Kaleidoscope Page 17

  First he had to find something else.

  Chapter ten

  Heat—trouble with people who are not carnies.

  Fist Carlton’s dark mood fit the sky which hung heavy and filled with soot over Cincinnati’s malarial basin. A number of things had conspired to put Bladehorn’s legbreaker out of sorts. The Duesenberg, for one, had a punctured tire, which meant that Fist was reduced to manual labor under the scathing indictment of his boss’s inspection. When Mr. Bladehorn wasn’t happy, no one was happy. Oliver Bladehorn had only just received the second telegraph from his butterfly-in-the-making, Jack Romaine, hinting at unspecified information related to Alex Goodman that, surely, was bound to be solid.

  “‘Solid’? Bullshit!” Bladehorn raged. “Who the hell does that son of a bitch think he’s fooling?”

  “Let me at him,” Fist offered. “I’ll show him what’s solid.”

  “D’you need reminding that it was your responsibility to keep my wife on a leash to begin with?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Cretin. You’d done your job, I wouldn’t have had my property stolen to begin with!”

  The more frustrated Bladehorn got, the more he harassed, belittled and pestered his thug cum chauffeur. So Fist had more than his usual store of reasons for wanting a reunion with Jack Romaine.

  Finally, Bladehorn had dismissed him for the day. Fist was grateful to be on his way home. He’d taken a pullcar down from the Hills, switching to another streetcar crowded with merchants, tradesman and stevedores on passage through the Basin’s filth before reaching the always-clean markets of Over the Rhine. His own people lived here, solid German stock who since the war had become suspicious of outsiders, insulating themselves in neat little apartments and tidy communal quadrangles.

  No guinea would get to you, here.

  Fist passed a streetside cheese vendor and walked another block to turn between two buildings whose facing walls rose nearly windowless for four red-bricked stories on either side of a narrow alley.

  The alley ran to a dead end at a solitary fire escape which was where Fist was headed. His apartment was at the rear of the tenement, up four flights and down a shotgun hall, its solitary window offering the only view of the bounding alley, but Fist would probably have been unable to recall the last occasion on which he entered his apartment by its street-facing door. For years he instead unlocked the heavy gate barring entry to the alley, relocked the gate, and then climbed the fire escape four stories to reach a landing at the heavy and double-locked door allowing entry to his modest apartment.

  There was a serious purpose behind the unorthodox entry. Fist Carlton had no friends; anyone approaching him from an interior door or hallway he regarded as a potential enemy. By using the fire-escape and by gating the alley, Fist was not required to meet anyone. Carlton did not want neighbors to know his comings or goings. He never spoke to anyone from the tenement. If he met someone loitering beside the alley he simply broke a face or an arm and they invariably failed to return.

  In earlier years, kids would scale the locked fence to throw catcalls or sometimes bottles at Carlton’s landing. Fist tolerated those indignities stoically. Kids at play were more valuable than canaries in a coal mine. You didn’t get ambushed with kids around. Not even in Cincinnati.

  Fist had barely entered the alley when he heard a cat yowl from the fire escape. It was not a housecat, or at least this tom had never entered Fist’s home. In fact, it had taken him weeks just to coax the animal to his landing, each evening after work teasing the cat with some snack or another until it was hooked.

  “Can’t wait, can ya?” the big man smiled.

  A four-storey climb with his heavy coat and implements reminded Fist daily of his limitations. It was getting hard to mount those improvised stairs, but he managed, finally reaching the fourth floor’s landing and the door that opened directly into his kitchen. The cat was waiting.

  “Git,” Fist kicked but the cat was already scampering from range.

  The landing’s door was set in a metal frame, secured top and bottom with deadbolts and an interior drawbar. Took two more keys to throw the bolts before Fist stepped into his kitchen. He immediately reset the door’s deadbolts and threw down the interior drawbar. The cat complaining steadily outside as Fist made sure his home was safe. This was his habit. His routine.

  There wasn’t much to check—the kitchen opened onto a single room which doubled as bedroom and parlor. Nothing disturbed there. He inspected the loo briefly. A real bathroom, with facilities. No invasion to be discerned in the shitter.

  Carlton then lumbered on squeaking shoes to peer through the peephole augered into the apartment’s also-reinforced front door. No threat apparent in the immediate hallway. Fist released another pair of deadbolts, keeping the safety chain engaged as he cracked the door open for a view down the corridor. Nothing to see but a shotgun of peeling wallpaper and unwashed floor.

  A gentle release of tension on the chain as Fist released the safety. The door swinging open to reveal an empty milk bottle perched on the frontier between his apartment and the hallway. Fist did not touch the bottle; instead he stooped to ensure that the ring of dust gathered at its base was undisturbed. Satisfied, Bladehorn’s feared henchman then closed the parlor door, secured the locks and safety chain and only then discarded his coat, hat, truncheons and revolver in favor of the more domestic routines at day’s end.

  The cat by now pawing at the kitchen door.

  “I know, I know.”

  Fist rolled up shirtsleeves to expose forearms the size of logs. He lumbered back to the kitchen, bent over an icebox to retrieve a package butcher-wrapped inside. It was Fist’s habit to feed the cat on the landing outside his kitchen door. Once inside Fist did not like to unlock the kitchen door. More secure to tempt the cat from the window.

  Fist had armored the window even more exotically than the door. The window itself was ordinary; a pair of bright brass keeps released the glass. The real protection came from a grate of steel mounted outside the window, a moveable grid set in a heavy iron frame welded directly to the fire-escape. The grate itself was a quiver of steel-pointed bars made to raise or lower in sleeves set into the window’s sill so that it functioned like a portcullis protecting a castle’s gate. No intruder could force his way through Fist’s armored window, but he could easily raise it to defend the landing against any intruder.

  Or just to be entertained by the cat.

  Fist raised the window first and a stir of air wafted through the grating. A padlock and bar secured the grate’s vertical bars in their iron sleeves. Fist knelt at the window to release the lock, the ungrateful kitty jabbing a tentative paw through those iron spikes in an attempt to reach the food now maddeningly displayed on the sill.

  Fist raked a ring of keys viciously across the grate; the cat spit and backed off. Carlton released the padlock’s hasp with a chuckle and pulled the bar free.

  “Not long, now,” Fist promised and took a grip of the grate’s iron frame.

  Even for a big man it took a shove to raise the portcullis clear of the window. A sawed off broomstick propped beneath to keep the grid raised.

  “Here y’are,” Fist displayed the goodies inside the butcher’s paper.

  The cat snarling frustration with the scent of salmon.

  “You want it, you gotta come to the sill.”

  A short leap took the cat from the landing to the window’s wide sill. Fist swatted the cat with a huge scarred fist. Just slapped the tom off the sill and back onto the fire escape.

  A howl, then, the cat impotent and spitting. Fist laughing from his redoubt. Pleased with his entertainment.

  “Stupid kitty.”

  Carlton played the game a while longer, tease and swat, tease and swat, frustrating the tomcat with the salmon. Fist was enjoying himself, really he was. He would not have been pleased to know that his recreation was being observed.

  A rope anchored on a vent atop the building’s roof supported
Arno Becker as he hung flat against the building’s brick face directly above Fist’s now-open window. Becker could see the cat and mouse game below, the cat leaping to reach the salmon, Fist’s arm emerging to swat the animal off the sill. It was not the first time that Arno had seen this game.

  Becker was close enough to taste the brass smell of fish on his tongue, but even though his feet were now on top of the metal tongue which framed Carlton’s grating, Arno maintained a tight grip on the rope which, still, supported his weight.

  You had to be patient.

  Finally, Fist Carlton decided he’d played enough.

  “Supper for kitty,” he abdicated abruptly and extended a meaty arm to drop the salmon on the landing outside.

  That’s when Becker let go the rope, his body’s weight snapping the slender stick below and driving the portcullis like a guillotine into the windowsill.

  A violent concussion slammed Fist to his knees. He felt nothing, at first. Something had jerked him back from the window and his head, he realized, had slammed into the sill. There was the taste of pennies in his mouth, that was all. At first.

  But then he tried to pull back into the protection of his fortress apartment—

  “WHHHAAAAAA?!!”

  That’s when Fist realized that his arm was crucified onto his windowsill.

  He screamed. The tomcat screamed.

  A thump of feet and a body swung into view at the still-open window. Suspended in midair outside.

  “’Lo, Fist.”

  Arno Becker smiling from the other side of the guillotine.

  “BASTARD!!”

  Fist lunging with his unbroken arm for Becker’s throat. Arno trapped that arm easily. Snapped a handcuff over the thick wrist and then secured the other side of the bracelet to the landing’s railing.

  Both of Carlton’s arms were now trapped, stretched, and exposed.

  Fist screamed again. Pain, this time, as tendons and connective tissue to the brain and back overcame nature’s first, insulating provision against trauma.

  Then he was cursing. Cursing Becker, God, Bladehorn. Cursing his mother.

  Arno smiling. Patiently. Waiting for a pause. Finally, when his victim was merely sobbing—

  “Where is Alex Goodman, Fist?”

  “Wha—? Who?!”

  Becker snapped a sap down hard over the pinioned arm.

  “AAAAAGHHHHHH!!!”

  Another string of blasphemy. Then he was begging. Begging and threatening, alternately.

  “Lemme go…I’LL KILL YOU, BECKER!! Lemme go! GOD!”

  Arno inhaling the aroma of the salmon pinioned along with Carlton’s shattered arm.

  “Alex Goodman. Where is he?”

  “I…I don’ know. Nobody knows!”

  “Not what I want to hear,” Becker chided.

  “I can’t tell ya what I don’ FUGGIN’ KNOW!”

  “Then were is Jack Romaine? Hmm? Master Jack, don’t tell me he’s off on his own. Bladehorn must have sent him someplace.”

  Fist shook his head.

  “No…NO!”

  Arno stuffed the blackjack back into his jacket and came out with his knife.

  “What you want left hanging, Fist?”

  “You know what Bladehorn’ll do duh me! You KNOW!”

  “I know what I will do, and I gotta tell you, Fist, nobody’s gonna hire a mutt without mitts, you follow me? And I’d love to have these fists, really I would. Mount the pair of ’em over my fireplace. If I had a fireplace.”

  “Oh, God….”

  Arno placing his blade on the handcuffed arm.

  “Awright, awright!”

  Fist’s forehead collapsed briefly in the blood now pooling at his window.

  “…Boss gave him a train ticket, that’s all I know. Someplace near Tampa.”

  Becker took a slice out of flesh.

  “OH GOD!!”

  “WHERE?” Arno demanded.

  “Jesus, ‘Kaleidoscope’! Yeah, that’s it—Kaleidoscope, that’s the place. South of Tampa, that’s all I know, swear to Christ!”

  “You don’t have to swear, Fist—”

  Arno smiled.

  “I always know when a man’s telling me the truth.”

  The tomcat hissing now from the fire escape.

  “How hungry you ’spose he really is?” Arno wondered aloud and leaned over to slice a piece off the salmon.

  “Wh—what?” Fist tried to pull away as Arno smeared the salmon over his shattered arm.

  “The fuck—? Fuck, you doin’?”

  And then more choice cuts taken from the kitty’s meal to smear on Fist’s handcuffed arm.

  “You don’ hafta do this!”

  Fist’s breathing becoming labored, sporadic.

  “You don’t!”

  Becker wiped his blade on his corduroys.

  “Once an alley cat gets a taste, what I hear—? He just keeps on gnawing.”

  Arno Becker lowered himself to the fire escape below. Fist Carlton howling curses and imprecations from above, but there was no one to hear.

  There were no children in the alley.

  Chapter eleven

  The Fix—the grease, the patch, the bribe.

  Night had fallen with a harvest moon by the time Tommy Speck wiped his feet on the horsehair mat just inside Kaleidoscope’s Western Union.

  “Hiya, HighWire.”

  Addressing himself to the withered old coot whose fingers tapped code, apparently, even when he was asleep.

  The old man rousing from a stolen slumber.

  “Anything snappin’?” Speck climbed a stool.

  “Deader than a drunk’s dick,” the operator replied sourly.

  “Just got back from Tampa myself,” Tommy confided, as though it were the greatest trick since Lindy’s crossing. “Some of the acts’re beddin’ early. Guess who I saw?”

  “Couldn’t hazard.”

  “Mel Dodson—remember Mel?”

  “Worked for the man,” the Union man affirmed. “Took a mile of railroad cars to pack in all the acts. A walkin’ mile.”

  “Some show,” Tommy whistled admiration.

  “‘Dodson’s World Fair Shows’.” The old trouper suppressed a smile. “Class act, all the way around.”

  “Boy a’howdy.”

  “Never used a net, neither.”

  “Hell, no!” Tommy bristled. “Not you, Wire.”

  “Not anybody on that show,” the old-timer amended gruffly. “So how are things with ol’ Mel?”

  “They finally made him full partner,” Tommy reported.

  “Sumbitch.”

  “Yep. Fair payback fer bein’ a general agent all these years.”

  “Then again life’s hard and you die.”

  “I heard that,” Tommy dropped from the ledge of his stool. “Well, if you don’t have anything fer me to deliver, I reckon I’ll be—”

  About that time the telegraph chattered its salutation.

  CQCQCQCQ….

  “Hold up,” HighWire swiveled back to key a go-ahead and Morse chattered like firecrackers over the wire.

  Harry scrawled the message, double-checked his tape.

  “Anybody we know?”

  “The new fella. Brodie.” HighWire was reaching for an envelope.

  “Ya mean Jack? Jack Romaine?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I can get it to him,” Tommy offered brightly.

  “It’s marked ‘Personal’.”

  “He’s laid up. Got the squirts.”

  Harry frowned over the telegram.

  “Does say immediate delivery.”

  “Harry, I take people their wires alla time.”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “How much is the damage?”

  “Pretty steep, three fifty.”

  Tommy produced a Jackson.

  “He can pay me back.”

  “All right, then. If yer sure it’s copasetic.”

  “I’ll run ’er over right now.”

>   Tommy sneaked the message from the old man’s hand like a pickpocket and skipped for the door. He was barely outside the telegrapher’s tin shed when a pair of headlights speared him from behind. The dwarf turned to face the glare. A touring car had him crosshaired and he could tell it wasn’t Doc’s.

  Tommy shielded his eyes against the running lights.

  “This Kaleidoscope?” a disembodied voice floated from somewhere behind the wheel.

  “Who’s askin’?” Tommy stepped out of the spotlight.

  Stars swam before his eyes. He didn’t see the driver leave the car, but he heard the door open, all right. Shoes digging into soft sand.

  Tommy backed away instinctively. A man emerged finally from silhouette. As Tommy’s eyes adjusted he could make out a few details. A cityslicker suit. Shirt open at the collar. A flat-brimmed fedora. He was taller than your average rube. Hair and face looked white as chalk, but that could be the light.

  A cigarette glowed briefly in the visitor’s hand. A casual inhalation before he flicked it hissing to the sand. Embers following that flight like a miniature comet.

  “I’m looking for a man,” Arno Becker looked down on Tommy.

  “Don’t think I’m yer type,” Speck replied.

  “Movie star looks but cheap threads,” Becker went on as if Tommy had not said a word. “Low quarter shoes. Dark hair, early thirties. His real name’s Jack Romaine; I don’t know what he’s using down here.”

  The Packard purring like a tiger.

  “Sorry,” Tommy shook his head. “Dudn’t ring a bell.”

  “That a fact?” Arno reached into his pocket-—

  And pulled out a five dollar bill.

  “Hey, buddy,” Tommy waved him off. “I don’t know any movie stars and I don’t know this Romanian or whoever the fuck he is.”

  Becker leaned down to stuff the bill inside Tommy’s shirt.

  “More where this came from. You see Mr. Romaine, or your memory improves, let me know.”