Jericho felt a faint shudder of revulsion run over him. He remembered hacking his way through a Korean swamp with those dreadful bloodsuckers fastened to his chest, his arms, his legs.
Somehow the giant boy-man had Amanda helpless on the couch, pinioned by the weight of his body while he held her head still with his left hand and aimed the loathsome leech at her black eye with his right. Amanda screamed at him.
“No, Val! Please! No, no!”
“It’s for your own good, Manda,” the giant crooned at her.
“No!”
Then Val Kramer did an extraordinary thing. He lowered his head and fastened his mouth on Amanda’s, smothering her scream. For a moment she resisted him, kicking and pounding at him with her fists. And then, suddenly, she was just as eagerly accepting him as she had been resisting, her arms locked around his neck. Gently Val managed to release himself and without any further outcry from Amanda placed the repulsive leech on her swollen eye.
“Have you fixed up in no time,” Val said.
He stood up. Amanda lay still, her eyes closed, the leech swelling and growing larger as it sucked her blood.
Val Kramer gave Jericho a sheepish grin. “It’s hard to convince anyone what’s good for them,” he said. “I gave Manda that black eye, so I’m responsible for fixing it up.”
“She said she bumped into something,” Jericho said.
“This,” Kramer said, grinning down at his huge fist. “She was acting crazy about this artist fellow that got shot. She was going to run over there, get mixed up with the cops and all. I had to try to stop her, and somehow, in trying, I kind of backhanded her alongside the eye. I didn’t mean to, of course.”
“Of course,” Jericho said. “But it was natural for her to want to go to Rick, wasn’t it? She tells me they were pretty close.”
Val Kramer looked up and the smile was gone from his face. “She belongs to me, Jericho,” he said. “I can turn her on or off. You saw that just now, didn’t you? She belongs to me.”
Jericho took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “Well, I’m sorry to have interfered with your blood-letting, Val,” he said. He looked at Amanda, lying so still on the couch, her eyes closed, the leech swelling like an obscene infection. “I came because she called me.”
“That was before I told her she could only get in trouble with Roberts’ people if she stuck her nose in,” Kramer said. “We appreciate your coming, though.”
“My pleasure,” Jericho said. “When Amanda comes to, tell her that.”
Jericho walked west from Jane Street toward the waterfront. The scene in Amanda’s apartment was something out of Grand Guignol, he thought. The girl, grief-stricken for a lost love, suddenly turned on by that giant child, submitting to his kiss, and to the disgusting creature held fixed on her eye. Jericho supposed that reactions to the physical were Amanda’s whole life.
There was a house near the abandoned West Side Highway which Jericho had visited before. During a longshoremen’s strike some years ago Jericho had done drawings and paintings of the violence, and he had met Reno Roberts and been invited to an incredible Italian dinner given by the crime boss. Reno Roberts had admired Jericho’s size, his bawdy humor, and in particular his ability to draw extraordinary caricatures of the dinner guests. Jericho had earned a pass to the gangster’s presence that night and he decided to use it now.
The security was unexpectedly tight. More than a block from the house Jericho was picked up by two of Roberts’ men who recognized him.
“Better not try to see Reno this morning,” they told him. “You heard what happened?”
“That’s why I’m here,” Jericho said. “I might be able to help him.”
“He don’t need no help,” one of the men said.
“Everybody can always use help,” Jericho said. “Ask Reno to let me see him for five minutes.”
Reno Roberts was a short squat man, bald, with burning black eyes that were hot with anger when Jericho was ushered into his presence. A large diamond ring on a stubby finger glittered in the light from a desk lamp.
“Not a time for fun and games, Johnny boy,” he said. “Pasquale says you want to help. What help? Can you turn off the cops?”
“Maybe,” Jericho said.
“Can you turn off J. C. Cordell? Because he has his own army which won’t wait for the police. A lot of us are going to die on both sides in the next forty-eight hours. I am supposed to have killed Paul Cordell.”
“But you didn’t,” Jericho said.
“What makes you think I didn’t?” Reno asked, his eyes narrowed. “J. C.’s people killed my boy Michael. We don’t let such things pass in my world.”
“But you did,” Jericho said. “You let two years pass. You didn’t strike when your anger was hot. Why? I’m guessing it was because your boy was involved in an unauthorized theft. The guards on Cordell’s pier only did their duty. They didn’t know whom they were shooting. You were filled with grief and sorrow, but there was no cause for revenge. Your boy pulled a stupid stunt and paid the price for it.”
“Not a bad guess,” Reno said.
“So why strike back now, after two years?” Jericho asked. “And why do it so stupidly? That’s not your style.”
“Why stupidly?” Reno asked, his eyes bright.
“It would have been easy to finger Paul Cordell without having a witness present,” Jericho said. “Why do it when it was also necessary to kill a completely innocent man? Why do it in broad daylight in a building where there might be other witnesses? Why choose a moment when Paul Cordell’s bodyguard might walk in on you before the job was done? All those risks, Reno, when it could have been done with no risks. Not your style. Not professional.”
“Can you convince the cops and J. C. Cordell of that?” Reno asked.
“By producing the killer,” Jericho said.
Reno leaned forward in his chair. “You know who it was?”
“A hunch, Reno. But I need your help.”
“What kind of help?”
“I need you to persuade someone to talk to me without any holding back.”
“Name him,” Reno said. “And why are you doing this for me, Johnny boy? You don’t owe me anything.”
“Rick Sheridan was my friend. I owe him,” Jericho said.
“I don’t talk about my customers,” Florio, proprietor of Florio’s Bar & Grill, said to Jericho. He was a tall, thin, dark man who looked older than his 50 years. “You come into my place with some guy’s wife and I don’t talk about it. It’s none of my business.”
“But Reno has made it clear to you that you must talk,” Jericho said.
“I would rather cut out my tongue than betray my friends,” Florio said. “You are a friend of the cops.”
“Didn’t Reno tell you that I am also his friend?”
“The heat is on Reno. He would do anything to take it off.”
“Maybe the people I want to talk about are not friends you would cut out your tongue to keep from betraying,” Jericho said. “One of them works for you now and then. Val Kramer.”
Florio’s face relaxed.
“Poor dumb kid,” he said. “Yeah, he fills in behind the bar when I’m shorthanded.”
“Yesterday?”
“From five in the afternoon till midnight. My regular bartender was home with the flu.”
“My friend Rick Sheridan was murdered at about four in the afternoon. Did you know Rick?”
“Sure, I knew him. He came in here three, four times a week. A great guy. Very bad luck for him he was there when they hit Paul Cordell.”
“If that’s what happened,” Jericho said. “Did you know Rick’s girl, Amanda Kent?”