“Staro!” His eyes lighted up. “It’s about time somebody took your scalp!”
Chapter Twenty
“You’d Kill Me!”
“BARNEY? I’M UP at the Bosphorus. With a cute little customer, name of Staro… Yair, reason we had difficulty digging up the lowdown on him is that his name is Lasti — L as in lethargy, A as in arms of Morpheus, S as in sleep… Yair, Astaro Lasti — Staro for short… He and I are about to split a tea for two over at Combination Thirty-six… That’s right… and we’d feel lonesome without company. Would you so nicely as to bring MacCarthy over there?… But right away… and listen, if the commissioner gets itches in his britches, you don’t know where I am, what I’m doing, or when I’m going to show.”
He hung up the phone, went back to the poolside, where a gnarled-oak individual was rubbing horse liniment on the prostrate man’s bald pate.
“Thanks for holding the horse’s head, Johnnie.”
“It stopped the bleeding, Ben.” The proprietor of the Bosphorus was apologetic. “But the guy doesn’t seem grateful. Confidentially, he says it stings.”
“Doc,” grunted Staro. “Get me — to a doc.”
“You’re more likely to need the services of an undertaker before I’m through with you.” Pedley rapped Staro’s fingers with the barrel of his gun. “Rise and shine.”
Staro stumbled unsteadily to his feet.
“Can’tchtake a little roughhouse, without getting sore?”
Pedley shoved him toward the dressing-room. “Slap that wig on and get dressed. Don’t waste time looking for your bill-clip or your keys or such. I’ve got ’em.”
Staro made one more try, as he was putting on the gaudy shepherd’s-plaid trousers with the exaggerated pleats.
“Maybe you hadda little right to a peeve, pally. I useta play a lot of water polo an’ sometimes I forget myself, splashing around inna pool.”
“I know how it is.” Pedley observed the orange and cerise tie with wonder. “I’m about to forget myself, too, in a few minutes.”
Johnnie said, “If you want any help with him in the car—”
“No thanks, Johnnie. He’ll go out like a lamb.”
Before they went down to the car, Pedley locked one cuff of the bracelets around Staro’s right wrist.
“Stick your mitt in your coat pocket and keep it there, fink.”
At the borrowed sedan, he ordered the bodyguard to sit by the right-hand door.
“Bend over. Put your right hand under your knees. Now the left one, same way.” The other cuff clicked shut on the man’s left wrist.
“I can’t even sit up,” Staro complained.
“You’re lucky you’re able to breathe.”
Combination Company Thirty-six was still playing housemaid to the apparatus when Pedley unlocked Staro and marched him in from the street.
Some of the men were doing “committee-work” — cleaning the brass, buffing enamel. A couple were reloading dried hose in horseshoe loops.
This was one of the crack outfits — a combination engine and hook-and-ladder company with one of the best records of quick “stops” in the whole department. It was also the successor to Pedley’s old hook-and-ladder outfit — he knew the building as most people know their homes, and some of the old-timers as well as the average man knows his own family. They wouldn’t interfere with what he had in mind; they wouldn’t let any prowling patrolman cut in on the deal, either.
“Hi, Marshal.” A pair at a checkerboard saluted.
“Hi. How’s the tournament?” He kept Staro moving toward the back room.
“Mitch loses two straight after he has a King advantage. The yap’s trying to play according to that ‘How to Be a Champion’ book — but he can’t remember the moves when he’s at the board.”
“Try playing with quarters instead of pieces. Makes you more careful. I want the back room for a while. Oke?”
“Help yourself.”
“If we make a racket in there, it’s just because I’m showing my sidekick some jujitsu holds.”
The back office was a small room with bare brick walls, one window, a radiator, a brass standpipe with a Siamese coupling, a row of shelving on which were mounted helmets and trumpets of the three-horse-hitch era, a wall map of the fire district, the signal box, the assignment board, a green steel desk, and three straight-backed chairs.
Pedley jammed Staro down into one of the chairs. His aim wasn’t too good; the heavy man let out a yip.
“Lay off! You ain’t gonna third me!”
Pedley closed the door. “Look, Staro. Ordinarily I don’t believe in banging a rat around. You get a squeak out of him but it doesn’t stand up in court. This is different.”
The bodyguard didn’t try to conceal his fear, as the marshal went on. “I’m not going to give you the works because you did your best to drown me, though I wouldn’t want you to think I’m forgetting that. But I’m not going to stick to the letter of the ordinances with a murdering slob who’s been running around town starting bonfires to burn up people.”
“I didn’t have anything to do—”
“Hold it. I know you’re not the boy-behind-the-scenes. You aren’t big enough. You couldn’t make that kind of crime pay enough. But you probably rigged up those fires. And I suppose you were told to fix my wagon because Mister Behind-the-Scenes thought I was blood-hounding around too much and might be lucky enough to come up with the answers. Now, I’m going to find out who he is. It’s strictly up to you how I do it.”
Staro licked the knuckles Pedley had rapped with the gun.
“You can talk now and I’ll take you down to the Prosecutor’s office to make an affidavit. You might even arrange it to cop a plea on account of turning state’s evidence. It’s been done.”
“I don’t know anything about the fires, so you can put me under the light all you wanna. I won’t be able to tell you nothing.”
“Suit yourself, Staro. By the time you get ready to squawk, the surgeons will have their hands full putting you back together.”
Barney arrived with a canvas bag about as big as himself. He barely glanced at the man in the chair.
“Where you want MacCarthy, boss?”
“Set him in that chair, Barnabus.”
The fireman untied a heavy cord at the top of the bag, pulled out a life-size dummy made of sailcloth, with leather joints at knees, hips, shoulders, and elbows. The thing was weighted to approximate that of an average man; its flat canvas face was crudely painted with horror-stricken eyes and open mouth.
“Borrow a doughnut from the boys, Barney.” Pedley propped MacCarthy up so the dummy faced Staro.
Barney came back with a tight, round roll of fire hose. “Hook up the standpipe, Barnus.” Pedley wrapped the dummy tightly, from neck to waist, in coil after coil of the hose, mummy fashion, carrying the hose around the back of the chair on each loop.
“Generally use Mac to train the boys in rescue work,” he explained to Staro. “He’s not made to stand this kind of treatment. But it’ll give you a rough idea of what to expect.” The marshal opened the window, stuck the nozzle end of the hose out of it. “Let her go, Barney.”
Barney turned the brass handwheel on the standpipe. Water rushed through the hose, swelling each coil instantly to a rough hardness that constricted the dummy’s torso so the canvas neck swelled, the arms stuck out straight at the shoulders, a ridge of stuffing swelled out between two loops that weren’t overlapping. The dummy stiffened as if in its death agony.
“Hold your water, Barney.”
The clerk shut off the stream at the nozzle. Charlie MacCarthy sagged, limply.
Staro’s eyes bugged. “You can’t pull that on me. You’d kill me!”