The Erection Set (16 page)

“Cut the comedy, Chet. Am I being tailed?”

“Not by us.”

“Somebody's on me.”

“Tough, kiddo. You expect anything else?”

I let out a hard laugh. “I'm not yelling for help, pal.”

“The best help you could get would be to be dead, then nobody could squeeze anything out of you. They got some pretty tricky gimmicks today to make a guy talk. I never should have voted down that hit.”

“Who are they, Chet?”

“My bet is they belong to The Turk. Three of them came in yesterday. We figured them for that new expansion operation in Jersey, but it could be anybody's guess. We're laying off them until they make a move.”

“The Turk ought to know better.”

“He carries a big grudge,” Chet said. “Anything else?”

“Nope. See you.”

“The hell you will,” he told me and hung up.

Hunter was busy with his paperwork and Sharon was sitting there with her head back and eyes closed when I got in the car. We eased back into traffic and a half mile down I saw the white car half backed into a driveway. It gave - us a hundred yard lead, then got behind us again. I felt my mouth pulling into a grin, then I leaned back beside Sharon and took her hand. My fingers found the ring again and rubbed against the little stone. I held up her hand and looked at it. “That thing is going to poison you,” I said.

“I think it already has.”

“Why don't you throw it away?”

She gave me an annoyed poke and took her hand back. “It has sentimental value.”

“Worth the poisoning?”

“I think so.”

Hunter shuffied his papers, his eyes smiling at us over the top of his glasses. “Must be nice to be young.”

“I wouldn't know. Besides you had your chance with old Dubro and blew it.”

“I didn't blow it.”

“Okay, horny. I didn't mean it that way.”

“Who's old Dubro?” Sharon asked sleepily.

“Some dame he went skinny-dipping with when he still was a charger.”

“And what's skinny-dipping?”

“Honey ... bare-ass swimming is what it is. Like last night, remember?”

“He sleep with her too?”

“Mighty Hunter didn't have the nerve,” I grinned. “Maybe she was lucky. Counselor here has got himself a reputation.”

I saw him flush and make a negative motion with his head, his eyes darting sidewise at Sharon.

“Can you imagine being married to that old doll, buddy?”

The stem grimace twisted into a grin. “Yes, I can. Maybe that's why I've stayed happily unmarried.”

“Nothing like being wedded to a job, kid. Now you can screw a tort instead of a tart.”

Sharon's elbow jabbed into my ribs and Hunter let out a grunt, then went back to his papers.

Behind us the white car had closed up until only a station wagon separated us. Ahead was the madman maze of concrete that led into the city of fun and when we stopped at the tollbooth it pulled into the adjoining aisle and I had a look at the driver and the guy alongside him.

The Turk was stupid. He should have used somebody else. Markham, who drove the car, was an on-the-toes shooter, but he was to damn direct. He laid everything on a moustache and goatee hiding the snap in his nose and Bridey-the-Greek who rode the jump seat beside him had the idea that all his kills had gone unnoticed. A little nothing of a guy who could be buried in a crowd of two thought he was still one of the grand gang of anonymous killers. A first-class ice-pick man who could cripple or murder on order. It couldn't be murder, or The Turk never would have sent Bridey-the-Greek along. I was to be an example. Markham would hold me under the gun and Bridey would do the job.

Shit. The Turk was laying on a twenty-five-grand job split two ways and all I could think about was why my price went down. Last year Kurt Schmidt had me on open season for a half million. The two Frenchmen tried me and after that he had no takers at all. Marco could have had me in the pub outside of London, if he had really gone for it, but what good is a half million if you're dead? I had the .45 in my hand under the table and the sound of that hammer going back was like the crack of thunder, even if the girls didn't hear it. But he heard it. He smiled a little bit, kissed Lisa's hand without taking his eyes off mine and told all the others that I couldn't be made unless it was in the back.

But The Turk was no Kurt Schmidt. He couldn't get over his kid days of haggling for fake rugs with the tourists and would try for a fistful of cheapies before he went the big route. Or he got scared out of the marketplace.

Leyland Hunter rattled his papers back into their folders and stuffed them into his briefcase. He popped open the bar, poured himself a short brandy and downed it. “That one was for you, Dog.”

“Thanks.”

“Help yourself if you want to.”

Sharon and I shook our heads. I said, “What's next on the agenda, pal?”

The old lawyer gave me a wry look and folded his hands in his lap. “I am empowered to conduct an investigation into your moral character. Needless to say, after our, er, recent episode that is hardly necessary.”

I had to laugh. “Old buddy, a lawyer you may be, but a psych pro you're not. The little laughing ladies you are referring to wouldn't cop out for all the cash in the world. You'd have to admit your own pariticpation in the group therapy and I can see the boys at the club giving you the heave-ho already.”

“You do have a point there, Doggie boy.”

“What are you two talking about?” Sharon demanded. She was giving each one of us funny looks, waiting for an answer. I spelled it out for her in a couple of succinct sentences and she glanced at me wide-eyed and started to giggle.

“Maybe I can help, Mr. Hunter. We slept together last night, all naked and warm playing tickle finger -all over until we fell asleep.”

“I would hardly enjoy involving you, my dear,” Hunter told her.

“It probably wouldn't do any good anyway,” she said. “The big lunk refused to violate me. I could even have a doctor verify it.”

“And ruin his reputation?” Hunter smiled.

“Well, it could
prove
how high his moral standards are.”

“My cousins wouldn't like that,” I said. “Why don't I just give you an affidavit to the effect that I have been a little promiscuous at times?”

“Don't make it easy for them. Besides, I'd rather enjoy the investigation. My reading matter has been rather dull lately.”

I grinned back and glanced at the mirror. The white car was still there, tucked behind two others. It squeezed through a yellow signal light, closed up some so we wouldn't separate at the next traffic light and followed us up the avenue to the spire of Hunter's office building.

Hunter said, “Can I drop you two somewhere?”

I glanced at Sharon. “Home for me,” she said. “I'm on East Fifty-fifth.”

“That puts me two blocks away, Counselor. We'll go back in style.”

“Good. The garage is right in the same area. I won't be needing the car again today.” He picked up his briefcase and checked the clasp. “Do you, er, have any specific plans, Dog?”

I squeezed Sharon's hand. “I'm contemplating a few.”

He caught the action and smiled. “I mean in reference to your family.”

I nodded and shook a butt out of my pack. “Don't sweat it, friend. I have three months to think about it.”

“And it's a frightening thought. Are you sure it's worth the now-paltry sum involved?”

I watched him, my lips tight across my teeth. “You bet your sweet ass it is,” I said.

We let him off in front of his building, went crosstown to First Avenue and turned north. For a minute I thought we had lost the white car in the tangle of traffic at the intersection, then I caught a flash of it crowding the opposite side of the one-way street and settled back against the cushions.

Things were going just right. I slid open the glass partition and told Willis we'd drop Sharon off first, but she bounced up with a hard negative and. said I was going to walk her back from the garage and things weren't going so right after all. The time and the place to intercept the two goons in the white car had to be mine or I'd be hurting. I was betting they were being paid for a smash job, but if it was necessary a direct hit would be acceptable. For the first time I missed the comfortable feel of the iron that used . to hang on my belt and the way the spring-loaded holster would throw it into my palm at the right touch. There were other ways to do things, but it was nice knowing the advantage of a standard Army .45 automatic with alternating rounds of armor piercing and lead nestling in the clip.

The garage was midway up the street and the driver nosed down the ramp into the bowels of the building above it, swept around the fender-scarred concrete columns with skilled ease and stopped. I hopped out in front of the ticket booth, gave Sharon a hand through the door and watched the car pull up to the open elevator at the far end. A Volks-wagen came down next, scraped one of the pillars, then pulled into an open slot on one side evidently reserved for it. Then I looked around the curve and saw the white reflection of the next one in line and knew it was time.

I told Sharon I'd be right back, asked the guy behind the window of the ticket counter where the men's room was and walked off in that direction.

The flat windshield of an older car made a good mirror. Bridey-the-Greek and Markham had left their car and were right behind me, Markham splitting up to take an angled course through the parked vehicles. I spotted them again in the plate glass of a framed ad for a Broadway show just before I turned the comer of the alcove that led to the toilet.

I had my belt off and wrapped around my hand, feeling that funny expression I always got cutting creases into my face. Maybe the slobs thought I had been away long enough to forget the tricks. Or that being out of the game would spook me. Hell, it was spicing up the day for me.

I pushed open the door and went inside. There were two urinal bowls and three unoccupied toilet booths and I knew I had lucked in. I picked the one to the right, took my shoes off, placed them so anybody looking down would figure I was squatting there nice and helpless on the pot. I closed the door, locked it, hopped over the top and got behind the entrance door and waited for Markham.

He came in right on schedule with a snub-nosed .38 in his hand, saw the single closed toilet door and my shoes in position and walked right past where I was behind the opened door and never even looked when it snicked shut. He never heard me come up behind him in my stocking feet and was just raising his foot to kick the toilet door when I smashed him in the skull behind his ear and sent him splintering through the wooden partition so hard his knees broke the seat right off the bowl. Before he could yell I had his head in my hands, slamming his face against the two-inch dirty ceramic and his teeth broke like dry matzos in a splatter of blood that speckled the stagnant water like obscene curds.

Markham was totally unconscious and never felt what happened to him. He never heard me break the bones in both his hands and never even moaned when I cupped my palms and clapped his eardrums into split pieces of delicate flesh. But in a few hours and for a month later he'd be one hellish piece of agony and his days of usefulness to The Turk would be over.

I picked up his gun and put on my shoes.

Outside the door Bridey-the-Greek would have heard the noises and be anticipating the finish. It was a pleasure to oblige him. All I did was open the door and say, “Come on,” and by the time he realized it wasn't Markham's voice he was already inside looking up at me with eyes gone suddenly wide with fear.

He tried one lunge with the ice pick and I broke his wrist with the barrel of the .38 then laid it across the side of his head before he could let out a scream. He went down in a heap like dropping an old laundry bag, the pick rolling from his fingers. It was a nice new sliver of steel, that pick. You could buy them in any dime store and when you loosened the handle and sunk it into somebody you pulled back all your fingerprints and only left pain and slow death behind. Voorhies and Brown had gone that way. Bridey had given it to Bud Healey in the spine and Bud had been a paralytic from the waist down ever since, vegetating in that cottage outside of Brussels.

So I broke every finger on Bridey's hands too, then stitched him up the side of each cheek so he'd never be invisible in a crowd again. I opened his belt, pulled his pants and shorts down and waited the two minutes until he started to wake up, holding the point of the pick right over the two goodie sacs, and just as a groan wheezed through his lips and his eyes opened and rolled toward mine I drove the ice pick through those lumps of tissue into the rubber-tiled floor and the frenzied yell of horror he started never got past the sharp hiss of his sucked-in breath before he fainted.

The next person to go in that bathroom would do more than relieve his bladder or bowels.

Sharon watched me walk toward her, her face expressionless. Then she frowned momentarily and teased her lower lip with her teeth. I took her arm and walked up the ramp to the street. Her apartment was only five minutes away and she didn't speak until we turned at her comer.

Then she said, “There's blood all over your shirt.”