Emil Fiddlemarch was the proprietor of a pale, bony nose, with a lean and waxy length to it which had the effect of pulling his eyes together and belittling his mouth. He frequented the Times Square area, the railway terminals, the Village, and crowds.
On a stagnant morning in August he was following his nose on Broadway above 42nd Street, breakfastless. There was a girl ahead of him, moving right along as though she were going places. As far as he could tell from her eloquent rear, she was a peach. She had a long bob of yellow hair that moved fluidly against her neck and shoulders as she hiked along, and choice long legs against which her skirt played provocatively.
Emil accelerated to keep up with her; it was this innocent pastime of getting an eyeful of seductive curves that brought him to the spot at the mathematical tick of time.
It was on its way down, a dozen feet above the girl’s head, when he first sighted it, and with lightning perception he knew what it was. In its descent it flipped over and over as though on an axis, rolling steadily down an invisible incline at such a degree that all he had to do was snatch it out of the air. Just like that — grab.
The grab brought him a couple of passing stares, but no challenge from other pedestrians. No one else had seen it. Finders keepers. But within one step after his brief hesitation he heard the yell from overhead, muffled by height. Way, way up, a redheaded man leaned out of a hotel window and roared, “Hey! Hey, you!”
Simultaneously a man burst out of the hotel entrance ahead. He was a young fellow in spite of his bald spot, and he had the build of a tough customer. He collided with the blond girl, spilling her interestingly across the sidewalk, and didn’t wait to see how she fared. After a hurried glance aloft at the redhead he started belligerently for the bunch of pedestrians including Fiddlemarch.
“Which one of you—” he began.
Emil turned in his tracks and fled.
His pursuer shouted, “Hey! Grab that little guy!”
Even on an empty stomach Emil could run, and he got going now with all the industry and vigor of fear. He zigzagged among people, jumped the curb and set sail through the Main Stem’s unsolvable traffic problem. He didn’t look around once, merely bent his wits to dodging fenders at top speed.
By the time he bolted down the stairs of a subway entrance and reached the turnstiles he had gained enough ground to drop a nickel in the slot like any honest person. Thereafter not a hand was laid on him as he tore through the station. Behind him, Bald Spot jumped the turnstiles, and a uniformed guard promptly ducked in and joined the chase.
There was a train at the platform; like red embers the lights over the doors were winking out one by one. Only one light remained, and that door was grinding shut.
Skinny as he was, Emil had to knife through the closing slot to freedom with less than nothing to spare. The door’s rubber bumper slammed into his hip, bounced as he clawed his way inside, and shut decisively as his pursuer arrived. Too late, the man scrabbled furiously at the door, pounded on the window as the train began to roll. The last Emil saw was a contorted face and a grim-looking guard grappling with the man.
Emil lurched his way down the car to the vestibule at the other end, where he could be alone and lean his hip against the brake wheel. His heart was ticking as fast as a watch, and his breathing snuffled as though he were laughing under it. But he had no cause for mirth, not when there was so little doubt about his being a goner. He had been around enough, mooching and scavenging wherever there were cash customers, and he knew a great number of characters who obtained their living after his own fashion.
His feeling about what he had just done was akin to horror, for he had recognized both of those men and they must have recognized him. His pursuer was Farr Luette, and the man Luette was working with was the redheaded Ira Terrin. They pulled big jobs; they hired out to murder a man they never saw before, if the price was right, and followed people home from night clubs to waylay them of money and jewelry. Things like that, strictly above Fiddlemarch’s class — those two.
At 34th Street, where he left the train, Emil copped a peek at what he had in his hand. It was the wherewithal, all right, wadded up as tight as a spitball. Covertly he peeled a corner open, and his eyes glazed. He swallowed, and his fingers jumped shut again. The banknote was a grand. A thousand frogskins! No wonder Luette had got down on his tail in such a rush.
Farr Luette rode the hotel elevator back up, mopping his face and the bald pink crown of his head, taking care not to disturb the meticulously combed, curly black remainder of his hair around the sides. He wasn’t used to running much, and he was still breathless when he got back to Terrin’s room.
“Catch him?” Terrin demanded.
Luette shook his head. “No.” Gasp. “Caught a subway.”
“You sure about that,” Terrin stated suspiciously.
“Ah, don’t pull that.” Luette snapped. “I said he got away. Damn it!”
“Of all the lousy—” Terrin swore, muttering the profanity. He stuck his heavy fists in his pockets and paced the room. He was built like a gorilla, thick through the chest, neck, and head, broad-shouldered, beefy. His face was heavy, loose-lipped, and his red hair commenced only a couple of fingers above his red eyebrows.
“Listen,” said Luette, “I seen that little runt somewhere around. Maybe we can pick him up.”
“A hell of a lot that’ll do,” Terrin growled. “How much of that grand you think we’d find on him?”
“What’s the difference? I hate to think of some little wart like that making me run my legs off. I hate to let him get away with it.”
“Go head and ask around, then,” Terrin suggested angrily. “You find out who he is, then what? The guy’s got rabbit blood in him, and besides that, you make chumps out of us.”
Luette gave Terrin a hard look, sweat beading his upper lip. It was Terrin’s clumsiness that sent the grand out the window, but Luette didn’t make any cracks about it. He compromised by beefing: “So we don’t get nothing out of this job. Well, I guess I’ll go down and lay a couple of bets.”
“Wait a minute.” Terrin’s eyes were bright squints. “You know this guy we did the job for?”
“Sure; Polumbo. Jack the Bug Polumbo.”
“And this Frankie Liano we bumped off — what did Polumbo have against him?”
“Something about a girl,” Luette said deprecatingly. He always got the essential information for Terrin before they pulled a job. “Name’s Audrey Starr, used to be in burlesque, and she’s Polumbo’s girl. Liano was a waiter at the Lisbon, and he was making little Audrey, I guess. So Polumbo has us bump Liano.”
“The Lisbon, ugh? Is that where we find Polumbo? Where is it?”
“It’s one of them joints. Over on the West Side, straight across from here, almost.”
“Come on, guy; let’s go.” Terrin shrugged into his coat and buttoned it, patted what might have been a bulge of muscle near his left armpit.
“What have you got on?” Luette asked.
“We’re gonna get another grand out of Polumbo. Maybe a couple of grand.”
“Yeah? We can’t do that, Ira.”
“The hell we can’t! Coming?”
“You dumb slob,” Luette said softly, but he followed him and the two marched over to the Lisbon.
The Lisbon bar was near the middle of the block, on the right going uptown. It was on the second floor over the dirty windows of a plumbing shop.
Terrin and Luette went through an unpainted doorway and mounted a flight of uncarpeted wooden stairs. A man might be delivered here if he was drunk and amorous and asked a hack-driver where he could find some nice girls at two o’clock in the morning, in midtown. The Lisbon Bar had been converted from a deep floor-through apartment, and its ceilings were stamped tin, painted gray.