Ed Lacy - The Men From the Boys

“But if it had been a runt, that would rule Bob out. Now, we...”

“Marty, Marty, slow down. I just came home, trying to take a bath, relax, so don't get me worked up. Ah... Marty... Flo... uh... what's this she said about you saying you expect to be dead by the end of the week?”

“What? Oh, that—I was jazzing around with her. You know, guys our age never know when the old ticker gives the final chug. Flo is the dramatic type.”

“She sure is. Well, I'm going to get some rest now. You do the same. Yeah, don't get Lawrence excited. Don't know what you told him, but the hospital complained to us, and Dot is up in the air.”

“You know how badge-happy he is. I was merely letting him in on some of the fine aspects of our trade. Take your bath, Bill.”

We hung up and I lay on the bed, fanning myself with a newspaper. I glanced at the paper. Seems they still hadn't found Mr. Mudd, the mad bank robber. The rest of the paper was full of tripe about Cocky Anderson, so I went back to fanning myself, thought about Flo, about Bill taking the trouble to worry about me after we'd almost slugged each other. All the years we were a team Bill and I were good friends, yet never too close. He was married from the start, never chased around. And one cocktail was enough for Bill —said only an unhappy man drank. Might be something to that.

Closest I ever came to really making Bill's character was when we killed time by playing penny rummy. He'd make a stack of ten pennies, then pile the rest of his coppers into stacks even with the first one... and then carefully count the pennies in each pile.

But Bill minded his own business, never said a word when I was tanked on the job, or when I made a fool of myself over a broad—that's enough to find in a friend. And the way he stuck to his plump Marge, a real pot. He never liked Dot and me busting up, and he sure couldn't figure Flo, although you could see his desire for her in his eyes. I remember once, when she hooked me into buying her a fur cape, Bill asked me, “What does she do right?”

“Bill, I look at her and there's nothing she can do wrong,” I'd told him, but he couldn't understand that. He liked to think of himself as a “family man,” but that was a lot of slop; to him a woman was part of the home, like a rug— once you got a rug you had a rug and that was it.

I reached over and picked up my wrist watch from the bed table. The band was almost rotten with sweat. It was after ten. I got up and started to get dressed, including my gun and a flash. I went out to the lobby and Dewey was totaling the day's phone charges. He said, “Still muggy. Sure wish it would rain and break this heat.”

I took a linen-closet key from the key rack when he wasn't looking, told him, “I'm going to my room and I don't want to be disturbed.”

“Starting that again, Marty?”

“I have some business to take care of, but if anybody asks I'm still in my room. I'll be back in about an hour or so.”

“Marty, you know I'm not strong. What if somebody starts a rumpus?”

“Sock 'em with one of your wine bottles—a full one,” I said, walking back toward the service elevator. There was a back entrance to the Grover that was rarely used—my tail might or might not be covering it, but at the moment I didn't want to see him.

I ran the elevator up to the eighth floor, quietly walked by an open door where Barbara and a girl named Jean were sipping iced tea and playing gin.

When the Grover was built, there had been an apartment house set smack up against one side of it. A fire is said to have wrecked this building back in 1910 and it was made over into business lofts. Two years ago we started missing a lot of linen till I found some jerky wino had noticed that the fire escape of the loft building at one point practically touched the window of the eighth-floor linen closet. I'd put a folding steel gate on the inside of the window.

The damn closet was full of hot stale air, and I was running sweat by the time I got the bars out of the way, the window open. It was a snap to step out on the dark fire escape, go over the roof, then down a rear fire escape. These industrial joints are deserted at night and this one was too small for a night watchman. Not a soul was on the street when I stepped out, my gun in my pocket.

I wiped the sweat from my hands and face, stopped at a drugstore to buy a package of mints and roll of tape, headed for Lande's store. They were unloading at the docks nearby and had the big lights on, but the rest of the street was deserted. I taped off a section of the door glass close to the lock, quietly busted this with my gun, put on my gloves, and stuck the pieces of glass and tape in my pocket. Then I reached through the hole and opened the door.

Inside I shut my eyes for a minute and when I opened them I could see pretty good in the semidarkness. I don't know what I expected to see or find, but I didn't see a damn thing—it looked like the inside of the Bay meat store. The icebox was a square room about 15' x 15' and I stepped inside and flashed the light a few times, covering all but a thin ray with my hand. There was a big grinding machine and a large flat tin pan for holding the chopped meat, scales, rows of empty shelves with long white enameled pans, meat hooks on the wall, a roll of liverwurst and one of salami hanging from two hooks. In one corner there was a pile of canned hams, and under the chopped meat table I saw a box of smoked tongues. There was a light layer of fresh sawdust covering the floor. And a clean chopping block with knives and a cleaver stuck in one end of the block.

Everything looked all right—the trouble was I didn't know enough about the butcher business to know what “all wrong” would be.

But at least it was comfortably cool inside the icebox and through a window I could watch the store and the street. The hams came from Germany and being so close to the docks, Lande could be running a dope depot. I took a cleaver and busted open one of the cans of ham, split a smoked tongue in half. The tongue tasted fine. The ham was all cold grease—but ham.

I took the busted ham and tongue out with me and it was like stepping into a damp oven. I opened the door of the freezer next to the icebox. No light came on, but a cold blast of air gave me the creeps. Fumbling along the wall I found a switch, and the light went on. I jumped inside and slammed the door shut—through the open door of die freezer the light could be seen from the street.

There wasn't any window in the freezer and I didn't like the deal—if anybody had been following me, or if the broken door glass should be discovered, I was up the creek—a cold one. Anyway, I wasn't sweating about it—it was too damn cold. My breath turned to fog and my head felt like an icicle.

The freezer was loaded with meats—steaks, cans of livers, pork loins, tripe, pig's feet, turkeys and chickens—all of them frozen stiff and neatly packed in plastic bags with tags on them. From the wall hooks large turkeys and sides of meat hung, all wrapped in bags. On the sawdust floor I saw large wooden and cardboard boxes full of slabs of fat, pig's knuckles, cans of lard. I tried opening one of the bags of steak, but the meat was hard as a rock.

It was so cold I could barely breathe and every time I glanced at the thick door I felt like I was locked in a tomb. I unscrewed the bulb and there was a bad moment when I finally found the door and couldn't open it. You had to press the handle hard and hit the door with your shoulder. I came tumbling out into the dark store, shook for a second with a chill, then the muggy heat got me and I started to sweat, or thaw out.

I shut the door and the boom of the door closing filled the store and I stood very still for a moment, hand on my gun. But everything was all right. I went into Lande's office, pulled out two drawers and took them back into the freezer, screwed the light on. All I saw was bills and orders. I went through his checkbook and everything looked okay. These wholesale cats even had a daily news bulletin giving them the names of all restaurants and stores being sued.