The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™: 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

Heels Are for Hating

Originally published in Manhunt, Feb. 1954.

About a week before the date of his fight with Emmet Darcy, Jackie Brand went home one evening to find his wife Peg at the kitchen table with a pencil in her hand and a big sheet of paper covered with figures in front of her. Peg was a little gal, maybe five-one in heels and about ninety pounds sopping wet, but every inch and every pound collaborated to produce a quality product. Her hair was pale gold, almost white, and it had the same soft glow that got into her eyes when she was excited about something.

When Jackie came in, Peg looked up at him and said, “I drove out on Highway 66 today. That little motor court is still for sale. I talked to the owner.”

“How much?” Jackie asked.

“Twenty-five thousand. Ten would finance it.”

“How much we got in the bank?”

“About a G.”

“Okay, a grand. My guarantee for the Darcy brawl is five more. Expenses will whittle that. You see, baby?”

She crumpled the paper up into a little ball. “Sure, Jackie, I see. I was just passing the time, anyhow. I’d better fix you something to eat.”

That’s the way she was. Never any bellyaches, even though she’d learned quite a while ago that she and Jackie weren’t going much of any place. Jackie was a pretty fair middleweight, as middleweights go, but pretty fair isn’t good enough. Pretty fair means you’re just there for the really good boys to knock over on the way up. In the meantime, you earn a living. You hang around on the edge of Big Time, and you earn a living.

The longer Jackie looked at Peg that night, the worse he felt. After supper, he couldn’t stand it any longer, so he got up and said he was going for a walk. He decided a beer might make him feel better, and he went down the street a few blocks to Happy Sam’s Bar and Grill. Happy Sam’s was a place where a lot of minor sports characters hung out, and when Jackie went in, there was Benny Lester, Emmet Darcy’s manager, sitting at a table with a bottle of Blatz. He lifted a thumb, and Jackie went back.

“Hi, Jackie,” he said. “Sit down and have a brew.”

Jackie sat down, and Happy Sam carried another Blatz over from the bar. Benny sat watching Jackie until he’d had a couple of big swallows from the bottle. Benny was a guy who could bide his time, like a spider in a web. He even looked like a spider. Thin and gray, with a wizened face.

“I been thinking about your match with Emmet,” Benny said. “The kid’s a comer, but he’s green. He needs experience. You been around a long time, Jackie. You know the tricks, and you got a good right. It’s mostly that right that worries me. Green as the kid is, he might walk into it.”

“Maybe I’m supposed to send flowers,” Jackie said.

Benny killed his Blatz and wiped his mouth with the back of a dry hand, looking into the empty bottle as if he’d lost something there. “Time comes when a guy ought to check out, Jackie. It doesn’t pay to hang around after hours. A guy can quit and get into something soft if he’s got a bundle.”

“What’s a bundle?”

“Ten grand, maybe.”

Jackie laughed. “You got ten grand to spend?”

Benny lifted his shoulders. “Not me, Jackie. There’s a guy interested who spends ten grand like nothing. In an investment like this, he wouldn’t even think twice.”

Jackie thought of Peg and the way she was quietly breaking up inside with the wanting of something she couldn’t have. A little motor court. A stinking little outfit out on 66. It wasn’t much to ask, after the years she’d given. Add ten grand to the five grand guarantee, it made a lot of things possible.

Jackie finished his beer. “Talk’s cheap,” he said. “Talk’s not worth ten grand. Not your kind, anyhow.”

Benny leaned forward, his gray little face quiet and closed. “How about Jay Paley? You figure his talk might be worth ten grand?”

Jackie traced the outline of the empty Blatz bottle with the tips of his blunt fingers. He wished there was something left in it. A lot better if it were something stronger than five percent. The name of Jay Paley was enough to make a guy want a quick shot. In its way, it was a name like Emmet Darcy. They were both supposed to be on the way up. In different rackets, though. In Jay Paley’s racket, there wasn’t any breather between rounds, and the only rules were the ones that were made to break. A pretty important guy, Jay Paley. He’d even been on television with some senators and other guys. He’d had a kind of minor part, really, but he’d been there just the same.

“What makes Paley interested?” Jackie asked.

Benny sat back with a thin, dry smile that managed by a physical paradox to look oily. “Come off, Jackie. Who you think owns Darcy?”

“Word is, you do.”

“Don’t be silly. Darcy’s valuable property. I couldn’t buy a couple of his left hooks.”

Jackie took a deep breath that burned in his lungs like the ones he usually started drawing around the sixth. “You tell Paley he can see me if he wants.”

Benny’s thin smile cracked open, permitting an escape of beery air. “You’re getting sillier, Jackie. Jay Paley doesn’t come see people. People go see him. If you’re ready to go, I might be able to find him.”

Jackie started to think again about Peg and the place on 66 and fifteen grand minus expenses. And it seemed to him, sitting there over an empty beer bottle, that Benny’s gray little weasel face dried up completely and blew away, and in its place was Peg’s, the eyes trying to hide their hurt and hunger behind a kind of gallant, small-girl smile. Peg, who asked for so little and got such a hell of a lot less. Peg, who was married to a big stumble bum who tried and tried his level best, God knew, but whose best was never good for more than peanuts here and there. Peg, Peg, Peg. The name was like a crying inside him, and all at once he was standing up.

“I’m ready,” he said.

On the way out, he glanced into the mirror behind the bar, and there was a pair of snotty eyes popping out of the glass at him. They belonged to Spud Perkins, who was hunched like a toad on a stool at the bar. He didn’t turn to face Jackie. He didn’t make any kind of sign.

Spud was a flabby little guy with eyes that were popped half out of his head by an overtime thyroid. His throat was scarred and sunken where a goiter had been removed. He was Jackie’s manager all the years Jackie was in the fight game. He always took good care of Jackie, and he was always strictly honest. Jackie hated him. He hated his guts.

Maybe it was because those popped eyes were always snotty with cold contempt. Maybe it was because Spud always wrapped a sneer around a ten-cent cigar. Or maybe it was because he always said what he thought, and most of what he thought was nasty with the same contempt you could see in his eyes.

Like in the dressing room after the fight in which Jackie upset Joe Donny with a ninth round kayo. When everyone had gone but Spud and Jackie, Spud rolled his cigar to one side of his sneer and said, “So you won. You won because the guy got sloppy and left an opening you could’ve thrown a chair through. You took a hell of a beating for eight rounds just hanging on for a chance to throw the sleeper. You’re a catcher, boy. You take six to heave one. Pretty soon you’ll be punch-drunk. You’ll be a bum. You’d better quit.”

Jackie had cocked the right that had smeared Donny and measured the blur that was Spud’s face. Spud hadn’t moved an inch, and the fist had dropped.

“Look,” Jackie had said. “I’ll take the punches. You just match the fights.”

Spud had shrugged. “I saw Benny Lester in the hall. He wants you for Emmet Darcy. He thinks a Brand-Darcy match will be a step along for his boy.”

“That’s what Donny’s manager thought. You get me Darcy.”

Spud had shrugged again and turned away. “I’ll get him,” he’d said.

And so he’d made the match, the one that Jackie was putting on the market, and now Jackie held his eyes in the mirror for a second and then went on out with Benny. On the street, they legged it a block to Benny’s parked Olds and took a short ride across town to Eddie Malaca’s Elite Billiard Parlor. They went in past a crowd of fringe characters playing rotation and snooker and into a back room. Jay Paley, the big guy around Eddie Malaca’s, was sitting at a round table in a corner with a handful of pasteboards. His little eyes took time to mark the approach of Benny and Jackie and then returned to the consideration of a club flush. He backed the flush and won, teetering back in his chair with smug complacency.

“Something on your mind, Benny?”

“I’ve brought Jackie Brand around. He thought you might be interested in buying some insurance.”

The little eyes flicked over Jackie as if he were another flush. “You selling insurance, Jackie?”

“Just big policies. Nothing less than ten grand.”

Paley laughed and rocked his chair down. Standing, he strolled across the room and dropped at a vacant table. Benny prodded Jackie into motion, and they followed after.

“Sit down, Jackie,” Paley said. “What kind of policy you got?”

Jackie remained standing. “Ten grand in advance and you name the round.”

Paley’s little eyes were twin points of glittering light. “Ten grand’s a lot of lettuce, Jackie, even to a guy like me. I expect my money’s worth. If I don’t get it, you better invest the ten in a policy of your own.”

“I’ll deliver. You just name the round.”

“The seventh ought to do. Not too soon. We’ll want to give the customers something.”

“Okay. The seventh. Now I’d like to see the ten G’s.”

“You’ll see the ten, all right. You think I carry a bundle like that in my pocket? I’ll send someone around to Lefty Jordan’s Gym tomorrow. How about three o’clock?”

“Three’s as good a time as any. I’ll be in the dressing room.”

Jackie turned and looked at Benny, and he could see the contempt was already in Benny’s eyes.

“I’m sticking around for awhile,” Benny said. “Grab a cab.”

Jackie grabbed the cab and went back home. Peg was waiting for him in the living room. Across the room, Martin Kane was throwing some guy all over the television screen.

“Where you been, honey?” Peg said. “I thought you were just taking a walk.”

“I dropped into Happy Sam’s and got talking with some of the boys. I didn’t aim to be so long.”

“It’s okay, honey. I was just a little worried.”

He sat down and watched Martin work on the other guy. He felt sick and dirty. He wished to hell he was the guy catching it on the screen. He glanced at Peg and away. Even his look might contaminate her, he thought. Something dirty might rub off.

Jackie had never quite believed in the miracle of his marriage. A gal like Peg and a guy like him. Spud Perkins had trouble believing it, too. He couldn’t for the life of him understand what Peg saw in a second rate catcher like Jackie. Spud was crazy about Peg. Not gland-crazy, like a young guy who had to do something about it, but crazy in a quiet way, like an old guy who only wanted a kind word and a little company. He liked to come around and talk with Peg. Or maybe just sit and look at her. Once in a while he’d just barely touch her on the cheek or on the hair or some other innocent place like that, very gently, with a funny wet look in his popped eyes. If he caught Jackie watching him, he’d sneer and snarl and light one of his foul cigars.

It’s for Peg, Jackie kept thinking. I’m doing it for Peg.

After he collected the bundle the next day, there wasn’t much use thinking at all. He continued to work out at Lefty Jordan’s, going through the motions, and mostly he wished he could drop dead before the fight came up.

The day before the fight, Spud came in late and stood leaning against the wall, his hands rammed down into his coat pockets and his eyes watching every move Jackie made. It was like being spit on by a pair of eyes. That’s the way Jackie felt, having Spud watch him like that. Later, Spud tagged along to the dressing room and stood around while Jackie showered and dressed. Jackie was tying his tie in front of the mirror when Spud spoke.

“Why bother, tramp?” he said, and his voice sounded just like his eyes looked.

Jackie pulled the knot of his tie up snug against his neck and turned, giving the smoke of quick anger time to clear out of his eyes.

“Maybe you’d better tell me what you mean.”

Spud didn’t crawl a bit. He was a short, soft, nasty little man, and he’d have been a pushover for any fleaweight in the world. But he had guts, and he wouldn’t crawl. In all the years he knew him, Jackie never saw him crawl.

“Sure, tramp,” he said. “You’re selling out. The other night you were bunghole buddy to Benny Lester, and you’re selling out. Benny wouldn’t waste his time on a tramp except to buy something. What round’s it set for?”

“As far as you’re concerned,” Jackie said, “it’s round one.”

Then he clobbered Spud. Right in his nasty mouth. Spud’s feet were lifted clear off the floor, and his flabby body smeared itself against the wall like a blob of putty. His upper plate jumped out onto the cement floor and skittered away in two pieces. He slid down slowly against the wall to a sitting position and slumped over on his side.

Jackie felt sick. Sick to think he’d smeared a guy who wouldn’t have been a good match for a Brownie. He stood there looking at Spud for a long time, wondering if he’d ever move again. After a while, Spud did, pushing himself slowly back up against the wall. When Jackie left, he was still sitting there on the floor, looking down with a kind of stunned wonder at the curve of his fat belly.

Jackie stood on the curb, his stomach a hard knot. For a minute, he was afraid he was going to be sick in the gutter. He stood there with his legs spread and his head back, breathing deeply, fighting the sickness. It was pretty silly. A guy who’d looked into dozens of pairs of glassy eyes and who’d had his own looked into more times than it was pleasant to remember. A pro who’d seen as much blood as he had, both his own and the other guy’s. A guy like that going squeamish over a simple clobbering. It was just one more poke in the kisser, delivered to a snotty character who had it coming. To hell with it.

He wished he could get a drink. He wanted a quick one at Happy Sam’s. But it wouldn’t do for a fighter to be bellying a bar the day before a fight. Loose-lipped characters liked to make something out of things like that. A guy already on the fat end of a fix had to be careful.

Maybe another place. Maybe a little hole-in-the-wall where no one would recognize him. He could pick up a quick one and get on home to Peg. He’d been staying away from Peg as much as possible lately. It sort of hurt to look at her. He couldn’t get over the feeling that he soiled her somehow when he touched her. She’d noticed it, too. She’d been asking him what the matter was.

He started walking and pretty soon he found the hole-in-the wall. Inside, he crawled onto a stool at the rear end of the bar and ordered a neat rye. Just one, he told himself. Just one, and then home to Peg. No need at all to feel like he did about Peg. No need at all to feel like a lousy tramp. Damn it, he was doing it for Peg. Damn it to hell, it was all for the place out on 66.

A voice beside him said, “Well, well. This the way you train for a fight, champ?”

Jackie slanted a look into the face at his shoulder. The face was thin and dark with a dimple in its chin. The eyes were amused, but they didn’t have any warmth. So was the mouth, and neither did it. Jackie looked away into the mirror behind the bar and saw with relief that the face was reduced to a blur with no discernible parts.

He said, “I’m not champ, and I’ll train my own way.”

The guy laughed, and the laugh was like the smile — shallow stuff with no warmth. “Sure, champ. You do it your way. The training, I mean. The actual fighting’s something else.”

Inside, Jackie felt suddenly withered and old. He dumped the neat rye into the center of the feeling, but it didn’t have much effect.

“What the hell you talking about?”

“Let’s move back to a booth, champ. I’ll explain it.”

“I like it here.”

“You might like it even better in the booth.”

It was then that Jackie felt the steel finger prodding his kidney. In his day, he’d taken a few in the kidneys from an inside brawler or two. Nothing, though, like this gentle prodding. Nothing ever that left him so internally cold, so vulnerable to what would follow. He slipped off the stool and moved toward the last booth in the rear of the joint. His feet had the incredible heaviness that they used to acquire in the days when he went fifteen.

They sat across from each other in the booth, and the hood’s lips fashioned the shallow smile above the dimple. “It’s not like a fighter to train in a bar. Conscience bothering you?”

Jackie made a fist in his lap under the table. He wondered how much shoulder he could get into one reaching out from a sitting position.

“I’m not very bright,” he said. “You’ll have to keep it simple.”

The shallow smile spread a little. “Sure, champ. You know Rudy Ryan?”

The question was rhetorical. Everyone knew Rudy Ryan. Or about him. Another TV actor. Not a minor one, like Jay Paley. Big stuff. A real channel attraction.

Jackie said, “Who doesn’t?”

The hood across the booth lit a cigarette, the light of the gopher flaring up across his dark face. “Right. Who doesn’t? You’re lucky, champ. Rudy’s taking a personal interest in you. He sent me around to tell you so. He’s heard that Jay Paley’s laid a lot against you tomorrow night. He says to tell you he believes in you. He says to tell you he’s laying even more the other way. Your way. He says he’ll appreciate it if you do your best.”

Jackie’s lips were stiff, dry, like parchment. When he moved them, he had the feeling that they were going to crack open in a dozen places. “You’re still being too fancy for me. Why the hell would Ryan be interested in a peanut stand like this brawl? It makes no sense.”

The hood’s laugh was brittle, and he snapped it off before it was started good. “You’re pretty smart, champ. For a guy who’s been catching them as long as you, you’re real smart. Here it is on the line. Paley’s getting too cocky. He operates too much. He’s crossing too many lines. Like this fix. It doesn’t amount to much, but it’s the principle. For all Paley knows, Rudy might have laid a bundle the wrong way. Rudy doesn’t like that. He figures it’s time to cut Paley back. This is just a beginning.”

“Oh, sure.” Jackie’s voice was harsh. “The beginning of the end for Paley and me both. It’s not hard to figure what would happen to me if I pulled a deal like this.”

“No. You got no worry. Rudy said to tell you that. You don’t seem to get the big picture, champ. I said Paley was due to be cut back. That means way back. All the way.”

“It’d still make me a louse. Nothing doing.”

“I guess maybe you’re already a louse, champ, anyway you play it.” The hood slipped out of the booth. “You go home and think about it. Maybe you’ll see it different when you get home.”

Turning his back, he walked out of the joint, his shoulders swinging lazily under expensive tailoring. Jackie sat in the booth for a few minutes longer, anger disturbing his viscera, making him half sick again. After a while, he got up and went home.

He went upstairs to the apartment two at a time. His eagerness to see Peg had suddenly the strength of hunger. He was hungry to see her, feel her, smell the clean scent of her. He hadn’t felt this way in a long, long time. Not so desperately. He was, in a way, a kid running to his mother.

But Peg wasn’t home. The living room was empty. So were the bedroom, bathroom, dining room, kitchen. He made the tour slowly, wondering where she could be. There wasn’t anything cooking in the kitchen, either. It wasn’t like Peg to be gone when he got home. Usually she was waiting for him. It was late now, too. Later than he ordinarily arrived.

Back in the living room, he sprawled in a chair, thinking that it was a hell of a way for a guy to wind it up. Once, a long time ago, he’d had ideas of being champ. It hadn’t taken too long to learn that he’d never make it. There were too many guys around who were a little better. Too many guys a little faster, a little sharper, a little smarter. Maybe he hadn’t even been a strong contender. But he’d always been a good competitor. He’d taken them as he could get them, the good and the bad, and no one had ever been in the ring with him who hadn’t been in a fight.

Now to end it with a fix. Now to wind it up in a dive for ten lousy G’s.

He squirmed in the chair, swearing softly, and he was suddenly aware that the clock that Peg was so proud of was striking. Soft, musical strokes. Eight of them. Eight?

He was on his feet in one unbroken motion, standing tense, almost in a fighting crouch. He said aloud, “Peg. Where the hell’s Peg?”

Then at last with sluggish perception of significant relationships, he was back in the hole-in-the-wall with the hood’s voice in his ears. Maybe you’ll see it different when you get home. Whirling with a choked, gutteral cry, he lunged out into the hall and downstairs.

On the street, he began to trot, arms up, knees lifting high, as if he were doing roadwork. Blocks along, at an intersection, a cab pulled up, stopped by a red light. Quickly, without thinking, he tore open the rear door on the near side and piled in. The driver twisted under the wheel, peering back.

“In a hurry, Mac?”

Jackie leaned back in the seat, relaxed a little by the exercise of muscles. “Rudy Ryan’s club,” he said.

The driver threaded the cab through traffic, slicing across lanes, timing progress to hit green and slip through yellow. Over on glitter street, public playground number one, he pulled the cab to the curb in front of Ryan’s club. Jackie got out and passed a five and left without his change. Across the sidewalk, he ran into a doorman who appeared silently in the way.

“Sorry, sir. Evening dress is required.”

Jackie let his eyes drift down the black and white barrier. The guy was big — big shoulders, big hands, big feet. His belly was big, too. Jackie thought he could probably bury an arm to the elbow in that belly.

“To hell with evening dress,” he said. “I want to see Rudy Ryan.”

The doorman’s face seemed to flatten, nostrils flaring, and he shifted his big feet to a stance that indicated a knowledge of basic principles.

Behind him, a voice said, “It’s all right, Holly. Let Mr. Brand come in.”

Still polite and friendly, just like he’d been in the hole-in-the-wall, he stood there casually with the shallow smile faintly present above the dimple that must have sent the dames. Just the same as he’d been earlier, except that now he’d qualified himself for the night with soup and fish.

Jackie pushed past the doorman and said, “Where’s Peg? What the hell you done with Peg?”

His voice skidded upward, acquiring volume, and a couple on stools at a small bar beyond an arch turned to stare. The faint smile on the hood’s face jelled a little, displaying a quality no smile should have.

“Don’t be noisy, champ. You ask to see Mr. Ryan, and now you start yelling about someone named Peg. Make up your mind. You want to see Mr. Ryan or not?”

Jackie spread his legs and lowered his chin onto his chest, struggling for control, knowing he was playing a contrived wheel.

“That easy?” he said. “That easy to see the great Ryan?”

The hood’s shoulders lifted. “Why not? Mr. Ryan’s democratic. He tries to see everybody.”

He lead the way through the small bar and on into a hall that was cushioned against sound with a thick carpet and drapes and even a tapestry or two. They went upstairs into another hall and past a succession of rooms to a closed door. The dimpled hood knocked and pushed the door open.

“Inside,” he said.

The man Jackie found himself facing might have been, except for the evening clothes, a middle-class merchant watching the approach of a customer. He had a round, placid face under a naked skull rimmed by a gray fringe. Rimless glasses covered his eyes, reflecting the light in a way to give him an appearance of bright blindness. His mouth was small, like a child’s, and the lips were pink and tender and pleasantly bowed.

The hood said, “This is Jackie Brand. He wants to know where Peg is. Me, I don’t even know who she is.”

Eyebrows raised above rimless glass. “Peg?”

“You know damned well who Peg is,” Jackie said. “And I know damned well you snatched her.”

The placid pink face was not visibly affected. “Kidnapping is a serious charge, Mr. Brand. I’m sure you’ll want to retract it. Perhaps, if you’ll tell me precisely what’s on your mind, I can reassure you.”

“Okay. I’ll play along for a minute. I’m going in a fixed fight tomorrow night with Emmet Darcy. You know that. A little while ago your errand boy served notice that I was to go for a win. You know that, too, because you sent him to tell me. I told him nix, and he told me I’d think different when I got home. At the time, I didn’t know what he meant. When I got home, I found out. Peg’s gone. My wife Peg, as if you didn’t know. Like I said, you snatched her to make sure I’d follow instructions.”

Ryan laughed. “I suppose that’s the kind of reasoning one should expect from a punched-out pug. Let’s get this straight. I have a guarantee that you’ll win your fight tomorrow night. If that arrangement is violated, I’ll hold responsible the man who made the guarantee, not you. On the strength of the understanding I’ve invested a considerable amount with the bookies. Although the money is important, it is really incidental. The primary object is to discipline an upstart. I consider the arrangement adequate as it stands, and I’ve taken no steps to reinforce it. In brief, I don’t know where your wife is, and I don’t care.”

Maybe, as Ryan suggested, you couldn’t expect much from the brain of a punched-out pug. But it could still solve elementary problems when someone gave it a hint. It could see, for instance, that the only person who could have dealt with Ryan was Spud Perkins. Nasty little pop-eyed Spud.

But Spud wouldn’t have snatched Peg. Whatever else he might have done, he would never have touched Peg. Not for any reason whatever. Peg was the only person on earth that Spud gave a damn for.

But he might have an idea about it. He’d been mixed in the business from the start, and he might have an idea. Inside all that deceptive thyroid ugliness, Spud had a brain that worked like a fine watch. Standing there in front of Ryan with rage and fear a riot in his entrails, Jackie was aware of a driving compulsion to find Spud right away. Without another word, he spun away to the door.

Spud lived in a single room on the third floor of a dilapidated hotel on the south side of town. He sat slumped in a chair by a window that looked down into the dark well of an interior court. His shirt collar was open around his scarred and sunken throat. His lips were split and swollen, and every time he opened them his shrunken upper gum showed through. He looked old and sick, ready to die. But his eyes, looking up at Jackie, had the familiar expression that made Jackie want to smash his lower plate just the way he’d smashed the upper.

“What the hell do you want, tramp?” he said.

The words came out like mush, leaking air around their edges. Jackie closed his eyes and clenched his fists, cutting off the sight of Spud, fighting the effects of a tumultuous stirring of nausea and hate.

“Peg’s gone,” he said.

Spud just sat quietly in his chair for a minute, as if he were trying to comprehend what Jackie meant, and then he went crazy. He bounced out of the chair with a little squeal and grabbed Jackie by the lapels of his coat, twisting and jerking. His voice was shrill and frightened, like a woman’s.

“Gone? What you mean, gone? Damn you to hell, what’s happened to Peg?”

Seeing Spud go to pieces that way seemed to have a reverse effect on Jackie. He felt calmer and stronger, suddenly very sorry for the ugly little man. Looking down at the hand twisted in his lapels, he said nothing until the hand relaxed and dropped away.

“I thought maybe you’d know.”

“Me? You think I’d do Peg any harm?”

“No. I just thought you might have an idea.”

Spud turned and walked away. Across the room, he stood quietly, thinking, rubbing a finger along the hard edge of his upper gum.

“Rudy Ryan sent a gunsel to see me today,” Jackie said. “The gunsel said Ryan wants me to win tomorrow night. Thanks to you, Ryan knows all about my deal with Benny Lester and Jay Paley. At first I thought Ryan might be holding Peg as insurance, but I went to see Ryan, and now I don’t think so. He says he’s got a guarantee that I’ll win and that’s all he needs. A guarantee from you. No one but you could have made a deal like that.”

Spud turned back, and now there was no evidence of his brief insanity. His eyes smeared themselves all over Jackie, and his bruised lips curled back off his gums.

“It’s what I get,” he said softly. “It’s what I get for playing nurse to a second-rate pug who should have been a plumber. You got no talent, you got no brains, you ought to drop dead. Sure, I made the deal with Ryan, all right. I knew Ryan was ripe to cut Jay Paley down, and I thought this would be a good time to begin. You know why I did it, tramp? But that’s a silly question. You wouldn’t know. You haven’t got the brains to know. I’ll tell you why I did it, but first of all I’ll tell you it wasn’t for you. For all I care, you could sell your stinking soul, and I wouldn’t lift a hand to stop you or spend a nickel to buy it back for you. It was for Peg I did it. It was for the only person on this sour earth I give a damn for. And she has to be married to you. Of all the guys available to a girl like her, for some damn reason no sane man could understand, she has to be married to you.”

It was strange, but Jackie wasn’t mad at all. It was as if, at last, Spud had lost the power to affect him. “You did a pretty good job,” he said. “I’ll have to win now. I’ll have to win to save your hide from Rudy Ryan. You made the guarantee, and I’ll have to keep it.”

Spud began to laugh, a soft, hysterical quivering of his flabby body. “No. You won’t win. You won’t win for two reasons. The first reason is, you haven’t got the stuff. Emmet Darcy’s a tough kid coming up. A hard, fast boy headed for the top, if the lice he works for don’t wreck him before he makes it. He’ll cut you to shreds in six, eight rounds. You haven’t got a prayer. It’s a laugh, it’s a great big belly laugh, to think of Benny Lester and Jay Paley buying a fight that was already on ice.”

“If I’ve got no chance, why this fat deal of yours? Why nudge Rudy Ryan into forcing me to go all out?”

Spud hammered his forehead gently with the heel of one hand. “Stupid,” he said. “So damn stupid. It was just to make you try. It was just to keep you straight. You really think you could take a dive and make it look legitimate? Not in a million years. It’d stink. It’d stink like the rendering works. And right in the middle of the stink would be Peg. Realizing that you’d done it for her in the only way a dim wit like you could figure to do it. Blaming herself and breaking up in little pieces. I couldn’t let it happen. Not to Peg.”

A trickle of saliva ran out of the corner of his mouth and down across his chin. He found a handkerchief and wiped it away, his lips twisting bitterly.

Jackie still couldn’t get mad. He said quietly, “So that’s one reason. What’s the other?”

Spud sat down wearily, staring at his fat belly. “I guess I might as well spell it out for you. It’s the only way you’ll ever get it. Because Jay Paley’s got her, tramp. That’s the only explanation. These things develop leaks always, and he’s learned of my double-cross. Or is it a triple-cross? It’s getting too damn complex to follow. Anyhow, you’ll hear from him pretty soon. Probably he’s been trying to contact you already. To the effect that Peg is his guest, I mean. Soon as you’ve lost the fight, he’ll send her home. Since you’re all messed up in a dirty fix, he won’t worry about you doing anything or going to the cops. You’ve got no call to worry, either, as far as that goes. All you’ve got to do is lose. There isn’t anything else you could do, even if you wanted, so you’ve got no worry.”

Looking down at Spud sitting there in the chair like an ugly little toad, Jackie was suddenly aware of the full significance of the deal with Ryan. The enormity of it swelled in his brain, assuming gigantic proportions.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “You promised I’d win. You made the guarantee to Rudy Ryan. If you don’t think I’ve got a chance, even trying, why would you do that? You know what happens to guys who cross Ryan.”

Spud’s eyes raised to Jackie’s face and dropped again. The bloat of his body seemed to deflate, withering and drying against worn velour.

“You wouldn’t understand. That’s something I couldn’t make simple enough. Now get the hell out of here. I’m tired, and I’m sick, and most of all I’m sick of the sight and sound and smell of you. I hope I drop dead before I ever see you or speak to you again.”

Jackie turned and went out. Downstairs in the shabby lobby, he consulted a telephone directory and found the address of the Pawnee Apartments. It was out on North-line Boulevard. A fancy street. People with money lived there. One of them was Jay Paley.

Outside, Jackie flagged a cab and gave the driver the Northline address. He sat sprawled in the back seat, still filled with the strange and purposeful calm that he’d acquired in the face of Spud’s invective. When the cab stopped in front of the massive stack of the apartment building, he got out and went in, wading through thick carpeting to the elevator bank. A kid in a red monkey suit was standing outside an empty car.

“Jay Paley’s apartment,” Jackie said.

The kid looked dubious, so Jackie dug a limp five out of his pocket and fingered it obviously.

“Fourteenth floor,” the kid said, “and I told you nothing.”

They went up to fourteen about one floor ahead of their stomachs, and the kid indicated a blond door down the hall. “That’s it,” he said.

Jackie went down and thumbed a button, hearing beyond the door the spaced musical vibrations of chimes. The door was opened by a man about Jackie’s size with a hard, pocked face. Without waiting for an invitation, Jackie stepped across the threshold with his left foot and brought the lethal right up from the rear. The pocked face didn’t even have time to look surprised. It just disappeared. The body below it lifted off the floor in a short arc and came down on its head and shoulders, making considerable noise.

Jackie stood with his legs spread, massaging the knuckles of his right hand, waiting for a reaction. Down the length of the room, a door burst open and Jay Paley appeared in pink silk underwear. His eyes took in the sprawled figure of the pocked subordinate and flashed up over Jackie, widening with apprehension. Spinning, he dove back through the open door. His legs, Jackie noticed, were thin and hairy, rather repulsive.

In his bedroom, Paley was frantically pawing in the top drawer of a chest. As Jackie drove toward him, he came up and around with a snub-nosed .38. But not soon enough. Jackie’s blunt fingers locked around the wrist behind the gun, snapping it aside and down. The wrist bone snapped like a rotten stick, and Paley screamed. It was a shrill, wavering scream of fear and rage and pain in equal parts. The .38 thudded on the floor, and Jackie transferred his grip from Paley’s wrist to Paley’s throat. With his other hand, he slashed down on Paley’s mouth, driving the scream back into the throat it came from, altering it to a wet blubber. He kept holding Paley like that, by the throat, slashing his face methodically with his free hand. Paley went on blubbering, mouthing incoherencies. His face acquired a sleek red sheen.

“Where’s Peg?” Jackie said. “What’ve you done with Peg?”

He let Paley sag to the floor, a hairy slug in pink silk. The body crumpled, folding up on itself, so Jackie straightened it with a kick in the ribs.

“Peg,” Jackie said. “Where’s Peg?”

Paley lifted an arm and let it fall, gesturing toward the door to the bathroom. The door was open, and Jackie could see through across tile to another door that was closed. The closed door had a key on the bathroom side. Bending over, Jackie got hold of Paley and hauled him up. He smashed a short right to the slack jaw and let the body drop again. Not for pleasure. Just to put Paley out of the way for sure. That done, he walked through the bathroom and unlocked the closed door.

Peg sat on the edge of a double bed, small and lovely and unhurt, her knees and ankles primly together. The glow of her pale hair was in her eyes, the way it always was when things were fine.

“I heard you out there,” she said. “I never dreamed you were so tough. How come you aren’t champ?”

Jackie felt as if someone had tied a knot in his heart. He went over and dropped to his knees in front of her, burying his face in her lap. “Peg,” he said. “Peg, Peg...”

She stroked his head, crooning a little, like a mother with a child. “I know,” she said. “You’re in a mess. I know all about it. But you’ll come clean, honey. You can give that louse out there his money back — the ten grand, I mean — and what he loses on the books is his tough luck. That we won’t worry about.”

She stroked his head a minute longer, and then said, “It’s all my fault, anyhow. Always whining for that lousy dump out on 66. I should have known I’d only get you confused. Come on, now, honey. You’ve got to get home to bed. There’s a fight to win tomorrow night.”

Taking the blame. Just as Spud had said she would.

Jackie stood up, grinning a little, pulling her after him. Tucking the bright head under his chin, he breathed the clean scent of it, wondering how any guy could be so lucky.

The blunt hand that had just done a good job on a couple of bad boys folded into a knot of hard knuckles behind her.

“Yeah, honey,” he said softly, “this one I’ll win. This one I’ll win for an ugly little bastard who loves my wife.”

And that, in the unreasonable way events sometimes have of going against the experts, is what happened. Jackie read the story of the fight aloud to Peg from page umpteen in the next morning’s paper.

Jay Paley, being a more important character, rated a bigger treatment. The story of how his bullet-riddled body was found in an alley on the east side of town was carried on page one.