This week’s prompt was: Write a story in which a character unexpectedly has to take care of another character's pet.

 

Big Sleep

 

The stenciled letters on the pebbled-glass door say “Paul Marston, Investigations.”  On the other side there’s what you’d expect in the way of a waiting room, about the size of a cigar box and just as clean (the maid hasn’t been by since 1922, when I first rented the two rooms in the Mercury Building): a threadbare couch, a couple child-sized wingbacks, and a coffee table with magazines so old the covers are yellowing complete the tableaux.  If the waiting room doesn’t scare you off, you’ll see another pebbled-glass door with the same writing as the first, only without the Investigations below.  Go through and you’ll find more of what you’d expect in the way of a glass-covered desk, ratty scrap of rug under it filled with cigarette ash, a few filing cabinets you just know don’t have a thing in them (except maybe a bottle of rye), and—oh, let’s not forget—the cynical private dick in a ten dollar suit and prematurely grey hair.  I was pushing that “prematurely” bit back by the wrist.  It wasn’t premature, particularly for my line of work.  Forty-three years old, the only thing that I don’t have that shoots grey into a man's hair is a wife.  There was one thing, though, that you might not expect: a black cat sitting on my blotter.

His name was Big Sleep; that’s what Dick named him even though his wife—back when he’d had one—had wanted to call it Taki, of all things.  Dick said Big Sleep was the perfect description of the cat.  Only Big Sleep wasn’t sleeping at the moment.  I don’t know what kind of cat he was; don’t know much about cats.  He was short haired and entirely black, with blue eyes.  And he didn’t blink those blue peepers any more than he had to.  Jacqueline—Dick’s secretary—had brought Big Sleep over about twenty minutes before, still in tears.  Dick had been shot to death in his office.

I’d known Dick since we met in Veracruz, way the hell back in 1914, and not on vacation.  He was one of the Navy Bluejackets who took the customs house; I was a Marine, eighteen, and lost most of the time.  The city fighting had been fierce here and there but never seemed like a war.  Having grown up in Hoboken, New Jersey, I’d had an education in street fighting whenever someone tried to unionize the dockworkers down in Elizabeth or if there was a liquor raid, back during Prohibition.  It was worse in Veracruz, of course; not for the least reason that old Woody Wilson had only sent us there because he wanted to play Dictator of the Caribbean.  It didn’t feel like war until France, until Belleau Wood.  I got wounded toward the end of September, 1918, and was shipped to England and wouldn’t you know it, Dick Dryden was in the bunk next to me with a busted ankle, two broken ribs, and VD.

When I got back to Jersey, an uncle of mine with pull in the Hague machine got me a job on the coppers in Hoboken.  That lasted about two years until they figured out I didn’t have my uncle’s pull and got fed up with my mouth.  I was out on my can but I had enough dough put aside to buy a private license and set up here in the Mercury building.  Dick showed me the way.  He was set up in the same business down in Jersey City, on the edge of Newport.

Jacqueline hadn’t been able to tell me much about Dick’s murder.  I asked her what happened but all she could seem to think about was how he looked lying on the floor.  I figured she was still half in shock.  She was crying but not bawling; trying to focus on questions would have made it worse.  Letting her mind go where it wanted was best.  She'd said that Big Sleep had been in the office with Dick the whole night.  When she’d first come in that morning, he was curled up between Dick’s arm and chest.  He’d had a little blood on his paw, as if he’d been batting at Dick’s cheek trying to wake him up.  She’d also said Big Sleep had meowed so much she nearly ran out of the office, looking between her and Dick as if he expected her to do something.  I sent her home and sat down at my desk and filled a pipe.

Big Sleep was fine now.  He’d jumped up on the desk, sat down, and curled his tail around his feet.  He hadn’t meowed once; he’d moved on, as cats do; he just sat there and stared at me like an unsatisfied client asking, “Why haven’t you found who killed my owner yet?”  Because I knew the Johns were there; that Jacqueline had barely got out of there at all and even then only because they didn’t want Big Sleep walking all over their chalk outline and jumping into the thousand photos they have to take of a man who doesn’t care about having his photo taken anymore.  (She’d brought Big Sleep to me instead of to her apartment because Mr. Jacqueline is allergic.)  I didn’t want to go down there and know that it was true and have to hear some button with a glow on at 10:30 in the morning—who only got the job because he had an uncle like mine and no brains to speak of—tell me to step back, police business.  Business: phooey.  I was going to wait right there and tell any customers that came by to scram and just wait until the Johns left and then break in and frisk Dick’s office myself.  But as I raised the burning match to my pipe, Big Sleep watched my hand, watched the match as it moved, sputtering, and then blinked one long disdainful blink and asked his question again.

“Alright, fine,” I growled at him.  “Have it your way.”

I left and told the Polish lady who ran the shop across the street to send her boy down to the hardware store and buy some sand; he’d find my office door unlocked (it always was; no one was going to steal that furniture) and he should fill up the desk drawer I’d left on the floor with the sand.  I didn’t want to come back to Big Sleep having left a big mess.

I could have taken the car out and drove, it’s a fair piece down to the edge of Newport where Dick had his office; but if the cops were still there and someone rubbed me the wrong way, I didn’t want to get thrown in the can with my car left sitting on the street all night.  Not in Dick’s neighborhood.  I took a cab.

His building was near the waterfront and you could smell it before you could hear it.  The cabbie dropped me at the end of the block because of the three black-and-whites taking up most of the street.  There was an unmarked, too, with nothing but the big whip antenna on top to indicate a detective used it.  I would have known the car anyway.

Up the stairs at the back, I remembered that I’d only ever come to Dick’s office maybe half-a-dozen times in the fourteen years I’ve been in the PI racket.  Fellahs in the business tend to run into each other over a drink.  The cops were still enjoying themselves when I arrived.  Two buttons standing in a doorway were earning their paychecks telling jokes about Jews, Blacks, and dogs: it’s good work if you can get it, only, no jokes about the Irish.  They stopped hamming it up when I got close.  One yelled something into Dick’s office; the other held up a tobacco-stained hand.  I brushed past him and ran chest-to-chest into Harcourt.  Detective Sergeant Harcourt.

“No you don’t, Marston,” he bellowed and gave me a shove.  “Out!”

“You know he was my friend, Harcourt,” I said, just managing to keep my teeth clenched tight enough not to shout back.  “I want to see him.”

“You’ve seen dead bodies before,” Harcourt told me.  “You can see this one at the funeral.”

“Don’t give me that guff,” I told him.  “He deserves to have somebody in the room who isn’t thinking of him as a piece of meat.  Out of my way.”

He shot his hand out and took hold of the doorjamb, making a bar with his arm.  “Can’t let you do that, Paul,” he said, a little bit closer to human.  “People doing their jobs in there.  Let’em do it.  When we’re done, I’ll give you a minute with him once he’s on the gurney.”

I stood there and stared at him.  I knew from the word go that no cop was going to let a private dick snoop a murder scene.  I also figured if I gave a power-tripper like Harcourt a chance to say no a few times, he’d give me a brief of what they knew.  He always had in the past, and we had a lot of past together.  No dice.  He stared right back and didn’t move.

“You going to tell me about it?” I asked him.

“Not this time, sweetheart,” he said.  “This ain’t some missing persons where you can wring a commission out of the parents if you beat us to the lamb.  This is murder and there are a whole different set of rules for murder.”

“Was my friend,” I said.

He shook his head.  “Nope,” he said.  “When did you see him last?”

“Are you kidding me with this shit?” I said.  I must have come forward a few inches because Harcourt stepped back and blocked the doorway with his body.  The two buttons behind him exchanged a glance.  I was getting worked up.

“I’m not asking you as a suspect,” he said.  “Not yet, anyway.  Not until I see a reason to.  I want to know from you, when did you see him last and if he said anything that might shed a little light on why someone wanted to put a bullet through his head.”

“Screw you,” I told him and the only reason he didn’t hit me was because of our history.

Harcourt and I had served together in the corps.  I’d asked my uncle to throw him a line when he threw me one for the coppers in '19.  Harcourt was better at taking orders than I was and made it up to detective about the time I was headed out.  He was now stalled at Detective Sergeant because the Chief didn’t like him enough to make him a lieutenant.  It had nothing to do with his sunny disposition, either.  It was a tough, dirty city and you never knew what a cop would do, or for who, or for how much.

As good a cop and as old an acquaintance as he was, I knew if Dick’s death was mixed up with any of the department’s side businesses, Harcourt might let it be known that I was taking an interest, might let it be known and then turn his head.  Harcourt, my friend, who I as with in France, who I saw piss his pants at Belleau Wood, who saw me shake a turd out of my trouser leg after our first heavy bombardment, would turn his head if a wrong gee wanted it that way.  I was getting mad.

“Tell me what happened,” I said.  “The only thing Jacqueline would say was that she found him.  What about time of death, was there a cartridge case or not, what caliber, was the gun left, were the files rifled, the safe cracked—what the hell happened?”

Harcourt slowly shook his head again.  “Not going to happen,” he said.  “Not yet.  The only thing I can tell you is that Dryden was shot in the head at close range with a medium size automatic.  The rest is to be determined.  You want all the gory details, wait for the coroner’s inquest and sit in the gallery.”

“What about his files?” I asked.  “Any of them taken?”

He didn’t say a thing for a minute, busy sucking his lips into his head.  “Nothing taken,” he said.  “So far as we know.  We didn’t have much luck with his office cutie.  Figure I’ll let her calm down before we go through it with her.  So, no, we don’t know what case he was working when he got dead.  Why I asked you if you’d talked to him.  So, when and where did you see him last?”

“I ain’t seen him in a month,” I said and it pinched me a bit.

He nodded and then said, “Okay, if that’s what you want to say.  You can go but I don’t want to hear about you sticking your nose in on this.  You leave it to me.”

“Oh sure,” I said, finally breaking loose.  Nodding to the two buttons holding up the walls, staring at us, I said, “I can see you’re stacked with the very best talent, an extra pair of eyes would be wasted around here.”

I turned to head out but Harcourt took me by the arm.  “Now you listen to me, Marston,” he said.  “You keep the hell out of this.  I'm not going to tell you twice.  I don't want you snooping around, getting a lead on our man, and then pulling a revenge killing.”

“That's only for the coppers, right?” I said.

“That's right,” he said without missing a beat.  “If you find the punk that did Dryden and pull that .45 of yours, buddy don't you doubt for one minute that I won't put the arm on you—and I'll sleep well that night.”

I knew he would, too.  I pulled my arm free and walked away.  Something wasn't quite kosher, though.  No cop organization wants private citizens—and even less private dicks—trying their hand at police work.  But Harcourt was putting on the tough to a degree he hadn't taken before.  I was halfway to Jacqueline’s before I thought maybe he wasn't covering for some fellow officers in their pristine blue suits but maybe . . .well, whatever I thought, I went to Jacqueline’s.

Her husband wasn't around, out working at a pharmacy he part owned, and she was lying on the couch, still crying and taking a glass of sherry.  It was slow going, asking her about what Dick had been up to the last few weeks; a lot of reminiscing about his personal habits and what a wonderful wife he used to have.  The hell she was wonderful.  I saw the man gain fifty pounds around the middle before he got the goods and divorced her and then lose all the color in his hair during the year and a half it took to make the divorce stick.  He was a wreck for three years.  But he'd made it back to something approximating a man.  And then someone had killed him.

Jacqueline finally got enough sherry in her so she could tell me that she didn't know exactly what Dick had been working on for the past few days but she did say he only had the one case.  The last thing he'd asked her to do was, the day before, place a phone call to the coroner; she didn’t know what for.  After a little more prodding and a very uncomfortable moment with her hands on my cheeks and her saying how handsome she always thought I was, she told me the name of his last client: Mrs. Rockwell.

There was only one Rockwell in Jersey City in 1936 that meant a damn: Mr. Rockwell, millionaire industrialist, Hague supporter, and union-hater extraordinaire.  He normally lived in a deluxe room at the Waldorf in Manhattan but to keep residency in Jersey City, he had a palatial house taking up half a city block in the nicest ward in the city (which wasn't saying all that much).  His wife was thought to be a bit of a hellcat.  And now she'd hired Dick.  And Dick got dead.  I unwrapped Jacqueline’s arms from my neck, put her feet on the couch as she passed out, and headed down to the Rockwell mansion.

The place looked like someone had reached a big hand over the Atlantic, plucked a chateau off some Grand Duke's estate, and plopped it down in the middle of what once had been a park.  And that's more or less how it happened.  Money from shipping during the war and loans to allied counties had paid off so big that Rockwell could afford eccentricity, the only real way to judge wealth.  I decided against the front door—judging by my suit, they'd think I was selling brushes—and went around to the service entrance.  The kitchen helper was only just impressed enough by the useless badge they give PIs that she went and brought the butler.  Now there's a man you wouldn't want to try to sell brushes to.  It took me ten solid minutes to talk my way into the house and another half-hour before I was presented to Mrs. Rockwell in some room that probably had a name, though it beats me what it was.

The room was a million dollars worth of fragile furniture, gigantic paintings, and polished wood paneling—and it all looked like a garage sale compared to the woman reclining languidly on the settee.  She was nearly as tall as a man, blond hair that—when down—probably reached her waist and glowed as if each strand was a wisp of sunlight on a spring morn, a figure that would have made a conscientious objector take a hatchet to a nunnery, and a pair of pale blue eyes that a man could wade out into and never care to come back from.  She was nearly paralyzing with those eyes and every gesture she had told how well she knew their effect.  It was a good thing the butler was there to throw me into a seat.

“Andrew says you are a representative of Mr. Dryden's,” she said, sitting up and raising her chin as if she wanted me to convince her.

“Not exactly, Mrs. Rockwell,” I said.  “My name is Paul Marston and I'm a private detective, same as Mr. Dryden; we were friends.  I say were because, I'm sorry to say, he was murdered.  Either last night or early this morning.”

She trembled a little bit, mostly in her bottom lip or that's all I could see.  She composed herself and said how dreadful it was and asked a lot of questions very fast.  I told her what Harcourt had told me, which wasn't a hell of a lot, and then asked her a few questions.

“Mrs. Rockwell, your case was the only thing that Dick—Mr. Dryden—was working on at the time,” I said.

“Please, let's call him Dick,” she said, leaning forward.  The pale green dress she was wearing was calculated to breed hope in a man's heart.  “I feel like we must talk of him as a friend, especially if he died because of something I had asked him to do.  Oh, dear!  I simply must have a drink.  Do you mind?”

“Of course not,” I said, or a voice that sounded vaguely like mine said, I couldn’t be sure.  Between her calling Dick a friend and leaning forward, I didn't know whether I was closer to crying in her lap or sitting in it.

She called in a monkey in a black suit to wheel the drink cart over and mix us a couple of drinks; he poured them into glasses big enough to keep goldfish in.  He handed them around and then left.  I watched his eyes and he made sure they didn't look anywhere; I was surprised he found the door.

“Can I ask you about the last case, Mrs. Rockwell?” I asked after tasting my drink.  It wasn't made with rye and probably cost more than my suit.

“You can if you'll call me Liz,” she said.  “All my friends call me Liz and, if we're going to talk about our friend Dick, you must call me Liz.”

“Alright, Liz,” I said.  “What did you ask Dick to look into for you?”

“Well, I, that is, I hesitate to say,” she said with no note of hesitation anywhere in her undulating figure.  If there was a flush creeping from her face to the edge of her dress, it wasn't from embarrassment.  I've known too many women to think that.  “I'm being blackmailed,” she said and poorly concealed a smile.  “Somehow a photograph was taken of me—oh, I can't believe I'm telling this to a stranger,” she said, putting a hand to her chest.

“I thought we were friends,” I said.

“Yes, we are,” she said and gave me the full smile.  “Or we would be if you'll come over here where I won't have to shout my secrets.”  I came and sat beside her and knew halfway there that a flush was going from my hairline all the way to my little piggies.  “I received a photograph in the mail, or rather, left at my door.  In the photograph—oh, Paul, don't look at me for one second while I tell you,” she said and I didn't believe a word of it, but I wasn't supposed to.  “In the photograph, I don't have any clothes on.  Does that shock you?”

“The thought of naked photos of you?” I asked.  “My heart's about to jump out of my chest.”

“You're terrible,” she said, leaning close to me and putting her hand on my thigh.

“So, blackmail,” I said, just trying to keep the story in my head and my eyes out of the front of her dress.  I wasn't getting very far with either.

“Let's have another drink,” she said and mixed two more.  “Yes, blackmail.”

“Was there a note?” I asked, putting back what was left in my first drink in one slug.  “Do you still have it or did Dick take it with him?”

“No note,” she said as if barely listening to me.

“How were the demands made?” I asked.  “Do you know who the blackmailer is?”

“Yes, I know,” she said.  And then, as if thinking about it for the very first time, said, “Well, I know what he told me.  You see, Paul, the man who's blackmailing me, who took the picture somehow, was my lover.  Now you are shocked, aren't you?”

“That any man would want more than being your lover?” I asked.  “Shocked is not the word.”

“You're wonderful,” she said.

“Does this heel have a name?” I asked.

“He told me his name was Bob,” she said.  “But I never thought it was his real name.”

“And you hired Dick to track Bob down and get the photos away from him?” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Did Dick have any leads?” I asked.  “How was he supposed to find this Bob?”

“Oh, well,” she said and polished off her drink.  “Another?”

“In a bit,” I said.  “It'd be a shame if my vision got blurry.”

She laughed, throwing back her head and all but running a fingertip down the full length of her extraordinary neck.

“So, finding Bob,” I said when she'd poured herself another drink.

“Yes, finding Bob,” she said.  “Well, I'd met Bob while I was out and about.  You know how it is; one gets so tired of society parties and the stuffy life of a millionaire’s wife: I want excitement, from time to time.  Passion.  A little danger, maybe.  So, after a night at a club that your cop friends would like to know about,” she said, tapping me on the nose, “a friend of mine took me to this low down boozer on Newark Avenue.  And there was Bob.”

“What was the name?” I asked.  “Low down boozer describes the whole street, private residences to laundries.”

“You make me laugh,” she said and proved it.  “Oh I don't remember.  It was one of a type.  Small, greasy, salt of the earth, laborers who smelled of dead fish and tar.  There was sawdust on the floor and accordion music in the air.  I doubt that will help you.”

“Dick must have picked up on something,” I said.  “What else can you tell me about this Bob?”

“Do we have to talk about him?” she asked, dropping her chin and looking up at me.  “At any moment I'm expecting a call from the blackmailer or, worse, from the newspapers.  Comfort me!”

She threw herself into my lap and had half a mile of arms around my neck and a cloth-yard of lips pressed to me—and they knew just what they were doing.  I had to kiss her back just to get her under control but I had her hands in mine a minute later and put her back on to her side of the settee.

“Listen, Mrs. Rockwell,” I said.

“Liz,” she breathed, trying to reach me again.

“Liz,” I said, pulling back.  “My very good friend just died: I kinda figure I should find who done it before celebrating.  Can I take a rain check?”

“You can,” she said, lying back and taking the hem of her dress in her hands.  “If you touch me.”

This was murder of a whole other sort.  I wasn't sure if it was really happening at first.  I threw back my drink and—hell, I'm only human and how many times does a man get an offer like that?—I admit it, I touched her.  I leaned in close and only used my hand.  She stared into my eyes the entire time until she couldn't anymore and then dropped back onto the settee's deep cushions, breathing hard and looking hungry.  There was nothing calm about how I reached for the glass of ice water on the drinks tray.

I wanted to ask her about this Bob character a little more but I couldn't be sure if I’d hear the answers.  Whether it was the scotch she was serving or what else was on the menu, I was not in a working state of mind and it was making me sick.  Dick was on a slab downtown with a tag on his toe and I'm up to my elbow in skirt.  I told Mrs. Rockwell goodnight and that I'd find whoever was blackmailing her—and who'd killed Dick.

I must have been standing there like an idiot trying to figure which door to use to get out of there when she laughed and hit the button on the side of the settee to bring the butler.  He showed me out.  Once we were in the hallway and I was putting forth an effort to get a hold of myself, I noticed the guy.  He wasn’t one of these ancient, would-be British types in a tuxedo and the expression of a cue ball.  This guy was well over six feet, as wide as Ford, and as he walked down the hall—clumping along like a bull leaving a stadium with a little Spanish fellah dead in the sand behind him—I noticed a symmetrical bulge at the small of his back, under his jacket.  Bodyguard.  Armed, tough, and on call.  Whatever running around Mr. Rockwell allowed his wife to indulge in, he had the sense to keep somebody around who knew the score.

I found a cab and went back to my office.  Big Sleep was right where I’d left him except facing the door.  I figured he must have moved around a little bit or something, maybe napped.  If he had, he wasn’t about to let me know about it.  He sat there curling his tail around his feet, waiting for me to report.  I reached forward to pat him on the head and he pulled back with a look on his pan like a butcher who hears the next person in line is a vegetarian.  I kept my hand near him so he condescended to sniff it.  He looked a bit skeptical but in the end he brushed his whiskers against my knuckles.  I don’t know why it made me feel better.

I sat down and filled a pipe and lit it.  (Big Sleep watched the match again: I was beginning to think he disapproved of smoking.)  Pulling my professional address book from the center drawer, I called a clipping service and told them to find a good picture of Mrs. Rockwell from any newspaper they could and have a courier bring it by my office as soon as possible.  While the clipping service was doing that, I called around to a couple boys I know in the liquor business.  Good boys to know; bad boys to cross.  They threw a little work my way every now and again and I kept an ear to the ground for them.  They weren’t racketeers exactly, not anymore.  Hell, you could say worse things about most of the fellahs in my racket.  All Mrs. Rockwell said about where she’d met this Bob character was that they’d met in a bar on Newark Ave with an accordion player.  She should have been able to tell me more than that but I wondered if maybe Dick’s killing had scared her into playing ball with the blackmailer: she didn’t want him found, worried it would come back to her.  Tough.  As it turned out, the liquor boys knew of a few joints that fit the bill and by the time the courier showed up with a newspaper photo of Mrs. Rockwell, I had the name of the low down boozer: Florien’s.

Florien’s was the ground floor of a row house converted into a bar.  The tenants above must have had drunks pounding on their front door every night; it was that kind of place.  It was cozy enough, though, for all that.  Mostly it catered to the working stiffs come up from the river front.  Mrs. Rockwell wasn’t wrong about the hint of tar on the air.  They served a few types of beer, plenty of whiskey, and oysters if you didn’t mind how old they were.  You could get bread, cheese, and a watery bowl of soup for free at lunch times, provided you bought a drink; that’s how they pulled in the pros.  They were wobbling together at the far end of the bar, and not in time with the accordion (which, incidentally, was played by a Swede so big she barely fit in the room).  At the entrance side of things, it was mostly longshoremen.

I waded through to the bar.  The mug behind it had a face like a bag of cement left out in the rain.  I waved him to lean in but he didn’t lean worth a damn; I showed him the clipping of Mrs. Rockwell and asked if he’d ever seen the lady.  He kept looking at me and not the photo.  I said she would’ve met someone and who was it?  He said the same as before.

“What are you, some kind of dick?” a scruffy red beard with a man somewhere inside it asked from the barstool next to me.

“That’s right,” I said.  There’s never any use in denying it, not that it gets you anywhere to admit it.  “You ever see this lady in here?”

“She’d be hard to forget,” he said and turned back to his drink.

“What’s the problem here?” I asked him and the barman together.  “Either you have or you haven’t.”

“You want a drink or what?” the barman asked.

“Yeah, rye, straight,” I said.  “What’s that cost?  A five-spot?”  I took what was becoming an all-too-thin roll out of my pocket and peeled off a fiver.  I lay it on the scarred wooden bar and watched the barman eyeing it as he slid the rye toward me.

He shook his head slowly.  “This one’s on the house,” he said.  “Seeing as you’re leaving in such a hurry.”

I could feel the three men behind me; seeing them in the greasy mirror wasn’t a possibility.  I put the fiver back in my pocket, the drink down the hatch, and turned around.  These were big boys in the arms, but a little bow-legged underneath.  They looked serious enough.

“Aww, that’s swell of you fellahs,” I told them, just to be friendly.  “Offering to walk me home and all.”

The tallest of the three, in the middle, motioned toward the door with his chin.  The bar didn’t quiet down much, not with Brünnehilde mashing away in the corner, but a lot of eyes were slanted our way.  I figured I was due for a sap on the back of the head as soon as I turned but it was either go for the door and risk it or take it right in the face.  I went for the door.  Not too fast, but not so slow that I was giving them time to think it over.  I shuffled out sideways, making sure they were still with me and their hands were out of their pockets.  On the sidewalk, I walked backwards a few steps as they spread out.

“Alright, fellahs,” I said, trying my luck with my lovable smile.  “This broad here: know her?  Seen her around before?”  Nothing.  “I’m starting to think I’ve got the right place.”

They looked at each other and then the middle one said, “No, mister, you’ve got the wrong place.  We don’t like snoopers.  Here, I’ll show you.”

He took a big step toward me and hauled his arm back as if he was quarterbacking for Rutgers.  I popped him with a quick left when he was reeled back and off balance and he fell right on his ass.  The other two rushed me at the same time.  I fended off one with a stamp on his foot; the other tried a jab of his own but I brushed it passed my ear and gave him an uppercut with extra sauce.  From there it was on.  I took it from one after the other—and gave it back in spades.  Problem was they kept getting up and I was going to tire out from knocking them down.  I had the .45 under my arm but I didn’t figure pulling it would get me anywhere.  I wasn’t hurting them too bad and, except for a split lip and what would probably grow into a pretty good shiner, they weren’t really hurting me: I was hoping they’d calm down enough to talk.  I guess the tall one thought his pride had got stepped on, though, because all of a sudden he had about three-feet of bowie knife in his paw and looked mad enough to use it.

“Have you lost what little sense you were born with, son?  Put that thing away,” I said and, by the way, that’s about the worst, most stupid thing you can say to a guy worked up enough that he pulls a knife on you.

He lunged at me and now it was for real.  The people who had gathered on their front stoops or hung out of windows to watch the fun all gasped at the tall man’s ferocity.  I was pretty impressed with it myself.  Twenty years is a long time but what the corps said to do in a time like this flashed through my head as clear as the day they'd trained me for it.  Of course, I was also twenty years too old to try any of that fancy arm-grabbing stuff.  I jumped to one side and stamped on his knee.  He went down with a howl like a dog hit by a car.

All of a sudden, I was madder than he was.  Here I was, trying to find a wrong gee who blackmailed women and may have shot my friend, left him on the floor of a crummy office all night with nothing but a cat for company, and this mug with a half-mile of knife wants to open me up for asking questions.  No, sir!  Not that afternoon.  I had my gat in hand and pressed to the side of his head before I knew what I was doing.

I must have looked like something else because the other two were on their feet and had their hands in the air.

“I’ve had enough of this Arthur Murray lesson, beautiful,” I shouted at the tall one.  “Now either you start with the talking or I start with the shooting.  And you can be damn sure there won’t be any witnesses to say the knife wasn’t in your hand,” I added in a growl to the other two.

They were sweating but the tall one was still tough, busted knee and all.  “We look after our own,” he spat through teeth clenched in pain.  “What do you expect?  We’d tell you all about him?  Did we tell the last dick?  Why send you?”

“I can just guess who the last dick was,” I said and I could feel the blood boiling under my skin.  “That was my friend—and he’s dead!  And if he’d been stabbed instead of shot, you’d be dead already, too.  He came here?  Who talked to him and what was said?”

This was never the way to go about things but what was I going to do, now that I was standing there like a maniac?  Police on the way, for all I knew.  Luckily, the dame came out.

“No, please, don’t hurt them anymore,” she said.

She was a little bit behind me, having come up the alleyway.  Twenty-two, maybe, twenty-three; from her clothes you’d think she sewed piece work in a basement sweatshop or cleaned houses; by her accent, you’d know she had soft hands.  You would almost think she was in disguise.

“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” she said, wringing her hands.  “Just leave them alone.”

“They’re the ones who started this brouhaha, sweetheart,” I said, straightening up and putting my piece back under my arm.

“And you can end it,” she said, composing herself in a flash.

“I have,” I said.  “Let’s have the name.”

“Not here,” she said and took a step backward into the alley.

“Not your name,” I said.  “His name.  To know you’re on the level.  You can help her out, boys.”

“Dryden,” the tall man said quietly.  “He said Gabe's folks sent him, but it weren’t true.”

“Dick always was better at this part of the racket,” I said.

“A dick named Dick?” one of the other two said through a split lip.  He nudged his friend and almost laughed until he saw my face getting red again.

“Come on,” the girl said.

I followed her down the alley and I must have been a little punch drunk not to expect an ambush at the other end.  There wasn’t one, though.  We walked a good fifteen minutes or more, out of Hoboken and up on the Heights.  She had a little room at the top of a boarding house, slanted roof and as airy and bright as a manhole.  She called it her “new” place as we were going up the stairs.  The furniture looked as if it had been salvaged from a grade school, a grade school that had burned down.  I couldn’t even stand up the ceiling was so low so I squeezed as much of my backside onto one of those little chairs as would fit.  She took a bowl from a cabinet and poured warm water from a jug into it and then found a washcloth.  She handed it to me and told me to wipe my face.

“That other detective,” she said after she sat down and lit a cigarette, “Mr. Dryden, he spooked everyone, I think.  When Gabe went missing, well, a lot of people thought he’d finally grown tired of slumming it with us and went back home.”

“Slow down, sweetheart,” I said.  “I’m not even in your rearview mirror yet.  Who’s Gabe?”

“Gabriel Peabody,” she said and then softer, “Gabe.”

I sat and looked at her while she was thinking.  The hard-boiled expression she tried to keep on her face kept slipping.  From the way she sat in her little chair, with a straight back and hands folded in her lap, to the fashionable bob she wore and tried to keep hidden beneath her cheap hat, I could tell she hadn’t been born to that garret apartment and could probably leave it if she wanted to.  Gabe had been slumming?  Sister, he wasn’t the only one.

“I’m sorry,” she said and propped the cool, hard-boiled look back on her face.  “I should have asked you who you are.”

“Paul Marston,” I said.

“I’m Anna Patton,” she said.  “You’re a Private Detective?”

“Yes,” I said.  “A friend of Dick Dryden’s.  He was killed last night or early this morning—if it’s any news to you.”

That jarred her a little.  “Yes, it is,” she said.  “I’m sorry about your friend but I want you to know that despite what Frank and those others tried to do to you, none of us would have killed anyone.  We’re not like that.”

“And who’s us?” I asked.

She took a deep breath.  “The IWW,” she said.  “Don’t roll your eyes!  And don’t say, ‘I Won’t Work’ either.  We are doing good work and are fighting for the rights of workers all across the world.  People are being treated worse than animals, even today, even after President Roosevelt’s promises to support unions.  Should people work sixty, eighty, a hundred hours a week, with no days off, and still not be able to feed their families?  Is it right for society to stand by while a woman has to choose between clothing her children or housing them?  Is it justice when an owner maims his workers with unsafe equipment or conditions and then does nothing to help heal and rehabilitate and find work for the injured?”

“Alright, alright!” I said.  “Look, you’ve convinced me.  Here: here’s my dues, I’m a wobbly now.  Give me my brochure and my pin and shut up about it.  All I care about is who shot my friend; and this lady in the photo and the man she met at that trashcan of a bar—and maybe your Gabe—are wrapped up in it somehow.  Now give!”

“You don’t have to shout at me,” she shouted back.  “They are wrapped up together, I’m sure they are.  In fact I know they are.  Oh,” she said and practically took off her own thumb biting down on it.  “Gabe came from a good family, a wealthy family, but he saw the evils of the world and wanted to do something about them, Mr. Marston.  So he joined the IWW and has been working to help unionize the scores upon scores of shops and industries up and down the Hudson.  We’ve faced entrenched opposition, as you might guess.  Corruption at the highest levels is set against us.  And that’s the toughest part of it all.  If the laws were simply enforced, we’d have won by now.  But here, and in Jersey City, the law means nothing.

“There’s a factory on Monroe Street, here in Hoboken, marine equipment.  Mostly they supply the various tugs and ferries and light cargo ships.  They’re also un-unionized and that’s exactly the way the owner wants to keep it.”

“And the owner is?” I asked.

“Mr. George Rockwell,” she said scornfully.

I saw it then, not all the details but I saw it, or what I thought it would grow into.  Like a painting across a long room, the colors, the streaks and the pools of pigment and light, and you just know it’s going to be a park or a ship at sea or a fox hunt or whatever.  The details will change and go this way and that as you close in on it but you know.  I knew.  I hung my head and told her to go on.

“Rockwell owns as much of Hoboken as he does Jersey City,” she said.  “He owns most of the business in his district and pays protection to the best operator in town: the police department.  We’ve been trying to set up a union shop, hold a vote, in Breckenridge Marine for four months.  And what we’ve seen is as flagrant a violation of the law as ever was perpetrated against the workers.  Anyone seen with a pamphlet is arrested on their way home; anyone seen handing them out is arrested and beaten.  If anyone talks too loudly about direct action, he might just disappear all together.  Mr. Marston, there is no one to go to in a situation like this.  Who do you go to when it’s the police themselves who are the goons?

“Well, Gabe has faced a lot of doubts in the union because he comes from money.  Though he’s been arrested along with the rest of us many times, because of his family, they just lock him up for the night but never charge him.  So, many in the union doubt his commitment; some think he’s a plant by the industrialists.  He thought if he could organize Breckenridge Marine, they’d have to take him seriously.”

I didn’t have to say a word.  All I did was hold up the photograph of Mrs. Rockwell.

“Yes,” she said and almost dropped her eyes to her wringing hands but held on.  “Yes, that was Gabe’s big idea.”

“Sister, he took ‘big idea’ to new heights of stupidity,” I said.

“Oh, no, Mr. Marston, he didn’t set out to blackmail her,” she said, as if it mattered what I thought.  “How much do you know about Mrs. Rockwell?”

“I know she has a reputation that would stand about as much strain as overcooked pasta,” I said.

“That’s one way of putting it,” she said, rolling her eyes.  “It’s more than that, though.  She runs around, it’s true, and she’s not shy about who knows it but she’s also known to stand for a little bit of squeeze.”

“Tell me about it,” I said and looked around to see if there was a drink anywhere.  There wasn’t.

“Not that kind of squeeze,” she said.  “She’s willing to use her money, and a couple of times her influence with her husband, to satisfy a lover.”

“How would you know?” I asked her.

“I said Gabe came from money, didn’t I?” she said.

“And you?” I asked.

She didn’t answer and didn’t look at me for a moment.  Then she went on as if I hadn’t spoken.  “Gabe said that she had helped a railroad man, who was developing some land, to get zoning permission—by asking her husband.  They seem to have some sort of understanding, her and Mr. Rockwell.”

“You think so?” I said.

“Yes, I do think so,” she said.  “Don’t sneer at me.  These things happen all the time, particularly amongst the wealthy.”

“So Gabe thinks he’ll have a go at Liz,” I said, “—we’re very close since I met her this afternoon, me and Liz—he’d have a go at Liz and then, because she’s such a soft-hearted slob, she’d talk her husband into letting the IWW take over one of his factories.  Is that it?”

“That was Gabe’s plan,” she said evenly.

“Only there’s one problem with it,” I said and stood up but had to sit back down again because of the low roof.  “Mr. Rockwell throwing a little influence to keep his wife discreet with her paramours is one thing: cutting his own throat—as he would see it—by letting a union cut into his profits is another thing all together.  Let me guess, Gabe dropped a few hints and Liz laughed in his face.”

“More or less,” she said.  “She told him to ask for something else.”

“Where does the blackmail come in?” I asked.

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair for a moment and then forced her favorite expression back on her face.  “He thought she didn’t want to force her husband,” she said and I could hear her voice drying out.  “He also thought she probably could force Rockwell, if she really wanted to.  I don’t know why.  So he thought he’d push a little harder.  He took her up to a little apartment he had on 7^th and, and,” she said and had to clear her throat, “and took her clothes off as if they were going to sleep together.  Or, rather, they did sleep together but before that, when she was lying there watching him undress,” and it was her turn to look around for a drink then, “while she was lying there, a photograph was taken of her with him in the frame, too.”

“Where were you hiding?” I asked.

She couldn’t look me in the eyes after that.  I guess I’m a heel, too.  I had to be sure, though.

“In the closet,” she whispered and then forced her voice to a normal level.  “I had to stay very quiet until they were finished.  We developed the film at a friend’s studio in the Village.  Gabe then mailed her a photograph.  After a day, he met her in person and asked again if she’d help us with Breckenridge Marine.  All we wanted, Mr. Marston, was a fair try.  Just to call off the police so we could hold a meeting and a vote, that’s all!”

“How did she react?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said and there was no way to keep the sorrow out of her voice.  “The last I saw of Gabe, he was putting on his jacket before he left my old apartment.  He was going to ask her again to intercede for us.”

I gave her a minute to pull herself together.  She wasn’t falling to pieces exactly but she looked as if the whole world had gone brittle.  She may have believed in all the talk they have nowadays, amongst the socialist set, about how sex should be open and free and about as selective as a water fountain.  Looks good on paper, no one getting jealous, no cheating because there is no cheating, no shame and no doubt.  Sounds nice but it doesn’t seem to prevent broken hearts and I’ve seen enough of them to see one breaking in her.

“When was this?” I asked.

After a second she cleared her throat and said calmly, “Two weeks ago.  The fifteen to of June.”

And a couple days later, I thought, Mrs. Rockwell hires Dick to find the man who was blackmailing her.  That didn’t add up exactly but there were a few possible scenarios.  The one thing they all had in common: Mrs. Rockwell was less than forthcoming that afternoon.

“And then Dick came by Florien’s,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.  “A few days ago he came in and said he was looking for Gabe.  He said he had been hired by Gabe’s parents because they hadn’t heard from him in a while.  That scared me because it had been weeks.  We said we didn’t know where he was.  I don’t know what everyone said; he talked to several people.”

“Did he have one of these swell photos?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” she said.

“How did he get to Florien’s?” I asked.

“Taxi,” she said tartly.

“That’s not what I meant,” I said.

“I know what you meant,” she said.  “Oddly enough he didn’t tell me his life story.”

“He must have learned something that was worth killing him over,” I said.  “Where are the photos?  I assume you made a few prints and still have the negatives.”

“I don’t have them,” she said.  “Gabe thought it would be safer if he hid them somewhere.  I don’t know where.  He knew that he would be suspected immediately and that it wouldn’t take much poking around to lead to me.”

“So he stashed them,” I said.  “Where?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

I didn’t like that she couldn’t look me in the eye now.  Maybe that had to do with admitting that her fellah was two-timing her while she stood in a closet or maybe not.  “Look, Ms. Patton,” I said.  “You’ve told me a lot, and I’m grateful, but I think you can tell me more.  Where are those photos?”

“I told you I don’t know,” she said.

“What did you think happened to Gabe when he didn’t come back from meeting Mrs. Rockwell?” I asked.

“I thought,” she started to say and this time the tears found a way out.  Not into her voice, but down her cheeks.  “I thought she must have told her husband and that he had the police waiting for Gabe.  Or worse,” she whispered.

Her whole body jerked a couple of times as she fought like hell to keep from bawling.  I wanted to hand my handkerchief over to her but it’s just a gesture like that that will push some women over the edge.  It wouldn’t have been a kindness.

“Did the police ever come by your apartment?” I asked.  She couldn’t reply right away so I said, “This being your ‘new’ apartment and all—and you not wanting your name said on the street—I’m guessing you’re on the run.”

She nodded her head and then found a handkerchief in her bag and wiped her eyes.

“Cops or somebody else?” I asked.

She shrugged and shook her head.

“So maybe plain clothes detectives or maybe a couple of hard-boys Rockwell keeps around for special occasions,” I said, thinking of the butler who walked me out.  “What about this photographer friend of yours in the Village?  Would he have a copy of the prints or the plate, maybe?”

“I don’t know,” she said.  “Maybe he does.  No, no Gabe told him it wouldn’t be safe.”

“I better ask him,” I said.

She took out an envelope and wrote down the photographer’s name and address, handed it to me.

“Okay, Ms. Patton,” I said and stood up as best I could.  “Thanks for talking to me.  I mean it.  Thank you.”

She stood up, too; a little straighter than I could.  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said and it was the truth, though I had my doubts.

“Mr. Rockwell found out and to teach us and his wife a lesson, he killed Gabe,” she said.  “With the police in his pocket and the unlimited power of money, what could stop him?”

“Me,” I said.

We both laughed the sad, humorless laughter of mourners at what I’d said.  I squeezed her shoulder and she knew it was nothing more than compassion; she knew I was looking for Gabe’s killer as much as for Dick’s now.  We said a few things to each other, I told her I’d let her know, and said goodbye.

It was late, getting dark, by the time I hit the street.  I walked back to my office, needing time to think.  When I got in, I found Big Sleep on the window sill.  He looked over his shoulder at me, nose twitching and eyes dropping to my hands.

“Aw hell,” I said.  “I’m sorry, brother, I forgot to get some kind of food in here for you.  Don’t suppose you want a drink, do you?”

He went back to looking out the window.  I got the office bottle up on the desk and put back two fingers of rye from the glass I keep meaning to rinse out and then put it and the bottle back in the filing cabinet.  It was time to go home.  The question was, how do I get Big Sleep home with me?

I had one of those satchels in the corner, which I never use, that looks like a cardboard box with a handle going through the center of the top, only it’s made of leather instead of cardboard.  It was big enough for Big Sleep but I didn’t figure wrestling him inside would be much fun so I set it on the floor, opened it with the top flaps folded down the sides, shooed away Big Sleep when he came over to sniff it, and then sat down in my chair, leaned back, and filled a pipe.  In less than a minute, he was sitting comfortably inside looking over the top with the expression of a U-boat captain ordering the surrender of a merchantman.  I swept the two lid flaps up and over and had him closed up in a flash.  He announced his displeasure with a few scandalized meows as I headed out but, once I was on the street—with him in one hand and his bag of sand in the other—he decided to remain inconspicuous and kept quiet until we got home.

I stopped at a drug store on the way and picked up a chicken salad sandwich for myself and a couple tuna fish sandwiches for him.  Once I had the door to my apartment closed and the lights on, I put the leather satchel on the coffee table that was so old and scarred it looked like a piece of drift wood.  I rented the place furnished.  Opening the satchel, I found Big Sleep lying inside and looking up at me as indignant as if I had interrupted his lecture on indigenous languages of ancient Mesopotamia.  He winked one blue eye at me and then waited until I had the good graces to remove my objectionable presence from his important business.  I told him I had a tuna sandwich for him, but he didn’t seem impressed.  Before I could unwrap the wax paper, a knock came at the door.

It was my dear old chum, Fred Harcourt.  He looked as if he’d swallowed a wasp.  He didn’t bother with any niceties and rode me back into the room, saying, “I thought I heard someone firing a machinegun in here,” as his excuse for entering my apartment without a warrant.  As if any cop within twenty-five miles of Hoboken ever needed a warrant.

“Where you been, pal?” he asked.  “Your friends have been looking for you.”

“The only friend I have is in that box,” I said, hiking a thumb over my shoulder at Big Sleep’s satchel.  “The only living one, that is.”

He ignored that and said, “Been calling your office all day.  It just rings and rings.  Called here a few times, too.  Same effect.  What’s a-matter, pal?  You so weepy at your little pal getting blown down that you can’t bear the thought of talking to nobody?  Can’t trust your voice on the telephone?”

“Fuck you,” I told him.  If there was ever anyone who could get under my skin.

“You wouldn’t say that if I had you on Hudson Street,” he growled; the police station is on Hudson.  I knew how to get under his skin, too.

“The way I’ve been hearing it,” I said, tipping the brim of my hat up with one finger (a particular finger) and leaning toward him, “with the way the HoboPD runs the show, I’d never make it to Hudson Street.  Not with my head still on my shoulders.”

“Is that where it is?” he said.  “I thought it was stuck somewhere else.  So how about you tell me where you were all day?”

“And how about you go fry your face?” I told him.

He had me by the front of the shirt then.  It was hard work not to swing on him.  He’s a big man, Harcourt, but I had two inches on him and the fight I'd had earlier had worn off enough that I was ready for another one.

“You think a couple of hard weeks together, twenty years ago, will save your ass from me, baby,” he shouted, “but it don’t count for squat.  I told you to lay off the Dryden case and you’ve been AWOL all day.  Now you come back with the kind of work done to your face that I’d like a crack at.  Where and doing what?”

“Aww, Freddie, you little devil,” I said and his face lit up like a bonfire.  “So you found out I went to see her, huh?”

He flung me away from him and took two quick steps the other way, not looking at me.  He knew I wasn’t talking about Jacqueline, either.

I laughed and said, “How far did you get with her?”

He swung around and looked just a bit worried.  “Jesus,” he said.  “I’m married!”

“That sort of thing doesn’t seem to bother her,” I said.  “And she asked me personally to look into a matter for her.  A private matter, you understand, Freddie ol’pal ol’buddy.  Confidential.  Did you get told?” I asked sweetly, finally seeing why he was so sore, or thought I did.

He was maybe an inch away from flying across the room and socking me but he didn’t.  Something held him back.

“She tell you the name of the blackmailer?” I asked.  “The real name, that is; not the guff about Bob.”  He blinked a few times and swallowed.  I shrugged.  “Jacqueline told you about the phone call he asked her to make?”  He nodded.  “Any John Doe’s at the morgue that look a little soft to you?  Without fingerprints on file?  Here or down in Jersey City?”

“Well, well, well,” he said, no longer bothering with the tough.  He was quiet and patient and everything was different.  “You’re a smart cookie after all, Marston.  I remember that one time Sergeant Mallory was shouting at you for mouthing off and said you ought’ve been an officer.  Sounded like a college boy to him.  Just like one: not as smart as you think.”

“And now I know just enough to be dangerous?” I asked him.  “Should I sleep with my pistol in hand tonight?”

“With your big mouth?” he said.  “Tonight and every night.  See you around, Marston.  Maybe.”

He left and closed the door softly.  I realized I was holding my breath after a while and let it out.  Looking over, I found Big Sleep staring at me from his U-boat.  He looked a little less disappointed in me.  Or maybe he could smell the tuna fish sandwiches.

I picked up the phone and called the Rockwell residence.  It took nearly ten minutes of talking to various people—none of whom wanted to admit she was even in the house—before I was connected to Liz.

“Paul, how wonderful to hear from you,” she said breathlessly.  Her voice was as good as the rest of her.

“And wonderful to finally talk to you, Liz, after the mountain of servants I had to climb over,” I said.

She laughed and said, “The moment I’m off the phone with you, I shall leave word that you are to be put through to me immediately, night and day.  Particularly night.  Am I going to see you this evening?”

“I’d like that,” I said and nothing truer had ever been said in the whole history of the world.  “I have a couple questions, first, if you don’t mind.  I found out that the night after you received one of those special photographs, Bob was due to come by to talk to you about it.”

“Oh?” she said.  “Which night was this?  I have such a bad memory, Paul.”

“This would have been the fifteenth,” I said.  “You don’t happen to remember if Mr. Rockwell had been in Jersey City that night, do you?  Or which bodyguards he had with him?”

“Such strange questions you are asking,” she said.  “I learned long ago never to talk about such indiscreet subjects on the telephone.  You are a Private Detective: isn’t that smart of me?”

“Very smart,” I said.  “And talking to you in person is all I want in the world.”

“You lovely man,” she said.  “I will meet you somewhere and we shall talk of many things.  Is there someplace near where you live, a few blocks away, perhaps?”

“There is,” I said.  “The Brass Rail, on Washington.”

“It sounds charming,” she said.  “I shall be there in an hour.  Until then, my dear Paul.”

She hung up before I could say anything and that was probably very smart of her, too: in that state, getting any blood up to my brain was a chore.

I unwrapped a tuna sandwich for Big Sleep and put it on a plate for him.  He deployed himself as a landing party and ran purring to it.  I stood next to him and ate my chicken salad.  Stale bread, brown lettuce, and mayonnaise that was yellow enough to be mustard: I really need to stop going to that drug store.  I washed the taste out of my mouth with a glass of rye and put a saucer of water down for Big Sleep; he seemed to have as much use for water as I did.  The hour went by quickly enough, although under normal circumstances it shouldn’t have.  Of course, under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have been going to see anyone like Liz Rockwell.  Under normal circumstances Dick wouldn’t be dead.

Big Sleep was back in his U-boat, watching me, so I walked over and let him rub his face against my knuckles again, put his ears under my fingers for a scratch.

“Okay, fellah,” I said to him, or to me, “if things go south, the landlady will find you in the morning.  I'm convinced she frisks the joint after I leave each day.  And there's the other tuna sandwich, if you can get the wax paper unfolded.”

I went into the closet, which is really just a thing attached to the side of the fold-down bed, and took down the shoe box.  I had an ammo can with two-hundred rounds in it along with six more magazines for the .45.  I always think of that destroyed village, leveled by artillery, in Belleau Wood, where I was the only NCO alive and so therefore in charge of the fifty or so of us left in the company.  Every time.  Except that night: that night I thought of lying in Devonshire, or wherever it was, with Dick lying in the next bunk over trying not to laugh because it made his ribs hurt, trying to tell me he hadn't got the VD until he was in hospital.

I opened the door and waited a full three minutes before I stepped out.  On any other night, someone would have walked by or taken a bag of trash to the chute or something.  All I could hear was the hophead down the hall laughing fit to choke and Mr. Winters across the hall arguing with whatever show he listened to on the radio.  I put on my hat and headed down, taking the stairs.

The delivery entrance I used opens on the alleyway and it seemed like a good idea until I opened the door and the light above it blinded me.  There could have been three battalions of storm troopers in that alley, flamethrowers and all, and I wouldn't have seen a thing.  My ears were still working though.  I didn't hear anyone so after a couple minutes of thinking they must be able to hear my heart beating down in the Ironbound Section of Newark, I walked out, going the opposite way from The Brass Rail.

The route to the bar was obvious, even a thug could figure it out.  So I went parallel to that route, ducking in toward it on perpendicular alleys, every so often.  About halfway there, as I slid an eye past a corner, I could see a man standing in the shadow cast by a streetlight and the building's corner, flattening himself against the wall.

Hoboken has been here for a long time.  Everyone knows that Manhattan was a Dutch colony before the English got their mitts on the gear.  Well, Hoboken was here the same time.  The streets are so old they're made of cobblestone, and none of them set any too plumb.  Horse carts break their wheels between them all the damn time.  Hell, even cars will have a tire pulled off every once and a while.  What bothered me at the moment, though, was that they are loud as all the souls in hell to walk on.  Particularly in leather soled shoes.  I bent down and took mine off.

With the .45 in my hand, I crept down the alleyway.  Every step was a nightmare of possibility: a broken piece of glass slicing my foot could make me cry out, a rat could bite me, a deep puddle could splash, a loose cobblestone could roll and heave me out into the light.  And then that mug at the other end would have a hell of an easy target.  I started down that alley thinking only about surviving it and not much about the guy at the other end: by the time I was within a dozen feet of him, I hated his living guts.

I figured I was close enough but had a doubt.  I couldn't really know one way or another if the mug pressing his back against the greasy brick wall was one of Rockwell's bodyguards or not.  Could be some random thug out for a little stickup work.  Not that shooting him wouldn't be a public service but I hadn't crept down here to play Captain America.  I knelt slowly, silhouetting the man's head against the glow of the streetlamp and when the light was no longer directly in my face, I could see into the shadow across the street and wouldn't you know it, there was the tuxedo monkey from Rockwell’s staring back at me.

He couldn't see me because he had his head out in the street, looking up 3^rd waiting to see a run-down dick in a ten-dollar suit.  There were people about, and the mugs had to pull back and wait for them to pass; Hoboken was never a quiet city.  The mile square, Ho-broken, a Petri dish of corruption and vice with human viruses like my two friends with the gats held under their jackets.

“Is that him?  Is that him?” the mug closest to me hissed across the street.

“Looks like him,” the monkey hissed back.

They were going to shoot some poor bastard.  The Mug pulled his gun and held it in both hands, facing the mouth of the alleyway; I could see the Monkey do the same and nod to his pal: good fun, make a bonus from Rockwell, it's just some stinking dick, after all, not a human life.  I pointed my pistol at the Mug and said, “Gotta match.”

He swung around like he'd been kicked in the pants.  I shot him in the face and he went down in a burst of red.  Monkey must have thought the shot was Mug taken one at the supposed me coming up 3^rd: he aimed with his arms stretched out of the alleyway, along the wall.  Gave me the perfect shot, right through both forearms.  He fell down, too, throwing himself back into the alley way and started screaming.  I could hear someone up 3^rd cry out, “Hail father who art in shit, bejesus-heych and woo hoo.”  And how, brother.

I was just starting to think things were going my way and stepped out into the street when all hell broke loose and a Tommy gun opened up on me from farther up the street.  These boys weren't taken any chances and had their ambush two deep.  From both sides of 3^rd, they had guys with Tommy guns spraying fire down like ammo was free.  I lost my hat and damn near my nerve.  I fell back into the alley and crawled on elbows and bare feet up against the wall.  On my belly, I rolled just far enough to send a few rounds back their way.  Yeah, it did less than nothing—guy across the street with the Tommy started running down toward me, using the line of parked cars for cover.

I pulled back behind the corner as brick was flying like shrapnel every which way, and reloaded.  The Tommy across the street was jeering me as he worked his way down, firing short burst so he'd still have enough ammo in the drum when he reached the alley's mouth and I'd have nothing for cover.  I pushed away from the wall and landed on my shoulder, still in the alley but far enough forward so I could see under the car behind which the Tommy was crouching and firing.  One shot through the ankle shut him down.

For a second, there was no firing as the Tommy on my side of 3^rd listened to his friend screaming in agony about his ankle.  It barely registered that I had to act now now now or the other Tommy would just waltz down and drill me: I scrambled up and was out of the alley just when the last Tommy started blasting hell for leather.  I'd made it to the parked cars along my side of 3^rd, though, out in the street with them between me and Tommy (provided I stayed on my hands and knees).

I was crawling like a drunk dog toward a St. Patty's Day parade.  I was crawling so fast, I lost a sock somewhere.  That last Tommy shot through the cars; glass and metal were falling all over the place, down the back of my jacket, in my hair—even in my mouth.  I must have been screaming the whole time I scrambled up the street because my throat was raw.  And then it happened and it hit me like the Pennsylvania Railroad: Tommy ran dry.

I threw myself over the hood of a car as he was staring stupidly at his sub-machinegun, wondering why it wouldn't work no more.  Daddy fix it.  I fixed him, the bastard.  I had him dead to rights and could have given him the full fresh magazine I'd loaded into the .45 but I wanted him angry, I wanted him with my fists so I—barefoot and screaming like an Indian in a western movie—I drove a fist in to Tommy's uncomprehending mug like a fullback hitting a free safety.  If his chin felt anything like my hand, he was hurt bad.  Didn't make a sound though.  His lights were out before he hit the wall.  I left him slumped against it and walked back to the Monkey.

Monkey was going into shock.  He was losing blood and he couldn't use his hands to stop it.  I could.  I thought of telling him I'd trade his life for a confession but what do you get there?  What's he going to say except he did it?  Even if it isn't true?  I stuck my .45 back under my arm, tilted him forward, and pulled off his jacket.  (He wasn't in the tuxedo anymore; you don't get dressed up to blow down a gumshoe.)  I pulled a couple of strips from his blasted sleeves and tied up his bleeding arms.  He was still in bad shape but it was the shock that was going to kill him, not blood loss.  Not now, anyway.  I slapped him a few times, and yeah I wasn't going soft on him.  He didn't seem to notice too much but he focused just that much more.

“Listen,” I said and then gave him another.  “Somebody must have called the cops.  Even HoboPD can drag its sorry ass three blocks to stop a gun battle.  You've got maybe thirty seconds to convince me not to hold you here and turn you over.  Got it?”

He just stared back and I wasn't sure if he got it or not.

“If you make for the Heights, you could hide out, pull a few things off a clothesline tomorrow, take trains and get out of the state,” I told him.  “That's up to you.  I don't need you but I'd like just that much information.  Is it worth a chance for you to skip the electric chair?”  He nodded; he was coming to and finding whatever dreams he had been dreaming a second before were nothing compared to the reality he'd woken up to.  “The night Gabriel Peabody was killed: who was in on it and when and where did Mr. Rockwell give the order.”

He laughed.  It wasn't a big laugh, but it was a laugh.  Soundless, hopeless, with a look in his eye that told me everything I wanted to hear.  He didn't have to say a thing.

“You, too?” I asked him.

He nodded and the laugh was almost a sob.  “You don't say no, brother,” he said.  “Whatever you do, no matter what you think you've got on the job, at home, in the future or in the past, you don't ever say no.”

“That simple, huh?” I asked.

He nodded and I was about to say something else when I heard feet in hard leather soles pounding up 3^rd.  I dropped Monkey's head where I'd been holding it up by the hair and took off down the alley toward my shoes, oohing and aahing all the way.  I snatched them from behind a garbage can and ran another block before putting them on and then snaking my way toward the river.

One of the things I took from the special shoebox was a spare barrel for my .45.  I've never handled it or any of the rounds for the pistol with bare hands, and I didn't then, either.  I took out the barrel that I'd used on Rockwell's bodyguards and hurled it into the Hudson River.  I put in the new one and I was all set.  No one could trace any of the bullets I fired that night to my gun.  I may have been in the right to take those boys out, but I wasn't about to let HoboPD decide that.  I found a cab and took it to Jersey City.

I had to make a couple phone calls but it was a synch I couldn't go back to my apartment.  I stopped at Jacqueline’s along the way.  If you ever want to see a nervous husband, go over to Jacqueline’s unexpected when her husband is home; you'll see a nervous husband then.  I made the calls I had to make and then went on to the Rockwell mansion.  I knew everything I need to know now.

Not surprisingly there was no butler or servants anywhere on the place.  Maybe in some stifling top-floor closet a maid pinned for her lover, suffocating in moldy agony, but there was no one downstairs.  I let myself in the servant's entrance and found my way to the same room I'd met Liz in that morning.  She was obliging enough to be there, as her set might say.

Languid as ever, stunning as ever, Mrs. Rockwell was in another green dress that left little to the imagination except what it was like to unzip it.  Even then, even knowing all I did about her and Gabe and Anna and the IWW, a part of me wanted to solve that mystery, too.  But not the part that knew Big Sleep was waiting for his answer at home.  I walked into the room.

“Paul!” she cried.  “Oh, what happened?  Andrew said it was unsafe, that there had been a warning and went to get you.  What's going on?”

“I have some news, Liz,” I said.  “And it's going to be tough to hear.  Please sit down.”

She sat back down on the settee, slowly, hand fumbling for her drink first and then for her hand bag, extracting a cigarette with trembling hands.  I held out a match for her.

“What's happened, Paul?” she asked.  “Please tell me.”

“Your husband found out about our meeting tonight,” I said.  “Probably he has someone listening to all your phone calls.”

“Oh my god,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment.

“I've found out a lot about Gabe, since this morning,” I said.  “That was his name, by the way: Gabriel.  He was in the IWW.  An organizer.  Did you know that?”

“I, well Paul,” she said and looked at my hands for a moment.  Raising her eyes back to mine, she said, “Yes, I did.  I suppose I should have told you but, well, my husband.  Do I have to explain?”

“You knew I'd find out,” I said.

“I depended on it,” she said, taking my hand in hers.

“And his reason for taking that picture of you was to force your husband into accepting the unionization of Breckenridge Marine,” I said.  She nodded like a naughty school girl.  “But when the photo came in the mail and your husband found out, he wouldn't bend to such a demand and had the men, the protection, and the money to squash a fly like Gabe, didn't he?”

“Oh, Paul if only you knew what it was like for me to live under the oppression of such a tyrant,” she said, eyes like liquid sapphire, glistening, pleading.  Even then, even then.

“It must be terrible for you,” I said in the softest voice I'd ever used with a woman, leaning as close to her as she did to me.  “It isn't right for a sensitive woman like you to be punished because you're passionate.”

“Oh, my Paul,” she said.  “My savior.  I knew the moment I saw you that you were different from all the other men I've ever met.  You aren't from our rotten set, from the coddled side of life.  You're a real man.”  She practical said every word directly into my mouth.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“He won't be home until late,” she whispered.  “We have hours.  Hours, Paul, and I've been imagining you all day.”

“And you won't hate me for taking care of him?” I asked.

“For freeing me?” she said.  “I would reward you with anything you want, everything I have, everything I am.”

She was pressed full against me, her lips touched the point of my chin whenever she spoke, and her hands were running through my hair like a prospector panning a river for gold.  Those beautiful blue eyes; how could any man with blood in his veins not want to dive into those eyes, even if it cost him his life.  I suppose a lot of men had.

“Kiss me,” she said.  “Kiss me, Paul, make me forget everything but your touch.”

I looked down into those eyes, felt the warmth of that body beside me, against me, and—there was no way around it—I thought of everything my body screamed for me to do.  “No,” I said.

“What?” she asked and laughed a little breath of laughter.

“No, sweetheart,” I said.  “That's never going to happen.”

I stood up and she nearly fell forward onto her face.  I took a couple steps away from the settee and spun on my heel.

“You're a beautiful woman, Liz,” I said.  “It's true but at the end of the day, I don't want to sleep with you.  Tempting though it is.”  I shrugged.  “The idea does not appeal to me.  Is that how they'd say it in your rotten set?”

I took out my pipe and tobacco pouch and filled a bowl.  She sat up slowly as the normally smoldering look on her face caught fire and then raged out of control.  I shook the match out and dropped it smoking to the floor.  I grinned at her around my pipe and chuckled good-naturedly, just to be friendly.  There was nothing slow about how she dove into her handbag and drew out a medium sized automatic.

“Liz, darling, is anything the matter?” I asked, sounding as much like David Niven as I could.

“You think you can speak that way to me?” she said and she was breathing so hard I almost thought she was going to faint.

“Why whatever is the matter?” I asked.

“You low down, drunk, cheap, dirty, keyhole-peeping, shamus,” she hissed.

“Is that what you said to Gabe before you shot him?” I asked.  “And was it for the same reason?  Once he saw you wouldn't go to bat for him, you just weren't attractive enough anymore, were you?”

“You shut your dirty mouth!” she shouted.  Then, more controlled, “You think you can shame me?  You think you can say anything to me and I'll just let you?  I am not ashamed, not one bit.  I will have what I want, Paul, I will.  It is not up to you or anyone else to deny me and my desires are more important than any little quam of love, of marriage, of anything.  I blest you with the highest compliment I could give you, far above your worth as a man.  You will not throw that back in my face.”

“They can ask for things,” I said.  “And you can say no to them.  But they can't ever say no to you.  Is that it?”

“Yes, Paul, that is it,” she said distinctly.

“But you never slept with Dick,” I said.

“Dick?” she said dreamily, as if she'd never heard the name.  “Dick, of course: Dick knew too much.”

“Like me,” I said.

“Yes, like you,” she said.  “And you'll die the same way.  Only he didn't grovel and waste my time with silly questions and comments.”

“You didn't hire him to find Gabe,” I said.  “You hired him to find the photos and the negative.  But Dick was smart.  He didn't trust you.  You showed him your print of the photo and he recognized Gabriel Peabody: Dick always knew the carriage trade on sight.  So, he called up the morgue to see if there were any John Does with soft hands; the coroner didn’t know who Gabe was because he’d never been printed.  But you're no dummy either, are you Liz?  When you put Dick on the case you had Andrew, your husband's contact with HoboPD, put a wiretap on Dick's phone.  They didn't know what for, which is why they wouldn't help me—weren’t sure if they could keep their involvement quiet—but they did tap his phone and give you the gear to listen in.  When Andrew heard that Dick was looking into the morgue, he was done for.”

“How smart you are, Paul,” she said.  “How wonderful, how handsome, and how dead.  I should have come to you first.  Dick was clever in a plodding way but he was never right for the job.  He had a chance and he just threw it all away.”

“He just told you to screw yourself, did he?” I said.  I think I must have forgotten about the Mauser automatic she was holding.

“Goodbye, Paul,” she said and straightened her arm.

“Not so fast, sister,” Harcourt said, jumping out of the hallway where he'd hid the whole time.

“About time, ol'buddy ol'pal,” I told him.

“I was enjoying the view,” he told me, speaking over his outstretched arms, revolver pointed at Mrs. Rockwell.

“Drop the gun, copper,” she said and I have to admit it, crazy as she was, you have to respect that level of spunk.  “Or your ol'buddy ol'pal will take one right between those delicious eyes of his.”

“Go ahead, sweetheart,” he said.  “I never liked him that much.  You hear that, Paul: your eyes are delicious.  How'd she find that out?”

“Shut up!” she shouted.

“Elizabeth,” a voice I'd never heard before except over the phone said.  Mr. Rockwell came out of the same hallway Harcourt had, a couple more coppers behind him.  “Elizabeth, how could you do this?”

“As if you care one cent about the trash you stomp to death in your sweatshops,” she snarled.

“You've just admitted to killing Gabriel Peabody,” he said and the old geezer looked as if he was about to keel over.  “Marcus Peabody's son, Elizabeth.  Why, I'm on the board at the Met with him.  We joined the Century Club the same year.  You've killed him?  This is monstrous.”

“You bastard, you bastard!” she said and then shouted.  Her gun came around for Mr. Rockwell but my gun came out from under my arm a lot faster.

One shot and hers went skidding off under a dinky little chair in the corner.  She sucked air through her teeth and held her hand between her knees.  Later, I was a little sorry I didn't let her drill old man Rockwell.  Anna would have loved that if nothing else.  Maybe I should have drilled Liz through the head, I don't know.  I know that would have pleased Anna.  But Dick wouldn't have gone for it.  I could just see him, up in heaven, with VD again, saying he got it from an angel, looking down and sneering at me if I'd killed a woman.  Well, I didn't you old son of a gun but she's going to prison for a long time.  And I'll take care of Big Sleep.

It was hours before I was through telling the story another twenty times to a couple of mayors, both of which scowled at me, wondering what I knew.  Mr. Rockwell cleared the way with his corruption and power.  His buying the coppers never came up.  His standing on the necks of his workers never came up.  But his wife's killing a Peabody, and killing my friend to cover it up, all for a lust she could not stand to have disappointed, did come up.  It was a scandal the papers couldn't let go for months and months.

When I finally did get home, all I thought I wanted was a shower and a drink.  I had both but what really made me feel better after a while was sitting on the davenport, legs stretched out, with Big Sleep lying on my chest, purring up my nose.  We lie there the whole night, had a few drinks, he cried a little and I purred at him, and we said goodbye to our friend Dick.

 

 I hope you enjoyed reading this short story.  I also have a few novels published through Amazon’s Kindle Store, the newest being The Parnell Affair.  Thematically, it is not very similar to the above but hopefully a good read, too; it’s a political thriller about a betrayed spy, a relentless journalist, and the hidden truth behind a President’s demand for war.  Don’t have a Kindle?  No problem: Amazon provides free apps to view all of the great—and inexpensive—Kindle content on your phone, PC, or Mac, here.  Thanks and happy reading!