Two men in gray hats came through the door. They had twin builds, short and chunky. One of them wore a blue gabardine suit, the other was dressed in gray. The man in gray wore a pink sport shirt and fitted Eve Bustamente’s description of her early morning assailant. He was ugly. They were both ugly, and angry looking with thick bloodless lips itching to snarl. They were two commercial diamonds of the sub-rosa industry.
“Sweeney, eh?” Pink shirt rasped. He turned to Booker, “This guy bothering you, Mr. Booker?”
The pasty faced man didn’t look at either of them. He stared listlessly at one of the Japanese prints on the wall. “He thinks I can tell him where Anne, Mrs. Donaldson, has gone.”
“Why, Syd and I will be glad to take him to Mrs. Donaldson, won’t we Syd?” Pink shirt offered.
The man in blue nodded his bulldog head agreeably. He asked me, “Would you care to accomp’ny Eddie and me to where the skirt is?”
I put out my cigarette and stood up. “Let’s go.”
The torpedos appeared disappointed. Eddie, in the pink shirt, growled, “You mean you don’t need convincin’?”
“I’m convinced,” I answered. “I want to see the girl.”
Booker was still gazing at the Japanese print as we filed through the side door. We walked down open wooden steps to a parking lot in back of the building. The green Buick was waiting. I got in the front seat, Syd in back.
“Why don’t chou save time and kill two birds with one stone, Eddie?” Syd asked his partner when he opened the door on the driver’s side.
Eddie laughed hoarsely. “You’re thinkin’ with your head again,” he said. He slammed the car door and walked back toward the steps.
I made it easy for Syd in the rear seat. I leaned back, my head straight up, an appetizing target. Millions of tiny, white hot arrows stabbed me behind the right ear. The glare of the windshield dimmed, the windshield and the dashboard floated into a blue vertical wave that turned inky black and disappeared altogether.
I was watching a key dance crazily at the end of a chain hanging from another key in an ignition switch. Miserable key. It resented the chain and wanted to free itself, I could see that. I reached out the hand I wasn’t lying on to rescue the key. A hard rap on the back of my wrist halted me.
“Papa spank,” a guttural voice reprimanded.
The sting in my wrist prodded me. I heaved myself into a sitting position and saw the owner of the voice, Eddie in the pink shirt, behind the wheel of a green Buick. We were driving South on Portrero avenue. The light and the speeding traffic hurt my eyes. I blinked away silver gray cobwebs and remembered. The back side of my head felt like a volcano crater looks. It was sore when I touched it.
I squirmed around to face Syd in the rear seat. He sat complacently, his right hand bulging under the left side of his coat. “Why did you do that?” I asked him.
“You needed sleep.” Syd showed me how tough he was. He made a fist of his left hand and shoved my face around with it.
We turned off Portrero, drove through Apparel City and over Winston avenue to a four storied white stucco apartment house. Eddie and Syd took me up a self service elevator to the fourth floor. They walked me halfway down a deep carpeted hallway to a door with a diamond shaped mirror at eye level in its center. In a slot over the doorbell alongside the door a neatly engraved card spelled out Mr. Frank Mortola. Eddie pressed the bell.
A grinning thin man with a sallow, rutted complexion admitted us to the apartment. He straightened his thin lips when I said, “Hello, Benny. How’ve you been?”
I was ushered into a large, high walled room with a fireplace at the far end. A picture window hid behind olive Venetian blinds on one side, oriental rugs lay around on brown and white checkerboard tile. There were a couple of ottomans, two sofas, a number of modernistic chairs, stand-up ashtrays and cocktail tables among them. Mortola must have decorated the joint himself.
The girl who hired me to find Robert Donaldson sat in one of the ottomans, an open magazine in her lap. She paled under the tan when our eyes locked for an instant as I came into the room. Frankie Mortola sat on a sofa, smoking a new cigar and seeming pleased to see me. Mortola was an ex-bootlegger, ex-bookie, who was now accepted in some circles, notably petty political ones, as high rolling, good humored Frankie: the rough exterior with the heart of gold. I knew better.
He was a big black haired fat faced man with a flat nose and one and a half ears. His thick black brows were frozen into a perpetual scowl, and when he tried to smile he looked like a pregnant satan. He was trying to smile now.
I walked to the other sofa and sat down, opposite Mortola. I said, “All I need is a drink.”
Mortola glanced at Benny Lufts, “Fix Sweeney a drink. And one for me.” He leaned forward toward the girl. “Will you join us?”
“No thank you.” Anne Donaldson spoke in a small, strained voice.
“No thank you,” Mortola repeated, turning to me. “What’s your pleasure, Sweeney?”
“A lot of whisky and a little soda. I’ve just been sapped and my head hurts.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, looking over my shoulder. “Syd, Eddie. Come over and sit down, next to Sweeney. That’s it, one on each side, like for a group picture.”
The master having spoken, they performed accordingly. Mortola looked at the tip of his cigar, surprised to learn there was an ash on it. He flicked the ash with his thick little finger and it spattered on the rug. He asked, “Didn’t Sweeney want to come with you, Eddie?”
“I was all for it,” I interrupted. “I wanted to see Mrs. Donaldson, but when I got in the car with this guy Syd he bashed me on the head. Where’d you import these meatballs from, Mortola? No manners.”
Benny Lufts handed drinks to Mortola and me. I gulped half of mine and the sharp, sour taste chased away the remaining traces of mist behind my eyes.
“You mustn’t be too impulsive, Syd,” Mortola said, feigning displeasure by moving his fat head from side to side. “Where did you hit him?”
On his right, Syd said, “Here,” and poked the small lump back of my ear with his fingers.
It hurt like hell and I lost control of myself. I threw what was left of my drink in Syd’s face and followed through with the glass in the heel of my hand. The mouth of the tumbler cracked on the bridge of his nose and I kept shoving it, working the fingers of my other hand around his thick neck. A forearm around my own neck tugged me and I was standing over the sofa, held from behind. My eye caught Benny Lufts and the automatic in his hand on the other side of the sofa. I dropped the broken glass.
Red wrinkles oozed across the lower half of Syd’s face. He passed his hand over them dazedly and looked unbelievingly at the blood. Then he lunged off the sofa, coming between me and the automatic. I brought my knee up hard into his windpipe and he slithered heavily to the floor.
“Enough. Enough,” came from Mortola and the arm around my neck relaxed. “Get the hell up off the carpet and into the kitchen,” he barked at Syd. “Wash that stuff off your face.”
Syd shook himself like a wet bulldog, climbed up the sofa to his feet. He stood there, staring down at the broken glass on the oriental rug. Maroon spots flecked his gabardine suit. He felt his face and his neck. He reached for the bulge under his coat.
“Go on. Get in the kitchen,” Mortola barked.
When Syd trudged across the room the hold on my neck was released. Eddie walked over to Benny Lufts. I ignored the automatic and sat down. “I told you,” I reminded the room in general, “my head is sore as a boil.”