Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 4, August, 1961

Bugged by Bruno Fisher

We come up together from nothing. The three of us, me and Lew and Floyd. From nothing to the top. Then Lew gets bugged by this broad... a school teacher no less. I had to do something.

I know you’re in the room, bug. I think in the wall. You must’ve heard me and Floyd talking, so you know how we’re trapped.

Bug, do you hear me? You’re our one chance. Bring help.

A second car just pulled up behind the trees. Four guns now, but they’ll take their time on account they know how straight I can shoot. If I was running this from their side, I’d wait till dark before moving in. There’s time to save me, bug.

I don’t mean too much time. Could be there’s hardly any time.

This is all the thanks I get from Lew Angel. Did I wish him anything bad? All I did was for his own good. Sure, me and Floyd Finch were looking out for our own good too. What hurts Lew hurts us. Like they say in Washington, D.C., we’re a team.

I mean were.

We came up from nothing together, me and Lew and Floyd. It wasn’t easy. You take a city like this. It isn’t Chicago or even St. Louis, but it’s a city. Let a guy be five times as smart as Lew Angel, he doesn’t climb to the top of the rackets without he has help. My kind of help. Even Floyd’s kind.

Many a time I saved Lew’s life. And when somebody big needed cooling, who did Lew depend—

Well, never mind about that.

Fact is, I was a lot more to him than his muscle. More than his bodyguard I was his pal. All of a sudden, does this mean a thing to him? Nothing! On account of a dame.

Out there they’re not starting to make any move to close in. I’m at a window talking to you, bug, while I’m watching them among the trees. They look like they’re talking things over.

A school teacher. Those are the worst kind. A kindergarten teacher, no less.

There’s Lew Angel, so big in town he can get hot-looking dames by the dozen by reaching out for them. Who does he reach for? Who’s he been dating two, three times a week this last month? Esther Hunt.

I don’t mean she’s bad-looking. It’s just that if you stood on a street corner with nothing to do, you’d hardly bother giving her the double-o as she walked by. Kind of small and very quiet. And no idea of fun.

Tuesday night I found out what Esther Hunt was doing to Lew.

We picked her up at eight o’clock at her run-down, walk-up apartment house. Usually Lew liked to drive, but when she was with him they sat in back, leaving me sitting alone in front like I was nothing but a chauffeur. And they held hands like a couple of teenagers. This was all he was ever getting out of her, holding hands and a good-night kiss, and from the looks of her I didn’t think he’d ever get more. Go figure him. For this he had to become the big wheel in the rackets?

She dragged us to see Shakespeare, no less.

Lew’s dates used to be pleasure. Hot spots and parties. If we went to the theater you could see something you could laugh at or stacked dames with hardly any clothes on. With Esther Hunt, Shakespeare! And the time before a symphony concert. And one afternoon I got sore feet tagging after them in the municipal art gallery. What a guy will do for a dame!

But you know something? This Shakespeare isn’t as bad as he’s cracked up to be. The play was about a Scotchman name of Macbeth and how he and his missus knocked off the king so he could become king. Just like in real life. Like right here in our own town when Yank Sands was top man in the rackets and Lew was moving up and one night me and Lew—

Never mind.

I was talking about Tuesday night. The show was over and me and Lew and Esther Hunt were moving up the aisle when a guy in front turned around. It was Allen W. McGoldrich, the new D.A., who one of the reasons he got elected was he promised the voters he’d put Lew Angel in jail.

McGoldrich said sarcastic-like, “So it’s true what I hear about you, Angel, you’re on a culture kick.”

“This is against the law?” Lew said.

“No,” McGoldrich said, he touched me under the left shoulder where I wear my clip. “I see you’re dressed for the theater, Willie,” he said.

“I got a license for it,” I said.

“I’m aware of that,” McGoldrich said. “My predecessor in office was rather lenient, wasn’t he? This resulted in him becoming a much richer man than I ever will be. I could have your gun license if it was worth the effort.” He turned a smile to Lew that was full of teeth and said, “I’m after much bigger game than a mere henchman.”

By this time we were all at the end of the aisle. We went one way and McGoldrich the other way. And I remember how Esther Hunt looked after him. Her eyes were the best thing about her, great big brown eyes, and now they were twice as big.

I don’t mean she didn’t know till then what Lew’s line of business was. Everybody in town knows, even kindergarten school teachers. But I think this was when she started seeing something she hadn’t seen before.

From the theater we went for a drink. Not the kind you think. She had no use for the hard stuff. So help me, we had to go to an ice cream parlor.

As we were lapping up ice cream sodas, which I’m not crazy for, she looked at me across the table with her big brown eyes. “Willie,” she said, “have you really got a gun?”

“Just kind of insurance, Miss Hunt,” I said.

She shivered and said to Lew, “Must we always have him along with us?”

“Don’t you like him, honey?” he said.

“I go out with you, not with both of you,” she said.

Lew sipped his soda through the straw and didn’t say anything. So I said, “I see your point, Miss Hunt, but a guy in his position is like the kings in the play we just saw. Everybody is looking to knock them off. You don’t want it to happen to Lew here, do you?”

“Of course not,” she said.

“So that makes the both of us,” I said.

“I hate having it to be like this,” she said. And looked like she was going to bust out crying.

Lew took the straw out of his mouth and said, “Scram, Willie.”

“But—”

“Leave the car,” he said. “Take a taxi home. Now beat it.”

He was the boss. I finished the soda and left them there at the table sitting practically on top of each other. But I didn’t go home. I had my responsibilities. For one thing, Augie Pitcher was getting ideas about moving into slot machines, and he’d have no trouble at all if all of a sudden Lew Angel stopped living. I got me a cab and sat in it down the street from the ice cream parlor. When they came out and drove off, I was right behind them.

They went to her place. I paid off the cabbie and leaned against the faded brick wall of the building. After a while I got tired and sat in his car. Waited better than two hours. It was maybe two-thirty when he came out, and her having to get up early to teach school. On his face he had a look like a little league kid who had just hit a home run.

I figured this time he’d gotten a lot more off Esther Hunt than a lousy good-night kiss and I was glad he was no longer wasting his time. The way he was feeling he wasn’t sore I hadn’t gone home like he’d told me to. Got in the car like it was a cloud and I drove him home to his swank apartment house.

“Come up for a nightcap, Willie,” he said, speaking to me for the first time.

“You bet,” I said, this being my first chance to get the taste of the ice cream soda out of my mouth.

Lew Angel doesn’t pour it out of a bottle and give it to you. He has to mix it up first. He was standing at his bar in his living room, putting God knows what in the shaker, when I said, “I think maybe I ought to sleep here nights for a while.”

“What’s the matter with your cottage?” he said.

“Nothing’s the matter with it. But what with Augie Pitcher...”

“We can forget about that,” he said, shaking the shaker. “I’m getting out of the rackets.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I’m dead serious, Willie. This week I start pulling out.” And turned around and poured into a couple of glasses.

I looked at his back that’s not more than half as wide as mine. I said very slowly, “If I didn’t know you, Lew, I’d think you were scared of Augie Pitcher.”

“That lightweight!”

“Then it’s the new D.A., McGoldrich.”

“That do-gooder! He can’t touch me.” He handed me a glass, and a sappy look was on his face. “Drink to Esther and me, Willie. We’re getting married.”

“I didn’t raise the glass.” I said bitterly, “So she talked you into it?”

“Well, we discussed it tonight in her apartment,” he admitted. “Willie, she’s a wonderful girl. Nothing like the cheap broads I’ve been messing with all my life. She’s the first girl I’ve wanted to marry. She’s got class, Willie. Brains. Refinement. And she loves me.”

“No dame is worth giving up all you have,” I said.

“What have I got?” he said. “This isn’t a real home. There’s no loving little woman in it and no kids. Willie, I’m a man without dignity. I’m merely a glorified hoodlum.”

“That’s not you talking,” I said. “That’s the kindergarten school teacher.”

“And I’m not getting any younger,” he went on. “I’ve made my pile. Enough for us to live on the rest of our lives. Though, as Esther says, a man should do useful work, so I’ll look around for some kind of business. Strictly legitimate. In Florida or California. We’ll buy a nice house in the country with a swimming pool and have four kids. Two boys and two girls.” He was still way up on that cloud. “I’m thirty-six years old,” he said, “and it’s getting pretty late in life. Like Macbeth said in the play tonight: ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.’ ”

When a guy like Lew Angel not only goes to see Shakespeare but starts reciting him, you know there’s no hope for him. So at last I raised my glass and drank to their happiness, his and Esther Hunt’s. But there was no taste in it for me.

I got a good look at all four of the guys among the trees, bug. Know ’em all real good. Lew’s boys of course. Like I am — I mean was. Maybe one reason they’re waiting is for Lew himself to show.

Bug, are you bringing help?

This set-up is perfect for them, this cottage in the hollow without another house very close. Guess you think it’s a funny place for a couple of bachelors and all like Floyd and me to live instead of right in the city. But me, I like to fool around growing flowers, and Floyd can’t stand the noise of traffic and kids yelling and other people’s televisions blaring. Besides, there’s all the privacy you want for bringing dames to.

But this isn’t about any of our dames, Floyd’s or mine. It’s a dame I wouldn’t give two cents for, but was wrecking our lives. Esther Hunt.

I came home Tuesday night and Floyd was right here in this living room working on the books. I mean Wednesday morning on account of by then it was close to four o’clock. Lew is a guy never leaves a loophole in his tax returns to give the government a chance to put the hook on him, and it being close to income tax time Floyd is working day and night on the books and tax forms and all those headaches.

I mean was. Floyd has kind of lost interest in his precious books. Right this minute he’s in the kitchen crying like a baby. What can you expect from a bookkeeper?

Well, I came home around four A.M. and told Floyd about Lew going to marry this Esther Hunt and retire. He was hit as hard as I was.

He took off his glasses and blinked his watery eyes and said in that whinny voice of his, “What’ll become of me?”

“The same thing as will become of me,” I said. “We’ll become a couple of unemployed bums. How much dough have you in the sock?”

Floyd gave a very sick laugh. “Minus about two grand. The horses haven’t been running right for me.”

“And me,” I said, “I haven’t drawn a decent hand in poker in months.”

I got a bottle out from the cabinet and we sat drinking at the table and telling each other how black the future was for us. We weren’t just Lew’s bodyguard and Lew’s bookkeeper. We were big men in the organization, and Lew paid us real good. We had real respect in this town, I tell you. But Lew turns straight and we’re nothing but a couple of working stiffs on the labor market, scrounging for every lousy buck. This was a very soft life, except for Floyd at income tax time.

“There’s only one thing to do,” Floyd said after a few drinks. “We got to sour her on him. We’ll tell her all about him.”

“She reads the newspapers.”

“I said all about him,” Floyd said. “Things only we know. The real dirty stuff. You go to her, Willie, and tell her.”

I shook my head. “No good. He’s promised her to quit, and there’s no dame more devoted to a guy than a good woman reforming him. This goes double for kindergarten school teachers.” I reached for the bottle that by now was close to empty and said, “Let’s turn it around. Sour him on her.”

“You have an idea, Willie?”

“Yesterday I ran across Deuce Melody on the street,” I said.

“And who may he be?”

“Deuce Melody is a con artist,” I said. “A very handsome guy that slays the ladies, especially the elderly ones, by having dimples in his cheeks when he smiles. I met him two, three years ago in L.A. where he hangs around on account of that’s where most of the suckers live. We were in a poker game together and after the game he fixed me up with a hot little redhead to kind of make up for all the dough he won off me.” I took a drink. “Well, Deuce Melody was driving through town yesterday when the transmission of his car went. They said it’ll take two days to fix it. He’s never been here before. Lew doesn’t know him and he doesn’t know Lew. He wouldn’t know whose girl Esther Hunt is. He’s our boy, Floyd.”

“Are you thinking, Willie, he can make time with her?”

“Not a chance,” I said, “even with his dimples.”

“Then what are you getting at?”

I told him, and behind his thick glasses his watery eyes got scared sick.

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“You got any other idea how we can hang onto our jobs?”

Floyd emptied the bottle and said, “No, I haven’t.”

So next day I went to see Deuce Melody in the motel outside of town where he’d told me he was staying. I could’ve left a message for him to meet me in a ginmill where I could’ve been comfortable waiting, but of course I didn’t want we should be seen together in public. I had to hang around three, four hours before he showed. Then I slipped into his cabin after him.

“My car will be ready in an hour,” he said. “Nothing doing in this crummy town. I figured I’d be on my way.”

“Is a chance to pick up an easy hundred bucks nothing doing?” I said.

“What is it, a divorce case?” he said. “Will I have to come back here to testify?”

“You can leave right after and never come back,” I said. “Better that way. It’s just that a pal of mine wants to get dirt on his girl friend so he can pull her off his neck without her raising hell. One hundred bucks.”

“Tonight?”

“Tomorrow night, I’m hoping.”

Deuce pushed his hand through his curly hair. “To spend another night in this ghost town it will cost three hundred.”

“Two hundred.”

“Is she pretty?” he asked.

“A knockout. But this isn’t for your pleasure.”

“Pleasure is where you find it,” he said, showing his dimples. “It’s a deal.”

The breaks are with me next evening. Yesterday evening that was. Lew and Esther Hunt didn’t have a date on account of he wasn’t wasting any time getting out of the rackets. He had Floyd Finch over his place going over his books with him so he’d know how big a bundle he could retire with, and later on he was going to have Augie Pitcher and other wheels over to break the news to them. So the coast was clear and at six-thirty I was ringing Esther Hunt’s doorbell.

Timed it exactly right. She was finishing dinner she’d eaten by herself. Her place was a tiny two-room dump, but kind of neat.

“Seeing you and Lew are getting married.” I said, “I came to make sure there are no hard feelings between us.”

“There are certainly none on my part,” she said. “I never disliked you. Only what you represent.”

“I’m glad to hear this, Miss Hunt,” I said, “on account of I’m going on the straight and narrow too.”

“Why, that’s wonderful, Willie,” she said.

“Let’s have a drink on it,” I said.

“I don’t drink whiskey,” she said. Which I knew she didn’t. “But I was about to have coffee. Will you have a cup with me?” Which is what I’d hoped she’d say.

She poured the coffee. While she was in the kitchen getting some cake to go with it, I emptied into her cup the powder I’d gotten from a druggest pal. It wouldn’t hurt her any. Anyway, not by making her sick or anything.

Also while she was gone I snapped the catch on the door lock so it would be unlocked.

You know something? It wasn’t so bad having a cup of coffee with her. I mean this was the first time we were alone together and she had a very sweet way about her. But what the hell, I had my own problems.

When pretty soon she started to yawn and get sleepy-eyed, I got up and said good-bye and left.

I phoned Deuce Melody at his motel where there was a private phone in each cabin and told him everything was under control and to start out in fifteen minutes. I waited in a doorway across the street. Deuce showed in forty minutes, this being about what I’d figured it would take him. I watched him go into Esther Hunt’s building, then got in my car and drove over to the block on which Lew Angel lived.

I didn’t go up to his apartment. Went into the corner drugstore and dialed his number. By then it was eight-thirty. Augie Pitcher and the others would be there already for the meeting. Floyd was also still there, giving himself an alibi.

I made my voice sound thin and high like an old lady’s. I said, “Is this Mr. Lew Angel?”

“That’s right,” Lew said. On the wire I heard the buzzing of voices of the others in the room with him.

“Mr. Angel,” I said, “right this minute your girl, Esther Hunt, is carrying on something scandalous in her apartment with another man.”

“You’re nuts,” he said.

“She looks like such a nice girl,” I said in that cracked old voice, “but such carrying on. I mean all the time men coming and going in her apartment. Right this minute.”

“Madam, who are you?”

“Never mind my name. I live in the same building with Esther Hunt, and I feel it my duty to let you know how she’s two-timing you.”

“Madam,” he said, “You’re a lousy liar.”

I could hear it was quiet in the room now, like they were all listening. I said, “You can insult me all you want, young man, but you can go there and see for yourself.”

And hung up.

I stayed in the phone booth a couple minutes more, then walked over to the front of the building like I hadn’t a thing on my mind. Lew was coming out in a big hurry when I got there. This was my alibi.

“Willie,” he said when he spotted me, “where’s your car?”

“Right over there,” I said.

“Drive me to Esther’s place,” he said.

He didn’t say another word all the way, just sat in my car staring straight ahead. I’d hardly stopped the car in front of her house when he was out of it and running. At the street door he stopped and came back slowly.

“Maybe you’d better come up with me,” he said.

“Is anything the matter?” I asked.

“Maybe nothing,” he said. “If there is—” He massaged his face all over with his hand. “I don’t want to kill her. If I try to kill her, Willie, don’t let me.”

I’d just as soon not have gone up there with ham, but what could I do? I tagged after him up the two flights of stairs. He stood at the door a little while, just stood there, then moved his hand to the bell. Didn’t ring it though. Instead turned the knob and the door was unlocked on account of I’d made sure it would be. Both for Deuce Melody and for him.

He barged across the tiny living room and threw open the bedroom door. Then stopped dead like he’d come up against a wall.

I didn’t go all the way with him, but I could see past his shoulder into the bedroom. Could see the bed and Deuce Melody sitting up in it in his underwear shirt. With a kind of silly grin on his face and the dimples punching deep holes in his cheeks.

Esther Hunt was in the bed with him. Out to the world like she’d been since before Deuce had come up and taken her dress off her and put her on the bed. She looked like she was peacefully asleep. Which was what she was, that powder I’d put in her coffee having done it.

The whole thing lasted two, three seconds. Lew didn’t have to worry about killing anybody. I didn’t have to worry either, though up to then this was what I’d been worried most about. Lew was too dead inside to do anything but turn around and walk out of there.

I drove him back to his house. He got out without saying goodnight. Maybe he didn’t even know I was there.

I had one more thing to do. I drove to Deuce Melody’s motel. He’d just got back from Esther Hunt’s place. I paid him off and told him who the guy was who’d stood in the doorway. Though he hadn’t known what Lew Angel looked like, he’d sure enough heard of him.

“My God, Willie,” Deuce said, “you doublecrossed me. He’ll cut my heart out.”

“Not if you keep your trap shut,” I said. “And if you don’t lose time getting out of town.”

“I knew the minute I lost my transmission in this dump there was nothing good about it,” he said.

I went home to the cottage and got out a bottle. Pretty soon Floyd arrived. He was a happy man. He said when Lew got back to his apartment the first thing he did was kick out Augie Pitcher and the others that were waiting for him to go on with the meeting. He’d changed his mind about retiring. Which was no surprise to Floyd hearing this.

We shook hands and between us killed the bottle. Celebrating.

This was on account of we didn’t know about you, bug. And you were here all the time.

So you know most of this anyway. Guess I’m on a talking jag. I always talk a lot when I’m nervous.

I found out about this afternoon, bug.

I came back to Lew’s apartment from an errand and found Esther Hunt with him. School was still on, but she’d walked out on her kindergarten kids to try and explain about last night. Said it was all news to her, he thinking she’d been in bed with a guy, till she phoned him at lunchtime and heard it from him. Said all she knew was she’d fallen asleep very early and when she woke up she’d still been alone. Said there couldn’t have been any guy with her.

A likely story.

“Throw the bitch out,” Lew said to me.

I put my hand on her arm, but gentle-like. She threw her shoulders back and marched to the door with her face like a cake of ice. You know, I felt a little bit sorry for her. But what the hell!

“Serves me right, Willie,” Lew said when I came back. “I was old enough to know all dames are tramps.”

“Live and learn,” I said.

A couple of hours later Allen W. McGoldrich, the D.A., came up to the apartment. He was carrying a kind of square case by the handle.

“To what do we owe this pleasure?” Lew said sarcastic-like.

“I have something here that will interest you,” McGoldrich said.

He put the case on the table and took off the top. A tape recorder. We didn’t say a thing watching him plug the cord into an outlet. Then he snapped a switch and the spools started turning and I was listening to my own voice. And Floyd’s.

On the tape was everything I and Floyd had been talking about in our cottage the night I’d come home and told him Lew was going to get married and retire. How we were going to hire Deuce Melody and fix it so Lew would have no more use for Esther Hunt.

But you know. You were right in the wall listening, bug.

I mean you have to be in the wall on account of you’re not anywhere else in this cottage. I’m no beginner. I know the cops and the D.A. are all the time bugging houses and apartments of guys like me and Lew Angel. One of my jobs is to go over Lew’s apartment every few days to see if it’s been bugged. Found a bug only last week behind a picture. Went over my cottage too, but found nothing.

This leaves inside the wall. Put there while I and Floyd were away. With electronics and all, these days you don’t even need wires. A tape recorder can be a mile away recording every word we say as long as a bug is somewhere around.

And there was the tape on Lew’s desk repeating all our words. And Lew just looking at me. And McGoldrich smiling that smile of his full of teeth.

McGoldrich was playing the old D.A. game. If you can’t beat ’em, make ’em beat themselves. Get ’em to fighting each other. Afterward clean up the pieces. A smart cookie, that D.A.

Lew kept looking at me.

I was safe as long as McGoldrich was there. But after he left! Me, I had no hankering to hang around.

I slipped out of the apartment while the recorder was still going. I shouldn’t have stopped. But I figured I had a little time to warn Floyd and pack my clothes and get the few bucks I had stashed away in the cellar.

Floyd got the hysterics when I told him. I was all packed and ready to go, but then I had Floyd on my hands. I couldn’t get him to move, he was so scared. Should’ve left him, but what the hell! Then I was going to leave him, but when I opened the door the first car was pulling in among the trees a couple of hundred feet away.

Got me the box of cartridges out of my valise and my gun hasn’t been out of my hand all the time I’ve been talking to you.

Talking is good for me when I’m like this. Quiets my nerves. Floyd is nobody to talk to. I can hear him bawling in the kitchen.

Now Lew is out there. I just saw him. And it’ll be dark soon. There’s not much time.

Of course the first thing they did was cut the telephone wire. So I can’t call the cops for help. It’s up to you, bug.

You got me into this. Now get me out.

I hope there’s a man at the other end and not just a tape recorder. A man who heard me and will send help before it’s too late.

Bug, for God’s sake, are you listening?