Down Among the Dead Men

IX

When Koski opened his eyes, he was looking at a ceiling. The ceiling was gray, mottled with irregular brown stains; a crack ran across it from one corner to the other with tributary cracks spreading out like forks of a river. His head left as if somebody were squeezing it in a vise; he moved it enough to see the foot of a white, iron bed. He put his hand flat to push himself on his side, felt coarse mattress ticking beneath him.

He rolled over. Big Dommy sat in a kitchen chair three feet away. A pink-striped pillow without a pillowslip lay in the saloonkeeper’s lap; his arms lay across it, the hands on his knees. Koski’s service-special was in the fat man’s right hand. Dommy’s face was congested; one of his eyelids was blue and swelling. His neck glistened with sweat.

“I’ve been trying to think of some reason why I shouldn’t cancel you. I can’t think of any.”

“I can tell you one.” Speech came clumsily; Koski’s lips were bruised; his tongue felt as thick as a rubber heel. “My partner will be around.”

“No dice. You been out nearly half an hour. It’s after one. If you had a partner an’ if he was coming, he’d be here before this.”

“You don’t know Mulcahey. He might have taken a shine to some jane on the way over.”

“He should have come here first. I got some nice numbers downstairs.”

“Headquarters knows where I am, too.”

Dommy shook his head. “I could name half a dozen people who saw you walk outa here.”

“You must be loaded to the gills.” Koski levered himself, painfully, to a sitting position, sparred for time. It didn’t look as if he was going to be able to do much in the time he had. Nobody would be likely to hear him if he yelled; the jukebox was blasting full force; Jingle, Jangle, Jingle. There was nothing to use for a weapon, nor any question of getting the gun away from Dommy, without getting a .38 slug in the wrong spot. “If you snap the switch on me, it’s better than even money you burn.”

“I been taking chances all my life.”

“You’ll be hot, all the rest of it. Even if they don’t tie a conviction on you.”

“I’d sooner be hot, on the outside looking in, than cooling on the inside looking out. I’m a two-time loser already on account some of your stinking finks frame me into Dannemora on a phony Mann Act rap. So what’s the odds? You come around, pin something on me — and there’s the judge ready to throw the book at me for being a habitual criminal. Habitual—!” The muzzle of the gun swung slowly around until Koski could look straight along the barrel.

“How’d you know I was going to pin something on you?” The Lieutenant gauged his chances of taking the pistol away, decided they were no good.

“The name is Dommy. Not dummy. Why you think I had you tossed in here?” The pale eyes stared at a point on the mattress close to the detective’s fingers.

Koski looked down. The red-brown stain had been underneath him; it covered half of the mattress. He propped himself up, groaned at the stab of pain in his side. It felt as if someone had run a red-hot skewer in under his heart. A cracked rib, probably. What the hell. What difference did a cracked rib make when you were about to have your last look at the light! That was what he was due to have in a second, now. “Yair. This is where he got it, hah?”

Dommy nodded slowly. “Where you get it, too.” He held the pillow out with one hand, stuck the pistol-muzzle in the middle, folded the pillow back around the gun. He bent forward, pushed the pillow-ticking toward the Lieutenant’s face.

Koski put out a forearm, warded it off. “Oh, no. Not as easy as that. Not through the forehead so it’ll look like suicide when they find me finished with one of the bullets from my own gun.” He got one knee twisted around under him. “I’d as soon have you work on me with a saw, the way you did the other guy.”

The fat man removed the revolver from the pillow, leaned back in his chair, stuck the weapon out rigidly at arm’s length in front of him. “Who was this... other guy?”

“You don’t know. You just cut him up for practice.”

“I don’t know,” Dommy blinked rapidly. “I didn’t kill him. I didn’t cut him up. A gun is quicker. It don’t waste good sheets.”

“If you’re leveling on that, Dommy, I might make a deal with you.”

The Greek smiled thinly. “Go ahead. Deal. I got the big ace, already.” He sighted along the barrel.

“You say your nose is clean on this other thing. Okay. Give me the low on that — I’ll keep you out of it. We forgetsis about that mugging down on the stairs. And this.” He waggled his fingers at the revolver.

“I never trust a cop until he’s at the undertaker’s.”

“You get along with the boys at your precinct all right, don’t you? Maybe you slip ’em a bonus for their birthdays, now and again. Okay. You can do me something.”

“Paying off so I’ll be let alone to make a dollar is one thing. That’s not stooling. Before I’d stooge for any cruddy cop, I’d—”

Koski slid one foot over the edge of the bed. “You’re in the driver’s seat. I can’t tell you how fast to go. If you won’t help — don’t get in my way. I can get what I want from whoever takes the two bucks from the occupants of the rooms.”

“You don’t get anything. From anybody. You’re in no position to get anything...”

Koski leaned out over the edge of the bed; his other foot touched the floor. His eyes were bloodshot; his hair stood up stiffly like rope ends. “All bets off,” he growled. “Hell! I’d play ball with a pimp or a gunman if I have to — but there’s no use trying to string along with a half-wit!” He braced his hands on the edge of the bed frame at either side.

“Get back!” Dommy snarled. “I’ll give it to you!”

Koski leaned away from the gun, turning his body a little to the right. His left leg straightened slowly; it was a natural movement to balance the weight of his body as he leaned back. “Go on. Get it over with. You haven’t sense enough to recognize a good break. Instead of being readied up for a leg-shave and a nice, new set of electrodes, you could be in the clear—” his foot touched a rung; the toe hooked it, “—with the word passed down the line to lay off you—” he jerked up on the rung, threw himself backward flat on the bed.

The front legs of the chair came up. Dommy squeaked; flung out his arms to regain his own balance. The gun went off. Powder grains stung Koski’s ear; the metal of the bed pinged loudly; the fingers of his left hand tingled. The Greek crashed over backward.

He was on his knees when Koski rolled off the bed. Dommy tried to get the .38 angled upward in time. The detective dived, landed on the fat man’s neck. The flabby shoulders went down; the puffy face smashed against the floor.

Koski got a grip on the bulbous throat, hauled the Greek up to a sitting posture. The man from the Harbor Squad hunched his right shoulder, drove his fist to a spot just above the pendant necklace of fat. Dommy’s body sagged as if it had been a sack of mush, but Koski held him up by the hair, hit him twice more, carefully, in the same spot. Then he let the lump of flesh collapse.

Koski picked up his gun, gritting his teeth at the slashing agony in his side. There was a washbowl at the head of the bed; he let cold water run into the chipped enamel bowl, doused his head, rinsed his mouth. Threadbare towels, smelling of disinfectant, hung on a hook. But he dried his face with his handkerchief, looked around for his hat. It wasn’t in the room.

He squatted beside Dommy, went through his pockets. There was a wallet with a wad of singles, a gold Elgin on a thin platinum chain with a gold penknife on the other end, a ten-cent pocket diary with entries scribbled against various dates: January 10, Oranges, $75; January 24, Figs, $50; Feb. 7, Figs, $25; Feb. 21, Apples, $50. Koski put the book back in Dommy’s vest. The only thing he kept was the penknife and a thick bunch of keys.

He used the penknife to slit out the top of the mattress ticking, which he folded and stuffed into his hip pocket. Then he tried the keys on the ring until he found one that locked the door of the bedroom.

He went out into the hall, looked at the number on the door. It was 5. He turned the key in the lock, put the key ring in his pocket.

Below, in the barroom, the juke-box was rumbling boogie-woogie. Upstairs, the lights were on again. He considered the advisability of going down to locate the master switch that must have been pulled, decided it would waste time.

He moved along the hall, toward the head of the stairs. The office was on a landing one step below the second-floor level; he could see the green-painted “desk,” the open register and the keyrack. Someone was moving around, out of sight.

He dug the .38 out of its armpit holster, stepped quietly around the jamb of the door.

An enormous Negress in a shapeless dress and loose straw slippers on her feet sat in a low rocker, tapping her feet on the floor to the rhythm of the juke-box below. There was a knitting bag on the floor beside her, a nearly finished sweater in her lap.

She rolled her eyes at the gun but didn’t get up or stop rocking. “Shah! Put that thing away. Ain’t no call for we’p’n’s, up heah, mister. Down below, maybe yu need fiah-ahms. But not on the second flo’. This my flo’. I don’t allow no disturbances of the peace, up heah.”

Koski holstered the pistol. “You the night clerk?”

“I’m Dora. I run this place. Day an’ night. I mean I run it. You want a room fo’ tonight?”

His grin was a little lopsided on account of a swollen lip. “I want some information.”

She stopped rocking but went on knitting. “That’s about the scahsest thing they is aroun’.”

He leaned against the desk. “I’m not hard to satisfy. Let’s start with the occupant of Room Five, yesterday.”