The New Black Mask (No 6)

A Friend to the Limit Jeffry Scott

Jeffry Scott is better known to British readers as journalist Shaun Usher, entertainment writer and television critic for The London Daily Sketch until 1972, and more recently for the London Daily Mail. With his father, journalist and author Gray Usher, he has edited two collections of stories about the supernatural — The Graveyard Companion (1975), and Festival of Fiends (1976). As Jeffry Scott, he has written a mystery novel, Trust Them and Die (1969) Jeffry Scott has twice won the Crime Writers Association prize for the best short story of the year, in 1972 and 1973.

Terry McNair’s a good enough kid in his way. Dumb rather than stupid, the dumbness of inexperience — seventeen’s the age for that.

Rick McNair and his son had moved into the next apartment a few months back. Terry would run errands, wash my car, feed the cats and like that all without a handful of “gimme.” He just liked feeling useful, helping out. Right now he was about to help his old man into an early grave.

I don’t snoop worth a damn, but this time it was hard to resist. Their apartment door was open, and locking mine, I heard sounds that wouldn’t mean diddly to some folk and said plenty to me. The small noises certain types of machined metal make when you treat them a certain way.

Ready to duck, I put my head round the door. Sure enough, Rick McNair had a handgun there, a big old Colt model 1911, your basic.45 automatic. I’d heard him smacking the magazine home and now he worked the slide and set the safety and put the piece down the back of his jeans; kind of shrugged and wriggled, making sure it set right, and got into a parka. It was loose enough for the gun to be hidden.

“Yo, Rick,” says I, because he’d looked up and caught me peeking. “Gonna rob a liquor store or what?”

“Norm, just mind your own business and leave me mind mine,” McNair told me. He was at the door by then. The faint smell of work sweat — he was a carpenter — had that overlay of anger, a coppery reek. He was looking past me, not at anything solid, but what he meant to do next.

“Sure thing,” I agreed, stepping aside to show sincerity. “Only you’re from out of state... Maybe you aren’t aware that in this state they’re kind of into gun control and suchlike. Kinky for permits. Get caught on the street with that piece, you’ll take a long vacation, all your fellow guests be wearing the selfsame clothes, eating the same meals, if you get my drift.”

Rick McNair stared at me until I came into focus. A lot of stuff was going on behind his poker face. I gave him credit for it not being that the last thing he needed was some nosy black dude giving him a short course on firearms regs in the city.

“I don’t aim to get caught,” he said. “Appreciate your concern though, Norm. But this is fam’ly business.”

He’s a widower with just the one kid, meaning the business concerned young Terry McNair. It was then I noticed Terry in a corner of the living room. He looked pale and sort of sickly, and he’s one healthy kid.

McNair nodded like I’d said something. “Yeah, the jackass got himself a heap of trouble, over the Limit.”

“Makes sense,” I said. The Limit’s a couple — two, three blocks on Republican and the itty cross streets between aforesaid blocks. Every city has a Times Square or Combat Zone. Here we call it the Limit. Good place to stay away from, less you work out of there. Me, I visit some. But up on my tippy-toes, one set of eyes doing duty for maybe four sets.

“Kid got a heap of trouble, and now you going there?” Ricky McNair nodded, zipped up the parka, understood that hampered the pistol, unzipped it again. White folks listen, oftentimes they don’t bother hearing. I’d told the man something, he cared to think about it. So I had to go the i-dotting, t-crossing route. “What you plan on doing, down there at the Limit?”

“Kick ass,” said McNair. “Get Terry’s money back. Dumb kid!” Biting down on the anger, he managed a little grin. “It’s not the principle of the thing, Norm. It’s the money, right?”

“I can save that much again, easy,” Terry put in. His left cheek was red and the ear real fiery red. I figured Pop had smacked him upside the head, a good one. “It’s only a hundred dollars.”

“The hell it’s only a hundred dollars; where d’you come off with the ‘only,’ Mr. Rockefeller?” McNair went, top of his voice. And to me: “Kid’s spent best part of a year saving that; he wants a motorcycle. Then he gets a better idea, whorin’ around this Limit place. Where’s it at, anyway?”

“You try kicking ass around the Limit, all they’ll find is your foot, they put that in some kind of museum,” I told McNair. “I mean it, Rick. Cops go in double-banked, riot guns for walking canes. You want the Limit that bad, ask some other sucker.”

Ten minutes later, out front, Rick McNair stopped fooling with what he calls wheels — little rust bucket near as old as his son — and came over. Me, I’m laid back on my reclining seat in reclined mode, nice tunes on the stereo, ready to motorvate, no particular place to go.

“Listen,” McNair said, “lend me your car, Norm. Please. Mine won’t start, damn it.” Naturally, on account of me fixing it that way.

“This fine car don’t go to no Limit,” I announced, giving him a little ethnic rasp in the voice. “But I’ll give you and Terry a ride.”

He nodded tautlike. “Get in the back,” he ordered Terry, and slid in beside me. It took a while to get to the Limit, plenty of home-going traffic that time of day. “When did he go, anyway?” I asked Rick McNair.

“This afternoon, fourish,” Terry supplied from the back. That struck me as a little early for the locality, like five, six hours early. The Limit’s hardly begun hopping by nine at night.

“I was just curious,” Terry mumbled. “And I heard about this ace girl there, she... well, you know... does it. I was curious.”

“A hooker,” his father snapped.

Not looking at either of them, I said, “Rick, you never had anything to do with a lady of the night, huh? Not in Nam or wherever? Real straight arrow, my man.”

“Not at Terry’s age,” McNair said shortly. “Not hardly ever. Never, once I’d met his mother, God rest her soul.”

“I was curious,” Terry whined. “All the guys were talking about the Limit, what goes on there.”

“They go all the time, huh?” I suggested.

Terry started to say yes, but he’s an honest kid and after a bit he said, “Well, some of them. One guy, anyway. His father’s a landlord there, so Mike gets left alone.”

“Fine friends you make,” McNair said.

“He’s not a friend, we were just hanging out, talking,” Terry explained miserably.

“This looks a decent area,” his father said, when I pulled in. “I thought the Limit—”

“This aint it,” I said. “From here we walk. Limit’s down there a ways, and one block over. Rick, either you let me lock that forty-five piece in the trunk or... put it this way, you pull it for any reason at all, I’ll bust your hand before you get to squeeze a shot off. You can bank on that in Denver, my friend.”

He just grunted and got out of the car. He thought I was bragging, but that was all right because I knew I wasn’t — and that left the pair of us happy.

Rule of thumb: Carry a piece and sooner or later you have to use it or get dead. Dumbest dumb in my book. Around the Limit, it’s likely to be sooner than later, at that. Plenty of mean characters there, choice of race and all three sexes, count ’em.

We went over to Republican and pretty soon the discount and novelty stores were empty stores, hole-in-wall head shops, peep shows, places showing triple-X movies and promising live action on stage between whiles. Dross City, no question.

Cross streets, being narrower and darker, were worse. But the quarter was empty, still asleep. Fairly safe, especially with three of us teamed.

“It was in there,” Terry said, after leading us down the wrong street and trying again. He pointed at a brownstone, some of the upper windows shuttered with marine ply sheets, ripe for the demo men. At street level, a dusty-windowed store showed a few items of the type of leisurewear that comes with spikes and studs. It hadn’t seen a customer since when and the lights were out.

“Not so fast.” I towed the pair of them into an alley beside the brownstone. “How’d you come to lose the money, get robbed, Terry? She do it up in her crib? You get mugged out here on the sidewalk? What?”

“I never saw the girl,” he told me. “Mike showed me where she operates, gave me a ride to school this morning, we cut through here on the way. I came back, solo, this afternoon. Street door doesn’t lock, you can shove it open. Her place is on the third floor.

“It’s dark, no windows on the stairs, the lights don’t work. I got to the landing, saw her apartment door. I was... um... getting up courage, I guess. Somebody jumped me from behind, slammed me against the wall so hard I saw stars, my nose bled. Uh, they twisted my arm, too, slammed me again, ran away. I heard them on the stairs. Then I found my money was gone.”

Rick McNair shook his head in disgust.

“Where was the wallet?” I asked.

“Back pocket of my jeans. I know, I know, it’s a stupid place to carry a wallet, Norm.”

“You learned that the hard way, it’ll stick.” It cheered him up some. “The guy who jumped you, what he look like?”

Terry’s blush made his whole face match the red ear. “All I know... it was a man. He was behind me all the time, then I was on the floor when he took off. You could tell it was a man, from the feel of his hands when he grabbed me, twisted my arm and all.”

“Okay, mystery man clobbers you. Maybe he was waiting, maybe he followed you in. What next? Hooker come out, ask what goes on? He’s bouncing you off walls hard enough to draw blood, must’ve been a ruckus.”

“I just wanted to get the hell out of there.” Terry turned to his father. “Look, Mike kind of dared me and... I was curious and I didn’t want to seem a nerd, you know? I took money to show her, string her along, but I meant to duck out before... well, anything. Then I could tell the guys I’d been there, prove it by saying what she and her place looked like.”

“We’re wasting time,” Rick McNair grumbled. “The girl’s pimp waits for morons like this one, too green and puny to matter, and roughs ’em up, lifts their dough. Let’s get to it, Norm. You stay here.”

“No way, José. We’ll all go up there, visit a spell.” I was thinking that Rick McNair might be hell on wheels as a carpenter but he couldn’t figure worth diddly. No hooker’s main man carries on that way. He do, word travels among the johns pretty soon his girl runs out of clients. For sure. Maybe he does knock over a fat-cat john every so often. But wise birds don’t foul their own nests and hookers’ men are real owls when it comes to their trade. They hit the john down the block a piece, never the doorstep.

Like Terry said, the street door looked solid but pushed open. By the second set of stairs, I was climbing them real slow, feeling less than good — and I’m in shape.

When I glanced back, Terry said, “Yeah, there’s a terrible smell. Plain dirt, I guess. That would have put me off, even if I hadn’t decided to duck out soon as I saw her, from the start.”

I hardly heard him. Rick McNair was staring up at me over the kid’s shoulder. He and I knew that smell, you never forget it. Somebody nearby was dead, and had been that way for too long.

McNair pushed past his son and then me. We reached the famous landing. He went to press the buzzer beside the apartment door but I stepped in fast. “Don’t touch a thing, Rick. Terry, you go back to the stairs, keep watch.”

I just wanted him well out of the way. Any fool could tell that the brownstone was deserted, waiting for the wrecker’s ball. That store at street level had been shut for weeks and the ex-owner hadn’t bothered to haul the window-display merchandise away. Street people had been using the hallway for a rest room; the odor up here wasn’t so much worse than lower down, just different...

The lock was strictly five-and-dime; I slipped it with a credit card.

We didn’t have to go in.

The woman was just inside. She hadn’t been much in life and was even less now. I couldn’t tell whether she had been strangled or what, the corpse was far gone. Maybe it had been there for a week. The rats hadn’t helped anything but themselves, the way rats will.

“Jesus,” Rick McNair groaned, and it wasn’t taking holy names in vain. “Let’s get out of here.”

The apartment, as I’d expected, was empty. The floor was fluffy tan underlay, the final tenant had ripped up the carpet. Unfaded places on the walls showed where furniture must have stood. I stood firm as McNair yanked my arm.

“Stuff to do,” I told him.

“Say what?” He didn’t realize it, but he was shouting.

“Terry’s wallet must be around here.” He blinked at me and I got mad. “Come on, Rick! Terry couldn’t kill a fly and somebody suckered him here next a body.” Then I heard that yowl-whoop-yowl cutting off suddenly, maybe a block away.

Great.

Now there was all of sixty seconds to do a day’s work. The stairway had no windows but the apartment couldn’t get by without them. I yelled for Terry to get in there with us — he went green and started to take off at the sight of the dead lady but McNair grabbed him.

I wrestled the nearest window open. “Fire escape,” I told McNair. “Don’t go down! Go up and over the roof, far as you can get. Use cover, go quiet, think Nam. Terry, this kid Mike — what car he drive? Quick, boy!”

He was nauseous, fighting it, eyes rolling. I shook him. “What car?”

“Uh... uh... Toyota. Silver, black roof.”

“Go!” I whacked McNair’s rump, nearly threw Terry out after him onto the rusty iron escape route of the fire stairs.

The apartment being stripped cut searching time. Terry’s wallet was half under the body, shoved there. I ripped it out, frantically checking the contents. Money, tickets for a rock concert, some clippings from Sports Illustrated.

Either he’d been cool enough to leave his ID at home, which I doubted, or Terry simply kept it separate from his dough. Adding my cash to the wallet, I slipped it into my jacket pocket, using the now-empty money clip, a hammered silver-dollar sign, to fix tie to shirt.

I just finished when two cops burst in. You can climb stairs fast or quiet; they’d tried both at once and could be heard on the final flight. So I was reaching way up, grabbing air, a fraction before they made the scene.

They said I was in a lot of trouble and a bad person to boot. Not hardly, I said, but polite.

What it was, I told them, I’d been hanging out on the corner and noticed this white teenager, maybe high school, in a silver Toyota with a black roof. He’d been in and out of the brownstone here, half a dozen times in a matter of hours. Made a fellow think...

Just now, I said, I’d gone into the hallway of the building to take a leak, and the same kid came barreling down the stairs, never seeing me in the shadows. So I’d decided to snoop around, see what drew him upstairs, day after day.

Sure, I’d opened the window. Had they noticed the smell in there? No, I didn’t know the dead lady from Adam, and neither would anyone, bar her Maker, thanks to those rats. But I did know that yellow simulated leather coat. Belonged on a street lady I’d seen from time to time, on the next block to here...

Finally the brightest cop ran out to their car, got on the switch about his comrades looking out for a black-and-silver Toyota driven by a kid. Later this cop told me he’d been covering all the bases and figured the vehicle and driver to be figments of my imagination.

Only while he was still leaning into the police car, he saw a black-and-silver Toyota cruise past; stayed cool, and observed it was driving round and round the block.

Which was how Terry’s friend Mike, who knew the Limit so well, came to be detained as well as me.

Mike’s story ran that he happened to be driving past, that was all. He denied pointing out the building to Terry McNair or telling him a hooker was there.

But as I’d gambled, Rick McNair had just enough smarts to take off on a sudden visit to Vermont with Terry. Well, I hadn’t figured Vermont, just far and fast until the mud settled. Okay, it was schooltime. Then again, it’s the American way, Pop and Junior going off to fish and hunt. Rick McNair was an impulsive father, what can I tell you?

Until they caught up with father and son, the cops had to be satisfied with me and Mike the Toyota driver. Even with his dad’s lawyer present, Mike made an uneasy witness. Then they matched his voiceprints to the anonymous call on 911, claiming a murder at the brownstone, and the prints matched.

This made Mike an uneasier witness. His lawyer had a long talk with him, in private. Then the plea bargaining began, Mike ’fessed up — he’d hit on the street lady, greased her in a panic when she refused to get out of the car again, wanting extra cash — and I was released. My fine car had been towed, like to wrecked the transmission. The Good Samaritan never had that breed of static, but then again, I guess in those Bible times he’d have ridden a mule.

About two days later Rick McNair phoned me, kind of high-strung and guarded in his talk. “Relax, come on home,” I said. “No problem anymore.”

In the middle of the night, Rick McNair and Terry were hammering at my door. Thank you, thank you, how in the world did you figure it, so forth. How in the world could anyone not figure it, I nearly came back at them.

Mike had been on the prod for Terry to go to the apartment where he’d dumped the body. From the speed the cops turned up, somebody had been watching the place, ready to tip them when we went in. It was such a rinky-dink, schoolyard plotting affair...

As such, there was a good chance, far better than drawing to a straight, that the someone who’d called the cops would hang around the neighborhood to see how his caper worked out. Amateurs always want to make sure, that’s how they stay amateurs, right?

Which was why I needed to know what sort of car Mike drove. If I’d been wrong about Mike, then it was my grief. Any fool could tell the street lady had been dead more than forty-eight hours, and I’d only been back in the city for a day — before that, I’d been in Vegas for nine days. Very firmly in, thank you: in jail, to be exact. The worst the cops could have done was give me a hard time.

So it was all pretty simple, considering. When I said simple, Rick McNair gave me a look as much as to say I was fooling. He was a good guy and Terry was a good kid, but they weren’t swift.

Rick McNair hugged me hard, close to tears. “Anything you ever want and it’s in my power, you got it, Norm.”

“One thing, then, right now. That.45 piece, Rick — toss it in the river. As a favor to me, huh?” He wanted to know why, now the trouble had passed, but I stalled on that and Rick went off to fulfill his promise.

I couldn’t tell him that I might not be able to watch out for him another time. Or that some white folks just can’t handle pressure.