“Were you checking on Ben Lutz?”
“Maybe.”
“Ben’s dead, Frey. Were you checking on Bert Archer, too?”
“He had nothing to do with this.”
“Yeah, but on his last day Ben Lutz went around telling everybody you were his friend. He said you were going to do great things for him.”
I perked my ears up at that. If Ben had gone around shooting off his mouth about any great plans he thought I had for him, that verified the motive for murder. Or did it? The kingpin in the illegal booze business knew his own position. He also knew I most certainly was not his lieutenant or even a not-so-reasonable facsimile thereof, so he knew I had about as much chance to elevate Ben Lutz in the organization as I’d have to restore the Third Avenue El after the city decides to tear it down. Then the boss didn’t kill him. The boss was probably laughing at me so hard in private he got a fit of the giggles every time he even thought of me. But if the boss did have a lieutenant, a sort of go-between who knew his identity and kept the others in line, maybe the guy got scared. Maybe Ben told a good story. Or maybe Vito Lucca, afraid to lose his glorified delivery boy’s job, held the answer.
“Listen, Frey,” Soolpovar informed me, “as a friend, let me tell you what we decided. Either you stop bothering us or else open up and let us know where you stand. You got to do one thing or the other.”
“Then listen to me. How do you expect me to play ball if you people clam up every time I’m around?”
“How do we know you’re not just a snooper? Even a cop, maybe.”
“You don’t. I have no suggestions. All I know is this: I was sent here to do a job, and from the looks of things I’ve found a dog-eat-dog mess without even scratching the surface.” This particular brand of lying was coming to me easy by now.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means the boss is going to maybe start the whole thing over with a new bunch of boys if he thinks you’re all leaping at each other’s throats.”
Soolpovar mouthed a four-letter word without expression, then said, “Who do you think you’re kidding? Starting this setup all over again would cost thousands. Try to find another place like Tolliver’s for it, too….”
Then he shut up. He thought he was talking too much because he still wasn’t sure if he could trust me as far as he could throw the merry-go-round, so I decided to put his mind at ease or put my neck in a noose or both. I said, “There are other places we can run a still.”
Soolpovar swallowed the bait but left his mouth unhinged
so he could regurgitate it at any time. The open mouth stood for awe. But the small, calculating eyes stood for suspicion. I was either going to receive an invitation to look at the still or a ride sans return fare, to the outskirts of town.
“Say, didn’t I tell you?” King Kellum asked with his out-of-kilter voice. “Frey isn’t fooling, Soopy.”
“No? Who cares what you think? All a guy has to do is knock the crap out of you and you’ll kiss his behind forever.”
“Say, listen. If you think I’m going to stand here and…”
“Cut it out,” I said. Kellum shut up. Soolpovar stared at me. “See what I mean?” I went on. “At one another’s throats, all the time. I hope I’ll be able to give the boss a better report on the still itself.”
“Near as I can figure, we’re maintaining maximum output,” Soolpovar insisted with a note of belligerence in his voice.
“You’ll have to show me.”
“Prove who you are.”
“Suit yourself,” I said.
“Listen, Soopy,” Kellum said. “Don’t get us all in hot water because you’re so suspicious.”
“You can’t blame Soolpovar,” I told Kellum. How do you know all this isn’t some kind of test to see whether you employ adequate safeguards or not? You can’t let anyone walk in and snoop around.”
“See what I mean?” Soolpovar demanded.
“But on the other hand, you can carry things too far. I’ve said all I’m going to say. Now you do the talking.”
I waited. Soolpovar stood there, tense, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Kellum looked like he’d run after it if I tossed a stick into the gutter.
It was Sheila O’Keefe, who’d been listening in with Vito, who offered to show me around the still.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SHEILA LED the way down a flight of stairs in a little closet this side of Karen’s penny arcade. Sheila opened the closet’s lock with a key. Kellum was reaching for a key, too, so more and more this figured for a community enterprise. Only I never suspected Sheila was a part of it.
The first thing that hit me on the dark stairs was the odor. The chief factor without which all the elaborate plans and scientific methods in the world won’t help at all in the successful operation of a still is location. Tolliver’s scored a hundred percent with its mixed stinks. Chlorine from the pool, Italian spices, taffy, popcorn, cotton candy, the huge doughnut machine — you name it.
“The masking odor is perfect,” Soolpovar said, following us down the stairs. Someone fingered a light switch and a couple of seconds later fluorescents flickered on.
I gasped. Machinery pumped and ground, mash bubbled sluggishly out of sight in two rows of huge cylindrical vats ten feet high and a dirty gray in color. I counted twelve vats in all, connected by piping, green-molded and studded with gauges. Three men in faded surplus Army fatigues surveyed us and nodded when Soolpovar said hello, then returned to their gauges and vats.
“Tolliver’s is ideal for another reason,” Soolpovar went on, “as you no doubt realize. Huge quantities of sugar are consumed upstairs in the making of cotton candy, and taffy. The same is true of all the water in the bathhouse and steam rooms. Only grain we got to obtain on the Q.T. Pretty neat eh?”
It was neat, all right. It was ne plus ultra as the Romans used to say. It was a million bucks worth of equipment.
“Funny part of it is,” Soolpovar continued his guided tour, “most people don’t realize bootlegging is a big-time business. A guy pays a fin for a bottle of good rye, most of it goes to the government. Taxes. Make it yourself, like this, you get a four, five hundred percent profit. The government was asking for trouble with taxes so high, they were asking for the bootleggers to get started again. The guy who signs the dollar bills in Washington finds himself short over a billion bucks a year, thanks to stills like these. A billion dollars. The last couple of years the T-men took over thirty thousand illegal stills, but we won’t get caught. The T-men don’t get a rumble from us. Nothing. You know why.”
I said I knew why and paused thinking Soolpovar would take up the slack. Sheila came to the rescue by saying, “Because the entire operation functions right here. We don’t have to depend on unreliable outside contacts at all.”
“Naturally,” I said. “Vito delivers, to your outlets, so there’s no middle man.”
“Vito don’t just deliver,” Soolpovar told me. “Vito also gets the bottles. You’d be surprised how many apartment superintendents will take two bits for a whiskey bottle if the bartenders we supply can’t keep enough bottles flowing back. And let me tell you something else, if you drink some of our stuff out of a Canadian Club bottle, brother, that’s what it tastes like, Canadian Club. We do the bottling here, too,” Soolpovar went on. “Inna next room. Labels we repair or get ’em made up for us by a guy out in Jersey. The only loose cog in the whole business.”
“He can be trusted,” I said. Obviously, I was supposed to know about such matters.
“That’s the boss’ business,” Soolpovar told me. He lit a cigarette and it glowed very white under the pale fluorescents as he dragged deeply. “And yours.”