Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1953

Joe Boyle — with all eyes still on him, and with murder still dogging his footsteps. The reason? Vetter!

Part II

WHAT HAS HAPPENED BEFORE:

JOE BOYLE, a young kid working for a junk dealer, delivers a note to MARK RENZO, local big-wig racketeer. The note reads, “COOLEY is dead. Now my fine fat louse, I’m going to spill your guts all over your own floor.” It is signed, VETTER. Renzo’s boys work Joe over, trying to find out more about the man who gave him the note. When he tells them all he knows, they throw him outside, beaten and bruised. HELEN TROY, feature attraction at Renzo’s Hideaway Club, finds Joe, takes him to her apartment. She bandages him, tells him she had been in love with Cooley who’d figured a way to make money from Renzo’s gambling tables. She thinks Vetter was a friend of Cooley s. Together, they go to CAPTAIN GEROT of the police. They learn from him that Vetter is a professional killer responsible for the death of many hoods, a mystery man about whom practically nothing else is known. Gerot also tells them that it’s suspected Cooley crossed Renzo, and that he was somehow mixed up in narcotics. They leave headquarters, find BUCKY EDWARDS, Joe’s reporter friend, who opines that Vetter will either kill Renzo, or Renzo will come out of it stronger than ever. When they get back to the apartment, JOHNNY, Renzo’s gunsel is waiting there, ready to work Joe over again. Helen gets the drop on Johnny, and Joe beats him unmercifully. They bundle him in a cab and send him back to Renzo’s club. Joe is anxious to leave before Renzo sends more of his boys after him.

I waited until midnight before I left. I looked in her room and saw her bathed in moonlight, her features softly relaxed into the faintest trace of a smile, a soft, golden halo around her head.

They should take your picture like you are now, Helen, I thought. It wouldn’t need a retoucher and there would never be a man who saw it who would forget it. You’re beautiful, baby. You’re lovely as a woman could ever be and you don’t know it. You’ve had it so rough you can’t think of anything else and thinking of it puts the lines in your face and that chiseled granite in your eyes. But you’ve been around and so have I. There have been dozens of dames I’ve thought things about but not things like I’m thinking now. You don’t care what or who a guy is; you just give him part of yourself as a favor and ask for nothing back.

Sorry, Helen, you have to take something back. Or at least keep what you have. For you I’ll let Renzo push me around. For you I’ll let him make me finger a guy. Maybe at the end I’ll have a chance to make a break. Maybe not. At least it’s for you and you’ll know that much. If I stay around, Renzo’ll squeeze you and do it so hard you’ll never be the same. I’ll leave, beautiful. I’m not much. You’re not much either. It was a wonderful day.

I lay the note by the lamp on the night table where she couldn’t miss it. I leaned over and blew a kiss into her hair, then turned and got out of there.

Nobody had to tell me to be careful. I made sure nobody saw me leave the building and double-checked on it when I got to the corner. The trip over the back fences wasn’t easy, but it was quiet and dark and if anybody so much as breathed near me I would have heard it. Then when I stood in the shadows of the store at the intersection I was glad I had made the trip the hard way. Buried between the parked cars along the curb was a police cruiser. There were no markings. Just a trunk aerial and the red glow of a cigarette behind the wheel.

Captain Gerot wasn’t taking any chances. It made me feel a little better. Upstairs there Helen could go on sleeping and always be sure of waking up. I waited a few minutes longer then drifted back into the shadows toward the rooming house.

That’s where they were waiting for me. I knew it a long time before I got there because I had seen them wait for other guys before. Things like that you don’t miss when you live around the factories and near the waterfronts. Things like that you watch and remember so that when it happens to you, it’s no surprise and you figure things out beforehand.

They saw me and as long as I kept on going in the right direction they didn’t say anything. I knew they were where I couldn’t see them and even if I made a break for it, it wouldn’t do me any good at all.

You get a funny feeling after a while. Like a rabbit walking between rows of guns wondering which one is going to go off. Hoping that if it does you don’t get to see it or feel it. Your stomach seems to get all loose inside you and your heart makes too much noise against your ribs. You try not to, but you sweat and the little muscles in your hands and thighs start to jump and twitch and all the while there’s no sound at all, just a deep, startling silence with a voice that’s there just the same. A statue, laughing with its mouth open. No sound, but you can hear the voice. You keep walking, and the breathing keeps time with your footsteps, sometimes trying to get ahead of them. You find yourself chewing on your lips because you already know the horrible impact of a fist against your flesh and the uncontrollable spasms that come after a pointed shoe bites into the muscle and bone of your side.

So much so that when you’re almost there and a hand grabs your arm you don’t do anything except look at the face above it and wait until it says, “Where you been, kid?”

I felt the hand tighten with a gentle pressure, pulling me in close. “Lay off me. I’m minding my own...”

“I said something, sonny.”

“So I was out. What’s it to you?”

His expression said he didn’t give a hang at all. “Somebody wants to know. Feel like taking a little ride?”

“You asking?”

“I’m telling.” The hand tightened again. “The car’s over there, bud. Let’s go get in it, huh?”

For a second I wondered if I could take him or not and knew I couldn’t. He was too big and too relaxed. He’d known trouble all his life, from little guys to big guys and he didn’t fool easily. You can tell after you’ve seen a lot of them. They knew that some day they’d wind up holding their hands over a bullet hole or screaming through the bars of a cell, but until then they were trouble and too big to buck.

I got in the car and sat next to the guy in the back seat. I kept my mouth shut and my eyes open and when we started to head the wrong way, I looked at the guy next to me. “Where we going?”

He grinned on one side of his face and looked out the window again.

“Come on, come on, quit messing around! Where we going?”

“Shut up.”

“Nuts, brother. If I’m getting knocked off I’m doing a lot of yelling first, starting right now. Where...”

“Shut up. You ain’t getting knocked off.” He rolled the window down, flipped the dead cigar butt out and cranked it back up again. He said it too easily not to mean it and the jumps in my hands quieted down a little.

No, they weren’t going to bump me. Not with all the trouble they went to in finding me. You don’t put a couple dozen men on a mug like me if all you wanted was a simple kill. One hopped up punk would do that for a week’s supply of snow.

We went back through town, turned west into the suburbs and kept right on going to where the suburbs turned into estates and when we came to the right one the car turned into a surfaced driveway that wound past a dozen flashy heaps parked bumper to bumper and stopped in front of the fieldstone mansion.

The guy beside me got out first. He jerked his head at me and stayed at my back when I got out too. The driver grinned, but it was the kind of face a dog makes when he sees you with a chunk of meat in your fist.

A flunky met us at the door. He didn’t look comfortable in his monkey suit and his face had scar tissue it took a lot of leather-covered punches to produce. He waved us in, shut the door and led the way down the hall to a room cloudy with smoke, rumbling with the voices of a dozen men.

When we came in the rumble stopped and I could feel the eyes crawl over me. The guy who drove the car looked across the room at the one in the tux, said, “Here he is, boss,” and gave me a gentle push into the middle of the room.

“Hi, kid.” He finished pouring out of the decanter, stopped it and picked up his glass. He wasn’t an inch bigger than me, but he had the walk of a cat and the eyes of something dead. He got up close to me, faked a smile and held out the glass. “In case the boys had you worried.”

“I’m not worried.”

He shrugged and sipped the top off the drink himself. “Sit down, kid. You’re among friends here.” He looked over my shoulder. “Haul a chair up, Rocco.”

All over the room the others settled down and shifted into position. A chair seat hit the back of my legs and I sat. When I looked around everybody was sitting, which was the way the little guy wanted it. He didn’t like to have to look up to anybody.

He made it real casual. He introduced the boys when they didn’t have to be introduced because they were always in the papers and the kind of guys people point out when they go by in their cars. You heard their names mentioned even in the junk business and among the punks in the streets. These were the big boys. Top dogs. Fat fingers. Big rings. The little guy was biggest of all. He was Phil Carboy and he ran the West Side the way he wanted it run.

When everything quieted down just right, Carboy leaned on the back of a chair and said, “In case you’re wondering why you’re here, kid, I’m going to tell you.”

“I got my own ideas,” I said.

“Fine. That’s just fine. Let’s check your ideas with mine, okay? Now we hear a lot of things around here. Things like that note you delivered to Renzo and who gave it to you and what Renzo did to you.” He finished his drink and smiled. “Like what you did to Johnny, too. That’s all straight now, isn’t it?”

“So far.”

“Swell. Tell you what I want now. I want to give you a job. How’d you like to make a cool hundred a week, kid?”

“Peanuts.”

Somebody grunted. Carboy smiled again, a little thinner. “The kid’s in the know,” he said. “That’s what I like. Okay, kid. We’ll make it five hundred per for a month. If it don’t run a month you get it anyway. That’s better than having Renzo slap you around, right?”

“Anything’s better than that.” My voice started getting chalky.

Carboy held out his hand and said, “Rocco...” Another hand slid a sheaf of bills into his. He counted it out, reached two thousand and tossed it into my lap. “Yours, kid.”

“For what?”

His lips were a narrow gash between his cheekbones. “For a guy named Vetter. The guy who gave you a note. Describe him.”

“Tall,” I said. “Big shoulders. I didn’t see his face. Deep voice that sounded tough. He had on a trench coat and a hat.”

“That’s not enough.”

“A funny way of standing,” I told him. “I saw Sling Herman when I was a kid before the cops got him. He stood like that. Always ready to go for something in his pocket the cops said.”

“You saw more than that, kid.”

The room was too quiet now. They were all hanging on, waiting for the word. They were sitting there without smoking, beady little eyes waiting for the finger to swing until it stopped and I was the one who could stop it.

My throat squeezed out the words. I went back into the night to remember a guy and drag up the little things that would bring him into the light. I said, “I’d know him again. He was a guy to be scared of. When he talks you get a cold feeling and you know what he’s like.” My tongue ran over my lips and I lifted my eyes up to Carboy. “I wouldn’t want to mess with a guy like that. Nobody’s ever going to be tougher.”

“You’ll know him again. You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” I looked around the room at the faces. Any one of them a guy who could say a word and have me dead the next day. “He’s tougher than any of you.”

Carboy grinned and let his tiny white teeth show through. “Nobody’s that tough, kid.”

“He’ll kill me,” I said. “Maybe you too. I don’t like this.”

“You don’t have to like it. You just do it. In a way you’re lucky. I’m paying you cash. If I wanted I could just tell you and you’d do it. You know that?”

I nodded.

“Tonight starts it. From now on you’ll have somebody close by, see? In one pocket you’ll carry a white handkerchief. If you gotta blow, use it. In the other one there’ll be a red wiper. When you see him blow into that.”

“That’s all?”

“Just duck about then, kid,” Phil Carboy said softly, “and maybe you’ll get to spend that two grand. Try to use it for run-out money and you won’t get past the bus station.” He stared into his glass, looked up at Rocco expectantly and held it out for a refill. “Kid, let me tell you something. I’m an old hand in this racket. I can tell what a guy or a dame is like from a block away. You’ve been around. I can tell that. I’m giving you a break because you’re the type who knows the score and will play on the right side. I don’t have to warn you about anything, do I?”

“No. I got the pitch.”

“Any questions?”

“Just one,” I said. “Renzo wants me to finger Vetter too. He isn’t putting out any two grand for it. He just wants it, see? Suppose he catches up with me? What then?”

Carboy shouldn’t’ve hesitated. He shouldn’t have let that momentary look come into his eyes because it told me everything I wanted to know. Renzo was bigger than the whole pack of them and they got the jumps just thinking about it. All by himself he held a fifty-one percent interest and they were moving slowly when they bucked him. The little guy threw down the fresh drink with a quick motion of his hand and brought the smile back again. In that second he had done a lot of thinking and spilled the answer straight out. “We’ll take care of Mark Renzo,” he said. “Rocco, you and Lou take the kid home.”

So I went out to the car and we drove back to the slums again. In the rear the reflections from the headlights of another car showed and the killers in it would be waiting for me to show the red handker-chief Carboy had handed me. I didn’t know them and unless I was on the ball every minute I’d never get to know them. But they’d always be there, shadows that had no substance until the red showed, then the ground would get sticky with an even brighter red and maybe some of it would be mine.

They let me out two blocks away. The other car didn’t show at all and I didn’t look for it. My feet made hollow sounds on the sidewalk, going faster and faster until I was running up the steps of the house and when I was inside I slammed the door and leaned against it, trying hard to stop the pain in my chest.

Three-fifteen, the clock said. It ticked monotonously in the stillness, trailing me upstairs to my room. I eased inside, shut the door and locked it, standing there in the darkness until my eyes could see things. Outside a truck clashed its gears as it pulled up the hill and off in the distance a horn sounded.

I listened to them; familiar sounds, my face tightening as a not-so-familiar sound echoed behind them. It was a soft thing, a whisper that came at regular intervals in a choked-up way. Then I knew it was a sob coming from the other room and I went back to the hall and knocked on Nick’s door.

His feet hit the floor, stayed there and I could hear his breathing coming hard. “It’s Joe — open up.”

I heard the wheeze his breath made as he let it out. The bedsprings creaked, he fell once getting to the door and the bolt snapped back. I looked at the purple blotches on his face and the open cuts over his eyes and grabbed him before he fell again. “Nick! What happened to you?”

“I’m... okay.” He steadied himself on me and I led him back to the bed. “You got... some friends, pal.”

“Cut it out. What happened? Who ran you through? Damn it, who did it?”

Nick managed to show a smile. It wasn’t much and it hurt, but he made it. “You... in pretty big trouble, Joe.”

“Pretty big.”

“I didn’t say nothing. They were here... asking questions. They didn’t... believe what I told them, I guess. They sure laced me.”

“The miserable slobs! You recognize them?”

His smile got sort of twisted and he nodded his head. “Sure, Joe... I know ’em. The fat one sat in... the car while they did it.” His mouth clamped together hard. “It hurt... brother, it hurt!”

“Look,” I said. “We’re...”

“Nothing doing. I got enough. I don’t want no more. Maybe they figured it’s enough. That Renzo feller... he got hard boys around. See what they did, Joe? One... used a gun on me. You shoulda stood with Gordon, Joe. What the hell got into you to mess with them guys?”

“It wasn’t me, Nick. Something came up. We can square it. I’ll nail that fat slob if it’s the last thing I do.”

“It’ll be the last thing. They gimme a message for you, pal. You’re to stick around, see? You get seen with any other big boys in this town... and that’s all. You know?”

“I know. Renzo told me that himself. He didn’t have to go through you.”

“Joe...”

“Yeah?”

“He said for you to take a good look... at me. I’m an example. A little one. He says to do what he told you.”

“He knows what he can do.”

“Joe... for me. Lay off, huh? I don’t feel so good. Now I can’t work for a while.”

I patted his arm, fished a hundred buck bill out of my pocket and squeezed it into his hand. “Don’t worry about it,” I told him.

He looked at the bill unbelievingly, then at me.

“Dough can’t pay for... this, Joe. Kind of... stay away from me... for awhile anyway, okay?” He smiled again, lamely this time. “Thanks for the C anyway. We been pretty good buddies, huh?”

“Sure, Nick.”

“Later we’ll be again. Lemme knock off now. You take it easy.” His hands came up to his face and covered it. I could hear the sobs starting again and cursed the whole damn system up and down and Renzo in particular. I swore at the filth men like to wade in and the things they do to other men. When I was done I got up off the bed and walked to the door.

Behind me Nick said, “Joey...”

“Right here.”

“Something’s crazy in this town. Stories are going around... there’s gonna be a lot of trouble. Everybody is after... you. You’ll... be careful?”

“Sure.” I opened the door, shut it softly and went back to my room. I stripped off my clothes and lay down in the bed, my mind turning over fast until I had it straightened out, then I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

My landlady waited until a quarter to twelve before she gave it the business on my door. She didn’t do it like she usually did it. No jarring smashes against the panels, just a light tapping that grew louder until I said, “Yeah?”

“Mrs. Stacey, Joe. You think you should get up? A man is downstairs to see you.”

“What kind of a man?”

This time the knob twisted slowly and the door opened a crack. Her voice was a harsh whisper that sounded nervous. “He’s got on old clothes and a city water truck is parked outside. He didn’t come to look at my water.”

I grinned at that one. “I’ll be right down,” I said. I splashed water over my face, shaved it close and worked the adhesive off the bridge of my nose. It was swollen on one side, the blue running down to my mouth. One eye was smudged with purple.

Before I pulled on my jacket I stuffed the wad of dough into the lining through the tear in the sleeve, then I took a look in Nick’s room. There were traces of blood on his pillow and the place was pretty upset, but Nick had managed to get out somehow for a day’s work.

The guy in the chair sitting by the window was short and wiry looking. There was dirt under his fingernails and a stubble on his chin. He had a couple of small wrenches in a leather holster on his belt that bulged his coat out but the stuff was pure camouflage. There was a gun further back and I saw the same thing Mrs. Stacey saw. The guy was pure copper with badges for eyes.

He looked at me, nodded and said, “Joe Boyle?”

“Suppose I said no?” I sat down opposite him with a grin that said I knew all about it and though I knew he got it nothing registered at all.

“Captain Gerot tells me you’ll cooperate. That true?”

There was a laugh in his eyes, an attitude of being deliberately polite when he didn’t have to be. “Why?” I asked him. “Everybody seems to think I’m pretty hot stuff all of a sudden.”

“You are, junior, you are. You’re the only guy who can put his finger on a million dollar baby that we want bad. So you’ll cooperate.”

“Like a good citizen?” I made it sound the same as he did. “How much rides on Vetter and how much do I get?”

The sarcasm in his eyes turned to a nasty sneer. “Thousands ride, junior... and you don’t get any. You just cooperate. Too many cops have worked too damn long on Vetter to let a crummy kid cut into the cake. Now I’ll tell you why you’ll cooperate. There’s a dame, see? Helen Troy. There’s ways of slapping that tomato with a fat conviction for various reasons and unless you want to see her slapped, you’ll cooperate. Catch now?”

I called him something that fitted him right down to his shoes. He didn’t lose a bit of that grin at all. “Catch something else,” he said. “Get smart and I’ll make your other playmates look like school kids. I like tough guys. I have fun working ’em over because that’s what they understand. What there is to know I know. Take last night for instance. The boys paid you off for a finger job. Mark Renzo pays but in his own way. Now I’m setting up a deal. Hell, you don’t have to take it... you can do what you please. Three people are dickering for what you know. I’m the only one who can hit where it really hurts.

“Think it over, Joey boy. Think hard but do it fast. I’ll be waiting for a call from you and wherever you are, I’ll know about it. I get impatient sometimes, so let’s hear from you soon. Maybe if you take too long I’ll prod you a little bit.” He got up, stretched and wiped his eyes like he was tired. “Just ask for Detective Sergeant Gonzales,” he said. “That’s me.”

The cop patted the tools on his belt and stood by the door. I said, “It’s stinking to be a little man, isn’t it? You got to keep making up for it.”

There was pure, cold hate in his eyes for an answer. He gave me a long look that a snake would give a rabbit when he isn’t too hungry yet. A look that said wait a little while, feller. Wait until I’m real hungry.

I watched the car pull away, then sat there at the window looking at the street. I had to wait almost an hour before I spotted the first, then picked up the second one ten minutes later. If there were more I didn’t see them. I went back to the kitchen and took a look through the curtains at the blank behinds of the warehouses across the alley. Mrs. Stacey didn’t say anything. She sat there with her coffee, making clicking noises with her false teeth.

I said, “Somebody washed the windows upstairs in the wholesale house.”

“A man. Early this morning.”

“They haven’t been washed since I’ve been here.”

“Not for two years.”

I turned around and she was looking at me as if something had scared her to death. “How much are they paying you?” I said.

She couldn’t keep that greedy look out of her face even with all the phony indignation she tried to put on. Her mouth opened to say something when the phone rang and gave her the chance to cover up. She came back a few seconds later and said, “It’s for you. Some man.”

Then she stood there by the door where she always stood whenever somebody was on the phone. I said, “Joe Boyle speaking,” and that was all. I let the other one speak his few words and when he was done I hung up.

I felt it starting to burn in me. A nasty feeling that makes you want to slam something. Nobody asked me... they just told and I was supposed to jump. I was the low man on the totem pole, a lousy kid who happened to fit into things... just the right size to get pushed around.

Vetter, I kept saying to myself. They were all scared to death of Vetter. The guy had something they couldn’t touch. He was tough. He was smart. He was moving in for a kill and if ever one was needed it was needed now. They were all after him and no matter how many people who didn’t belong there stood in the way their bullets would go right through them to reach Vetter. Yeah, they wanted him bad. So bad they’d kill each other to make sure he died too.

Well, the whole pack of ’em knew what they could do.

I pulled my jacket on and got outside. I went up the corner, grabbed a downtown bus and sat there without bothering to look around. At Third and Main I hopped off, ducked into a cafeteria and had a combination lunch. I let Mrs. Stacey get her calls in, gave them rime to keep me well under cover, then flagged down a roving cab and gave the driver Helen’s address. On the way over I looked out the back window for the second time and the light blue Chewy was still in place, two cars behind and trailing steadily. In a way it didn’t bother me if the boys inside were smart enough to check the black Caddie that rode behind it again.

I tapped the cabbie a block away, told him to let me out on the corner and paid him off. There wasn’t a parking place along the street so the laddies in the cars were either going to cruise or double park, but it would keep them moving around so I could see what they were like anyway.

When I punched the bell I had to wait a full minute before the lobby door clicked open. I went up the stairs, jolted the apartment door a few times and walked right into those beautiful eyes that were even prettier than the last time because they were worried first, then relieved when they saw me. She grabbed my arm and gave me that quick grin then pulled me inside and stood with her back to the door.

“Joe, Joe, you little jughead,” she laughed. “You had me scared silly. Don’t do anything like that again.”

“Had to Helen. I wasn’t going to come back but I had to do that too.”

Maybe it was the way I said it that made her frown. “You’re a funny kid.”

“Don’t say that.”

Something changed in her eyes. “No. Maybe I shouldn’t, should I?” She looked at me hard, her eyes soft, but piercing. “I feel funny when I look at you. I don’t know why. Sometimes I’ve thought it was because I had a brother who was always in trouble. Always getting hurt. I used to worry about him too.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was killed on the Anzio beachhead.”

“Sorry.”

She shook her head. “He didn’t join the army because he was patriotic. He and another kid held up a joint. The owner was shot. He was dead by the time they found out who did it.”

“You’ve been running all your life too, haven’t you?”

The eyes dropped a second. “You could put it that way.”

“What ties you here?”

“Guess.”

“If you had the dough you’d beat it? Some place where nobody knew you?”

She laughed, a short jerky laugh. It was answer enough. I reached in the jacket, got out the pack of bills and flipped off a couple for myself. I shoved the rest in her hand before she knew what it was. “Get going. Don’t even bother to pack. Just move out of here and keep moving.”

Her eyes were big and wide with an incredulous sort of wonder, then slightly misty when they came back to mine and she shook her head a little bit and said, “Joe... why? Why?”

“It would sound silly if I said it.”

“Say it.”

“When I’m all grown up I’ll tell you maybe.”

“Now.”

I could feel the ache starting in me and my tongue didn’t want to move, but I said, “Sometimes even a kid can feel pretty hard about a woman. Sad, isn’t it?”

Helen said, “Joe,” softly and had my face in her hands and her mouth was a hot torch that played against mine with a crazy kind of fierceness and it was all I could do to keep from grabbing her instead of pushing her away. My hands squeezed her hard, then I yanked the door open and got out of there. Behind me there was a sob and I heard my name said again, softly.

I ran the rest of the way down with my face all screwed up tight.

The blue Chewy was down the street on the other side. It seemed to be empty and I didn’t bother to poke around it. All I wanted was for whoever followed me to follow me away from there. So I gave it the full treatment. I made it look great. To them I must have seemed pretty jumpy and on my way to see somebody important. It took a full hour to reach THE CLIPPER that way and the only important one around was Bucky Edwards and he wasn’t drunk this time.

He nodded, said, “Beer?” and when I shook my head, called down the bar for a tall orange. “Figured you’d be in sooner or later.”

“Yeah?”

That wise old face wrinkled a little. “How does it feel to be live bait, kiddo?”

“You got big ears, grandma.”

“I get around.” He toasted his beer against my orange, put it down and said, “You’re in pretty big trouble, Joe. Maybe you don’t know it.”

“I know it.”

“You don’t know how big. You haven’t been here that long. Those boys put on the big squeeze.”

It was my turn to squint. His face was set as if he smelled something he didn’t like and there was ice in his eyes. “How much do you know, Bucky?”

His shoulders made a quick shrug. “Phil Carboy didn’t post the depot and the bus station for nothing. He’s got cars cruising the highways too. Making sure, isn’t he?”

He looked at me and I nodded.

“Renzo is kicking loose too. He’s pulling the strings tight. The guys on his payroll are getting nervous but they can’t do a thing. No, sir, not a thing. Like a war. Everybody’s just waiting.” The set mouth flashed me a quick grin. “You’re the key, boy. If there was a way out I’d tell you to take it.”

“Suppose I went to the cops?”

“Gerot?” Bucky shook his head. “You’d get help as long as he could keep you in a cell. People’d like to see him dead too. He’s got an awfully bad habit of being honest. Ask him to show you his scars someday. It wouldn’t be so bad if he was just honest, but he’s smart and mean as hell too.”

I drank half the orange and set it down in the wet circle on the bar. “Funny how things work out. All because of Vetter. And he’s here because of Jack Cooley.”

“I was wondering when you were gonna get around to it, kid,” Bucky said.

“What?”

He didn’t look at me. “Who are you working for?”

I waited a pretty long time before he turned his head around. I let him look at my face another long time before I said anything. Then: “I was pushing a junk cart, friend. I was doing okay, too. I wasn’t working for trouble. Now I’m getting pretty curious. In my own way I’m not so stupid, but now I want to find out the score. One way or another I’m finding out. So they paid me off but they aren’t figuring on me spending much of that cabbage. After it’s over I get chopped down and it starts all over again, whatever it is. That’s what I’m finding out. Why I’m bait for whatever it is. Who do I see, Bucky? You’re in the know. Where do I go to find out?”

“Cooley could have told you,” he said quietly.

“Nuts. He’s dead.”

“Maybe he can still tell you.”

My fingers were tight around the glass now. “The business about Cooley getting it because of the deal on Renzo’s tables is out?”

“Might be.”

“Talk straight unless you’re scared silly of those punks too. Don’t give me any puzzles if you know something.”

Bucky’s eyebrows went up, then down slowly over the grin in his eyes. “Talk may be cheap, son,” he said, “but life comes pretty expensively.” He nodded sagely and said, “I met Cooley in lotsa places. Places he shouldn’t have been. He was a man looking around. He could have found something.”

“Like what?”

“Like why we have gangs in this formerly peaceful city of ours. Why we have paid-for politicians and clambakes with some big faces showing. They’re not eating clams... they’re talking.”

“These places where you kept seeing Cooley...”

“River joints. Maybe he liked fish.”

You could tell when Bucky was done talking. I went down to Main, found a show I hadn’t seen and went in. There were a lot of things I wanted to think about.

(To be continued)