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

“It certainly looks like the McCoy, Doc,” she said in a hard baritone drawl. “And anyway, you wouldn’t be simple enough to try to palm off a bum G-note on me. But you must have taken an elephant’s liver out, to earn this much dough in one slice.”

Gradek cut a chunk of rare beef from the slab of red meat on the table in front of him, forked it into his bruised mouth, chewed, and washed the meat down with a gulp of red wine.

“Confidentially, Miss Jones,” he said, “I’ve performed an operation that will make medical history. I’ve succeeded in grafting a chorus girl’s legs onto the trunk of a spinster school teacher, in Queens. There isn’t a boy in her class who will ever play truant again.”

Carlin rested his head against a wall of the small, curtained private dining room. He sat with his eyes closed, because even the soft light of the room seemed to burn his eyeballs. The fever had given way to chills now, and his body shook as the cold seeped deep into his bones.

He heard the thousand-dollar bill crackle, and the scrape of the woman’s chair as she pushed it back, and then Grace laughed, joggling the table as she arose.

“Your friend doesn’t look very happy, does he, Doc?” she asked. “What is it, hangover? Or has he been taking some of your pills?”

“He’s a man troubled by conscience,” Gradek said, his mouth filled with food.

“He looks sort of familiar, too,” the woman said. “Seems like I’ve seen him somewhere before. But not here, I don’t think. Somehow he doesn’t look like a customer of ours.”

“Don’t let his dirty raincoat fool you,” Gradek answered. “Or the rest of his sloppy clothes. My friend is a rich eccentric. He could buy and sell this place.”

Carlin heard the woman’s thickening body move away from the table and the sound of a door as it was softly closed. He forced himself to open his eyes. He saw Gradek’s face, flushed and sweating, and noisily chewing food. He let the leaden weights of his eyelids fall down again.

“Please, Joey,” Gradek said, “don’t go out of your way to look like a zombie. Do me a favor, kid. I took a lot of risks bringing you in here, as hot as you are, even at an hour when there’s nobody around.”

“You’d have taken a lot of risk leaving me sit out in the car, too.”

“All right. But, please, if anyone else comes in here, make like a living person.”

Carlin opened his eyes again and stared at Gradek for a moment, and his eyes were pools of shadow under knit black brows. “Speaking of risks, Gradek,” he said softly, “something’s been bothering me. It could be that I’d wind up very dead, somewhere out in the Jersey marshes. Never get to Pennsy. A thing like that could happen, couldn’t it, Doc?”

Gradek hacked at his steak with a sharp-bladed, bone-handled knife. He made a wry face. “Anything is possible in this world,” he said. “But have you got anybody else to cart you around? If not, shut up. You’ve got to depend on me, Joey.” He half rose from his chair, using his fork as a spear with which to reach a plate of rolls.

Carlin moved quickly. He made a swift movement with his hand, caught up another bone-handled knife, and thrust it into the raincoat pocket. The smell of the half-raw steak clawed at his nostrils as he leaned over the table, and his stomach seemed to constrict and then rise like a rocket against his throat.

“The first door to the left, down the hall,” Gradek said. “I can imagine how you feel.”

Carlin rose unsteadily, went to a door in the rear of the room, and pulled it open. He stumbled down an unlighted hallway that smelled of cold cooking and stale tobacco and perfume. He found the first door to his left and clawed his way into a room that was small and not luxurious. He was very sick in the close, bad-smelling darkness of the room. When he had finished, he pushed the single small window open and let the cool evening air blow in upon his face.

After a while, he went back into the hallway, but slowed when he heard the sound of heavy footsteps and loud voices from the private dining room. He took a few wavering steps forward, and leaned against a wall. He recognized Grace Jones’ baritone as the other voices fell away.

“These gentlemen here are from the D.A.’s office, Gradek,” the woman said. “They say they want to talk to you.”

“Sure,” Gradek said. “Talk all you want — and the first thing you can tell me is what this is all about.”

“They know about the G-note,” Grace said. “I’m sorry, Gradek, but I got caught short. They came in here and braced me, and how did I know they’ve been watching you for a long while? I want to stay in business, don’t I? All right, so I figure it’s the G-note they’re after, and I turn it over to them. So what?”

“But what have I done?” Gradek asked, and his thin voice rose in a kind of blustering scream. “Is it a crime to eat a good dinner, to drink a nice bottle of wine? Is it a crime to have a thousand-dollar bill?”

A man laughed, his voice a sardonic bass growl. “Maybe it is a crime to be passing out thousand-dollar bills, Pop — unless you can damned well explain where you got ’em.”

“I would hate to be the D.A.,” Gradek said in a bitter voice. “I would hate to be the D.A. and be hanging by my ears until he learns where I got that grand.”

“What’s the use, Gradek?” another male voice asked. “We saw you park that heap outside, and you got a whole briefcase full of surgical instruments in the car. Tell us some good reasons, Gradek. Tell us why an ex-con with no M.D. license should be packing a bunch of croaker’s tools.”

“I’ll tell you a reason, flatfoot,” Gradek said. “A reason you wouldn’t have intellect enough to understand. Before a stupid, bungling jury and a moronic judge committed the criminal error of sending me to prison, I was a great surgeon. A great surgeon. I carry my old surgical instruments with me because of a sentimental attachment I have to them — like a great violin virtuoso who can no longer play might still carry his violin.”

Grace Jones said sadly: “It’s no use, Doc. They got to Rosa. They told me that. They made her spill her guts. Your racket’s finished.”

Gradek shrugged heavily, and shambled to his feet. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“One thing first,” one of the men from the D.A.’s office said. “Where’s the guy Grace said was with you — the guy looked like he’d been on a ten day diet of slow pills? Where’d the sleeper go, Gradek? Where’d he go?”

“For your information,” Gradek said, “he’s in the john. Sick. On account of eating some of the steak Grace served me, and drinking a glass of her wine. Even the food in prison is better than the stuff she serves here.” He spat, and turned his broad back in her direction. “Let’s go,” he said again.

Carlin was already back in the toilet room when he heard the heavy footsteps coming down the hallway. He locked the door, and turned on both water taps. As fists pounded on the door, he climbed over the sill of the window and dropped into the alley beyond.

The living room of the apartment was long and wide, with three white walls that gleamed like old ivory in the semi-darkness. Carlin stood very still in the center of the room, on a piled carpet thick enough to muffle an elephant’s tread. Listening intently, he heard no sound except the whistling hoarseness of his own labored breathing, the ticking of an Ormolu clock on a curved mantelpiece beneath a tall mirror that reflected the hollow-cheeked, pain-ridden mask of his pale face.

He turned away from his reflection, moved silently towards the bedroom door. Light shimmered softly on the bone-handled knife as he drew it from his pocket, held it behind him, against the skirt of the raincoat that. Burkman had once owned.