Ed Lacy - Lead With Your Left

For no reason I suddenly saw the old flat, Mom shrilling, “You're trying to kill my baby!” Her gray hair all wild-looking and her face so pale.

She had to say “baby.” And Dom Franzino rubbing his bald head, embarrassed as he said, “But Mrs. Wintino, he ain't no baby. He's a natural welter and going on eighteen. Ten amateur fights with nine kayos. Nine kayos, Mrs. Wintino. Dave can take a man out with his left. Fans go for a puncher, go nuts over a left-hook artist. And his baby puss won't hurt none. He'll make a fortune, a—”

“Killing my baby,” Mom moaned, wringing her hands, her face looking as if it was coming apart at the wrinkles. “No... never!”

Dom stared at me as if asking what the hell I'd got him into. Then Pop coughed slightly, said in Italian, “Mr. Franzino, my wife is becoming sick. We will talk this over, let you know our decision.”

I grinned at the darkness. Two weeks later I was in the army. Mom used to cry about me getting drafted, now she was relieved. My left screwed up the army for me, never left the States—spent all my time on a service boxing team in Salt Lake City, fighting a few bootleg pro bouts for the hell of it.

I turned over again and got comfortable. Mary was really sleeping now. I told myself, okay, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Boxers like Robinson, the Kid, Olson, would have cut you to pieces. Of course if you ever managed to hit them, just one real clout... That's over, never was. And in the morning Mary will feel better. I should have phoned her, could have done it easily enough. Forget all this wind. All I should be thinking About is finding who killed Ed Owens. Think about that and only that.

It was a little after two in the afternoon. Danny Hayes and I had returned to the precinct house from talking to a shop owner who claimed a couple of blouses had been lifted from his counters. He was a big help, all he could say was, “It was a couple of tall women. They came in while I was busy and walked out again. All I remember is they were tall.” He didn't expect us to do anything, was merely reporting it for his insurance claim. We'd just parked in front of the station house when Lieutenant Reed, in charge of the Detective Squad, and Captain Lampkin, the boss of the precinct, came running down the old brick steps, jumped into our squad car as Lampkin said, “Killing. West End and Seventy-eighth. Stick-up. Get the siren working.” Lampkin was a big sloppy square who always talked like a teletype message.

Danny was driving and it was kind of cool for May so he was wearing the dirty trench coat that showed off his thick shoulders—made him look like something off a TV screen, except they never have colored detectives on TV. He made it pretty fast but Danny can't wheel a car like I can.

There were two radio cars plus the usual afternoon crowd of curious housewives when we got there. It was one of these old but still ritzy big houses, seven- and eight-room apartments. The body was at the entrance to the delivery alley that led to the back of the house, a plump man in a worn suit, the frayed collar on his white shirt and the dirty tie all bloody. One foot was bent far under the body in a position that would have hurt like hell if he'd been alive. He was wearing heavy socks with the ends of gray winter underwear stuck in them, high black shoes that needed resoling. There was the newspaper with the picture of a ball game over his face and above it thick grayish hair and an old sweat-stained brown _hat a few feet from his head. When Reed pulled back the paper this puffy face with some red veins in the long nose stared up at us with mild surprise.

All his pockets were turned out, the inside pocket torn. There was a torn wallet, a crumpled pack of butts, keys, a bulky old lighter, and a pack of mints scattered on the cement floor near his body.

The beat cop, an old beerhound, slipped Lampkin a halfhearted salute as he told him, “I found him at six minutes before two, Walter—Captain. Only witness we got so far is this” —he jerked a big thumb at a frightened young colored fellow in work pants and a torn army jacket—“who says he was coming out after delivering an order, groceries, when he seen the stiff. He yelled and I come a-running from the corner.”

“God is me witness I never saw him before! I know nothing except the man is stretched on the bloody stone!” the delivery man said nervously. He spoke with a kind of British accent.

Lieutenant Reed gave Danny the eye. Danny went over and said softly, “Relax, homie, and tell me exactly what you saw. And don't worry, you're in no trouble. What island you from?”

“Trinidad, and I'm here all legal and—”

“Sure,” Dan said gently. “My old man was from Barbados. Let's you and me step over here and talk a little.”

Captain Lampkin pushed his cap back as he scratched his head. “Homicide will be here soon, along with the rest of the boys. Touch anything, Buddy?”

“Now, Walter, long as I been a cop. Nobody has touched anything. I just spread the paper over his face. But see under his coat there, on the left side, that's a hip holster. Probably one of them little foreign automatics. Want me to pull the coat back, take his gun?”

“No, we'll wait,” Lampkin said, taking off his cap to scratch his fat head. “Yeah, does look like a holster. But I wouldn't pick him for a punk or a hood.”

Lieutenant Reed waited politely for Lampkin to stop talking, then quietly told me to get the janitor and start questioning the people in the house. The superintendent was no janitor, he had a regular little office with a typewriter and a desk. He was an old Swede wearing a starched collar and a worn blue suit. He said he was in his office when he heard somebody yelling police and came out to find the beat cop with the delivery man. He'd never seen the stiff before. I got his name down, along with the owners of the building and I was pretty excited—this wasn't the first dead man I'd seen, but it was the first gun killing. I found a couple of maids who'd been using the laundry room and didn't know a thing, but I put them in my notebook.

The alley began to fill up fast as the routine went into full swing. Some big cluck from Homicide was there, looking very important, a heavy-set square whose suit was too small— probably didn't know yet that big men can't buy bargain clothes. He had a fat baby mouth and a necklace of chins. The sonofabitch put me in the mood to pop him, and the rest of the men laughing, when he first saw me and asked, “What you doing here, sonny? The super's son?”

When Reed said, “He's one of my squad, Detective Wintino,” this big hunk of blubber did a hammy double-take as he said, “Jeez, he don't look old enough to be a Boy Scout.”

In less than fifteen minutes the photographers and lab men had finished. The stiff Was Edward Owens, a retired cop—he had his Police Benevolent Association card in his wallet, along with a buck and a Chinese laundry ticket. He was working as a messenger for a brokerage house down on Wall Street. His gun, a .38 Police Special, hadn't been used and he'd been killed with one slug through the heart, fired at fairly close range. Reed had a couple of more detectives working and they hadn't found anybody who had heard the shot or noticed anyone in the service entrance. I thought I was going to be stuck going through the apartment houses across the street looking for witnesses, but Lampkin had called downtown for a detail to go to the brokerage house and have everybody there stand still. The Homicide clown decided he'd better go down too and Reed said, “Dave will drive you, he's a speed boy.”

“Regular hot-rod lad, I bet,” Homicide said.

I sirened the car down West End Avenue, then cut over to the West Side Highway. The lump was named Anderson and he chewed on a wad of gum and told me, “All right, Sonny, the guy's long dead, won't make no diff to him if we get downtown in ten minutes or fifty minutes. But it does to me —I want to get there alive.”

“Relax, you're still breathing—or are you?”

“Don't know what the force is coming to, punks like you not old enough to have the milk on your mouth dry or—”

“Fatstuff, you already made too many cracks about my being young. You want to guess ages, get a job in Coney Island.”

He looked me over like he was alone in the car. “Snotty kid, too. Getting so a man—”

“Want to stop the car and see who's the best man?”

“Jeez, I'm not only more than twice your age, Wintino, but... What land of a name is that?”

“It's my name and I like it,” I said, weaving in and out of the highway traffic. We were doing fifty-five and he was so scared he was holding onto the door with one hand and his chins were dancing. I wasn't doing it just to frighten him. Fast driving gives me a bang.

“... But I could also write you up and—”

“Do that. And you know where you can shove it.”

He sighed. “Maybe you're right. Young as you look you must be the mayor's bastard son to be on the force.” He sighed again, tried to calm his nerves by working on his gum. “How do you like this Owens working as a messenger? Goddamn papers always so quick-to say cops are on the take; they ought to do a piece on Owens. But they won't.”

“Probably had a pension of three grand. Hell, I'm only making a couple bucks more than that now.”

Anderson shrugged, nearly put his big feet through the floorboard as I cut around a car. “I could take my pension today but with prices so high, what's the use. Pension is okay if you already got your house paid up, the kids set, no sickness. Only how can you ever get that far ahead on our salary? Wintino... You're the rookie who made the big arrest couple months ago. Sure, I remember now, this drunk parked next to a hydrant and he turned out to be the psycho who knocked off all them women. A lucky collar.”

“Yeah.” Everybody called it pure luck, forgot that if I hadn't been thinking of those four dames with the battered heads all the time, I wouldn't have connected the rusty length of iron pipe in the glove compartment with the women.

I cut across the highway, shot down the ramp to the street as Anderson yelled, “Damnit, you think this has wings?”

There was a radio car parked in front of the office building and as we braked to a stop, the siren still working, a lot of people stopped and I gave my hair a pat as I jumped out. I don't believe in looking sloppy. A well-built, solid-looking cop said to Anderson, “I've been holding an elevator for you. Room 619.” It wasn't hard to spot Anderson for a dick.

The brokerage firm was a suite of three large offices with about a half a dozen stenos pounding typewriters. They all stopped talking when we came in. A couple of them were good-looking. A cop was talking to a tall thin guy wearing a dull gray suit and one of these old-fashioned pop-'em bow ties that had to be at least ten years old. At one time the guy must have been lean and in shape, now he looked shrunken and skinny. His eyes were tired and bloodshot, his features thin, and face wide. His hair was a lousy dye job, jet black. He looked about sixty and judging from the patches of stubble around his long jaw he still didn't know how to shave.

Anderson flashed his badge and so did I, but mine was on my belt. May look corny but I like to have both hands free. The cop nodded at the bag of bones, said, “This is Al Wales.”

“I'm a retired detective. Fact is Ed and I were partners. If you'll step in here,” Wales motioned with his head toward a small office, “I pan give you all the dope you need. We'd also appreciate it if you'd remove the officer from the door and let business go on as usual. You know how it is, looks bad for a house dealing in bonds. Whatever happened to Ed, the dirty bastards who did him in had nothing to do with his job here.”

“The cop stays,” Anderson said. “You in charge here?”

“No, I'm merely a part-time messenger, like Ed is—was. Step into the office and I'll have Mr. Stewart, our manager, join us.”

“We can talk here,” Anderson told him.

“What's the point in making a show?”

“Get this Stewart,” Anderson said, looking around at the stenos. “I'm in a hurry.”

“Don't be a horse's ass!” Wales' voice had been tired but now it turned into a kind of whip. And he seemed to pull himself together. I bet he'd been a rough Oscar in his time. Then he added in a lower voice, “Don't be a fool, they'll yell to City Hall—this isn't any two-bit outfit. Told you it looks bad for business.”

Anderson stared at Wales, trying to decide what he was going to do about it. He decided to do nothing. “Okay, we'll go in the office. Now get this Stewart guy.” He turned to the cop. “But nobody goes out till I tell you.”

The office was four plain chairs around a polished oak table with a clean glass ash tray in the center. There were a couple of framed pictures of apartment houses on the walls. Wales called out something to one of the girls as we went in and Anderson planted his large backside on the table. Wales stood by the door and I glanced out the window: we weren't up high enough for a view of the harbor or anything interesting. A plump joker with crew-cut gray hair, expensive brown pin-stripe suit and a sweet tie, strode into the office. I mean strode, he must have practiced it. The walk matched his salesman face. He said, “Gentlemen! I'm Harris Stewart, office manager. Mr. Wyckoff, president of the firm, is in Washington. This is indeed a terrible piece of news about Mr. Owens. Simply incredible—there's absolutely no point to a robbery.”

“Where was Owens going?” Anderson asked.

“According to the time sheet he checked out at five after one to deliver bonds to a client, a Mr. Jensen McCarthy who lives at 316 West End Avenue. Mr. Owens never delivered the bonds so we—”

“How do you know he didn't?” I asked as Anderson gave me an annoyed look.

“Mr. McCarthy was waiting for them and he phoned a few minutes before you, that is the police, called to tell us the horrible news. Mr. McCarthy was in a hurry to leave for his house in Westhampton and asked where our messenger was. We must assume it was robbery although I can't understand it. Naturally we have a list of the bonds in my office.”

“A guy carrying bonds is robbed and killed,” Anderson said. “What's there hard to understand about that?”

“But the bonds are not negotiable, they're worthless except to the owner,” Stewart said, waving his manicured hands.

“That's right,” this Al Wales put in, “all we carry is mortgages and nonnegotiable general bonds. Of course, assuming this was a robbery and that's what it looks like, whoever killed Ed might have thought he was carrying something worth taking. Must have been an amateur punk.”