid — somebody in a car up the alley. That somebody fired a shot that didn’t do any damage and then took it on the lam, leaving the kid with Teed. Bill Teed took the kid straight to Pop Walker and told Pop the story as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

When Teed had finished, Pop got up slowly and went over to where the kid was sitting. He put both hands on the kid’s shoulders and asked him if all this was true. Pop’s eyes were shiny.

Joey Hango knocked Pop’s hands down. His mouth sneered, and then it was very much like his dad’s mouth. “Listen, fats, I been sitting around here playing you for a sucker because I like what you hand out. I like having a bed an’ a place to eat. Easy pickings on the money, too, and I could help some friends a mine. You and that damn dirty copper sent my old man up. And if my old man fries—”

Teed said to Pop: “What this kid needs he’s got waiting for him. I mean a paid-up tuition in the reform school.”

“Shut up, Bill,” Pop said. He went over to the kid, got him by the shoulders, shoved him across to the bedroom. He pushed the kid through the door, pulled the door shut, and locked it. He turned, looking deflated.

Bill said: “I’m sorry, Pop. But I think one reason the kid has been hanging around is that he’s got some nutty idea he can get square with you and me for what we did to his dad.”

“The kid has guts enough to try it,” Pop said. “That’s what makes it tough. There’s stuff in the kid, good stuff.”

“It’s nothing more than you can expect, for him to turn out like this,” Bill said. “Rats breed rats. You’d save a lot of grief for yourself if you’d just let me take him down to headquarters on the charge of trying to break into that grocery. That will at least get him away from the Jigger Cullem outfit. He’ll learn fast from Jigger. The Cullem mob must have been the gang that Benny Hango was working with, but we can’t prove it. We might be saving the kid from a murder rap later on.”

Pop pounded one fat fist into the palm of its mate. “If I only knew, Bill. If we could only see into the future and see how Benny Hango is going to face the chair. I guess you know that Benny has been asking to see his son.”

Bill Teed nodded. “And maybe that hasn’t had me on a spot down at headquarters. I knew you wouldn’t want the kid to see his dad, so I’ve been pretending I didn’t know anything about Joey. You know, Pop, this personal stuff between you and me is O.K., but I think it’s gone far enough. I better take the kid down to headquarters before something turns up that makes me get it in the neck from the chief. I got a family, you know.”

Bill started for the bedroom door, but Pop caught his arm. Pop’s face was pale, his eyes moist. “Don’t do that, Bill.” His voice was flat. All the appeal was in his eyes. “It’s the last impression the kid gets of his old man that’s going to count. If Benny Hango gets hold of that kid long enough to talk to him, he’ll ruin the kid. And if Benny turns up a hero in the electric chair, that’ll finish the kid, too. But the reason Benny wants to talk to the kid is — well, there’s a certain tragic sense of life in all men, an aching desire to be sure of some sort of immortality. And Benny hates cops and always has. It’s almost a creed with him. His last desperate effort to grasp that immortality will be an attempt to drive that same creed home to the kid. That way, Benny will live again in his kid, see? We can’t have that.”

Bill said: “I’m not thinking of the kid. I’m thinking you’re making an ass of yourself. Rats breed rats.” He jerked away from Pop and went to the bedroom door. When he got the door open he found the room empty, the window open, the curtains breezing out over the fire-escape. He turned to Pop, his thin face screwed into a knot. “I’m a hell of a cop,” he said. “The kid blew while we were talking all that stuff about immortality.”

A week later Bill Teed and Pop Walker were compelled to witness the death of Benny Hango in the electric chair. Teed was among the official witnesses and Walker represented the local press. Benny lived up to all his promises, and the only reason he didn’t spit in the warden’s eye was that his spitting was not accurate enough. He did not die yellow.

The following morning, Bill and Pop returned from the up-state pen. Pop had no comments to make. He simply went off to his news office.

About noon, Teed was bending over the cigar counter at Rudy’s poolroom, talking to Rudy, when somebody who was buying cigarettes shoved up against him. Teed looked around and saw that it was Joey Hango. Joey’s lips sneered at the dick and that made his face a sort of living death mask of Benny Hango’s face. It startled Teed more than a little.

Joey bought cigarettes and shoved a hundred-dollar bill across the counter to Rudy. Rudy ran a dice game somewhere in his establishment, it was rumored, so Teed was not surprised when Rudy changed the C-note. Bill made no effort to stall Joey as the little punk swaggered out of the place. But he did insist on looking at the bill the kid had passed. One look at the numbers and he knew the bill was hot. It was part of the loot from the bank stick-up. Teed took the C-note and gave Rudy a receipt for it.

Bill noticed, when he put the note in his pocket, that there were gray grease stains on it and he meant to have a man in the police lab look at these stains before he went much further. But from Rudy’s he drove to a drug store which was across the street from the ratty three-story walk-up where the Cullem mob hung out. He got there in time to see Joey Hango enter the Cullem place.

Teed used the phone booth at the drug store and called headquarters. He asked for a man to be sent around to the drug store at once. Then he called Pop Walker at the Courier and told him that he had found the Hango kid passing hot money and that he thought now was the time for a showdown. He hung up without telling Pop where he was. Teed didn’t know but what this was a trick on the kid’s part to get him into some sort of trap in which the Cullem mob was to serve as jaws. If that was what it was, he didn’t want Pop or anybody else walking into the trap with him.

When the man came from headquarters, Teed gave him the C-note and told him to get a report on the grease spots on the bill and call him at the drug store. When the man started back to headquarters, Teed stood around in the drug store, watching the place across the street. He was there long enough to see Jigger Cullem go in about forty minutes later. Jigger was a crazy-looking hood, what with his broken nose on which sat large horn-rimmed glasses, and the blond baby fuzz that grew on his head. He didn’t look tough, but then neither does a black widow spider.

The report Teed got from headquarters was that the grease stains were a mixture of certain animal and vegetable fatty substances mixed with salts of magnesium and calcium. Teed knew that a mixture like that comes from the contact of soap and hard water. It gave him an idea.

As soon as he had that report, Teed went out of the drug store and there he met Pop Walker. Pop said: “You thought you’d put over a fast one, did you? I simply went over to headquarters and found out you were here waiting for a call. Where’s Joey?”

Teed nodded at the building across the street. “Over there with his cute little pal, Jigger Cullem and maybe Spig Morrava and Mike Brandon. I’m going over there alone.”

“If Joey’s up there, I’m going with you,” Pop insisted.

Teed shrugged. “I’m not going to mess up this sidewalk with you all over it. Let’s go across the street.”

The Cullem flat was on the top floor of the walk-up, and Teed’s long legs took him up the first flight of steps quickly. He waited for Pop to join him. He said: “Pop, you’re not barging into a mess like this with me.”

“Like hell I’m not,” Pop said.

“I’m sorry,” Teed apologized, and then hit Pop on the point of his most prominent chin. Pop was out on his feet and collapsed into Teed’s arms. Teed let him down easy and then went on up to Cullem’s place.

The door was opened by Jigger Cullem himself. Jigger’s eyes, as he regarded Teed, looked like glass behind glass. In answer to Teed’s question he said he didn’t mind if Teed came in, though obviously he did. Teed went in and looked around the crummy little living-room with its newspapers, whiskey bottles, playing cards, and cigarette butts lying around. The Hango kid was standing over near the window, a smoking cigarette in his fingers. Joey’s fingers weren’t steady.

“You have a warrant?” Jigger asked in his monotone.

Teed pulled his revolver. “This is it.” He stepped up close to Jigger and relieved the four-eyed killer of his gun. He gun-drove Jigger over to where Joey stood and patted the kid’s pockets. Joey wasn’t armed.

“Let’s go look at the bathroom,” Bill said, thinking of the hard water and soap stains on that C-note. He prodded Jigger ahead of him into the bathroom, went over to the lavatory and tried to turn on the water. Opening the taps, no water came out. Cullem said if he wanted to wash he’d have to go to the kitchen.

Bill kicked under the lavatory with the toe of his shoe and discovered that the drain pipe was loose. He backed, motioned Jigger forward with his gun. “Tough on the plumbers’ union, Jigger, but you’ll have to take down that drain pipe. That’s where the money is, isn’t it?”

Jigger said, “What money?” and turned a little pale.

“The loot from the bank stick-up you and your pals pulled with Benny Hango.”

Behind Bill, somebody said: “Drop the rod, dick.”

Teed turned without dropping his gun. In the bathroom door was Spig Morrava and red-haired Mike Brandon. Teed knew no matter how good a shot he was he couldn’t gun both of those men before one of them gunned him. So he dropped his gun.

“The dick is in the know, Spig,” Jigger said.

Morrava shrugged. “Just so he don’t tell, we don’t care.”

“He won’t tell,” Mike Brandon said.

Joey Hango squeezed in between the two men in the doorway. His face was white, like he might be sick any minute. Mike Brandon said to him: “You pick up the dick’s gun, Joey, and then you and I will sort of square things for your old man by taking this guy for a ride, huh?”

“They’ll frame you, Joey,” Teed warned.

Joey stumbled forward and crouched to pick up Teed’s gun. Jigger Cullem said:“And get my rod out of the dick’s pocket, Joey.”

Bill Teed looked down. He saw Joey’s fingers close over the grips of the police gun and saw Joey’s finger slide into the trigger guard. Bill knew that something that wasn’t on the books was going to happen.

Joey lifted the gun, spun around on one heel like a dervish. Still in a crouch, he fired. Spig Morrava looked like the most surprised man who ever lived — or died. His broad flat face went blank as he started sliding down the frame of the bathroom door, both hands clutched to his chest.

Mike Brandon’s gun dipped a bit to take in Joey Hango. Bill Teed kicked Joey from behind, knocked him flat on the floor, and at the same time pulled Cullem’s automatic from his pocket and gave Mike Brandon two shots — one through the leg and the other through the right arm. Going down, Mike Brandon tried to cross his gun to his left hand, but Joey came up from the floor to rush Mike and managed to get to the gun first.

At about this time, Jigger Cullem tried a flying tackle that took Teed from behind and thigh-high. Bill came down, squirmed over to put the gun on Jigger. Jigger released Bill’s legs to try and get hold of the automatic Bill Teed was using.

Bill used the gun to slap a barrel blow to the side of Jigger’s head.

Pop Walker broke into the Cullem apartment about that time to see Joey Hango grinning and shaking hands with a grim and slightly puzzled Bill Teed. Joey was saying that he had planned this all the time. He had passed that hot note right under Bill’s nose as a way of telling Bill where he could nail the bank stick-up boys without much trouble. Joey had found out where the money was hidden and had swiped one of the hot notes just to use as a signal to Bill. He wondered if that sort of made up for things and if Bill thought he’d make a good cop later on.

When the police were cleaning up the Cullem place, Teed got Pop off in a corner and asked what he had done to make the Hango kid change overnight. Pop didn’t know. He hadn’t said anything that would have caused the sudden change. No, Joey must have made the right decision himself.

“Of course,” Pop added, “this might have had something to do with it.” He picked up a sheet from the morning Courier that was on the table in the Cullem living-room. There was an item on the sheet, by-lined by Walker. It read—

Bill didn’t read any farther. He just looked at Pop Walker and said: “You damned liar.”

Pop said: “I felt that the last impression of his dad the kid got would determine what he decided to be. I knew a yellow streak down his idol would make the kid ashamed of his dad and of the kind of life his dad had represented.”

“So you just painted the yellow streak on,” Bill said.