It was 2:34 a.m. And Richard, if that was Richard, sounded like a straightforward guy, a working stiff, somebody who didn’t cross the line over into the Life.
This was important to Leonid. He didn’t want to get involved following some guy who might turn around and blow his head off.
At half past three he called Gert.
“Six-two-oh-nine,” the recording of her voice said after five rings. “I’m not available right now but if you leave a message I’ll be sure to call you back.”
“Gertie, it’s Leon. I’m sorry about before. I miss you, honey. Maybe we can have dinner tomorrow night. You know-I’ll make it up to you.”
He didn’t hang up for a few seconds more, hoping that Gert was listening and would decide to pick up.
The buzzer woke him. The clock had it just past nine. The window was filled with cloud-just a pillowy white gauze that didn’t give three inches’ visibility.
The buzzer jangled his dull mind again. Another long ring. But this time Leonid wasn’t awake enough to have fear. He stumbled down the hall in the same suit he’d been wearing for over twenty-four hours.
When he opened the front door the two thugs pushed in.
One was black with a bald head and golden-rimmed glasses while the other was white with thick greasy hair.
They each had five inches on Leonid.
“The Wyants want forty-nine hundred,” the black man said. His mouth on the inside was the color of gingivitis. His eyes behind the lenses had a yellowy tint.
“Forty-six,” Leonid corrected groggily.
“That was yesterday, Leo. That interest is a motherfucker.” The black man closed the door and the white one moved to Leonid’s left.
The white hooligan grinned and Leonid felt a hatred in his heart that was older than his communist father’s father.
The white man had coarse chestnut hair that had been hacked rather than cut. His eyes were bisected between blue and brown and his lips were ragged, as if he had spent a portion of his earlier life soul-kissing a toothy leopard.
“We wake you up?” the black collector asked, just now remembering his manners.
“Li’l bit,” Leonid said, stifling a yawn. “How you been, Bilko?”
“Okay, Leon. I hope you got the money, ‘cause if you don’t they told us to bust you up.”
The white man snickered in anticipation.
Leonid reached into his breast pocket and came out with the thick brown envelope he’d received the night before.
While counting out the forty-nine hundred-dollar bills Leonid had a familiar sensation: the feeling of never having as much money as he thought he did. After his debt and interest to the Wyants, this month’s rent and last on his apartment, after his wife’s household expenses and his own bills, he would be broke and still three months behind on his office rent.
This made him even angrier. He’d need Karmen Brown’s money and more if he was going to keep his head above water. And that white fool just kept on grinning, his head like a wobbling tenpin begging to fall down.
Leonid handed the money to Bilko, who counted it slowly while the white goon licked his ragged lips.
“I think you should tip us for havin’ to come all the way up here to collect, Leon,” the white man said.
Bilko looked up and grinned. “ Leon don’t tip the help, Norman. He’s got his pride.”
“I knock that outta him right quick,” Norman said.
“I’d like to see you try it, white boy,” Leonid dared. Then he looked at Bilko to see if he had to take on two at once.
“It’s between you two,” the black capo said, holding up one empty hand and one filled with Leonid’s green.
Norman was faster than he looked. He laid a beefy fist against Leonid’s jaw, knocking the middle-aged detective back two steps.
“Whoa!” Bilko cried.
Norman ’s frayed lips curved into a smile. He stood there looking at Leonid, expecting him to fall down.
That was the mistake all of Leonid’s sparring partners had made at Gordo’s gym. They thought the fat man couldn’t take a punch. Leonid came in low and hard, hitting the big white man three times at the belt line. The third punch bent Norman over enough to be a sucker for a one-two uppercut combination. The only thing that kept Norman from falling was the wall. He hit it hard, putting his hands up reflexively to ward off the attack he knew was coming.
Leonid got three good blows to Norman ’s head before Bilko pushed him away.
“That’s enough now, boy,” Bilko said. “That’s enough. I need him on his feet to get back out on the street.”
“Take the asshole outta here then, Bilko! Take him outta here before I kill his ass!”
Dutifully Bilko helped the half-conscious, bleeding white man away from the wall. He pointed him at the door and then turned to Leonid.
“See you next month, Leon,” he said.
“No,” Leonid replied, breathing hard from the exertion. “You won’t be seeing me again.”
Bilko laughed as he led Norman toward the elevators.
Leonid slammed the door behind them. He was still in a rage. After all his pay he was still broke and hard-pressed by fools like Bilko and Norman. Gert wouldn’t take his calls and he didn’t even have a bed that he could sleep in alone. He would have killed that ugly fool if it wasn’t for Bilko.
Leonid Trotter McGill let out a roar and kicked a hole in the paneled veneer of his nonexistent receptionist’s cubicle wall. Then he picked up the phone, called Lenny’s Delicatessen on Thirty-fifth Street and ordered three jelly doughnuts and a large cup of coffee with cream.
He called Gert again but she still wasn’t answering.
It was a small office on the third floor above a two-story Japanese restaurant called Gai. There was no elevator so Leonid took the stairs. Just those twenty-eight steps winded him. If Norman had fought back at all, Leonid realized, he would be broken and broke.
The receptionist weighed less than ninety-eight pounds fully dressed and she was nowhere near fully dressed. All she had on was a black slip trying to pass as a dress and flat paper sandals. Her arms had no muscle. Everything about the girl was preadolescent except her eyes, which regarded the bulky P.I. with deep suspicion.
“Richard Mallory,” Leonid said to the brunette.
“And you are?”
“Looking for Richard Mallory,” Leonid stated.
“What business do you have with Mr. Mallory?”
“No business of yours, honey. It’s man-talk.”
The young woman’s four-ounce jaw hardened as she stared at Leonid.
He didn’t mind. He didn’t like the girl; dressed so sexy and talking to him as if they were peers.
She picked up a phone and whispered a few angry words then she walked away from her post into a doorway behind her chair, leaving Leonid to stand there at the waist-high barrier-desk. In the mirror on the wall Leonid could see through the window behind his back and out onto Madison Avenue. He could also see the swelling on the right side of his head where Norman had hit him.
A few moments later the tall man with a sparse mustache strode out. He wore black trousers and a tan linen jacket and the same uncomfortable expression he had on the photograph in Leonid’s pocket.
Leonid hated him too.
“Yes?” Richard Mallory said to Leonid.
“I’m looking for Richard Mallory,” Leonid said.
“That’s me.”
The P.I. took a deep breath through his nostrils. He knew that he had to calm down if he wanted to do his job right. He took another, deeper breath.
“What happened to your jaw?” the handsome young man asked the amateur boxer.
“Edema,” Leonid said easily. “Runs on my father’s side of the family.”
Richard Mallory was stymied by this. Leonid thought that he probably didn’t know the definition of the word.