It was Hertz.
III
For a long moment Hertz and I stared at each other. His tongue came out and went over his thick lips, the way a snake flicks out its tongue before it strikes.
“Hello, peeper,” he said softly. “Remember me?”
I remembered him all right.
I hadn’t reckoned on being bounced by Hertz. I had been prepared to be roughed up a little and shot out on my tail on the hard, cold sidewalk, but having Hertz in it as well hadn’t come into my calculations.
I did some rapid thinking. I moved sideways so I could see Cordez while at the same time I could watch Hertz.
Cordez said, in his flat, bored voice, “What is this?”
“The creep’s name is Brandon,” Hertz said. “He’s a shamus. He’s that punk Sheppey’s side-kick.”
Cordez stared at me, his eyes completely impersonal, then he lifted his shoulders, walked around the bar and made for the door leading into his office. There he paused, looking at Hertz.
“Get him out of here.”
Hertz smiled.
“Sure,” he said. “Give me a little room, boys, I want to take this baby on my own.”
He waved the other two hunks of beef aside, and still smiling, his close-set eyes glittering, he came across the glass floor towards me.
There were five against one; six if Mr. Cordez would condescend to join in, and that seemed to me overlong odds.
I equalized the situation by sliding my hand inside my coat and throwing my .38.
Relax, I said, and let the gunsight swing in a semicircle to cover Hertz, the two toughs, Gomez, Bennauer and Cordez. “Don’t let’s have any rough stuff or there could be some damage around here.”
Hertz came to an abrupt stop as if he had walked into a brick wall. He stared at the gun as if it were the last thing he expected to see.
Cordez paused, his hand on the doorknob, his eyes on my face.
The two muscle-men remained motionless. They were professionals, and they were quick to realize I would shoot if I were crowded.
Cordez moved back to the bar and leaned against it.
“I told you to get out, didn’t I?” he said. “Well, get out!”
“Keep this ape out of my way and I will,” I said, nodding at Hertz.
Then the lights went out.
Maybe that was Gomez’s contribution to the tableau. I shall never know. I heard a quick patter of feet and I squeezed the trigger. An orange spurt of flame came from the gun and the bullet smashed a mirror somewhere ahead of me. Then a wave of bodies rolled over me, taking me to the floor. Hands groped for my throat, my arms, my wrists. I was squeezing the trigger again as the gun was wrenched out of my hand. A fist that felt more solid than a lump of pig-iron smashed against the side of my head. A boot thumped into my side as someone fell over me. I hit out blindly. My fist hit a face, and there was a grunt. Something whistled past my face and made a dull thud on the glass floor. Hands found me. I fought, kicked out and mentally cursed, then a fist slammed me on the side of the jaw and that was that.
Lights came on again.
I lay on my back staring up at the two thugs and Hertz. One of the thugs had my gun which he held down by his side.
My jaw ached and my head felt as if it were bursting. I heard the sound of footsteps across the glass floor. Cordez joined the happy band. His thin face was still indifferent, still without expression.
I pushed myself to a sitting position, my hand holding my aching jaw.
“Take him away and dump him,” Cordez said. “Make sure he doesn’t come back.”
He turned and walked away. It was then that I saw he was wearing very high-heeled shoes: just another phony who wanted to look better than he was.
Neither Hertz nor the two thugs moved until Cordez had gone through the doorway at the back of the bar. Gomez and Bennauer had already faded out of sight.
Hertz held out his hand for my gun and the thug who was holding it gave it to him. I watched Hertz slide the gun through his fingers until he was holding it by the barrel. All the time he stared at me, a meaningless smile on his moronic, battered face.
I had shaken off the effects of his punch by now. The movement he was making to hold the gun by its barrel told me I was in for a pistol whipping. He was aiming to club me with the gun. An expert pistol-whipper knows how to handle the gun. He hits you in every spot except a vital one. You’re out of action for months by the time he has finished with you. The gun, used by a vicious thug like Hertz, can do a lot of damage, but it needn’t be lethal.
I had served five years as a special investigator to the D.A.’s office in San Francisco. If you think there is any tougher place than San Francisco’s dock-land, tell me and I’ll keep clear of it. For five years I had rubbed shoulders with thugs like Hertz. So long as he didn’t get behind me, I wasn’t all that scared of him.
But I let him think I was.
As he swung the gun in his hand, I squirmed away, horror on my face.
“Let me out of here,” I whined. “I won’t make any trouble. Just let me out of here.”
Hertz’s grin widened.
“You’re going, pally,” he said in his soft, moronic voice. “And you’re going my way.”
He gave me time to squirm further from him. He even gave me time to get to my feet. Then he came dancing in, his ruined face alight with fiendish happiness as he swung the butt of the gun towards my head.
I timed it right. Just when he should have connected I shifted. The gun-butt flashed past me, his arm thumped on my shoulder and that brought him close to me. I grabbed hold of his coat lapels, bent my knees, leaned against him and heaved. He sailed over my head with the grace of an acrobat, arrived on his mouth and his nose on the glass floor with a crash that rocked the bottles on the shelves behind the bar, and slid along the floor to land with his head squarely connecting with the bar counter.
I went for one of the thugs the way a fighting bull goes for a matador. He swerved aside, his eyes bulging. But I wasn’t after him. That was just a feint. I was after his pal. He was standing close by, and he was totally unprepared. My fist caught him on the side of his jaw: a beautiful punch with all my weight behind it, and it lifted him off his feet and sent him sliding along the glass floor to take a toss that ended up with his head hammering against the wall. The contact between his head and the wall made such a mellow, lovely sound, I knew he would be out of action for some time.
That left the other thug.
He came at me like an enraged elephant. It was good to see the startled fear in his face. I slid under his right lead and thumped him in his ribs, sending him backwards. Then I dived for his ankles, grabbed them and jerked him upwards. The bang his skull made on the floor made even me wince. He gave one spasmodic heave of his body and then stiffened out cold.
I paused and looked over at Hertz. He was still counting stars, huddled up against the bar counter. I went over to him, took my gun out of his limp grasp, shoved it into my holster, than taking him by his ears, I lifted his head and connected it with the floor. He flopped around for a brief second like a landed trout, then went limp.
I stepped back and surveyed the wreckage. All this had taken about eighty seconds, no more; and I felt quite pleased with myself. I hadn’t had a rough house like this for four or five years. At least it showed me that I hadn’t lost my grip.
I now had two alternatives: I could either get out fast or I could remain on the premises, out of sight, in the hope of picking up some worth-while information.
Up to this moment I hadn’t found anything worth the risk of getting my neck broken. I decided, as I might never again get the chance of crashing this club, I had better stick around.