by Colin Deerwood
I like my coffee hot and black. I was drinking a strong tea that had been poured over half a dozen sugar cubes. The daily blatt’s morning edition headlines screamed MASSACRE IN THE HEIGHTS and took up almost all of the space above the fold to make up for the fact that they didn’t have any information except that the cops had found what appeared to be a shootout in an attempt at robbery. Even though I had the inside track of what really happened, I paid attention to what the news hacks had come up with. That the police were baffled came as no surprise. G-men were being brought in to help with the investigation. That was funnier than Dagwood.
Soloman, I kinda figured, was a respected businessman with international connections. He had ties to refugee organizations who were helping displaced people who were fleeing the krauts and the nasties in the Balkans around where I was guessing Rebecca was from. Rabbi Joe, Joseph Frank, they called him, also well respected and a community leader, resided at that address but was unharmed. According to unofficial reports, two of the stiffs were also residents of that suite of apartments, a third, thought to be one of the robbers, was Asiatic which was another way of saying Chinese or Japanese. Half a dozen people had been taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds. A few residents were also not accounted for. There was an ill lit photo of a large room with a long table I took to be the dining room. A trio of men in fedoras with their hands in the pockets of their overcoats very much out of place, Police were questioning neighbors and were asking witnesses with information to please step forward.
I looked up at one of the unaccounted for residents and a witness and got a frown. I’d been getting them since I woke up. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate all she’d done for me. I didn’t expected her to wash my trousers and iron them dry and thought I’d thanked her by saying “you didn’t have to do that.” And she’d grabbed a morning paper as soon as the bundles hits the bricks at the newsstand down the block. She’d obviously read the reported account of what she’d been in the middle of and that giving a cause for worry. But that wasn’t it, exactly.
I had to ask, “Where’s the library?” I got a crossword puzzled look. “The terlit, the commode?” and I was hoping that it wasn’t a bucket behind a curtain.
The confidence that had been a part of her upbeat personality seemed shaken and I suppose it coulda been my fault. I had the choice between being a good guy by being a bad guy or a bad guy by being a good guy. I never thought of myself as a good guy. On the streets, do-gooding tends to get kicked to the gutter. I don’t even know why I chose pain over pleasure or maybe the pain was the pleasure of being perverse. So I said, “No.” And when I saw her look, I said, “Not now.” I wise up at the worst times, and when it happens, I don’t know why it doesn’t happen more often. As a result, I got some much need shut eye while I suppose she stewed over why I didn’t give her a tumble. I had to work out my next step but she had her own ideas.
“I cannot go back to them, Lack, you must understand. They are bad men, dishonorable men. Even my Zayde is foolish and old fashioned and believes the lies they tell him. He was my last hope to make them let you go. You are not at fault. You are good man, Lack, I can see that now.”
My ears heated up and I was hoping I wasn’t running a fever. “You have to find your father and tell him you are all right. To find out if he’s alright. Do you have a phone number you can call in case of an emergency, somewhere you can go to be safe.
“I am safe here, Lack. This is the only place I know other than the room behind the kitchen in the apartments.”
“But what about your things? Your clothes?” I had a pain behind my eyes that wasn’t going away and I wanted to blame Max’s hooch. Besides I wasn’t having any luck convincing her that the worst for her was probably over. “Once this gets calmed down, you can go to your father and tell him you’re safe. Who knows, he might even show up here looking for you.”
“No if he is not here by now, he has either been detained or he is not coming back.”
“You don’t know that he’s dead.”
She shook her head as if to rid herself of a sad expression. “No, I don’t think he is dead because now I understand what has happened.” Now she gave a sardonic little twist to her mouth. “You came to the apartments at a fortunate time, Lackland Ask. Did you not notice the large gathering of men? You came at the end of a long day of discussion and planning by the men of I don’t know what but I can assume it was to do about the refugees who are being detained in Albania. It is a very complicated situation my father has told me.” She shook her head, “He treats me like a child.” Her blue eyes blazed with hurt. “I know what he does for them. He is a proud man and a believer in the cause. It is why he does what he does and wants to keep the truth from me.”
“Well slap me silly and call me Einstein. You’re a Red!”
She must have noticed my surprised look. “What do you know about me, Lackland Ask?” She gave a fierce smile. “You know where I am from, I am a refugee from Salonika, I have no papers, and I cannot go to the authorities. When I was young I play the piano at five years old. I was reading the classics by ten. Then I was sent to special school in Zurich where I belong to a group 
of comrades, we called ourselves the “red kerchief” because that was our uniform, a red kerchief around our necks. When the war came I return to Salonika. My mother was a school teacher and belong to a political party prohibited by the metaxfascist government. The secret police arrest everyone in connection and steal their property. The Black Hand gangsters firebomb our place of worship and kidnap those of our faith for ransom. My mother was torture until death. My father escape to Istanbul on a Black Sea freighter and with help of compatriots come to America. I stay behind to be with my mother and help hide refugees until she is arrested and I hear she is dead. I have to flee because the secret police wishes to arrest me, too. I catch fishing boat across to island of Lesbos, and then to Anatolya where I ride many bus lorry wagon for many days to reach Beirut where after a long wait I am able to catch ship to come to this city and find my father who has joined with Herr Doktor Soloman and his refugee organization and where I can get new papers to say who I am and why we must fight for the revolution and overthrow the oligarchy!”
That made my ears perk up. And the more she talked the more I was beginning to get the picture. She went to a fancy school where they filled her head with a lot of baloney about truth and justice and capitalism and oppressed masses and fired her up with a fever to change the world to be a better place for people and puppy dogs. What she didn’t realize that if it we’re for dog food, the dogs would be eating each other and even bit the hand that might pet them. All this high toned coffeehouse jabber disappears as soon as you step out on to the street where you have to look three way, right, left and right again if you didn’t want to get upended by some bat out of hell, I wanted to tell her. Someone was always on the grift and they didn’t really need to have a fine opinion or reason to take you to the cleaners. You’re just another pebble in the path leading to the top trod on by an endless stream of crooks and cons with table manners and nice suits with their hand in your pocket and who would think nothing of snuffing you as if you were a bug, maybe even less because at least they have to admit the bug’s existence. I was trying to tell her all that and if the people at the top of the heap ain’t buying it, it ain’t getting sold, but she was all pink in the face, eye bugging with intensity, declaiming that the workers of the world had to unite and overthrow the ruling class. I knew they only way that got done was through strong arm robbery, what some might want to call revolution. I had to laugh. “Well slap me silly and call me Einstein. You’re a Red!”
It was probably the wrong thing to say. I got the frown again and the glare that went with it. “I am not a color! I am a human being who wishes for equal rights for all mankind!”
I didn’t want to tell her she was in the minority so I concentrated on the matter at hand. I didn’t doubt that her people even her father and maybe even the cops would show up at the shop. I needed to make myself scarce and even though the kid had got her hooks into me, I was going to have to slip free if I was going to get back what was mine, with interest. I had a diamond in me and I had to get it out. A good strong cup of Java would have done the trick without thinking. The tea, strong and sugary as it was, was making me think about what I had to do and I was wondering if I was up to the intellectual effort. One of the things I learned from my old man was to make sure you were in the proper circumstances and that was by sitting in the library as it was often called. And if I went to library I would need reading material. I noticed that she had been filling in the squares on the crossword puzzle so that ruled that section out. She’d explained when I noticed her scanning the columns of clues, “This is how I am learning vocabulary for to better my English.” She’d said it with a beam of pride. The screaming front page headline seemed untouchable so I opted for the for the funny page.
I had to ask, “Where’s the library?” I got a crossword puzzled look. “The terlit, the commode?” and I was hoping that it wasn’t a bucket behind a curtain.
She gave me a look of pleasant surprise. “So it is called that also, the library! Of course!” She had a key and pointed me to the water closet down the hallway past the broom closet that led down to the furnace room. “Be careful the super does not see you.” It was a tiny spot crowded with a corroded gravity flush commode, a scummy washbasin, a battered plumber’s helper and a stinking soaked mop.
Staring at the blue and red can of Drano on the shelf under the sink wasn’t helping, but then neither had Maggie and Jiggs, Orphan Annie, Gasoline Alley, Mickey Finn, or Terry and the Pirates. My brain was sending commands down to the engine room but nothing was turning or churning. Popeye , The Katzenjammer Kids, Mutt or Jeff couldn’t take my mind off what I had to do. I was about to give in and pull my pants up from around my ankles when I felt the tremor, faintly, but I knew my gut had finally made up its mind and was sending signals to set off a chain of events. I quickly freed a double page of newspaper and slid it under the seat and then sat back down to let nature take its course. I was hoping that what I was expecting was at the head of the line and that I wouldn’t have to wait for the next installment.
I stink, I’ve been told that many times, mainly by dames, and for entirely different reasons. This time I was looking at the evidence that I did and trying not to add to it with something coming up my throat. I set the package on the washbasin and slowly ran water over the sticky stinking muck. They were two well-formed specimens. I began separating them with a pencil tip. Most of it washed away as a disgusting brown slurry and I almost lost it down the drain and had to stop up the hole with my thumb while my other hand carefully separated the tiny chunk of gravel to one side of the basin and onto a dry section of the newspaper. I held the pebble under the faucet and let the slow stream wash the dirt away. It still looked a bit of grit but now that I knew what it was it was more than that. Slipping it into my vest pocket, I ran water over my hands washing off the crap and scrubbing my fingers with the bar of lye soap on the shelf next to the can of Drano. No matter how many times I put my nose to them, the stink lingered around my sparkling cuticles. I dumped the newspaper and the remains into the commode and after slipping into my suspenders, strode out into the hallway and back into the tailor’s shop.
“You seemed pleased with yourself.”
“I’m happy to report that everything came out ok.”
“It was then a good ending?”
“Yeah, very satisfactory.”
“Did you bring some of it with you. I detect. . .something. In the air?”
“Maybe we should find some fresh air. Things are looking up and there’s a chop suey joint down the street in need of my business.”
“Do you think it is safe to be in the public? The police?”
“I plan get as far away as possible from the cops and this little beauty is my ticket out of here. I just got a little bit of unfinished business to take care of and I’m gone.”
“Oh, that is the diamond. Have you had on you all this time? I did not find it when I was washing your clothes.”
“I had it in me.”
“Oh. . .ooh, that explains the odor.”
Yeah, well I didn’t have much choice. I had to do what I had to do do.”
“That is joke, yes?”
“Yeah , you catch on fast.”
“And where is this place you will be gone now that you have a diamond.”
“Any place but here. But I hear South America is nice. Rio, Buenos Aires, maybe even Santiago in Chile. I hear the weather is like California, and it’s not as expensive. A cheap place to lie low while I’m on the lam.”
“Now you are just making up words. I have never seen this word in my cross puzzles.”
“What’s a three letter word meaning ’23 skidoo’?”
“You are making fun of me but you also make me laugh, Lack.”
“Yeah I’m just a barrel of laughs once you get to know me. I kill ya with my jokes cause ya die laughing.”
“Now you speak of murder? Why is this funny?”
“Forget it. It’s just an expression.”
“Lack, I have something else to tell you.”
“You’re full of surprises.”
“Herr Doktor cheat you from the diamonds like I told you. They have the real book that you have sold them for the diamonds. They trick you with a false book soaked to look like it has fallen in the commode. I hear them laughing about this and I think they are cruel and dishonorable men. And I think that they must be not succeeding in this cheating.”
“I appreciate the thought, but a diamond in the hand is worth six in the safe.”
“That is just it, Lack, there are none in the safe!”
“Whaddayamean?”
“When they have their meeting in Zayde’s apartment I go into Herr Doktor’s office and take the diamonds from the safe.”
“You did what? How did you know the combination?”
“It is my birthday.”
“So you have the diamonds?”
Dime Pulp 