Roy Carroll - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 4, April, 1953

Gradek lay under a torn crazy quilt, on a tarnished brass bed. His swollen lips were the color of grapes. He did not seem surprised to see Carlin again.

“I thought maybe you’d be around,” Gradek said. “It isn’t as though you had so much choice, is it, Joe? To a boy in your position, I’m like the Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Brothers rolled into one. You could say I had a sort of medical monopoly, in a way of speaking.” His fingers came up to touch his mouth. “I could use the Mayo Brothers, myself. I damn near never got home after the way that bastard kneed me. But I’ll get him for that. If I have to—”

“Forget it,” Carlin said, tiredly. “Burkman already got his. But good.” He told Gradek about Burkman and the winos. When he finished, he leaned against a crumbling wall that was half covered with photographs of nude girls, and wiped sweat from his grimy face. “I came to make a deal,” he said. “I want to make a deal, Gradek.” He sucked air into lungs that seemed filled with hot sand, and started to speak again.

Gradek waited, cocking a polite but skeptical eyebrow, but Carlin could not get the words past his lips. He fell forward in a long, sliding fall, and lay face downward beside the bed.

When Carlin recovered consciousness, he was lying upon the bed, stripped of everything except his bandages, and Gradek was standing beside him with a hypodermic syringe in his hand. He was wearing a long-tailed cotton shirt that flapped about his knees, and a cigar butt smoldered in the corner of his mouth.

“You passed out, Joey. Exhaustion, pain, loss of blood. Rosa and I thought we’d be doing you a kindness by undressing you and putting you to bed. And incidentally, Joey, we found your second thousand-dollar bill.”

“Okay,” Carlin said, “so you found it.” He was too tired to care very much, either way.

“You must understand that you’re in pretty bad condition,” Gradek said. “There’s a bullet in you, Joey, lodged pretty deep, and it should be removed. There were several reasons why I couldn’t remove it, last night. I didn’t have enough morphine on hand to really knock you out, for one thing. And if I had, you would have been too sick to go after the money. You understand, don’t you?”

Carlin said nothing, and Gradek’s amiable voice went on. “So, what could I do, except sew you up with the slug in you? A pretty unethical procedure, I’ll admit, but you can’t eat ethics or wear them, or sleep with them, either.”

He sat down on a chair and stared thoughtfully at the floor. “I could take the slug out of you today, Joey, but after that, what? You’re a sick boy. You need some place to stay until you get well. Also, you’re hot. You’re hotter than young love in a haymow in August.”

Carlin cursed him feebly.

“Of course I could just turn you out when I’d patched you up,” Gradek said. “But you’d only fall down in the street, and then the cops might pick you up, and you’d probably tell them about me. On the other hand, I can’t keep you here. It’s occurred to me that maybe you have some place you can go. If you’ve got any such place in mind, tell me, and perhaps I’ll help you to get there.”

Hope stirred in Carlin. “There’s a farm in Pennsylvania,” he murmured. “Just across the Jersey line. If I could get there, I’d be all right.”

Gradek lifted the long-tailed shirt and scratched one of his fat thighs. “Pennsylvania is a long way,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of going that far. But I suppose, since you’re a reasonable fellow, and can’t expect to get that thousand dollars back, I might consider it. I can borrow a friend’s car — for a price, of course.”

“That’s wonderful of you,” Carlin said bitterly. “That’s the biggest-hearted offer I ever heard.”

Gradek rose from his chair. “I’ll dig the lead out of you at the farm, son. It won’t kill you to pack it a few hours more. I could dig it out of you here, of course, but you’d be weaker, and it’d be a mess, and Rosa doesn’t like me cutting people in here.” He shook the hypodermic syringe, and smiled. “I’ll just sink this spear into you, Joey, and you’ll get some rest. Along towards dark, we’ll shove off for Pennsy.”

Carlin scarcely felt the needle. It was a pin-prick of minute pain, dissolving almost instantly into a feeling of drowsy pleasure as a warm pink mist closed in about him...

Carlin awoke to find Gradek gently shaking him, and beyond the window the light was blue with autumnal dusk. Gradek was neatly dressed in a shabby tweed suit and a white shirt and polka dot tie. He had a cup in his hand, and he held it to Carlin’s lips.

“Drink this, Joey,” Gradek said. “It’ll help pull you out of the fog. You really were sleeping. I dressed your wounds while you slept, and my Rosa gave you a nice sponge bath. Boy, you needed that bath. You know what Rosa said? She said, ‘Ayee! but thees one steenks!’ ”

Carlin swallowed some of the bitter fluid, retched, and then emptied the cup as Gradek pressed it relentlessly against his lips.

“I’ve got some clothes for you,” the doctor said. “Not new, but clean. The car’s outside, and we can leave as soon as you’re dressed. But I’ll have to make one stop, in Manhattan, to break the thousand-dollar bill.”

“Okay,” Carlin said. “Okay, Gradek.”

“On second thought,” Gradek said, “I’d better stop at a post office too. So that I can mail the money to myself. Just in case you should get any bright ideas, Joey, after I’ve hauled you to Pennsylvania. Just in case you should turn out to be ungrateful for what I’ve done.”

He set the cup down on the floor, picked up a pair of faded khaki trousers from a small pile of clothing on the bed, and began to draw the trousers on over Carlin’s legs. “Sorry there’s no underwear,” Gradek said. “I couldn’t seem to find a pair of shorts that were clean.”

He pulled the trousers up around Carlin’s hips, then said: “I gave a lot of thought to the matter of where I was going to break the grand note. I was getting discouraged, and then I happened to think of the Plume Club. You know the Plume Club, Joey? No? Well, perhaps it’s a little too refined for your type of character. But, for your information, the Plume Club is a private drinking club, in the sixties.

“Only it’s something more than just a private guzzling joint,” Gradek went on as he picked up a torn cotton sock. “What it really is, Joey, is a very high-class brothel. One of the finest in the world. At the Plume Club, you can get a good dinner, and a good bottle of wine. And if you want — if you have the price, of course — you can dally with a really beautiful girl. Not you, really, Joey. You’re in no condition for that kind of stuff.”

Carlin ran his tongue across his parched lips, and said nothing.

Gradek lifted one of Carlin’s feet and began to ease the sock on gently over his toes. “I happen to have done some business with Grace Jones,” he said. “Miss Jones is the proprietor of the Plume, and a very nice woman, too. When I called, she said she would be pleased to cash a G-note — for a ten per cent rake-off, of course.”

Gradek finished pulling on the sock, and made a flourishing gesture with his plump hands. “So, I have ordered a steak dinner for six o’clock, a dinner and a good bottle of wine. Maybe you might feel like eating a little, maybe, but I don’t think you will feel like trifling with any lovely girls, Joey, huh? No, not tonight.”

Grace Jones had cowslip-colored hair, a face that was pink and slick, like a well-iced cake, and a body that was apparently losing a war against old age and excess flesh. She stared at the thousand-dollar bill, turning it over and over in her hands, and finally lifted her cool gaze to Gradek’s face and gave the little fat man a fleeting smile. She paid no attention to Carlin.