The town was about to be split wide open, its entrails, decomposing with corruption, spilled on the streets so the public would know what the vice lords had accomplished through white slavery, narcotics, and shameless stag sessions. The big battle was on between the kings of depravity, Vince Kane and Art Ringler. They were enemies, each sworn to bury the other ... or anyone who got in their way. Barney Williams was Kane's right hand man ... more interested in protecting Barbara, an innocent bystander who had been brutalized and was being used as a pawn by the evil giants in their death struggle. Howard Jones wrote, in his Crime in a Changing Society: "The amount of anxiety evoked by crime, and especially violent crime, is such that one is tempted to feel that its roots lie deep ... Why, for example, in the face of criminal violence, do we ourselves become so violent in return?" like when Barney found Flame, the voluptuous plaything of more men than she could remember...
CHAPTER ONE
It was hot one of the hottest nights the city had ever known. The papers said fifty-year old records had been broken and that more heat would follow.
The people suffered. Sullen, angry, they sprawled in the parks and the open places. They snarled at each other, and quick fights erupted in bars. In the more squalid sections, knives flashed suddenly and police sirens whined in answer.
Stifling. Unbearable. But a great night for jackals. If the people of the city had been classified in terms of animals, that was what Sammy would have been. A jackal; a yapping, cowardly scavenger running with other scavengers to make no kills in the city jungle, but to eat the carrion the tigers left behind.
Changed into human terms, this made Sammy a peeper, a night skulker who got his kicks by vicariously sharing the flesh-pleasures of others.
The night of smothering heat was ideally suited for this, and the old warehouse on Archer Street next to the Park Hotel was ideally located.
The warehouse was locked, but Sammy knew where the broken windows were. You went in through a broken window at ground level and worked your way up, checking each floor of the hotel for lighted, unshaded windows.
And you found many examples of interesting amorous invention.
But heat could be both promising and disappointing because on a night like this, you found mostly nakedness, but not much energetic passion in the hotel where the air conditioning had broken down and the guests were panting in their beds.
So Sammy the peeper moved up through the warehouse, going quickly from floor to floor looking for the action. There wasn't much, and Sammy felt betrayed by the mechanical breakdown across the three-foot areaway.
The Park was no two-bit flop house. It faced on Lincoln Street and had not lost prestige because Archer was slum a kind of funnel feeding into the tenements of the lower east side. The Park ignored its Archer Street side.
They got high rates so why the hell couldn't they keep their air-conditioner working?
So Sammy climbed swiftly until he got to the ninth floor.
He stayed there for a long time...
She was a blonde, alone in the room, lying naked on the bed. She'd opened the window to keep from smothering, and her body was detailed in the bold glow of the lamp she'd been trying to read by.
But it was too hot to read, and she'd thrown the magazine aside. She lit a cigarette. A spark touched her naked belly and she grabbed at it. Her legs jerked. She slapped the hot spark angrily.
Sammy watched.
He'd seen many naked girls through the windows of the Park Hotel; decent girls and hookers; ugly girls and beautiful; passionate girls and passive.
But there was something about this one that fired him; something about her slim legs and high-nippled breasts that gave him reckless thoughts.
He murmured, "God!" there in the darkness and felt brave juices rise in his body.
The girl got up and went into the bathroom beyond range of his vision. He waited, feeling lonely. The toilet flushed, she returned, and Sammy now shared an intimacy with her. It made his insides quiver.
The girl threw herself back on the bed, her legs tossed, her arms thrown out in hot exhaustion.
And Sammy could stand it no longer.
But he did not attack. He was a jackal, not a tiger, so he faded back into the warehouse and went down the nine flights to take the word back to the pack ...
There were four in the pack. Their gathering place was the sidewalk in front of the tavern on Archer Street, near the corner of Lincoln. This was close to the beer inside where they went when they had money and offered a garbage box to sprawl on when they were broke.
The other three were waiting when Sammy got there. Gooch eyed him in weary disgust. "You got the price of a beer?"
"Hell, I bought this afternoon."
Lew, the fat one, grunted and wiped his face. "This damn heat's busting me up. I can't take no more."
Frenchy was the handsome jackal. He had a sensitive Latin face and a thin line of mustache he kept touching with the tip of his little finger. He said, "Keep on moaning. It helps."
Sammy, Frenchy, Gooch, and Lew four scavengers in the city-jungle; four useless young men trying to con each other for beers on a hot summer night. They had been born in the Archer Street tenements, but time had not done much for them. Time had not been able to do anything to them but make them grow up physically. Time had not been able to turn them into anything at all, and it seemed to have given up.
Other children from those tenements had been swept forward into various destinies; some into jail; some into prostitution; some into death from violence or drugs or disease. And some had gone out of the slums to live respectable lives and keep Time from despairing of the human race.
But Sammy, Frenchy, Gooch and Lew had stayed where they were, too fearful, too lazy, or too stupid to leave the tenements that had spawned them; sweating and suffering there in the heat that gripped the city by its throat ...
". . .You been up in the warehouse?" This from Gooch of the bobbing Adam's apple.
"Uh-huh. And man, there's something up there!"
"Yeah?"
"A broad."
Frenchy hooted. "I thought you liked goats."
Lew kept wiping his face. "So you saw a broad. Does that get you in an uproar on a night like this?"
"She's got her window open. The air-conditioning must have busted in the Park. She's alone and mother-naked on the bed."
"That hotel's full of stripped broads," Frenchy said. He took out a pen knife and went delicately to work on a fingernail.
"But not like this one."
"Some guy's probably in there already, taking care of her."
"I'd sure like to take care of her," Sammy said. "The damn window wide open."
Frenchy pondered the thing with the air of an expert on such matters. "What do you suppose the broad would be doing while you climbed in the window?"
Gooch laughed. "Sammy could say, 'Hold still, baby. I'll be right with you.' She'd order him a drink and have it ready."
"Wise guy!" Sammy grunted. "A wise, no-guts guy."
Gooch glared. "What're you talking about? You mean go in through the window and take the broad? Are you serious?"
"I just said none of you got the guts."
Frenchy considered, his eyes narrowed. "I wonder if it could be done?"
The night, the heat something was giving them courage, charging them with a recklessness; but they were still far from the point of action.
Lew sat down heavily on the garbage box. "Too damn hot. The broad'd float away in sweat."
"We could look," Frenchy murmured.
"Then we could go on up on the roof," Gooch suggested. "It might be cooler."
They knew they were going, but they did not moved directly toward their objective the areaway between the warehouse and back wall of the Park Hotel. They never did anything positively and directly. This was against their natures. They moved lazily toward the corner of Lincoln and Archer. Crossing the street at this angle, they stopped on the far sidewalk and shuffled around uncertainly before they began drifting slowly back toward the areaway.
As they slipped single file into the narrow darkness, Gooch giggled. He began to sing in a high, nasal pitch his own words to tune of Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush:
"We're going upstairs to rape a broad rape a broad rape a broad "
"Shut up, you stupid animal," Frenchy snarled.
"What the hell! There's nobody here."
"Shut up anyhow!"
They crawled in through a familiar broken window and moved unerringly through the darkness toward the stairs.
"Nine floors?" Lew moaned. "Jesus."
"Wait here then."
"Why the hell should I? Just take it easy, that's all."
They reached the ninth floor and moved to the window, and a silence fell.
"She's still there," Sammy whispered.
Frenchy punched him silently in the ribs as they stared, breaking the silence only with their breathing while the night and the trap of the heat made an anger in them that turned into a madness.
But time was needed time for the madness to mount.
The girl lay on her back, her eyes closed. She opened her eyes, looked at the cigarettes on the table beside the bed but changed her mind. Restlessly, she reached down and passed a soothing hand over her thighs where the heat was most irritating.
She turned the gesture into an unconscious caress, and in the shadows of the warehouse Frenchy drew his breath in sharply and pressed Sammy's arm.
The four of them moved quietly back out of earshot of the open window.
"We could do it," Frenchy whispered.
Lew's sweaty bulk smelled in the lifeless air. "But God! If she yells-"
"We can do it. One of us goes in through the window fast. I'll go. She's surprised for just a second. That's all I'll need. Sammy comes in after me. By that time I've got my hand over the broad's mouth. Sammy grabs on. Then Gooch comes and, zingo! We got her!"
"What about me?" Lew asked wistfully. "You come last."
"Not me," Gooch said. "It's crazy. We never done nothin' like this before."
"No? What about the broad you took in the basement on Yarrow Street last year. You were telling us."
Gooch had told them and now he wished that he hadn't; something to say; his contribution to some yakking about sex...
...There was this broad, you guys over in a basement apartment ott Yarrow Street. I just happened to be walking by, and she was coming out of the shower. There was only a screen door so I figured what the hell and walked right in. You should of seen the. look on her puss. She tried to back away, but I didn't let her get set. I pushed her back into the bathroom, and you know, when I left, that broad invited me back sometime.
There had been no girl and no invasion, but the tenants changed so fast in the Yarrow Street dumps that none of the others could prove it.
But Gooch wished now that he hadn't said it.
They whispered there by the far wall of the dark warehouse, and one thing became apparent. It had to be all or none. No surge of reckless passion would send one of them or two or even three off on a reckless adventure. They were chained together by a pattern of years that held them like steel bonds.
"Not me," Lew grunted. "If you guys miss I'm in trouble."
"You want to go first then?" Frenchy asked. "Axe you kidding."
Gooch snickered at this. "There'd be eight cops in the room before Lew got his rear over the sill."
"For God's sake!" Sammy growled harshly. "Are we going to yak here all night?"
From where they were, they could look into the yellow rectangle of light and watch the girl. In lazy restlessness she put her hands under her hips and lifted her body. Holding her legs erect and rigid, she V'd them in an acrobatic exercise that made Sammy double his fists.
"Lord!"
"She gets to you, huh, kid?" Frenchy's tone was half contemptuous, half sympathetic. He considered himself the sex expert of the group; the more experienced one who could patronize the others in this realm.
"She'd get to anybody."
"A natural blonde. You can't hardly find them no more." Frenchy was grinning in the darkness.
Sweat ran down Gooch's belly. He swallowed and made a gulping sound in the darkness.
"She gets Gooch, too," Frenchy said.
"Suppose somebody came?" Gooch asked.
"The door'll be locked," Frenchy said. "So the broad doesn't answer a knock. They won't break the door down. They'll figure she's asleep."
Frenchy took the question as surrender by Gooch. "I'll go first," he said, "then Sammy. Then you come in fast, Gooch. We'll need you."
Perhaps it was the being needed that did it. Perhaps it hit his childish mind and overcame his fear.
"Okay."
"Then we're set," Sammy whispered. "What about me?" Lew whined. "I ain't said I'd go along."
"You'll go," Frenchy said.
And Lew knew he was right. It took less courage to go in than to accept the desertion of the other three ...
CHAPTER TWO
Barbara Ames had begun that day in anger. She had fallen into various moods of resentment and frustration during the day and had finally lapsed into weary resignation.
They'd had no right to imprison her here in the first place. That was what it amounted to. But after they had done so, she was certainly entitled to a minimum of comfort. They could easily had moved her to another hotel.
Her major resentment, however, was against being a helpless pawn in a struggle she didn't know anything about and had had no part in; the rivalry between Vince Kane and Arthur--"Call me Art"--Ringler, the local political power. Power struggles such as theirs interested her not at all. She was a dancer, and as such she had a right to earn her living in the chorus line at the Star Dust Club. That didn't make her a tramp or a tart or anything other than an honest performer trying to work her way up to a solo spot.
So Vince Kane owned the Star Dust Club. So it was his headquarters. Barbara couldn't have cared less. Nor was it her fault that she happened to be coming out of the dressing room when a black-suited man with a gun in his hand rushed out of Vince Kane's office and headed for the alley exit door.
But that was how it had happened.
She hadn't even heard the shot. That made the funny-looking extension on the end of the gun very unlucky for her, they said, because it was a silencer. If the gun hadn't been silenced there would have been the sound of a shot, and that would have brought other witnesses.
Of course there had been one bit of luck. The shot that the fleeing gunman had turned and snapped in her direction had missed her. But maybe that really hadn't been lucky either. If it had hit her just a little bit-then she probably wouldn't have blundered into Vince Kane's office to see him lying there writhing on the floor. She would probably have run away herself so that no one would have known she'd been the sole witness to the attempted murder.
Vince Kane, even with blood running out of his shoulder, had tried to send her away.
"Beat it!" he yelled at her. "Go mix with the chorus and forget this."
But not little Barbara! She had to be a heroine. She couldn't leave a man dying on the floor.
Of course Vince hadn't been dying. He wasn't even seriously wounded, but Barbara didn't know that at the time. She'd taken his order to leave as terror-stricken delirium, so limited was her experience in this sort of thing. She'd dropped to her knees beside him and tried to pull his head into her lap while she ignored his curses, his pleas to go somewhere and get lost. She'd screamed for help at the top of her lungs; screams that were heard by Lieutenant Egan of the vice squad, who just happened to be out front at the time.
And Barbara didn't see how she could be blamed for giving Egan all of it right off the bat. She hadn't been briefed. She didn't know Kane preferred to settle his own troubles. So far as Barbara was concerned, somebody had shot the boss and was getting away and Lieutenant Egan was the man to tell about it.
Lying there on the sweat-damp bed in the stuffy room they'd given her in the Park Hotel, Barbara pondered the mysteries of being a material witness. It meant they could lock you up. It also meant because there was a big feud going on between Ringler and Kane that they could practically kidnap you and hide you out incognito in order to keep the opposition's lawyers from getting at you.
That wasn't the way it had been put. Barbara was supposed to be under protection from the gunman's friends. Actually, the district attorney, under orders from Boss Ringler, was hiding her from Kane. Ringler, trying to break Kane's power, needed Barbara's testimony or would need it when the trial came up in order to do something to Kane. Exactly what this something was, Barbara didn't know.
She only knew that she'd been cut off from the world in this crazy hotel room where there wasn't even an air-conditioner, and she was getting pretty sick of it. There was a phony name on the register and her meals were brought to the door, which was locked from the outside. Otherwise she'd been pretty much ignored.
Endless hours in all this heat. What a nightmare. Barbara, these injustices going around and around in her mind, hadn't been able to get any real sleep. She was dozing now, the hot, stale air heavy in her lungs, dozing and thinking that a girl alone in a city without any close friends could get into positions of great disadvantage.
And she was afraid. But she didn't quite know what she was afraid of. She'd committed no crime, and she couldn't conceive of a sinister gunman stalking her in order to silence her tongue. That was too ridiculous.
But she was confused and bewildered; and so, while things stayed as they were, she'd found the easiest course was to lie there and suffer, to wait and see what was going to happen, to lie there and hope to heaven the heat broke.
That was the situation when she was suddenly hurled into a nightmare.
It began with a sound at the window and then a hand clapped cruelly over her mouth. Then her head was twisted to the side, and there seemed to be an attempt to smother her with the pillow she'd been resting on.
She began to fight but the weight of bodies there were at least two of them was upon her. Strong arms held her helpless. She squirmed and fought, trying to bite the hand that gagged her so she could scream. It was useless.
Then something was jerked over her head like a sack; the pillowcase from the other pillow, she realized vaguely. They were using it as a blindfold.
Now pure terror ripped at her mind. Had the gunman's friend's found her? Was she going to be murdered?
Then her mouth was jerked open and part of the pillow case was pushed into it, jammed in tight by a finger that kepi shoving it in until her mouth was full of it. Then the rest of the pillow case was wrapped around her head, leaving hardly enough room to breathe. She got her hands loose and struck out, trying to hit one of them, but they put a stop to that in a hurry by taking something else, probably a necktie, and binding her wrists together behind her back.
With all this done, they let up. The pressure on her released, Barbara tried to rise from the bed. But she was slammed back hard twice after which she lay there, whimpering into her gag, hoping to God she wasn't going to be killed.
She had only her ears to tell her what was going on now, but she couldn't hear too well because of the pillow case wrapped around them. But she was able to hear somebody coming in the window and thought there were at least three of them no, four. She was sure there were four because two had been manhandling her in the beginning and then, when they got her tied up like an animal, she heard two more come in the window.
God, she moaned soundlessly. Did it take four men to kill one helpless, naked girl? But maybe they didn't intend to kill her. Maybe they planned to do something else.
This fear dawned as a certainty when she felt her ankles gripped from both sides and fought against the pressure that pulled her legs apart. She kicked and fought desperately, but she might as well have saved her strength. They had her. They had her good. There was nothing she could do but he there and take it.
She waited, the tendons at her thighs hurting from the strain put on them. Then her whole body jerked in outrage at what one of them did next. There was low laughter at her unconscious reaction.
The animals! The dirty, filthy degenerates! Doing a thing like that to a girl. If they were going to rape her, okay. There was nothing she could do about it. And if they weren't brutal it would work out all right. She was a fairly big girl nothing fragile about her, and taking on four rapists wouldn't kill her. It could wear her down plenty, but it wouldn't kill her as long as they played fair.
But doing that to a girl! What the louse was doing! Only a degenerate would think of it. They had her down, and if they wanted to take her like men, let them go ahead. But God! To have to lie there and-
Barbara tried to sit up. She was knocked back down again. She twisted, her body arced over her bound wrists and her belly tightened and heaved in reaction to the abuse that one of her invisible tormentors had devised. There was muffled laughter, snickering, in the room hidden demons out of hell amusing themselves by watching her struggles.
She fought against the shame and embarrassment of the spectacle she must had presented. Fought it because it didn't make any difference. Why should she feel ashamed in front of animals like these?
But Barbara's tormentor knew what he was doing. He was good. He'd had practice. He had evidently paid some hustler to hold still for him at some time.
Oh God! He brought her to the goal of the manipulation swiftly, and she fought the impulse to come up and meet him there on the crest of it; fought hard; but her body responded automatically and there was enough cooperation on her part to make the snickering come louder.
He stopped and Barbara collapsed, cursing them against the gag that filled her mouth.
She was no longer afraid, now. The fear had been engulfed by the rage that this indignity generated within her. The hell with them. If they were going to kill her, okay. Why didn't they go ahead with it?
With hardly any rest after the devilish attack, she was suddenly pulled to her feet. She was weak from her normal, healthy body pouring its strength into the forced delight of what had occurred, and this was reflected in the reeling, almost drunken manner in which she staggered across the room.
They were laughing. They were having a hell of a time. They were here and there and everywhere in this new game of blind man's buff. They kept steering her erratically around the room getting great pleasure from her naked clumsiness.
Then one of them applied a more vicious form of amusement. A quick, accurate thrust, and her surprised body arced forward, her trapped hands clawed downward in desperation as her now free legs lunged forward trying to escape. But he followed her followed there behind her while they laughed.
Then she heard the first clear words any of them had uttered; a muffled, jeering voice:
"Wow. She climbed right up the damn wall ... "
They hauled her back to the bed now and it took a new turn. The business. The real thing. They'd had their fun, and now they were taking what they came after.
The first one was heavy and his breath was in her face. After he abused her he cursed her through the pillow case because it was over so quickly. As if that had been her fault.
The second was different. Her gagged mouth was pushed into the pillow this time with hard hands gripping her ankles to keep her from blocking him. He rolled off with a gasp of exhaustion.
The third she was hardly conscious of. They'd pulled her back down the bed her head had banged against the wall while the second one took her and left her on her belly while the third one got his kicks.
Then she was turned over, and it was as though a wet, stinking mountain had been laid on top of her. She could smell the stink of his body and the rottenness of his breath. She heard the laughter of the others while this fourth rapist made himself one with her.
And it was over.
God! It was over and she was still alive.
No, not quite over. One of the earlier ones had gotten his vitality back and had a new idea. She was hurled viciously over on her belly again. This time they had to hold her, and it took all three of them to do it. She screamed soundlessly into the gag while this final indignity was perpetrated on her body. Before it was over, she was chewing in panic on the gag; slavering into it as she went through this new, specialized form of hell.
When it was over, she lay still, whimpering in her throat. Would they stop now? Would they please stop now? Had she not furnished them with enough pleasure and amusement? Had she not been a good girl and submitted meekly to all their demands?
Thus did she reflect a temporarily broken spirit as she prayed that it had really ended.
And it had. They'd gotten what they'd come for, gotten it in full, delightful measure and now it was time to go. And, in weird contrast, they turned human enough to show her a little consideration. They did not leave her gagged and helpless. The last one to leave freed her wrists so that she could remove the pillowcase gag herself.
She did not move. She remained where she was, motionless, in that last, lewd position, her arms still crossed over her back, for what seemed an age. Then she fell sideways, off her knees and face which had been the two points of contact of her previous position. She pulled her knees higher, hard against her breasts, and sobbed in defeat as she pawed at the pillowcase.
But there was sudden, renewed activity in the room. The door had opened, and Barbara cringed, awaiting a new attack; for a continuation of the abuse she'd grown almost used to. But then fumbling hands untied the pillowcase and pulled the gag from her mouth.
"Barbara-baby! For God's sake! What happened?"
It was Barney Williams from the club. There were two other men with him, but they were only faces in the background as Barbara reached for Barney and he took her in his arms. She knew him only casually as Vince Kane's right-hand man, but now he was an angel of salvation.
He'd steadied sharply since his first outburst. His eyes were cold and hard as he held her, raising one hand to motion toward the window. The two men came out of their trance and vanished through the window into the warehouse.
"What happened, Barbara?"
"I was dozing. They grabbed me." She opened her eyes. "What are you doing here?"
"I've been hunting for you. I got a lead half an hour ago."
"I'm so glad. It was horrible."
"I've got a writ. I'm taking you out of here."
Back on Archer Street, the four rapists showed native caution by going behind the tavern to relive their experience.
"God!" Gooch said. "I feel like I come out of a hot shower. The sweat's running down my legs."
"What a night to have a broad," Frenchy chuckled.
"It was worth it, though," Lew wheezed. The sweat poured off his face, and his lungs pumped like bellows. His eyes glowed in the light of the match he held to a cigarette.
"Me," Gooch laughed, "I was so damned sweaty I almost slid off the broad."
"You were pretty close from what I could see," Frenchy smirked.
Gooch laughed as he looked at Frenchy. "That idea you got at first while we held her down. She liked it. You could see she liked it."
Lew's fat jowls quivered. "And when she went into her dance. I thought she was gonna go right up through the ceiling."
Sammy laughed. "Her legs working against nothing nothing at all. like going up a ladder with no ladder there."
"There was something there," Frenchy murmured. "There was something there all right."
"I wish I'd had me a camera," Gooch said. "A picture of how she was righl: at the top would sell for ten bucks."
"Who do you suppose the broad was?" Sammy asked.
Frenchy shrugged. "She was all right, I'll say that for her. A lot of spirit, till it finally broke."
"It didn't break. She fought right up to the end."
"Oh, no," Frenchy said softly. "It broke. I broke it."
"I never saw that before," Gooch said. "It must have hurt her like hell."
"She'll always remember."
"They say some broads like it," Lew observed. "Maybe," Gooch said doubtfully, "but it must be hell getting used to Frenchy's way."
They envied him for getting more out of the adventure than they had.
"Think she'll get out of that room now?" Sammy asked.
Frenchy laughed. "She'll go out of there like a shot. I'll bet she yelped as she ran down the hall."
"It would be great if she'd stay around a week or so."
"Forget it," Frenchy said sharply. "It's always the second trip that gets a guy into trouble. You got something for free. Now forget it."
Lew yawned. "I'm beat. I'm going home and sack out, you guys."
"I could use a little myself," Gooch said.
Gooch and Lew paired off and moved lazily up the alley. Sammy stirred restlessly. "What you gonna do, Frenchy?"
"I think I'll go over to the park and find some grass. It's too damned hot to go inside."
"Me too. I'll go with you."
"Won't your old lady holler?"
"The devil with her," Sammy said contemptuously. "She can have that stinking room. All she does is snore anyhow."
Frenchy sighed and yawned. They moved lazily up to Lincoln Street and then went daringly past the hotel in which they'd just finished committing rape and violence. They grinned at each other.
"Want to go in and ask if they got any natural blondes?" Sammy asked.
Frenchy laughed. "Natural blondes? You can't hardly find that kind any more."
Sammy laughed also. "But when you do, you really got yourself something."
They walked on past the Park Hotel and were soon stretched on the comparatively tool grass in Belmore Park, the shabby little oasis that broke the monotony of brick and cement on the lower east side.
Frenchy sighed. "I feel good. I feel damned good."
"Me too," Sammy said.
Soon they were asleep, unaware that their lives had reached a turning point; unaware that on this hottest night of the year they had opened a terrible Pandora's box and the furies were already pouring out...
CHAPTER THREE
The story broke that morning. A rather clumsy beginning columnist for the Morning Telegram reported it this way:
MYSTERY WITNESS RAPED WHILE UNDER PROTECTION OF D. A. Blonde dancer, witness in Explosive Kane Shooting Case, Attacked in Park Hotel Room
A startling new development further complicated the case that is purported to be a showdown between Art Ringler, political boss of the lower east side, and Vince Kane, alleged controller of various rackets in that area, when Barbara Ames, a stunning blonde dancer in Kane's Star Dust Club was brutally raped last night.
Thus, new complications were added to an already complicated picture.
Barbara Ames, twenty-six, a dancer in the chorus at the ornate club, was the sole witness to a purported shooting that allegedly took place in Kane's office last Saturday night. Kane was painfully but superficially wounded, his life possibly saved by the presence of Miss Ames on the scene. She stated that she saw a black-clad gunman running from Kane's office and that he fired once in her direction as he fled from the club.
Lieutenant John Egan of the detective squad was also on the premises at the time and came in response to Miss Ames' screams.
Kane deprecated the incident and, it is maintained by the office of District Attorney Colin Avery, he would not have reported it if the situation hadn't gotten out of his control.
However, Avery, who it is claimed sees eye to eye with Boss Ringler on many lower east side matters, insisted on making an investigation. He claims the shooting was a result of trouble in the ranks of numbers operators he says Kane controls; and he sees in the investigation, it is believed, an opportunity to break into and possibly smash the lucrative numbers racket in the lower east side area.
Stating that it was for her own safety, District Attorney Avery had Miss Ames taken into custody as a material witness and hidden in a hotel room. He made no statement on the measure but the implication is that Kane himself is a threat to Miss Ames' safety because of his desire to quash the whole incident.
When Miss Ames was spirited away by the district attorney's men, Kane demanded to know where she had been hidden. He instigated a search and sought a writ releasing her. He claimed that as Miss Ames' employer, he was responsible for her safety.
After much effort, Kane learned of Miss Ames' whereabouts and sent an assistant, Barney Williams, to effect her release on a writ he finally obtained from Judge Henry Davis.
At this point, fantastic timing came into play in that Williams entered the Park Hotel and gained entrance to Miss Ames' room scant minutes after she had been brutally raped by an attacker or attackers who entered and left by an open, unguarded window giving into a warehouse next door. Miss Ames, approached and blindfolded in her sleep, was sure there was more than one man in the room. She believes there were four, but would be unable to identify any of them.
Many questions in the strange case remain unanswered. Why, if Miss Ames was such an important witness, was she placed in such an easily accessible room? Avery frankly attributes this to sloppy work on the part of subordinates and promises an investigation. Also, why, with an easy escape route offered her, did Miss Ames remain in the room? It was hot, uncomfortable, and not air-conditioned. Miss Ames said that fear, confusion, and uncertainty kept her there.
Meanwhile, charges and countercharges fly thick and fast. Bops Ringler implied that Kane himself would not be above instigating the vicious attack in order to frighten Miss Ames and persuade her that testifying would be dangerous, and identifying the mysterious gunman even more so.
Kane, in turn, accuses District Attorney Avery of being Boss Ringler's captive stooge and claims that Ringler's sole motive is to divert attention from the city's flourishing vice traffic which Kane claims is the main source of Ringler's hidden income.
A strange accusation from Kane, some observers feel, as Kane, it has often been alleged, is the kingpin of the numbers racket, a source of vast income in itself ...
Vince Kane threw the newspaper on the floor beside his desk in his office at the Star Dust Club. He was a big, healthy man and had already recovered from the superficial wound he'd received from his would-be-killer. A handsome man, Barney Williams conceded, but his manner showed some rough edges revealed marks of the hard, tough road he'd taken to the top. A meticulous dresser but a shade too flashy too carefully perfect.
"What do you think?" Barney asked.
"The hell with them."
"Avery is arranging a grand jury investigation into the shooting."
"The hell with that, too."
"A grand jury can be rough."
"I think they'll back down. This rape. It was a hell of a blunder. Avery was never very smart."
"That's for sure. Otherwise, Ringler couldn't control him."
Barney Williams knew Vince Kane better than any other man alive. He knew Vince's mercurial character; his mixture of soft sentimentality and rock-like cruelty.
"See that the girl gets a couple of grand," Kane said. "She earned it."
Barney considered this. It was like Vince. Everything had a price. There was nothing that couldn't be settled for dollars and cents.
That was true, of course, in the lawless city gambling world that Vince controlled. And Vince would never understand that this world had boundaries; that beyond it there lived people with sensibilities above the money level: girls like Barbara Ames.
"I'll take care of it," Barney said.
One thing, he realized, was much in Vince Kane's favor. He was a gambler, yes, but he hated .he filthier areas of vice and dope and the degradations that went with them. Therefore, in his own book, he was a clean and upstanding citizen beside Art Ringler.
Thus, ironically, his crusade against Ringler had some merit.
Kane waved his hand. "Take care of the girl. I'll leave it up to you."
There was so much Kane left up to Barney. In fact it had been said by those envious of Kane's success that Barney Williams was responsible for a great deal of it.
"...That Barney Williams he's smart. And still he doesn't realize how Vince Kane picks hi? brains ... "
The office door opened, and Barbara Ames entered. Kane was on his feet instantly, his impulsive personality carrying him forward.
"Honey! That was a hell of a thing! Did you get some rest? Do you feel better?"
He led the uncertain Barbara to a chair and sat her down. She smiled.
"I feel much better now."
"We're going to get those rats! We're going to trace them straight to Art Ringler. We'll crucify him."
Barney Williams raised an eyebrow. Vince was talking too much. He was bewildering the girl. She didn't know or care anything about Ringler.
"It was a frightening experience," Barbara said.
"But you're okay now."
"I think so."
"And it's all over. You're safe, baby. We'll see to that. Barney here's going to take care of you." Kane patted her warmly on the shoulder.
"You're very kind," Barbara smiled.
"If it was up to me I'd send you to Florida, or California, somewhere you could get a change of scenery and forget. But you've got to stay in town a while until this thing cools down. You'll be covered, though. You'll be covered like a blanket."
"Thank you. You're very good to me."
Barney Williams studied Barbara. He'd known her around the club, but not intimately; not to the same extent that he knew the other girls in the permanent chorus. Not too much of a lady's man himself, he was inclined to hold all of them at arm's length. But he liked Barbara nonetheless. And the change in her interested him.
Before the shooting, she's been what you might call a hip chick. Even a little hard perhaps. Not more than a year in the entertainment game, she'd quickly assumed the armor of cynical realism that girls needed in that business to fend off the wolves.
But now that had changed at least temporarily. Barbara had reverted to the small-town girl she'd probably been when she came east to conquer the big time.
Nothing like getting raped to put the fear of God into a girl, Barney thought.
Kane, with his characteristic nervous energy, had pulled a straight chair up in front of Barbara and sat facing her with their knees almost touching.
He took his eternal unlit cigar from his mouth and said, "Now look, honey the picture's cleared a little for you, hasn't it?"
"Yes. It's cleared a little."
"All right. I want you to think. I want you to put your mind on it and see if you can't give us something to work on. I want to get those rats. I want to take care of them. Can't you remember anything you heard that might help us?"
Barbara shook her head. "They didn't talk much. They were very quiet about it."
"Probably afraid someone would hear."
"I guess so. I only heard actual words once, but I'd never be able to identify the voice."
"Was there anything you felt? A ring on a hand? A-"
"One of them was very fat." Vince Kane jerked his head toward Barney. "Make a note of that. Anything else, honey?"
"I think one of them did have a ring. But I don't know on which hand."
"You're pretty sure there were four of them?"
"I'm almost positive. While two were holding me, I heard two more climb in the window. It was the same when they left.
Vince pondered for a while as though trying to think of more questions. Then he got quickly to his feet. "All right, honey. Take it easy, rest your mind." His positive manner instilled confidence in people, and his smile was warm and reassuring. "Take a breather in the powder room, honey, but don't go 'way. I want to talk to Barney a few minutes. Then he'll take you home."
"I'm all right now," Barbara said uncertainly. "I'm able to work."
"Nix. You take it easy for a while. Don't worry, you're not going off salary."
He smiled brilliantly as he took Barbara by the arm and led her to the door. But when he turned back he was scowling deeply. "Those dirty cruds," he muttered.
Barney, a slim, scholarly looking man in his early thirties, regarded Vince pensively. "The thing is really getting to you, isn't it?"
"Why the hell wouldn't it?" Kane flared. "If there's anything I hate it's a sick toad that jumps women. She's one of my girls can't you get that through your head?"
"Sure," Barney said. He knew Vince's reaction was genuine. Vince did hate rapists and degenerates. But he was also keenly aware of the advantage the incident gave him in the public eye; the adverse reaction against Ringler and Avery.
"Exactly how do you think we stand in this deal?" Barney asked.
His scowl intense and quick, Kane dropped down behind his desk and threw a leg over the arm of his chair.
"Ringler blew it. He gets nothing out of this. With Jack Farmer out of the country "
"I still don't see how Jack could pull a gun stunt like that."
Vince waved an impatient hand. "Hell he's hotheaded, that's all. Got sore when I gave Inky Dolan his territory."
"You never told me why you did that."
"Jack began ringing relatives in on me. You get relatives working together on numbers, you got trouble. It never fails. So I warn the creep but he doesn't drop them. So I turned the territory over to Inky Dolan."
"You weren't afraid Jack would run to Ringler."
"Hell no. He's a pretty decent guy."
"He tried to kill you."
Kane treated that with a negligent wave of his hand. "Christ no. When he came back he was in tears. I gave him a grand and sent him to Vegas and that's that. Avery'll never be able to touch him."
Barney Williams pondered one of the strange paradoxes in Kane. He could be ruthless in dealing with anyone who threatened the efficiency of his operation and then casually forgive a hothead who tried to kill him.
Vince, still scowling, bit down hard on his unlit cigar. "I've got a tough job for you, Barney three jobs but there's no one else I'd turn any of them over to. First, I want that girl protected. I want you to cover her, stick with her until this whole thing blows over. No telling what wild ideas Ringler may come up with. We got the writ, and they can't take her again; but they might think of something else."
"Okay."
"Two and this is damned important I want you to get those creeps. Spend what you have to. Hire whoever you need. But get them. Nobody rapes one of my girls."
Barney, never one to be rushed, thought that over carefully. "And when I do?"
"Just let me know. Give me the word. I'll take it from there."
Barney frowned. "Vince, can I give you a word of warning."
"Talk up."
"Nothing specific. You've got a right to be bugged about one of your girls getting raped. But be careful. If I locate the four jokers ... "
"If! You locate them, get it?"
"When I locate them, don't do anything to lay yourself open. Take it easy."
"Don't worry. We've got Ringler on the run but good. We're on top of him."
"Okay, Vince. You said there were three things."
"Right. I want you to go to work on Ringler's joints. I've had enough of that crumb. T'm a live-and-let-live guy even with a rat like Ringler, but he pushed and now I'm going to clean that weasel out."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Catalogue his whole damned vice ring-the works. The call houses, the stag-show joints, the can houses. Spot them and label them. Get names and addresses everything you can. And keep me posted on how it goes."
"I'll do my damnedest, but it looks like I'll be a busy guy for a while."
"Do your best. I won't bug you. Just keep me posted on important points."
"Right."
Vince Kane threw his cigar away, selected another, and snatched up some papers from his desk. Then, just as suddenly, he put them down and turned his narrowed eyes on Barney Williams.
"Barney you know something?"
"What's that, Vince?"
"I'm a fairly big man in this town. I know a lot of people. I've got a lot of friends. But you're the only joe in this whole world that I'd trust with everything I've got."
It was one of those rare moments between two men who don't communicate very well in matters concerning or even bordering on sentiment. A rare moment but an important one.
"Thanks, Vince."
"For nothing," Kane said brusquely. "Now take that kid home. She must be worn out ... "
Barney Williams looked around the neat, one-room kitchenette and said, "Will you feel safe here?
You won't be afraid will you?"
"Of course not," Barbara answered. "This is my home, what there is of it. It's not like a strange hotel room."
"Vince said to stick close to you, to cover you," he said with a faint smile.
"But there's nothing to be afraid of, now."
"Actually, there isn't, but that might not be much comfort when you're alone in the middle of the night and you think you hear noises at the door."
"There's the telephone."
"Right." Barney walked over and picked the instrument up and hefted it as though judging how effective a weapon it would be against a rapist. He put it down and took out his pen and wrote a number on the desk pad.
"That's me," he said. "It dials easy and it's right there in front of your nose. Don't be afraid to call it even if you just get lonesome and want somebody to talk to."
"That's very sweet of you."
"It's very sweet of Vince. He's the man who calls the shots."
"Don't downgrade yourself."
"I'm not," he said pleasantly as he strolled to the door. He tested the chain and didn't seem to think much of it. "I'll have a heavy bolt put on there this afternoon. And you won't need a chain. You just don't open the door to anybody who hasn't got my voice. And I'll always phone ahead."
"T don't think all that will really be necessary."
"Maybe not, but don't make it rough for us. Cooperate. Otherwise, I'll have trouble with Vince." He paused and turned to her and smiled. "Okay?"
"Okay, Barney."
"It won't be long."
"Don't get me wrong. I'm flattered. I'm going to enjoy having you watch over me."
"Fine. We'll start now. How about making a pot of coffee?"
"Right away. Do you like it strong?"
"I like everything strong. That's from being around Vince Kane."
"As I said please stop downgrading yourself."
Barbara went to the kitchenette nook and Barney Williams strolled to the window. He looked out into the street and wondered what Art Ringler was doing at that moment. Would he take it lying down...?
Art Ringler had no intention of taking it lying down. At that moment, he was closeted in a private office of the 37th Precinct Non-partisan Headquarters, snorting through bulbous lips at District Attorney Colin Avery. Ringler was a type-cast politician of the old school. Big, bluff, hearty, with a built-in smile that instantly projected to the man in the street.
But in private, his face changed. The smile vanished and his mouth twisted into a cruel gash.
Avery, a delicate, aristocratic-looking man. loathed Ringler with an intensity that only a person with sensitivity could feel. But he didn't let it show. He didn't dare. Ringler overpowered him and frightened him, and he owed his own position to the lower east side boss.
"I'm damned if I'll close down a thing!" Ringler bellowed. "That louse doesn't scare me. I'll crush him."
"I was only suggesting a little caution," Avery said. "Just for the time being, until we're able to measure things and see which way the wind blows."
"It's blowing in my direction, and all I can smell is that snake Kane, with the greasy kid stuff on his hair. Who the hell's side are you on, anyway?"
"Your side, of course."
"Well, remember that's the side the butter's on, friend. And there's no butter for you anywhere else."
"I'm aware of that. You're the strongest figure on the local political scene today, Art."
"And you know why? Because I got the votes. It's as simple as that. I got the organization, and I got the votes. And I'll crucify Kane in the end. You watch."
"I don't doubt that you will."
"You know what we gotta do? We gotta find the jerks that raped that blonde broad. They gotta be found. It's important."
"The girl was blindfolded."
"I don't care if she was trussed up like a pig and hung from the ceiling. I want those guys."
"What's your plan if you find them?"
Ringler's small eyes narrowed as he glared at Avery. "You got it wrong, friend. You should ask what's my plan when you find them. All right, I'll tell you. When I get my hooks on them they're going to swear Vince Kane hired them to rape his own broad. That'll put him where I want him. It'll get him into court, and once I get him in front of the right judge, I tell you I'll crucify him."
"It sounds like a good idea."
"All right, get on it. Locate the creeps."
Emitting a final snort, Art Ringler strode out of the private room. Outside, his coterie awaited and fell in behind him. Ringler never moved without a palace guard fanning out behind him like a human train. This was the way the news cameramen always caught him. The big smile; the long stride; a public servant going briskly about the people's business...
CHAPTER FOUR
"God," Lew muttered. "An important witness for the D.A. hiding out in a hotel. And we have to go in and tumble her."
Frenchy turned a critical eye on Sammy as he delicately pared a fingernail "You sure can pick em. kid."
"Now wait a minute. You guys were in on it too. How come I take the rap? I didn't know any more about her than you did."
"Maybe you should have found out."
Gooch picked at one of his pimples and said, "What the devil is bugging you guys? You'd think we'd left a card or something. The broad had a pillowcase over her head. She didn't see any one of us." He paused and turned a suspicious eye on Frenchy. "At least, you said she didn't. You were the first one in."
"She didn't see me."
"Okay, then what's the problem?"
They'd promoted the price of a few beers and were huddled at one of the tables in the corner tavern. Gutsey Jake, the proprietor, eyed them sourly from behind the bar. He didn't like them, but his dislike was more negative than positive. They'd been around forever and they were harmless like a mild itch that couldn't be gotten rid of so Gutsey had learned to live with them.
"Hey, Jake, four more beers," Frenchy called out. And Jake reminded them of their status by drawing the beers and leaving them on the bar. The jerks could do their own carrying.
Then he forgot the scaly four as a newcomer entered the tavern. Not a newcomer exactly. A small, rat-like man who blended in well with the woodwork but was far too important to be ignored. His name was Bates just Bates, nothing more and he was political.
Bates was out of the D.A.'s office, or so it was claimed. Nobody could say for sure. Others claimed he worked for Ringler himself. That of course didn't exclude him from the D.A's office because clear dividing lines in this area had never been defined.
Gutsey Jake knew him as the man to see when you wanted to put on a show. He'd put on a few from time to time when there was enough interest among his customers to justify a ten-dollar tab for a couple of hours in the basement. That was when you got in touch with Bates. He listened, said practically nothing except how much the uptown cut would be, and you took it or left it alone.
If you took it you laid the cash in Bates' hand, and he walked out. Then on the night designated, some broads and a couple of rock-faced goons showed up, and they all went down in the basement.
Of course, broads were easy to get. They wandered in and out all the time. But what you got extra from Bates was no trouble. That was what Bates sold that was valuable. No trouble. But try and move with talent you picked off the street and there'd be cops crawling out from between the bricks before a single broad got her pants down.
Gutsey Jake didn't care for shows, though. They made him uneasy. He had a thing about watching a doll strip and get dirty. While he'd watch, the broad's face would always change and damned if he wouldn't see his sister standing there with that goofy half-witted look on her face. She was dead now, bless her, but she'd had a thing about not knowing when her pants were on or off and not caring much, and it had done something to Gutsey something that had to do with shame and he'd never really gotten over it.
So the hell with the broads. He made a good living with booze and peddling a few numbers for Vince Kane. Nice, clean operations.
But here was Bates when nothing had been ordered, so Jake forgot his four itches and their miserable beers and was waiting in front of Bates when he climbed on a stool.
Bates' stiff lips moved and words came out. "How's it going, Jake?"
Jake mopped the bar industriously. "A little slow, Mr. Bates, a little slow. But what the hell. You can't have them knocking the door down every day."
"You need a show, maybe."
Things must be bad for Ringler, Jake thought. Real tough if they were out peddling it. "I've been thinking about one," Jake said heartily. "I sure have. But the dough's kind of thin around here just now. Maybe it'll thicken up. I'll keep an eye out."
Bates always drank a small glass of seltzer water that he paid a dollar for. This was his trade mark; so much a part of him that Jake brought it automatically and was now folding Bates' dollar in nervous fingers.
Bates sipped his seltzer and seemed to be tasting it for quality. But he wasn't. There was something else on his mind, as evidenced by his next remark.
"That thing down the block," he said. "In the Park Hotel."
"You mean ? "
Bates nodded That was exactly what he meant. "Nasty stuff. Very nasty."
"It certainly was, Mr. Bates." Jake picked up the gist of it and kept talking. "Uh-huh. You ain't kidding, Mr. Bates. Real nasty. It's got all the neighborhood folks all upset."
Bates seemed to Jake to be the last guy on earth to worry about a broad getting it in a hotel room, but he wasn't going to question it.
"We think it important that the perpetrators of the horror be apprehended and punished."
"That's right, Mr. Bates," Jake assured him. "I go along with that. I go along a hundred per cent."
"What have you got for me on it?"
"Me? I ain't got nothing. Nothing at all."
"Now Jake. That doesn't sound right. It doesn't sound right at all. You run the neighborhood tavern. People come in. People get drunk. People talk."
"Nobody's said a word. I think they're all a little ashamed of it, Mr. Bates. I honestly do."
"I see."
"That's it. Come to think of it, everybody's been a little shamefaced lately."
"Nevertheless, something must be done. The guilty must not go unpunished." Bates leaned forward. "In fact, they feel so strongly about this uptown that there will be a sizable reward for anyone who comes forward with vital leads."
"You can count on me, Mr. Bates. If I hear anything, I'll be right on the phone."
Bates finished his seltzer and allowed his eyes to wander here and there around the empty tavern. They were very sharp eyes. When they came to the only occupied table, they seemed to be counting the pimples on Gooch's face, pausing to note the cleanliness of Frenchy's fingernails, pondering the danger of heart attack to one as fat as Lew.
Then Bates got off his stool and left without a good-bye.
Jake washed the seltzer glass and felt a little less uncomfortable. Funny that a man like Bates would be following up on an ordinary gang job. They happened every day. Only a month ago a gang of punks snatched a broad in the park and worked her over in the bushes with people going by on the walk not fifty feet away. And nobody seemed to give a damn except maybe the broad.
Anyhow, Bates hadn't been promoting stags and that was a blessing ... Stags.
By sheer chance, that was what Sammy was just bringing up at the table in the corner. His mind having been turned toward sex by events of recent date, it was conditioned to go back to other pleasant memories of a like nature.
"I had a hell of a time raising the dough, but I got it and went down in the basement like they said to, and pretty soon the broad came out and she was stark naked. Then another one came out, and they asked for a guy from the audience."
"Did they get him?" Gooch asked.
"Uh-huh."
Frenchy laughed softly. "They got Sammy."
"Like hell! Me go up there and get it done in front of other guys?"
"You did all right in the Park Hotel."
"That was different. It was just you guys."
"I saw a stag down there a couple of years ago," Lew grunted. "A couple of Lesbo broads that had a grudge. They fought it out right there in front of all the guys. No holds barred. The one that got licked well, she got it afterward."
"Must have been rough," Gooch said. He spoke with casual boredom. He could not under any circumstances evince interest. None of them could. They could only hope that Lew would go on. He did.
"A crazy deal," he said, being careful to keep his voice casual. "A real fight. Not an act. On the level. A big redhead and a brunette."
"A redhead can always lick a brunette," Sammy said.
"That's what you think," Lew bristled. "They came out dressed in sweaters and slacks, and it was just like in a fight ring except there was no ref or handlers. Just some guys standing around to see to it the customers didn't join in."
"What's good about a couple of broads with clothes on?" Frenchy asked. "You don't pay twenty bucks for that."
"Who said their clothes stayed on? First thing, the brunette knocked the redhead down with a straight right to the puss. Then she jumped on her, and when she got up the redhead didn't have her slacks on. Only the sweater. The brunette lost her pants a little while later, and the redhead got in some good licks when she pulled the brunette's sweater up over her head. She had the brunette doing tricks until she got the sweater off."
Frenchy's reaction was the most pronounced. A quick catch in his soft laugh. "Like our blonde climbing the wall?"
"Uh-huh. But not gagged. Bouncing around stiff-legged and bellowing like a cow."
Sammy shook his head with the air of a bored connoisseur of sex and all its aspects. "Those Lesbo broads. They're really bugged."
"The redhead finally caught it though. She-"
"How?" Frenchy asked delicately.
"Every way, I bet." Gooch sneered.
"The brunette got her down after she was groggy and sat on her, and that's when the party got started. After the redhead got too tired to bellow any more, the brunette let her up and made her crawl clear across the basement and then work for the brunette."
Lew stopped. He realized suddenly that he'd been talking too loud. In some strange way, the silence in the tavern changed context. It seemed now to be a listening silence.
The four of them turned their heads in unison and saw a newcomer at the bar. Not the scrummy little character Jake had been talking to before. A different guy, with a thin face and good clothes and an uptown look.
He was staring at the table and so was Jake, with a hell of a scowl on his puss. Then the thin guy turned back to the bar and said something to Jake in a low tone ...
"...The girl said there were four of them."
That was what Barney Williams said to Jake as he turned back from looking at the four characters at the table. And Jake shook his head and replied, "Oh, hell no," Mr. Williams. "Not a chance. Not them."
"You don't think so?"
"Not a chance. They're just four neighborhood cadgers that have been around for years. They started here as kids, and they'll die here as old men. They ain't got the sense or the guts to get into trouble. Rape a broad? Their speed's a sexy cartoon book and a stall in a washroom somewhere."
"Still, you never can tell "
"Oh, yes, you can. About their kind. Harmless."
"You'll keep your ears open won't you?"
"Oh, I sure will. You can depend on me. Mr. Williams. I hear anything, I'll be right on the phone..."
After Barney Williams left, Gutsey Jake wondered about several things. He wondered about all the damn interest in that hotel rape. Because he never read papers or listened to radio newscasts, he was singularly uninformed, justifying this mental laziness with the term "minding his own business."
Thus he had reason to be confused. Ringler and the D.A. after the gang fuck artists, in the person of Bates. Kane after them through this uptown hatchet-man of his, Williams, whom Jake had seen only often enough to identify.
Christ! Where did that leave him? Right in the middle, that was where. And the answer was simple. Keep his mouth shut. Don't blow his tonsils in either direction. When it was all over and somebody got dragged out by the heels, Jake would still be there handing out beer.
The other thing Jake wondered about was why he'd protected tho?e cadgers. How come he'd been so damn positive without even thinking about it? He thought about it now. Did they have the guts to climb in a window and rape a broad?
And he got the same reaction. Not a chance. So it made sense to shake the bloodhounds off. They were useless bums, and they maybe deserved to get kicked down the block once in a while, but that was all. Not to be hauled into an alley and get crippled. Fair was fair.
And Jake felt so uplifted and inspired by his humanitarian instincts that they made him generous. "You guys," he rumbled across the empty tavern. "How about four on the house?"
They stared at him in open-mouthed wonder. Gooch got up and went to the bar like one of the walking dead and came back with four fresh beers on a tray.
"Look, you guys," he said with awe in his voice. "Look what I got."
It was the first time, to their knowledge, that Gutsey Jake had ever popped for a drink...
Of the three assignments given him, Barney Williams found guarding Barbara Ames the most pleasant. Therefore it was natural that he give it more time than it actually required.
On that particular afternoon, however, it was fortunate that he did tarry longer over this duty than it required.
"I'll be quite all right, really," Barbara protested. "The fright's pretty well gone. I feel guilty, holding you here."
They were in Barbara's apartment. He'd dropped by early in the afternoon, and now it was close to five o'clock.
Barney Williams smiled. He was surprisingly handsome when he smiled, and Barbara reached out and put a quick, impulsive hand on his. "It's been very sweet of you, though."
"A very pleasant job," he said. "And by the way. Shouldn't a man know a little something about the person he's responsible for?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, other than the facts that you're very beautiful, that your name is Barbara Ames, that you dance like a dream and that you're from the Middle West, I don't know a thing about you."
She laughed, and he was struck by the musical notes that came from her slim, lovely throat. "I'm afraid you'll find it pretty dull. The name of the town is Pender's Hill, Ohio. Fifteen thousand population. A town all the young people get away from as soon as they can. I went to college in Pomona, a slightly larger town about fifty miles from Pender's Hill, so that wasn't really leaving home."
"The big city was a giant step for you, then?"
"The biggest. I majored in dramatics and took dancing and well, here I am."
Barney laughed. "It's amazing what a college education will get you."
"I could have done without some of it."
"Is there a boy back home?"
"I'm afraid that part's missing. Perhaps I should invent one."
"Give him cross eyes and buck teeth and I'll permit it."
"All right. One eye in the center of his forehead. But I believe in reciprocity, so I'm entitled to know a little about you." She'd been smiling, and now the smile almost vanished, covered by a look of puzzlement. "I've always thought it rather strange-" She stopped, fumbling for words.
"You thought what strange?"
"It's really too personal."
"Come on. No cliff-hanging. You're among friends."
A quick, unbidden thought came into his mind as he waited for her reply. A wonder. What would she look like--what did she look like stretched naked on a bed there in the room at the Park Hotel? He drove the thought away instantly as being cheap and unfair. But the image it conjured up was stubborn. It faded slowly.
"Well," Barbara said, "don't think this is any reflection on Vince Kane. I think he's wonderful, and I admire him a great deal. But you just don't seem to me to be the type who would be working for him."
"What type do you see as being right for the job?"
"A tough guy. Somebody hard. I well, Vince is in a tough, hard business, and you don't look to be a person who could go around putting the muscle on people."
His laugh was genuine, from pure amusement. "What do I appear to be good for?"
"Oh, many many things. I just feel you must be wasting yourself. What college did you go to?"
"What makes you think I went to college?"
"That's obvious."
"It is? Thank you."
"You'd make a good lawyer," Barbara said. "You're supposed to be telling me about yourself, but all I get is questions."
"I'm sorry. But I have to contradict you-about Vince. He's quite a remarkable man. I met him in college."
"In college!"
"He came there and gave a talk, and afterwards
I asked him some questions and he offered me a job when I graduated."
"What did he talk about?"
"That was ten years ago. Vince was a real dynamo then, and he hasn't really slowed down much. He talked to the graduating class about success how to meet the competition in modern-day business."
"The numbers business?"
Barney laughed. "He was a union organizer in those days."
"That's amazing. Now he runs a night club and "
"Runs a night club," Barney said quickly. "Anyhow, when I got out of college he offered me more money than anybody else, and I had faith in him; I took it."
"What was your job?"
"Well, he was always a little vague on that. First, he had me stick close to him so he could break me in. After a while I quit asking what my job would be. I guess it made itself."
"He thinks highly of you. You're very valuable to him."
"We get along pretty well together."
"What did you major in at college?"
"Journalism. Had an idea I might be able to write. I liked it. But it didn't work out that way."
"It still can. You don't have to be on a newspaper to write. Did you ever think of doing a novel?"
"I've put some ideas down now and then."
"I think you ought to get at it."
"What?"
"A novel."
"I'm afraid it's a little late for that."
"That's nonsense."
"I'm doing fine as I am."
"You mean you're making good money?"
"Yes. What else is there?"
"You don't really mean that."
Barbara didn't find out whether he did or not because the doorbell rang at that moment. She looked a little frightened. "Shall I open it?"
"Go ahead. You're not alone."
Barbara went to the door and opened it, and two men pushed their way in. They weren't disrespectful but they were firm in not waiting to be asked.
The taller one wore a neat gray suit and looked quite respectable, but there was a hardness about him and a coldness in his voice as he said, "Miss Barbara Ames?"
"Yes."
He took an official-looking paper from his pocket and brushed it in her direction, then put it into the side pocket of his jacket. "Court order, Miss Ames. We're from the District Attorney's office. You'll have to come with us."
"Oh, not again!" Barbara took an involuntary step backward and looked helplessly at Barney.
He got up from his chair and approached the door. "You boys haye any identification?"
The man looked as though he'd hoped Barney wouldn't interfere. "This is official business, mister," he said by way of discouraging him
The second man, shorter but stockier than the spokesman and looking even less friendly, stepped forward Barney ignored him. "It's some kind of business, but let's find out exactly what kind. You said you had a writ?"
The man drew it from his pocket reluctantly and extended it toward Barney. "Who are you, mister?"
Barney spoke as he scanned the paper. "I'm one up on you. I don't have to identify myself. I'm not on business."
"If you'll get your coat, Miss " the stocky man said.
"Stay where you are, Barbara," Barney told her. Then he looked coldly at the taller man. "Is Egan kidding?"
"Hey!" The shorter one blurted. "You're Vince Kane's man."
Barney ignored him, still speaking to the taller one. "This writ is signed by Oscar Hagen. Last I heard of him he was a J.P."
"It's a legal writ, mister!"
"Uh-huh. But let's play writ-writ-who's-got-the-biggest-writ." Barney took a second legal-looking document from his pocket. "Mine's signed by Judge Henry Davis Superior Court. You want to try and make yours match it?"
The man scowled. The shorter one waited grimly. He was ready for anything, but he wasn't making any decisions on his own. He was backing his partner.
The tall man was undecided. Evidently his instructions hadn't included a briefing on legal values. "Can I use your phone?"
Barney stepped back and waved an arm. "Be our guest."
The short man folded his arms and looked at the ceiling while the taller one got his number. He spoke in a low voice, but his words were audible.
"Barney Williams is here. He's still holding that Davis writ. You want us to override it?"
He listened a while and then said okay and hung up. He walked straight to the door, looking neither right nor left. "Come on," he said. "We've got another assignment."
They left without a good-bye or a backward glance, and Barney stood frowning at the door. "You've got to get out of here," he said.
Barbara watched his eyes as though trying to discern the extent of the danger. "Why, Barney? They left peacefully enough."
"Sure. It was a stab in the dark. They figured if you happened to be alone they could pressure you into going with them."
"What do they want of me?"
"It's hard to explain. This is a battle between Vince and Ringler. You realize that."
"Nobody told me directly, but "
"That's what it is, and you're an important pawn in the game. Ringler had you once, but there was a big goof. Somebody caught grade-A hell for that, and now Ringler's trying to get back his lost ground."
"Why do they want me, Barney?"
"You're the key to the whole thing. Any strategy Ringler can plan hinges on possession of the only witness to the shooting. Vince doesn't want to prosecute. He wants to act as though the whole thing didn't happen. So the only way Ringler can prove it did is to have you."
"But so far he's handled things so stupidly."
"Don't discount him. He's smart. And he's desperate. I've got to get you out of here because the next time he'll probably do things right whip his men into line and there'll be hell to pay. But he can't get you if he can't find you. And it's my job to see that he doesn't ... "
CHAPTER FIVE
After leaving Barbara's apartment, the two men drove south. The tall man was at the wheel. The short man sat beside him and kept doubling his fists.
"I'd like to get my mitts on that cocky Williams guy one of these days."
"Maybe you'll get the chance."
"What's the dope on this new thing?"
"We pick a guy up."
"Any guy?"
"Any of four guys. I've got the names."
The tall man drove the black, unmarked official car southward through the city and pulled up in front of the Corner Tavern on Archer Street. There, they found Gooch and Sammy sitting on a Sanitary District box at the curb waiting for Lew and Frenchy to show up.
The tall man got out of the car and approached the box. The short man came around the car and came in from the other direction. When they stopped moving they were covering the box at both ends. No one was going to get up and run.
"Either of you guys Samuel Perry?"
It had been so long since Sammy had heard his full name that he blinked helplessly and looked at Gooch.
"Talk up."
"That's me," Sammy said. "Okay come with us."
Sammy got up from the box. He was crouched--ready to escape.
"Police," the tall man said. Not bothered by-having to produce a writ this time, he had the full use of his hands. Sammy spun away in panic, but the short man anticipated him and was there when he turned. He pushed Sammy back into the arms of the tall man who pushed him into the seat of the car they'd driven up in. The short man got in under the wheel. Stricken, Sammy looked back through the window as the car pulled away.
Gooch stared after it, frozen. His pimples and boils fairly vibrated from terror. The cops had picked Sammy up. What the hell did that mean? He looked around wildly. He was alone, and he didn't know what to do. Where were Lew and Frenchy? Why couldn't the creeps be around when they were needed. What could he do?
There was only one thing, of course, and he set off to do it.
Find Frenchy and Lew. Tell them what had happened. Maybe together they could work something...
It was a quick silent trip to where they were taking Sammy, and he rode with terror the whole distance. Why were they doing this to him? Why didn't they go after the big hoods and crooks and leave little guys alone?
And now he was in the basement of the 37th Precinct Police Station at the lower end of Lincoln Street. There had been a couple of days of comparatively cool weather, but now the heat had come back and there was no air conditioning or ventilation of any kind in the room. It was like a furnace.
The room was all cement; rough cement walls and ceiling and a cement floor. There was a table, a chair, and a light in the room. The two men took their coats off and laid them on the table and that made three things lying there; the two jackets and a nice comfortable length of rubber hose.
The short man pushed Sammy into the chair. "What'd you say your name was, buster?"
"S-Sammy."
"You know better than that."
The tall man adjusted the light that was on a stand beside the table. It was very strong. It made Sammy's face look like a sheet of white, sweaty paste.
Sammy threw an arm up over his eyes. The short man knocked it away and jerked Sammy's face into the light, using his hair as a handle."
"What'd you say your name was, buster?"
"Samuel Perry sir."
"Never mind the sarcasm."
"All we want from you, Sammy, is a quick clean confession. How you and some other punks crawled in a window at the Park Hotel and raped a girl. We know all about it. We just want to hear you tell it."
"I didn't rape nobody!"
"Oh, you mean she held still for it?"
"No no. I didn't climb in no window I ain't that kind of a guy."
The tall man had taken over, holding Sammy's face into the light. The shorter man immediately stepped to the table and came back with the hose. He was behind Sammy behind the chair. He raised the hose and brought it down expertly on the back of Sammy's neck. At that moment, the taller man let go of Sammy's hair and stepped aside and Sammy rocketed forward. He let out a choked scream as he sprawled on the cement in front of the chair.
The two men stood there looking down at Sammy. They had changed. They were not the same neatly dressed, coldly polite officers who had rung Barbara's bell. The change had been gradual from what they'd been then to what they were now. They hadn't looked quite as well dressed, not quite as politely, impersonally cold.
When they arrived at Archer Street, the change was more apparent. There, they'd looked mussed and shabby; arrogant rather than polite; sneering in place of impersonal.
And now, having arrived in the bare, cement, basement room, the change was complete. Their hair was mussed and their shirts were dripping wet. The heat in the oven-like room had driven sweat out through even their trousers.
But the big change was in their faces; their twisted faces; their half-glazed, staring eyes.
They were now two men who could beat another man to death and enjoy it.
The short man looked at his hose with appreciation. There was almost a look of love in his eyes as he looked at the hose.
"No marks," the taller man cautioned as he pulled a hand across his face to blot up the sweat. "No marks."
Sammy came up on his knees, cowering. "Leave me alone, you guys!"
They looked at him. "The taller one said, "You and some other punks raped that broad, didn't you?"
"I didn't rape nobody!"
The tall man swooped. He got Sammy by the collar of his shirt and jerked him erect. Or at least he tried to. He didn't quite make it because the shirt ripped and Sammy went back to his hands and knees.
The man dived again and hooked his fist into Sammy's belt at the center of his back. Her jerked and the belt snapped, too, but Sammy dropped back into the chair as the belt buckle and buttons from his pants bounced across the cement.
Sammy raised his arms, cowering and whimpering. The tall man slapped them down and twisted Sammy's head up again.
"You crawled in that window and raped the hell out of that broad, didn't you?"
"No no," Sammy screamed.
The hose again slashed across the back of his neck. Again he was sent lunging forward on his face. "No no not me!"
"You, you lousy little punk!"
Rage and indignation blazed in the tall man's face. At least that was what it might have passed for to the unpracticed eye. A psychiatrist, however, might have interpreted it differently.
The short man sucked air in through his bared teeth as he came forward.
The tall man reached down and took Sammy by the now-loose seat of his pants. He lifted him, and Sammy made quick, helpless motions like a person learning to swim out of water. Then the man jerked the cloth he held in his hand, and Sammy fell forward out of his trousers. The effect was like that of a man dumping refuse out of a torn paper bag. The man kept jerking as Sammy sprawled on the floor. Sammy kicked in helpless desperation, and the trousers came away, leaving him in his torn shirt and sweat-soaked shorts.
The short man laughed, his eyes on the shorts, "Looks like our friend had a hell of a big accident."
"He'll have a hell of a bigger one. He'll damn soon get worse if he keeps on lying."
Sammy was crying now. Sobs came from his throat as he lay with his mouth against the dirty cement.
The tall man reached down and lifted him by the back of his shorts. They stretched, but the elastic was tough and it held. He lifted until Sammy hung as though over a clothes line. "Honest, you guys-" he babbled out the words as tears and sweat choked him. "Honest, you guys, I didn't rape nobody."
The short man shook his head in mock sorrow. "Boy, we made us a big mistake. He didn't crawl through no window. He wouldn't rape a broad. He's too nice a kid."
"Please, mister "
Sammy came to his hands and knees again, his shorts dropping away. Sniffling, he pawed backward reaching for them, but ineffectually, and the short man moved forward.
His eyes aglow, he stepped over Sammy, stood astride him backwards and raised the rubber hose. He brought it down hard, exactly in the center of Sammy's buttocks. Its supple length bent and curled under, like a thick, black snake.
Sammy stiffened. His eyes bulged as his mouth flew open, and a squall of agony came out. He lunged forward, crawling across the floor in panic from between the short man's braced legs.
Once clear of him, Sammy rolled over on his back and pawed at himself like a brutalized animal.
The tall man was breathing heavily. He looked at Sammy and then at the hose that dangled in the short's man's hand.
"You're pretty accurate with that thing."
The short man spoke softly. "You ain't seen nothing yet."
Sammy, the first sharp rip of agony having worn off, seemed suddenly aware of his vulnerability. He scrambled to his feet.
The short man watched him like a cat looking at a trapped mouse. He turned his eyes to grin at the tall man.
"You ain't seen nothing yet."
He turned and moved, fast and smoothly for a man of his chunky build, and was close to Sammy, The hose lashed out in a short, vicious arc across Sammy's face.
Sammy screamed. Blood spurted from his nose.
"Wait a minute," the taller man said.
The shorter one smiled reassuring. "Don't worry. Nothing broke. It won't even swell. It bleeds a while and then you wash away the blood and there's nothing."
Sammy, his eyes glazed with terror, pawed at his face. He brought his hands away, bloody, and dropped to his knees.
"Please, you guys please-"
"Shut up!" The short man snarled out the warning as though he was afraid Sammy would confess, and he didn't want that. Not yet."
"On your feet."
Sammy clambered erect, and the shorter man swung the hose again. This time, lower down.
Again there was Sammy's squall of agony and terror as he clawed at his back, arced his body grotesquely, and staggered drunkenly away from his tormentor.
The man didn't follow. He grinned at his companion who was staring, fascinated.
"Do that hard enough, you pop a guy's kidney. You can bust a kidney and not leave a mark."
"But-"
"Don't worry! I know just how hard to hit. I didn't bust anything." He grinned. "I worked a chain gang once. I never told you that, did I?"
The taller man licked his lips. "No, you never told me that."
"Those cons you got to treat rough. This is nothing--nothing at all. I had a couple die on me." Again, the evil grin. "That was when I was learning."
"Okay, kid " the taller man said.
The short man held up a restraining hand. "Hold k. Not yet. He's a tough little monkey. Has to be softened up. You won't get nothing out of him for a while."
"Sure sure I'll tell "
The short man smashed the words back into Sammy's teeth with a blow across the mouth. The blow was light, however; just hard enough to partially numb Sammy lips.
The one that followed was different. It was aimed several inches lower, the hose hitting Sammy's prominent larynx and wrapping itself around his neck.
Sammy's mouth flew open. It worked soundlessly as his eyes bulged in pure terror. He pawed at his mouth and his throat. His tongue lolled from his mouth as he sought to breath and couldn't.
The taller man stepped forward in alarm. "He'll die on us. He'll choke on his own "
"No he won't. I tell you I know what I'm doing. I just numbed him a little. He'll come around.
They stood there watching as Sammy gagged and clutched his throat.
"Looks like a fish, doesn't he?" the shorter man said. "Like a gasping fish out of water."
Sammy's head was going up and down; he nodded frantically as though trying to reassure them.
"He wants to talk," the taller man said.
"Sure he does sure he does. But we gave him his chance. Now he'll talk when we say he can." He spoke in a tense, unnatural voice.
Sammy began to cough. The coughs grew more positive and wracked his body, bending him forward as he put his hands over his bloody mouth.
The stiff, fixed grin on the shorter man's face did not change as he went to the table and opened a drawer on one side. He took out a black stick about two feet long. It looked like a police club. He winked at his companion.
Sammy, busy with his own suffering, didn't see the shorter man move in behind him. The man extended the stick just as a paroxysm of coughing bent Sammy far forward.
His shriek was instantaneous. He straightened with an agonized snap of his body. He remained that way, stiff from ankles to shoulders, while his legs strove to go forward.
His shrieks dribbled off into agonized grunts as the shorter man poked him skillfully with the electrified stick. Sammy moved forward laboriously, one stiff step after another, like a paraplegic learning to walk all over again.
"That's enough," the taller man said in a choked voice. But there was a certain authority in the tone, and the shorter man reluctantly stopped following Sammy across the floor.
"Get 'em in a corner with this damn tickler," he said, "and you can really have some fun. Once in a tank-town jail I worked in, there was a drunken broad that started sounding off an we "
The taller man didn't want to hear it. His eyes had cleared a little as he watched Sammy in his new agony.
"He's had enough. Wash him up and get some clothes on him."
The shorter man scowled. "Wait a minute. Who the hell made you boss?"
It was what the taller man wanted. He was disgusted with himself for what he'd participated in; had allowed to happen. He badly needed a chance to vindicate himself.
"I said wash the blood off."
He took a step forward, and the shorter man saw what, was in his eyes. His scowl faded, and the corner of his mouth jerked slightly.
"Don't get sore. We're a team. We work together."
"I said clean him up."
"Sure sure "
There was a washroom across a narrow cement corridor, and the shorter man took Sammy in there while his companion watched. Sammy whined and cowered but, fifteen minutes later, he was upstairs in a different room. He wore clean, gray prison-issue pants and shirt, and he was not bleeding nor was there a mark on him. Only his eyes showed the effects of what had taken place. They were still red from crying. This, however, would pass as emotional release, remorse for his crime.
This room was different. It was clean, and the walls were painted, the table was better.
The two officers had changed also. They were again two neatly dressed, quietly impersonal public servants who could be trusted with the people's business.
The shorter one pushed a form across the table to Sammy. "Sign that there at the bottom."
"What is it?"
"Nothing important, son," the man said pleasantly. "It just says that we treated you all right. That this confession you're going to give us is of your own free will that nobody beat you up or anything."
"Oh," Sammy said vaguely. "Yeah yeah the confession ... "
Sammy signed and the shorter man folded the release neatly. "Now, let's get to it. Vince Kane sent you up there to rape that girl, didn't he?"
"Who's Vince Kane."
"Now look, son "
"Oh oh, sure. Vince Kane sent us up."
"How many of you?"
"There was four of us." Sammy was eager to please, now. He didn't want to go down into the basement again. "This here Vince Kane he "
"Take it easy, take it easy. Now, we're going over it very carefully so you'll remember. We're going to see to it that you remember exactly who Vince Kane is and how you met him and what he said to you."
"Sure sure," Sammy said. "I want to remember every damn thing. Who is Vince Kane...? "
Later, lying on the bunk in the cell they gave him, Sammy put his head in his arms and cried. The rats! The crummy snakes! They'd worked hkn over, but by God he'd been tough. They hadn't beat anything out of him. They used a hose and their fists and their feet, but he'd stood there against the wall and laughed at them. Finally, they'd given up.
That was how it had been.
He doubled his fists.
That was exactly how it had been.
He beat his fists against the bunk.
It had been exactly that way.
After a while, he stopped crying and went to sleep.
Vince Kane got the news from a Morning Telegram reporter who phoned.
". . .A Samuel Perry, twenty-five, a small-time neighborhood punk. There were three others."
Vince Kane's expression of anger was brief and to the point. "Hell!" he snapped.
"Take it easy, Vince. The worst is yet to come."
"Give it to me straight, Louie."
Vince Kane had known Louie Barns for a long time. Louie, a veteran police reporter, liked nice things and places, the kind of favors an important guy like Vince could extend. Vince, in turn, found a pipeline, to the inside extremely valuable. He liked important news first, and Louie was the man who could give it to him.
So the friendship was warm and solid.
"They got a confession from the punk."
"What's so rough about that?"
"They wrote it. It says you hired the four punks to rape your broad in order to make Avery look bad. Shame on you, Vince."
Kane wasted no more time in useless cursing. He chewed thoughtfully on his unlit cigar. "They've given it out?"
"Five minutes ago."
"Then the police will be over here to get me."
"The charge will be criminal conspiracy."
"What about the other three?"
"I gave you a boost on that. I got word of the pickup when it was made and tried to reach you. No could do, so I located Barney Williams and briefed him. He may have them stashed away by now."
"Thanks, Louie. When will the story break?"
"It'll be on the newscasts in an hour. They'd like to add that you've been taken into custody."
"I've got to get out of sight a while. If you see Barney, tell him to call me."
Louie didn't ask where. Barney would of course know that. He said, "Good luck, Vince." Then he hung up and began writing the story that would probably damn his friend Vince Kane in the eyes of the public. But what the hell. That was life. You played it straight and waited to see what would happen.
With events moving so fast, their chronology became a little blurred. Thus it was that while Sammy was in the midst of his basement-room torture, two gray clad men got out of a car near the Corner Tavern on Archer Street. They were so much like the two who had picked Sammy up that a witness might have testified they were the same men.
But they were not. They were two different men working a different boss. They approached Gooch, Frenchy and Lew, who at that moment were in confused conference at the curb, and spoke with the authority of policemen, which they were not.
"Okay-into the car."
The three unfortunates wouldn't have been there if they'd had any place else to go, or if they'd had sense enough to seek their own self-preservation by hiding out. But they weren't that smart. They were confused, frightened, and out of their depth.
So the two gray-clad men had little trouble. No resistance. They herded their quarry into the car without being asked to even show a badge.
The three huddled in silence expecting to be taken to the 37th Precinct Police Station. That was the closest temple of the law.
But the car swerved away before it got there, traveled far uptown, and they were herded into a shabby apartment in a shabby building on a shabbier street far from the corner of Archer and Lincoln. Shabby, but still far better than the Archer tenements.
"What'd you bring us here for?" Frenchy demanded, the first of the three to develop enough courage to make the inquiry.
One of the two men the one with gun in his hand grunted. "Never mind. Just shaddup and sit down and be quiet."
They sat down. The man who stayed pulled a chair to the far side of the room and sat down facing them. He lit a cigarette.
Lew gulped noisily. "Look, mister "
"Shaddup."
That was the end of all conversation.
Then, somewhat later in the sequence about the time Sammy drifted off to sleep Carter Gantry, a well-known uptown lawyer, presented himself to the desk sergeant at the 37th Precinct Police Station. He was strictly uptown, meticulously dressed and made the desk sergeant think of Ivy League, although he wasn't quite sure what Ivy League really consisted of. Regardless, Gantry was supercilious, contemptuous, and thoroughly unlikable.
"I have here," he said, "a writ. It has a Latin name you probably wouldn't understand, and it directs you to deliver something to me."
Carter Gantry tossed the writ on the desk. The sergeant picked it up, scowling. "Deliver you what, shyster."
Gantry overlooked the insult. "The body of one Samuel Perry, preferably conscious and as little damaged as possible."
The desk sergeant stared sourly at the writ. "What do you do? Sit out on the curb with a suitcase full of these things?"
The lawyer looked distastefully around the bleak, fetid room. "Please, sergeant. It's a hot day. This place smells. I want to get back into decent surroundings. So let's dispense with the pleasantries and get to the business at hand."
The desk sergeant, an Irishman named Hannigan, would have enjoyed reaching out and taking Gantry's thin throat in his fist and squeezing it for a while. But pleasures of this sort were not afforded ordinary public servants, so he picked up the phone, grunted into it a couple of times, and said, "Deliver Samuel Perry to the desk."
As he hung up, Gantry had a comment. "Hmmm. No number. A very important prisoner obviously.
"Stow it," Hannigan growled.
When his package was delivered, Gantry still wasn't satisfied. "That shirt. It appears to be your own special issue."
"What do you care? He's got his own pants."
Gantry looked at Sammy as though he were a dummy in a clothing store window. "But he didn't come in here with that shirt on. I suppose he tripped on the stairs and his own shirt was ripped to shreds while he was getting to his feet."
"You don't see any marks on him, do you?"
"I wouldn't expect to find any."
"There's this, too," Hannigan said. "Another one of them writs-like. This one says nobody touched him, and he admits it. It says all we did was shake his hand and make him welcome, and he appreciates our hospitality."
"Interesting."
"We've also got another one that says he goes around raping girls when he isn't busy doing other things."
"Hannigan. You're wasting your talent. You should be writing copy for comedians."
"All you comedians write your own copy," Hannigan said, and turned sourly back to his work ...
Outside in the street, Carter Gantry looked dubiously at the property he had just freed from goal. "How badly did they treat you, son?"
It was indicative of something that even men of his own age had been known to call Sammy, son. Sammy had wondered about it at times but he'd never translated it into anything he could cope with, so he'd grown to accept it.
"Okay," he mumbled, "Okay."
"That means, of course, that they didn't kill you." Gantry continued with his dubious inspection. "If I give you an address and find you a cab, do you think you could deliver yourself there?"
"Where do you want me to go?"
A nice, docile little clown, Gantry thought. He'd make somebody a fine witness. Probably the district attorney.
"Here is the address, here is a five dollar bill, and yonder is a cab. And remember, if you do not go to this place, your friends will have you back inside the station house in less than a twinkling. The place I'm sending you to is a haven. It is sanctuary. It is a snug port in a big storm." He paused. "Have you got the least idea what I'm talking about?"
"You want me to go to this place."
"That's the general idea. Peace, and bless you..."
And so it was that the gray-clad man in the shabby uptown apartment answered the doorbell to find Sammy standing in the hall.
"What do you want."
"A guy told me to come here."
"Okay. Don't stand there. Haul yourself inside." Sammy hauled himself inside, to be lined up with his three friends.
"Hell!" he blurted, on sight of them. "Shaddup," the man in gray said. And silence again reigned...
A short time later, Barney Williams called a certain private number and was greeted with an angry question. "Where the hell have you been?"
"Taking care of things."
"I'd say you've been goofing them up," Kane accused. "The cops have got one of those clowns, the others are probably way down their rat holes by now, and I'm hiding out to stay clear of jail."
"I don't think you ought to hide out, Vince. Why not go in and get it over with? Gantry's waiting to spring you."
"Don't tell me what to do. Tell me what the hell you've been doing."
"One, I picked up the three clowns and I've got them covered in the Maple Street place. Two, I sent Gantry in to haul the fourth clown out, and he's on Maple Street with the others. And three, why don't you do down to the precinct and give yourself up so Gantry can spring you and get to his usual late-afternoon cocktail party?"
There was a long pause while Kane reevaluated and Barney Williams chewed a toothpick. And when Kane spoke it was neither to apologize for ripping at
Barney or to compliment him on his activities.
"I guess the thing to do," he said, "is to go down to the precinct and get it over with."
"Good idea."
"Gantry's waiting?"
"He's waiting."
"We're in a hell of a mess."
"Maybe. Maybe not."
"You sound damned optimistic."
"No, but I'm not necessarily pessimistic. It's just that the jobs you laid out for me take on a different aspect."
"How so?"
"First, you can't afford the luxury of roughing up those four jokers. Not for a while at least. Egan's got a confession from one of them saying you were behind the rape. Your motive: Trying to make Egan look bad. So you're going to need the other three on our side."
"Sounds reasonable."
"Second, the vice roundup takes on added importance."
"It won't help the immediate present."
"It will if I get some witnesses. Ringler's squeezed you into a nutcracker. Your only out is to get him into a nutcracker of your own and see who can squeeze quickest and hardest."
"That's fairly good thinking, I guess," Vince said dubiously. "I've decided to go down and give myself up."
"You'll be out in an hour." Barney didn't voice the question in his mind He said, "In the meantime, I'll get to work on the other thing."
"Okay. I don't care how you do it. Just get results."
"Sure, Vince," Barney murmured...
After Vince hung up, Barney dialed another number and said, "Hello Barbara. How is it? You aren't too bored, are you?"
"I'm all right, Barney. How are you? I've been worried."
"Ease your mind. I'm fine. I've got a few things to do. Then I thought I might drop over for a cup of coffee if it isn't too late."
"It won't be too late no matter what time it is. Please come."
"That sounds like a genuine invitation."
"It is."
"Okay. But in the meantime don't get nervous. There won't be any snap-brim characters knocking on the door."
"I won't open it regardless."
"That's my girl. I'll be seeing you."
"I'll be waiting. And Barney "
"Yes?"
"Be careful. Please."
"I will."
He felt good leaving the booth. It was the first time in his memory that anybody had cared whether he took care of himself or not ...
CHAPTER SIX
She was a tall brunette with a stunning figure and a hauntingly beautiful face, an exceptionally big girl, almost six feet, which was the reason she'd been chosen to make five hundred dollars that night. A smaller girl in the role they'd planned would not have carried the dramatic impact.
There was only one flaw in the physical perfection of this girl: the look on her face. A sullen look; a look full of hatred and bitterness as though hatred and bitterness had been her diet for a long time and had molded itself into her otherwise flawless features.
She sat alone in a small room in a nameless place, awaiting her call to go before a nameless crowd in a larger room nearby.
The walls of the room she was in were thick, but she could still hear the sounds coming from the big room. She had the image of that room in her mind: a square, dark enclosure, the only light focused on the center of it where a wrestling or boxing ring had been
Si erected, complete with ropes and canvas and the stink of heavy cigar and cigarette smoke twisting and billowing in a lazy cloud against the light.
The sounds she heard were occasional roars from the crowd out there, the packed nameless faces in the darkness around the raised ring.
There were other sounds, too, from the ring itself: a quick scream of pain, a bellow of anger or a cry of triumph from one of the actors in the sickening dramas out there.
These performances were highly successful, commanding dizzy admission fees because of their elemental nature. They were not artificially staged displays of standard filth. The evil genius who had devised them had thought of something better. They were contests with the actors really antagonists competing for big cash prizes.
This was what the tall brunette was thinking about as she sat there in that tiny room sat there naked and ready to perform. The prizes, the money, that was what she filled her mind with in order to crowd out the rest.
And when she heard a particularly loud shriek of despair from the bigger room and knew why the girl had cried out what she was losing that made her yell like that the tall brunette decided five hundred dollars wasn't enough.
So, a few minutes later when the door opened, she turned her sullen eyes on the man who had come for her and said, "I'm not going on."
He jerked his cigarette from his mouth and said, "Now let's can that jazz. You're the feature act."
"That's why. I'm the feature. For a lousy five hundred bucks. I want a thousand."
"Why you chiseling witch! I'll "
"You'll do what? Have me beaten up? A lot of good that'll do you. It won't keep those wolves out there from pulling you in two when they don't get a feature."
"I ain't got that kind of dough. I didn't pull it in."
"You're a lying crook. You clipped that gang of mongrels fifty bucks a head."
He glared at her. "So you think you've got me over the barrel, huh?"
"I get my money first. I don't shoot for prizes."
He shrugged. "Okay, but no more dough after tonight. From now on you go out and scratch like the rest."
"After tonight I stay out of your lousy rings."
"And another thing. They don't like being muscled the boys uptown. This is no skin off my nose. When I account for the dough I just tell them you nudged me. They might send a guy or two to see you."
"I'll gamble on that. It's the grand or I don't go on."
The man snarled wordlessly and stalked out. He came back a few moments later and threw five one-hundred-dollar bills on the floor.
"Okay, root for 'em."
She trembled with rage. "Someday they're going to find you with a knife in your gut."
"Be in the ring in three minutes," he snarled. He went out, slamming the door.
After he left, the girl picked up the money. She couldn't take it with her. She was stark naked. And she saw the possibility of being robbed while she was out there in the ring taking her lumps. The first payment was safe. She'd gotten that earlier in the evening and slipped out and mailed it to herself at a corner mailbox.
But this five hundred was different. Finally, she pulled her chair close to the wall and stood on it. She reached a hole high in the cement and pushed the money in out of sight.
Then she got down and stood facing the door for a long moment; after which she straightened her shoulders, raised her head, and strode naked out into the big room...
A roar greeted the girl's appearance. She ignored it, keeping her eyes on the ring as she approached it. Her opponents in the contest to be staged were already in the ring, waiting for her. They grinned as she climbed through the ropes. All three of them.
They were midgets...
Back in the nameless crowd, a local executive was entertaining an important customer. The executive was an old hand at this sort of thing. He'd seen every kind of exhibition of this kind that had ever been devised.
His guest, however, was new to the stag shows. He'd come reluctantly, timidly. But after seeing a girl knock another girl senseless, strip off her clothes and tie her in a lewd position to a ring post, he'd gotten excited. Then there was that mixed tag-team match; two couples against each other; with one of the men finally getting the opposing girl in the middle of the ring and taking her while she'd strained to reach the hand of her partner while he clung to the ring rope.
She hadn't made it, much to the delight of the crowd.
These things had fired the executive's guest, and his curiosity reflected his aroused interest.
"That girl's already got her clothes off."
"Sure. This one will be a little different. I've seen it done a few times."
"The three midgets "
"It's three against one."
"Good Lord!"
"It's up to them to take her. That's why they've got a big girl."
"You mean ? "
"Wait'll you see it. It'll be something to tell the boys back home at the club."
The guest shuddered. He remained silent, but he thought how terrible it would be if anyone back home ever found out he'd come within miles of a place like this.
The brunette had climbed into the ring now. She stood alone, distainful, sullen, in one corner, while the three midgets whispered in the corner opposite.
"How can she stand there like that?" the guest marveled. "Stark naked "
"They get used to it."
"They must pay them fortunes."
"Not necessarily. It depends on how broke they are, how bad they need money."
A tall thin man in a dinner jacket and a black tie added a grotesquely festive note to the proceedings as he climbed into the ring. He held up his hands. "All right, men. The feature of our performance the high spot of the evening the contest you've all been waiting for. I don't have to tell you about it. Some of you have seen contests like it before and have probably told the others."
The crowd was getting restless. Nerves were tight. Sensibilities at a high pitch.
"Cut out the speech and let's get going," someone yelled.
"We didn't come to hear a lecture."
The man held up his hands good-naturedly. "Okay, men. Okay. Nobody has to hit me with a brick wall."
"It might be a hell of a good idea."
There was raucous laughter.
"Just let me introduce Margie, our star."
The man made the introduction as he backed toward the ropes. The brunette ignored the hand-clapping and the shouts.
"I'm betting on you, baby!"
"Want me to come up and give you a hand?"
"You can tear those monkeys apart, sweetheart."
The guest's nerves tightened. "Exactly what's going to happen?"
The executive's eyes were glued to the ring. The guest and his interruptions had become a nuisance.
"They're going to take her if they can. They got fifteen minutes. If she's on her feet when the bell sounds, she wins."
"But "
"Just watch and see," the executive snapped irritably.
The guest subsided. He stared at the ring, the heavy pall of tobacco smoke stinging his eyes.
A bell sounded and the three midgets bounded out of their corner. The girl went up on her bare toes, her shoulders hunched slightly forward and the guest was fascinated by the movement of her lush breasts as she moved along the ropes.
The midgets moved in, forming a line in front of her. Suddenly one of them feinted and rushed at her. She crouched and leaned forward, her fist doubled. But the midget did not come within range of her arm. He skidded to a quick halt and scrambled back into the line. He laughed and jumped up and down and waved his arms. The crowd laughed with him.
A second midget performed the same maneuver. But he was a little too daring. Her timing perfect, the girl took a step forward and hit him with her doubled fist, sending him staggering back.
Now the audience roared as the watchers leaned tensely forward in their seats.
The girl continued to circle around the ropes, keeping them at her back. Until someone yelled, "All right, sister. Play fair. Give the little guys a chance."
Play fair, the guest thought. God! Is this real? Or am I having some kind of a terrible nightmare? He was feeling faintly nauseous from the high keening excitement, but he ignored it and peered through the smoke at the ring, not wanting to miss an instant of it.
The midgets became angry, one of them running to the edge of the ring. He waved his arms, pointed at the girl and complained to the man in the dinner jacket in a high-pitched voice.
"We want our money back! We want our money back!" Several malcontents took up the cry, but it was stilled by a sudden maneuver on the part of one of the midgets.
Thinking that possibly the girl's guard would be down while the complaint was being made, he suddenly rushed in and hurled himself at her ankles. He wrapped his small, twisted body around them and it appeared that he would be able to hold her until the other two could come to his aid.
And he almost succeeded. But the girl, standing in a corner at that moment, braced herself on the ropes with both arms and lifted her legs, kicking out savagely. She shook the midget loose and as he lay exposed in front of her she stamped hard on his belly putting her whole weight on that leg.
He squalled in a high pitched voice, rolling away as he clutched his stomach. He kept on rolling until he reached the middle of the ring where he lay clutching himself with both arms.
The other two midgets knelt beside him. Then one of them raised his fist and shook it at the girl.
She stayed where she was, crouched there in the corner, gripping the ropes. Until one of the midgets left his partners and again went to the edge of the ring to complain to the master of ceremonies.
Then, quite suddenly, the girl galvanized into action. She raced across the ring in the direction of the lone midget.
The executive, seeming to remember that he had a guest with him, turned and shouted above the din. "If she can throw any of them out of the ring he can't come back."
The girl reached the midget before he realized she'd left her corner. The guest saw the quick look of fear on his face as he strove to dodge and skitter away.
But the girl got her hands on him. She must, at one time, have had some training in wrestling, the guest thought, because she was lifting the midget expertly. She was strong, too, as evidenced by the way she lifted him above her head preparatory to throwing him out into the crowd.
He fought and writhed desperately, putting her slightly off-balance. This saved him and put the girl oil the road to defeat. It gave the midget in the center of the ring time to come to his partner's rescue.
He did this by lunging at the girl and hurling his body against the backs of her legs after the manner of a clipping tackle in football.
The girl teetered, struggling valiantly to hold her balance. But she did not succeed and went over backward, tossing the midget into the center of the ring instead of out of it.
She fell heavily, flat on her back, and the two active midgets moved swiftly. They must have been trained in this maneuver because they rushed in on either side of her and each of them wrapped themselves around a leg.
The girl fought desperately, and she might have succeeded in fighting free if the midget she'd kicked hadn't come back into the action.
He came back viciously, savagely, taking several short, waddling steps and then hurling himself through the air to come down squarely on the girl's belly with the whole weight of his body.
He didn't weigh a great deal, but his weight, delivered in that fashion, brought a squall of agony from the girl as her mouth flew open and her eyes fairly bulged from her head.
A roar went up as though every man in the audience felt the punishment. The girl's hand went automatically to her abused belly, any gesture of defense momentarily forgotten. The midget that had incapacitated her rolled off, came to his feet and pumped up and down in glee.
Then, grinning hideously, he drew back to repeat the brutality. This time, it was different. Forewarned, the girl was able to fend him off even in her reduced condition. She used her hands to push him at just the right moment to keep his weight from landing squarely on her body.
"You got her!" a voice from the audience screamed. "You got her. Don't let her up!"
And it appeared that this was true. With all three midgets concentrating on the girl's legs, they were too much for her. They pulled her legs taut and kept her feet off the mat, thus depriving her of leverage. She could only kick and struggle. The blow in the belly had weakened her. Sensing their advantage, they began clowning, humiliating and degrading her. Keeping her legs stretched, they began pulling her in a circle around the ring. She continued to fight, clawing at the ring and trying to reach them with her hands.
But they kept out of range.
"All right," the raucous-voiced man in the audience yelled. "Quit horsing around! Get on with it. We want to go home."
The executive leaned close to his guest. "It all hinged on that second when she had the one midget over her head. If she could have thrown him out of the ring she'd have won. That's how these things go."
Suddenly, the guest loathed his perspiring host, sitting there talking about this blatant filth and brutality as though it were some kind of scientific exhibition.
His skin crawled as the girl, beside herself with rage and humiliation, began screaming curses at the midget.
It's like something out of Dante's Inferno, the guest told himself numbly. The ring blurred. He squeezed his eyes tight shut and snapped them open and the place cleared again.
The two midgets were amusing the audience by jumping in opposite directions while clinging tight to the girl's ankles.
"Make her yell!" a new voice yelled, and the guest knew that the owner of the voice was no longer a man; he'd turned into an animal.
He blinked again, and while he had his eyes closed a fresh roar went up; he opened them to find that the midgets had flipped the girl over on her belly while still retaining control of her legs.
This gave her the opportunity to come up on her knees, one she promptly took advantage of. But she was only falling into a trap they'd prepared because the third midget hurled himself hard against her buttocks, slamming her down against the canvas.
Doggedly, she tried it again. This time they let her crawl a foot before the midget slammed her down a second time.
Now he stayed in close and necks craned and fresh animal roars went up as the girl began to fight frantically, clawing backward at him and then pounding her fists against the canvas.
"Give it to her!" A voice roared.
But a second voice dissented. "The hell with that stuff! We can't see. Get on with it."
Again the executive explained. "The little guy's getting even. He wouldn't do that to her if she hadn't stomped him."
"It looks to me as though he's gotten more than even already."
"They'll pull her over and hook her feet in the ropes and finish it now."
"I think I'd just as soon not see it," the guest said. Then, without waiting for a reply, he got to his feet. "I'll wait for you outside."
He left and the executive looked after him angrily. Why did he have to be like that? The executive's thoughts, written clearly on his face, were frustrating.
He knew that he should go with his guest. It was only common politeness. Also, there the matter of business. There was a big order at stake. The guy wasn't taking this exactly as he'd expected. Maybe he was sore. Maybe more harm had been done than good and he ought to be out there apologizing, straightening things out.
But damn it, he wanted to see the end of this.
That was what he'd paid the imagine price for. And it was about over. Another ten minutes maybe, or a little more. It depended on how fast the midgets were.
Already they had the girl at the edge of the ring with the ropes twisted around one of her ankles. They were pulling the other leg out now, getting the rope around it. This was the big finale.
The roar of the audience deepened, became more vicious. The hell with the guy! He wanted to see this. He'd smooth the guy out after it was over. Buy him a few drinks...
Ten minutes later, he hurried out to find his guest standing at the curb taking slow, deep breaths
"Well," he said cheerfully, "how did you like that?"
"I don't quite know. What happened?"
"They finished it. Each one of them gets a turn at her." The executive laughed. 'It's only fair The spoils of war, you know."
The spoils of war! God, the guest thought. What else went on in this world that he didn't know about? That he didn't care to know about?
"Come on," the executive said, "we'll go to my club and have us a nightcap or two before you turn in."
"I'd rather not. I think I'll go right to my room. I'm tired."
The executive didn't like his tone of voice. There seemed to be a coldness in it. He wondered if he'd lost the order.
There was no doubt in the guest's mind.
No doubt at all ...
The hole seemed to be higher now, standing on tiptoe, the girl could just reach the wadded bills with the tips of her fingers. She strained upward, got a fragile grip on one and drew it out. That got the bill close enough for a harder pull, and soon the money was in her fist.
"Okay, baby. Give it here."
A cold chill ran through the girl's abused, degraded body. She almost lost her balance as she turned and looked down at him.
How had he entered so noiselessly? Concentration on her task had no doubt helped him.
His hostility was formed into a yellow-toothed grin now as he stood there with his hand extended.
"So that's where you stashed it. Clever. I hunted all over hell while the midgets had you tied up getting their kicks. I couldn't find the dough. I figured you must have been smart."
"No!" the girl screamed. "It's not fair! It's my money! I earned every dirty cent of it."
He snapped his fingers. "You want to give me the loot or do you want a busted gut?"
He grabbed at the money as she came down off the chair, got her by the wrist and twisted it. She was a big, well-muscled girl, but no match for him and she slipped, writhing to her knees.
He held her that way for a few moments, enjoying his triumph; enjoying the stream of abuse that flooded out at him from between her beautiful lips.
He grinned. "You wanna give me what the third midget got by twisting your arm?"
The girl cursed, either from the memory of what he referred to or from sheer loathing of the man.
Then he tired of his pleasure, of baiting her. He snapped his fingers. "Okay, baby the loot."
When she didn't comply instantly, he applied pressure to her arm and she twisted away from him with a shriek of pain. He reached for the money.
But he didn't get it because the door opened again at that precise moment, and the man was suddenly in bad trouble.
His trouble came from another man, one that the girl-now crouched in a corner of the room did not see as being much of a protector. He was well-dressed, too slim to be a fighter, and with a thin, sensitive face that didn't fit into this cesspool of sick, rotten sex.
But he proved to be deceptive. Without taking time to assess the situation, he'd stepped in, taken her tormentor's head in his two hands and twisted it; used it as a sort of knob to spin the man away from her and send him crashing against the table.
The man's reaction was completely normal. He yelled, "Why, you creepy louse!" and lunged into combat.
But he flew out again as the slim intruder seized his wrist, twisted it, executed an odd little dance, and sent his opponent crashing head-first against the cement wall.
Paying no further attention, he turned to the girl. "What seems to be the trouble."
"He tried to steal my money."
"Well, I don't think he wants it now." The girl stared at her rescuer and did something she hadn't done in a long time tried to cover her nakedness. She'd long since lost all consciousness of modesty or decency or any thing else of that nature.
But now, for some strange reason, instinct took over and as she crouched there, she put one arm across her breasts and spread her other hand over her thighs.
"If you like," he said, "I'll wait and see that you get safely away."
When she did not answer he said, "I'll dump our friend here in the alley while you get dressed. Then we'll leave."
She watched as he lifted her unconscious tormentor to his feet, put an arm under his shoulders and dragged him from the room with his feet dragging.
"Don't be long," he said. "I'll come back and wait for you in the corridor."
The girl stared for a while. Then she got up and began to dress...
"My name is Flame," the girl said, and he accepted it. It wasn't her real name of course, but she'd disowned the other one, the one that associated her with home and parents and all her beginnings. She was now Flame, the girl who had been born one bitter night when three young human animals, skilled at their calling, had broken her in, given her her first hours of intensive training for her life ahead. They'd enjoyed their work and had been thorough; when they got through, she was familiar with every abnormal sexual gambit ever devised by man to be perpetrated on women.
But that seemed a thousand years ago, and now she was sitting in a cocktail lounge with the first man who had been decent to her since she could remember.
It wasn't genuine though, his decency. It was only his pitch. They all had pitches because they all wanted the same thing. Most of them rushed into it and then threw the money on the dresser and left. This one was a little more refined in his approach. Or maybe he figured, by being nice to her, that he could get it for nothing.
Well, the hell with that noise. He'd find he couldn't.
"My name is Barney Williams," he said. Then he smiled and raised his glass and said, "Here's luck."
She drank with him, wondering when he'd get around to suggesting a room upstairs in the hotel they were in.
But he seemed to be in no hurry. "Are you new in town?" he asked.
"I've been here about a year. I came from Cleveland."
"I'm from farther west myself. I started life in Des Moines, Iowa."
"They're all good towns to get away from."
"Uh-huh. I wasn't born in Des Moines. A little burg called Appleton. Maybe five hundred people."
"My little town was Gravesend, and it was a good name for it. The cemetery was on a hill behind it. The tombstones were all you could see."
He had nice eyes and when he smiled, he did something to her.
This realization should have been pleasant. At least it should not have been as bitter as it was. But the bitterness was quite natural for Flame because it highlighted her weakness. Men.
That was how it had been right from the beginning; all during the time of her younger years; during the time she'd sensed it as being wrong and had fought against it.
But it had beaten her long before she'd been channeled into her present way of life, had recognized her talent for sex as being the only one she had.
Men. She would meet a man and sit down with him for a drink and he'd begin getting to her, drawing her, attracting her. And before long, after she quit fighting it, the path from a cocktail table to a bed became very short.
That was how it had been. She hadn't been taken by accident. The punks on the lookout for female sex material have brains, too. They see talent; they even spot it. And she'd eased herself into the bedroom where they'd initiated her into the big time. She hadn't been pushed.
All that was water under the bridge, though. The surprising thing was now. In her present status as a professional, what had once been a thrill had become business. It had been a long time since a man across a table had been anything but a business proposition; the thrill of proximity had long gone.
But here it was again. A man attracting her physically.
All this flashed through her mind as Barney Williams smiled at her and created the illusion that he was thinking of her as a lady.
"Yes," he was saying, "we leave the small towns and go out to lick the world. And somewhere along the line we always wish we could go back." He gave her a quick smile. "Do you ever wish you could go back?"
"I don't know. I never think of it any more."
"Sometimes it isn't worthwhile ... "
That was how their conversation started. Flame wasn't sure, later, just how it went from one subject to another until they arrived at the place where Barney Williams said, "Art Ringler controls all the commercialized sex in town. I work for Vince Kane. He's no lily himself, I'll admit that, but he hates the cynical exploitation of girls."
"They all claim to."
"But Vince Kane will stand or fall on it. He and Ringler are meeting head-on. And Vince needs help."
The illusion that Barney Williams liked her for herself alone died somewhere along the way, and its death hurt a little. But there was a compensation. He wasn't maneuvering to go to bed with her. And he was a decent guy.
"Which one will win?"
Barney shrugged. "Who knows? There's one thing sure, though. Ringler can be hit only in one place. Did you ever deal with him?"
"No. I never met him in my life."
"But you've heard the rumors. You know he's the kingpin in the vice rackets."
"Everybody hears rumors."
"But those rumors are true."
It was Flame's turn to shrug. "So what?" And now her rapport with Barney Williams manifested in a strange way. Her illusion gone, she used him to fill another need in her life. A buffer against loneliness. Someone to talk to, a confidant with whom she could be herself and pour out her bitterness on the terms she understood it.
"When you're being dragged around a fight ring on your naked bottom by three midgets," she said bitterly, "you haven't got much time to think about the rumors you've heard."
"I suppose not," Barney replied thoughtfully. "But afterward you think about it. You want to hit out at somebody."
"You can make him know you're alive. You can sue him."
"I can what?"
"File suit against Ringler." Barney leaned across the table. "Look here-what does it come down to? Why were you in that ring tonight. Not from choice."
"Simple. For money. For a thousand backs."
"How would you like to make a hundred thousand bucks?"
"Are you kidding?"
"Not at all. You can do it."
"You're crazy."
"I'm not crazy."
"How?"
"Publicity. Unless you're afraid of it."
"I'm afraid of nothing."
"All right. Tonight they gave you a thousand dollars for taking your clothes off and degrading yourself in front of a lot of men. You have to concede that that's the hard way."
"I suppose you're telling me there's an easier one."
"There is. In a couple of months you can work it so you'll get an offer for your life story from a national magazine. They'd probably offer you fifty thousand. And it would be worth it to them."
"Why?"
"Publicity. People will want to read about the girl who sued a big vice lord. The publicity would make you."
"You're wrong. The publicity would get me killed."
"Not a chance. You'd be guarded like the gold in Fort Knox."
Flame wasn't having any. It was too crazy in the first place. It wouldn't work. But even if it did, they'd get her. She wouldn't have a chance. She'd seen something like that in Detroit, one of her stepping stones to the so-called big time. There'd been a girl there, a pretty little fireball who hadn't sued any big vice lord. All she'd done was threaten to take a very small grievance to a reporter friend of hers. That was all she'd done, and the way they'd killed her hadn't been pretty. Flame hadn't been in at the death, but she'd seen the girl afterward and what she'd seen substantiated the rumors of how it had been done. The boys had had some fun in the process.
All of that for just threatening to talk to a reporter.
"They'd kill me," Flame said.
He thought for a moment, not putting on any more pressure. Then he said, "They wouldn't. You'd have friends. You wouldn't be walking the street alone. But that's not the point. It's the way you see it that's important. So we'll forget the whole thing."
He gestured toward the waitress, calling for the check, and something happened to Flame. Maybe it was that word friend, what it implied. Or maybe she didn't want Barney Williams to go out of her life. Maybe she wanted to see him again to a point where her fears were diluted. After all, he was there. He was real. He was flesh and blood. And the fears were vague intangibles.
"Can I think it over?"
"Sure sure, why not?"
"Thanks."
"But in the meantime, will you do me a favor."
"What favor?"
"Move now tonight. Let me get you out of wherever you're living and put you in a different place."
"Then T was right. Even being seen with you is dangerous."
"No. But you've forgotten what happened. That joker who tried to take your money."
"Oh, him..."
"He might try to get at you."
"All right. I'm staying at the Belmont Hotel."
"We'll ride over there. You can pack your bag while I wait, and then I'll take you to a place that character won't know about. But even if he did find you there, he'd lose an arm and a leg trying to reach you ... "
They went out together and regardless of what bad happened that night, regardless of anything, Flame was happier than she'd been in a long time ...
Barbara's phone rang. It awakened her, and she looked at the clock and saw that it was three-thirty in the morning. She let the phone ring four times before she found the courage to pick it up. Then, when she answered it, her voice was small and timid.
"This is Barney. I want to apologize for calling you so late."
"That's all right, Barney. It's nice to hear your voice at any hour."
"This might sound weird, and don't hesitate to say no; but I'd like to come up and have a cup of coffee."
"I'd be delighted."
"I promise not to let it become a habit." She laughed. "The coffee, or the late visit."
"Both."
"Why don't you call both of them minor vices?"
"I will. I'll be there in twenty minutes..."
He arrived in fifteen minutes and when he'd identified himself through the door, she opened it and met him in a pale blue gown and a hairdo minus the curlers she'd desperately rid herself of during the precious fifteen minutes.
"Hello, Barbara."
"Hello Barney. The coffee's ready."
He dropped his hat and coat on a chair and watched her as she poured the coffee. She was aware of the fact that there was something different about him; there was something on his mind.
She put the coffee down but he paid no attention to it, his eyes still on her. "You're so beautiful so clean."
She laughed. "I do bathe quite regularly. J wash my neck and ears the way my mother taught me to."
"You're mother must have been a wonderful woman."
"She was. She-"
"Let's not talk about your mother. Let's talk about you."
"Barney! What's happened to you?"
"I think I'm in love with you. But maybe not. It may be only the contrast."
"I'm afraid you'll have to explain that."
"I shouldn't, but J think I want to. It will give you some idea of how wonderful you are."
"I'm listening."
"The explanation has some very earthy aspects. They won't sound at all romantic."
"I'm a rather earthy person myself."
"I went to a stag show tonight."
Barbara blinked. "That's a great opening line, I'll say that for it."
"In all justice to myself I must say that I don't care for stag shows. I never did."
"But you were there on business, no doubt."
"That's exactly it. I was there on business. The business has to do with the way we plan to hit back at Ringler."
"The way you plan to hit back at Ringler."
"Vince Kane "
"You!"
"I don't understand."
"I'll explain it sometime. But not now. You're narrative is much more interesting."
"Okay. So I went to this stag show, and my job was to contact one of the performers."
"A female performer?"
"Yes."
"Oh, naturally. What other kind is there at a stag show?"
Barney paused. There was hostility in Barbara's voice but not enough to make an issue of. He wasn't sure whether he liked that or not. He would have probably been happier with more hostility in that it would have indicated a greater personal interest in him. But he went on.
"So I made a contact. A girl who follows that line of work so to speak. I took her to a cocktail lounge and talked to her, and the longer I talked, the more clearly I saw you."
"Now just a minute, Mr. Williams "
He overrode her. "The more clearly I saw you in contrast. She was a very beautiful girl. She hadn't even begun to wear out. In fact, she might have been a shade more beautiful than you are."
"Maybe we're getting a little too earthy here."
"Shut up," he said gently "You've got to listen to me. I sat there talking to this girl, giving her my proposition, and kept seeing you; you got bigger and brighter and more wonderful all the time."
He got up suddenly and took a restless turn around the room and came back and stood looking down at her.
"I'm lousy at explaining this."
"You're doing fine."
"Anyhow, when we left the place all I could think of was how clean and lovely, how wholesome and wonderful you are, and I knew I was in love with you."
"You just knew it? like that?"
"Yes. And then, later, the doubts came."
"The doubts?"
"Uh-huh. I thought about contrasts, and it occurred la me that it might be only the contrasts. I was with a girl who symbolized all that's weak and rotten and repulsive in life and so my mind, not liking that, went automatically to the sweetest, cleanest, most wonderful person I knew. Maybe that was it. Maybe I don't love you at all."
"I never knew you were a philosopher, Barney, but I should have known that you would be. Philosophers always have big blind spots, or so I'm told."
"I have a blind spot?"
"A huge one, but that isn't important now, either. Let's get on with what you were saying. You've given me the picture, now what do you want of me?"
"I had to come here and ask you what you think? Am I in love with you?"
She got up from her chair and stood close to him. "I don't know, Barney. I honestly don't."
He looked a little miserable. "I suppose it was asking to much hoping you'd know."
"I'll say this. If you aren't, it might do as a start. Maybe you need a little more time. If you do, I won't run away. I'll be here."
He took her in his arms and kissed her and then drew back. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you very much. I'll run along now and let you get back to sleep. I'll call you in the morning ... "
After he left, Barbara finished her coffee. Was Barney in love with her? He was such a strange, strange guy. Something clean in a very dirty world. At least he created that impression. But was it an illusion?
She'd been disappointed in the kiss. It had been chaste, passionless, gentle: a sister kiss. But perhaps that didn't mean anything. She would have to wait and see.
And maybe that was good because there was something she could ponder while she waited. Was she in love with Barney Williams?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Carter Gantry had many negative qualities. He was a snob without the background that gave his snobbery the least vestige of authenticity. He was cutting, supercilious and he drank too much. But to offset these shortcomings, he had two virtues. He was an incredibly good lawyer, and he was not afraid of the devil himself. He demonstrated this last characteristic in an interview with Art Ringler.
"You're a menace to society, Ringler. A political boss with none of the good points of that breed and all the evil traits they've demonstrated from time immemorial."
Ringler glared and scowled and snorted. This was his own office where he wasn't used to being insulted. This louse had walked in like he owned the place and started throwing insults.
"Suppose you get the hell out of here before I have you thrown out."
"Don't be childish. I'm here as a friend."
"Fine friend!"
"The best friend in the world is one who points out your weaknesses. Your strong points take care of themselves."
"Well I got a weakness for you. You're a shyster lawyer living off a two-bit hood with a few numbers slots that thinks he owns the town."
"That may be true. Oddly enough, he says the same thing about you only slanted a little differently. He says you're a blackleg politician with a chain of dirty houses who thinks he owns the town."
"Ask Kane how he'd like to wake up and find himself lying in an alley somewhere with his "
"Childish," Gantry repeated. "Let's dwell on the more interesting aspects of this drama the part about owning the town. You both actually think you do own it. But in truth, neither of you do. The people own this town."
Ringler looked honestly amazed. "Are you kidding? Look, shyster. You aren't talking to some law school graduating class. This is Art Ringler behind this desk. The people are the suckers and you know it. They buy Kane's numbers ... "
"Some of them do."
"...and they get their kicks from my layouts."
"Some of them do that too. And therein lies both your mistake and Kane's. You look at these minorities and call them the people."
"What the hell else are they?" .
"We won't go into that. You mention and acknowledge your layouts. Then you acknowledge owning or controlling these brothels?"
This made Ringler laugh. "If we weren't in my office if we were some place else I'd get up and ram those words back down your throat. Bui there are no bugs here. None of this is being taped. So I'll let you get away with it."
"Thank you. But to get back to the people. You think of them as powerless because you control the district attorney. But did you ever hear of the grand jury?"
"The grand jury? You're barking up the wrong tree. I control Avery and he controls the grand jury. Even in your little walnut of a brain that should add up to one thing: Art Ringler controls the grand jury."
"Not necessarily," Gantry said cheerfully. "Have you got any idea of the power of a grand jury?"
Ringler lost some of his bluster and eyed Gantry warily. "You think I was born last week?"
"As a matter-of-fact, I have gotten that idea at times. But we'll assume it isn't true so far as your knowledge of grand juries is concerned. Have you checked on the one Avery, in pursuance of his duties as a district attorney, had sworn into session last week?"
Ringler stuck his fat lips out. "So what? If a grand jury don't go along with Avery, he has it dissolved."
"But what if it doesn't allow itself to be dissolved?"
"You talk like an idiot. The theory of the grand jury is great stuff for school books where they teach kids about what a great system we got. But any DA. worth his salt leads a grand jury foreman around by the nose."
Gantry was amused at the transparency Ringler revealed. He wondered for a moment how such a stupid man, one not even able to hide his sudden fears in a conversation, had been able to take such a grip on a vulnerable section of a great city.
Then he remembered. The votes. Ringler had a single talent that was enviable; the ability to make the voters go his way. He remembered also that people take favors from a stupid man as quickly as from a smart one.
But Gantry had easily discovered what he wanted to know; had done what he'd come to do. He'd learned that Ringler was unaware of a trap he'd already fallen into. And he'd had the personal satisfaction of acquainting Ringler with the trap and witnessing his fright.
Gantry got up from his chair. He gave Ringler a jaunty smile. "Well, that's fine. Tell Avery I wish him luck in his nose-leading."
He left with Ringler staring after him angrily ...
And at that precise moment, Colin Avery was having his first experience with a grand jury foreman who liked to have his nose left alone. This foreman's name was Wendell Hill, a rather aristocratic sounding name, it was true, but this was only one of the deceptive aspects of the new thorn in Avery's side. First off, Wendell Hill wasn't a banker as the name might have tended to indicate. He was a mechanic. Also, he was a small, sandy-haired,ingrown little man who looked as though the wind might blow him over.
But all this was a classic pattern in deception.
And Colin Avery was being apprised of his danger in this direction by an assistant who put through a frantic telephone call from the corridor outside the grand jury room.
"Yes, Degan?"
"It's Wendell Hill, Chief. He's."
"Who is Wendell Hill."
"The foreman of the blue-ribbon jury."
"What about him?"
"He read that thing about Beekman's son."
Colin Avery recalled that. A small matter. An alderman's son had gotten high and beaten up a news dealer. It had turned out that the news dealer had been blind, a point the boy overlooked. A snooping reporter hadn't overlooked the point, however, and it made quite a yarn. Nothing that wouldn't be forgotten overnight, though. An indignant statement about vicious youth in general: a promise to make an example of this one; public statements to that effect with the kid out on bail and the case finally lost in the legal push.
Thus did Art Ringler exact obligation from men such as aldermen men who could do favors in return.
But this grand jury business could be annoying. "The boy has been charged. What does Hill want?"
"He doesn't like the charge. Thinks it's too mild. He wants to talk to the boy and the complainant."
"Stall him off."
"This guy doesn't stall. He knows his rights as foreman."
Colin Avery pondered the problem. "All right. Coach the kid on what to say. It was a prank."
"And the old newsy?"
"Shut him up. Offer him a payoff."
"How high?"
"Go to a thousand if you have to. In the meantime, I'll talk to Judge Allen. We'll dissolve that jury."
"I don't think so. Hill's read the book. He's tough."
"I'll take care of it."
Avery put the phone down. He was no fool, and he was frightened. A runaway grand jury. God! That was all he needed at a time like this.
The Beekman case in itself wasn't important. They could throw the book at the kid if necessary. One of those things. Beekman couldn't blame Ringler for a flare-up of public sentiment.
The jury itself was the problem this Wendell Hill nut. If he snooped into one case, he could snoop into another. There were a lot of places he could go An obedient, disinterested grand jury was important in the structure Art Ringler ran.
Yes, that jury had to be forced out of business. And it had to be done quickly...
This decision on Avery's part, furnished the papers with a second story:
GRAND JURY FOREMAN BUCKS D. A. Wendell Hill Blasts Colin Avery's Attempt To Dissolve Grand Jury.
A rarity in this city, a citizen with knowledge of the law, is giving District Attorney Colin Avery a big headache. Early today, Avery went through the motions of dissolving the grand jury. But they were only motions. This was disclosed when Wendell Hill, the quiet, steely-willed foreman of the current grand jury refused to submit to Avery's dictum as manifested through Judge Thomas Allen's dismissal of the panel. It was nullified at Hill's request, on legally sound grounds, by Judge Henry Davis and it is authoritatively conceded that the Judge Davis writ will not be appealed; that such an appeal would be useless.
So we now have a grand jury with the bit firmly in its teeth, willing and able to move in any direction it chooses...
"You had something to do with that, didn't you, Barney?"
"Me?" Barney asked innocently. "Yes, you."
He looked at Barbara absent-mindedly. She sat on the arm of his chair in the apartment he'd moved her to; one in which any intruder would have had to get past a formidable doorman and two equally formidable elevator men in order to even approach her door.
"Oh, sure sure," he mumbled vaguely. Then: "What did you say, baby?"
"Barney! Where is your mind?"
He patted her knee, got up, and went to the phone. He dialed and then said, "Hello, Vince. Did you read the paper this morning?"
Barbara, even though she realized it was ill-mannered, followed him, pressed close, and put her ear beside his. She heard Vince's reply.
"Uh-huh. What did I miss?"
"The bit about the runaway grand jury."
"What about it?"
"Looks good to me. A break for us."
"Well of all the stupid ways to look at things. You're slipping, Barney. You're really slipping-
Barney covered the phone long enough to turn and whisper in Barbara's ear: "He's upset." Barney spoke with lazy self-satisfaction.
"Well, maybe "
"Good Lord! Now we've got a deal where some damned do-gooder citizens can rip me to pieces!"
"Real upset," Barney whispered. Then to Vince. "I was going to suggest that you turn those four kids loose. They aren't of any value to us any more. I mean "
"What in the hell are you talking about? Have you gone crazy? Do you want me to cut my own throat? I've got to keep them out of circulation until this dies down until maybe something swings my way."
"I think maybe they've already swung that way."
"How the hell can you say that?"
"I've got a pretty good reason. Sex is always more interesting than numbers. Numbers is what Ringler's got on you. Sex is what we've got on him."
"Will you tell me what you're talking about?"
"Ringler is going to be sued on some pretty spectacular charges by a girl. The grand jury's going to want to know all about it because the charges will be criminal. So will the reporters-want to know all about it. I mean. So will the public. I don't think there'll be any interest in numbers for a while. And
I don't think Ringler will be in the seat of the mighty long enough to bother you much."
There was a pause. Barney smiled and turned to kiss Barbara on the nose.
She wore a puzzled expression. "It all seems so childish," she said.
"What do you mean childish?" Barney whispered.
"I mean "
But Vince was talking again. There was fierce elation in his voice. "What a break! Who says my luck isn't holding?"
"Uh-huh."
"Look get rid of those punks. Throw them into the alley. We don't need them any more."
"I'd suggest we wait a couple of days. Until the charges are filed against Ringler."
"Of course. Certainly. I don't want you to go off halfcocked and goof this thing up. Use your head."
"Okay. I'll be in touch."
Barney hung up and turned to Barbara. "What did you mean childish?"
"Oh, I don't know. All this that's going on. The way Ringler acts and Vince and Avery. They're like a lot of children somehow, I can't quite explain what I mean."
"Adults are nothing but grownup children."
"All except you."
"What do you mean?"
"You make me so mad, Barney."
"I do?"
Barbara was wearing a pair of green lounging pajamas, and Barney appeared to notice them for the first time; the way they clung to her gorgeous thighs; the affectionate manner in which they hugged her breasts.
"Yes, you do! I think maybe you're the stupidest of the lot. Don't you realize that you're carrying Kane on your back? Don't you realize that if it wasn't for your brain, he'd "
"Wait a minute, honey. You're a little mixed up. The payoff in this world is on results, not on conversation. Vince is the guy who owns the Stardust Club. Vince is the one who's got the numbers' racket in his pocket."
"Stop talking like an idiot. What I'm saying is that it's because of you that he has these things. Ringler would have eaten him up long ago if it hadn't been for you."
Barney's eyes were on her. They were preoccupied with a frank appraisal of her breasts and her body. Again, it was as though he was seeing them for the first time.
"You're off your rocker," he said.
He made no attempt to hide his true point of interest; Barbara herself, and he gave every indication of not really hearing anything she said.
Barbara backed slowly away from him. "It's you, Barney. Without you, Kane would be nobody. Can't you understand that?"
He moved slowly toward her. "I think maybe you're a little bit prejudiced."
"That's not true."
"Maybe just a little?"
She'd backed halfway across the room, and their eyes were talking across the space between them. Talking a different language than the one coming from their lips. It was as though their eyes hadn't the least idea what their lips were talking about and didn't care.
"Barney all I want you to do is make something of yourself. You don't have to stand in Kane's shadow."
He was moving slowly but still faster than she was moving, and before she reached the wall he was standing close to her. His eyes looking deep into hers.
"Make something of myself?" He asked the question absently. "How?"
"I want you to write." Barbara struggled over that last word because she'd had to swallow suddenly.
"Write what?"
He was touching her now, and she raised her hands to fend him off but still did not back up to the wall. "Your novel ... "
The dam broke suddenly, and it was a mutual movement. In a sudden great need, he snatched at her, grabbed her as though he'd suddenly been seized with an urge to destroy her.
"Barney oh, darling..." She gasped, and that was all she was able to get out at the moment.
He hurled her to the floor and clawed her pajama bottoms down and tore them off of her savagely. She lay looking up at him, frozen, seemingly terrorized, but silent and waiting as he tore his own impeding clothing away and dropped his weight upon her.
He moved her thighs savagely, like a crazed animal, and when their naked flesh met, belly against belly, he demanded her so ruthlessly that Barbara cried out in pain and tears came to her eyes.
But even as she wept, she blindly sought his mouth with hers and hysterically ravened at it with her lips and her tongue to find more of him and devour it.
His breath, going down into her throat, was like an irregular blast from a furnace, and the frantic drive of his body at her was answered as she braced her heels against the floor and drove upward to meet him.
Now she was able to speak again. "Oh, God darling."
It was as though she feared he would vanish because as her eyes widened from the mounting ecstasy of her body, the delight he was creating within her, she cried, "Don't stop oh, don't stop please!"
He had no breath to answer her; scarcely enough to keep his lungs from bursting so great was the tax he put upon them.
Then Barbara stiffened and screamed and clawed at his back...
...And it was over.
They lay for a long time on the floor, coming down from the rainbow; recovering from an experience neither of them had ever had before.
Then the room reformed around them, and they were back in the world they had left.
Barbara moved first; she reached up and stroked Barney's hair.
His mouth formed into a grin.
"And now," he asked. "What were you saying about a novel?"
CHAPTER EIGHT
The man in gray answered the phone. Gooch looked at Frenchy. Lew looked apprehensively at Sammy. Sammy looked at the man in gray as he put the phone down.
They hadn't been treated badly, but they kept wondering what they were doing there because no one had gotten around to talking to them. They felt there was a purpose in it, but the man in gray had only one comment when any of them risked a timid question.
"Shaddup."
At intervals he had been replaced by a second man in gray, but he proved to even less communicative than his companion. He didn't even tell them to shut up. He sat down with his holster cleared and read a magazine. He obviously read very slowly because in three days he'd only gotten ten pages into it.
This confused the four a great deal because when they got a look at the magazine it turned out to have no printing at all except captions. It was filled with pictures of naked girls.
And now, wonder of wonders, the man who always said shut up had a new comment. He buttoned his coat and opened the door and said, "Beat it."
Gooch answered him. "Huh?"
"I said beat it. What's wrong? You got wax in your ears?"
"Where do you want us to go?"
"Who the hell cares? Get lost. Drop dead on the sidewalk. Jump in the river. Tie a rock to your neck and sink."
They were confused and bewildered, but they got the idea. They trooped out past him, Gooch, at the end of the line, pressing forward a little as though he was afraid the man might take a notion to boot him over the heads of the others.
The door slammed.
They trooped down the stairs and into the street. "Damn!" Lew said, for no particular reason. "You ain't kidding," Sammy assured him. "The louse didn't even give us carfare," Lew growled.
"You want to go back and ask him for it?" Frenchy asked. He was scowling at a finger. He'd bumped it against a chair arm and lost the whole nail. "A crummy joint," he complained. "A real crummy joint."
"We might as well head south." They started to walk. After a while, Lew said, "Why the hell do you suppose they took us there."
"Who knows?" Frenchy said. "They weren't cops." Sammy said. "Why? Cause they didn't beat the devil out of you?" Gooch sneered.
"Hell, when a cop takes you they got to book you."
"Maybe they forgot to bring the book," Frenchy said.
"Well, we didn't get beat up," Lew said with satisfaction.
"You know something. It's a good thing they let us out when they did. Ten minutes later, they'd have been in big trouble." Gooch spoke the words ominously.
"How so?" Frenchy asked.
"I was just getting ready to take that goon."
"Yeah?"
"I'd been watching him straight through. He had a gun. That was what made it tough. It's rough taking a guy with a gun. You have to watch him a long time to spot his habits and his weakness. But I had that guy measured, and I was just ready to take him when he chickened out and let us go."
"You know," Lew said. "I guess you didn't notice it, you guys, but those creeps were scared stiff all the time. They tried to cover it up but-"
"Uh-huh," Sammy cut in. "I saw that too. I tried to signal you how scared they were."
"Matter of fact," Frenchy said to Gooch. "If you'd jumped the guy you'd have found me right with you. I'd have been ready because I was watching him too."
"Uh-huh." Gooch rubbed his hands together. "Ya know, I kind of wish they'd find they made a mistake."
"What do you mean?" Lew asked.
"That they shouldn't of let us go. And they had to chase after us and try to pick us up again."
Sammy grinned and slammed a fist into his open palm. "Oh, man! Wham! Just like that. I'm an easygoing guy but I can be pushed around just so much. If they tried something like that they'd wake up wondering what the hell happened to them."
A car rounded a corner ahead of them; a black, unmarked sedan. It cruised past. Then, halfway down the block, its driver hit the brakes and made them squeal. He made a quick U-turn and gunned the car back. He pulled up just ahead of where the four, still far from home, were plodding stolidly alone.
The man beside the driver jumped out. He cleared his holster and yelled. "You guys! Over against that wall. Come on come on snap it up."
The driver was out and around the back of the car and approaching from another angle. The two men merged and began hustling the four against a nearby brick wall.
"Come on hands against the wall feet out ... out farther hands high." That's it. Now stand there."
"What is this?" Sammy whined. "Shut up."
It was a word he understood. He'd been in quite a few rehearsals with that word lately. When they said shut up you didn't say anything back. That was what they meant by it.
One of the men looked at the other. "What do you think?"
"It's them. The one on the end's Perry. I saw him in the station."
The man who asked had been expertly frisking. "They're clean."
"I'll call," the other one said.
He went to the car and came back and said, "Thirty-seventh."
The other grunted. "It figures. Come on you guys into the back."
The two cops pushed their prizes into the black, unmarked car and then both climbed into the front seat.
They showed their contempt by not even bothering to look around as they moved south toward the 37th Precinct Police Station.
The four sat silent. Then there was a sound, when Gooch gulped noisily. He was almost in tears.
"Gees," he muttered. "Why do they have to keep picking on us? Why can't they leave a guy alone?
The police announced the capture of the four rapists in time to catch the evening papers. But all they caught in the Dispatch was two inches on page six. The reason was a story that spread all over page one. A story Barney Williams had spent quite a few hours arranging. It started for Barney the night he bought Flame a drink, but the heavy work began the next day...
. . . "My name is Flame," the beautiful brunette had said, but in the hotel room far uptown that Barney had procured for her, he tested his ballpoint on a piece of hotel stationary, and prepared to go on from there.
"This isn't going to be easy," he told her. "It will be the roughest thing you've ever faced. I'll be frank with you in saying I personally wouldn't want to go through it. And if you want to back out, it will be all right with me."
"Rough?" Flame asked as she noticed the way his hair dipped down in a widow's peak.
"The worst. You're going before the public into court, where hostile men will ask you cruel, personal questions. They will try to destroy you on the witness stand before an audience, and they'll have that audience behind them. They'll strip and abuse you verbally worse than you've ever been stripped and abused in-in other ways."
"That bad?"
"Yes. And they'll be clever enough to destroy you if you aren't on your toes every minute."
Flame was frightened, but she stubbornly refused to let it show. She sat silent, wondering why she was doing this; why she had allowed herself to be talked into it?
Was she in love with Barney Williams? She didn't know. Love, to Flame, was like a threadbare garment she'd been taking off and putting on all her life. She'd murmured, "T love you," to men she'd known only an hour and had never seen again. So how could she know about what they termed true love? She thought Barney Williams had a beautiful face. But she had lain naked with men she'd known not at all and told them they had beautiful bodies.
So what was it all about?
Flame didn't know. She was confused and bewildered, frightened. But above all, she was twenty-six years old and very, very tired.
Why had she decided to go through with this thing? She didn't know. She only knew she was going through with it and that with the decision made, she would not flinch nor turn back.
"It's all right," she said. "I'll do whatever I have to. Say whatever you tell me to."
He sighed, his expression revealing his unhappiness at having started this thing.
"We've got to talk rehearse," he said. "You've got to get used to being asked personal questions. Also, you're lawyer will have to know everything about you that it is possible to find out, because you can be sure that Ringler's lawyers will make a point of finding out about you."
"Who will my lawyer be?"
"A man named Carter Gantry. One of the best. If the case comes to trial--. "
"You mean it might not?"
"That's possible. There will be a hearing first. Because of the nature of the case, it may go before the grand jury. You may be a witness against Ringler. If this happens, and it's what I'm trying to bring about, it will be just as rough on you as though you were on trial. Because that's what it will amount to."
"All right," Flame said simply.
"So be it," Barney Williams replied, the muscles of his jaws stiffening slightly. "I'm going to ask you a lot of questions. I'll take them down in shorthand along with your answers, and then we'll turn them over to Gantry." He paused. "Unless you'd rather start directly with Gantry?"
"No. I'd rather do it this way."
"Okay what is your name?"
"Leona Brown."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-six."
"Where were you born?"
"Gravesend, Iowa."
'"How old were you when you left Gravesend?"
"I was sixteen?"
"Under what circumstances did you leave."
"I left with a salesman a traveler I met in a bar."
"Were you married to him?"
"No. He left me in Detroit three months later."
The questions went on, some of them obviously inept because Harney Williams was embarrassed, disgusted with himself perhaps, and kept dodging the vital issue. Finally, he got to it.
"At what age did you lose your virginity?"
"At fourteen. One of my cousins raped me."
"Did you invite it?"
"I don't know what you mean?" Flame answered. "I always thought rape meant rape."
"Ringler's lawyers will try to establish a picture of complete wantonness. They'll try to make you appear as a cynical temptress of men. That way, Ringler will appear blameless."
Flame's eyes looked empty and old. Then they hardened.
"I see. The details are quite simple. I was in bed at the time. My parents were both gone. This cousin his name was Frank Bing came to the house and into my bedroom. He sat down on the edge of the bed. I told him to leave but he wouldn't. He tried to kiss me. I fought him. I was scared. During the fight, he got my nightgown up over my head. The nightgown was tight around the middle and it was kind of a bag after he tied my ankles to the bed posts with two of my father's neckties. Then he raped me. He didn't untie me afterward. My parents were gone all day both of them working so he left me there. He came back a little while later and raped me again. He did it four times in all.
Then he untied me and told me he'd find me and beat me up if I told on him. He left about four o'clock in the afternoon. Does that sound as though I encouraged him?"
"No. It doesn't." Barney stopped. "Flame, would you prefer that we end this thing?"
Her look was one of faint contempt. "What's the matter? Are you getting cold feet?"
"I was thinking about your sensibilities."
"Don't let them worry you..."
"When did you arrive here?"
This question came after Barney had traced Flame's movements from Detroit to Chicago to Kansas City to Cleveland and eastward.
"Six months ago," Flame said. "I can give you the exact date if you'll give me a moment."
"It's not important now "How did you support yourself?"
"I had a little money. When it ran out I began soliciting men around the airport."
"You mean contacting men and offering yourself?"
Flame smiled fleetingly. "That was the general idea."
"When they agreed, where did you take them?"
"I was staying at the Clermont Hotel. I talked to the night clerk there and made a deal with him. I gave him five dollars for every man I brought in."
"Was this recorded as room rent?"
"I don't think so. There were always a few rooms available, and I'm sure the clerk put the money in his pocket. When I got a man to stay all night he had to register us in as man and wife and pay for the room. When we stayed all night I gave the clerk ten dollars."
"How long did that arrangement go on?"
"Until I was picked up."
"How did that happen."
"I took a man to a room and then he flashed a badge and told me I was under arrest."
"Where did the policeman take you?"
"I didn't say he was a policeman. He wasn't. T thought he was until he got me to a place on the lower east side just an ordinary brownstone. He took me inside, and there I met another man who said I'd work for him or he'd see that I went to jail."
"So you agreed to work for him?"
"No."
"What was his name?"
"I didn't know at the time. Later, I found out his name was Bates."
"Any first name or initials?"
"No. Just Bates. He was a little man, always as cold as ice. He looked like he should have been a bookkeeper or something like that. He didn't look the part at all."
"But you refused to work for him."
"Yes.. I told him I'd rather go to jail."
"Was that true?"
"Yes. A jail sentence would have been maybe six months, and then I could have moved on to another town. Throwing in with that guy, anything could have happened as I saw it. I might have landed in some crib in South America."
"Did he make good his threat."
"No. When I refused, he locked me in another room. Then, after while, he came back with three hoods-three tough young men. He said, 'Okay, make this chippy see it our way.'"
Barney stopped asking questions. He got up and walked to the window. Flame sat silently until he turned and said, "I think we've got him."
"Ringler."
"Yes."
"How so?"
"I'm not sure whether I'm right or not, but I think I am. Anyhow, what happened in that room may be very important. Try hard to remember and make it exact."
"I remember very well," Flame said bitterly. "They stripped me and took me real good."
"Could you identify them if you saw them again."
"I'll never forget them."
"When you say they took you, what exactly do you mean?"
"First, they knocked me around. One of them would knock me down and another would pick me up.
Then the first one would knock me down again."
"How long did that go on?"
"Quite a while. I was terror stricken. They hadn't locked the door and I got out once, but they chased me and carried me back in again."
"Then they raped you?"
"Yes. They were inventive very inventive. They thought of things to make me do. Real cute tricks. Twice I couldn't go on."
"From being beaten up."
"From that and other things. After one of their tricks I crawled into the bathroom; they followed me and watched, laughing at me. Then they waltzed me around some more."
"We'll need details on all that later," Barney said. "What happened after that incident was over?"
Flame's smile was bitter. "That's how you see it, isn't it? Just an incident."
"No. Of course not. I'm sorry. Would you like to take a break?"
"No. There in that room, they made me say uncle all right. Mr. Bates came back and was quite happy with the results. I think his goons probably got a bonus. I appeared a week later in one of Bates' circuses." Flame smiled again with the same bleak bitterness. "I had to wait a week for the bruises to heal."
She swiftly lit a cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke before going on. "I wasn't really broken though, I guess, because I caused Bates' and his stooges a lot of trouble. I always howled for more money than he wanted to give me, but I guess I was a pretty valuable property because he always paid it."
"There were other stags and circuses?"
"Uh-huh. I could have worked every night if I'd wanted to. Then I gradually became my own boss I guess because Bates couldn't take the hard time I kept giving him. Anyhow, I got to be a kind of free agent. I could work when and how I wanted to and argue about money as long as I stayed in Bates' stable.
"That was a Bates stag where we met?"
"Yes. And that brings us up to date."
"Do you think Bates will be hunting you?"
"I don't know."
"It really won't matter. I'm going to have him arrested. You're going to charge him, and we're going to have him thrown in jail. He'll be out of course, and nine chances out of ten he'll go before the grand jury. Then who knows?"
Flame passed a tired hand over her eyes.
"If you don't mind, Mr. Williams, I'd like you to leave. I'm very tired. I want to go to sleep."
"Of course. I'll arrange to have you meet Carter Gantry, your attorney, tomorrow. I'll call you."
"Do that," Flame said.
She let him out and then went to bed where she cried for half an hour before she went to sleep...
When Barney Williams left, he told himself he was not going to see or call Barbara that night. This resolution came spontaneously without thought, but it was clear and definite; it was right and sensible.
Then it occurred to him that perhaps a telephone call would be all right.
So he phoned her, and the gladness and the welcome in her voice made him feel like a heel She invited him up for a few minutes and he could hardly refuse. But that was what it would be; a brief call; with perhaps a cup of coffee or a drink.
And that was how he went from taking notes on Flame's life to lying naked beside Barbara in less than half an hour. Lying there now, her body close to his, her most intimate charms revealed to him given to him as his possessions he wondered about her first experience with a man. What had it been like for her? Had she been scared? Had the man meant anything to her? Had he been a considerate, decent individual?
He thought of Flame's defloration; the brutality of the man who had taken her virginity away from her. And he wondered if Barbara could also be hiding a traumatic shock of that sort deep in her being.
He was sure that this was not true.
In comparing the two women, he visualized Flame, naked and beautiful, performing in one of Ringler's stag shows. He visualized the despicable things they would have forced her to do. He saw the avid eyes of men turn into animals gloating at the spectacle.
Then he tried the other and failed. He could not visualize Barbara in a position such as that. It was utterly impossible. He tried to do it and was able to force her body into the image, but where her face belonged, there was only a blank.
Only a blank...
"Are you asleep?"
"Now just relaxing." Barbara smiled lazily.
He kept his eyes closed and felt her lips brush his body. It was like a faint touch of gentle lightning, gone so quickly it was immediately a memory, and the thought came to him that even Flame could have been no more uninhibited.
He leaned to toy with her nipples.
She laughed softly. "I'll give them to you if yoa want."
"Are they detachable?"
"I don't know. We could find out."
"No. You keep them for me. Just have them both ready whenever I want them.
"It's a great responsibility."
"They're so small. I might lose them."
He felt a sharp quick bite. "Well I like that, Mr. Williams. Talk about insults!"
"It's all comparative. Pinned on my lapel they would look like little brown roses."
He felt her quick kiss. "You're forgiven."
His hand wandered, and he felt her body quiver as she said, "Shame on you!"
"Uh-huh."
"Am I keeping you awake, Mr. Williams."
"As a matter-of-fact, you are."
"I'm glad."
Her belly jerked and he heard the quick intake of her breath.
"Something new?" She asked the question with a quick, inward gasp.
"I don't know-is it?"
"I I'm afraid so."
"Do you want me to stop?"
"No-no-don't stop?"
"Didn't a man ever do that to you before?"
He regretted the question instantly and would not have blamed her for anger. She had every right to tell him to mind his own business. But she didn't. She hesitated while her thighs began tightening and her body jerked again.
Then she said, "Yes but I was always afraid before afraid somehow."
"You're not afraid now?"
"No oh, no but gently at first oh, gently-"
"Yes, my darling," he whispered.
Then he was surprised. Barbara said, "You're not doing it right."
He knew what she meant, but he did nothing about it. Until she moved quickly and with resolution, her body twisting and turning and readjusting itself in juxtaposition with his.
When the change had been made he again heard her voice. But a new kind of passion had dulled his receptivity; filled his ears with a ringing sound, and he heard her from a long distance away, it seemed farther than she had actually. gone.
He knew her face was partially buried in a pillow as he answered a completely artificial chuckle in his voice; as he tried, for no reason he could think of, to keep it light.
"All right. But I refuse all responsibility."
Her whole body quivered from anticipation now. There was silence except for the little cat-whimpers that came from the pillow.
"Oh, God!"
Her first clear cut reaction, and he remembered her plea: gently gently.
But the time for gentleness had past. He was unable to be other than demanding; and he knew she was giving something she had never given before.
Perhaps that was why he had to take it from her violently.
And his violence brought quick reaction. She was blindly pushing him away.
But he had passed a point of no return. It had to be finished even if it cost him his immortal soul.
"No! No! Oh, God! I can't stand it!"
She could stand it. She was a woman. She had been born to stand it. She would have to learn.
He clung to her; held her; demanded of her.
Finally, her body came up in a high rigid arc as she stuffed the material of the pillow into her mouth and screamed. She threshed violently so that it was hard for him to follow the movements of her body, but he pursued her relentlessly.
Then it was over. She collapsed and lay trembling from the after-effect, curled pathetically into a protective ball; like a child whose feelings had been hurt.
He waited; saying nothing; doing nothing.
Then she moved, and he wondered. Would she get up and go away? Was her judgment of this new thing one of disgust and revulsion.
He lay still as she moved.
As she came into his arms and cuddled there with her face against his chest. Again like a child who, after being punished, came back to ask forgiveness for the transgression that had brought on the punishment.
Still, he waited. Would she accuse him?
She giggled, the sound faintly hysterical. "I'm warm."
"It's a hot day," he said.
Again the giggle. "This room is air-conditioned."
"So it is."
"Maybe the air conditioner broke down."
"Shall we check?"
"No. I'm too relaxed. Too comfortable. She sighed. Her tongue darted out and was drawn back. "You're salty."
"I'm warm too."
"You're I don't know. You're just you."
It was her final summing up lor the moment as she cuddled closer to him and sighed and went to sleep. After a while he released himself gently and started to draw away.
She whimpered in her sleep and reached for him. He paused and then came clear and stood looking down at her as she slept naked, glorious her effect on him beyond clear towards.
He only knew that he wanted to take her. He wanted to lunge down at her like a bull and rip satisfaction from her body.
But instead, he dressed, wrote a short note that he left on the bed.
Then he quietly let himself out of the apartment ...
CHAPTER NINE
The headline read:
RINGLER ACCUSED OF GOON-SQUAD METHODS
Private Police Squad Hinted in New Sensational Disclosures.
The story could have been called a bonus handed by destiny to Vince Kane in his battle against Art Ringler. Or then again, it could have been credited to the fact that Barney Williams' mind was always working.
After the capture of the Archer Street four, Barney arranged to bump into a reporter friend who had a by-line in the Journal. He knew the reporter's first question would be:
"Got anything for me, chum?"
"Me?" Barney asked innocently. "Not a thing. All I know is what I read in the Journal."
Bill Seagram growled, "Very funny. Who do you think you are Will Rogers?"
Barney sipped at his Scotch. "I see where they picked up the four Park Hotel jokers."
"Old stuff. It happened yesterday."
"They were taken to the Thirty-seventh." Seagram grunted.
"I need a new angle, Barney. I'm damned sure you've got something up your sleeve to feed Art Ringler."
"Those rapists still interest me, though. Avery was sounding off. Were you in on the interview? I understand that he had the captain at the Thirty-seventh parade the boys for the press."
"Sure. Four lame-brain studs. Color them gray."
"Maybe you missed something."
"What?"
"I don't know. But I heard some rumors. One of them was hauled in earlier, you know.
"Sure-so what?"
"He got roughed up a little."
Seagram snorted. "Who cares? The public feels rapists rate it."
"Yes, but I've got a hunch the guys who did it might not be in line for a police pension."
"What do you mean?"
"Not on salary. Not public servants."
Seagram's eyes snapped. "You're nuts. They came straight to the Thirty-seventh with the punk. He "
"Sure. But who the hell were they? You haven't heard any Thirty-seventh boys bragging about the pinch, have you?"
"You mean ? "
Barney shrugged. "Don't quote me on anything," he murmured. "You know how rumors get around."
As he finished his Scotch, he pursed his lips thoughtfully, watching Bill Seagram head for the door...
And as the news story went on...
It was discovered by this reporter, that there was no record of the arresting officers when Sammy Perry, the first of the rape suspects to be picked up, was brought to the 37th Precinct Headquarters. When this fact became apparent, your reporter insisted on an interview with the prisoners. He was refused this privilege on the grounds that the prisoners did not want to make public statements at this time.
However, contact with the lawyer representing them, court appointed LeRoy Howell, it was discovered that they had no objections at all.
It was during this interview that your reporter got from Sammy Perry a description of the men who brought him in, men who according to rumor that stubbornly persists, used Gestapo methods on Perry in order to force a confession in which he stated that Vince Kane hired him and his three co-defendants to rape Miss Ames...
These descriptions do not fit any of the policemen working out of the 37th. Nor, so far as this reporter has been able to discover, any of the men in any other of the city's police stations...
Barney Williams was pleasantly surprised when he read the story. But Vince Kane was wildly elated.
"We got a break, Barney. We got a real break."
"We sure did."
"Well, what the hell are you going to do about it?"
"Do? Be happy, Vince. I'm going to be real happy."
"Good Lord! Aren't you going to follow it up? Do something about it?"
"What would you suggest?"
"Suggest.! There are twenty things you could do."
"Tell me, Vince. I'm ready."
"Do I have to think of everything? What the hell are you around here, Barney? A messenger boy? I want Ringler. Do I have to keep reminding you?"
"I'd say we've got two nails in the cross already. The third one might go in tomorrow."
"All right. Don't bother me with details. Do it. That's what you get your big money for."
As Barney left Kane's office, he thought about that. Kane did pay him big money. That made Kane the boss. He could talk as he saw fit. He had a right to blast the help if it soothed his nerves.
But it was a little irritating even to a person of Barney Williams' serene temperament.
He pondered this as he stopped off to see how Barbara was doing and found a surprise.
There was a chair and a typewriter table with a typewriter on it in the middle of the room.
He stared. "What the hell is that? You writing your memoirs?"
"No, but you're going to."
"Now wait a minute. I never said-"
"You said you wanted to write."
"I said I was thinking about it."
Barbara's eyes suddenly beseeched. She laid a hand on Barney's arm. "Darling. Please don't think I'm acting like a nagging wife. I don't want to. But you're so much better than you realize. Your potential is so much greater than what you're doing. I'm--I'm just so terribly ambitious for you."
She turned away suddenly and the change intrigued him. He followed her and lifted her face so that he could look into her eyes.
"What's bugging you, baby?"
"It just occurred to me "
"What occurred to you."
"That I'm taking too much for granted."
"Are you out of your mind?"
"It could be true. Just because we've slept together doesn't mean "
He looked at her angrily. "What do you think I am? Some kind of wolf?"
"You've slept with other girls."
"Of course. And you've slept with other men."
She bit her lip as her eyes dropped.
Again, he lifted her chin. "Look, honey. We're wandering off into left field. Let's go back and start over. You said you figure you might be pushing in where you don't belong. I'm just telling you it isn't true. It's just that, well, hell. I'm making good money. I'm getting along fine. Sure I talked about writing the great American novel, but everybody does that everybody has a dream; something they plan that they never expect to fulfill."
She was close to tears. "Oh, so that's what it was! Just a lot of talk!"
"Now wait a minute! You're twisting things. You're putting words in my mouth."
"I'm not putting words in your mouth. The only words I've repeated are words you've used yourself."
"Then you're putting your own meaning to them."
"Am I? Did you or did you not say that you planned to write a book?"
"Well, maybe I did. But "
"But what?"
"But I didn't mean "
"But you didn't mean that you had any intention of writing a book."
"Now you're calling me a liar!"
"Why don't you say it? Why don't you tell me to keep my long nose out of your business?"
"There you go again "
Barbara, more highly emotional than Barney thought she had any right to be, doubled her fists and shook them and screamed. "Oh, get out of here! Leave me alone with-with my humiliation!"
This honestly floored him. "Your humiliation! For God's sake! I wasn't trying to humiliate you!"
"You're a fool!"
His anger came to the surface. "Okay! At least I know what you think of me now."
"Barney "
But he had already stormed out of the apartment, and with every determination to keep things strictly impersonal from that moment on.
Women!
Art Ringler sneered.
"Okay," he said. "So I do have a few boys for special jobs. So they do use the precinct stations. What's the big deal? A crum gets roughed up."
"It's the publicity, Art. And I think the mood of the people has a lot to do with it."
"The people don't give a damn as long as they get what they want."
"What if they decide they want clean government?"
"Look here, Avery. Who the hell's side are you on?"
Colin Avery knew that in this area he was two men. A public servant who had started with reasonably high ideals and a desire to serve. But something had happened along the way. There had been temptation. First, a series of small temptations little favors he was able to do with an eye to politics.
These had taken only small compromises with his conscience. He had been able to tell himself that the game had to be played according to the rules of the times.
A man had to be a realist.
But the line between the small favor and the big favor had been hard for Colin Avery to find. Then, when he'd realized Art Ringler could keep him in office; could even use entrenched political power to push him higher, he'd gradually fallen into a new way of life.
And now, here he was, so completely under Ringler's power that there was no way out except disgrace. "Well for God's sake! Can't you figure it out?"
"I'm on your side, of course. That's why I'm being honest about this thing. It's dangerous, Art. Very dangerous."
"I've bucked tougher ones. And I'm going to get Kane. I'm going to smash him."
"But did you ever stop to think what it may cost you? Is it worth wrecking your own machine?"
"What are you talking about?"
"A deal. You're both in trouble. I'm suggesting that you see Kane. Talk it over. This town is big enough for both of you."
"Are you serious?"
"Very serious. And I've got some more suggestions. Pull in your horns a little. You've let your hatred for Kane affect your judgment. That shooting at Kane's night club. It all started there. If you hadn't insisted on my following it up there would never have been any rape case. Kane would not have started fighting back. It's a snowball, Art a dirty snowball that gets bigger and bigger as it rolls downhill."
Art Ringler let his contempt for Avery blaze out full force. "You're yellow, Avery. You're just plain yellow."
"I've told you the truth."
"Get out. I'll call you when I want you."
During this time of fear, uncertainty, and tension, Carter Gantry was probably the most self-confident and perfectly adjusted man in town.
He called on Flame in her hotel room that morning and was pleasantly surprised. He'd expected to find an old, beaten bag of a female with flabby breasts and an overtaxed body. But he'd found quite the opposite. He sat down in her room, and while he opened his brief-case he acknowledged to himself the fact that this case would be pleasant.
He did not allow these thoughts to reflect in his manner, however. He cleared his throat and scanned the typed notes Barney Williams had given him.
"I think, Miss Brown, that we may very well win this case."
Flame was wearing lounging pajamas under a red Chinese robe. Only the cold, wary look in her eyes kept her from being thoroughly enchanting.
"That's nice."
Gantry smiled brilliantly. "This could be the turning point of your ah, career."
Flame saw no reason for finesse. "You mean I might get a real break? If I'm careful and do what I'm told I might get to be a five-hundred-dollar call girl now with the publicity and all?"
"Well," Gantry said delicately. "You could well become a national figure."
"That's great." Flame said with complete unenthusiasm.
"I'd say your fortune, your monetary fortune that is, would lie in the realm of books, magazine articles, motion picture contracts."
"All that?"
"And possibly more."
"I can hardly wait."
Gantry cleared his throat again. He was scanning the notes. "There is much more we'll need before we go into the grand jury room; greater detail as to what you were subjected to."
He paused, keeping his eyes on the papers, waiting for her comment. When none came, he said, "I'm really tied up at present. The pressure of work and all. So I've arranged with Barney Williams to carry on with his original good work."
"You mean he's going to ask me a lot more questions?"
"It will point only to the single incident your encounter with Bates and exactly what transpired afterward."
"That could still mean a lot of questions."
"Nevertheless, it's of vital importance. And I'm sure you'll cooperate."
"Oh, of course. I'm the greatest little cooperator that ever hit town."
Gantry glanced at his watch. "I must run along now. I thought I might stay long enough to catch Barney Williams, but I'll see him later."
"I'll tell him you were here."
Gantry got up and used his brilliant smile again. "Chin up, Miss Brown," he said briskly. "From here out we'll follow our fortunes wherever they lead us."
"That will be great," Flame said gravely.
Back in the street, Gantry found his mind dwelling on the image he'd carried away. Flame was a beautiful girl. His type. He was so impressed that he stole ten minutes from his busy schedule and went into a bar. He ordered a drink and allowed himself to think about her to the exclusion of all else.
Then he went on with the things of the day...
Barney Williams arrived at Flame's hotel fifteen minutes later an interim during which Flame had belted down two stiff jolts of Scotch. Flame had never done a great deal of drinking, a characteristic of people strongly sexed. It had a tendency to make her reckless and even more cynical than was her natural wont.
Barney himself was in a reckless mood also. By coincidence, he'd done a little drinking himself after leaving Barbara's apartment, during which time he'd reassessed the situation on the basis of its practical aspects and his mood of the moment.
Barbara, he decided, could now be released. There was no reason to keep her under wraps. With all the new trouble Ringler had, he wouldn't be bothering with her. The four jerks also were no further problem. The police had them, and they would be legally processed in due time. Barbara would be called on to testify, but nobody would be gunning for her in any sense.
Flame was a different proposition. She would have to be covered and protected. And, he told himself resolutely, after a prying witch like Barbara, Flame would be a pleasure.
A pleasure.
She was certainly that to the eye as he entered the hotel room and saw her standing by the window. He used his own key, having felt it expedient to have one.
She turned to look at him but didn't move. "The second inquisitor," she said.
He was surprised. "Inquisitor?"
"A pretty big word, isn't it? I do know a few. Not very many, but a few."
He didn't know quite how to answer that. He said, "Gantry asked me to corne. I-"
"Yes. He was here. He said I'm going to be famous."
"Maybe we ought to get on with it," Barney said. "That one incident "
"Oh, yes. That famous incident. Let's get into it by all means."
And she made it very easy for him by crossing to the bed and sitting down and becoming very business-like.
"As I told you, there were three of them. After they got through knocking me down and picking me up again." She stopped. "Oh, I forgot or did I tell you the last time? They stripped me first."
Barney walked to the bed and stood close to her, looking at her with compassion. "Flame this is killing you, isn't it?"
She was holding herself in. "I made a deal. I'll go through with it."
"You act so hard, so tough. But you aren't that way at all, really."
"How can you say that? You saw me in a prize ring, naked with three midgets taking it away from me? You know there isn't a degenerate sex trick in the books I'm not familiar with! You know I've performed every physical act any man ever asked of me!"
Her eyes were bright with pain and anguish. "Let me tell you some of them; let me give you the details. Once two drunks picked me up and took me for a ride in the country. That was what they were paying for
just a ride in the country." She laughed. "A couple of nature boys!"
"Flame!"
She brushed away his restraining hand and went on with the compulsive self-flagellation, her voice rising. "They got me way out--out in a woods somewhere and made me take my clothes off. Then they smeared me from head to foot with mud thick mud. It was fun oh, such fun down on my hands and knees like a pig rooting in the slime and them down there too mauling me one of them grunting like-"
"Flame!"
He cried the command at her as he slapped her across the mouth. The slap was light but it stopped her. She stared at him, transfixed in the high, tight emotional state she had created.
"Flame," he said, "you're sweet and wonderful."
She was in his arms with the cry of a child on her lips; a miserable, hurt, beaten child.
"Oh, Barney Barney--tell me I'm not a pig--love me love me."
She hadn't meant physical love. Nor was that' what he'd implied. Her emotion was gratitude for being treated like a human being, and his aim had been to make her feel that way.
But she was a hot-blooded, passionate woman regardless. She could not have done the things she'd done without that. And he had just come from his fight with Barbara and had brought a recklessness with him.
Her mouth was close; she offered it and he took it gently at first, but almost instantaneously with hunger.
He pressed her back on the bed. "Flame Flame-you're wonderful," he murmured, their mouths still together.
He lifted her pajama tops and found her lovely breasts and buried his face in them and she whispered, "oh, yes, yes."
There was an urgency about their lovemaking. There had to be.
She pressed his face into her bosom and whispered, "Oh, I want to feel your mouth." She helped him, guiding the tight, erect nipple between his lips.
A haste; a great urgency because neither of them dared to stop to think for even a moment because then they would both have been ashamed.
"Harder! Harder!" she breathed. Don't be afraid to hurt me. I want to be hurt hurt! I want to give!"
Her pajamas were gone, and while he made love to her breasts she skillfully stripped his clothes from his body. She writhed her own mouth against him, and her hunger was such that it seemed she had never before had a man, that she'd saved everything for him and now she had to give it all to him quickly oh, so quickly before the rainbow broke and hurled them down into the muck again.
Everything all the things she'd learned from many men were so valuable now, because he was a man too and they would bring him pleasure.
So much skill in her hands and her mouth and her body. Her hands and month on his face and neck and belly, causing his thighs to jerk and twitch during the time he remained passive, engrossed in physical reactions he'd never known before.
Then he remembered the aggressive role of the man in lovemaking and reached blindly until he found her head and pulled her savagely upward and threw her on her back.
But even then Flame's skill and experience in sex kept her in the lead. She guided him expertly; handled him much as a veteran swimmer would handle an amateur, such being the comparative difference in their sexual skills.
Her body merged with his and her rhythm was smooth and practiced, her pace gradual, then faster and faster as she drew him to her.
It was an expert performance in every way.
Yet, her skill was unconscious, not in her mind, as she ministered to him. In her mind there had been an unprofessional tenderness, even a thrill to which she'd long since grown unaccustomed.
And now she began to cry.
He held her, and their roles changed. He was an adult comforting a weeping child. "It's all right," he soothed.
She tried to pull away. "Oh, sure! What else is expected of me? I always get down on the bed whenever a man comes along. It's automatic."
"Stop it. That wasn't the way I saw it at all."
"Are you sure?"
It was a pathetic little plea that touched his heart. "I think you're pretty nice." She lay in his arms for a while, then she stirred. "Please, can't we finish your notes later? I don't feel like talking today."
"Of course."
Again they were quiet. And again, it was Flame who spoke.
"Barney--. "
"Yes"
"I don't want to go through with it. It's too too dirty."
"You've changed your mind then."
"No. I never wanted to do it."
"But you said you would."
"I will. I just want you to understand that I don't want to, but I'll do it for you."
"For me?"
"It's very important to you, isn't it."
"I guess it is. I work for Vince. He deserves my loyalty."
"He has it, but does he deserve it?"
Barney stirred uneasily. Women, it seemed, were all the same. This was the identical line Barbara had harped on. Were they trying to cut him away from Vince?
That might have been true with Barbara, but Flame certainly had no interest in the matter. So what was she driving at?
"Doesn't any boss deserve the loyalty of the people he pays?"
"I suppose so, but somehow I don't like to see you working for him."
Barney's first reaction was one of annoyance. What right had Flame to such an observation? He'd found her performing in a stag show and had contacted her strictly on a business basis. Did she think he saw her as anything else?
Then he was shaken by his own bigotry. He'd never been like that--a hypocrite.
And it was for that reason alone, his guilt, that he answered her gently. "It's a good job. He pays me a lot of money. Do you think I'm above working for money?"
"No. Of course not."
And he had another strange reaction. Or perhaps it was not strange at all. He realized that if he'd met Flame under any other conditions of conventional decency that he would have seen her as a normal, conventional girl. She bore no scars of her life other than those she confessed to and could easily have kept secret.
And here she was, talking exactly like Barbara.
Predatory.
That was the word, he told himself. Possessive. Every girl had the same idea when they got their hands on a man. Take him over. Direct him. Possess him.
But damn it! He didn't want to be possessed...
CHAPTER TEN
"Are you sure you're doing the right thing, Wendell?"
Clara Hill was a plain woman, plain in her looks, plain in the way of life she pursued with her husband, plain in the philosophies and conventions to which she adhered.
"It's what I must do," Clara."
They were at the breakfast table, and the paper that told of Wendell Hill's exploits was spread on the table. Clara Hill shook her head dubiously. "But you never talked of things like this city government and such. You never showed much interest in such things."
"There was nothing I could do about them before."
"Men like Vincent Kane and Arthur Ringler they seem so dangerous so untouchable."
"They are not untouchable not by any means. No one has taken the field against them. That's the trouble."
"But there have been other grand juries."
"Ineffective ones, you mean? That's quite true. But it's no excuse for me to shirk my duty."
"Isn't it the business of the police to arrest wrongdoers? Why should you have to take your time leave your job to "
"Please Clara. I have to do what I think best."
"Of course you do, dear, but the city government is so dishonest. Everybody taking bribes. Everybody violating their oaths of office."
"It isn't quite like that. The vast majority of public servants are honest. It's the small minority that contaminates the bowl."
"Everyone complains but no one does anything."
Wendell Hill smiled. "But now we are doing something."
"But Wendell, what can you do against their power?"
"Their power is an illusion, really, my dear. The power is still in the hands of the people, if and when they want to use it. The grand jury is an instrument of the people."
"I never knew just how it works."
"It's quite simple. A grand jury is convened by a judge to pass on the circumstances of lawlessness. Every accused person gets a hearing. The grand jury room is the place where many of these hearings occur. If the grand jury decides there is not sufficient evidence against an accused person, the case is not prosecuted."
"Who brings the accused people before the jury."
"The district attorney does that."
"Then I'd think the jury would get only cases he wishes them to pass on."
"Normally that is the case. But the foreman of the grand jury has powers that are seldom exercised. With the backing of his jury, the foreman can demand to hear anyone he chooses. The district attorney must take his orders if he gives them."
"But I understood the district attorney could dissolve the grand jury."
"No. Not according to law. It amounts to that most of the time in practical application because the judges who actually dissolve the juries work on the district attorney's recommendation. But in exceptional cases, such as the one we've gotten into, only the most venal judge would act arbitrarily. And even then a higher judge would usually overrule him."
Clara sighed. "I suppose it will all work out for the best, but I still wish the responsibility was not yours. I guess I'm afraid for you."
"Don't be, my dear. Threatening or molesting members of a grand jury is too serious a crime for even Arthur Ringler or Vincent Kane to attempt ... "
"You're crazy, Vince! You can't touch the foreman of any grand jury. It's too dangerous. And trying to mess around with Wendell Hill would be suicide!"
"Hell, Barney. Everybody's got their price."
Barney Williams was in a phone booth in the lobby of City Hall. He was frowning.
And he was worried.
Kane had changed a great deal fn the previous few days. Things were going so well in the war with
Art Ringler that Vince must have reacted to the scent of new power. That was the only answer to Kane's new arrogance that Barney could think of.
"Look Vince I've been doing some thinking."
"Okay," Kane said crisply. "I pay you for your thinking time too, so what have you come up with?"
Still scowling, Barney Williams pondered before answering. He didn't like the peremptory tone in Kane's voice. But he'd heard it before and he wondered why it bothered him now.
"I think you ought to get together with Ringler," Barney said. "We're in a dangerous situation. You might well collapse his vice balloon, but things could backfire. A real reform movement might start. That would wipe you out of town too."
"You don't have much confidence in me, do you?"
"That's not it. We can get Ringler sure but Hill might not be sidetracked by vice and sensationalism. He might plow right on through the numbers and the pin-balls and everything else."
"You're making that damned grease monkey bigger than he really is."
Barney was struck by the inconsistency of Kane; the rationalizations his ego forced upon him. He conceded Hill the power to smash the powerful machine headed by Art Ringler. but withdrew this concession when his own gambling empire was in question.
"There's enough in this town for both of you. The only thing involved is your personal hatred of each other."
"Are you going over to his side? What did he pay you, Barney?"
"That's uncalled for, Vince."
"I guess maybe it is. But quit giving me reasons to say uncalled-for things"
"Okay," Barney said coldly. "I'll call you later."
"Right. Keep me posted..."
Barney Williams left the booth. He was not a happy man. For the first time since he'd worked for Kane, he had been disloyal. It had been a treason of omission. He'd called Vince to tell him that a process server was on the way with a subpoena to appear before the grand jury. With warning Vince could have avoided the service and left the brunt of the ordeal on Art Ringler.
But Barney had not warned Kane. And now he left the booth, shaken by his own treachery...
. . . "I think you're safe now," Barney said. "You will be called as a witness against your attackers, but Art Ringler isn't interested in you anymore. You won't be bothered by phony protection."
"Everyone seems more interested in a girl called Flame," Barbara said.
She had a copy of the morning paper in which the story had been luridly played up:
POLITICAL BOSS CALLED VICE LORD Arthur Ringler Accused By Call Girl. Heatedly Denies Charges.
In a series of sensational charges, a call girl and admitted prostitute today charged Arthur Ringler, the city's most potent political boss with being responsible for her downfall. The charges, if proven true, will most certainly destroy Ringler as a political figure.
Slated to go before the grand jury at 10 a.m. today, Ringler was defiant and bitter. Ringler claims that he is the victim of a plot instigated by a long-time bitter enemy, Vincent Kane, local boss according to Ringler, of the lower east side policy racket. Kane, called before the grand jury also, denies any involvement.
A shadowy figure known only as Mr. Bates is being sought for questioning as the alleged link between Ringler and the city's well-organized vice activities ...
Barney glanced at the paper and smiled a humorless smile. "It looks as though the fat's really in the fire, doesn't it?"
"What are you going to do afterward, Barney?"
He looked surprised. "Afterward?"
"This is the end for both of them, isn't it? They destroy each other."
"I don't think so."
He had seen Barbara several times since the typewriter episode and the meetings, while not hostile, had certainly been cool.
"You mean that they will be able to go on with what they've been doing after this?"
"As terrible as it may sound to you yes. There will be some sensational testimony. A lot of people will be hurt. But the public forgets."
"I don't understand. Ringler will most certainly be indicted on the strength of Flame's testimony. The newspaper publicity alone will ruin both of them."
Barney smiled again. "You'll notice that the papers were very careful in one respect. Their reference to Flame is guarded. They mention her professional name only once at the very end of the story. And her real name isn't used at all."
"Why is that?"
"Because nothing has been proved. At the moment all this might be nothing but a lot of irresponsible charges. There is no concrete evidence to the contrary. Newspapers only go so far with allegations. They want facts."
"The facts will come out at the grand jury hearing won't they?"
"Yes. But there is one point everyone overlooks. The grand jury cannot indict. It can only recommend. It finds the evidence sufficient for trial and the district attorney takes over from there."
"You seem so pessimistic so sure there will be no results from this."
"I am pessimistic. I know so many things that can happen in a corrupt administration when the immediate spotlight of publicity is turned off. Deals arrangements for the good of the party for the general welfare of the city. The 'sweep it under the rug boys' the strong uptown politicians haven't moved into action yet. Ringler isn't as big as a lot of people think. Kane is relatively small time. They are both fronts for other people. The important people the really solid ones never get their names in the papers. They are never touched."
"What you say is frightening," Barbara murmured.
"It's reality. I'm basing most of what I say about this affair on instinct. Something is missing. It hasn't got the flash or the spark to really make it go off."
"I don't quite understand what you mean."
"I don't really understand it myself."
"But you're pretty well fed up with the whole business, aren't you, Barney?"
"Why do you say that?"
Barbara held up a quick hand. "Now don't flare up. I'm not trying to tell you what to do. I wouldn't dream of trying to run your life. But I am in love with you, and maybe that gives me clearer perceptions."
He stared at her. "In love with me!"
"Does that sound so terrible? And why is it such a surprise? If you'll remember, you came to me and asked me if I thought you loved me."
"So I did."
"I think you do."
"I think we're both being very foolish."
"Why are you afraid of it, Barney? Love isn't a trap."
"I'm not cut out for that sort of thing."
"You've changed," Barbara said. "You're not the same man you were when we met. What happened, Barney?"
"Nothing happened," he said savagely. "You're reading lines into the script. My boss has been in a bind. I've been trying to get him out. Things have been a little rough."
There was pain in Barbara's eyes. "I want to ask you a question, Barney. I want you to answer as truthfully as you can."
"Very well."
"Are you having second thoughts about us because of what happened to me?"
"What do you mean?"
"I was raped, brutalized "
He held up his hand in protest. "Barbara--! "
"Let me finish because it's very important. I was taken by four men and made to do terrible things." She closed her eyes and the words came out with difficulty. "I never gave anyone the details, but I'm sure you know what happened to me. But you don't know that toward the end I did them willingly. They broke me at least temporarily, Barney. In the end, they had me crawling because all I wanted to do was to please them so they would finish and go away. I had to tell you that. I had to give you the absolute truth because well, because there must not be any misunderstanding between us. I would rather walk away than have you always wonder exactly how it was."
"But why should I wonder? Why should it be necessary that I know the details."
"If you don't love me it makes no difference at all. But if you do, there must be honesty. There must be--oh, I don't know. Will you leave? Will you get out of here?"
Barbara turned away and flung herself on the lounge. Barney waited helplessly for a few moments. Then he moved toward the door.
As he closed it behind him, Barbara burst into hysterical tears. He listened a few moments before he walked away.
Down in the street, pure misery was his lot. He was deeply sorry for Barbara. He understood what she was going through. He wanted to help her but he could not.
None of what she'd said was true. But she was right in her perceptions. There was something wrong. But he could not tell her what it was.
He could not tell her that he was in love with a call girl.
A call girl named Flame.
Wendell Hill looked at Egan, Colin Avery's most dynamic young assistant, and said, "I'd like to question the gentlemen if I may."
Egan nodded reluctantly. He'd expected this but had tried to forestall it and lead Art Ringler through a series of as harmless questions as possible.
He nodded again. "Certainly. Question him by all means," he said, and stepped back.
Wendell Hill leaned forward across his desk. "Mr. Ringler. Are you acquainted with a man named Bates?"
Art Ringler scowled. "Bates? What's his first name?"
"I don't know. The first name has not been stated."
"There are a lot of men named Bates in the city."
"I know, but we're speaking of the Mr. Bates that Miss Brown referred to in her testimony. The man who appears to be in charge of certain vice activities around the city."
"That could be anybody. I don't know about any vice activities myself. If I found out about them I'd put a stop to them in a hurry. Or at least I'd refer them to our police department. There are a lot of good men on our police force. They hate that sort of thing "
Wendell Hill had been waving his hand trying to stop Ringler. He finally succeeded. "We are well aware of that. Mr. Ringler. There are many good honest men on our police force. The vast majority of them are interested in doing a good, honest job. At the moment, we are interested in the factors that keep them from always doing their best."
"If I ever found any of those factors I'd put a stop to them in a hurry. At least, I'd refer them to "
"Yes, I know. But about Mr. Bates. Do you know any men named Bates?"
"Yes yes I do. There's Arney Bates. He owns a butcher shop down on Ferry Street near where I was born and raised. I'm a native of this city, Mr. Foreman. All my life I've worked my heart out to see to it that the taxpayers get their money's worth. I-"
"Any other men named Bates, Mr. Ringler?"
"There's Charley Bates over in the dock district. His little girl got polio five years ago, and I "
"Any other men by that name?"
Wendell Hill was getting a little desperate. He was beginning to realize that honesty and courage were not enough; that he was a mechanic and as such was not equipped nor trained to get honest answers, even under oath, from slippery liars like Art Ringler.
He realized too, that he was pretty much alone in this crusade. The other members of the jury were actually a little embarrassed about all this. They were decent and honest also, but they were only citizens who had come to listen and make up there minds about evidence presented. They were not skilled at prying this evidence out of reluctant witnesses.
That was the district attorney's job.
And Wendell Hill had to admit that so far he'd given them little that was tangible. Not enough to indict the men at whom the inquiry had been aimed.
Art Ringler, sensing his advantage, smiled expansively at the rest of the jurors and then returned his attention to Hill.
"Mr. Foreman, I'm happy to be here. I want you to understand that. I was subpoenaed, sure, but if I hadn't been, I'd have asked to be heard. I think it's every citizen's duty to get up in court and state what he knows. That's one of the basic foundations of our government. I "
"Yes, Mr. Ringler. Most laudable, I'm sure. But I have no more questions at this time..."
Egan smiled. "I have no further questions either, Mr. Ringler...
Barney Williams entered the waiting room from which the witnesses were called, one by one, before the grand jury. Vince Kane sprang up from his chair. He scowled.
"Where have you been?" he whispered harshly. "Busy," Barney said.
Kane looked around at the others. He did not try to hide his annoyance. "Let's go out in the hall."
The uniformed guard at the door did not object and they stood outside where he could see them through a crack beside the slightly open panel. "Did you find Bates?"
Barney shook his head. "He's a slippery character. He disappeared into the woodwork, and I haven't located the worm hole yet."
"What the hell have you been doing? Don't you know that without Bates there's nothing to support that tramp's testimony?"
Barney did not answer immediately. He was looking at Vince Kane and again noted the change. It had been so sudden. Or had it? Perhaps it had been the opposite; so slow, so gradual, that Barney had not been able to notice it; not until now.
At any rate, Vince was a far cry from the dynamic, earnest young phenomenon who had rated the privilege of speaking before a college graduating class.
"Yes," Barney said. "I know that."
"You slipped up, Barney. You really fumbled the ball. You should have known you had to have Bates before the Brown girl was any good to you."
"I kept you briefed on the whole operation."
"But I was leaving it to you."
"I'll try to find Bates."
"See that you locate him. I'm due in there at any minute."
Barney looked at him curiously. "Are you afraid?"
Kane was wiping his face with a snowy handkerchief. "What the hell is there to be afraid of?"
"Nothing nothing at all," Barney said. "I'll go to work on the Bates thing again." He started away.
"Barney."
"Yes?"
Kane was nervously putting his handkerchief away. "What do you think that jerk'll ask me?"
"The only thing he can ask you now is about the shooting in your office."
"What'll I say. What do you think would be best?"
"Tell him it was all a mistake. A friend of yours was visiting you. He had a gun. He showed it to you. It went off. He got scared and ran."
"They'll ask the friend's name."
"It was Joe Whoozis. You haven't seen him since. He left town. He didn't leave a forwarding address."
"But-"
"They can't prove anything until they find Joe. If he doesn't exist they'll have a rough time locating him."
"They'll know I'm lying."
"Then tell them one of your policy-drop men got sore at you and pulled a gun. They'll believe that."
"You're kidding," Vince mumbled and turned abruptly and re-entered the waiting room.
Barney stared after him for a few moments. Then he hurried to the elevator and out of the building ...
"Did I do all right?" Flame asked.
"You did fine," Barney said.
He sat on the arm of the lounge in Flame's room and watched her pour a drink for him. He had no reason to be there. He was wasting good time. But he wanted to be there. He wanted to watch Flame as she crossed the room: to see the graceful movement of her legs and arms and her body; to remember the ecstatic electricity that their mating had generated. He wanted her again. He never wanted to lose her.
"You did fine," he repeated. "And I'm glad it wasn't as bad as we thought it would be."
"Mr. Hill was very nice."
"Mr. Hill is a mechanic, not a lawyer. That was the trouble. He wasn't up to asking embarrassing questions."
"I have to go before the jury again tomorrow. Mr. Gantry told me so. He's coming up this afternoon to brief me."
"He's a smart lawyer the best. You can't go wrong with him."
Flame brought the drink and pushed Barney down on the lounge as she handed it to him.
He felt a surge of annoyance, wishing he hadn't asked for the drink. Women! All they tried to do was run your life.
"I needed a quick one."
Flame dropped cross-legged at ms feet. She was so beautiful; so completely desirable. Not the least sign of her way of life was reflected anywhere.
It would come quickly, though, Barney thought. One of these days Flame would suddenly be old.
"Things are moving very fast," she said.
He was looking into her eyes, feeling the pull of her, noting the bright happiness with which she regarded him. He thrilled to the warm, trusting way she laid her head against his knee. There was nothing of the call girl in her at the moment.
Perhaps there never would be again.
Barney toyed with the thought. It fascinated and frightened him.
"Yes," he said. "Pretty fast. "The four goons who started this thing have been indicted already."
"They had a Legal Aid lawyer, I hear."
"Yes. They've been released on bail."
"What will they get?"
"It's hard to say. There were two counts of illegal entry the warehouse and the hotel. The hotel people are pushing hard, so I guess they'll have something added to the maximum rape penalty. They could get ten years."
"They deserve it."
"Yes, they deserve it."
Barney was having strange reactions. He felt empty and old, yet elated and young at the same time. It was weird; to be in love and dread it at the same time; to want a girl and have to sell yourself on the reality that taking her was suicide.
He finished his drink. "I'd better get along. There are things to do. I'll drop in again later."
She arose and slipped naturally and trustingly into his arms. And when he kissed her it seemed so right.
"See you," he said, and rushed away ...
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Carter Gantry was feeling edgy. This was unusual for him, and he wondered what was wrong. A busy man, he expanded most of his energy in his practice, and when he got a chance to rest, he was grateful.
But for the last few days, he had been full of pep, bouncy, and restless.
He was thinking of this as he rang Flame's bell. She opened the door and something hit him realization, among other things. He knew what had been wrong with him. His trouble had dated from the first interview he'd had with this chick.
"Hope I'm not intruding," he said.
"Not at all. I was expecting you."
He smiled as he entered and his eyes followed Flame as she walked in front of him.
God, but she was stacked. Those slacks held a real load of woman.
"There isn't much," he said. "Just a few points I want to go over with you before tomorrow's session."
He took some notes out of his brief-case and sat down on the lounge.
"Here," he said. "Sit down beside me and well go over them together."
As they cleared up a few matters, he was hotly conscious of Flame's thigh pressed against his own ...
The business at hand took twenty minutes, after which he put the notes back into his brief-case and smiled at Flame.
"Nice place they put you in, here."
"It's comfortable." She regarded him uncertainly. "Would you like a drink?"
"I certainly would."
Flame was a trifle uneasy as she poured Gantry a Scotch. But she could find no reason for it. He was a gentleman. There was no reason to be afraid of him.
Good heavens, she thought. Since I met Barney, I'm like a silly school girl.
She took the drink back to Carter Gantry and handed it to him. But he did not drink it. He put it down on the table by the lounge and suddenly pulled Flame down beside him.
He kissed her.
Thrown off balance by his sudden action, she submitted for a few moments. Then she jerked away. "Stop it!"
He was honestly surprised. This reflected in his face. "What's the matter, baby?"
"Are you out of your mind?"
He regarded her anger curiously. He grinned. "Good lord! You aren't beginning to believe your notices, are you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Innocent little girl trapped and brutalized by fiends in human form. Let's not get carried away by the copy."
He reached for her again, drew her down. This time she fought him. She drew back and slapped his face.
"I said-no!"
"Why you cheap little tramp. Getting tough with me! What's wrong. I'm not asking for it free!"
Flame's eyes widened. They blazed. "Damn you! Shut your mouth! Shut your filthy mouth!"
"My filthy mouth! After the things you told Barney? And the things you told me? Who's filthy!"
His anger mounting, he seized her and dragged her down on the lounge. He was prepared for the fight she put up now. And he had no trouble in controlling her.
Forcing her down, he sneered into her face. "Sure, that's it. Ideas of grandeur. You just forgot who you are. Now let's cut out this nonsense and get on with it. You'll find I'm a pretty generous guy."
Flame stared into his face. He did her the courtesy of giving her a few moments to make up her mind.
It took only a few moments.
Her anger subsided. The fires of indignation went out. "All right," she said, "all right. I'm sorry I slapped you."
He grinned. "That's better."
"Let me up, please."
"Sure, baby."
Flame got up from the lounge and walked to the window. It was a peculiar gesture as though she were saying good-bye to someone in the street.
Then she turned back and began to undress.
There was a small smile on her face as she unbuttoned her blouse and took it off. Her fingers were sure as she pulled the zipper on her slacks. She took them off, watching Gantry's eyes as she'd watched the eyes of so many men while she'd undressed before them.
Appreciation was there; the glow of desire that came into the eyes of the lustful male when he looked for the first time on the body he was about to take.
Flame had never been kittenish. She'd always been generous with men. She'd always given them their money's worth.
And Gantry got his money's worth. Naked, Flame moved toward him and took his head in her hands and pressed it against her breast.
His heat mounted swiftly. "The floor, baby, the floor."
The carpeting was thick and comfortable, and she undressed him while he lay prone. His eyes never left her body. Traveling over it, caressing it with trembling hands.
And for Flame, it was the old, old story; anticipating him; knowing from experience the manner in which a man could be guided through passion to the moment that was the be-all and the end-all of the kind of love she'd practiced for so long.
He showed great violence toward the end, his frantic rutting moving her across the rug, and now his weight was heavy upon her and his breath a wheezing in her ear.
She ached from the final, violent straining, and her body seemed emptied of all life.
Carter Gantry was a good lover in his own right; no fumbling amateur. He had caused her to respond in spite of herself.
He sat up and smiled down at her. "You're all right, honey. You're great."
"Thank you."
He pursed his lips and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How would you like to talk over a deal."
"A deal?"
"Sure. I'd like to have you."
"Exclusively?"
"That's my idea. You've got so damn much more than the others around. There are places I'd like to take you."
"You're married, aren't you?"
"Of course. I have a place up in Connecticut. A wife and two kids. I've got plenty of money, too. I'd set you up in a nice apartment in town not a dump like this and you'd find me generous very generous. I believe in paying for what I want."
"That would be very nice."
"It seems to me you'd go for it. No scrounging around." He smiled brilliantly, and she had to concede that he was very handsome. Being the mistress of a man like Carter Gantry was every hooker's dream.
"You'd have to watch yourself," he said jokingly. "Your weight. You'd be getting a lot less exercise."
He no doubt meant that she would do no more street walking. That was the difference between having one man a man like Carter Gantry and just hustling.
"I'd be very careful. I'd always want to look my best for you."
He patted her naked breast. "That's my girl. When this mess is over, we'll set it up. Just you and I."
He got to his feet and began dressing. When Flame started to get up, he said, "Stay there, baby just the way you are. Let me look at you. You're beautiful."
"Thank you."
She stayed where she was, naked there on the floor, while he dressed. She watched him take a bill out of his wallet and drop it on the coffee table. "There's a little to carry you over, baby. I'll see you tomorrow downtown right?"
"Right ... "
Outside, Carter Gantry congratulated himself. He'd had little time for fun up to now always too busy. But a man had to think of himself. You worked like a horse making it but if you never bought anything with it, what was the point?
In buying Flame, he was getting the real thing. God what a woman to be knocking around loose! Funny she hadn't been snapped up long ago. He wondered if Barney Williams had any ideas about Flame.
If he did, he'd better get them out of his mind.
She was taken...
Flame got slowly off the floor. She picked up the hundred dollar bill from the coffee table and looked at it. There had been times when she would have gotten down and crawled for a hundred dollar bill. Not so long ago, either.
She dropped the bill and put her blouse and slacks back on. Then she sat down and cried quietly for fifteen minutes.
When the crying was over, she went into the bathroom and returned to the lounge with a large bottle of sleeping tablets and a glass of water.
Then she set these things down and did a rather peculiar thing. She took the hundred-dollar bill, struck a match, and set the bill on fire.
She watched it burn. When it came close to her fingers, she dropped it into the ash tray and continued to watch until the last wisp of smoke arose from its charred remains.
She opened the sleeping tablet bottle and poured out a handful of the tablets and began systematically taking them. She washed each mouthful down with water and refilled her mouth.
When the water was gone, the bottle was three quarters empty.
Then she lay down on the lounge and closed her eyes.
Two tears came. They washed down her cheeks two small rivulets.
Then she murmured, "Good-bye, Barney-goodbye, my love" and went to sleep...
CHAPTER TWELVE
Barney Williams walked the streets. He went many places and made many inquiries and came finally to a ratty looking building in the lower part of the city.
He went inside. It was a dirty, unhappy building that housed dirty unhappy people who were not doing well in business and probably never would because their businesses were like themselves dirty and unhappy.
One of the doors said, Felix Haymer, but it did not specify the nature of Mr. Haymer's enterprise.
Barney went in through the door and found a frumpy little middle-aged woman going through some correspondence at a battered old desk.
"Is Mr. Haymer in?"
The woman glanced fearfully at the door to the inner office. "No," she said. "When will he be back."
"He's gone for the day."
The woman's glance had betrayed her. Barney, paying her no more attention, went into the inner office and found a prim, precise little man seated at another desk.
"Hello, Bates."
Bates did not react with any alarm. "Hello, Williams."
"I've been looking for you."
"Quite a few people have been looking for me. The point is-you found me."
"A weird blind you've got here."
"It's an entirely legitimate business," Bates said coldly.
"What kind of a business."
"I negotiate the sale of bankrupt stocks."
"I'd say Art Ringler is about bankrupt. Wouldn't you?"
"I have no present dealings with Mr. Ringler."
"You've deserted the ship with the other rats?"
Bates gave Barney a long, level look. "You can't insult me, Williams. Experts have tried it."
"What are you going to do about the grand jury summons?"
"Nobody has served me a summons."
"You've been dodging it."
"I have been dodging it to the best of my ability."
"The dodging is over. You're going in." Bates folded his hands and pursed his thin lips thoughtfully. "Do you insist."
"I insist."
"You do not have a summons with you."
"I'm no deputy. The point is, I know where you are now. I couldn't possibly lose track of you again."
"I could leave town vanish."
"Not you, Bates. You haven't got the guts to head out. You know I'd find you and bring you back."
"Yes," Bates sighed. "I'm sure you would."
"So the thing for you to do is to go in voluntarily. It would help a lot."
"How bad will things be for me would you say?"
"Who knows? Maybe not bad at all. The idea is to get Ringler indicted. I think you might make a deal. Turn state's evidence. Colin Avery will have to go down the drain with Ringler. A special prosecutor will be appointed, and he'll be looking for help."
"I suppose that's the best way. Will tomorrow morning be all right? I have a few things to clear up."
"Tomorrow will be okay." Barney grinned without humor. "I'll be out of a job too, I guess. I think Vince will be hit too, eventually. Got any bankrupt stocks I might be interested in?"
"I don't think I have a thing that would suit your tastes," Bates said gravely.
"See you in court," Barney called.
He left the building after doing an admirable job of difficult tracing. But he was not happy. Nor did he want to see anyone.
He walked a while and then went into a bar and ordered a Scotch.
Twice, he approached the phone to call Flame, and both times he resisted the temptation.
He nursed his drinks but after several hours had passed, he'd taken on a respectable load of alcohol. But it did not seem to have any effect.
He stared straight ahead at the bottles behind the bar in front of him.
Then he jerked his eyes sharply away as the music on the radio stopped and a voice cut in.
"We interrupt this program to bring you a news flash. The body of Leona Brown, key witness in the Ringler grand jury hearing, was found in her apartment half an hour ago. Miss Brown was dead, apparently a suicide. An almost empty sleeping tablet bottle was found by her side.
"Efforts at resuscitation failed, and Miss Brown was declared dead an hour after a janitor, entering the apartment to fix a leaking faucet, discovered the body."
The barkeep scowled and flipped the radio dial to a sportscast.
"Damned crooks," he grunted. "A guy gets sick of listening to what goes on in this town. Ringler probably had the girl killed. I hope they hang the louse."
Art Ringler got the news in his office. He smiled. "God," he said. "That ought to let us off the hook. The witch had an attack of conscience. She knew she lied about me and couldn't face it. She did a dutch."
"That's not quite how the papers will write it up," Colin Avery said.
"Who the hell cares? They've lost their witness. That's the main thing."
"They have her testimony. It all depends on how the public reacts to this thing."
"You and your public! The trouble with you is you've got no guts, Avery."
"All the same, without the girl or Bates, they haven't got a prayer."
"Let's hope Bates stays out of sight."
"He will. He's smart. And he knows if he ever showed up to testify against me, I'd nail him. Talk, and the little creep lands in jail. It'd be the safest place for him."
"Incidentally, Art, there's something I want to tell you. I'm resigning after this thing is over."
"Resigning? What the hell. You turning yellow?"
"No, I don't think so. I just want out. I haven't got the stomach for it anymore.
"Okay so run. I'll get another boy. After this is over I'll be bigger and better than ever and don't you forget it."
"I think perhaps you will, Art. I just don't want any part of it."
"Well, I haven't got time to sit here yakking. I've got things to do. I got to start putting the fence together again ... "
Barney Williams dialed a number and heard Kane bellow at him from the other end.
"Where in the hell have you been? I've hunted everywhere."
"I was out looking for Bates."
"Did you find him?"
Barney stared moodily out of the booth.
"I asked did you find him?"
"Yes."
"You heard about the girl knocking herself off."
"Yes."
"All right. Now will you tell me what the hell good Bates will do us without the girl?"
"It looks as though the whole case might fall through."
Kane cursed. "A great break a real great break," he said bitterly.
"Maybe it's better. Art stays in business. But you stay in business too."
"I've never worried about myself, you lamebrain! I can beat Ringler any day in the week. I think you're losing your grip."
"The girl who killed herself," Barney said, "she was sticking her neck out for us. Don't you think we ought to send a wreath?"
"Very funny," Vince growled.
"It wasn't meant to be," Barney said, and hung up ...
He left the tavern and went back in a straight line toward Bates' building. As he entered, he found Bates on the way out. Bates' calm approach to things was gone. He looked scared.
"I'm leaving, Barney. The girl is dead. That means my testimony and mine alone would convict Ringler. He'll try to kill me if he can."
"He hasn't thought of that yet."
"But he will. I know Ringler. He'll begin to get uneasy having me around. He'll put out a contract."
"If he does that, they'll find you wherever you go."
"I can make a try at it at least. I'm not going to get taken like a sitting duck."
"There's a better way."
"I'd appreciate your telling me what it is."
"Come on back in your office ... "
While Bates watched silently, Barney dialed long distance. "Give me the governor's office in the capitol," he said.
Bates started slightly. Barney waved him down ...
"I'd like to speak to the governor," he said. "I'm calling for a very important witness in the Ringler case. What I have to say is personal and confidential."
"Just a moment please..."
Five minutes later, Barney put the phone down and smiled at Bates. "The governor, if you'll remember, is of the opposing party. He's been itching to get Ringler and his ilk out of power for a long time. So everything is fixed."
"But I'm a bigger sitting duck than ever," Bates wailed.
"You're as safe as if you were in a bank vault. A car will pick you up in less than half an hour. You'll stay under guard until this thing is over. Ringler is through can't you see that. Kane is through. There's going to be a big clean-up in this town. Flame's suicide was the spark. When it's over, Ringler won't be in a position to put out a contract on you or anybody else."
Bates thought it over. "I suppose it's the best way," he said. "But I won't relish being a public figure."
"You'll be famous," Barney said dryly. "You'll be selling your life story to the papers. They'll want a picture based on your life."
But it wasn't funny. Barney remembered saying that to Flame. God! What could he have been thinking of? What kind of a man had he been?
He snatched up the phone and dialed. His sudden anger frightened Bates.
"Who are you calling now?"
Barney frowned absently at Bates. "I don't want ' her in the city morgue," he said. "It's a hell of a place ... "
They laid Flame out in a small chapel in an uptown funeral home where Barney sent her, and he went there after a while and stood in front of the casket.
Word had not been let out. No one knew. So he was alone.
"I'm sorry," he said.
She was so achingly beautiful lying there. He bent over and kissed her cold lips and then stood motionless looking down at her for a long time.
Later, much later, he repeated his words.
"I'm sorry."
Then he turned away and saw Barbara Ames standing by the door. He went to her. "How did you find out?"
"I went to the morgue. I thought you might be there. A policeman told me."
"How long have you been waiting here?"
"A long time. It doesn't matter."
They went outside and began walking.
Barbara remained silent as she moved along beside him.
"How did you know it was-Flame?" he asked. "That you were in love with her? I'm not quite sure how I knew it. I sensed it I guess. I knew it had to be somebody."
A little later, she asked, "You were in love with her?"
"I think so. But I'm not too sure of anything now except that I don't like myself very much."
"What will happen now?"
"Ringler is through. Kane is through although he doesn't know it. In fact both of them are living in a momentary fool's paradise. The sky will fall on them tomorrow."
"I'm glad."
They came to a corner and turned. "What will you do now, Barney."
"I don't know. I'll go away, I think."
"I'll miss you."
He stopped and faced her. He took her chin in his fingers and lifted it. She said nothing as she looked up into his eyes.
"Come on," he said, "There's something I have to do."
He called a cab and they went downtown down to the lower east side. He took Barbara into the Park Hotel and sat her down in the lobby. "You wait here. I've got something to do. I'll be back ... "
Gooch and Frenchy and Lew came together at their spot.
"Where's Sammy?" Gooch asked.
"Parading around somewhere," Frenchy said with disgust.
Actually, they'd all paraded around. After the shock and the fears of the affair, there had been notoriety. People looked at them and, not being too discerning, they'd enjoyed it. Lacking in imagination, they could not visualize the coming trial going to jail. They'd lived for each day at a time, and these days had an excitement to them.
Gutsey Jake appeared in the doorway of the tavern. "Lew," he said. "There's a guy wants to see you."
Lew was pleased. "Me?"
"Uh-huh."
"Not us?" Gooch asked. "Later."
They smiled. "A newspaper guy maybe." Lew went inside. Gutsey pointed. "Down in the basement."
Mystified, Lew went down. "You wanted to see me?"
"My name is Barney Williams. You're Lewis Key?"
"Uh-huh. They call me Lew, though."
"Okay Lew " And Barney hit him.
Barney hit him squarely in the belly, his fist sinking deep. Lew's eyes bulged from surprise and sudden agony. He gagged and bent forward over himself.
Barney straightened him with an uppercut that smeared his nose with blood. Lew tried to back away.
"Wait a minute wait a minute now. I "
"You rotten little weasel!"
Barney smashed a straight left against Lew's nose. It gave. Lew squalled and back-pedaled. He went to his knees and pawed blindly upward.
"It wasn't me, mister! Honest! It wasn't me."
Barney paused--intrigued. "It wasn't you what?"
"What'd you jump me for."
"Rape, you rotten punk."
"Well, it wasn't me. I just went along. I didn't want to."
He interpreted Barney's inaction as a truce. Coming eagerly to his feet, he said, "It was them the others. I just went along."
Barney hit him in the gut again. Harder, swinging from the heels. Lew squalled and went down. He rolled into a ball.
"I'm busted! You busted something. I'm sick!"
He vomited.
Barney stepped back. He pulled Lew to his feet and pushed him to the back of the basement where he went down again. Then Barney went to the stairway and called to Gutsey.
"You can send the other two down now."
"One at a time?"
"Hell no. Send them down together ... "
Barney went back to the hotel and into the lobby and smiled at Barbara.
"Are you through with what you had to do?" .
Barney rubbed his knuckles. "I'm through."
"You look a lot better more cheerful."
"I am. I'm hungry, too."
"We can go to my place. I'll make dinner."
"All right."
They got a cab and he was silent until they were out of the cab and upstairs in Barbara's apartment.
But Barney did not take his hat off. "Pack a bag," he said. "Why?"
"We're going away."
"Where?"
"Somewhere-anywhere-across state lines."
Barbara laughed. It was all different now. "For immoral purposes?"
"Would you go?"
"Anywhere, darling any time."
"Then I'll have to marry you to keep you moral."
Her eyes questioned tremulously. "Then ? "
He knew what she was going to ask about Flame if he'd made a mistake. He hadn't, but it didn't make any difference. He knew what he wanted to do.
"Don't talk so much," he said. "Pack a bag ... "
Two hours later, they flew out over the city toward the west. They were in the lounge of a jet plane, Los Angeles-bound, and Barney looked out the window. He looked back toward the flickering lights of the city and whispered, "Good-bye, Flame sleep well."
Then he turned to Barbara: "Here's to us, darling."
But Barbara was more perceptive than he thought. She did not smile.
"I'll help you forget her, Barney."
"It's over done with."
"I'll be a good wife. I won't nag. I won't try to run your life."
He grinned. "Then it's all off. That's what I'm after. It's what I need. Somebody to start running my life."
Barbara leaned close. "Tell them to hurry, darling. Tell them to get us there quick. Then take me to a hotel. I've only had you once. I want you again. I want you now so bad I could push you right down on the floor."
"Me too," Barney whispered back.
And they both knew everything would be all right ...
