Ed Lacy - The Men From the Boys

“Which one?” I asked, considering making a crack about Bill's pay-off—maybe he thought I came with dough. But he was very touchy about it, blew up if I even talked about it.

Bill sighed. “Wish I was like you, could just ask 'Which one?' Thought you said you heard the news? They found Cocky Anderson's body up in the Bronx this morning, with a .38 slug through his left ear. You know what that means?”

“What?” I asked as if I cared.

“When Bochio first started out as a strong-arm punk, he ran with a gang that used a slug through the left ear as their trademark for people who knew too much. Also, it's an open secret that old Albert swore he'd get Cocky after the jerk made a pass at Bochio's daughter—tried to rape her is the way I heard it. Should be an open-and-shut case, only nothing shuts, nothing even moves. Damn, a tough one has to break in a hot spell like this—I was set to drive the kids up to Orchard Beach this afternoon for a swim.”

“If he was killed in the Bronx, where do you come in down here?”

“Your brains die when you buried yourself in that hotel? Marty, you know Cocky Anderson had 'interests' on the docks here. For the love of tears, I have every man I can get my hands on out snooping, canceled all vacations.”

“Bochio ain't no hood, and anyway he's been in Miami as you said. Ask me, he's out of the picture. Even that daughter angle is bunk. Cocky was getting too big for the syndicate and they took him out. But the hell with that. I didn't come to talk about rats and punks.”

“Just what did you come about, Marty?”

“Oh... nothing special. Just dropped in to talk.”

“About what?”

“What do you mean, about what? Bill, you're the oldest friend I got. Can't a guy drop in to chat with a buddy?”

“Marty, are you sick?”

“Why? Do I look sick?” I asked, and couldn't stop my voice from shaking.

Bill stood up. Except for the little pot belly he was as lean and wiry as ever. “Marty, I don't like to give you a short answer, but I'm up to my eyeballs in work and you breeze in and talk about Cuba, then about the wife and girls, and then you just want to talk. Damnit, Marty, the pressure is on me, real pressure. Some other time we'll talk about old times.”

“All right, Bill,” I said getting up. “I didn't know you were so busy. Matter of fact I did drop in to talk about Lawrence. He wants to be a cop and I don't want him to have a bad time of it because of me.”

Bill sort of groaned and sat down again. “Don't talk to me about these auxiliary cops. They're driving us nuts.”

“Why?”

“Look, if you ask me this is all a lot of crap—if they think New York City might be bombed, then build air-raid shelters, real shelters. In a real bombing what the hell good will a batch of jokers in white helmets do, or all these drills and the rest of it? Ask me, it's just to keep the people on edge. But nobody asks me. The point is some boneheads downtown made a mistake assigning these tin cops here. This is a water-front section. They belong uptown where things are quiet. Don't worry, they won't be here long.”

“I thought they had their own setup?”

“They do, up to a point. They got some stuffed do-gooder that's a major or some damn thing in charge of them here, and he's such a strutting jerk, somebody is due to clip him. Most of them are crackpots anyway.”

“Lawrence is a bit cop-happy, but otherwise he's a serious kid.”

“Marty, I'm not saying they're all jerks, but you know what happens when you get volunteers. Everything is tossed in, including the bottom of the barrel. For every sincere kid like Lawrence, you get a dozen uniform-happy characters who are only looking for a chance to get away from their wives, walk around looking important.”

“Me, I don't think there will be a war, but you can never tell. But to get back to Lawrence, watch out for him.”

“I will. He's an intelligent kid.” Bill looked up at me. “Since when did you get so fatherly over him?”

“Since last night. He wants to be a cop, a real one, and I have a hunch he's eager beaver enough to build himself up, pass the exams. All right, with my name he's starting with two strikes and I don't want him to do anything that will make him look foolish now, when he's on this volunteer-cop kick. Last night he was all excited about some crazy butcher and a phony holdup.”

“I know, he came to me with that. He's green and full »f too much pep—thinks he has to prove himself, live up to the Bond name, all that. Don't worry—as an auxiliary there isn't much of a jam he can get into.”

“He can make a false arrest, like he almost did with that wacky meat chopper. Bill, he's a silly kind of kid and well... kids today can't take care of themselves the way we did.”

“Bull. Marty, the kids today are a lot smarter and tougher than we ever dreamed of being.” He stood up again. “Don't worry about him. Couple of weeks and he and the rest of these tin badges will be way uptown, putting in their hours directing traffic, or something. While he's here, I'll keep an eye on him. Marty, when this Anderson mess blows over, I'll have you out for supper some night and we'll talk.”

“Marge would sure love that; she could never stand the sight of me. All right, Bill, don't call me, I'll call you,” I said, and walked out. I heard him say, “Now, Marty, I told you I'm swamped ...” as I walked down the stairs.

On the way back to the hotel I had a sudden longing for watermelon and stopped in at the corner coffeepot. I told the old-bag waitress to give me a double hunk and she asked, “What you doing, Marty, eating for two?”

“That's it.”

She thought it was funny and showed me all her bad teeth in a laugh. “Something as big and ugly as you pregnant!”

“Honey, you don't know how much pregnant,” I told her.

I washed down the bad taste in my mouth with a couple of glasses of iced coffee and I was belching before I reached the hotel lobby. Lawson nodded at the office behind him, said, “Mr. King is quite upset over that rug. He wants you to call him.”

“Tell him I couldn't care less,” I said, walking past the desk and into the hallway that took me to my room.

There was no sense in stalling. I locked the door and took off my shirt, tie, and shoes—to be comfortable—then I sat down and wrote a short note to Flo telling her about my gut. I didn't know why I wrote her, she wouldn't give a damn. But then I had to leave some sort of note.

I got out my Police Special. A gun can be the most beautiful or the most ugly thing in the world—depending upon which end you're looking at. Right now it looked ugly as hell.

I sat on the bed and put the muzzle in my mouth, tasting the oil. In a few seconds King would have another rug to get himself in an uproar over. For some reason that seemed funny to me.

For the first time in days I smiled—if you can smile with a gun between your teeth—as I pushed the safety off.

Two

At five after ten that night Dewey pounded on my door. I was in a drunken haze—I'd knocked off over a pint in an effort to get up courage and as usual liquor had let me down; all that happened was I went to sleep for a few hours.

I stumbled out of bed and never felt so awful, worse than when Art told me I had cancer—for the first time in my life I knew I was a phony, a damn coward.

I couldn't understand it; I'd risked my life plenty of times without a thought. I'd even played Russian roulette once when I was young and well crocked. “If you're not afraid to die, then there's nothing to be scared of” was the motto I'd lived by, yet when my own personal chips were down, I didn't have it—I didn't have it at all.

All right, if I didn't have the guts to do it myself, I'd have to figure out some way of getting killed, because I sure wasn't going to take the slow torture of cancer. It wouldn't have been so hard to stop a bullet when I was on the force, but now... Who the hell bothers shooting a house dick? A lousy...?