CHAPTER FOUR
“HE’S DEAD.”
“Dead? Wanna bet, stupid? He ain’t dead.”
“Oh, yeah?”
The carrion birds had come to argue over my cadaver. They argued in piping little-boy voices and when I forced one swollen eyelid open they even looked like little boys. I groaned.
“See? What I tell you?”
I tried to spit sand, old pennies, sea water and last night’s garbage out of my mouth. During the night a pint-sized fiend had crawled in through my mouth or one of the new openings in my head and was now beating out something from John Philip Sousa inside my skull. His fellow-fiends had doused my body in alcohol and lit a match. I burned like my own funeral pyre.
“Go away,” I croaked.
Scurrying feet kicked sand in my face as one of the boys hustled down the beach. The other one surveyed me out of dubious eyes and said, “Well, he looked dead.”
I rolled over on my back and gazed up at a bright blue sky. A stiff breeze blew in over the water and except for the first kid disappearing down the beach and the second one viewing my remains solemnly, there wasn’t a person in sight. Early morning, I figured. My watch confirmed this. The hour was eight, much too early to wake up after getting your head beaten in. I groaned again for the kid to scram, but he just stood there.
“We were going digging for clams,” he said, sticking a tanned foot near my face. “With our toes.”
The other kid pounded back along the hard-packed sand at the edge of the water. A cop trailed behind him, far enough back not to have wet sand kicked up in his face. The way the cop ran head thrust up, arms bent at the elbows and pumping vigorously, knees kicking high, exactly the way it’s done in all the track meets only more so, I knew who it was. Another day had dawned. Young Billy Drake was back on duty.
“You still think he’s dead, stupid?”
Young Billy paced about studying things, sniffing like a bloodhound. He finally said, “On your feet, Frey. This is a hell of a place to sleep one off.”
“Damn you, Drake. I don’t want sympathy, I’m just telling you this because I happen to be on your beat and this is what you get paid for. Someone conked me last night, but good.”
I stood up and didn’t move while the beach and the distant boardwalk and the breakwaters thrusting out into the water like skinny black fingers all whirled like a carousel. “See,” I said. Billy examined the back of my head, probing with his fingers and making me wince.
“I wasn’t on duty last night,” Billy said, as if that could explain how this could happen on his beat. “Who did this?”
“That,” I said, “is a pregnant question. I didn’t have a chance to look. Someone worked me over with a baseball bat.”
“Uh-uh. They didn’t use a baseball bat,” Billy informed me clinically. “It looks like the work of a blackjack.”
He looked around for footprints, but the wind had tucked them away with last night’s dreams. “You can go now if you’re feeling all right.”
“Thank you, officer.”
“You want me to call an ambulance and have you taken to Coney Island Hospital?”
“You do that little thing.”
“I’m warning you, Frey, quit needling me.”
“Then act like a cop, damn it. Bert Archer was murdered yesterday. Someone either tried to kill me last night or wanted to scare me away from Tolliver’s. Both times you come along and tell me I’m drunk.”
“Where’s your shirt? Better put your shut on. The sun will be pretty strong by the time the ambulance comes and it won’t help your burn any.”
“Unfortunately, it’s in a locker at Tolliver’s.” I grinned at him painfully.
“All right, all right. Kid, you stay here.” He jerked an index finger at the other boy. “You come with me.”
They headed for the boardwalk. The boy returned in about fifteen minutes, lugging a big beach umbrella. He forced it into the sand and piled more sand high around its base and said. “The cop went to get an ambulance, mister.”
The more I thought about the trip to the hospital the less I liked the idea. I needed something for my sunburn. I thought it would be a good idea to have my head wounds cleaned, for whoever wielded the sap didn’t know his own strength and had left some cuts and gashes to decorate the bumps on my skull. Then I could use some more sleep and some good food and they’d better save their hospital beds for sick people. I’d had my fill of hospital beds in Japan.
“Listen, son,” I asked the kid who’d toted the umbrella, “how would you like to do me a favor? This is a key to locker 1418 in Tolliver’s bathhouse.” I took the key off my wrist and flexed the elastic band until he got the idea and slipped his own wrist through it. “You know where Tolliver’s is?”
“Sure.”
“O.K. They’re not open yet, but show the key to anyone you can find there and tell them there’s a man who fell asleep on the beach and sent you for his clothing. Then you get the stuff and bring it back to me.”
“Well…”
“I know the boardwalk entrance will be closed, but all you have to do is walk around on Surf Avenue and through Tolliver’s Funland. And I tell you what. Anytime you want, drop around to the Tolliver’s penny arcade and ask for Mr. Frey. That’s me. You get to play all the free games you want.”
“And my friend, too?”
“And your friend too. You bet.”
The kid scampered off. I mean, scampered. The other one smiled at me and wandered into the shallows near one of the breakwaters, poking his toes around for clams. Soon the first one returned triumphantly with shirt, trousers, underwear, shoes and socks. I dressed over my bathing trunks and was glad the night man at Tolliver’s forgot to ask about them.
I stood up while someone probed behind my eyeballs with a scalpel. Both kids went hunting for clams and I staggered toward the boardwalk. I was going to do some hunting too. I didn’t know the name of the prey yet, but I’d find out. At this moment I favored King Kellum, first because whoever had clobbered me had used the sap with authority and Kellum could probably bend el girders with his toes, and second because Kellum wasn’t as dumb as he looked and might be hiding anything behind a Mortimer Snerd expression and a Mickey Mouse voice. But the more I thought of it, the more Kellum lost his monopoly. It looked like everyone in Tolliver’s and the Lutz’s outside of Tolliver’s had something to hide. Karen Tanner either hadn’t given two hoots and a holler for Bert despite all the love letters which had crossed the Pacific Ocean or I missed something in their relationship. Dark, Irish Sheila said Vito Lucca was really a nice boy which meant she knew something about Vito which the police or somebody wouldn’t like. And there was this miasma of disagreement which kept the Lutz’s yammering at each other.
I started wishing there was a V. A.-approved school which gave a quick course in detection in ten easy lessons. I wished that and a lot of other things, none of them very practical, and by then I’d dragged my swollen legs and burning body to the front of Tolliver’s. A panel truck was parked at the curb with no lettering on it but the tail gate down and the doors swung wide. I peered in and saw a solitary cardboard carton holding down a lot of floor space when someone grabbed my shoulder and made the sunburn sting down to my ankles.
“Cut it out!” I yelled.
He let it go. “You cut it out,” he said. “Quit poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.” It was Vito Lucca. Vito looked angry.
“What have you got in there?” I said, for no other reason but to goad Vito. The lone carton looked about as deadly as a box full of eggs, which for all I knew, it was.
“I was only unloading some stuff for our pizzeria, that’s all.”