by Colin Deerwood
The cops finally caught up with me. Hogan, specifically. I had stopped at the newsstand around the corner from Hopper’s Diner, the daily blat’s headline blaring Bombers Blast Britain. It was another headline below the fold that caught my eye, Missing Ridley Constable Sought For Questioning. I was curious. Maybe Marie had stirred up a ruckus. I was on my way back to Alice’s old basement studio from the passport bureau with my new identity tucked in the breast pocket of my darker than tan suit coat. Almost two weeks had passed since I’d snuck back into the bad Apple. A lot had changed, and for me, for the better.
The five grand from the sale of the art piece had done wonders for my spirits, only the best mash, and my wardrobe, only the best haberdasher. It had also gone to the Uptown Downtown barber shop over on Seventh where I had had my mug given a going over. When I stepped out of the chair I was sporting a precise VanDyke. It went well with my sporty beige fedora with the fly fish feathers in the band and my new identity as Dr. Jerome Paulsen, O.D. Maybe the freedom of having a pile made me reckless. People were still looking for me. I’d let my guard down. But in my dark glasses and new duds, even the newsboy didn’t recognize me at first, and I’d been buying newspapers, girlies, pulps, and my Lucky Strikes from him for years.
I considered buying the latest issue of the crime fiction magazine, Black Mask. I’m not a big reader, especially of imaginary crime, but my old mug was on the cover of this one. I could see where Larry Jakes had got the color of the bruise under one eye just right.
I was about to take a closer look when I heard a familiar voice behind me. “You think you can fool me, wisenheimer? I’d know you anywhere, even in your dark glasses. You’re what every parent’s bad dreams are made of.”
I couldn’t help but grin. Jake Hogan and I went way back to the old neighborhood where I’d grown up, mostly on the street. He’d been the rookie beat cop back then. We were all wisenheimers to him, Ralphie Silver, Stevie Silverman, and me as well as a handful of other faces on the block. We thought we were the toughest guys on the East Side. He threatened to haul us down to the station just to get our attention, and when that didn’t work, and we got older, he did haul us in, and that meant that our parents had to come and get us, and sometimes that was worse than being taken in. “I guess I should say thanks for keeping an eye of me all these years.”
“Where’d you get the money to suit up like that? Last time I saw you, you looked like you were sharing a wardrobe with a moth.”
“Inheritance?” I coughed.
“Oh yeah, who from? I know it ain’t from your old man. And I don’t think it’s from your mother, either.”
“A rich uncle.”
“He got a name?”
“Ned. Ned Ask.”
“Ned? That the best you can come up with?”
“Honest. His full name is Nedan T. Ask.”
“What’s the T stand for?”
“I dunno, Ted, Tom?” All of a sudden I felt like I was ten years old again, caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to do.
“That’s a nice story, wisenheimer, but I still got to take you downtown.”
“Come on, Hogan, you don’t think I had anything to do with Ralphie’s murder, do ya?”
He shook his head slowly, giving me the patented intense cop stare. “No, I don’t think you did Ralphie, wisenheimer. You ain’t got the guts or the brains.”
“Then whadya want with me?”
“Oh, I got questions about that crew that ended up full of holes at Kovic’s warehouse. But it ain’t only me, the government boys wanna have a word.”
“Listen, Hogan, this is all Ralphie’s fault.”
“There you go, blaming a dead man. I can’t say I’m surprised.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“Wait, wait. Let’s talk about this. There’s something you should know.” My chances at a clean getaway were fading fast. If Hogan took me in, I’d be a sitting duck for Kovic’s stoolies and anyone else who would want to get their hands on me. And I wanted to avoid the feds at all costs. “How about I buy you a cup of coffee over at Hopper’s diner?” I was gonna throw in the offer of a donut but I know how sensitive cops can be about that. “You know Ralphie,” I pleaded, “it was always his schemes that got the rest of us in trouble. And this whole chain of events started because Ralphie said he had a job for me. Hear me out. Ok?”
Hogan cocked his head to one side, surprised. He’d never heard any of us beg, no matter how deep a mess we were in.
“It all started with Kovic’s daughter.”
“Don’t tell me.” Hogan smirked over his cup of steaming java.
“Naw, nothing like that.” And I went on to tell him about how Ralphie Silver had set it up. I was going to be paid to find the mob boss’s daughter. Ralphie thought he could maybe get some of his gambling debt forgotten if I could bring her back to daddy. She had a history of running away and the old man usually sent one of his goons to retrieve her. But this time, it was way out of State, and South. His dapper boys would have been made out to be city slickers and the local law would be onto them like white on rice. As I could pose as a traveling salesman on my way through town without any problem.
Hogan grunted and shook his head when I told him how Kovic had stiffed me and left me for dead in a ditch on the island. And how I was determined to get what was owed me, with interest. But in the meantime, my pal, Al, the pearl diver at Madame Cho’s chop-suey joint, hooked me up with his sister, Della, who wanted me to find her boyfriend who had stolen something from her. “That’s how I got pulled in on suspicion of murdering him.”
“Yeah, I remember that. I knew that wasn’t you. It was a professional hit. I can’t figure why. He was a no account pimp. And his girlfriend wanted something he stole from her? I wonder what that was.”
I shrugged. “I never got the chance to find out.” I left out the fact that I had filched the postal slip from Della’s mailbox. “Of course that was before I knew that she and her brother were part of a robbery gang who called themselves the Thieves of Bombay.” And before I knew that waiting to be picked up at the post office was the exotic erotic jade, the Empress’s Cucumber.
I thought about the empty bank deposit envelope in the cigar box back at the basement studio where I was lying low, and the postal package notice it had once held. Della with her dying breath had told me she had mailed the jewelry box containing the rare jade to herself. Why was the postal slip missing? I was certain Rebecca had it on her that day. But she was dead. No one survives a fall four stories up.
“So not long after that, I’m in a phone booth where I find an address book somebody forgot. I woulda returned it but I couldn’t read it.” I didn’t want to say I lifted the wallet from a man drowning in the East River.
“I told ya, you shoulda stayed in school.”
“Naw, nothing like that. I can read alright. This wasn’t in regular writing. Something called Serial writing.”
“Serial writing? You mean like in the pulps?”
“I don’t think so. Whatever it was, it was Greek to me.”
“Waitaminute. Do you mean Cyrilic?”
“Yeah, probably. That sounds right. No way I can return it if I can’t read it so I stick it in my pocket. I go to buy a cheap suit from a tailor, see, and as he is taking my measurements, I’m trying on the suit coat, the address book drops out of my old one. He picks it up and gives it back to me and when he does, he sees the writing. He’s kinda shocked, probably because I don’t look the type to be reading that cockamamie scrawl. And he’s right. I do ok with the ABC’s and I don’t see why I gotta know anything else. Anyway, he says he can’t read it well but he knows someone who might, a rabbi, at some uptown address, and that I should see if he can’t help me.”
“Are you going somewhere with this, wisenheimer? If you keep droning on, I’m gonna need another cup of coffee.”
“Well, as it turns out the tailor has a daughter. . . .”
“Ok, I shoulda seen that coming.”
I had to watch my step with the story. Hogan didn’t need to know about the diamonds. It was best that I stuck with the beef I had with Kovic. I had tipped him to the crates of machine guns at the Serbian Social Club where I had gone, foolishly, to enact some kind of revenge because my old man taught me, somebody hits you, hit them back twice as hard. He didn’t say anything about a brick wall and hitting it twice as hard hurts twice as much. And I’d told Hogan about the heist at the Customs Warehouse and the threat to the grand jury investigating Kovic’s control of the waterfront. But how to explain Rebecca.
“Is she the one that jumped off the roof of that social club?”
“She didn’t jump. There was an explosion, remember? She was knocked off the terrace.” I didn’t have to tell him that it was Rebecca’s father who had built the bomb and planted it there on orders from Herr Doktor Soloman and his clandestine diamond syndicate.
“We never found a body so unless she walked, you’re imagining things.”
I had to think on that for a bit. “So Kovic grabs me, he thinks I set the bomb. They scram before the keystones can get there, and take me with them to the warehouse. Which is where you found me in the aftermath of the shootout.”
Hogan shook his head. “I can’t figure that one out. Once we started making identification of the bodies at Kovic’s warehouse, we realized we were on to an international gang that target the wealthy for their jewelry and their art. We’d been after them for a while as the ones who had been taking down high society penthouses and their art collections. I don’t see how Kovic fits in there. And the feds are still looking for him.”
“I don’t either but I heard he wanted me dead. And which is why I took it on the lam and laid low up in the Lakes country waiting for it to blow over. That’s where I learned my uncle had died and he had left me a little something in his will. I’m just in town wrapping up some business. I like it up in the country and I’m thinking of going back there to live. Start a new life, stay out of trouble.”
Hogan snorted. “Not a chance. Besides there’s the little matter of the victim’s statement.”
“Victim?”
“Yeah, a certain Alice Neal. About a month ago she was attacked in her studio by two men who were looking for you and the dame. Only thing that stopped them from murdering her was a crazy Czarist and his rapier. You’re an acquaintance of Miss Neal? You were seen leaving her dwelling recently. ”
“I’ll bet Kovic was behind it.”
Hogan shook his head. “Kovic’s goons don’t wear goggles. That one’s still a mystery. The same crew shot up a diamond dealer a while back. So far all the leads point to Chinatown.”
“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”
He laughed and it was a rare occasion when he did that. “I’m gonna thank you for the cup and I’m still gonna extend my hospitality and invite you downtown to sample some of the swill they call java.”
“Wait, what if I told you something that would get you in good with the G-men and get you a load of commendations and maybe even a handshake with the mayor.”
Hogan didn’t get where he was by ignoring situations that would put him in a good light. “I’m listening.”
“I know where Kovic is hiding out. You think that information could buy me a pass?”
“I could take you down to the precinct and beat it out of you.”
“Listen, Hogan, I just want to move to the country and get out of this rat race, make an honest living.”
“You should have quit while you were ahead, wisenheimer. Honest ain’t in your blood, and why would a rat leave the race when that’s the only thing he knows.” He sat back in the booth, a spiteful grin creasing his mug. “But ok, spill.”
“Chinatown.” That’s when it all fell into place. Hogan saying that all the leads pointed to Chinatown was the piece I was missing. The goggle bandits, of course. They resembled owls. And that’s what Max Feathers was called by the Chinese denizens in the neighborhood of his pawn shop, māo tóu yīng, the cat headed eagle. The Owl.
I stood in a doorway across the street from the pawn shop. I’d left Hogan holding up his end of the bargain. “For once you done something right, wisenheimer,” he’d said, “Just don’t leave town.” I had every intention of leaving town. My bags were packed and I’d made arrangements with Annie Bassinger, the tugboat captain. There was a freighter due to sail in the wee hours of the next morning and I was going to be on it. But first I had to take care of some unfinished business.
The front of the shop was dark, but a light shone against the ceiling at the far back where Max sat in his cage. I’d gone back to the basement studio and looked in the cigar box again. The empty deposit envelope, the cloth sachet that had held the uncut rocks, and slipped Rebecca’s peashooter into my pocket. The street was the usual hustle and bustle for the time of day, wagons and trucks and a smattering of foot traffic but mostly further up the block where the street stalls were set up. I waited for an old woman, bent forward on a cane, a scarf close around her face, to wobble past the entrance to the shop before I made my move.
The bell over the door tinkled. I quickly made my way through the racks of clothing and stacks of boxes to the cage. Max, his back to me, seated in his chair didn’t turn around until I was right up to the counter. He blinked at first and then nodded in recognition. “Lackland Ask, to what do I owe this pleasure?”
“I got a bone to pick with you, Max.”
An evil smile creased his unshaven cheeks and he rolled his chair up to the teller caged counter. “Should I put you on a waiting list?”
“I’m taking cuts, Max. I brought that diamond here for you to appraise. And I told you I was gonna cut you in on the deal when the rabbi’s people paid me off for the address book. But you had to get greedy, you wanted it all.”
This time he laughed, exposing the ruins in his mouth. “Is that not the purpose of this madness? To want it all, to get it all?”
“You offered Rebecca the red brocade dress as an engagement present delivered to the address she gave you. You figured that’s where the diamonds were and you sent your boys to get them.”
“Do nothing in half measures, I learned long ago. Not only were the diamonds an opportunity but you, yourself, as well. With Mr. K’s price on your head, it was one I could not pass up.”
“Keep your hands where I can see them, Max. I know you’ve got a gat squirreled away on the shelf below.” I pulled the pistol from my pocket and pointed it at him.
He grinned and shrugged. “If you must know, I would have the diamonds and the finder’s fee from Mister K. My owls swooped in on their prey only to meet with fierce resistance and find the diamonds gone and you missing. I assumed that you and the diamonds had left together. I had your so-called office watched. The super was very cooperative. The sister act failed to fool him. He alerted my man who followed them to the woman’s studio. My owls swooped in only to find you not there and themselves dead. Unfortunate, but often the fate of soldiers for the cause.”
The bell over the door tinkled as someone entered the pawn shop. “Closed!” Max called out not taking his eyes off me or the gun. And then “Guānbì” in case it was one of the locals. The bell above the door sounded again. “The diamonds have entered the market so I hear. Whomever had them has made a tidy profit, and judging by your accouterments, you have come into some money. Only one thing puzzles me. According to my sources, the person who sold the uncut gems was a woman. Do I have to ask? Someone you know?”
That confused me, someone, a woman, had sold the uncut diamonds, and it must have shown. I hesitated as he brought the automatic to bear on me. “But I have you, Ask, and Mr. K’s offer is still standing. His current troubles with the authorities will be short lived and has not slackened his thirst for revenge.”
I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. I pulled it again with the same results.
Max was enjoying my panic. “You will kill me with your comedy, Lackland Ask. You in your fancy clothes, ridiculous beard, dark glasses, and toy pistol. I will die laughing. But before that happens, you will suffer a horrible death at the hands of Yan Kovic.”
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement followed by the shadow of a shape. Max didn’t realize until too late that we were not alone. It was the old woman in the head scarf I’d seen creeping along the sidewalk before I entered the pawn shop. Only it wasn’t an old woman after all. It was Rebecca. And she had a gun in her hand, a big gun. “Try this on for laughs, Max.” Her revolver barked. Max held his chest with a look on his face like something he ate didn’t agree with him, a lead pill, as he slowly spilled out of his chair and onto the floor behind the counter.
“Becky! I thought. . .the explosion. . .you fell. . . .”
“I didn’t fall, Lack. I jumped.” She pointed the gun at me. “I jumped from the ledge to the fire escape just as the bomb went off. I was certain that you were dead. In the commotion I was able to get out of the building unseen.”
“You’re alive!” I wanted to hold her in my arms but the gun wouldn’t let me.
“I don’t want to see you again, Lack. Don’t come looking for me, otherwise I will be forced to kill you. Forget me, you don’t even know my real name.”
How could I have been so blind? I kicked myself with the thought of how I had been fooled all the way back to the studio where I grabbed my satchel and left without leaving a note. I needed to make my exit before more bodies started piling up, one of which, to believe Rebecca, could very well be mine. All the same my mind was feverishly trying to make sense of how Rebecca was alive when I’d been certain she was dead, shocked and relieved because I’d been blaming myself all this time. What didn’t square was how she had the diamonds all along and had no intention of giving me my cut. How could I have missed that? I’m nothing if not skeptical, I can spot a con a long way coming. But not this, dazzled by a pretty face and womanly wiles.
She brushed off the double cross, saying that she needed the money to finance her goal of fighting fascism and the oppression of the working class wherever it arose. And the way she saw it, there was a lot of that in the States.
This was not the naïve kid I thought I was protecting from the mean cruel world. The tables were turned and I was the dupe being led around by a sharp cookie.
She didn’t want to go into detail about what she’d been up to since the night of the explosion, the night we’d made love in the shabby hotel, but I assumed fencing the diamonds had been some of it. She had some unfinished business she said, and it had to do with the jade, the Empress’s Cucumber, which explained the empty bank deposit envelope. But why be so careless to leave those things behind in the cigar box?
With a shrug of cruel indifference, she explained that she had redeemed the package with the postal call slip, and it contained the Empress’s Cucumber that Della had mailed to herself. The only problem was that the jade was a fake, a soapstone replica. Someone had switched the authentic jade with an imitation jade cucumber.
I had to think about that for a bit. The only time that the swap could have been made was when it was in the possession of Della’s pimp boyfriend, the one who was murdered. The Thieves had got it in a heist of a collector’s penthouse. Then someone stole it from them and left the fake behind. It was a wily move and I knew exactly just who could have pulled it off. He was gargling blood and thrashing on the floor behind the counter, The Owl.
Rebecca had come to the same conclusion when she discovered that it was a replica. She had stumbled upon the authentic jade after Max had offered her an engagement present. It had been a ruse to get her address where he would have the red brocade dress delivered, assuming, correctly, that the diamonds would be found where she lived. Max was hiding the Empress’s Cucumber in plain sight. She’d never received the red dress either, it was still hanging on the rack, so she was taking it and the jade as well.
That’s the way I’ll always remember her, revolver pointed at me, dress over one arm, imperial green brocade box in the other, backing out the door to the hubbub of the street outside. Rebecca was not who I thought she was. That accent, the innocent act, had me fooled good. I figured I wasn’t the first and I wouldn’t be the last. She wanted the power to change the world because she was a formidable woman, the money from the sale of the rocks and the authority of the Empress’s Cucumber would make her what the Chinese call qing guo qing cheng, a terrifyingly powerful woman. A flash of red and she was gone. I had to wonder, is she working for Uncle Joe or just a rebel with a just cause, the Joan of Arc in all women? That’s why when I think of her I think of her as the Red Empress.
I stood atop the accommodation ladder looking out over the smear of lighted early morning skyline behind the scrim of a thick fog. In the churning waters below, the stern of the tug Narcissus was pulling away from the freighter’s towering hull. I’d said my goodbyes to Annie, telling her that she was one of the reasons I wished I could stay. “Then stay,” she pleaded, “Get your seaman papers. Ship out to the West Coast, Hawaii, I hear it’s pretty safe out there.” But, nah, my old man was one, and that wasn’t me. Robal, one of Annie’s crew, had given me the name of someone to look up when I got to Havana who would connect me with someone else to get me the rest of the way. Valparaiso, no one would ever think of looking for you there, an old mobster told me once. I was travelling light, a change of clothes and my new name as a visually impaired optometrist, like it said on my passport. Some people might appreciate the irony and refer to me as “the blind man”, a really private eye. Maybe I could get into the art collection con south of the Equator. Open an art gallery, call it The Blind Man.
The first mate interrupted my reverie and indicated the direction with an outstretched arm. “This way to your cabin, Dr. Paulsen. The Captain looks forward to meeting you at breakfast.” I stepped through the hatch and into the passageway where fastened to the bulkhead was a life ring displaying the ship’s name, the S.S. Van Dyne.
END
After I’d left my disappointment in the coalbin, I made my way to the railyard by the Serbian Social Club. There were a couple of squad cars parked out front and the guard at the front door was now a boy in blue. There was no chance that I was going to get close or even inside the building. Becky was gone, I had to face up to that. Kovic’s mob probably dumped the body somewhere it wouldn’t be found any time soon. If anyone looked like a sad sack that day, it was me. I had no choice but to pick up my gear at Alice’s and head out of town.
I’d waited till the last person in line had boarded and the driver was about to close the door. The man behind the wheel gave me the ‘there’s one in every crowd’ squint as I made my way to the back and humped my satchel onto the seat next to me. I’d given a quick eyeball of the occupied seats and what I was seeing was a smattering of overdressed travelers, men and women looking out the window, some with children in their laps. Some were obviously vacationers heading up to Big Lake, one of the three lakes and most popular summer resort. And some, by their defeated expressions, were going back where they came from with only the clothes on their backs. Maybe I fit into that last category, but behind the dark glasses I had picked up at the terminal newsstand and my hat tipped back once the bus turned onto the road leading to the outskirts, I didn’t care. I had a half pint of Old Hickory and a pack of Lucky Strikes to while away the three hours it would take to get to where I was going.
I’d gone through about half of the Old Hickory and smoked up the rear of the bus with a cigarette haze by the time the bus rolled into Ridley. I found my feet once I stumbled off the bus and watched it kick up the road dust on its way out of town. Ridley didn’t seem to have changed much since they last time I came through. They’d added a gas pump in front of the livery barn and a sign on the side that said mechanic. There was a streetlight I didn’t remember from before out front. Granny’s house was down the elm shaded road running behind it.
She ducked in the doorway with the wick on the lamp trimmed short so that just a dim pale glow lit part of her face. It looked like a face out of a Hollywood photo magazine. All of a sudden I wasn’t all that tuckered out as I thought I was. She came closer and I saw she was wearing a quilted house coat open at the front to reveal a frilly shimmering slip. And she’d perfumed up.
She was pointing at the two armchairs and the table with the radio between them. She stumbled back with her hand held over her mouth and in doing so knocked the banker’s lamp off its perch with a shattering crash. “The radio!” she gasped.
doorframe buckled, coughing out bits of brick and plaster. I dropped to one knee to keep from toppling over. My ears were ringing from the explosion. Dust and acrid smoke filled my nostrils. When I got over the initial shock I looked over at Rebecca. She was gone.
At the end of the line the late afternoon sun passing behind a cloud defined a horizon of ship yard cranes and a thicket of masts. Fenced lots echoed with the barks of loud vigilant dogs and the brick warehouses, some seeming abandoned, maintained a grim silence. The rail yard was nearby, and a block of shabby businesses: a café and bakery, a corner grocer’s, a laundry, a hotel, a snooker parlor, and the address I was looking for.
“No, no you’re doing it all wrong! Didn’t they teach you anything in that fancy Swiss boarding school of yours?” And I showed her how, breaking off a piece and dipping it in the coffee just enough to wet it but not get it soggy. “That’s the way it’s done, kid.”
I was tempted, pulling her up against me, her head tilted back at my response. My judgement when it comes to women hasn’t always been the best, and maybe I could even blame my lapses on my inability to figure them out even when I gave it a try. The hardest part of this jobs was resisting that urge. How many unfaithful wives of unfaithful husbands had offered themselves as partial payment or as a bonus for my peeping, and every time I gave in I was reminded soon after of what a mistake that had been. I couldn’t afford to be swayed.
The lid of one of the crates had been pried up and I lifted it off. All of a sudden I felt like Ali Baba minus the forty thieves, and I didn’t have to say Open Sesame. Nestled in among the packing straw were five Thompson machine guns, gleaming with oil as if they’d just been foaled. This was my ticket out. Any one got in our way they’d get the business end of old Tommy.
He was going on about other things, Commies, getting loud, angry, until the cook waved a big metal spatula at him and told him to turn it down. I was looking at my hands trying to be invisible, hat pulled down over my ears, dark glasses no matter that they looked like beach wear. A problem had developed. Because of Sid’s frap between the eyes, the bruise around both of them had turned the color of a ripe eggplant. I didn’t think my nose was broken but it was still throbbing the next morning.
As if no one would take a gander at my beat up mug wearing a pair that belonged on a Hollywood dame. I held them in my hand as I had then to compare. There wasn’t too much of a selection in the box, mostly a tangle of round wire frames and cracked lenses. At the bottom was a square set of black lenses, the kind you might see on a blind man. I tried them on and they fit with a certain weight that felt comfortable. I turned on the stool and looked at my reflection in the diner’s front window. I was unrecognizable. I slipped Lee’s pair into my jacket pocket and smiled even though it hurt. “Whadyeoweya?”
I had a card in my wallet. It was Yamatski’s card, the one that promised a reward if his address book got lost and found and gave a phone number and an address to return it to. My original idea of taking a look at his setup and maybe taking something that might be worth my trouble came back into play. It would be dangerous and I didn’t think I should drag Becky into the scheme which was essentially a burglary. But when I told her I had to be someplace, she gave me such a sorrowful look and pleaded, “What will I do while you are gone? Alice is still very angry with you, with me. I have no place to wait.”
Neither of the two bartenders treading the boards pouring drinks and ringing up the sales on the big brass cash register was the tree trunk that had served me the first time when I’d stepped in to avoid a tail. I tried to wedge myself between a couple of muscle heads who weren’t interested in letting me squeeze through until they laid eyes on Rebecca. Then they became gentlemen whose mouths had dropped open and whose eyes popped out of their sockets accompanied by an ahooga horn.
I nudged her with my elbow. “imtay otay ogay.”
A herd of elephants might have been quieter climbing up the two flights to my office. Alice must have forgotten to lock the door and I walked right in. The bruiser had an iron grip on my shoulder. “Don’t try any funny business,” Sid warned. I flicked on the light and saw what Alice and Rebecca had seen earlier that day. Messes don’t have a tendency to right themselves no matter how long they’re left alone.
I could see Dempsey pause at the top of the stoop, look around to see if he could spot me. Out of breath, he lifted his cop cap and scratched his head realizing he’d lost me. He slapped the billy in the palm of his hand a couple of times and then strode off to the call box at the other end of the block.
“Sure, Lack.” She’d started another cigarette and let the smoke drift from between her lips. “But if you kids need a place to hang out for a while, that’s alright with me.”
“We ran into that creep Curtis when we were leaving.” Alice was digging through the drawers of her dresser under the portrait of Ted. “I told him that we had a bag for you but you weren’t in your apartment, which, by the way, is a picture perfect disaster zone.” I noticed Becky wrinkling her nosy at the unpleasantness of the experience. “He didn’t say anything about the rent. Probably because he was too busy ogling your ‘sister’.” Alice indicated a beaming Becky with a nod of her head. “From Wyoming.”
I pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go have a drink and think this over.”
Dime Pulp 