Strip For Violence - Ed Lacy

I was frisked in the darkness, then the lights went on. Two burly goons were staring at me, one with a Luger in his hand. The office was a mess—again. I said, “You went through this act once. What's the pitch?”

The joker behind the gun asked, “Tiny, where's the bundle?”

“The what?” He was close enough to try brushing the gun aside, but the other punk worried me.

“Give me no questions,” the gunman said, slapping me across the face with his free hand. My nose began to bleed and my head started buzzing with static again. The other clown picked me up like I was a puppet, said, “Tie him up and get to work.”

I was furious—my feet dangling in the air, his stinking breath covering my face. But I had to stall for time. “If you tell me what this is all about, I might...”

The gunman slapped me again and I swung like a punching bag. My head hurt and blood gushed down my chin, over my shirt and good tie. “Open the safe, bud, and you won't get hurt.”

The other giant let go and I got to my feet, opened the safe. It was five to midnight. There wasn't much in the safe, papers, petty cash, and two guns. The guy with the gun took off his coat, said in a bored voice, “Guess we got to work you over, shorty, after all. Where's the dough?”

As he reached over to smack me, I kicked him on the knee-cap with my metal-toe shoe and he screamed. I turned to sidestep the other mug's rush, but didn't quite make it. He threw himself on me and we both went down. He had at least a hundred pounds on me and I could hardly move. When I tried to get a finger under his ear, he brought his elbow down into my guts and I had to fight hard to keep from passing out. I managed to grab his left thumb, started working that back, trying to break it, as he roared with pain and began clubbing me with his right fist.

His buddy managed to crawl over and swung at me with a sap. Although I blocked this with my shoulder, the blackjack felt like a crowbar. They both were swinging at me when the door opened. Curly Cox and Dan Rosen were so surprised they hesitated a second before swinging into action. Rosen had only been a run-of-the-mill middleweight—ring rules hampered his style—but in a street brawl he was strictly champion stuff. He landed on the gunman with his hands and feet working, while Curly hit the joker who was pounding my guts with a solid right that made him forget me.

I took time out to get my breath, then chopped at Curly's guy, hitting him on the temple with the edge of my right hand—and that was that. Rosen was enjoying himself with the other goon and as Curly grabbed the guy's arms, Danny smashed a right and left to his face, added a terrible right to the belly as a finisher.

We got to our feet and it took me a long minute to straighten out. Curly asked, “Boss, what's all this?”

“I don't know, exactly,” I said, taking the gunman's Luger and sap. The other sport had a knife and a .22 strapped to his ankle. They were careful, no identification on them, not even clothing labels. All they had between them was about a hundred bucks and a set of car keys... and the sliver of rock!

This threw me entirely off base, if they had the rock, what else did they want? What money...? The phone rang. Thelma Johnson sounded hysterical as she asked, “Mr. Darling, have you seen Will?”

“Yeah—on TV.”

“Oh the way she was kissing him! Where is he now? I'm worried sick, have a feeling he's with that woman and...”

The numbness was leaving my shoulder and head, and I had to spit out a mouthful of blood before I could shout, “I'm as anxious to find Will as you are. And if...”

“You must find him! If he's with that... that... slut, I'll... I don't know what I'll do! I'm about crazy now and... and...” She began to weep over the phone.

“I have some business to take care of, but I'll come up to see you soon—and your Will. I want to...”

“Please come up at once. I'll go nuts if I don't talk to somebody and...”

“Hold your water, I'll be up as soon as I can.” I hung up.

Rosen said. “Boy, you're a mess. Hal, shall I call the cops?”

“No.” I dug through a couple of overturned drawers till I found an extra sport shirt I kept around the office. It wasn't too clean but a big improvement over the bloody one I was wearing. I tossed one of the guns to Curly, told him, “Keep an eye on our guests,” and went to the washroom. When I washed the blood from my face, it didn't look too bad. I stuffed my nose with toilet paper to stop the bleeding, changed shirts.

When I returned to the office, Dave Moore, my other patrolman, was there. The two hoods were sitting up, looking ugly. I got out the patrol cards, took the gun from Curly and told them, “I can handle this from here—get going.”

“But, Hal...?” Curly began.

“Look, far as you're concerned, this is a simple case of robbery. Forget it.” I handed him the hundred dollars I'd taken from the thugs' pockets. “Split this between you— for your trouble.”

Dave, who talked with a rasping voice because of his flat nose, looked at Curly splitting the dough with Rosen, asked, “Hey, what's the deal here?”

I pointed to my wrist watch, which by some miracle was still working. “It's twenty after twelve. If you'd come on time you might have found out. Curly, give Dave a ten spot... and all of you get out of here.”

They didn't want to go but I finally convinced them it was okay. When they left, I locked the door, put the .22 and the knife in the safe. I sat on the table, the Luger in my hand, the leather sap beside me. I said, “You've had your fun, chums, now start talking!”

12

They glared at me with silent suspicion.

“Maybe you jerks don't realize the spot you're in,” I pointed around the office. “I can knock you both off and it would be a clear case of self-defense, caught in the act of robbing my office. The police would pin a medal on...”

The character whose thumb I'd tried to break mumbled through puffed lips, “You ain't calling no cops.”

“Maybe. Why did you punks sap me outside the hotel? Who you working for?”

“Just a job to us,” the gunman said, “we was hired. Come from Philly. Don't know a thing.”

“What's this money you were asking about?”

“You asking us?” he said, working his bloody mouth into a sneer.

“Sit on the floor, with your backs to me. Come on, move!” I cracked the gunman on the side of the head with the sap—but not hard enough to kayo him. He went down. I had the Luger in my left hand, covering the other monkey. He scrambled down on the floor beside his pal.

“Now reach forward and grab your toes—stay like that.”

They grunted and finally made their toes. Standing far enough behind them so they couldn't spin around and try anything, I swung the sap back and forth through the air. In the quiet of the office it made a faint swish sound.

“Look, fellows, I'm pooped, in no mood to futz around. You've jumped me twice, kicked the slop out of me, if you don't talk I'm going to beat your heads to a pulp.”

They didn't make a sound.

I said, “Know how your noggin is constructed? Your brain is a very delicate mass, suspended inside your skull. Know what causes a kayo? The sock on your jaw rattles the bone against your skull and that jars the brain against the bone structure, makes you black out If it gets rattled too hard, if the brain is bruised, you get a concussion. A bruise on the brain matter leaves a scar, if that's reopened by another blow, you either die, go blind, or end up paralyzed for life. That's why they don't let a pug with a concussion fight again. Or if he does, well—you know the ring deaths in recent years. Now a sap does lots more damage than a punch, sometimes it splinters the skull, a hunk of bone sticks in your brain.”

As I talked I kept swinging the sap through the air. The backs of their necks turned a flush-red, then went pale.

“Little lecture because I want you to think about all that soft spongy brain matter being rocked like this...” I socked the gunman again—lightly. “Think of it, that's two bruises your brain's had in the last five minutes. Another one and you may be blind or...”

“Cut it out!” he said, his voice a hoarse scream. “Told you this is only a job to us.”

“Honest!” the other goon whispered.

I tried to laugh. “Sure, just a good day's work!”

“We're getting a grand, must be a big deal,” the gunman said. “But it isn't the dough. Like I told you, we was hired in Philly and you was fingered to us this afternoon on the street and...

“By whom?”

“A guy called Gus. He come in from Atlantic City yesterday. We was to look around your joint for a bundle of folding money. We drive along Hudson Street for an hour till we see a Dodge sedan with a busted right headlight, give Gus what we had, get paid off.”

“Mac, that's the God's honest truth!” the other guy said. I cracked him on his balding dome. He fell over, then sat up again. I told him to grab his toes and he did, moaning. The whole mess was starting to get me a little sick.

“What kind of a story you dummies handing me? If you found the bundle, what's to stop you from crossing this Gus and...?”

“It would mean dying.” the gunman cut in. “Told you we're dealing with big stuff.”

“With Big Ed Franklin?”

“We wasn't given no names. We didn't ask for none.”

“This bundle—how much dough is it?”

“Didn't say,” the other joker chimed in. “We was to get that hunk of stone you had, then look around your office— and your wallet—for any hundred buck bills we could find.”

I was still whipping the sap about and his voice shook with every swish. He finally gulped, said, “Mac, that's the ticket, all we know.”

“When did you hit New York?”

“About noon this afternoon,” the gunman said.

“How about one in the morning, where you beat a girl to death on an East River dock!”

“You mean that one they got in the papers?” the second hood asked.

I slapped him with the blackjack and he fell on his side, shouted up at me, “What you want, us to make up a story to sell you? Like you said... don't want to get my brains... scrambled... we're leveling with you.”

“Catch your toes,” I said, pointing with the sap. “What's with this rock?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” the gunman said. “Looks like ordinary hunk of crummy stone to me. But I don't ask questions. Can I let go of my toes? My stomach and back are killing me.”

“Certainly,” I said. As he took his hands off his shoes I swatted him lightly. “But you get this.” He grabbed his toes again—but fast.

I didn't know what to think: I not only was on a merry-go-round but as Bobo said, I had a tiger by the tail and didn't know what to do with it. If Saltz found out I was holding out on him, the least he'd do would be revoke my license. I said, “Okay, get up—slowly—and keep your hands in the open. The three of us will meet this Gus in the busted Dodge.”

The gunman shook his head. “Buddy, you don't get the set-up. We ain't just a couple of hoods, we're big operators in Philly. We took this job because we had to... it was that important. They've imported guys from all around the East Coast. I'll lay you odds there's somebody watching us and...”

“Who's the 'they'?” I asked.

“You can kill me and I can't tell you because I don't know. We take orders, that's all.”

I don't know why, but I believed them, they were just a couple of errand boys. I was confused, weary, and tired of beating them, sick of all this crazy violence I'd been through. Only an idiot gets a bang out of smacking anybody. I saw a stamp-pad on my desk. “One at a time, go over and open that pad—leave your fingerprints on those papers next to it.”

“What's the idea?”

“Your calling cards—in case I want to look you up sometime in the future. Then you can beat it.”

“Beat it?” the gunmen repeated, relief and astonishment all over their bloody faces.

“No sense in licking a dead horse. We'll leave together, in case you have any pals waiting outside. Come on, make with the prints.”

From the way they left their prints, I knew they'd been printed before. I herded them out of the office, down the steps. The street looked deserted. I said, “Start walking toward Third Avenue and don't look back.”

They almost ran down the empty street. I jumped into my car and drove off. I still had the keys to their car, where-ever it was. Tomorrow I could trace it, but it would probably be a stolen job. At the moment I had only one thing on my mind—a talk with Willie Johnson, the lover-mailman.

13

It was almost two when I climbed the five flights to the Johnson apartment. Thelma was in the same housecoat I first saw her in and her eyes looked bad—red.

She squeezed my arm. “Oh Mr. Darling, you don't know how glad I am to see you. I'm simply a nervous wreck! Will kissing that woman before... millions and now.... Why in all the years we've been married I never...”

I sat down on the living-room couch, tried to think. Her chatter seemed to snow me under. Finally I cut her off with, “Mrs. Johnson—Thelma—I'm beat, tired, on edge. Got a drink around?”

“Why... yes. My, you do look... your poor face is a little puffy. Your nose—”

I dug out the wadded toilet paper from my nostrils. She gave out a mild scream and I said, “Only paper and blood. Where's the bottle of courage?”

“My... something happen to you?”

“Everything

has happened to me! You going to yak-yak me to death or get me a drink?”

She returned with a full bottle of Canadian whisky, sat on the couch beside me. I poured myself a good hooker, drank it, then poured one for her.

“Oh, Darling... that's such an odd name...”

“Skip it. Call me Hal.”

“I really don't drink, Hal. The doctor told me...”

“Take it, relax you. And for Christsakes, shut up.”

“Well!” She gave me a fish-eyed stare for a moment, gulped her drink down, turned pink as she sputtered, “I never heard such rudeness!”

“What do you know about that rock? The truth, not that crock of crap you and Will gave me.”

She began to whimper. “I don't know anything. Oh what's... happening... you insulting me and Will....” Thelma poured herself another stiff drink, took it down like a veteran lush. “Always been a good wife to Will and now....”

I shut my eyes, tried to think. The hoods had mentioned hundred-buck bills. Could be they had me mixed up with somebody passing the queer, a ring of...

“How could he do this to me? Another woman!” Thelma's whimper began to take on an hysterical note. That would be the finishing touch—all I needed! I told her, “Stop moaning. Will is with one of the sexiest women in the world and if he... hell if he gets the chance to lay her, you can't blame him.”

“How can you say that? Blame him! I'll break his head for him!” she said loudly, her whisky beginning to talk.

“Well, let's chatter about it some other time, I...”

“I can't understand how Will could...”

“Thelma, your Will is probably a good faithful guy but... there's always a point where any man can be tempted, and Margrita is that point. Doesn't mean he doesn't still love you but.... How long have you been married?”