I said, “He can’t tell you now. Guess we’d better call the whole thing off.”
Ignoring me, Limpy Alfred said, “Why not just take him out somewhere and dump him?”
Thurmond shook his head. “I think Bremmer had some kind of plan to frame it like an accident. Or maybe frame somebody he didn’t like for it.”
“Like you framed Joe Brighton for the Bart Meyers kill?” I asked.
Both of them looked at me.
“Why don’t you just shut up?” Thurmond inquired in an irritated voice.
Limpy Alfred said, “I guess all we can do is wait for him to sleep it off. How long you think he’ll be out?”
Thurmond shrugged, and looked at a gold wrist watch. “It’s three-thirty now. The way he’s sleeping, I don’t guess he’ll stir before dark anyway.”
“I have a dinner engagement,” I said. “Maybe I’d better leave and come back later on.”
Again I was ignored. Stiffly Limpy Alfred walked over to the table and examined the bottle of rye. Approximately a half pint remained in the bottle.
“This the stuff?” he asked Thurmond.
“I don’t know.” He looked at me. “Is it?”
“Naw,” I said. “The knockout drops are in the soda. That’s pretty good whiskey. Let’s all have a couple of snorts for old times’ sake.”
“That’s the stuff,” Thurmond told Limpy Alfred.
Still keeping his gun on me, the gray-haired man uncorked the bottle with his left hand, sniffed at it and then poured about four ounces in a tumbler.
“You’re going to take a little nap,” he informed me. “You can take it this way, or get a gun barrel bent over your head. Take your pick.”
I considered the two alternatives with equal lack of enthusiasm. “Why can’t we just all play pinochle until Bremmer wakes up?”
Thurmond said, “Just belt the guy and shut him up, Limpy.”
When Limpy Alfred’s expression indicated he was about to do just that, I said hurriedly, “I’ll take the Mickey Finn.”
When I awoke the room light was on, and I could see from the frosted glass window that it was evening. I was lying on the couch. When I tried to move, I discovered my hands were lashed behind my back. They felt as they were asleep.
Only one other person was in the room. Buzz Thurmond sat in the chair where Sherman Bremmer had previously slept, an automatic lying in his lap and his eyes studying me broodingly.
“Decided to join the party, eh?” he said.
“What time is it?”
“Eleven o’clock. You been sleeping seven and a half hours.”
“Where’s Bremmer and Limpy Alfred?” I asked.
“The boss is lying down with an icebag on his head. Limpy’s on an errand.”
A few minutes later the door opened and Sherman Bremmer came in. His normally sooty white complexion was even sootier than usual and his eyes possessed the slightly glazed look of a man with a terrific hangover. Apparently he still had a headache, because when the sight of me distorted his face into a snarl, he winced and smoothed out his facial muscles again.
Behind him, Limpy Alfred moved stiffly into the room and handed Bremmer a leather key case I recognized as my own.
“He wasn’t there,” the gray-haired man said. “What now?”
Bremmer frowned, and then glared down at me. “Where’d you hide that kid, Moon?”
When I merely looked at him silently, he started to bend forward with the apparent intention of slapping me, but the instant his head lowered he winced and straightened.
“Get out of him where he put the kid,” he ordered Thurmond.
Rising, Buzz Thurmond walked over to me and grabbed my shirt front and jerked me to a seated position. I swung my legs over the side of the couch, closed my eyes until my head adjusted to its new position and the ache subsided, then looked up at him.
“Where’d you put him?” Buzz asked.
“He’s in jail,” I said. “He was describing you to the cops, and they arrested him for indecent language.”
Buzz growled deep in his throat. Leaning over me, he grasped my shoulders and dug a thumb into the joint on each side. When he found the nerves he wanted, he pressed until I had to bite my lips to keep from screaming.
Eventually he let up and asked, “Where’s the kid?”
I had to wait a minute for the pain to subside before I could speak. Then I asked thickly. “Have you tried his home?”
With an exasperated expression, Buzz started to dig in his thumbs again.
This time, I did scream. I’m not an expert screamer, but it was enough to make Bremmer say, “We can’t have screams like that in the hotel.” He paused a moment and then his face brightened. “Sam Polito’s the one could make him talk. We’ll take him to Harry Krebb’s house, and work in his soundproof basement. I’ll pick up Sam Polito and meet you there.”
Harry Krebb was the fence the juvenile gangs dealt with, and I remembered Sam Polito as being one of the narcotics pushers.
Limpy went out into the lobby a minute, and then came back in. “There’s a kind of stupid looking cluck sitting in the lobby,” he said.
Bremmer considered. Then he ordered my wrists untied, and as we went into the hotel lobby, Bremmer went over to talk to the man Limpy had mentioned, to block off the view.
Just before we went outdoors, with Buzz Thurmond’s pocketed gun pressing into my back, I risked a quick glance back. This got me a scowl from Buzz, but didn’t prevent me from getting a profile view of the man Bremmer was talking to.
To my complete amazement I saw it was Mouldy Greene.
14
It was only about twelve blocks to Krebb’s place, near a darkened repair garage. I was hustled downstairs after the door had been opened by someone I guessed to be Harry Krebb himself, and into a newly decorated game room at the rear of a furnace and laundry room. It was about fifteen by twenty feet, with a pool table, a fireplace, and a bar. The ceiling was white acoustic board, and the walls were of light blue painted plaster. A wicker sofa was in front of the fireplace and two small round cocktail tables were near the bar.
In a few minutes footsteps sounded in the laundry room and Bremmer entered with a swarthy man I took to be Sam Polito. He was about fifty with short gray hair which lay close to his head in tight ringlets. He had an insensitive, almost sullen face, thick lips and dull black eyes which contained none of the Sicilian spark common among his countrymen.
Bremmer told him, “What we want, Polito, is to find out where Moon here hid out Stub Carlson. The kid’s not at home and he’s not at Moon’s flat. It’s your baby.”
The swarthy barber merely nodded.
“Lay him out on the pool table,” Bremmer ordered the others. “Strip him to the waist first.”
When I was lying on the table, stripped, Sam Polito reached in his pocket, brought something out, there was a sharp click and a thin blade with a razor edge jumped from his fist. At a signal from Bremmer, Buzz Thurmond grabbed both my arms and Limpy Alfred clasped his arms around my legs.
“Sam doesn’t like to talk much, so I’ll explain things for him,” Bremmer said. “Sam’s so expert with that thing, he can peel off skin a square inch at a time without even cutting the tissue underneath. According to Sam, a man can live until two-thirds of his skin has been cut away. But I imagine he’d stop wanting to long before that. Now I don’t enjoy this sort of thing, Mr. Moon, and I’d just as soon dispense with it. Why don’t you tell us where the kid is, and save both us and yourself trouble?”
I examined Sam Polito. There was nothing sadistic in his sullen face. His expression was simply unfeeling. He had a job to do and he’d do it efficiently, but he didn’t really care one way or the other whether he had to do it or not.