Catch the Brass Ring

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A FIGURE LUMBERED toward us in the darkness. It screamed again, a horrible sound which carried far across the almost silent beach and drowned out the giggles from the blanket fifty yards away, a sound compounded of terror and hate.

Something crashed flatly. A brilliant flash lit up the shapeless figure. Face distorted, hair disheveled, it was Becky Lutz. And she had fired a pistol.

“Lie flat!” I yelled at Sheila, and got down beside her. “You put that thing away, Becky,” I said. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

“You killed my Ben.”

“I didn’t kill anybody. I want to find out who killed Ben as much as you do. Just take it easy, Becky.” I climbed to my knees and watched her. She was crazy-mad all right. Even if she had known I was out here on the beach, at this distance she couldn’t have been sure it was me. Dandy.

“I liked you,” she said. “I thought you could help Ben. Ben is dead, you know. The police said you killed him.”

“They were wrong. They let me go.” I stood up and took a step toward Becky. The pistol roared again. This time I was looking straight at the muzzle blast and it blinded me. If I hit the dirt again I figured I was a dead duck, so I kept walking.

“You put that thing away. Someone will get hurt.”

The gun blammed once more. Bless Becky, she couldn’t hit the side of an apartment house from the delivery entrance. But accidentally, she might hit something a lot smaller than that. Me.

The hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Becky shrieked and I grabbed the pistol away from her.

Becky kept right on shrieking. “Help! HELP! You killed him. Help!”

I hadn’t been aware of it, but the teen-agers, six of ’em by latest unhappy count, had clustered around us while their girls stood in a group a few yards off, chattering. “What the hell you shooting that thing off, for, mister?” one of the boys demanded. “Don’cha know that’s dangerous?”

And another: “Lady, is he bothering you?” Considering what they thought to be the true state of things, that was the understatement of this or any other century.

Becky had resorted to her wail again.

“You give us that pistol, mister. Don’t want no trouble.”

It was getting to be an ugly situation. They’d crowded in close. Any moment, one of them might decide to out-hero the others and hurl himself at me. I’d gladly take them on two at a time if I had to, but six had altogether too many arms and legs to mess with.

I said, “Boys, you’re making a mistake.”

But Becky’s wail was far more convincing.

They began to close the circle. This close I could see that one of them had found a shiv, though God knows where he managed to hide it in his bathing trunks. They smelled so loaded if you shook them they might overflow. So it suddenly occurred to me the situation wasn’t one in which I might merely find myself mobbed. I might find myself killed.

Before Becky could repeat her wail I raised her pistol, a .32, and squeezed the trigger, praying it wouldn’t misfire again. It didn’t. It roared a pleasantly deadly sound and backed the circle up a few steps. When it roared a second time I found my weak spot. It was the hero with the shiv. It was why he carried the shiv. He was yellow.

I lunged at him and bowled him over but lost my footing in the soft sand and went down with him. He was yelping to beat the band and I felt his blade scrape against my chest, nicking the flesh and grazing the ribs.

People were shouting. Brave souls heading towards us from the boardwalk. In a minute the place would be crawling with cops and every last one of the six male and six female witnesses, stewed to their gills or not, would swear I had attacked Becky and I wasn’t sure that Becky would testify in my behalf or not. As for Sheila, she had decided to take a quick powder while Becky’s cannon was changing hands. I couldn’t blame her, but that left me without a witness for the defense. All this, of course, was secondary. Sort of like a man with six or seven bullets in his gut in an ambulance on the way to the hospital and wondering if he’d catch a cold or measles or something there.

I rolled clear and leaped to my feet and got a good rap across the bridge of my nose for the trouble. Hands tugged at my shoulder but I threw them off and broke away. I stamped down when something coiled around me ankle and heard a little-boy scream.

Then I was in the clear and running. Not toward the boardwalk and more trouble, if of a milder variety. I made for the ocean and kicked off my loafers along the way. I took a dozen running strides in and it was cold as the Bering Sea on New Year’s Day. I kept running, surface-dived and began to swim out, straight out and good riddance.

I’d lost Becky’s .32 in my haste, but it didn’t matter. I just wanted to get away and think. Things were buzzing around inside my head like flies around a Korean honey bucket. From one source and another I’d gathered odd scraps of information. Put them all together and maybe you had a killer. Maybe you had a headache and plenty of wild notions. I had to talk to Kellum. Once he would have clammed up, but not now. Now I’d knocked the stuffings out of him. The way his sick mind worked, if Karen knew her Freud and company, I was Kellum’s Marilyn Monroe. But I wasn’t the only one. For Vito Lucca had broken his arm. Hot damn, I was getting somewhere! Maybe Kellum was covering up for Vito. Kellum discovered the body. And maybe… but it didn’t make sense, none of it. It made so little sense that it filled my lungs with water. There I was, swimming out beyond the jagged stone breakwaters which batter the Coney Island tide before it can tumble on the beach, thinking up a storm. And coughing and gagging and cursing myself before I re-established the rhythm, and where the hell was I?

I

swam left around the breakwater and kept going, swimming an easy sidestroke parallel to the beach, a sidestroke which would not kick up enough of a wake to be seen from the sand.

Call the boss Mr. X. He ruled indirectly, holding his organization together loosely by means of the letters he wrote. Quite probably, he controlled things from afar but remained on hand incognito to guard his interests. Then Mr. X had two roles to play, the one by mail, the other directly. Perhaps someone had challenged the second role. Perhaps someone had figured he could take over on this end, not knowing that Mr. X’s lieutenant and Mr. X were one and the same man. Such a someone, thanks to Becky’s goading, might have been Ben Lutz, who got himself killed. But…

There was something else.I counted four more breakwaters spaced a couple of hundred hefty strokes apart and headed for the beach. Something Vito had said once. Something which might tie everything together if only I could remember it. Ever try to remember the name of a vague acquaintance? The more you try to think of it, the further away from consciousness you push it. This was like that. Vito had said something, something he didn’t know was important, something innocent, but something which might hold the answer to everything. Vito had said… Damn it, what had Vito said? He’d been giving me some cock and bull story about Sheila, telling me she was cold and distant and had some notions about honesty and all the while successfully hiding his own smoldering, unfounded jealousy. Well, partly. At that point, perhaps Sheila had wanted him to get out of the bootlegging business before it caved in on top of him. Anyway, he’d said something, made some comparison….

I

dragged myself up on the beach and sprawled out there, panting raggedly, realizing for the first time that rain had begun to fall, etching tiny craterlets in the sand.

And then I remembered. If Karen had been taken, I thought I knew where I could find her. The more I explored the angles, the more convinced I was she

had

been taken.

My trousers soaking wet and plastered to me, I headed for the boardwalk and under it. I walked through to the street, ignoring the curses as I almost tripped over a foursome of bare legs, two male and two female.

I’d swam far enough to come out on the block with my hotel, and even if the police had been summoned, they’d be in no hurry to look for me at home, not when I’d last been seen heading out in the general direction of the Ambrose Light. I drew some strange glances on the street but made it to the hotel, where I changed my clothing and was on my way out again in ten minutes. I had to hurry but I had to make sure. I found a phone booth in a candy store and called Tolliver’s, but Karen hadn’t returned. I called Karen’s apartment in Queens and cradled the earpiece after a dozen rings. Then I stepped out into the street and wished I’d picked some other candy store. Any other candy store.

Approaching me were Becky Lutz, calmer now but still wild-eyed, as unlovely a figure as I’d ever seen in the rain, and officer Billy Drake. It was Billy who saw me and pointed, but Becky who did the yelling. I whirled and started to run, but when Billy told me to stop his voice said he had me covered. I turned around.

He did.

“You’ve got a lot of answering to do, Frey.”

“Not now. Later. You won’t believe this, but it’s a matter of life and death. Be a good kid, Billy.”

“Sure, someone’s life and death, with you maybe holding a gun and doing the job. I’ve got to run you in, Frey. Man, they’re still looking for you out on the beach.”

“He killed Ben,” Becky said.

“I don’t think so,” Billy admitted — which made me feel a little better. “As far as we can see he has an airtight alibi on that.”

“Thank you very much,” I said sarcastically.

“You’re going to let him get away!”

“Not on your life, Mrs. Lutz. I only said—”

“But he killed Ben.” Becky’s eyes had grown big, but the pupils were pinpoints in a lot of white, as if she’d been mainlining. She stared at me and spoke to Billy and needed psychiatric treatment. Her husband had been murdered and maybe her subconscious told her she was responsible. Her goading had driven him inevitably to the edge of his grave, had motivated the hand which wielded the shovel which dug the hole. She knew it unconsciously and she struck back at her environment so she wouldn’t have to admit that fact to herself. It was ugly, but you couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.

Fat arms streaked out. Fat fingers clenched and twister!. Billy Drake stood there, stunned, pointing his empty fist at me. Becky held his revolver in both hands and stared at it, then at Billy, then at me.

“Now, Mrs. Lutz,” Billy said. He was more than alarmed. He was frightened. “You can’t take the law into your own hands.”

Becky was beyond logic, beyond reasoning. She was not taking the law into her own hands. She was a law unto herself.

“I’m asking you, Mrs. Lutz,” said Billy. “Please give me the gun.” A crowd had gathered, surrounding us on three sides, with the entrance to the candy store on the fourth. The proprietor, a small man with shell-rimmed glasses and a stained white apron girdling his ample middle, stood there wringing his hands.

Becky lifted the .38 with both hands, grasping the butt like it was the neck of a copperhead and she didn’t want it to turn around and sink its fangs into her. I began to back away and wished I had the gift of gab which often talks people more talented than I — or so you read in the lurid mysteries — out of man-sized jams. I said, “I was Ben’s friend, Becky. I wouldn’t do a thing like that. I didn’t kill Ben, but I think I know who was responsible.”

Maybe she didn’t hear me. Maybe she did but wasn’t interested. Either way, it was as if I hadn’t opened my mouth. “A knife you killed him with. You stuck it in his back and pushed and let him lay there, bleeding….”

It was Billy Drake’s revolver. Right then, Billy had made a pretty sorry spectacle of himself as a cop. The crowd had begun to circle us and had seen. Perhaps that passed through his mind, I don’t know. It’s hard to tell what passes through a man’s mind when he decides to become a hero.

Becky’s fingers tightened. Becky sobbed. I couldn’t back off into the crowd because Becky might hurt an innocent bystander. I figured I’d rush her at the last possible instant and at least die trying.

Billy Drake stepped between us as I girded myself and Becky fired.

He fell slowly, not joint by joint but in a slow-motion, liquid movement. He rolled to the ground and you couldn’t tell where the bullet had gone in. He settled almost gracefully on his back. He folded his hands over his chest with easy grace. His cap had flown off and his blond hair was combed neatly in place.

“I asked you, Mrs. Lutz…” he said. Blood necked his lips and then welled from his mouth. He’d been hit in the chest.

There was no need to take the revolver from Becky. She let it fall and stood there staring down not at Billy, but at the gun which clattered to the pavement at his side. I could see how the one thing which stood out most to annoy you, his pride, had probably saved my life. And I could see how you couldn’t really blame Becky Lutz, although that didn’t help Billy. She had a debt to pay but it was up to the rest of the taxpayers to collect. So I stooped down while the first screams swept through the crowd and men began to shout in angry voices and picked up Billy’s .38 Special. Then I ran.

Someone tried to stop me, but I brushed aside the restraining arms and double-timed down Surf Avenue, half-expecting to hear the ambulance come wailing down the street and maybe save Billy and maybe not.

I knew where I had to go but not what I had to do, but Karen was there unless I had my signals crossed. I’d been wrong about Karen, so wrong it made me gnash mental teeth as I zig-zagged up the street, flitting among the size-changing shadows under Surf Avenue’s lampposts. You take a gal like Karen with all that pride of hers and a hot-headed dodo like me and nobody gets anyplace unless someone’s ready to sit down, keep his big yap shut and listen. That someone was me and I hadn’t done it.

Now Karen was in trouble.

I’d storm the pits of hell and kick sand in Cerebrus’ eyes if it would help Karen, but would it? I needed reinforcements, and if Karen knew her apples, I thought I’d be able to get some. Yeah, if she knew her apples. Fruit. Name of King Kellum. He could use his paws and that was one thing, but the fact that he owned a car made him about as valuable to me as the Chinese Reds were to the North Koreans after Nam II’s battered legions were down to a couple of scraggly regiments.

So back to Tolliver’s I went, hating every minute that ticked by, but realizing I might be trading minutes now for hours later and maybe for a life. Karen’s.

I found Kellum stuffing a limp slab of pizza into his mouth at Vito’s counter. Vito wasn’t around.

“Hi, Mr. Frey.” he said.

“Hi, yourself. I need a favor, Kellum.”

He looked at me with his big, brutal face, the expression showing nothing. “What kind of favor?”.

“I don’t have time to go into detail. I need you because you’re strong and know how to fight. I also need you because I’ve got to get someplace in a hurry and we could use your car. I better say first that it could be dangerous.”

“You haven’t told me enough.”

“Look,” I said, “this whole stinking business is going to come tumbling down so hard it will hit everyone concerned. You’re no exception. You’ve had it. You’ve been engaging in activities the T-men don’t exactly consider kosher.”

Kellum stared and stared, dropping the remains of the pizza to the counter. “What are you talking about? There’s no rumble…”

“Wrong,” I lied. “The T-men have been notified.” I spoke in an urgent whisper. Well, the T-men would be notified as soon as I could pause for breath. “They’re going to strike soon. Your best chance is to play along with me and turn in the brains behind the bathtub brew.”

“You mean Mr. Soolpovar? He ain’t here.”

I shook my head. “Let’s get going,” I said. “Are you coming or aren’t you?”

Kellum retrieved his pizza and stuffed it into his mouth. “How do I know you ain’t kidding me? How do I know you’re not giving me a test or something?”

I cursed him and told him to suit himself. I remembered what Karen had told me and realized maybe I’d gone too far afield. I swung my right hand, open-palmed, at his face and left the clear imprint of four fingers from eye to jaw. Then I turned and walked out of there.

First there was nothing, then a few random, self-directed curse words. Then Kellum had fallen into step beside me and said, “My car’s across the street in the lot.”

In a couple of moments we were skirting the pay toilet where someone had taken a pot-shot at me. There behind it was the kid and his stack of comic books. I would have sworn he was reading the same one. Kellum led the way to a pre-war Buick convertible and ground the starter half a dozen times before it kicked over and I stopped cursing. “Where we goin’, Mr. Frey?” Kellum demanded. “Port Washington,” I said. “Know how to get there?” As it turned out, I had to give him instructions. The convertible began to make noisy headway against a surprisingly cool wind, but as fast as the breeze dried sweat from my face, fresh droplets popped out. I might be wrong. I might be nuts. If Port Washington wasn’t the answer I’d drop a dime into the nearest phone, call the T-men, and pray.