Minnesota Strip, page 3
Mr. Smooth asked me, “You mean he didn’t go to the police?” He was still looking at the picture, making up his mind what to say next.
“The cops came to him,” I said, ordering another Bud. “There was a detective asking him questions when I got to St. Vincent’s. This cop made some notes and took off. Tommy started crying, the usual rummy shit, and I told him for Jesus sake, man, get the fuck back to Duluth and I’ll try to find the kid. That’s why I’m here.”
“You’re from Duluth, Mr. ...”
“Shay,” I said. “Pete Shay, originally from Duluth but here in the city close to twenty years.” I hoped that would explain my unmistakable New York accent. I hoped my voice had the fervent tone of the naturalized Manhattanite. “Hey, I been talking your head off, what about another drink of whatever that you’re having, Mr. ...”
“Kingsley, and I will have another Pernod and thank you very much, Mr. Shay. I developed a taste for it while I was in Nam. Very French in Saigon. Perhaps you’d like to try one?”
No, I said, the everlasting slob, I’d stick with dear old Budweiser. Ed McMahon and that big horsedrawn beer wagon would have been proud of me.
“I think I’d better have a better look at your picture,” Mr. Kingsley said, turning the young whore’s photograph this way and that. He lit a solid gold cigarette lighter—again nothing but the best—and inspected Ruthie Jannssen’s likeness while I was paying for his Pernod and my Bud with a crisp fifty. Intent though he was with the little girl lost he didn’t miss the fifty.
“I’m not sure, can’t be sure, but I think I saw this girl in here very early this morning. To be sure I’ll have to ask my associate, Mr. Jonas, over there at the table by the wall.” He was turning to point at his pal when suddenly he started to laugh, putting his hand lightly on my arm while he showed his big white teeth and his body continued to shake even after he took his hand away.
“What’s so funny?” I wanted to know because my face said I didn’t get the joke.
Mr. Kingsley said, “You’re probably thinking the two of us are what we look like.”
“No,” I said.
“Sure you do but you’re wrong. Security work is what we do. You know how boring it is to sit in a dump like this morning till night, seeing it doesn’t get ripped off. You know how much a place like this takes in just one day?”
I didn’t know.
“A lot,” Mr. Kingsley said. “So the agency sends us here in these funky clothes to make sure that doesn’t happen, Mr. Shay. I’ll bet I—we—fooled you good. I hope so.”
Sure they had and after I had done penance for any anti-Negro prejudice I might have had, I went with Mr. Kingsley to meet his “associate” at the little table in the corner. This lowlife was introduced as Seymour Jonas and he asked me to call him Cy. Kingsley was Ted and I was Pete. Kingsley said, “Show Cy the picture of the girl you’re looking for. I’m going to get some drinks.” Kingsley went back to the bar and said something to the bartender that made him jerk his head in my direction before he leaned forward to say something to Kingsley. He was saying he hadn’t made me for a cop.
Kingsley came back to the table with drinks for all of us, and just at that moment Jonas was telling me he was all but certain about the girl’s identity. Nowhere as smooth as Kingsley, he was still no dummy and he said, “This picture was probably taken some time ago, am I right?”
“A year ago,” I said, and he smiled at his own glibness.
“That explains why I didn’t reckernize her right off,” Mr. Jonas said. “But that’s the chick all right.”
“Did you see her in here?” I wanted to know. “All I want is to get her out of New York and back home to Duluth.”
“No, it wasn’t in here,” Jonas said slowly, looking at his buddy. “Another place up the street, early in the day, before noon anyhow. Kid was carrying a suitcase, maybe two, can’t be sure about that.” Another nice little touch of realism. This cat was really building up to his part.
“Of course she could be anywhere by this time,” Kingsley said, his way of letting me know that finding her would still be considerable trouble. “Maybe down in the Village, the East Village, the West Village. That’s a big hunk of territory.”
I took a nervous drink of beer. “There would be a little money in it. To help me find her, I mean. What do you think?”
Kingsley stood up and fished through his pockets for small change. “I think I’m going to make a few phone calls,” he said. “We do have some connections here and there. Just don’t get your hopes up too high, dig?”
He went to the phone booth and I could see him dropping in dimes and talking. I guess he was having nice little chats with the Time, the Weather, Dial-a-Joke, Dial-a-Prayer. Once or twice he laughed to make it look good. When he came back to the table he was shaking his head in disbelief. “The last call I made was to a security guy for that big old church on West 42nd. The priest got ripped off so much he finally hired a private security guy. It’s a parttime thing. He works a couple of other jobs on 42nd and keeps an eye on the church at the same time. Okay, here it is. About one o’clock today he spotted a blonde chick more or less the same description standing in front of the church. This guy is a sharp guy. Said she had two suitcases. She didn’t look like trouble so he didn’t think much more about it. Now he thinks maybe she went into the church to rest for a while. Maybe she’s still there. I’d say it’s worth checking out.”
“Me too,” Jonas agreed. “Anyway it’s only a few blocks down 8th and then half a block over to 9th.”
We hurried along like the good buddies we were by now and I figured Jonas was the one I’d have to take out first. They were both young and muscular but there was more of the savage in Jonas. If I didn’t knock him down and put him out of action in the first few seconds I’d find myself in real trouble. Kingsley was the talker, the brains behind this lovely enterprise and that made him a little less dangerous. Or so I hoped.
I could just about hear my boozy but devout Irish Catholic father turning over in his grave as I walked up the steps of the old gray church. I hoped to hell the place was empty because I didn’t want to give the parish priest a heart attack or to terrify some old charwoman saying her prayers. And for someone with a name like Shay I’d be in eternal disgrace if I shot off a gun in a church.
I got to the door handle before Kingsley and held the door open for them. They couldn’t very well argue about who was to hold the door. They went in ahead of me and that gave me a small edge but it was all I needed. I didn’t give them a chance to get set. I didn’t do anything but pull my short-barreled .38 Colt and slam Jonas three times across the back of the head. I put two hundred pounds of weight behind those blows and his skull would have caved in if it hadn’t been so hard. The first and second blow didn’t bring too much blood but the third made it spatter like rain. Jonas yelled like a wild man when the first blow landed. The second and third shut his mouth abruptly and he fell face forward and banged his forehead on the red-tiled floor. I swung the blood-slick .38 toward Kingsley and his smooth black face took on a gray tinge. He grabbed at my wrist and got it, but there was too much blood to be able to get a firm hold. I twisted loose and pointed the .38 straight at the center of his face while his right hand snaked into his coat pocket and came out holding a gravity knife. The blade snapped out and locked into place. A gravity knife is much more dependable than a switchblade, and a heavy hitter like Mr. Kingsley would know about things like that. It didn’t do him any good, not against a gun. Probably the only reason Kingsley wasn’t carrying a piece was because he had already done some heavy time on a weapons charge. The hammer was back and Kingsley was looking straight into the muzzle and if you have ever looked down the barrel of a gun then you know how huge it looks. It looks like you could jump in with both feet before you get blown out again.
“Drop it or I’ll blow your face off.” I warned him. “I’ll give you all six right in the face. What’s it going to be?”
His eyes darted to his bleeding partner now leaking blood all over the place. “One last chance, he can’t help you,” I said.
Kingsley still wouldn’t let go the knife. “I’m not going back inside.”
“You stupid shit,” I told him. “I’m no cop. Now drop the fucking knife.” This time he did what he was told and I kicked the knife away without taking my eyes off Kingsley. On the floor his wounded buddy was starting to give out with some very realistic groans. I thought about a short kick in the head, then decided against it because after all I hadn’t been hired to murder these guys, though I had nothing against the idea on general principles.
I beckoned Kingsley forward with my left hand, holding the .38 steady with my right. “Come and take your lumps like a good boy. Come and see how it feels.”
Kingsley looked like he was beginning to feel sorry for himself. I would too, in his position. “I know how it feels.”
“I know,” I said sympathetically, “you were deprived. One step forward, old chap.” I didn’t give him a chance to step anywhere. I moved in quickly and broke his nose with the barrel of the stubby revolver before I split his eyebrow and smashed his great white shiny teeth. For good measure I gave him one across the jawbone that guaranteed that he’d be sipping liquid food through a glass straw for a long time to come. He crashed to the floor screaming with pain, trying to protect his face with his hands. I didn’t want to do anything else to the goon’s face so I did some work on his ribs with my heavy cordovans. He was starting to pass out from the pain and the punishment and I didn’t want that to happen before I had a chance to talk to him. There was a holy water font right where he was sprawled and I scooped up some water and dribbled it on his bleeding face. Blood from the split eyebrow kept filling up his right eye. I put the bloody revolver into my pocket without trying to clean it. Kingsley was still conscious and his pal was close to it. I had given both of them what was probably the worst going-over they had ever received in their useless lives. I wanted them to know that they had a good chance of losing those lives if they ever came after me again, for any reason. I wanted them to know that I wasn’t kidding around. I wasn’t even cracking a smile.
I told them: “If I see either of you clowns around here again I’ll kill you. It’s that simple. Go back to Harlem, go back to Bed-Stuy, go back to Newark. I don’t give a fuck where you go as long as it’s away from here. Just don’t make this scene any more, you dig. Nod if you get the message.” They were both able to nod and they did it gladly. “That’s the spirit fellows,” I said. “Just don’t decide to change your minds later. I wouldn’t like that one bit.”
They were still nodding agreement when I left them there in the House of God.
Chapter Three
THIRTY MINUTES LATER I left the Buckminster Hotel in a fresh suit, with a clean .38 in the angled belt holster. The other suit, the one with the blood on the sleeve, had already gone to the cleaner’s. So far it had been a strenuous day and I hoped the rest of it would be as peaceful as possible. It was time to start laying out a little money for information. I’m tight with a working buck because I have to be, but there comes a time in every private investigator’s cruddy life when he has to let go some of it.
It took me almost three hours to check all the hooker hotels between 42nd Street and Columbus Circle and, believe me, that’s a lot of fleabags for less than twenty blocks. Some of them were on the second floor and up, so I had to do plenty of climbing. By the time I had worked just one side of the street my legs were beginning to ache.
At 59th Street I grabbed a hamburger and a cup of coffee and didn’t finish either. There were things in the hamburger that had never mooed or eaten grass. Not a bit refreshed I started down the west side of Eighth Avenue. So far I had turned up zilch no matter how hard I pushed it. I’m big, Irish looking in a dark way, and the right age to look and behave like a street-hardened cop; that didn’t buy me anything but some sneaky looks and a few nervous wisecracks. One greasy desk clerk who might have been a Hindu thought the girl had checked into the hotel that morning, but wasn’t sure. I didn’t pretend to be a regular cop because that’s the fastest way to get in a jam. Put it this way: I didn’t say I was and I didn’t say I wasn’t.
“Make up your mind,” I told the Indian clerk. “Is she here or not?”
“I cannot be certain for sure, my dear sir. I take it the young lady is in a spot of trouble or else you would not be looking for her. That is most distressing in view of the fact that we run a most respectable hotel.”
Sure they did, and I wondered who wrote his dialogue. This one was like all the others. This was the land of cartons of sour milk on the windowsills, disposable morphine syringes under the bed, empty pints of blackberry brandy in the dresser drawers, stashes of heroin in knotted condoms floating in toilet tanks, chickens boiling in sinks with the help of immersion coils.
The Indian ran such a nice place that I was already making plans to stay there on my second honeymoon. “Is she here now?” I asked the so-polite Asian.
“Most assuredly, my dear sir, for I have been on duty all day, I shall ring her room if that is what you wish.”
I shook my head and leaned across the desk to pat his greasy face, my way of letting him know I could lay hands on him any time I wanted. It’s amazing what a little physical contact will do. Besides I had taken an immediate liking to this lovely person. “Just give me a key and I’ll look for myself. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Mr. Singh,” the creep said promptly; most assuredly he did not want any unpleasantness with the police and, as a result of that, further unpleasantness with the immigration authorities who might send him back to the land of famine and sacred cows. “And here is the key, Room Twenty-Seven. Please, sir, if you have to take the young lady into custody I hope there will be the least amount of fuss.”
That was a laugh. You could do a slow ax murder in that dump and they would just bang on the walls for a little quiet.
I took the key and went up to the third floor. Mr. Singh and his partners, if he had any, were doing their level best to conserve electricity: the bulbs in the hallways glowed at a steady twenty-five watts. The linoleum on the stairs had been laid down before McKinley was shot. The whole place stank of things too awful to imagine, but at least there was nobody boiling a chicken in a sink.
I opened my coat so I could get at my gun in a hurry. Inside Room Twenty-Seven there were no sounds except those coming from a tinny radio. Then, after turning the key in the lock, I opened the door but didn’t go in at once. I pushed the door and let it swing open with a tiny bump. There it was, House Beautiful! A sagging double bed, a chipped chest of drawers, a chair that didn’t match anything, soiled and torn window shades. A young blonde girl on the bed! Naked and unashamed and stoned out of her skull. The air in the tiny room was a stew of pot smoke, dirty sex, cheap liquor, sweat and despair. A good scrubbing down wouldn’t have done any good; the place called for a flame thrower.
Unless there was somebody hiding in the narrow closet the knocked-out girl was the only person in the room. I didn’t worry much about the closet because Mr. Singh wasn’t the type who worked the violent side of the street. On top of the scarred dresser stood an empty bottle of lemon-flavored gin and two bottles of pills: Quaalude and Dexamyl. The young lady was into all the things that have made America great.
She lay on her back with her legs spread apart, but there was nothing there to entice me. I compared her face to the face in the Polaroid, and had to admit that they did look alike. Both faces were like those of pretty young cows, the kind that win prizes at county fairs, with blue ribbons around their necks. About the only difference was, the girl on the bed had a large mole on her right cheek, while my young lady had facial skin as flawless as a not quite ripened peach. Ah, Shay, I told myself, you might have been an Irish poet if you hadn’t had the misfortune to be born at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 96th.
I was turning away to leave her to her narcotic dreams when the young lady woke up. Like me, she had the gift of language. “What the fuck are you doing here and who the fuck are you?” was what the young lady said in a flat Midwestern accent. She sounded a little like Jack Nicholson while he was still using Henry Fonda’s accent and before he learned an accent of his own.
“A social worker,” I said. “Mr. Blumenthal. And I’m looking for a young woman named Ruth Jannssen.” Well it was at least worth a shot. You never know.
I tried to show her the snapshot but her Nordic eyes were too woozy to take it in. She tried slapping it out of my hand but I was too quick for her. I put it back in my inside pocket and said, “Well, I’m sorry I disturbed you. I’ll be leaving now.”
Raising herself on her elbows she screamed at me, “Like hell you’re a social worker, you scumbag. I know a fucking Irish cop when I see one.”
“Top of the mornin’,” I said, “and may the Saints be with you. Not to mention the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
Now she had swung her legs over the edge of the bed and I noticed that she had dirty heels and I knew her clean-living hunky parents would have a fit over that if they had seen it. She reached out for the lemon-gin bottle, then stopped when she saw it was empty. I think she was at least a year or two younger than the Jannssen girl, maybe not more than sixteen going on seventeen.
“Shit!” she said. “I don’t think you’re even a real cop.” She flopped back on the bed so I could see her snatch to the best advantage. Once again there was no stirring of desire, as they used to say in old novels. “You know what I think? I don’t think you’re any kind of cop. I don’t even think you’re Irish. I think you look like some kind of a Jew.”
