Ed Lacy - Strip For Violence

He made another drink, gave it to me, said, “I find people can think best when relaxed. You're not drinking gin but straight hospital alcohol, 190 proof, with juice.”

“190 proof? I thought a 100 proof was...?”

Franklin smiled, pleased with his own knowledge. “Most people confuse volume with proof. 100 proof, for example, only means the contents are 50 per cent alcohol by volume. This is a handy drink, puts people at ease, off their guard.”

“Think I'm off guard?” I asked, taking a big gulp, acting like a kid showing off. The stuff sure gave me a glow.

“You and I, we haven't any reason to be on our guard, or have we?”

“That's right,” I said, not having the faintest idea what he was gassing about. But of course I couldn't tell him that. “And my end of the deal is the Light Fantastic concession?”

He spread his large hands on the desk. “That's it, I throw business your way... you throw some my way.”

There was an awkward silence. He was waiting for me to carry the ball. I said, “Have to give it some thought,” and climbed off the chair.

“Very sensible,” Franklin said, standing up. “Only don't think too long. Sometimes a deal goes cold—dead cold— if a person waits too long.”

“You don't have to spell it out.” The thought that he might have something to do with Anita's beaten body sobered me up. I finished the drink to get the glow back again. I waved to Franklin, started for the door. The “Cat” said to Bobo, “Amigo, you smoke Havana cigars? Take some.” He held out a box.

Bobo took one, hesitated, took another. The “Cat” laughed at him. “You should have battled my Lefty again, you had the style to whip him.”

As we walked toward the door, Franklin must have stepped on a button under the carpet, the door buzzed open. He said, “I'll expect a call from you—soon.”

“Yeah.”

The hallway was empty and we walked—or floated— past the offices, nodded at the cute receptionist, and took the elevator to the street. I was drinking with one of the biggest mobsters in the city—that old merry-go-round was getting up speed.

8

When we hit the sidewalk Bobo said, “Hal, I am ashamed of what happened....” Martinez couldn't take liquor and he spoke thickly, like a real lush.

“Forget it, you've stepped in for me plenty of times.”

“Funny office, funny drink.”

“And a not-so-funny 'Cat',” I said. “Soon as my head settles down, I have to do some real good thinking.”

“Lot I fail to understand and it's not the drink,” Bobo said. “What you got on Franklin?”

“That's what I have to think out. Whatever I have—I don't know what it is.”

“Like holding the tiger by the tail. A difficult situation,” Bobo said in solemn-drunk talk.

“Look, go home and sleep it off. I'm going back to the office for a moment. See you in the morning.”

“Hal...” Bobo hesitated. “I... eh...”

I took out my wallet, still had seventy bucks of Will's money. I gave Bobo two tens, walked him to the subway.

The phone was ringing as I unlocked the office door. I didn't make it. I sat down and banged away at the rubber pad, but it was hard to think. In a vague way things were starting to take shape but I was a long way from putting the pieces together—or from having all the pieces. The phone rang again. Curly Cox asked, “Hello? Boss? Me and the other guys ain't got no more cards to stick in the doors tonight. Called you earlier but no answer. Told Anita about it yesterday and... What's with this Anita?”

I told him I'd ordered some and would pick them up from the printers, and that he and the others should drop in around midnight to get them.

I had to hustle down to the printer before he closed at five, then, having nothing to do, I dropped in on Saltz, to see what he knew. He greeted me with, “Deadeye Dick, the famous two-bit private investigator. Suppose you got the case solved?”

“Have you?” He sure irritated the hell out of me.

“Been talking to a couple of stoolies. They claim the word is Anita was shaking down somebody—somebody important.”

“That's a crock of slop; Anita never knew anybody important. And she wasn't a shakedown artist. She was a kid.”

“Is that why she's a dead kid, because she never knew nobody important?”

I said, “You're crazy if you take a stoolie's word that she was shaking down any...”

Saltz laughed in my face. “Darling, you're not even a two-bit detective. How the hell do you think the police work? Let me give you a little course in scientific detection —more cases have been solved by tips from stoolies than by all the laboratory methods ever invented. Maybe in the movies they look through a microscope and come up with the answers, but in real life—a dick is only as good as his list of stoolies. Sure, a stoolie is the worst kind of a rat, but if you squeeze him, all the grapevine gossip comes out, and that's what you work on. But, of course, you wouldn't know that.”

I shrugged, kept my trap shut. I wouldn't touch a stoolie with a fifty-foot pole.

Saltz brushed his hair with his hand. “Here's something else, I'm going to fool around one more day, then I'm cracking down. Somebody isn't talking enough!”

“Meaning me?”

“Could be. I've talked to her folks, former schoolmates, and always end up with the same stupid spiel—'Anita was just a kid.' You don't have to be over twenty-one to be a crook. And no matter how they do it in Hollywood or in books, in life nobody murders without a damn good reason. I'm going to find that motive!”

“I'm all for it. Did you trace the cab that picked her up?”

Saltz nodded. “Nothing there. Driver claims she only took the cab far as 59th Street. Probably took the bus across town. What you been doing all day, bird-brain?”

“Nothing much,” I said, weighing my words. “My office was ransacked early this morning; nothing missing or...”

“Why didn't you tell me that?” Saltz roared.

“Don't crowd me, that's what I'm doing—now. Rest of the day I spent on another case,” I lied. “By the by, the police ever have anything on a Marion Lodge, also known as Mary Long? She was a call-girl a year or two ago. Dead uncle's estate is looking for her, she came into some property.”

Saltz grunted a few words into his desk phone, then took out a package of mints, tossed one at me. “You stink like a saloon. Looking for the killers in a bottle?”

“Never tell where they might be?” I said, chewing on the candy. We didn't speak for a few minutes, Saltz staring at me as though I wasn't there, then he said, “Darling, I find out you're holding out on me, I'll give you a chance to try your judo against a couple guys with rubber hoses. Remember that.”

His heavy neck would be almost perfect to try out my new hold. I didn't know why I disliked the jerk, but I sure did. I said, “Have to ask the professor what to do in a case like that.”

His phone rang. He listened for a moment, then hung up. “A Marion Lodge was arrested for hustling in 1950. Released on a thousand-dollar bail. Case dismissed without coming to trial.”

“Why?”

“Usual reasons—witnesses changed their minds, refused to talk.”

“What was her home address?”

Saltz shook his head. “Knock off. That was two years ago or over, she wouldn't be there any more.”

I got up. Saltz said, “Keep in touch with me.”

I said I would and at the door he said, “This might interest you, couple thugs tried to burglarize Anita's folks' home this afternoon. Old man scared them off with a shotgun blast. Interesting?”

“Another piece for the jig-saw. Interesting to you?”

“Saltz and Darling, the TV quiz kids! Get out of here.”