Paul Cain: Seven Slayers

The man said: “McCary.”

“No.” I shook my head and started to push past him, and he said: “McCary,” again thickly, and then he crumpled into a heap on the wet sidewalk.

It was dark there, there wasn’t anyone on the street — I could have walked away. I started to walk away and then the sucker instinct got the best of me and I went back and bent over him.

I shook him and said: “Come on, chump — get up out of the puddle.”

A cab came around the corner and its headlights shone on me — and there I was, stooping over a drunk whom I’d never seen before, who thought my name was McCary. Any big-town driver would have pegged it for a stick-up, would have shoved off or sat still. That wasn’t a big town — the cab slid alongside the curb and a fresh-faced kid stuck his face into the light from the meter and said: “Where to?”

I said: “No place.” I ducked my head at the man on the sidewalk. “Maybe this one’ll ride — he’s paralyzed.”

The kid clucked: “Tch, tch.”

He opened the door and I stooped over and took hold of the drunk under his armpits and jerked him up and across the sidewalk and into the cab. He was heavy in a funny limp way. There was a hard bulge on his left side, under the arm.

I had an idea. I asked the kid: “Who’s McCary?”

He looked self-consciously blank for a minute and then he said: “There’s two — Luke and Ben. Luke’s the old man-owns a lot of real estate. Ben runs a pool-hall.”

“Let’s go see Ben,” I said. I got into the cab.

We went several blocks down the dark street and then I tapped on the glass and motioned to the kid to pull over to the curb. He stopped and slid the glass and I said: “Who’s McCary?”

“I told you.”

I said: “What about him?”

The kid made the kind of movement with his shoulders that would pass for a shrug in the sticks. “I told you — he runs a pool-hall.”

I said: “Listen. This guy came up to me a few minutes ago and said ‘McCary’ — this guy is very dead.”

The kid looked like he was going to jump out of the cab. His eyes were hanging out.

I waited.

The kid swallowed. He said: “Let’s dump him.”

I shook my head slightly and waited.

“Ben and the old man don’t get along — they’ve been raising hell the last couple of weeks. This is the fourth.” He jerked his head towards the corpse beside me.

“Know him?”

He shook his head and then — to be sure — took a flashlight out of the side-pocket and stuck it back through the opening and looked at the man’s dead face. He shook his head again.

I said: “Let’s go see Ben.”

“You’re crazy, Mister. If this is one of Ben’s boys he’ll tie you up to it, and if it ain’t...”

“Let’s go see Ben.”

Ben McCary was a blond fat man, about forty — he smiled a great deal.

We sat in a little office above his pool-hall and he smiled heartily across all his face and said: “Well, sir — what can I do for you?”

“My name is Black. I came over from St. Paul — got in about a half hour ago.”

He nodded, still with the wide hearty smile; stared at me cordially out of his wide-set blue eyes.

I went on: “I heard there was a lot of noise over here and I thought I might make a connection — pick up some change.”

McCary juggled his big facial muscles into something resembling innocence.

“I don’t know just what you mean, Buddy,” he said. “What’s your best game?”

“What’s yours?”

He grinned again. “Well,” he said, “you can get plenty of action up in the front room.”

I said: “Don’t kid me, Mister McCary. I didn’t come over here to play marbles.”

He looked pleasantly blank.

“I used to work for Dickie Johnson down in K C,” I went on.

“Who sent you to me?”

“Man named Lowry — that’s the name on the label of his coat. He’s dead.”

McCary moved a little in his chair but didn’t change his expression.

“I came in on the nine-fifty train,” I went on, “and started walking uptown to a hotel. Lowry came up to me over on Dell Street and said ‘McCary!’ and fell down. He’s outside in a cab — stiff.”

McCary looked up at the ceiling and then down at the desk. He said: “Well, well” — and took a skinny little cigar out of a box in one of the desk-drawers and lighted it. He finally got around to looking at me again and said: “Well, well,” again.

I didn’t say anything.

After he’d got the cigar going, he turned another of his big smiles on and said: “How am I supposed to know you’re on the level?”

I said: “I’ll bite. What do you think?”

He laughed. “I like you,” he said. “By God! I like you.”

I said I thought that was fine and, “Now let’s try to do some business.”

“Listen,” he said. “Luke McCary has run this town for thirty years. He ain’t my old man — he married my mother and insisted on my taking his name.”

He puffed slowly at his cigar. “I guess I was a pretty ornery kid” — he smiled boyishly — “when I came home from school I got into a jam — you know — kid stuff. The old man kicked me out.”

I lighted a cigarette and leaned back.

“I went down to South America for about ten years, and then I went to Europe. I came back here two years ago and everything was all right for a while and then the old man and I got to scrapping again.”

I nodded.

“He’d had everything his own way too long. I opened this place about three months ago and took a lot of his gambling business away — a lot of the shipyard men and miners...”

McCary paused, sucked noisily at his cigar.

“Luke went clean off his nut,” he went on. “He thought I was going to take it all away from him...” McCary brought his big fist down hard on the desk. “And by the Christ! I am. Lowry’s the third man of mine in two weeks.

It’s plenty in the open now.”

I said: “How about Luke’s side?”

“We got one of the—” he said. “A runner.”

“It isn’t entirely over the gambling concession?”

“Hell, no. That’s all it was at first. All I wanted was to make a living. Now I’ve got two notch-joints at the other end of town. I’ve got a swell protection in with the law and I’m building up a liquor business that would knock your eye out.”

I asked: “Is Luke in it by himself?”

McCary shook his head slowly. “He don’t show anywhere. There’s a fellah named Stokes runs the works for him — a young fellah. They been partners nearly eight years. It’s all in Stokes’ name...”

“What does Stokes look like?”

“Tall — about your build. Shiny black hair, and a couple of big gold teeth” — McCary tapped his upper front teeth with a fat finger — “here.”

I said: “How much is he worth to you?”

McCary stood up. He leaned across the desk and grinned down at me and said: “Not a nickel.” His eyes were wide and clear like a baby’s. He said slowly: “The old man is worth twenty-five hundred smackers to you.”

I didn’t say anything and McCary sat down and opened another drawer and took out a bottle of whiskey. He poured a couple of drinks.

“I think the best angle for you,” he said, “is to go to Stokes and give him the same proposition you gave me. Nobody saw you come in here. It’s the only way you can get near the old man.”

I nodded. We drank.

“By God! I like your style,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get along with an outfit of yokels.”

We smiled at one another. I was glad he said he liked me because I knew he didn’t like me at all. I was one up on him, I didn’t like him very well either.