Chapter 4

"God," Lew muttered. "An important witness for the D.A. hiding out in a hotel. And we have to go in and tumble her."

Frenchy turned a critical eye on Sammy as he delicately pared a fingernail "You sure can pick em. kid."

"Now wait a minute. You guys were in on it too. How come I take the rap? I didn't know any more about her than you did."

"Maybe you should have found out."

Gooch picked at one of his pimples and said, "What the devil is bugging you guys? You'd think we'd left a card or something. The broad had a pillowcase over her head. She didn't see any one of us." He paused and turned a suspicious eye on Frenchy. "At least, you said she didn't. You were the first one in."

"She didn't see me."

"Okay, then what's the problem?"

They'd promoted the price of a few beers and were huddled at one of the tables in the corner tavern. Gutsey Jake, the proprietor, eyed them sourly from behind the bar. He didn't like them, but his dislike was more negative than positive. They'd been around forever and they were harmless like a mild itch that couldn't be gotten rid of so Gutsey had learned to live with them.

"Hey, Jake, four more beers," Frenchy called out. And Jake reminded them of their status by drawing the beers and leaving them on the bar. The jerks could do their own carrying.

Then he forgot the scaly four as a newcomer entered the tavern. Not a newcomer exactly. A small, rat-like man who blended in well with the woodwork but was far too important to be ignored. His name was Bates just Bates, nothing more and he was political.

Bates was out of the D.A.'s office, or so it was claimed. Nobody could say for sure. Others claimed he worked for Ringler himself. That of course didn't exclude him from the D.A's office because clear dividing lines in this area had never been defined.

Gutsey Jake knew him as the man to see when you wanted to put on a show. He'd put on a few from time to time when there was enough interest among his customers to justify a ten-dollar tab for a couple of hours in the basement. That was when you got in touch with Bates. He listened, said practically nothing except how much the uptown cut would be, and you took it or left it alone.

If you took it you laid the cash in Bates' hand, and he walked out. Then on the night designated, some broads and a couple of rock-faced goons showed up, and they all went down in the basement.

Of course, broads were easy to get. They wandered in and out all the time. But what you got extra from Bates was no trouble. That was what Bates sold that was valuable. No trouble. But try and move with talent you picked off the street and there'd be cops crawling out from between the bricks before a single broad got her pants down.

Gutsey Jake didn't care for shows, though. They made him uneasy. He had a thing about watching a doll strip and get dirty. While he'd watch, the broad's face would always change and damned if he wouldn't see his sister standing there with that goofy half-witted look on her face. She was dead now, bless her, but she'd had a thing about not knowing when her pants were on or off and not caring much, and it had done something to Gutsey something that had to do with shame and he'd never really gotten over it.

So the hell with the broads. He made a good living with booze and peddling a few numbers for Vince Kane. Nice, clean operations.

But here was Bates when nothing had been ordered, so Jake forgot his four itches and their miserable beers and was waiting in front of Bates when he climbed on a stool.

Bates' stiff lips moved and words came out. "How's it going, Jake?"

Jake mopped the bar industriously. "A little slow, Mr. Bates, a little slow. But what the hell. You can't have them knocking the door down every day."

"You need a show, maybe."

Things must be bad for Ringler, Jake thought. Real tough if they were out peddling it. "I've been thinking about one," Jake said heartily. "I sure have. But the dough's kind of thin around here just now. Maybe it'll thicken up. I'll keep an eye out."

Bates always drank a small glass of seltzer water that he paid a dollar for. This was his trade mark; so much a part of him that Jake brought it automatically and was now folding Bates' dollar in nervous fingers.

Bates sipped his seltzer and seemed to be tasting it for quality. But he wasn't. There was something else on his mind, as evidenced by his next remark.

"That thing down the block," he said. "In the Park Hotel."

"You mean ? "

Bates nodded That was exactly what he meant. "Nasty stuff. Very nasty."

"It certainly was, Mr. Bates." Jake picked up the gist of it and kept talking. "Uh-huh. You ain't kidding, Mr. Bates. Real nasty. It's got all the neighborhood folks all upset."

Bates seemed to Jake to be the last guy on earth to worry about a broad getting it in a hotel room, but he wasn't going to question it.

"We think it important that the perpetrators of the horror be apprehended and punished."

"That's right, Mr. Bates," Jake assured him. "I go along with that. I go along a hundred per cent."

"What have you got for me on it?"

"Me? I ain't got nothing. Nothing at all."

"Now Jake. That doesn't sound right. It doesn't sound right at all. You run the neighborhood tavern. People come in. People get drunk. People talk."

"Nobody's said a word. I think they're all a little ashamed of it, Mr. Bates. I honestly do."

"I see."

"That's it. Come to think of it, everybody's been a little shamefaced lately."

"Nevertheless, something must be done. The guilty must not go unpunished." Bates leaned forward. "In fact, they feel so strongly about this uptown that there will be a sizable reward for anyone who comes forward with vital leads."

"You can count on me, Mr. Bates. If I hear anything, I'll be right on the phone."

Bates finished his seltzer and allowed his eyes to wander here and there around the empty tavern. They were very sharp eyes. When they came to the only occupied table, they seemed to be counting the pimples on Gooch's face, pausing to note the cleanliness of Frenchy's fingernails, pondering the danger of heart attack to one as fat as Lew.

Then Bates got off his stool and left without a good-bye.

Jake washed the seltzer glass and felt a little less uncomfortable. Funny that a man like Bates would be following up on an ordinary gang job. They happened every day. Only a month ago a gang of punks snatched a broad in the park and worked her over in the bushes with people going by on the walk not fifty feet away. And nobody seemed to give a damn except maybe the broad.

Anyhow, Bates hadn't been promoting stags and that was a blessing ... Stags.

By sheer chance, that was what Sammy was just bringing up at the table in the corner. His mind having been turned toward sex by events of recent date, it was conditioned to go back to other pleasant memories of a like nature.

"I had a hell of a time raising the dough, but I got it and went down in the basement like they said to, and pretty soon the broad came out and she was stark naked. Then another one came out, and they asked for a guy from the audience."

"Did they get him?" Gooch asked.

"Uh-huh."

Frenchy laughed softly. "They got Sammy."

"Like hell! Me go up there and get it done in front of other guys?"

"You did all right in the Park Hotel."

"That was different. It was just you guys."

"I saw a stag down there a couple of years ago," Lew grunted. "A couple of Lesbo broads that had a grudge. They fought it out right there in front of all the guys. No holds barred. The one that got licked well, she got it afterward."

"Must have been rough," Gooch said. He spoke with casual boredom. He could not under any circumstances evince interest. None of them could. They could only hope that Lew would go on. He did.

"A crazy deal," he said, being careful to keep his voice casual. "A real fight. Not an act. On the level. A big redhead and a brunette."

"A redhead can always lick a brunette," Sammy said.

"That's what you think," Lew bristled. "They came out dressed in sweaters and slacks, and it was just like in a fight ring except there was no ref or handlers. Just some guys standing around to see to it the customers didn't join in."

"What's good about a couple of broads with clothes on?" Frenchy asked. "You don't pay twenty bucks for that."

"Who said their clothes stayed on? First thing, the brunette knocked the redhead down with a straight right to the puss. Then she jumped on her, and when she got up the redhead didn't have her slacks on. Only the sweater. The brunette lost her pants a little while later, and the redhead got in some good licks when she pulled the brunette's sweater up over her head. She had the brunette doing tricks until she got the sweater off."

Frenchy's reaction was the most pronounced. A quick catch in his soft laugh. "Like our blonde climbing the wall?"

"Uh-huh. But not gagged. Bouncing around stiff-legged and bellowing like a cow."

Sammy shook his head with the air of a bored connoisseur of sex and all its aspects. "Those Lesbo broads. They're really bugged."

"The redhead finally caught it though. She-"

"How?" Frenchy asked delicately.

"Every way, I bet." Gooch sneered.

"The brunette got her down after she was groggy and sat on her, and that's when the party got started. After the redhead got too tired to bellow any more, the brunette let her up and made her crawl clear across the basement and then work for the brunette."

Lew stopped. He realized suddenly that he'd been talking too loud. In some strange way, the silence in the tavern changed context. It seemed now to be a listening silence.

The four of them turned their heads in unison and saw a newcomer at the bar. Not the scrummy little character Jake had been talking to before. A different guy, with a thin face and good clothes and an uptown look.

He was staring at the table and so was Jake, with a hell of a scowl on his puss. Then the thin guy turned back to the bar and said something to Jake in a low tone ...

"...The girl said there were four of them."

That was what Barney Williams said to Jake as he turned back from looking at the four characters at the table. And Jake shook his head and replied, "Oh, hell no," Mr. Williams. "Not a chance. Not them."

"You don't think so?"

"Not a chance. They're just four neighborhood cadgers that have been around for years. They started here as kids, and they'll die here as old men. They ain't got the sense or the guts to get into trouble. Rape a broad? Their speed's a sexy cartoon book and a stall in a washroom somewhere."

"Still, you never can tell "

"Oh, yes, you can. About their kind. Harmless."

"You'll keep your ears open won't you?"

"Oh, I sure will. You can depend on me. Mr. Williams. I hear anything, I'll be right on the phone..."

After Barney Williams left, Gutsey Jake wondered about several things. He wondered about all the damn interest in that hotel rape. Because he never read papers or listened to radio newscasts, he was singularly uninformed, justifying this mental laziness with the term "minding his own business."

Thus he had reason to be confused. Ringler and the D.A. after the gang fuck artists, in the person of Bates. Kane after them through this uptown hatchet-man of his, Williams, whom Jake had seen only often enough to identify.

Christ! Where did that leave him? Right in the middle, that was where. And the answer was simple. Keep his mouth shut. Don't blow his tonsils in either direction. When it was all over and somebody got dragged out by the heels, Jake would still be there handing out beer.

The other thing Jake wondered about was why he'd protected tho?e cadgers. How come he'd been so damn positive without even thinking about it? He thought about it now. Did they have the guts to climb in a window and rape a broad?

And he got the same reaction. Not a chance. So it made sense to shake the bloodhounds off. They were useless bums, and they maybe deserved to get kicked down the block once in a while, but that was all. Not to be hauled into an alley and get crippled. Fair was fair.

And Jake felt so uplifted and inspired by his humanitarian instincts that they made him generous. "You guys," he rumbled across the empty tavern. "How about four on the house?"

They stared at him in open-mouthed wonder. Gooch got up and went to the bar like one of the walking dead and came back with four fresh beers on a tray.

"Look, you guys," he said with awe in his voice. "Look what I got."

It was the first time, to their knowledge, that Gutsey Jake had ever popped for a drink...

Of the three assignments given him, Barney Williams found guarding Barbara Ames the most pleasant. Therefore it was natural that he give it more time than it actually required.

On that particular afternoon, however, it was fortunate that he did tarry longer over this duty than it required.

"I'll be quite all right, really," Barbara protested. "The fright's pretty well gone. I feel guilty, holding you here."

They were in Barbara's apartment. He'd dropped by early in the afternoon, and now it was close to five o'clock.

Barney Williams smiled. He was surprisingly handsome when he smiled, and Barbara reached out and put a quick, impulsive hand on his. "It's been very sweet of you, though."

"A very pleasant job," he said. "And by the way. Shouldn't a man know a little something about the person he's responsible for?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, other than the facts that you're very beautiful, that your name is Barbara Ames, that you dance like a dream and that you're from the Middle West, I don't know a thing about you."

She laughed, and he was struck by the musical notes that came from her slim, lovely throat. "I'm afraid you'll find it pretty dull. The name of the town is Pender's Hill, Ohio. Fifteen thousand population. A town all the young people get away from as soon as they can. I went to college in Pomona, a slightly larger town about fifty miles from Pender's Hill, so that wasn't really leaving home."

"The big city was a giant step for you, then?"

"The biggest. I majored in dramatics and took dancing and well, here I am."

Barney laughed. "It's amazing what a college education will get you."

"I could have done without some of it."

"Is there a boy back home?"

"I'm afraid that part's missing. Perhaps I should invent one."

"Give him cross eyes and buck teeth and I'll permit it."

"All right. One eye in the center of his forehead. But I believe in reciprocity, so I'm entitled to know a little about you." She'd been smiling, and now the smile almost vanished, covered by a look of puzzlement. "I've always thought it rather strange-" She stopped, fumbling for words.

"You thought what strange?"

"It's really too personal."

"Come on. No cliff-hanging. You're among friends."

A quick, unbidden thought came into his mind as he waited for her reply. A wonder. What would she look like--what did she look like stretched naked on a bed there in the room at the Park Hotel? He drove the thought away instantly as being cheap and unfair. But the image it conjured up was stubborn. It faded slowly.

"Well," Barbara said, "don't think this is any reflection on Vince Kane. I think he's wonderful, and I admire him a great deal. But you just don't seem to me to be the type who would be working for him."

"What type do you see as being right for the job?"

"A tough guy. Somebody hard. I well, Vince is in a tough, hard business, and you don't look to be a person who could go around putting the muscle on people."

His laugh was genuine, from pure amusement. "What do I appear to be good for?"

"Oh, many many things. I just feel you must be wasting yourself. What college did you go to?"

"What makes you think I went to college?"

"That's obvious."

"It is? Thank you."

"You'd make a good lawyer," Barbara said. "You're supposed to be telling me about yourself, but all I get is questions."

"I'm sorry. But I have to contradict you-about Vince. He's quite a remarkable man. I met him in college."

"In college!"

"He came there and gave a talk, and afterwards

I asked him some questions and he offered me a job when I graduated."

"What did he talk about?"

"That was ten years ago. Vince was a real dynamo then, and he hasn't really slowed down much. He talked to the graduating class about success how to meet the competition in modern-day business."

"The numbers business?"

Barney laughed. "He was a union organizer in those days."

"That's amazing. Now he runs a night club and "

"Runs a night club," Barney said quickly. "Anyhow, when I got out of college he offered me more money than anybody else, and I had faith in him; I took it."

"What was your job?"

"Well, he was always a little vague on that. First, he had me stick close to him so he could break me in. After a while I quit asking what my job would be. I guess it made itself."

"He thinks highly of you. You're very valuable to him."

"We get along pretty well together."

"What did you major in at college?"

"Journalism. Had an idea I might be able to write. I liked it. But it didn't work out that way."

"It still can. You don't have to be on a newspaper to write. Did you ever think of doing a novel?"

"I've put some ideas down now and then."

"I think you ought to get at it."

"What?"

"A novel."

"I'm afraid it's a little late for that."

"That's nonsense."

"I'm doing fine as I am."

"You mean you're making good money?"

"Yes. What else is there?"

"You don't really mean that."

Barbara didn't find out whether he did or not because the doorbell rang at that moment. She looked a little frightened. "Shall I open it?"

"Go ahead. You're not alone."

Barbara went to the door and opened it, and two men pushed their way in. They weren't disrespectful but they were firm in not waiting to be asked.

The taller one wore a neat gray suit and looked quite respectable, but there was a hardness about him and a coldness in his voice as he said, "Miss Barbara Ames?"

"Yes."

He took an official-looking paper from his pocket and brushed it in her direction, then put it into the side pocket of his jacket. "Court order, Miss Ames. We're from the District Attorney's office. You'll have to come with us."

"Oh, not again!" Barbara took an involuntary step backward and looked helplessly at Barney.

He got up from his chair and approached the door. "You boys haye any identification?"

The man looked as though he'd hoped Barney wouldn't interfere. "This is official business, mister," he said by way of discouraging him

The second man, shorter but stockier than the spokesman and looking even less friendly, stepped forward Barney ignored him. "It's some kind of business, but let's find out exactly what kind. You said you had a writ?"

The man drew it from his pocket reluctantly and extended it toward Barney. "Who are you, mister?"

Barney spoke as he scanned the paper. "I'm one up on you. I don't have to identify myself. I'm not on business."

"If you'll get your coat, Miss " the stocky man said.

"Stay where you are, Barbara," Barney told her. Then he looked coldly at the taller man. "Is Egan kidding?"

"Hey!" The shorter one blurted. "You're Vince Kane's man."

Barney ignored him, still speaking to the taller one. "This writ is signed by Oscar Hagen. Last I heard of him he was a J.P."

"It's a legal writ, mister!"

"Uh-huh. But let's play writ-writ-who's-got-the-biggest-writ." Barney took a second legal-looking document from his pocket. "Mine's signed by Judge Henry Davis Superior Court. You want to try and make yours match it?"

The man scowled. The shorter one waited grimly. He was ready for anything, but he wasn't making any decisions on his own. He was backing his partner.

The tall man was undecided. Evidently his instructions hadn't included a briefing on legal values. "Can I use your phone?"

Barney stepped back and waved an arm. "Be our guest."

The short man folded his arms and looked at the ceiling while the taller one got his number. He spoke in a low voice, but his words were audible.

"Barney Williams is here. He's still holding that Davis writ. You want us to override it?"

He listened a while and then said okay and hung up. He walked straight to the door, looking neither right nor left. "Come on," he said. "We've got another assignment."

They left without a good-bye or a backward glance, and Barney stood frowning at the door. "You've got to get out of here," he said.

Barbara watched his eyes as though trying to discern the extent of the danger. "Why, Barney? They left peacefully enough."

"Sure. It was a stab in the dark. They figured if you happened to be alone they could pressure you into going with them."

"What do they want of me?"

"It's hard to explain. This is a battle between Vince and Ringler. You realize that."

"Nobody told me directly, but "

"That's what it is, and you're an important pawn in the game. Ringler had you once, but there was a big goof. Somebody caught grade-A hell for that, and now Ringler's trying to get back his lost ground."

"Why do they want me, Barney?"

"You're the key to the whole thing. Any strategy Ringler can plan hinges on possession of the only witness to the shooting. Vince doesn't want to prosecute. He wants to act as though the whole thing didn't happen. So the only way Ringler can prove it did is to have you."

"But so far he's handled things so stupidly."

"Don't discount him. He's smart. And he's desperate. I've got to get you out of here because the next time he'll probably do things right whip his men into line and there'll be hell to pay. But he can't get you if he can't find you. And it's my job to see that he doesn't ... "