Minnesota Strip, page 5
I cut off her flow of dirty words with a slap in the face, then another slap, and when she kept on going I grabbed her by the throat and began to squeeze. The thought of life in Attica stopped me. I got up off her and put on my pants. I hadn’t taken off my shirt and the fifty dollars was still in the pocket. The money was damp with sweat, a nice loverly touch, and I threw it hard in her face.
“That’s more than I usually pay,” I told my lady, “but why not—it’s all in the family.” That’s me, Pete Shay, private investigator, always ready with the tough, flip comeback. But when I was outside, waiting for the elevator, I noticed that my hands were trembling.
And so, after a few more doubles, home to bed.
Chapter Four
THE NEXT MORNING I was still sleeping at ten o’clock and I would have slept longer than that, if the buzzer hadn’t got me up. At first I thought it was Jannssen and I cursed him as I rolled out of bed, scratching and yawning and rubbing my eyes. I hate to wake up in the Buckminster; there are mornings when I hate to wake up at all. I was tired and hungover—not a bad hangover, just the usual. When you have to drink to get to sleep you have to expect hangovers.
I hoped whoever it was would get discouraged and go away. They didn’t, and when I took a squint through the fisheye lens in the door I knew why. I knew them by sight and by name—Tumulty and Diaz, plainclothesmen attached to the Hooker Squad. They used to call it the Vice Squad and that suited these two yo-yo’s and most of their buddies who worked that particular turf.
When one of them started kicking the door I decided it was time to let them in. I turned the latch and they were already pushing on the door before I got the chain completely loose. I retreated before the majesty of the law. Diaz came in first and Tumulty shut the door and locked it. I thought of my unlicensed .38 and had my little story all ready, if that was what they were there about. Tumulty, a heavy, red-faced man in his fifties, sat at one of the two chairs in the room. He sniffed the air in my room and made a face. Diaz, a tall skinny Puerto Rican with long curly hair and a bandit mustache, stayed on his feet.
I always keep a shaker of vodka and grapefruit juice in my tiny refrigerator and was helping myself to some of the hangover cure when Tumulty said, “We don’t know you, Shay, and you don’t know us. Maybe it’s time we had a talk.”
No mention of the unlicensed Detective Special; even so I still had my story ready: I had taken it off a mugger in the early hours of the morning. The mugger got away and I was planning to turn in the piece as soon as I got a few hours’ sleep.
“What do you want to talk about?” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed with the glass and shaker in my hands. If they were there to do a fist and foot number on me, there wasn’t much I could do except take it. I knew these guys by reputation. I knew they were capable of murder when the price was right, and the talk on the street was that the price had been right a couple of times.
“What do we want to talk about,” Tumulty said. “This and that is what we want to talk about.” Tumulty had nice clothes, so had Diaz. Tumulty’s fat necktie had horses’ heads on it, and I think he bought his dark brown wingtips at McCreedy’s. “You’ve been busy. Up and down the Strip I keep getting feedback from you, about you. Who is this kid you keep asking about, this Ruth Jannssen? What’s she to you?”
So far they had been polite enough, for cops, and I just wanted to get them out of my room. My hangover—that would be Mary’s influence—was a little worse than usual. Another cooling drink and another hour’s sleep would fix me up. I told them the truth, everything but my five minutes in church. “The girl’s father hired me to find her, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m licensed, you want to see my license?”
Diaz said, “We know you’re licensed. You’d be under arrest right now if you weren’t. This Jannssen, where does he live?”
In Duluth, I said.
“A wise guy,” Diaz said to his partner, who nodded agreement. Tumulty took a good-looking cigar from his breast pocket and put it in his mouth without taking off the blue and gold band. He began to chew it with obvious enjoyment.
“In the city, where does he live?” Tumulty asked, patient with me. “Just for the record.”
“What record?”
“The record Sinatra made back in 1944. What record do you think? I asked you a simple question pal. And don’t give me that privileged information bullshit.”
“That’s what it is,” I said.
“So you say. Okay then, we’ll get back to that later. The address isn’t that important so we’ll skip if for now. You’re a citizen and a taxpayer, right. You’d give us the address if we really had to have it, right.”
I finished what was left in the shaker and began to feel less like a victim. My mouth was full of rat fur and other nice things. “I don’t know,” I said. “Would you mind telling me what this is all about?”
“The man is in a hurry,” Diaz commented. “He can’t wait to get out in the street and start asking more questions.”
Tumulty, dropping the bullshit, pointed his wet cigar at me like a teacher trying to get a dumb student’s attention. “What about these two blacks you worked over in the church? Who told you you could act like a cop?”
They both laughed.
“What blacks?” I asked. I didn’t know any blacks, didn’t have a thing against blacks.
“You were seen talking to these two blacks,” Diaz said. “In Maloney’s you were seen drinking with these two blacks. Somebody said you and the blacks were drinking like three good buddies.”
“Oh, those two blacks,” I said. “I talked to a lot of blacks and other people.”
“Why did you beat up on these blacks?” This was from Tumulty, and he wasn’t quite as patient as he had been. Maybe he wasn’t really impatient. It might just be the first part of the cop’s sonata.
“I didn’t,” I answered. The vodka had made me less fatalistic about the beating that might come at any moment. The .38 was between the mattress and the box spring, but I really didn’t want to go to Australia, if I could help it.
“You were seen leaving with them,” Diaz said. “You went with them to the church and worked them over. Look, we don’t give a fuck about these blacks. We want to know why you did it, is all.”
“They make a complaint?” I knew they hadn’t. I knew they might send some of their pals after me, but they would never complain to the cops.
“It’s okay,” Tumulty said pleasantly, patient again. “You can tell us about it. Who gives a shit about a couple of blacks?”
“That’s what I was thinking. Who?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He didn’t mean nothing, Ray,” Tumulty told Diaz, who was looking as righteous as only a crooked cop can. Tumulty reminded me of one of those alligators stupid kids make pets of in Florida. At any moment he might start biting.
Tumulty had another question. “You wouldn’t be working for anybody besides this Jannssen? I ask you that because we don’t want any more trouble than there is. On The Strip. What I mean is, two blacks getting beat up, half-killed, could be the start of big trouble, maybe some kind of war. You’d hate to have that on your conscience, right?”
That got a fervent nod from me.
“See, I told you this guy wasn’t a bad guy,” Tumulty said to Diaz. “That’s why we took time out to come up here. Good advice is what we came up here to give. I know what you’re thinking, Ray. That’s because you got a suspicious nature. Now, I’m different. I think this guy here is okay. What’s a couple of blacks between guys that understand each other? Let me finish, Ray. I just know this guy here isn’t going to start any trouble on The Strip. Even blacks have their civil rights. I’d even go so far as to say this guy here will stay off the Strip, way off The Strip. You know how dangerous it is. No telling what might happen to a guy if he didn’t take good advice from a couple of guys that wish him the best. A guy could get sliced, maybe even get killed. Am I right, Shay?”
I thanked them for their advice.
“Don’t mention it,” Tumulty said agreeably. “All in a day’s work.” Tumulty stood up, the cigar tilted in his fat mouth. He thought he was a tough guy, and I had no doubt that he was a tough guy. Maybe not as mean as Diaz, but tougher. “One last little thing, Shay, you wouldn’t be doing a little undercover work for certain parties downtown? You can tell us.”
I said I didn’t get it. That was a laugh, me working undercover for the brass. “They wouldn’t hire me to go for coffee,” I said.
“Don’t be so modest,” Tumulty said. “It’s been known to happen. And I have to tell you, a thing like that could be just as dangerous, if you know what I mean. Sure you know.”
“He better know,” said Diaz, tired of Tumulty’s sinister blarney.
“Now, now, Ray,” Tumulty said. “No need for that. We’ll be seeing you Shay. This whole thing was off the record. We were never even here, were we, Ray?”
“We never even seen the guy,” Diaz said, and then they were gone.
I decided the hell with trying to get any more sleep, and I was stepping out of a cold shower and brushing my teeth when the telephone rang. I gargled and spat and answered the phone. It was Jannssen wanting to get a progress report. I was still looking forward to the second $350 and I talked around the main question for a few minutes while I rubbed the stubble on my chin.
“Then you haven’t found her? I was hoping you’d of found her by now.” He sounded discouraged about the girl, or maybe he was thinking about his money. He didn’t have a good telephone voice; he’d be a washout trying to sell dance lessons.
I was the complete professional. “These things take time, Mr. Jannssen.” I didn’t say Rome wasn’t built in a day; it was too early in the day for historical references. “But I do have a couple of good leads.” I didn’t have a lead in the world, but it had a good ring to it. All detectives are supposed to say that. Anything to keep him from taking off to Duluth with my three-fifty. “I’ll call you the minute I get something definite.”
“I sure hope you find my Ruthie,” the anxious Dad said before he let me go back to the bathroom.
I got dressed and went downstairs to the coffee shop and hacked at a stack of soggy pancakes and three strips of fatty bacon. The kitchen help had washed their socks in the coffee, but it was hot and I drank three cups of it until my stomach begged for mercy. “I don’t know why you eat in this dump,” my favorite waitress, Cindy said to me when she brought the check. We both knew the answer to that one; the Buckminster coffee shop was one of the four places in town where I could run a tab when funds were low. Cindy was a big redhead with a West Virginia accent, and she hooked a little on the side. I banged her once in a while, on her lunch break or when she was working the late shift. She liked me because, as she said, I wasn’t “one of them weirdos,” which meant that I took my sex straight, or fairly straight. She knew I showered a lot, and she liked that, so much so that I could run a tab with her, too.
It was noon when I called Billy Sutter at the Hotel Santiago. Billy’s work keeps him up late and it’s no use trying to reach him any time before noon. Billy isn’t just a pimp—he’s the boss pimp on the East Side, north to south from 42nd to 23rd, east to west from 1st Avenue to Madison. He’s black and might even be beautiful if too many fixed fights hadn’t marked up his face. Except for residential Murray Hill, Billy’s territory is busily commercial during the day. At night nothing much stays open except bars and a few restaurants, but there is plenty of action just the same.
“Oh, it’s you Peter, my man,” he said sleepily when he finally answered the phone. He never called me Pete, and he always talked as if burdened by heavy irony. “And how are you this fine morning?”
Billy and I went back about two years, from the time he hired me to find the elderly sadist who was giving his best-looking bitches a terrible time. This old gent was a lovely person, a terminal syphilis case with but one mission in life—to pass on his disease to as many whores as possible before the Good Lord called him. He would pick up a whore, and they were all Billy Sutter’s whores in that part of town, and after they were up in her room all it took was one look and she knew this senior citizen was clapped up to the eyeballs. When the whore said No he said Yes. He said Yes and the little .25 automatic he carried was on his side of the argument. As Billy said at the time, “This guy is a walking clap factory. You got to find him before he does every bitch in my stable.”
I knew Billy had the organization to find this creep by himself, and I wondered out loud about it. “I don’t have the time, man,” Billy explained. “With me this whole thing is a business. I’m no mobster, you dig. That’s why I’m hiring you to find the guy.” I asked Billy what I was supposed to do when and if I found the dear old fellow. “Scare the shit out of him,” Billy said. “Threaten the cops on him. That ought to do it.”
I knew it wasn’t that simple. Billy wasn’t sending his own boys out to catch the creep for the very good reason that it might backfire on him when the creep turned up dead. I also knew that one or more of Billy’s boys would be on my tail every step of the way. In the end though it turned out nice for everyone—everyone but the old guy. I traced him to a small hotel in the West Twenties and he dropped dead of a heart attack when I caught him in the hallway coming back from the store with a bag of groceries. He made me for a cop and dropped dead with fright. He didn’t go for his little gun. He just died, and being a man of discretion I tiptoed out of there. On the way downstairs I met Billy’s two operatives on the way up. We were like ships passing in the night. I didn’t even wink at them ...
“I’d like to talk to you,” I told Billy on the phone. “Okay if I come over in twenty minutes?”
“Sure thing, man. Any old time will do.” Billy never said much on the phone. Where untaxed money is concerned, where the IRS is concerned, a boss pimp can’t be too careful. Billy is from Jamaica and plans to go back there some day—but not by way of some federal prison.
I took a taxi to the Santiago and went up to Billy’s suite. The door had three locks on it and inside there was an ankle-deep cream-colored carpet, the biggest color TV set in the world, and an air-conditioner that made hardly any noise. Billy, wearing a silk lounging robe, clapped me on the arm and went back to the studded black leather bar where he was making a scotch on the rocks. Chivas Regal, the guy went in style. Billy was so elegant, he made his ice cubes with imported Perrier water. I wouldn’t have been surprised if some day he started using silk handkerchiefs instead of toilet paper. Like that old Armenian billionaire who lived in the South of France.
We carried our drinks to two armchairs and Billy leaned back and smiled at me with his battered face. “And how is the world treating my favorite detective?”
I said I was looking for a girl.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place, Peter, my man.” Billy had to have his little joke, smacking his lips over his first drink of the day. Billy was a Sunday painter and his clown pictures looked down sadly from all four walls of the living room.
“A runaway girl,” I said, handing him Ruth Jannssen’s photograph. “Her old man hired me to find her. So far no luck. I thought maybe you could help. I already checked The Strip.”
“Disgusting place,” Billy said, ever the snob. “Really the pits. No, I haven’t seen her, Peter, which is not to say that I won’t see her. I’ve seen plenty like her, not this one though. What makes you think she might be around here?”
“No special reason. If she isn’t on The Strip she has to be somewhere.”
“Elementary, my dear Shay, to paraphrase Mr. Holmes.” Billy looked pleased with his book learning. “Have you read Holmes? Of course you’ve read Holmes.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t play the fiddle either. If the kid isn’t around here, then where the hell is she? You got any ideas?”
Billy went to the bar and brought back two more Chivas Regals, saying, “Some of these new foxes think they’re smarter than the old ones. It’s just possible she might be trying to work Chinatown, trying to get set up there anyway. These bitches have their own bush telegraph. Gash, any kind of gash, is a rare commodity down that way. Even the yellow ladies are scarce and the ones that are there are mostly married, so you got a seller’s market, pussy-wise. All those yellow brothers down there beating their meat. Used to be the Puerto Rican chicks had the corner on the beaver market. They worked it door to door, hitting all the rooming houses where the womanless Chinks hang out. It started with the real Rican dogs that couldn’t sell it for a nickel any other part of town. When word got out there was easy money to be had south of Canal, ladies of my own color started moving in. The PR’s said no way and started waving blades. The black ladies responded with razors and finally a truce was declared. Now I hear a few white bitches are trying their luck. The Chinks’ll pay just about any price for white nookie.”
“Then you think she might be there?”
Billy said blandly, “I don’t think anything, my man. I’m saying she could be there if she heard about it, knows about it. On the other hand she could be taking a little vacation before she starts hitting the Strip. You say she lifted a couple of hundred from her dear old dad. Maybe she’s doing the tourist thing until the money runs out. Who knows what she’s doing. Could be she doesn’t know herself.” Billy smiled, the wise old pimp who always knew what was best for mindless runaways. “And that, my dear Peter, is why these lost bitches need somebody to look out for them.”
“Do you think maybe porn movies?” I asked. I had been thinking about that. That’s how some of them start, with some oily talent scout who starts giving them his spiel the minute they get their weary teenaged asses off the bus. If they are hungry and lonely they go with the nice man, who is always generous and kind, their first friend in the great big heartless city.
