Her brown eyes were big and watery, on the verge of overflowing. I said gently, “What makes you think I’m your responsibility?”
“Bert is dead. Vito won’t listen to me. I’m sure Vito knows the score but he just won’t listen. It’s crooked. Sometimes they laugh at me. I’m eighteen, Gideon. I’ve been around.”
“I’m thirty.” I said in my best fatherly voice. “So have 1. Now I’m giving you the same advice, Sheila. Keep out of this. And who laughs at you?”
“Mr. Soolpovar. Karen, Becky Lutz. Everyone. Its dirty. It’s the kind of thing people get killed for. It’s a lot of money, I don’t know what. They’re all so suspicious and secretive, but they can’t hide it. Even Vito laughs at me. He… I .. .” Sheila sniffled and knuckled her nose. “Oh, damn it all… Come on, Gideon. I’ll take you over to Ben Lutz’s for some breakfast. Just wait till I change.”
CHAPTER FIVE
I CAME BACK FROM the Lutz’s toting a stomach full of bacon, eggs, toast, coffee and cake. Ben had minded his own business, but Becky, after nagging him, deposited her considerable girth at our table with a third cup of strong coffee for me and said I mustn’t forget that Ben was a good worker. I said I wouldn’t, I certainly wouldn’t. Apparently Becky thought I was taking Bert’s place at Tolliver’s in more than Karen’s penny arcade. While I didn’t come out and admit it, I didn’t bother to contradict her, either. Then we got to talking about Bert’s death and I insisted it was murder but wouldn’t say why.
All the proprietors were on hand at Tolliver’s when we returned, dusting off their stalls and such for the day’s trade. It was Vito Lucca who pointed me out to a tall, unsmiling man wearing a herringbone jacket and a rope-thin tie.
“Mr. Frey?” he demanded. “Mr. Gideon Frey?”
“That’s right.”
He slammed a folded sheaf of papers in my palm with the expression you’d expect if someone had just informed him he’d won the Irish Sweepstakes. “First try,” he chuckled. “Yes, sir, this is my good day.”
I started reading and learned why taxes are so high. It took four pages of fine print to tell me I’d been subpoenaed by the Kings County coroner concerning the demise of Mr. Bertrand Newton Archer. Young Billy must have fingered me for the County after the way I’d run off at the mouth, but I wasn’t complaining.
I told Sheila I’d see her dance number tonight for sure and headed for the penny arcade. Karen arched an eyebrow at the sunburn and the grease and offered me a cool hello. She gave me an apron with pockets deep enough to hold all the pennies minted last year and an ample supply of nickels, too. She gave me a set of keys and told me how to empty the coin boxes and where to stash the take. Then she said, “I suppose you received a subpoena, too?”
“Sure did. Day after tomorrow.”
“I know, Gideon. I’ll be there. You ought to watch the sun.”
“That’s the trouble. I was watching it too long.”
“If you have any questions about your job, I’ll be roving around the place.”
“There are five pennies in a nickel, ten in a dime, twenty-five in a quarter,” I said. “If I run out of fingers I can always count on my toes. I’ll refer the half a buck capitalists to you.”
“Well, you needn’t get so snotty. I meant if one of the machines jammed.” Karen wore her blonde hair in an upsweep, looking about as penny ante as a mink coat. “I’ll forget that crack, Gideon. If you’re going to work here, why don’t we stop jumping down each other’s throats?”
“Yes, Miss Tanner,” I said.
“Did you receive the subpoena because of what you went around telling everybody? That you thought Bert was murdered. That you knew Bert was murdered.”
“I think so. I can think of no other reason. I hope to do my duty as a public-spirited citizen.”
“Oh, shut up. If you don’t want to bury the hatchet, say so now. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”
“You didn’t lose any sleep over Bert, either.”
“That was nasty. And here we go again.” Karen hardly ever smiled, but when she did it was worth waiting for. It plucked at the corners of her mouth and gathered momentum. It tugged her pink lips apart and showed their moist insides and an edge of white teeth. Then it started working on her eyes. I got giddy, just looking. “Shake?” Karen said, offering her hand.
“It was nasty,” I admitted. Karen pumped my hand vigorously. She had a man-like grip but long, graceful fingers. “I’m sorry Ka — Miss Tanner.”
“That was nasty on my part. It’s Karen.”
“O.K., Karen. O.K.” I tried a smile too, but it threatened to peel off the sunburned skin, so I gave it up. Unpredictable wench, I thought. If you tried to butter her up she’d snap your head off. But cuss her out and she might give you that house-in-the-country smile. It was something to remember. The round almost went to Gideon Frey, but not quite. A moment later my two clam fishermen swaggered in like they owned the joint.
“Hullo, Mr. Frey,” one of them said, sticking out a grubby hand.
I reached into the till and filled his hand with pennies. He divided them with his buddy on the top of a Bat ’Em game and after a series of consultations which carried them around the arcade they began to plunge plungers and light lights.
“What was that for?” Karen said.
“They did me a favor,” I pulled a dollar bill from my government roll and stuffed it into the cash box, slamming the lid down. “There,” I said. “A neat profit for your side.”
Karen opened the box with a louder noise. She slapped the dollar back against my palm. “Just don’t do things like that without asking. You only work here, remember?”
I nodded. “Yes, ma’am. How could I ever forget?”
A good try, but we were right back where we started.
Forty-eight hours later, someone tried to kill me. It was my fault, because I’d spent the two days setting myself up as a clay pigeon. I told everyone Bert was murdered. Never mind how I knew, he was murdered. Don’t argue with me, I’ve got the inside poop. It stays inside until I tell the people at the coroner’s inquest.
I wasn’t cut out to be a Sherlock Holmes. I wasn’t even cut out to dig around for information like that Spade guy. Knocking heads in to ferret out the facts seemed more my speed, but Mr. Hammer and his compatriots knew which heads to knock. Since I didn’t, I put my own on the block.
It brought results, after a fashion. Karen left the arcade early on Thursday because she had some shopping to do before answering the coroner’s subpoena. I closed up half an hour later and walked east on Surf Avenue toward the subway. Dark, heavy clouds brooded sullenly overhead, barely clearing the tops of the buildings and threatening to up-end the harried weatherman’s applecart by splashing rain on his no-relief-from-the-heat-till-next-week prediction.
Slugs peppered the moving targets in a shooting gallery as I walked by its front. Something thudded into the wooden wall beside me. Splinters stung my face. It could have been Korea all over again the way I instinctively plunged to all fours and flattened myself on the sidewalk.
A crowd gathered. A fat man helped me to my feet and said, “It’s the heat. I always take a salt tablet. Are you all right?”
“I only tripped.”
Not without regret, the crowd dispersed. Maybe that’s the kind of sideshow the people at Coney Island really like. It would make the topic of conversation at a dozen noontime lunch counters. Such a strong-looking young man, too.
The bullet had gouged a hole in the wall, head-high. If it had come in on an angle I never would have found the slug. Actually, I found only pieces. Someone had cut an X in the nose of the slug to fashion a makeshift dum-dum. Some of the pieces had stuck in the wall like grape shot, but most of them had fallen to the sidewalk. Had the bullet even creased my forehead I’d have contracted a bad case of lead poisoning right through my thick clay pigeon skull.