I hadn’t, but I’d seen some guys who had. Empty hulks with part of an ear gone, or their noses smashed in, or no cheekbone where cheekbones should be — and always something on the inside gone forever — walking dead men. Monk would have to kill me before he pistol-whipped me. I stood up shakily, a tight knot growing in my gut but ready for the coming battle. I backed slowly away from him.
“Get your hands behind your back,” he ordered. He came in at me very slowly, a mean smile playing at his lips.
I wasn’t afraid he’d shoot. I was his golden goose, or maybe diamond goose, and he wouldn’t cook me — yet. But that automatic looked awfully big in his mitt. He waved it from side to side like a knife man, always coming closer. He feinted once, but I saw it in his eyes a second before, then I knew a real one was coming.
He brought around a roundhouse, but I was able to roll with it. It caught me over the ear, stinging more than hurting, but I let out a loud groan to make him think I was hurt bad. I’d have t take two or three like that before I went for him. He telegraphed the next one and I rolled with it again and ducked sideways. That one wasn’t as bad, but I groaned louder.
“Shut up, stoolie,” he snarled.
He swung viciously again, but missed completely when I ducked way down. My hand touched something behind me and I knew I had a weapon. It was one of those big, square, glass ash trays, Woolworth’s best, and it weighed at least a half pound.
I had to get him crazy mad to get the gun away from him. “All right, Monk,” I yelled, “I tipped the cops, but I’ve got the diamonds. You can have them, but don’t hit me again! I can’t stand it!”
His face contorted, his eyes seemed to get red, but his greed won. He brought the gun back for a mighty roundhouse that would have clubbed me through the floor. I ducked down, grabbed the ash tray with my right hand and swung it around as hard as I could, right for his eyes. I let it go like a discus inches from his face, then crouched down, ready to spring for his gun hand.
He didn’t have a chance. It must have looked like a bomb to him. It caught him right under his left eye, a sharp corner gouging upward, then it broke against his face bones, the ragged edges cutting across his flesh like a cleaver. The gun flew out of his hand as he jerked his arm up. I dove for it. He stumbled backwards without a sound, blood spurting from his face. Then he fell back and his head cracked against the edge of the bureau, making an ominous, crunching sound. I thought I knew what that meant.
I had his gun in my hand as I went to look at him. His face was a mess, but not bad enough to kill him. But I knew he was dead. I felt the back of his head — it was as soft and pulpy as a rotten melon. I’d heard that same sound in Korea when a rifle butt crashed down on an unprotected skull. Monk had no more worries about his hot diamonds now. Or anything else. I laid his gun on top of the bureau, then felt in my pockets for the recorder switch and shut it off.
In a way I felt sorry for him. His temper had caused his death, just as it had caused most of his troubles in his life. Monk Saunders was probably the best safe man in the country, a sort of real life Jimmy Valentine. I don’t think the safe or vault was ever made that he couldn’t open, given enough time. He could almost make those hunks of steel talk for him. But his temper and the queer idea he had that he was a tough guy were his undoing. If he played it as a loner he could have opened up safes forever and lived like a prince on what he got out of them.
Monk and his two partners gave us a hard time over the years, that was for sure. I work for one of the biggest insurance companies in the business, and have the fancy title of Chief Investigator of Frauds, but I don’t mind that because the salary and extras are pretty fancy too. For the past five years I’ve been trying to nail these three guys — now there were only two of them.
The first time I ever saw Monk was three years ago, when I was stuck in the maximum security cell block in Sing Sing, just before he arrived. He’d been convicted of a felonious assault rap — his temper again. He’d been celebrating the success of a big job and got in a fight with a legitimate john in a bar and almost killed him. The john happened to have a cop friend right there with him, so Monk didn’t have a chance to beat that one. We were cell neighbors for a week then, until Monk moved on to his permanent jail, but we hardly noticed each other. He was up for parole a little sooner than expected, just a few weeks ago, and I’d been pulled off an investigation in Los Angeles and flown back in a jet to sit in the same cell Monk had seen me in three years before. Then we’d struck up a sort of acquaintance, an acquaintance that led to me being hired by Monk and getting into the enemy camp.
Monk never knew it, but all during those three years in the can he’d been like a bug on a slide with guys watching him and studying him. The insurance companies even had psychologists exercising with him in the prison yard to find out what made him tick. I read all the reports, that’s why I felt sorry for him.
His body was partly blocking the door, I tugged his legs out of the way so that I would be able to get out, then searched him quickly. He didn’t have much on him, but I did find a folded paper in his inside jacket pocket which made me whistle in surprise as I read it. It was a list of fifteen jewelry houses in the city — five or six I recognized as active fences — some of them big, respectable businesses, supposedly above suspicion. But I imagine if the stakes were high enough some of these guys would come down off their pedestals to do business with Monk.
I had no time now to stay and explain things to the Homicide boys, that would have to come later, if I got through with the rest of the night. I wasn’t worried about Monk’s friend outside, he would just be a hood to watch the back way out of the hotel — he wouldn’t even see me leave through the front. I unlocked the door and slipped into the hall, then walked down the one flight and through the lobby. My bill was paid a week in advance so I got a big, Good evening, Mr. Young, from the manager at the desk. When the cops came for Monk’s body that guy would hate me forever. The one thing no one could ever do was die in a hotel in New York, even a third-rate joint like this. It was the unforgivable sin.
In the street I decided to walk to a drugstore a block away to call my office. Among other things I had to start the wheels moving for Monk’s funeral, and I was anxious to get the latest reports on his partners.
I hadn’t gone thirty feet when two fellows stopped me. They looked like college kids. Anyone standing more than ten feet away would think they were just that and that they were asking for directions. Only they weren’t college kids, they were two of my best men. I had almost forgotten how closely Monk had been followed.
“Bill, Monk went in that joint twenty minutes ago,” Jim Trevor, the taller one, said to me.
He was holding a card out for me to look at. I took the card, looked at it, and pointed down the street and started making gestures.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But you can forget about Monk now. He’s dead.”
Jim Trevor whistled.
“Dead, huh?” Bob Moran said. “You know we got four Safe and Loft Squad guys floating around here with us? You want us to tell them?”
I was still gesturing. “Stall them for five or ten minutes. I can’t stay here now. If we don’t break this case tonight, especially after this, we can forget all about it.”
Both of them were looking at me with funny expressions. Then I realized what it was. Leaving the scene of an automobile accident was kindergarten stuff compared to what I was doing — walking away from a stiff who had died at my hand. And I also realized what a very dim view the Police Department and the District Attorney’s Office would take. There are certain things you just can’t do, only now I had to, I had no choice.