Ross Thomas - Backup Men

The first thing I did when I got off the plane was to head for the men’s room where I paid seventy-five cents for a shine. They both wore suede desert boots so they had to hang around and pretend not to watch until I was through. Then I headed for the Avis counter and rented a car. That wasn’t covered by their instructions and they held a hurried conference before deciding that one of them should go find a cab while the other kept an eye on me.

The car that I rented was a Plymouth. I know because I looked at its emblem to make sure. I took a deep breath, started the engine, and headed out into New York’s six o’clock traffic, an act of bravery that deserved some kind of a medal. In the rear-view mirror I could see the cab containing the blue blazers right behind me.

I decided on the Triborough Bridge, not because it was a quicker route, but because it promised the most traffic. I made use of it. I switched lanes a dozen times, slowed down and speeded up, and faked a couple of turnoffs. The tailing cab stayed right with me. On FDR Drive I stuck to the right-hand lane and turned off on Sixty-third Street. Traffic got snarled and we crept along, averaging something like three miles per hour.

Sixty-third is one-way and between Lexington and Park I found what I was looking for: a double-parked delivery truck. I pulled up parallel with the truck and killed my engine. Leaving the keys in the ignition, I opened the left-hand door and got out, carrying my attaché case. I raised the Plymouth’s hood, shook my head, turned, and left it there in the middle of the street for the Avis people and the New York traffic cops to worry about. I headed up Sixty-third toward Park. By the time I turned the corner, the maddened drivers who were stuck behind the abandoned car were leaning on their horns. I could also hear a few coarse shouts. I looked back just once and the two men in blue blazers were out of their cab, but still involved in some kind of an argument with its driver.

On Sixty-second and Park I got lucky and found a cab discharging a passenger. The driver was more or less willing to take me to the Biltmore and during the ride, I kept looking back, but the traffic was too heavy to be sure that I’d lost them, but I thought I had. The driver let me out on the Forty-third Street side of the Biltmore. I wandered about its red and gold lobby for fifteen minutes and when I spotted neither of them I went down the stairs and out the Forty-fourth Street entrance. After a quarter of an hour I caught another cab and gave the address on Avenue A.

When we were three blocks away from where I wanted to go I told the driver to stop. He pulled up in front of a bar and I paid him and went inside. The bar was on Second Avenue and it was crowded. The clock above the bottles said six forty-five. I ordered a Scotch and water and stood at the bar, watching the door.

I spent ten minutes in the bar and then I went out into the street and started walking toward Avenue A. I turned the corner at Ninth Street and First Avenue and the taller one with the heavy moustache hit me on the right arm with what felt like a blackjack.

As I said, I thought I’d lost them, but I hadn’t. I dropped the attaché case and backed off. I wanted to rub my right arm because it ached and when I moved it, it hurt even worse. The smaller one came at me first, low and with his left hand stiff and well-extended. I assumed he was some kind of karate devotee, possibly self-taught, so I kicked his left kneecap and when he yelled and grabbed for it, I hit him just below his right ear with my left fist. I hit him hard and he sat down on the sidewalk and held his kneecap and yelled some more. I turned toward the taller one who was bringing the blackjack around and down in an arc and it seemed to whistle as it came. I blocked it with my left forearm, which hurt far more than I’d expected, and then drove a right into his thick chest. He stumbled back and I moved after him, trying to ignore the pain in both of my arms.

A middle-aged man wearing a black, unbuttoned vest and a white tieless shirt stepped out of a produce store and asked, “What’s going on here?” I hit the taller man in the stomach with my left hand. His breath exploded from him and he doubled over and the man who’d come out of the produce store said, “Let’s break it up.” I kicked the tall man in the face, just as if I were trying for a sixty-yard punt. That straightened him up long enough so that the man in the white shirt and I could note how I’d ruined his looks. The beaked nose was smashed almost flat and some bone showed through the blood.

A small crowd had formed and a fat man in a blue suit asked the man in the vest and the white shirt what had happened. The man in the white shirt pointed at me and said, “That big guy’s been beating up on these two little guys.” Both of the little guys were an inch or so over six feet.

“Anybody call the cops?” the fat man asked.

“Nah. It’s just getting started good.”

The taller man with the ruined nose was now kneeling on the sidewalk, not too far from his friend with the bad kneecap, which I hoped would give him trouble for years to come. I picked up my attaché case and walked over to them. The tall man didn’t know I was there. He didn’t seem to know much of anything other than that his nose was a bloody, shapeless lump of pain. The shorter man, still sitting on the sidewalk, still holding his kneecap, had stopped yelling. He looked up at me. I had some questions to ask him but I had to wait until he got tired of calling me five different kinds of motherfucker. Then I started to ask who had put him on to me, but I saw the blue uniform on the motor scooter down the street, so I turned and headed the other way—or started to. The fat man in the blue suit moved in front of me.

“You want something, friend?” I said.

“Those two guys are hurt real bad. You can’t just—”

I put my hand on his chest and pressed gently. He didn’t move. Instead, he stared at me with mean little blue eyes that were only slits in the fat folds of his face. “Those two guys are wanted in six states,” I said. “If you hustle, you can nail ‘em and beat the cops to the reward.”

“How much reward?” he said.

“Six thousand in Pittsburgh and seventy-five hundred in Altoona. Bank jobs.”

The fat man looked at me and then over my shoulder. He gave me another quick glance, as if hoping that there was something in my face that would let him believe me. Apparently there was because he stepped aside and I started across First Avenue. I’d only gone a few steps when there was a yell. I turned. The fat man stood over the dark Spanish-looking man whose nose I’d ruined. The dark man still knelt on the sidewalk and the fat man had an arm around his neck. He was choking him. At the same time he was trying to kick the smaller, blond man in the head. He missed in what must have been his second try, but the blond man yelled anyway and tried to crawl toward the curb. It hurt him to crawl and he yelled again as the fat man aimed another kick at his head, but again missed. The crowd was watching it all happen when the policeman arrived and I turned the corner.

The address on Avenue A that Padillo had given me was in a grimy seven-story apartment building which was located across the street from a dusty-looking park. It was a block of small, sour businesses that looked as if they could provide their owners a bare living, if the owners didn’t eat too much and too often. There were two candy stores, a dry cleaner’s, a small grocery, and a liquor store. None of them looked solvent and the liquor store for some reason appeared to be on the verge of bankruptcy. It may have been because of the defeated look in the eyes of its owner as he stood in the doorway, searching for whatever signs of Spring he could find in the dusty park across the street.