The Hoods (18 page)

Max said, “Did you ask the guy if he has a rug on the floor?”

“Yeah. He said he has a wall-to-wall.”

Maxie said, “Okay, Cockeye. You go over to Klemy, the rug cleaner, and tell him I want to borrow his truck for awhile. And don't forget to get a couple of uniforms from him. Then meet us with the truck. We'll be at this guy's apartment. You got the address okay?”

Cockeye nodded and grumbled, “Always the errand boy.”

We shot up to the address on West Fifty-first Street, went up in the elevator to the fourth floor and rang the bell of apartment 4D.

Behind the door a slow, grating, insultingly polite voice called, “Who's there?”

Maxie gave his name. The door opened slowly. Maxie edged in cautiously with his Roscoe ready. I was behind him, my hand on my shiv. Pat was at my back, his rod out. There was a fat middle-aged guy standing behind the door, a big smile on his face.

“Come in, gentlemen,” he said coolly. “Why all the display of hardware?”

Maxie looked around and asked, “Hardware bother you? Where's the guest?”

The guy motioned to the back room.

“The stiff is in there.” He smiled. “No, nothing bothers me.”

I said, “You called Hot Springs?”

The fat guy replied, “Yeh. I first tried New Orleans.” He smiled knowingly. “P.C. gave me the Hot Springs number. That's how I got in touch with you fellows. I heard a lot about you.” Maxie raised his eyebrow questioningly. Fat Stuff continued in his grating, too sweet voice, “Oh, don't misunderstand me. I heard nothing but good about you boys—very capable and all that sort of stuff. It's a pleasure to finally meet you.” He stuck his hand out. “My name is Oscar Antwerp. You boys heard of me?”

He said it as if he would be deeply disappointed if we had not.

“Yeh, we heard of you. You're Oscar, the fence,” I said.

Oscar beamed proudly. “Yes. That's me, Fat Oscar, the biggest fence in New York. I buy anything that's valuable, anything but this crap.”

He pointed to our little cotton bag disdainfully.

I said innocently, “What's in there?”

Fat Oscar opened the bag and poured the zircons on the table. “Some beautiful sparklers,” Patsy commented.

Oscar shook his head. “Nice imitations worth about fifty bucks. The stiff is Nutchy, the Shylock. Ever hear of him?”

Maxie shook his head and asked innocently, “No, who is he?”

“Never heard of that bum,” Patsy added.

“Well, anyway,” Oscar continued, “this Nutchy comes up to my apartment and tells me he contacted the guys who did that heist on Forty-fifth Street the other day, that hundred and fifty thousand dollar heist that was in all the papers. This Nutch told me he made arrangements to buy the swag from these guys. I told him I didn't care what he paid for it, I would give him as high as twenty percent of the value of the stones. This is what happened.

“I'm in the bedroom looking through the keyhole. Three guys come in, show a bag of diamonds to Nutchy. Nutchy comes in to me; I look them over through my glass. They are fine, clear stones, but they are not worth a hundred and fifty grand. I tell Nutch they are worth ninety grand legit, and I would pay him eighteen because they're pretty hot. He says he'd lose money on eighteen; he promised these guys twenty. Finally I said, “Okay, I'll give you twenty-two.' He says it's a deal. He went back to these guys, and I heard them arguing. He was trying to chisel them down to fifteen thousand. It didn't work. He comes running in to me for the stones and brings the bag of them out to these guys. I see through the keyhole he pays them the twenty grand, and they leave.

“Then I walk out to Nutch. He's not too happy over his two grand profit. I count out my twenty-two thousand, but I'm careful on a deal like this. It's easy for a guy to clip a few stones, you know, so I thought I would count them. I look in the bag. Immediately, I see they are phonies. I say to Nutchy, 'What are you trying to do? Pull my pudding? These are phonies.' Nutchy almost dropped dead.

“He made a grab for my dough. I warned him to take his hands off the dough. That lousy bastard accused me of working a switcheroo. Me! With my reputation of honest dealing!

“I said, 'Nutchy, either you are trying to rook me or these three guys gave you a friggin. You better take the phonies and clear out.' Then he made a grab for my twenty-two grand again. This is ironic, boys.” Fat Stuff chuckled, his belly bouncing. “Instead of twenty-two Nutchy got forty-five, meaning this.” The fat guy opened his jacket and showed us his gun under his armpit. It was the same make we carried.

We walked into the bedroom. There lay Nutch with a big hole in his head, all covered with blood. The fat guy laughed again.

“What will it cost me to get rid of this stiff?”

He kept on chuckling as if the episode was some kind of a joke. I couldn't make the guy out.

“Five grand,” Maxie replied.

He stopped laughing, a sad unhappy expression spread on his face.

“That's pretty steep,” Oscar said. “I understand Combination members pay only three grand for the same services.”

“Okay, okay,” Maxie said, “if it will make you any happier.”

“Yes, it will make me a great deal happier.”

He began his weird chuckle again.

The Fat guy peeled three grand off a roll large enough to gag Joe E. Brown.

He said, “I wonder if I can deduct this from my income tax?”

“Yeh,” I said drily. “You can enter this item under operating losses.”

Fat Belly emitted a hearty guffaw. “You fellows certainly tickle a guy—”

Maxie looked at the prostrate figure. “That Nutchy was so crooked, we will have to put him in the ground with a corkscrew,” he said.

The fat guy went into hysterics. He recovered in a few minutes.

“How are you boys going to remove this stiff?” Oscar asked.

“You'll see. I guarantee my clients complete satisfaction,” Maxie said.

Again Fat Belly guffawed as if Maxie's remark was the most brilliant witticism he ever heard.

Sarcastically I said, “You're a jolly one, aren't you?”

The minute I had said it, I regretted it. He chuckled for a full five minutes. To stop his hilarity I asked him if he had any liquor around.

Fat took out a bottle of Scotch and a bottle of soda. He drank only the soda. We drank most of the Scotch.

He was looking at us in admiration. “You boys can certainly put that stuff away fast.”

I said, “We were brought up on the stuff. We were weaned with five gallon tins of two hundred proof bootleg alky.”

Again Fat Oscar burst into hilarious laughter. He began to annoy me to death.

I murmured to Max, “If this Fat bastard keeps this up, we'll have two stiffs to bury.”

The doorbell rang. Cockeye came in dressed in a truckman's outfit. He carried an extra uniform for Patsy. On the shirt was the lettering, “Rug Cleaners.” In a mock businesslike tone, Cockeye asked, “How many rugs, Madame?”

“Quit the clowning,” Max said sharply. “We got work to do.”

With professional dispatch we moved the furniture, rolled up the rug with Nutchy in the middle, and tied both ends. Patsy put on the extra uniform. He and Cockeye carried the rug, with Nutch inside, downstairs into the truck. Max and I finished the bottle of Scotch.

As we were about to leave, Fat Oscar asked, “Do I get the rug back? It's an expensive Chinese import.”

“Yep. Cleaned like new,” Maxie replied. “Legitimate rug cleaners will deliver it back in ten days, don't worry.”

He started his odd chuckling again. I hurried out before I lost my temper and did something unnecessary.

We went downtown to the funeral parlors. Pat and Cockeye were already there. They were fixing Nutch for burial. They had him in the cheapest pine box we carried. Max sent Cockeye over to Pete, the printer, on Thompson Street for the necessary papers. Maxie called the cemetery to get the hole ready. I called up for a few of our professional mourners. In thirty minutes flat Nutch was on his way.

“He got a fast brush-off,” Max said.

“He got a better funeral than he ever deserved,” Pat said.

I asked Cockeye, “What name was on the burial certificate? Just for our own records.”

“I couldn't pronounce it,” Cockeye answered. “Pete said it was his brother-in-law's name, and he kept saying as he filled it out, “I hope, I hope.”

“Then the hell with it,” I said. “That one is entirely off the record.”

The minute we entered our “office,” Fat Moe came in with a full tray of drinks and the message that the main office had called.

“They want you to call right back. They said it was important.”

Maxie picked up the phone. On our end, as usual, all we could hear was Maxie's noncommittal, “Yep. Yep.” Finally he hung up. He walked slowly over to the table, sat down with a preoccupied air, three pairs of questioning eyes on him. Max picked up his double hooker, shook it and swallowed it down in one gulp.

“It was nothing important,” he said. “There's nothing stirrin' around town, at least as far as we're concerned. The only thing percolatin' is that goddamn kid, Vincent Coll. He got his fifty grand from the Combination and they got Frenchie back in one piece.”

“Minus one ear,” I said.

Maxie smiled. “Stop splitting hairs, Noodles. Well, anyway, the office said the Mad Mick is on the warpath again looking for more big shots to snatch.”

Max smiled again. “I guess the Kid figures he has got himself a good racket, snatching big shots. So far, he's ahead of the game. His score is one fifty thousand dollar snatch and five small-fry killings.”

“Don't we get in this game, Max,” I asked, “to get this kid Vincent?”

Maxie replied, “No. The office has five hundred torpedoes out gunning for him already. They don't need us. Besides, they contacted Shorty, Vincent's right-hand man. Shorty sent word to ask if he's eligible for the Dutchman's reward. The office said it's open season for everybody. Anybody can enter the contest, so it's just a matter of a day or two. Shorty is the closest to the prize. I guess he'll knock it off.”

Patsy seemed disappointed. “So, no action for us?”

Maxie shook his head. “Our instructions are to sit tight. It's a good thing anyway. I expect that guy John today.”

“What's he coming for? To buy the stones back for the insurance company?” I asked.

“Yep,” Maxie answered. “That reminds me.”

He turned to Cockeye. “Get the stones out of Eddie's safe.”

He tossed him the keys. Cockeye walked out grumbling. He came back about forty minutes later, and tossed the small bag of diamonds to Max. Max put them in his pocket without comment. Then he tilted his chair back, put his feet on the table, pushed his hat over his eyes and went to sleep. Like a vaudeville team, Patsy and Cockeye followed his example.

The taste of the Scotch I had had at the Fat guy's place lingered on my tongue. We rarely drank Scotch; rye was our drink. I went to the bar and picked up a sealed bottle of King's Ransom. I took it back to the table. I opened it and poured a glass full. Slowly I emptied the glass. I relished the flavor. I poured another and drank it down. I decided it was good Scotch whiskey. I poured another. I sat drinking and watching my companions.

In boredom I took the whetstone out of the table drawer, and began to sharpen my knife. The motion of the knife relaxed me. It was quiet in Moe's back room; the only sounds were Cockeye's rasping snore and the rasping noise of my knife on the whetstone.

I don't know how long they slept. I do know I drank glass after glass of Scotch whiskey, and drew my knife back and forth tirelessly on the stone.

When Moe finally came in to the back room, he interrupted my drinking, my knife sharpening and their siesta. He stood looking down at me in a peculiar way. He picked up the bottle, whistled, and put the bottle down. Then I saw it was almost empty.

He looked at me again and said, “Sorry to wake you guys up, but there's a gent outside who says his name is John. He said you were expecting him. I asked him for his last name, he said it was 'Doe.' What is he, kidding? Okay to let him in?”

Maxie stretched his arms and yawned. “Yep, it's okay. Let him in.”

I watched with interest as a tall, thin, middle-aged man walked briskly in. He was carrying a brief case. I felt an immediate antipathy for him though I'd never seen him before. And it wasn't because he was the husband of that pervert, Betty, either. He reminded me of someone I had disliked years back. Yeh, that was it: he reminded me of that goddamn landlord of the tenement we had lived in on Delancey Street. He had the same shifty eyes, similar features, and the same neat military mustache. Even his clothes reminded me of the landlord: a Homburg tilted at a rakish angle, a white boutonniere in the lapel of his dark, form-fitting coat. He looked us over with the same supercilious air, as if he owned the whole world. It was the white boutonniere in his lapel that got me.

Maxie introduced him as Mr. John Doe.

He had a haughty, mechanical smile. Even the way he stuck his hand out was insulting. I was wondering who this bastard thought he was. Obviously Maxie knew him well.