Web of the City (21 page)

Oh, he wanted to talk so badly. He wanted to talk about the city Morlan did not know, about the gutters and the fat women and beer-bloated husbands, and kids in the streets, and a girl who had died in a nasty way. He wanted to talk, and he prayed to god he would not have to use his fists, because all that was through, please dear Lord, let it be through at last. But he knew it would come to that. It had to because if it wasn’t Morlan, then it was another link along the way, and when he needed the way to find the link, the only help he had lay at the ends of his arms.

He studied the front of the building, the way the architect had fused the beauty of granite with the flamboyant extremes of glass to make a wonderful façade. He studied it and thought of the future he had left behind, trailed into the slush of the gutter. Was it only a few weeks ago he had been so eager to learn the potentialities of a slide rule and protractor? Too late now. All gone like the fog of a Manhattan morning. All gone, but the man in the camel’s hair coat was still alive.

This building. A camel’s hair coat fitted this place just right. Was this the end of the trail? Seemed like.

A fat woman with a fur coat thrown over a pale blue silk nightgown, her feet thrust into mules, came clattering out of the elevator inside the building, in Rusty’s sight, and the doorman opened the glass door for her.

Rusty could not hear what they said to one another, but the woman reached into a pocket of the coat, brought out a bill and handed it to the doorman. She pointed off in the direction of lights far down at the corner, and Rusty saw a drugstore’s sign glowing. The doorman nodded, touched the brim of his cap reverently and strode off in the drugstore’s direction. The fat woman stared after him for a moment, then went back inside. The elevator door was just closing on her as Rusty got to his feet—ignoring the cramp in his legs—and strode quickly across to the building.

He was inside in a moment and looking around the lobby for a stairway. The door was a shiny metal one, and before it had sighed pneumatically closed, he had three-stepped to the third floor. He paused there to catch his breath.

The climb to the fifteenth seemed much longer than he had imagined it would be. But once there, a great calm came stealing in through his nostrils and he sank down on the top step. He lay back, feeling the cold of the stone landing against his neck and hands.

He had reached the top. He was sure of that. This was the place where he would finish the tragedy that had begun with Dolores in the alley behind Tom-Tom’s shop. He felt certain, deep inside him, that when he left this building, it would be between cops, his hands manacled, his life ended. Because—clear as hell, no doubt at all, sure as god made little green apples—he was going to beat the man in the camel’s hair coat to death. Now, if Emil Morlan wore such a coat, that was it. A stupid way to figure it, he knew. A stupid way to arrive at conclusions, and no damned motive for this Morlan to kill his sister (hell, with his money any broad in the city was available, what did he want with Dolores?), but the search had been a long one, and the word was that she had been killed by a man in a camel’s hair coat, and the track had led here, so that was the way it would be.

Why?

It all seemed so stupid, suddenly. He had only one man’s word about it. The Beast. He had tracked a path of dope-peddling from Mirsky to his father to Boy-O and now to Morlan. But what did one have to do with the other? Anything? Sure, it had to, but why? There was no coherency here at all.

Thoughts swirled darkly and his mind tumbled them back and forth as he tried to discover some rationale. But it always ended up with Morlan and the need to end it all.

The elevator sighed open and he heard heavy footsteps beyond the metal door to the fifteenth floor. He pushed himself up and took a long step to the door. It opened a crack at his pull, and he saw the tastefully decorated hall. He saw the single door to the apartment that covered the fifteenth floor, and he saw the man who applied the key to the ornate lock.

The man wore what Rusty had come to hope he would not wear.

In the summer, a man would be crazy to wear a camel’s hair coat.

• rusty santoro
  
• morlan
  

Rusty caught him low in the small of the back, just as the door swung inward. He hit him with his bad shoulder—the one Boy-O had injured with the chair—and the pain washed Rusty anew. But the force of his drive from the back stairway sent the man spinning forward, to crash into the wall of the apartment’s hall. Rusty stumbled forward after him, grasping the door by the huge center-set brass doorknob and thrust it closed. It was pitch dark and Rusty fumbled for a switch, found it, clicked it on.

The man had fallen over and was just starting to rise, supporting himself on the wall, as Rusty clipped him again. The man caught it behind the ear and lost his balance. His short, sharp exclamation of agony was cut off as his face hit the polished tile of the hallway floor. He rolled a few inches and lay on his stomach, the camel’s hair coat bunched around him. He struggled on palms to rise. He could not make it and slumped down, breathing heavily. One hand went to his head, feeling the spot where Rusty had hit him.

Rusty used his foot to roll the man over.

He had a thin, pale face, with deep hollows under the eyes. His hair was thinning and brushed straight back from his high forehead. A birthmark purpled his cheek almost at the left corner of his lips. His eyes were green and smoked with pain. Rusty had seen the expression in those eyes in other eyes, too often lately, for it to escape him. He bent down and brought the man to his feet with difficulty. The man struggled in Rusty’s grip, but Rusty was as tall as the other, and held him fiercely.

“You don’t give me no trouble, Mr. Morlan, an’ we’ll be okay.” He hauled him across the hall, into the darkness of the living room. As Rusty struggled across the room, he knocked against a floor lamp and quickly switched it on with one hand, regaining his hold before the gray-haired man could break away. All the way across the room he maintained a precarious grip on his companion.

The strength was flowing back into the man’s body, and suddenly he shoved Rusty from him, at the same moment hurling himself sidewise.

Rusty tried to grab him, but the gray-haired man eluded the boy’s attack, and ran into a bedroom off the living room. He slammed the door and Rusty heard it lock.

Suddenly Rusty realized how scared he was and what he was doing. If this man—and it was certain this was Morlan—called the police, they would arrest Rusty for housebreaking and assault. He went to the door of the bedroom and put his ear against it. He could hear vague sounds of movement from within.

There was no keyhole in the door.

He didn’t know if he could do it, but he had to try breaking in that door, before Morlan could use the phone. He stepped back and took a run at the door. He hit it with his good shoulder, and even so felt the pain down his side. The door held and he was thrown back violently.

He tried it again.

He hit it from closer up, harder, and this time he felt pressure ease as the door strained on its hinges.

Again, and this time he heard the faint crackle of wood preparing to splinter as the center panel of the door began to buckle. Still nothing from the man within.

He smashed against the door for the fourth time and it crashed inward before him, slamming against the inner wall. The brittle metal of the lock itself had snapped. Pieces of metal hit the floor with soft clatters, and Rusty was shot through into the center of the bedroom.

He had been wrong. The man within was not calling the police. The phone stood unattended on the nightstand. The gray-haired man was standing half-turned toward Rusty, trying to extricate something from a messy tangle of papers and stray objects in a wall safe.

A picture had been revolved upward on the wall, and now hung upside down, grotesquely framing the gray-haired man who yanked at something in the safe, and abruptly spun full-face to Rusty—a gun in his hand.

Without thinking Rusty threw himself forward. He hit the bed just as the revolver went off and behind him he heard the bullet smash into the wall. He bounced off the bed and came at the gray-haired man from the side. Tackling him as he would have brought down a man on the football field at a pick-up game, Rusty caught Morlan around the knees and dug in.

They fell backward and Morlan crashed to the floor, still holding onto the revolver. He tried to bring it down on Rusty’s head, but the boy threw up a protecting arm and caught the other’s wrist as it came down.

Rusty swung over his head at the older man’s face. He could not see, but he felt and heard the blow land. The other slumped back on the floor, and the hand that held the revolver opened. Rusty took the weapon, and got to his feet. The bedroom was a wreck.

For a moment Rusty considered using the gun to beat what he wanted from this man, but the memory of Boy-O was still tonight-fresh, and he turned and thrust it back into the wall safe. He slammed the circular plug and spun the tumbler knob. He revolved the picture back into place.

Behind him on the floor, the man said levelly, “If I hadn’t been so nervous and forgot the combo to my own safe, I’d have gotten that gun sooner—and I’d of killed you!”

Rusty did not smile. He dragged the man to his feet and pushed him ahead, back into the living room. “But you didn’t get it in time, so we’re right back where we started from.”

He shoved the man into a deep wine-colored armchair. Rusty stood watching him carefully for a second. “You Morlan?”

The gray-haired man looked up with a surly, confused, frightened expression on his face. “I have no money on me. It’s all locked in my office downtown. You’re wasting your time. I have a few dollars…” he contradicted himself, “you can have that if you get out right now—”

“What about your safe in there, where we were?” Rusty asked sarcastically, indicating the bedroom with a jerk of his head.

“You little whelp bastard!” the man’s voice was rough and angry, but lit with fear. He studied the boy before him with an intense wariness.

“No dough. That ain’t what I’m here for. I want some talk with you, mister. That’s all I want.” Rusty marveled to himself how calmly he was talking to this animal who had murdered and defiled his sister and whom he was about to kill.

A change of expression came over the man’s face and he sat forward, massaging the back of his head. “Who the hell are you?”

“You Morlan?”

“Yes, goddamnit! I’m Emil Morlan, now what do you want?”

Rusty took a deep breath. He had known it, of course, but to hear him say it, was something else entirely. The end of the road. All screwed up and confused and no reason for suspecting this man—except here was the camel’s hair coat—but here he was. He’d forced his way into a swanky apartment and he was about to commit a murder. Not a switch stand or a zip duel or a brick in the head in an alley—but cold, sharp murder. He would stomp this man to dust beneath his boots.

“Why’d you kill my sister?”

Morlan’s face went back into shadow. His eyes opened wider. He let his mouth move and his hand came away from the bruise on the back of his head. “You’re that kid from way downtown. What’s your name—”

“Santoro,” Rusty tossed it at him, hard. “Russell Santoro, an’ my sister’s name was Dolores. Remember now?”

He started forward and had his hand wrapped in the full, thick cloth of the camel’s hair coat before Morlan yelled, “Wait a minute! Hold it! For Christ’s sake, hold it, not me, not me! I didn’t touch her! I wasn’t anywhere near her! I can prove it. Stop!”

Rusty was close to him, bending over the chair, half-dragging Morlan erect. “Then talk mister, talk so fast, ’cause I’m gonna do something, one way or the other. Talk now and make it good, or Jeezus I’ll k-kill ya…” Rusty’s voice broke, and he found himself trembling with fury. The shaking concentrated in a tic and it battered hot and fast in his cheek, and the pain hit him in the gut again when he thought of Dolores and the days of looking, and now it was almost finished. Everything was almost finished.

Morlan tried to talk, but Rusty had him too close under the chin with the coat wrapped in his fist. He motioned futilely and struggled to speak. Rusty backed off a little, letting loose of the coat.

Morlan started to talk fast and he did not stumble or hesitate. He could not afford to be slow or inarticulate. His life hung on his glibness. He tumbled it all out in one wild rush of words.

“I didn’t do it. I had nothing to do with it. I heard from one of my contacts all about it and that someone had given you my name, or what I looked like. I tell you I was nowhere near there that night. I was down in your neighborhood, but I was nowhere near your sister. You’ve got to believe me. I was down there—because—because—”

Rusty tried to stop the trembling with an abrupt movement and nodded his head sharply. “I know you push the stuff into my turf—an’ Cherokee turf, too—so stop the crappin’ around. Gimme the scoop, or I’ll put you down final, right now.”

Morlan continued, anxiously spilling it all out. “I went down there with a couple of friends to see a man who’s been cutting in on our trade. He’s been raising his own stuff in a deserted lot behind this dry cleaning place. He’s got it in the middle of a thick patch of weeds. Nobody would recognize what it is, even if they should stumble on it. Just some pretty flowers—”

Rusty tried to remember: he had gone through that empty lot a hundred times. In fact, he had been through it just the last week, looking for Boy-O. So someone was raising tea in that field. He turned his attention back to Morlan.

“This guy’s been supplying a few people and for a time it didn’t bother us, he was on such a small scale. But he’s been branching out, starting to grind up more snuff. Then a few weeks ago he tried to put the scare into my pusher down there—” Rusty knew he must mean Boy-O, “—so my pusher told my contact man to put a scare into this creep. I went down there with a pair of buddies who used to box a little, to scare him off our territory. We don’t kill people. I’m a businessman. I got interests all over town, I can’t afford that kind of stuff.”