“Where out back?”
Another stepped forward, chin jutting bravely; he pointed. “Dat toolshed back dere. Two white cops from de U.S.A.”
Melchen and Barker-law enforcement’s favorite vaudeville team.
“Are they alone?” I asked. “Did any Nassau cops come along?”
They shook their heads, no.
“Not even a colored driver?”
They kept shaking their heads in the negative.
Those two bastards coming out here alone wasn’t a good sign. On the other hand, it did make my job easier….
“You fellas stay here,” I said. “If any other cops show up, come running and tell me.”
The toolshed was well in back of the house, near where the yard ended and forest began; a limestone building a shade smaller than a one-car garage, the shed had a thatch roof and a dirt-caked window on each wall. I looked in the nearest window but all I saw was a fat back in a white sweat-soaked shirt. Both no doubt belonged to Melchen.
I looked in another smudgy window and got the picture: Melchen was standing, hands on hips, watching as Barker stood barking at Curtis Thompson, who was sitting in an old wooden chair, his hands tied behind him with wire, his ankles bound the same way, to the rungs.
The shed itself was pretty sparse-some shelves of tools and jars of nails and such; some feed bags; some bales of wire, from which they’d probably got what they bound Curtis with. The floor was hard dirt.
Both cops were in rolled-up shirtsleeves, ties loose, no shoulder holsters in sight-which made me smile….
Barker paused and Curtis-his handsome ebony face streaked with blood, his mouth and his left eye looking puffy-said nothing. Barker slapped him savagely.
I went around to the door. On the ground to one side, neatly folded, were the men’s two suitcoats. Brutality and tidiness going hand in hand. Just beyond the weathered door I was facing, Barker stood with his back to me, working Curtis over.
I could hear what Barker was saying, through the cracked, ancient wood.
“De Marigny’s going to hang, anyhow, and you’ll be smack out of work! Be a good little darkie-cooperate and we’ll see you get a new job, a good job….”
Curtis said nothing.
Melchen’s Southern-fried voice kicked in: “All you got to do, boy, is say you drove de Marigny out to Westbourne the night of the murder. You didn’t take no part in it-you didn’t know what he was up to…you just sat in the car and waited for him.”
“Curtis,” Barker said in a mock civil tone, “maybe you need your memory jogged a little more….”
That was when I kicked the door down.
It tore right off its rusty hinges, splintering, and fell straight onto Barker, flattening him; Barker and the door falling knocked Curtis back and down, and left him tied in his chair, on his back, gaping up at me.
Melchen was glaring at me in shock and outrage as light burst into the gloomy little room and so did I.
“Heller! What the fuck are you-”
“You call this the third degree? We invented the third degree in Chicago. Perhaps you ladies need a demonstration.”
“You’re under arrest, asshole!” Melchen sputtered, moving toward me with fists raised.
I kicked him in the balls.
He was doubled over screaming when I dragged Barker out from under the door; he was only half-conscious, so I helped him wake up by slapping him around a little.
Then I shoved him over onto the feed sacks; the Duke of Windsor’s lanky fingerprint expert sprawled there stupidly, his mouth hanging open and a little bloody drool trickling out.
Fatboy Melchen, whose face was streaked with tears, had recovered somewhat and charged me like a bull; his big hard head ground into the pit of my stomach and the air went out of me like a blown-out tire. But I stayed on my feet and belted him in the side of the head, weakly, winded as I was, though it was enough to distract him.
Gasping but better, I straightened him up and slammed a fist into the center of his fat face; the crunch of his nose was a sweet sound. He tumbled backward, hit some shelving, and jars of nails and nuts and bolts rained on him; he sat down hard, breathing the same way. He looked up at me, wondering if he should get up again.
“Mister!”
It was Curtis, warning me that Barker was getting up off the feed bags; the warning helped, because I turned, but it didn’t keep me from getting tackled by the tall, loose-limbed cop. He pushed me onto the fallen door and started throwing punches into my midsection. I grabbed a handful of his greasy hair, yanked his head back and gave him a forearm in the throat.
He let go of me, rolling off; then he was like a bug on its back, as he struggled to breathe, hands on his throat as if trying to strangle himself. I got back on my feet, but so had Melchen, who had found a wrench amongst the tools and was looking at me with a face running with blood from his mashed nose. His eyes looked crazed.
“I’m goin’ to kill you, you Yankee son of a bitch!”
The wrench cut the air, and I ducked, and it cut the air again, even more viciously, with an arcing swoosh, and I ducked again, and Melchen was smiling through the blood streaming down over his piglike teeth, enjoying himself.
Barker was on his knees, as if praying, and with one hand on his throat and the other gesturing wildly, he wheezed to his partner, “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him…witnesses…too many witnesses….”
Barker caught Melchen’s attention with this touching speech, briefly, and that was when I kicked the fat fuck in the balls again.
His howl filled the little room, and he dropped to his knees, clutched himself and bawled like a baby. Which is exactly what I’d have done in his place.
I picked up the wrench and walked over to Barker, who was still on his knees. Curtis, on the floor in his chair, was grinning like a fox in the henhouse.
“No…don’t…” Barker whimpered. He didn’t look like such a tough Hollywood-type copper now. His hands assumed a praying position. Seeing him beg like that would’ve made me laugh, if it hadn’t made me sick.
I tossed the wrench over on the feed bags.
“Get up and help your partner to his feet.” I righted Curtis and his chair. “You mind if I let ’em go in the farmhouse and wash themselves up?”
Curtis said, “Dat’s fine.”
“Go on,” I told Barker. “Go make yourselves presentable.”
Barker helped Melchen up and out of the shack; the tall cop gathered their suitcoats, then with an arm supporting Melchen, hobbled toward the farmhouse, through a laughing gauntlet of black faces. The native workers had gathered in the backyard to watch and listen to the fight, and now they were applauding and cheering at the sight of the two battered white cops.
I undid the wire from Curtis’ wrists and ankles. “Sorry about the door.”
“Dat’s easy fixed, boss. Dey work over dis face of mine much longer, it be too broke to fix.”
“Well, let’s get you inside and cleaned up, too.”
“Wait till dey go, mon.”
“Okay.”
We stood near the house and waited for Barker and Melchen to come down the back porch stairs from the kitchen. The two had washed the blood and dirt from themselves, but their clothes, beneath their perfect suitcoats, were mussed and torn. Melchen was holding a bloody handkerchief to his broken nose.
The natives were milling, but no longer laughing; the sight of the two burning-with-anger cops returned them to a more servile mode.
Barker stepped close. “You’re not going to get away with this, Heller. This is assault.”
“What you did to Curtis is assault. What I did is a public service.”
“We’re officially sanctioned investigators here,” Melchen said, petulantly, nasally, bloody hanky still pressed to his face.
“Maybe so,” I said. “And if you want to go public with this, swell. I witnessed you attempting to beat and bribe this witness into giving false testimony. If any of this gets out, you’ll both be on the next banana boat back to Miami.”