“Work on him,” Tommy said thinly. “He’s trying to slow us up.”
Happy Lado moved in eagerly, gun cutting up under Slabbe’s jaw. “Who’s the stoolie? Where is he?”
Slabbe had been snapping out of it a bit, feeling his normal strength return but he’d needed a couple minutes more grace to be in shape to make a move.
There was no help for it, though. The first slash of the gun told him that it would take only another one like it to jelly his muscles again. This time his chair was back against the wall. He heaved back, pulling both feet up, knees folding into his chest, then snapping straight and stiff again.
Only one foot caught Happy’s body and that not too solidly. But it was enough to throw Happy off balance for a second. Slabbe rolled forward out of his chair, hit the floor with knees and elbows.
A quick sidewise glance showed him that Tommy had stepped back to let Happy close again. Tommy thought it was between Slabbe and Happy for a second and had foolishly dropped his guard.
Happy shuffled in, setting himself. He expected Slabbe to swing up from the floor and meet him. Slabbe came up, all right, but he fooled Happy. Instead of closing with the man, he turned his back full in Happy’s face — and dived at Tommy.
Chapter Four
Finders Losers
Even a man who had been expecting it and had braced himself couldn’t have taken Slabbe’s hurtling two hundred and twenty pounds without folding. Tommy wasn’t braced, and he’d just got out of hospital that day. He crumpled like a ping pong ball under an elephant’s heel.
But he still had enough moxie to roll and bring his gun around. Slabbe clawed at it, expecting a blow from Happy any second. When none came, he sprawled on top of Tommy and glanced around. Happy was darting to the window. The sound of a whining siren in the street finally filtered to Slabbe’s ears. At the same instant, Happy whirled, took a step toward Slabbe, gun cocked.
Slabbe was a contortionist, hauling Tommy around so that he formed a shield. The siren screamed again. Happy spat an obscenity and ran from the office. Slabbe saw him dart toward the rear of the building. The elevator doors clanged and Al Gage’s tired face was pop-eyed for a second as he saw what was cooking. Then he dropped the bag of sandwiches and coffee container he was carrying and took off in the direction Happy had gone.
Slabbe grunted happily, now able to give his full attention to Tommy Rex. He did this lustily. Tommy had just been discharged from a hospital, true, but Slabbe figured that the beating he’d taken himself made them even. At that, it wasn’t much of a contest. Slabbe hit Tommy only a half dozen times before he sighed disappointedly. Tommy was out.
“Easy now! What’s going on here?”
Slabbe grimaced at the two radio car cops who skidded in, guns out. “Happy Lado’s lamming out the back way,” Slabbe told them. “For crissakes don’t shoot the guy who’s chasing him, he’s a Zenith op.”
The cops piled out again. Slabbe wrinkled his nose, muttered: “If they didn’t always play cop with that damned siren, we’d have taken ’em both.”
He hefted to his feet, staggered, caught at the desk. He recalled times when he’d felt better. He navigated to the washbowl, sloshed icy water over his face and neck, blowing like a whale. Finally he grabbed a quart of beer, bit the cap off with his teeth and drank.
There was no noise in the corridor now. Slabbe took a pair of handcuffs from his desk and fastened Tommy Rex to the radiator. Then he went into the corridor and turned toward the fire escape at the rear. He saw what he expected to see — nothing. Happy Lado, Al Gage and the two prowl car cops had charged through the alley, it looked like, for garbage and trash cans had been knocked over. But there was no one now, or no one alive.
Slabbe didn’t get it for quite a while. He was seven floors above the alley and his eyes still weren’t working normally, and he wanted beer more than anything else. He held onto the fire escape railing and drank. Each time he lowered the bottle, his chin dropped with it and his eyes focussed on the cans below, but it wasn’t until the third or fourth time he did this that he really saw much. Even then, it didn’t look like anything but a man’s battered hat in one of the larger cans.
Slabbe finished his beer, hefted the empty bottle, then sighted on the can and let the bottle go. It scored perfect and Slabbe took a breath. His coordination wasn’t too bad at that. He turned back into the building, did a double take and froze. The bottle hadn’t clanged in the can. They made futile noises and motions.
Footsteps were sounding in the alley again when Slabbe turned back and looked down. The two cops were coming back. Slabbe rubbed his eyes and looked at the can. The bottle had hit the battered old hat and knocked it aside. There was dirty white hair underneath it.
Slabbe croaked: “Hey, you guys! Am I seeing things? Lookit that ash can!”
The cops followed his gaze, stepped over to the can. They made futile noises and motions. Slabbe started down the fire escape, reeled a little and decided the trip wasn’t necessary. He recognized Whitey Fite from here, anyhow.
He yelled: “How’d he get it?”
“Knife,” replied one of the cops.
“I’ll get Carlin,” Slabbe said. He shook his head ponderously, went back into the building. The elevator boy had said he’d seen both Whitey and Abe Morse come into the building but hadn’t seen them leave. Till now, Slabbe had thought that Whitey had told Abe something and they’d gone off together; but if Abe had been with Whitey he wouldn’t have let Whitey get killed. Slabbe had faith in the men he worked with.
He growled at himself: “And Abe wouldn’t have left the office, either, when he was supposed to be on the job. I bet he didn’t, not under his own power!”
Slabbe stopped dead in the corridor, eyes clear again, glittering. He saw the door of the mop closet, went to it and jerked it open. He cursed softly at the motionless heap of blue serge, then bent swiftly and ripped the gag from Abe Morse’s mouth. The little dick was conscious but too weak to move.
He gagged, tried to lick his lips, gagged some more. Slabbe picked him up as he was and carried him into the office, put him on the couch and tore off the twine that bound him hand and foot. He recognized it as the very twine he kept in his desk.
Abe croaked: “I got slugged. I was only here twenty minutes and blooie. I didn’t see nothing.”
Slabbe gave Abe beer, got on the phone, called Carlin’s office. He said to Abe: “Then you didn’t see Whitey Fite, either?”
“I was slugged,” Abe repeated earnestly. “And, honest Benjy, I didn’t get cute or nothing like that.”
Slabbe got connected with Carlin, told a terse story, ending with: “Happy’s the only guy unaccounted for now and Gage is on his tail — I hope. Let’s all be set this time. We won’t muff it again.” He hung up before Carlin started in on his ancestors.
Charlie Somers came panting into the office. “Wow! They worked you over, too!” he exclaimed. He saw Tommy Rex handcuffed to the radiator. “You hit back, though, huh? When you made that crack on the phone and then hung right up, I knew what was up. I didn’t figure I could get here fast enough, so I called the radio rotunda and told ’em to get a prowl car here on the double.”
“Thanks, cousin,” Slabbe said. “You did fine, but it might have been worth taking a couple more pokes if you’d have come yourself. The prowl car cops had to use their siren, the dopes, and Happy lammed. We got to sweat it out again and hope Gage sticks to Happy.”
But there wasn’t much waiting this time. One of the prowl car cops came back up from the alley, then Lieutenant Carlin arrived with a squad and started to instruct Slabbe, Charlie Somers and Abe Morse on how private investigators’ licenses were forfeited. It didn’t last long.