“I know that,” he said ruefully. “But that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. As a matter of fact, I tried to slow Bart down.”
“How was that?” I asked.
“He wanted to convert the Purple Pelicans into a straight club at one fell swoop. I knew it wouldn’t work, since the gang, like the Gravediggers, was too highly organized for criminal activity. Also both have a high percentage of narcotic addicts.”
I talked a while longer with him, but basically he knew little that could help me. He hadn’t heard of Buzz Thurmond or Limpy Alfred, either. As there didn’t seem to be anything else he could tell me, I thanked the man and left.
8
I planned a visit to the Bremmer Hotel to see if I could turn up a connection between racketeer Sherman Bremmer and the two hoods who acted as advisors to the Purple Pelicans and the Gravediggers. But I decided to hold off on this until I knew how much I could make use of the friends Stub was working on to help me. One thing I didn’t want. I didn’t want to make Buzz Thurmond suspicious that the kids were plotting against him. Most of the club members just thought I was digging up general information to help Joe, but Stub’s close friends would know the truth, and I had to hope none of these close friends were hooked, and would try to protect their source of supply.
When I reached the corner of Sixth and Vernon and started to run right, a purple-jacketed youngster stepped from the curb and waved me down.
It was Dave O’Brien, the kid I’d met a couple of hours before.
In an excited voice, he said, “Stub told me to head you off. Everything’s blown up.”
When I’d parked the car, I got out and joined him. “What’s blown up?”
“The whole deal. They’re holding a kangaroo court for Stub. For telling you club secrets.” The kid’s face was pale and his speech was so hurried the words ran over each other.
I mulled this over a minute, then asked, “If this kangaroo court finds Stub guilty, what are they likely to do to him?”
The kid looked worried. “Maybe kick him out of the club.”
“Any danger of physical punishment?”
“I don’t think so,” he said in an uncertain voice. “They brought along the cat-o-nine-tails, of course, but that’s just to sort of scare guys. Only thing is, a lot of the guys seemed to be riding pretty high.”
I thought this over. It seemed reasonable to assume that if Buzz Thurmond was behind the kangaroo court, he would have seen to it that the addicts in the group were all doped to their eyebrows.
“I think I’d better look in on this meeting,” I decided.
“Stub said no,” the redhead insisted. “He wants you to get clear out of the neighborhood. He didn’t like the way some of the guys were talking about you.”
“I don’t like it either,” I informed him. “I think I’ll do some talking back.”
“There’s sixty guys down there,” Dave O’Brien said doubtfully as he followed me hesitantly to the brownstone entrance.
“Sixty kids,” I corrected. “I think I can handle kids, even if they’re doped up.”
None of the Purple Pelicans saw me enter the room, for they were all crowded to the far end with their backs to me. The green drapes were not only drawn, the windows were shut so no sound could emerge.
As I started to move forward slowly, from beyond the crowd there came a whistling sound followed by a dull spat and a groan. What I had heard sent me charging through the mass of youngsters, scattering boys in all directions.
Directly before me in an open area at the far end of the room Stub Carlson was spread-eagled on the floor, a purple-jacketed boy holding each of his arms and legs. He was stripped to the waist and his back was a mass of bloody welts.
Over Stub stood a muscular youth of about eighteen, also stripped to the waist and glistening with sweat. His back was to me and he was just raising a vicious-looking cat-o-nine-tails.
My right hand grasped the whip just as it reached the top of its upsweep and my left gripped the boy’s shoulder. Swinging him around, I slashed the knotted leather thongs across his bare stomach and chest with such force that he let out a howl of pain and stumbled backward until he crashed into the rear wall. I slashed at the four boys holding Stub, too, and they screamed and rolled on the floor to get out of my range.
No one had moved during my attack, being stunned by its suddenness. Turning to face them, I got them to move by taking a step forward and swinging the cat in a vicious circle at head height. It would have ripped to pieces any face it caught, but though I was boiling with rage, I wasn’t berserk enough to want to mar any of the kids personally. I only swung close enough to make the boys jerk back in terror. The ring widened appreciably.
Then I threw the lash half the width of the room at the boy I’d taken it from. He let out another yell when the handle caught him in the stomach.
Ignoring him, I let my eyes move around the circle of faces slowly, and the boys shifted uneasily under the contempt they could see in my expression.
Stub had managed to come erect, but he was weaving on his feet and staring around him with glazed eyes. A shirt, jacket and snap-brim hat lay on the floor near where he had been spread-eagled. Stooping I picked them up, set the hat on his head, draped the jacket over his lacerated shoulders and handed him the shirt to hold. When I took hold of his arm he let me start to steer him through the now silent crowd, as though he were a punch-drunk fighter being led from the ring.
A path silently opened before us, but we had gone no more than a few steps when a sharp click behind us made me release Stub’s arm and spin around.
The youngster from whom I had taken the cat-o-nine-tails stood spraddle-legged not two paces away, a switch knife with a seven-inch blade thrust out before him. His voice broke the silence, “That’s the private cop Stub’s been ratting to,” he said loudly. “The guy who’s trying to break up the club.”
9
Despite his youth the boy was an impressive-looking opponent. Naked to the waist and with his well-muscled body shiny with sweat, he looked like a pirate getting ready to board ship. A half dozen livid welts had raised across his chest and stomach from the single lash I had given him. His face was white with rage, and as I examined him warily, I saw that his eye pupils were mere pin points.
I also noticed for the first time that both forearms were dotted with needle punctures.
There’s no point in trying to talk down a guy full of heroin, because the stuff makes him feel big enough to whip the whole world. But his words, which couldn’t have been news, brought an angry muttering from the rest of the group, and I knew I had to move fast.
The only way to keep a mob under control is to step on the first person who tries to arouse it and step on him hard.
Swiftly I moved toward him. He didn’t need any further invitation. He moved with the smoothness of an expert, the knife thrust forward at waist level with the blade pointing upward. As the light glittered on it I could see that it was honed to razor sharpness and tapered to a needle point.
As the blade suddenly slashed up at my stomach, I crossed my forearms, the right on top of the left, and grabbed with both hands. My left hand clamped about his wrist and my right about his forearm. I pushed downward with my left, pulled forward with my right and simultaneously pivoted to swing my hip into his.
Before you could say, “Judo,” he was flat on his face on the floor and the knife was in my hand.
Hefting the weapon casually I looked around at the group, then snapped the knife shut and dropped it in my pocket.