The Big Kill

"Ease off, Mike. I'm on your side."

"I know, but you're tied down too. Who has to get murdered before the boob will put some time in on the case? Right now you got three corpses locked together as nicely as you please and what's being done?"

"More than you think."

I sipped the top of my beer and watched his eyes in the mirror. "It wasn't any news that Decker and Hooker were tied up. The lab boys lifted a few prints out of his apartment. Some of them were Hooker's."

"He have a record?"

Pat shook his head. "During the war he had a job that required security and he was printed. We picked up the blind newspaper dealer's prints too. He had a record."

"I know. They graduated from the same Alma Mater up the river."

Pat grinned again. "You know too damn much."

"Yeah, but you do it the easy way. What else do you know?"

"You tell me, Mike."

"What?"

"The things you have in that mind of yours, chum. I want your angle first."

I ordered another round and lit a cigarette to go with it. "Decker needed dough. His wife was undergoing an operation that cost heavy sugar and he had to get it from someplace. He and Hooker got some hot tips on the nags and they pooled their dough to make some fast money. When they found out the tips were solid ones they went in deeper. Hooker pulled out while he was ahead, but Decker wanted to make the big kill so he borrowed a grand from Dixie Cooper. According to Hooker, he lost everything and was in hock to Cooper for plenty, but when I braced the guy he proved that Decker had paid him back.

"Okay, he had to get the dough from somebody. He sure as hell didn't work for it because the docks have been too slow the past month. He had to do one of two things... either steal it or borrow it. It could be that when he went back to his old trade he found it so profitable he couldn't or didn't want to give it up. If that was the case then he made a mistake and broke into the wrong apartment. He and his partners were expecting a juicy haul and if Decker spent a lot of time casing the joint a gimmick like breaking into the wrong apartment would have looked like a sorry excuse to the other two who were expecting part of the proceeds. In that case he would have tried to take a flyer and they caught up with him."

Pat looked down into his glass. "Then where does Hooker come in?"

"They were friends, weren't they? First Decker gets bumped for pulling a funny stunt, the driver of the car gives the second guy the works so he won't be captured and squeal, then he goes and gets Hooker because he's afraid Decker might have spilled the works to his friend."

"I'll buy that," Pat said. "It's exactly the way I've had it figured."

"You buy it and you'll be stuck," I told him. I finished my beer and let the bartender fill it up again. Pat was making wry faces now. He was waiting for the rest of it.

I gave it to him. "William Decker hadn't been pulling any jobs before that one. He was going straight all along the line. He must have known what might happen and got his affairs in order right down to making provisions for his kid. If Decker paid off Cooper then he borrowed the dough from somebody else and the somebody put on the squeeze play. For my money they even knew where the dough could be had and laid it out so all Decker had to do was go up the fire escape and open up the safe.

"That's where he made his mistake. He got into the wrong place and after all the briefing he had who the hell would believe his story. No, Decker knew he jimmied the wrong can and didn't dare take a chance on correcting the error because Marsha Lee could have come to at any time and called the cops. In the league where he was playing they only allow you one mistake. Decker knew they would believe that he had stashed the money thinking to come back later and get it, so he took off by himself.

"What happened was this... he had to go home for his kid. When they knew he had taken a powder they put it together and beat it back to his place. By that time he was gone, but they picked him up fast enough. When he knew he was trapped he kissed his kid good-by and walked out into a bullet. That boy of Grindle's searched him for the dough and when he didn't find it, the logical thought was that he hid it in his apartment. He didn't have much chance to do anything else. So the driver of the car scooted back there and got into the place and messed it up."

Pat's teeth were making harsh grating noises and his fingers rasped against the woodwork of the bar. "So you're all for nailing the driver of the murder car, right?"

The way I grinned wasn't human. It tied my face up into a bunch of hard knots. "Nope," I said, "that's your job. You can have him. I want the son of a bitch who put the pressure on him. I want the guy who made somebody decent revert back to a filthy crime and I want him right between my hands so I can squeeze the juice out of him."

"Where is he, Mike?"

"If I knew I wouldn't tell you, friend. I want him for myself. Someday I want to be able to tell that kid what his face looked like when he was dying."

"Damn it anyway, Mike, you can stretch friendship too far sometimes."

"No, I'll never stretch it, Pat. Just remember that I live in this town too. Besides having what few police powers the state chooses to hand me, I'm still a citizen and responsible in some small way for what happens in the city. And by God, if I'm partly responsible then I have a right to take care of an obligation like removing a lousy orphan-maker."

"Who is he, Mike?"

"I said I didn't know."

"But you know where to find out."

"That's right. It isn't too hard if you want to take a chance on getting your head smashed in."

"Like you did last night?"

"Yeah. That's something else I have to even up. I don't know why or how it happened, but I got a beaut of an idea, I have."

"Something like looking for a guy named Lou Grindle whom you called all sorts of names and threatened to shoot on sight if you found out he was responsible for Decker's death?"

My mouth fell open. "How the hell did you get that?"

"Now you're taking me for the chump, Mike. I checked the tie-up Arnold Basil had with Grindle thoroughly, and from the way Lou acted I knew somebody had been there before me. It didn't take long to guess who it was. Lou was steamed up to beat hell and told me what happened. Let me tell you something. Don't try anything with that boy. The D.A. has men covering him every minute he's awake trying to get something on him."

"Where was he last night then?"

A thundercloud rolled over Pat's face. "The bastard skipped out. He pulled a fastie and skipped his apartment and never got back until eleven. In case you're thinking he had anything to do with Hooker's death, forget it. He couldn't have gotten back at that time."

"I'm not thinking anything. I was just going to tell you he was in a place called the Glass Bar on Eighth Avenue with Ed Teen somewhere around ten. The D.A. ought to get new eyes. The old ones are going bad."

Pat swore under his breath.

I said, "What made you say that, Pat?"

"Say what?"

"Oh, connect Lou and Hooker."

"Hell, I didn't connect anything. I just said..."

"You said something that ought to make you think a lot more, boy. Grindle and Decker and Hooker don't go together at all. They're miles apart. In fact, they're so far apart they're backing into each other from the ends."

He set his glass down with a thump. "Wait a minute. Don't go getting this thing screwed up with a lot of wacky ideas. Lou Grindle isn't playing with anything worth a few grand and if he is, he doesn't send out blockheads to do the job. You're way the hell out of line."

"Okay, don't get excited."

"Good Lord, who's getting excited? Damn it, Mike..."

My face was as flat as I could make it. I just sat there with the beer in my hand and stared at myself in the mirror because I started thinking of something that was like a shadow hovering in the background. I thought about it for a long time and it was still a shadow when I finished and it had a shape that was so curious I wanted to go up closer for another look.