The Hoods (57 page)

Hogan whispered tensely, “That's them—them two young punks coming in.”

He pointed excitedly.

Maxie cautioned, “Okay, okay, Hogan, take it easy; don't get your balls in an uproar.”

We walked to the bar and surrounded the two newcomers. One of them whirled around. He sensed the danger closing around him. He had alarm and a questioning look in his eyes. He recognized Hogan. He knew what we were there for. I watched his hands. His right hand crept stealthily toward his hip pocket. I had my thumb ready on the button of my switch knife. His hand came out halfway, tugging at a gun. I clicked the button. The six-inch blade swished open. I dug it deep into the back of his hand. He screamed once in pain. The gun dropped to the floor.

Everybody looked dumbly at the guy's bleeding hand, as if they were mesmerized. The room was deathly still. Then we heard two sounds—Maxie's fist rapping the other guy's jaw, and the guy's head banging on the floor.

“Outside, you two bastards,” Maxie growled.

The guy with the cut hand hesitated. Max grabbed him by the back of the neck and flung him the entire length of the room towards the door. It reminded me of a bartender sliding a mug of beer to the far end of the bar.

The other guy lay on the floor, sullenly refusing to get up.

“Upsy daisy, you lousy mensabunet.”

Patsy kicked him in the belly. He groaned and struggled up to a standing position, holding his abdomen. Cockeye and Patsy dragged him out.

We threw them both in the back of the Caddy and piled in after them. For the entire trip down to Fat Moe's they lay motionless under our feet. They were a couple of frightened kids when we got them into the back room.

The guy with the bleeding hand whimpered, “Give us a break, fellows, we're friends of Owney Madden's.”

“You know Owney is a member of the Combine and still you show disrespect,” Maxie said. He smacked the kid across the mouth.

He crouched fearfully on the floor.

“We were drunk,” he started to snivel.

“We got a bum steer,” the other guy sobbed. They were both begging, unashamed.

“Give us a break, fellows. We swear we'll show respect,” one kid pleaded.

“Okay, kid, then you're ready to give us the lowdown?” I asked.

The guy nodded eagerly.

“Yeh, yeh, I'll give you guys the lowdown. Just give me a break.”

They gave us the name of the guy who had fingered the truck, a Mr. Gordon, and the address of the place where they delivered the load.

“We'll teach the guy who fingered the job a lesson in manners,” Maxie said drily.

“You guys didn't tamper with the stuff before you delivered it?” I asked.

“No, we didn't touch the stuff, honest.”

The other one cut in, “How could we? We delivered it a half hour after we heisted it from the driver, I swear. May God strike us dead, honest.”

“Who tipped you guys off?” I asked.

“We gave you his name, a guy calling himself Gordon. We met him in a speakeasy. He told us it was a pushover. Honest, we didn't know the load belonged to the Combination. If we did, we wouldn't of touched the job with a ten-foot pole.”

“Yeh, we know it's unhealthy,” the other one added, “to mess around with the Combination.”

“Was this guy a small skinny guy with a moustache?” I asked. It was a shot in the dark.

“Yeh, yeh, that's him,” he retorted quickly.

“He clears his throat before he starts talking?” I asked. “Like he's nervous?”

“Yeh, that's the guy, and he's always spittin'.”

With sardonic politeness I said, “Shall we pay our friend Mr. Herring a visit over at the warehouse?”

Max nodded grimly.

“Eventually we'll let you two guys go. Will you mind your own business and keep your mouths shut when we do?” I asked.

“Yeh, honest, we promise.”

“Honest to God,” the other one nodded vehemently.

“Okay, scram!” Maxie growled.

I said, “Just a minute.”

I leaned over and whispered in Maxie's ear. “Okay, okay,” he said impatiently.

I turned to the two guys. “Well take about another hour of your time, then we'll let you take a powder. We want you to take a little ride with us.”

“Come on, let's go,” Max said sharply. “What the hell you so polite to these bastards?”

The guy with the cut in his hand cringed.

I smiled reassuringly. “Don't worry, kid, it ain't a one-way ride.”

He looked distrustfully at us.

I continued, “All we want is for you to identify this Gordon guy.”

Maxie prodded him and said, “You come along like a nice boy anyway, or else...”

We crowded into the Caddy. When we reached the warehouse I said to Cockeye, “You sit with these guys until we call you.”

Patsy gave two hard and three soft knocks on the door of the gloomy warehouse on West Street. Maxie took a coin out of his pocket and made a singular scratching noise with it on the side of the building and impatiently said, “Okay, open up, open up.”

The massive door creaked open inwardly, letting out a mephitic odor. Our eyes could not penetrate the blackness of the warehouse.

Maxie growled, “Why the hell don't you put on a light?”

We made out a short, slim form faintly, at the door. He cleared his throat nervously.

He gasped, “Is that you, Maxie?”

“Yep, Herring, who did you expect? The Mad Mick's ghost?” Maxie taunted maliciously.

“We got to be careful. You know, Maxie, we got valuable stuff here,” Herring whined meekly.

“You got guards here, ain't you?” Maxie snapped at him. “Where the hell are they?”

“Here we are, Max,” a voice called out behind the closing massive door.

Herring snapped on his flashlight. He shot the beam in a semicircle, disclosing five figures scattered around the entrance, two of them holding tommy guns.

“Where the hell were you guys the other night that Hogan had to ride without a guard?” Maxie snapped sarcastically.

“Ask Herring, Max,” a peevish voice said. “He's in charge. He gives us orders. We were around. We didn't even know the truck was ready to leave.”

“Okay, okay,” Max said tersely. “Is that you, Chicken Flicker?”

“Yeh, Max,” the peevish voice answered.

“Okay, let's go to the office,” Max said.

With Herring in the lead carrying the flashlight, we made our precarious way around all sorts of obstructions. I recognized the piled-up commodities as we passed them, all of it the property of the gigantic national Combine: thousands of crated slot machines, keg upon keg and box upon box of domestic and imported beers and liquors. They were stacked as high as the ceiling. There were hundreds of steel drums, each containing fifty gallons of high-proof alcohol which were recently distilled from sugar, at the Combination Jersey bootleg stills.

We groped our way around huge pyramids of barrels containing molasses which was to be used in distilling a cheap rum.

There were surplus stocks of all conceivable wares essential to the smooth functioning of the Combination's diversified businesses.

Behind me, Patsy remarked, “A million bucks' worth of crap lying around. Hey, Noodles?”

“Closer to two million bucks' worth of crap, Patsy boy,” I replied.

Herring opened the door and switched on the lights in the office. After the intense darkness of the warehouse, it was like walking from a dark bathhouse at the beach into the glaring sunlight. We blinked and looked at each other for a moment.

Maxie sat down behind Herring's big desk. With a grandiose wave of his arm and in a gravely judicial tone, he said: “Be seated, gentlemen, and let's have the truth and nothing but the truth,” he added emphatically. “No horseshit.” He glared truculently at Herring and the guards.

Herring stood up with a hapless expression and timorously cleared his throat as a prelude to saying something. Maxie cut him off.

In a bitingly polite tone he said: “My dear Mr. Herring, you will have your say, but in due time. Please sit down. First I shall hear the witnesses.”

Herring stuttered something inaudible. Maxie banged the desk with his big fist. Herring collapsed back into his chair, mumbling weakly, “I'm entitled to a fair trial. It wasn't my fault.”

“You're entitled, my dear Mr. Herring, and if it wasn't your fault, it wasn't your fault.”

Maxie smiled maliciously. He acted like a cat playing with a mouse. I did not like it.

“Okay, Chicken Flicker,” Maxie was addressing the peevish guard holding a tommy gun. “Hand over that lead sprayer to Noodles, and let's hear what you have to say.”

Chicken Flicker obediently passed the machine gun to me and said, “To tell you the truth, Maxie, we don't know nothin'...”

“Okay, Chicken Flicker,” Maxie continued interrogating the witness, “what were you guys doing that day?”

Chicken Flicker appeared a shy and shamefaced witness as he admitted, “We were playing pinochle behind the stack of beer boxes.”

“And drinking beer?” Maxie prompted.

Chicken Flicker nodded guiltily.

One of the other guards cut in, “Herring gave us the O.K., Max. I remember he said, 'Go ahead and cop a sneak. The truck won't be ready for quite a while.' Herring said that.”

“Yeh,” another one cut in, “now I remember—a couple of hours later I came in the office to take a leak. I asked Herring, is the truck ready? He said, it left already.”

Maxie questioned, “Didn't you think it was funny, the truck leaving without a couple of you guys trailing it?”

The guard appeared crestfallen. “To tell you the truth, Max, we were
farcharret
with the beer.”

“Farcharret, balls,” Maxie said angrily. “If you guys drink and don't know what's going on and get
farcharret,
don't drink on the job!”

“Okay, Max,” he mumbled, “we were drinking that goddamn Holland beer.”

“Powerful stuff,” another guard commented.

“Then stick to domestic stuff hereafter,” Maxie said drily.

I was watching Herring as the incriminating evidence piled up. He knew he was on the spot and that Maxie was holding kangaroo court. He made a pitiful figure slumped in his chair. The right side of his face twitched nervously. His eyes traveled around the room in helpless terror, seeking an out. He reminded me of a cornered rat. Yeh, the guy knew he was doomed. He knew what we were here for. I felt sorry for the guy, but why the hell did he do it? He was getting three hundred bucks a week from the Combine. Why did he do it? Spendthrift wife? Did he need the dough for an expensive piece of chippy? Maybe horses? The hell with him. No use wasting sympathy. We got a job to do. The shmuck dug his own grave. We'll turn him over. Let the big guys do what they want with him.

Maxie was trying to get my attention. “Hey, Noodles, day dreaming? I was talking to you.”

I did not like his tone.

I said wearily, “Yeh, Max.”

“Get Cockeye in here and the surprise witnesses.”

Maxie was enjoying his role of judge and prosecutor.

I took Herring's searchlight and walked out of the office. I trudged through the warehouse, opened the door and called Cockeye. He came in with the two young guys. I escorted them back to the office.

When Herring saw who came through the door, I thought he would drop dead, then and there. He stared at them, petrified with dread. He coughed, spit and almost puked.

Maxie's voice was like acid.

He asked, “Okay, punks, is that the guy who fingered the job?”

“Yeh, that's the guy.”

The answer struck Herring like a bull whip lashing across the face.

He cried hysterically, covering his face. “No, no. I didn't, I didn't...”

“You didn't? You rat bastard, they say you did,” Maxie goaded him.

“I didn't, I didn't,” he moaned.

Abruptly, a bell rang out in the warehouse, sharp and commanding. It was so unexpected that we remained quiet for a few moments with our mouths open. Somehow it had the same tone and it reminded me of the clanging bell in the sixth round of the Dempsey-Willard fight which we had seen a few years ago out in Ohio. There was the same thankful look on Herring's face as I saw on Willard's on that hot Fourth of July day.

“What the hell was that?” Max said to nobody in particular.

“That was the bell on the side street where the loading platform is,” Chicken Flicker said.

“Pat, you go with Chicken Flicker and see who the hell it is.”

Patsy picked up the searchlight. They went out.

I said, “I better go along with that lead sprayer just in case.” I caught up with Patsy and the Chicken Flicker just as they were unlatching the side door. A strange burly truck driver was standing on the platform. He had his big over-the-road truck backed up to the door.

Patsy said, “What's on your mind, Pally?”