Juvenile Delinquent (10 page)

D
ESPITE
his youth the boy was an impressive-looking opponent. Naked to the waist and with his well-muscled body shining with sweat, he looked like a pirate getting ready to board ship. A half dozen livid welts had raised across his chest and stomach from the single lash I had given him. His face was white with rage, and as I examined him warily, I saw that his eye pupils were mere pin points.

I also noticed for the first time that both forearms were dotted with needle punctures.

There’s no point in trying to talk down a guy full of heroin, because the stuff makes him feel big enough to whip the whole world. I simply grinned at him derisively and motioned him forward.

He didn’t need a second invitation. He moved in with the smoothness of an expert, the knife thrust forward at waist level and the blade pointing upward. As the light glittered on it I could see that it was honed to razor sharpness and tapered to a needle point.

In the background the thin voice of Buddy Tipp said, “Cut his guts out, Larry!”

The boy attempted to take this advice. But as the blade slashed up at my stomach, I crossed my forearm, the right on top of the left, and grabbed with both hands. My left hand clamped his wrist and my right about his forearm. I pushed downward with my left, pulled forward with my right and simultaneously pivoted to swing my hip into his.

Before you could say, “Judo,” he was flat on his face on the floor and the knife was in my hand.

Hefting the weapon casually, I looked around for Buddy Tipp. In the front row of the crowd ringing us I spotted the youngster who had tripped me up the day I first asked for Stub Carlson. In the background I caught a glimpse of two of the boys who had been present when Stub volunteered the services of his private squad, but they refused to meet my eyes and only drifted even farther back. Then I located Buddy Tipp standing behind a couple of other boys. His eyes glittered at me like a rabid cat’s.

I weighed backing him into a corner by walking toward him with the knife, then decided the heroin he had in him would make his reaction too unpredictable. He might draw his own knife instead of backing, and I didn’t care to get involved in a knife battle with a sixteen-year-old kid. Instead I snapped the knife shut and dropped it in my pocket.

An instant later I decided it would have been smarter to take a chance on backing him down.

As I started to push the still dazed Stub on toward the stairs, Buddy screamed, “Don’t let that cop out of here! Kill ‘em both!”

Up to that moment I’d had the rest of the mob pretty well cowed, none of them wanting to make the first move against me. But the blond youngster’s enraged scream acted as a trigger.

Abruptly the crowd stopped opening a reluctant lane before us and we were suddenly walled in. A dozen clicks sounded as switch knives appeared.

I told myself that probably a third of the crowd was full of heroin, and even though they were a bunch of kids, some as young as fourteen and none of them over eighteen, it was time for shock tactics if either Stub or I expected to get out of the place alive.

Keeping my hold on Stub’s arm, I said with a weariness I was far from feeling, “You kids are beginning to bore the hell out of me.”

Then I dipped my hand under my arm, flicked the safety off my P-38 and smashed a bullet into the light bulb immediately over our heads.

Instinctively every kid around us recoiled. Somebody yelled unnecessarily, “He’s got a gun!”

I took careful aim and shot out the other light twenty feet away.

Pandemonium set in as the room plunged into pitch darkness. I reholstered my gun before some kid could bump into me in the dark and accidentally set it off again.

All around us there were shouts, curses and the noise of people stumbling over each other. I made directly for the stairs, moving ahead of Stub and dragging him along behind me. Whenever we ran into anyone in the dark, I put my right hand under his chin, if I could find it, or against his chest if I couldn’t, and pushed, a maneuver which was invariably followed by the sound of several boys falling and thrashing around on the floor in an attempt to untangle themselves from each other.

Once I stumbled over a kneeling boy myself and was prevented from going down only by my grip on Stub. Even then we both went through a sort of drunken dance in the dark before recovering our balance and moving on.

We had made the foot of the stairs before anyone thought to flick on a lighter.

At the first flash of light every boy in the room got the idea, however. Within seconds matches and lighter flames sprang to life all over the club room.

I pushed Stub up the first two steps and said, “Move!”

As he began to stagger upward somebody yelled, “They’re going up the stairs!”

In the flickering light I could see the entire horde surge toward us.

With Stub reeling ahead of me like a drunken man we didn’t make very rapid progress. By the time we reached the door at the top, match and lighter flames were halfway up to us.

Reaching beyond Stub, I unlatched the door, put my hand in the middle of his back and shoved. He staggered forward into the upper hall, but I didn’t wait to see if he retained his feet. Turning my back on him, I gripped either side of the door jamb and raised my right knee to my chest.

I was happy to discover that Buddy Tipp was the first boy to the top of the stairs. When I planted my aluminum foot in the center of his chest and shoved, his mouth popped open and he spread his arms wide in a sort of backward swan dive.

The flickering lights on the stairway winked out as milling bodies rolled down the steps amid thumps and roars of anger and yells of pain.

When I slammed the door shut, I found Stub dazedly resting on his hands and knees where he had fallen after my shove. Jerking him erect, I hustled him out to the street.

Outside Dave O’Brien peered at us frightenedly.

“What were those shots?” he asked.

“Ask me later,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

I started to trot toward my car at the corner, dragging Stub Carlson along. Recognizing that something was wrong with Stub, the redheaded O’Brien grabbed his other arm. Between us we managed to work him up to a fair burst of speed.

When we reached the car, I left Stub for Dave to manage and raced around to the driver’s side. While I was getting the engine started, Dave helped Stub into the front seat and slid in next to him.

I was swinging the car into a U-turn before Purple Pelicans began to pour from the brownstone entrance.

Since Stub’s home was only a block from the basement club room, I decided that wouldn’t be the safest place in the world to take him with sixty out-of-control youngsters after our hides. While I doubted that even with a third of them hopped up they’d go so far as trying to beat down his door, I saw no point in taking the chance. Anyway, in their present mood they’d almost certainly strip my car, and possibly wreck it completely, if they found it parked in front of Stub’s place.

I drove right on past and headed for my own flat.

When we had traveled a couple of blocks Stub groaned and inched his back away from the seat.

“How do you feel?” I asked him.

“All right,” he said in a voice so thick it was all but incoherent.

Dave O’Brien asked, “What’s the matter with him?”

“They used the cat,” I said tersely. “I think he’s in a state of shock.”

I gave Dave a brief rundown of what had happened in the club room.

“My God!” the redhead said in an awed voice. “Have the guys gone crazy?”

“Just temporarily,” I said. “They’re full of H and they’ve been whipped up into a mob. By your pal, Buddy Tipp, I think. And I’d guess on Buzz Thurmond’s orders.”

After a moment I added reflectively, “I think I’m going to enjoy meeting the Purple Pelicans’ friend and advisor.”

When we reached my apartment house I parked in the no-parking zone right in front. Supporting him between us, Dave and I managed to get Stub up the half flight of stairs to my flat without much difficulty. I led the boy into my bedroom, told him to lie down on the bed on his face, and then pulled the jacket away from his back.

Dave O’Brien took one look and headed for the bathroom at a dead run.

I covered Stub with a blanket, told him just to lie still, and went into the hall to phone Doc Mason.

I don’t often require a doctor, being of fairly good general health, but when I do need one I call Dr. Tom Mason. I suppose you’d call him my family doctor. He only lives six blocks from my flat, and he said he’d be right over.

Tom Mason was in his early forties, tall and skinny and with the faintly harassed look all doctors with too large a practice seem to develop. When he had examined Stub’s back, he looked at me questioningly.

“He was beaten,” I said. “With a cat-o-nine-tails.”

Before touching the lacerated back the doctor took the boy’s pulse, looked at his eyes and listened to his heart with a stethoscope.

Then he said, “This youngster’s in mild shock. Go fix a hot toddy, and put a shot of liquor or brandy in it.”

Obediently I went into the kitchen. Dave O’Brien, who by that time had emerged from the bathroom with an only faintly green complexion, followed along.

As he watched me put the kettle on and get out a bottle and a couple of lemons, he asked, “You think he’s hurt bad, Mr. Moon?”

“He won’t die, if that’s what you’re worried about, but he won’t be going to school for a few days. You know Stub’s folks, Dave?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll send you home in a taxi when you leave here. I want you to go by their place and tell them he’s staying here tonight.”

He laughed a trifle cynically, and when I looked at him he said, “They won’t care. Stub never bothers to tell his old man or his old lady when he stays out all night. His old lady’s always drunk and his old man just plain don’t care.”

“You go by and tell them anyway,” I instructed him. “You go to the same school Stub does?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I’ll have the doctor write out a note and you can take it to school with you tomorrow.”

“All right,” he agreed, but his expression indicated he didn’t feel the note was any more necessary than informing Stub’s parents. Probably when the Purple Pelicans skipped school they wrote their own excuses and signed their parents’ names.

By the time I returned to the bedroom with the hot toddy, Dr. Mason had put some kind of dressing on Stub’s back, had gotten him into a pair of my pajamas and had him under the covers of my bed. Taking the toddy from me, he gave it to Stub and told him to drink it. Then he instructed the boy to stay covered up all night even if he felt hot.

“He’s taken a terrific beating,” the doctor told me. “But he isn’t in any serious condition. I don’t want him moved tonight, but he should be recovered enough to do anything he feels capable of doing by morning. That won’t be much. He’ll be stiffer than a board and that back’s going to hurt for a week at least. How’d it happen?”

“A kid kangaroo court.”

Mason pursed his lips. “I suppose I ought to report something like this to the police.”

“I’d prefer you didn’t,” I said. “I think an adult put the kids up to this beating, and if a lot of cops descend on the neighborhood where it took place, he’ll probably take to cover. I’d like him out in the open where I can get at him.”

When he didn’t look very satisfied, I said, “Suppose I cover you by reporting it to Inspector Warren Day. This incident concerns a murder he’s interested in, and I think I can talk him into agreeing to keep the beating quiet. At the same time you’d be in the clear if the cops ever inquired why you didn’t make a report on it.”

He said he was willing to go along with that.

A few minutes after he departed I took my car down the street to the public garage where I keep it, put Dave O’Brien in a taxi and sent him home. When I returned to the apartment I waited until I was sure Stub had gone to sleep, then made up a bed on the couch in the front room and went to sleep myself.

O
RDINARILY
I’m not a very early riser, but then ordinarily I don’t get to bed very early either. For a change having fallen in before eleven, I was up at eight in the morning and had showered, shaved and dressed before Stub even stirred. When I came out of the bathroom he opened one eye to look at me.

“Morning,” I said. “How you feel?”

He had been sleeping on his stomach. Before replying he pushed himself up on his elbows and winced.

“Lousy,” he said, but his voice had lost the thickness of the night before.

I watched as he stiffly raised himself to a sitting position and arched his back with caution. He winced again.

“I happen to have an unused toothbrush,” I said. “I left it on the bathroom sink for you. Want to get up, or sleep a while more?”

He said he was slept out and preferred to get up. Somewhere during the confusion of the previous evening he had lost the shirt I handed him when we started out of the club room. I found an old one of mine which was too small for me but looked as though it would be an approximate fit for him. Then I left him and went to get breakfast.

By the time he had dressed and come into the kitchen, I had bacon and eggs on the table. After breakfast I stacked the dishes in the sink, took Stub into the front room and told him to sit down.

When he had a cigarette going and I had lighted a cigar, I said, “Time we had a little talk, Stub. You remember everything that happened last night?”

“Pretty well. It’s a little hazy after you got there.”

“It’s before that I’m interested in. Just what took place?”

He puffed reflectively on his cigarette. “I’d told the fellows to get there at seven-thirty, so we’d be all set when you got there at eight. The ones you met the other day, I mean, plus a couple of other guys I’d sounded out. But when Dave and I arrived together, the whole club was there. When I asked what was up, they said they were holding a kangaroo court. Soon as they told me what for, I whispered to Dave to scoot out and stop you from coming down. Then I walked up to where the three judges were sitting at the table and told them to do their damnedest.”

He grinned a little ruefully. “It wasn’t a trial. It was just a lot of hopped-up guys hollering accusations and getting themselves more worked up all the time. I hardly got to say a word. When they passed sentence of ten lashes, I got mad and clipped one of the judges. Larry Covington, the guy you took the whip away from. Then I clipped two more guys as they moved in, but after that so many jumped me, I couldn’t fight them off. They pulled off my jacket and shirt and held me down while that big jerk Covington laid on the cat. He can’t count either.”

“How you mean?” I asked.

“The sentence was ten lashes,” he said dryly. “Larry was up to about eighteen when you stepped in.”

I asked who he thought was behind the kangaroo court.

“Larry Covington did most of the talking, but Buddy Tipp was urging him on.” He frowned puzzledly. “I didn’t get that. Buddy was one of the guys I thought was with me all the way. Most of the other fellows you met the other day were there too, but they didn’t do any talking. Matter of fact they stayed pretty well back, like they was ashamed to have me see them. But Buddy kept needling along Larry and the rest of the gang all the time.”

“Did you know Buddy was an H addict?”

He looked as surprised as Dave O’Brien had. “You’re sure?”

“Certain,” I said. “I think he sold you out to Buzz Thurmond for a couple of shots. And Buzz had him brew last night’s mess to stop both you and me from sticking our noses into his business.”

Stub’s face darkened. “I guess I’d better look up Buddy Tipp when I get home.”

“What would that accomplish?” I asked. “Buddy can’t help himself. A narcotic addict is just as sick as if he had T.B. He’s not to blame for last night. Buzz Thurmond is.”

Stub looked doubtful. “Yeah, I guess he is,” he said reluctantly. “But I can whip Buddy, and I’m sure not about to tangle with Buzz Thurmond.”

I grinned at this bit of pragmatism, and after a moment Stub grinned too. “I guess that didn’t sound very heroic,” he conceded.

I thought it was time to get down to business. For a few moments I examined the boy contemplatively.

Finally I said, “Stub, I want a release from my promise to keep confident what you told me about the Purple Pelicans and the racket setup down in your neighborhood.”

He looked at me in astonishment. “You mean to tell the cops?”

“A cop. I want to tell Inspector Warren Day, the chief of Homicide. I think he’d be interested in Buzz Thurmond going to the lengths he did to stop this investigation. If Buzz wasn’t worried about the possibility of being tied to Bart Meyer’s murder, he wouldn’t care how much a private cop, or you and your picked squad dug into the murder. The homicide department has a lot of facilities I haven’t got. If I can sell Warren Day on the theory that Buzz Thurmond or someone in his gang killed Bart and framed it on Joe, chances are this thing will be cracked a lot faster than if I just continue to work on my own.”

The boy shook his head. “I don’t want to be a squealer, Mr. Moon. Even second hand.”

“You have a perverted sense of loyalty, Stub. What do you owe either the club or Buzz Thurmond after last night? You stood a good chance of being beaten to death if I hadn’t arrived when I did.”

He merely shook his head again.

Before I could advance any more arguments, the door buzzer sounded. When I answered it, I found Dave O’Brien standing in the hall.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” I asked him.

He just brushed that aside. “Listen, I got to see Stub, Mr. Moon.” His expression was excited and his hands were trembling.

I let him in and closed the door behind him. Immediately he crossed over to Stub.

“You all right, Stub? I mean can you move around?”

“Sure,” Stub said.

“Listen, you got to get out of here and hide somewhere. They know you spent the night here, and if you don’t show up in the neighborhood today, they’re coming after you.”

“Who?” Stub asked.

“The guys. Or some of them anyway. Larry Covington and Buddy Tipp are talking it up. They say you’ve got to be shut up before your squealing wrecks all the club’s rackets.”

“You mean they want to bump me off?” Stub asked incredulously.

Dave ran nervous fingers through his long hair. “The whole gang’s gone kind of nuts. I went back to the club room after I left here last night, and they had a party till nearly morning. Buzz Thurmond dropped in with a whole flock of H and passed it out to anybody that wanted it. I don’t think a guy in the club made school today.”

“Buzz suggest that the gang come here after Stub?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” Dave said. “The guys were all talking about Stub squealing to a private cop, and Buzz just said if it was his gang, they’d know how to handle it. Larry and Buddy picked it up, and next I knew half the guys were saying squealers ought to be rubbed out.”

Almost in afterthought he added, “Buzz let it drop that his gang was going to take care of you, Mr. Moon.”

I grinned at him. “I was having similar thoughts about Buzz and his gang.”

I walked over to the ash stand next to Stub’s chair and punched out my cigar. “How’s your loyalty to the gang now, Stub?”

He looked up at me, half frightened and half unbelieving. “That was just a lot of talk because they were hopped up, Mr. Moon. The Purple Pelicans never went in for stuff like killing. Besides, they’re all my friends.”

“Yeah,” I said dryly. “I noticed them demonstrating their affection last night. You want to know what I think, Stub?”

“What?”

“I think Thurmond wants us both dead. If he can talk the Purple Pelicans into taking care of you, so much the better. But if your pals chicken out when it comes right down to the point of killing, I wouldn’t be surprised if Buzz himself took the job over. A hood like Thurmond doesn’t hand out free heroin and work a bunch of kids up to killing level just for kicks. He means business. I think you’re toying with suicide if you don’t release me from my promise and let me bring the cops into this.”

When he only looked stubborn, I said with mild exasperation, “For cripes sake, kid! These people intend to kill you! What in the name of jumping Jehosaphat do you think you owe them?”

This changed his stubborn expression to one of worry as he struggled between self-preservation and loyalty to an underworld code that had been bred into him. A code which regarded squealing to the police as the lowest crime in the book, no matter what the pressures were.

Finally he looked at Dave instead of at me and said with a peculiar mixture of apology and belligerence, “I’m not just going to sit still and wait for a bullet. You tell the cops anything you want, Mr. Moon.”

It seemed to make him feel better when Dave said seriously, “I don’t know what else you can do, Stub. I’d do the same thing in your spot.”

“Now you’re both beginning to make sense,” I said. “But first we’ve got to get you to a safe spot, Stub. I don’t think the Purple Pelicans would try to take you here in spite of their big talk, but Buzz Thurmond might.”

I turned to Dave. “How’d you get over here? By streetcar?”

He nodded.

“You check to see if you were followed?”

His lips curled in a superior smile. “I know better than to let the guys suspect I’m having truck with Stub and you. I don’t think anybody was tailing me, but I pulled a couple of shake tricks anyway.”

“How’d they find out Stub stayed here last night?”

“They sent one of the auxiliary members around to his house this morning, and his mom told her. They didn’t find it out from me.”

“Okay,” I said. “I want one last favor from you, Dave. Then I want you to stay away from both Stub and me before Buzz Thurmond decides to eliminate you too. Get down to Stub’s place and pack his clothes. Give them to a taxi driver and tell him to deliver them to El Patio Club over on the South Side.” I gave him a five-dollar bill. “Pay the cab out of this and keep the change.”

“All right,” the redhead said. “Want me to get in touch with you if I hear anything else?”

“Just phone me. I don’t want Thurmond or the Purple Pelicans spotting you running in and out of here. If you can’t reach me here, phone El Patio, ask for Fausta Moreni and leave a message with her.”

I wrote both telephone numbers on a slip of paper for him and he stuck it in his pocket.

Before leaving he went over to the front windows and checked the street like a professional gangster. Even though the situation had him obviously scared, I think the kid was enjoying his precarious role of intermediary.

When Dave O’Brien had departed, Stub and I left the flat too. Getting my Plymouth from the garage, I drove him over to El Patio.

En route Stub seemed enthralled by the way I managed the car with only one leg. My right one being false, I have to operate both brake and the clutch with my left foot, and I don’t have any special equipment in my car to make it easier. When I brake, I turn my foot sideways, my heel hitting the clutch and my toe the brake. I’ve done it so much, it’s second nature, but Stub watched in fascination every time I approached a stop sign.

“You drive better with one leg than most people with two,” he commented.

“Most people with two legs drive as though they also had two heads,” I told him.