“No, Dubrowski, no!” Paoli’s Latin temperament showed through the cracks in his self-control. “I ain’t stupid. I had no such an idea. I swear it to you! I figured I could show you how well I could handle both territories, before I bothered Chicago about Schirmer. You believe that, don’t you?”
“No, frankly, I don’t.”
“You got to! It’s the truth.” Paoli wiped his forehead with his crumpled handkerchief. “Why should I set up against you? I’m not a goddam fool. I know where the protection is. And the organization. And the...” he hesitated and looked at Thomas’s pocket... “the firepower.”
“Glad you do, Vergil.”
“I do, all right. I ain’t a complete dope, Dubrowski.”
“You keep saying.”
“It’s the God’s truth.” Paoli was running out of conversation. He wanted to get himself another, drink but he was afraid it would indicate his nervousness. He sat still behind his desk.
As casually as though commenting on the weather, Thomas said, “The way I hear it, you aren’t breaking any records with your Demmlertown set-up.”
“I ain’t?” Paoli was suddenly indignant. His fear burned away in the fire of injured pride. He defended himself with spirit. “Tell me any other territory the size of mine that produces as good! You can’t... because there ain’t any! Fourteen pushers I got here, for H alone! And the best, Dubrowski. The best! With solid connections in the high school bunch!”
“Fourteen?” Thomas said, surprised. “That isn’t the way I heard it. Seven was nearer what I heard.”
“You heard wrong, then. Didn’t you look up the records on my operation? Fourteen!” Paoli insisted. “Count them!” He reeled off a list of names that totalled thirteen.
“That’s only thirteen,” Thomas said, counting on his fingers.
Paoli repeated the list and remembered the fourteenth name.
“Yeah. That’s fourteen, all right.” Thomas was approving.
“You see? I ain’t conning you, Dubrowski. I got this town like this, in the palm of my hand!” He held out his hand to demonstrate. “And I could have Riverton the same way, if the boys would give Schirmer a push.”
Thomas said nothing.
“Okay?” Paoli asked, his spirits lifting as he realized that Thomas was listening to him seriously. The interview was going much better now, he thought. “Will you tell the boys in Chicago, Dubrowski? And say I’m sorry I moved in on Cal without leaving them know. It’ll never happen again, that’s for goddam sure. They’ll understand if you tell it to them the way I explained it to you. Okay?”
Thomas got up. He turned toward the door, to Paoli’s tremendous relief. “Okay,” he said.
“Good,” Paoli said. “That’s a boy, Dubrowski. Have another snort before you go, why not? It’s twenty-year-old Scotch.”
“No thanks,” Thomas said. He opened the door. “Give my love to Olga.”
“I’ll do that,” Paoli said genially. “I’ll do that.”
Forty minutes later, Thomas walked into the City Room of the Demmlertown Herald and over to Joe Bailey’s desk. Joe was the City Editor. He wore the expression of exasperated gloom typical of his kind. He looked at Thomas. “Well?” he asked.
“The works,” Thomas said and made a grimace of distaste. “The whole stinking mess, right from the horse’s mouth!”
“No kidding!” Bailey brightened and put down his pencil.
“No kidding. He’s our guy, just as you guessed. Mr. Vergil Paoli. The Syndicate’s top dog in Demmlertown. By his own admission, he’s got us right in the palm of his hand. Give him another couple of months and he’ll have Riverton there, too. Dope, prostitution, everything.” Thomas rubbed a hand over his crewcut. He leaned over Bailey’s desk. “Joe, I’ve got names, even! Heroin pushers here in Demmlertown. It’s enough to make you puke.”
“How did you get it out of him?” Bailey asked interestedly. “Was it my first published fairy story that did the trick? The piece about the gang killing by a certain Eyetooth Dubrowski?”
“That set it up,” Thomas replied. “But beautifully. Your phony item was right there on his desk when I went in. All I had to do was show my teeth.”
Bailey grinned. “Tessie, on the switchboard, said somebody called asking about you. She told them you were here in your office.”
“I heard her. She was great. I made the play for Olga Castle, Joe. And gave out with the sinister remarks about Paoli to her. And they didn’t hurt us any, for I’m sure she told him. But what really started him running off at the mouth was the telegram you had Bud send him from Chicago. He made me read it. I could hardly keep from breaking up!” Thomas looked at his chief with admiration. “How did you know about Schirmer?” he asked. “Enough to needle Paoli with the disgruntled neighbor Sit in the wire?”
“Just an educated guess. You work on a paper for twenty years and you learn a lot of little things that finally point in a certain direction.” Bailey looked at the big clock on the wall. “It’s getting late,” he said. “You say you got the names of some pushers?”
“Sure. I’ve got it all right here, Joe.” Thomas took the newest miracle of miniaturization from his jacket pocket — a tape recorder no more than four inches square and an inch thick. He grinned at his City Editor. “Paoli thought it was a gun.”
Bailey grinned back. “More like dynamite,” he said.
The Pain Killer
by Charles Carpentier
The man was screaming now and struggling violently, his handsome face distorted with fear. The doctor pressed down on the plunger and smiled soothingly. “Don’t be silly. It’s only a pain filler... to keep you from hurting.”
“Got a couple more for you, doc,” said one of the ambulance attendants, wheeling the woman in. “This one looks like a shock case. The guy, though, he’s banged up a bit. But not real bad.” The two attendants went back out to the ambulance after the man.
Dr. Edward A. Keyes glanced up from the desk where he was filling out accident reports. The woman looked small on the stretcher: everybody looks smaller on a stretcher, he thought.
She had nice hair. That was all he could see of her. He always noticed women’s hair; it was the first thing he noticed about them. Then he thought what he always thought when they brought someone in: Why do people insist on getting out on the highway and messing themselves up? — so I can make a living, I suppose.
He went to the woman, turning her head toward him. She had such nice hair and he was hoping her face wasn’t marked up.
“Doc.”
He just stood there staring at her face.
“Hey, doc,” the attendant repeated impatiently. “Where do you want this guy?”
Dr. Keyes pointed to one of the five beds along the wall; that was all the Briscoe Emergency Center had — five beds. “Put him over there,” he said. “Put her down at the other end.”
They lifted the man onto one of the beds. “Same old story every night,” the talkative attendant said. It was ritual with him — he said it every time they brought someone in. “They plaster themselves all over the highway and we scrape ’em up.”
“They were together, were they?” the doctor asked. “In the same car?”
“Yeah. This guy must have been dreaming. Either that or putting the grab on his wife there. Can’t say as I blame him, though. Real good-looking dame. Anyway, they were coming down from Barnsdahl Crossing — what folks up there call Motel Row. You know the place.”
The doctor nodded.
“Ran off the road and smack into a telegraph pole. Take ’em a week to put that car back together.”