Читать книгу Crang Mysteries 4-Book Bundle - Jack Batten - Страница 30

AT FOUR O’CLOCK I bought Annie a drink at the bar across the street from the CBC Radio building.

“Down to thirty-two minutes and a bit,” she said, “and still cutting and splicing.”

I was of two minds about mentioning my call on Grimaldi. Clam up on the failure or discuss it with Annie in the hope that talk might lead to a more inspired approach? The choice became academic. Annie was so high on coffee and work that the topic of my adventures on the Kingsway passed only fleetingly through the conversation. Annie was giving herself a thirty-minute break from editing the tapes of her interviews with the movie people. She planned to stick with them till twelve that night and Tuesday night.

“Get another ten minutes out,” she said. Her voice made her sound wired. “Better than a rough edit but not quite finished product, and Wednesday morning I’ll play it for the show’s producer. With all fingers crossed.”

I cheered Annie on in her endeavours and at four-thirty I drove back to my house. It was quiet when I shut the front door behind me. I went up the stairs, turned to the living room and walked into a rousing welcome from Tony Flanagan.

He socked me on the jaw.

I lost consciousness for a couple of seconds, long enough to hit the floor and settle. I raised my head. Sol Nash was sitting in my armchair and had his shiny black loafers propped on a leather footstool. Pamela gave me the footstool the first year we were married. She thought a lawyer was someone who needed to put up his feet in the evening and smoke a pipe. She bought me a rack of pipes. Tony Flanagan was standing between Sol and me with his fists raised to deliver another haymaker. Tony was wearing his straw hat. I was on my back on the floor. Of the three of us, I cut the least dignified figure.

I said to Tony, “I thought we might have arrived at a non-aggression pact yesterday.”

“This here’s business,” Tony said. “Get up.”

“Are you going to hit me again?”

“Unless Mr. Nash says never mind.”

I rubbed my jaw. It hurt when it moved. But conversation seemed a wiser alternative to standing up to Tony’s hands of cement.

“Well, Solly,” I said to Nash, “we’re awaiting your instructions.”

Nash said, “If he don’t get on his feet, kick him.”

He was talking to Tony.

I stood up and Tony fooled me. I expected him to lead with a straight right. It was the punch that knocked me down the first time when he had surprise in his favour. I stuck out a quick left jab and tucked my head inside my shoulder to avoid his right. Tony swung a left hook and it landed high on my right cheek before I could block it. Tony didn’t need the element of surprise. I fell down again.

After a few seconds I sat up. My head was ringing.

I said, “How’d you guys get in here?”

“Two queers and a dog let us in,” Nash said. “Get up.”

“Hospitable, didn’t you find?” I said, not moving. “The queers and the dog?”

Nash said, “Tony, this guy doesn’t quit with the chatter and stand up, put your boots to his knees.”

I held my sitting position on the floor.

Tony scrunched his face into a little-boy look.

“I dunno, Mr. Nash,” he said.

“You nuts?” Nash said. He bristled in his chair. My chair. “Give the guy your foot and let’s do the job here.”

“I ain’t no kick-boxer,” Tony said. His voice had a wounded sound.

“You ain’t Rocky Graziano either,” Nash said.

“Get up, Crang,” Tony said to me.

I said from the floor, “Safer down here.”

“Kick him,” Nash said.

“Shit, Mr. Nash, I box guys,” Tony said. “Kicking people’s for somebody had no training.”

“Good point, Tony,” I said. “Kicking isn’t legit.”

“Shut up,” Nash said to me. To Tony he said, “Stick your shoes in the man. Make him hurt.”

“Jesus, Mr. Nash,” Tony said.

He turned to his left, addressing the plea to Nash in the chair. Tony’s attention was diverted from me. So was Nash’s. I reached for a leg of the footstool with my right hand and pushed off the floor with my left. My head was light and buzzing, but my legs and arms felt able to do their stuff. I lifted from the floor and swung the footstool at Tony’s head. He turned toward me at the moment I swung, and the stool came at his chin like an uppercut.

The stool made a cracking sound when it connected with Tony’s jaw. Tony looked shocked. His straw hat rose off his head and spun three loops in the air. Tony stopped looking shocked. His eyes shut and he fell against the small table beside the chair that Nash was sitting in. Tony landed on the floor. The table tipped over and came to rest on his shoulders. He didn’t notice. Tony was out cold. He wouldn’t be fretting over the morality of punching versus kicking in the immediate future.

The impact with Tony’s jaw had snapped the footstool in two pieces. The larger piece flew across the room and thumped into a row of hardcover American novels on a shelf. I held the other piece in my hand, one leg of the stool. Not much of a weapon. I dropped it.

Nash had his left hand on the arm of the chair and was pulling himself forward while his right hand reached behind him. The man was going for the gun that spread people’s brains on walls. Forewarned is forearmed. Nash’s gun was tucked in a holster at the small of his back. The motion of reaching for it flipped up his suit jacket. I leaned over Nash’s shoulders and yanked the jacket above his head. My yank lifted his hand away from the holster. The hand came up empty.

“Fucking asshole,” Nash said. It was a businesslike mutter.

I pulled until the jacket bent Nash’s head level with his knees. A wallet fell to the floor from his inside pocket. I gave the jacket one more tug. It didn’t tear. Good tailoring. Nash’s head under the jacket developed resistance. It held firm a foot from the floor and began to rise up. He was strong, Solly the Snozz, and as his head and shoulders rose, his right hand was returning to the gun.

I threw a short punch with my left hand at where I thought Nash’s face was located beneath the jacket. The punch caught his skull and stung my hand more than it rocked his head. Nash grunted and his right hand kept moving for the gun.

Nash chopped at my legs with his left hand. I grabbed it and twisted the wrist. It was as thick and rubbery as a bologna. My twist slipped in its flesh.

His right hand found the gun. I dropped his left wrist. He brought the gun out of its holster. I raised my left knee. Nash’s head was still covered by his jacket. He reached up to shake it off with his left hand. The gun came around Nash’s body. I pushed forward with my knee. Nash had the gun pointed to the left, moving toward my stomach. His head came free of the jacket. My knee was aimed at his right hand and I lunged hard. My knee caught his hand and the gun and pinned them both against the arm of the chair. Solly made a noise like it hurt.

“Drop the goddamn gun,” I said. My voice sounded loud. It wasn’t natural to scream in one’s own living room.

My knee pressed deep into Nash’s hand. He dropped the goddamn gun. I picked it up and stepped away from the chair into the centre of the room.

Sol Nash looked at me with the almost-black eyes.

“I got a message for you,” he said. His suit jacket was rumpled, his black hair mussed, and his right hand looked red and sore. His sangfroid seemed to be intact.

I said, “CN Telegraph’s still in business.”

I had a firm grip on the gun and pointed it at Nash’s chest. The gun didn’t feel right. My acquaintance with handguns was limited to holding them in court while I examined and cross-examined witnesses. The guns were trial exhibits that the police had allegedly taken from clients of mine who were facing armed-robbery charges. I’d never pulled a trigger in anger or out of any other compelling motive. Sol Nash’s gun, the one in my hand, seemed without the heft of the weapon that Tony Flanagan had described the day before. I put a tighter grip on it.

“Message is,” Nash said, “Mr. Grimaldi says you should butt out. Permanent, he means.”

“For that you need Tony’s fists?”

“Make sure you get the idea.”

“Maybe Grimaldi didn’t get my idea,” I said. “I put a transaction to him this morning of mutual benefit to all parties.”

“You tried to squeeze him,” Nash said. “Thing like that, Mr. Grimaldi don’t take from nobody. You especially, guy like you.”

Nash waved a hand as if something unpleasant had come to the notice of his ample nostrils.

“A guy like who?” I said.

“Guy doesn’t show respect,” Nash said. “Comes to a man’s house, no appointment, nothing, man’s brother’s visiting, and shit, you’re looking to jam Mr. Grimaldi.”

Nash crossed his legs in the chair, as casual as if the gun in my hand was part of the furniture.

“Reason Mr. Grimaldi sent me,” he said, “you forget everything you said about a deal. None of that bullshit, and Mr. Grimaldi wants the papers you said you took out of the office.”

“Or what?”

“I’ll slam you.”

“That didn’t work right here this afternoon.”

“Slam you when you’re not looking. Professional.”

“Without Tony?”

Nash turned his flat gaze on the floor. Tony’s chest heaved and little bubbles of saliva floated out of his slightly opened mouth. Eyes shut, fists clenched, he was as immobile as the end table that lay across his shoulders.

“Kid was a good driver,” Nash said.

I clutched the gun and kept it aimed at Nash’s breastbone. It still felt insubstantial.

“Something’s wrong with your gun,” I said.

“Safety’s on,” Nash said. “Won’t fire that way.”

I looked at the gun and back to Nash.

I said, “How come you haven’t tried to take it away from me?”

“Figured you knew how to push it off, the safety.”

“You figured incorrectly.”

“Dumb fuck.”

“You or me?”

Nash didn’t uncross his legs. I held on to the gun.

Nash said, “What’re you talking about, gun’s got something wrong?”

“Too light,” I said. “Tony down there told me you carry a cannon.”

“Sometimes.”

“Blows holes through people.”

“That ain’t it, gun in your hand,” Nash said. “Forty-four Mag you’re talking about.” His voice had grown instructive. “It’s for when I go see tough guys. Guys who I need to make an impression on, you understand what I’m saying.”

I didn’t know whether to feel insulted or relieved.

“That one you took off me, that gun,” Nash went on, “it’s for pussycats.”

I said, “One thing about us pussycats, we land on our feet.”

Nash shrugged.

“You got lucky,” he said. “Gimme back the gun.”

“You’ll shoot me.”

“Not till somebody says I should.”

I turned the gun over in my hand.

“How do you unload this thing?” I said.

“Little switch at the bottom of the barrel, thing your hand’s on, push it.”

A clip of six bullets slid from the barrel. I flicked them out of the clip, put the bullets in my jeans pocket, and handed Nash his unloaded gun.

“You bluffing about the papers?” he said, returning the gun to its holster. “The ones Mr. Grimaldi wants back? You really got them?”

“I’ve got them,” I said. “In a secure place.”

“No place’s secure somebody wants them bad enough.”

Nash was right. The invoices and Harry Hein’s computer printouts were still in the trunk of the Volks. I wouldn’t call that secure. I could transfer them to a safety deposit box. Or maybe secrete them down the hollow in the third tree from the left in the park across the street.

“I’ll tell you something,” Nash said. “Mr. Grimaldi’s screwing up here. Between you and me, there’s too much commotion going on. You, shit, you’re not worth all the jacking around.”

“Sol,” I said, “you can’t keep buttering me up this way.”

“I’m talking to you confidential,” Nash said. He uncrossed his leg. “You oughta go away quiet on this thing. It isn’t like you’re arguing a parking ticket for some guy. This is something where there’s serious money involved and certain people’s jobs.”

“Yours, for instance.”

“Yeah.”

“And part of your job was to take the documents back to Grimaldi.”

“Yeah.”

“You failed.”

“For now.”

As Nash spoke, he bent from the chair, picked up the wallet on the floor with his left hand, and came up fast with the back of his right hand. It was aimed at the side of my face. Nash wasn’t quick enough. Maybe advancing age, maybe he’d underestimated me. I hadn’t underestimated him. Instinct or fear had me suspecting a snaky move from Sol, and as he swung, I slipped inside the arc of the punch and it passed over the top of my head. I backed away and held my hands in front of me.

“Don’t do that again, okay?” I said.

“Just so’s you know this ain’t over,” Nash said. He was holding his jacket by the lapels and shaking it. “Fucking wrinkles.” He buttoned the jacket and patted its pockets. Apparently our conference had concluded.

“What about Tony?” I asked.

“You put him to sleep,” Nash said. “You wake him up.”

He walked to the top of the stairs.

“Tell the kid he’s fired,” Nash said. His feet made thumping noises on the stairs and he slammed the front door.

I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Same face, marginally smarter. I filled the sink with cold water and submerged my head. George Raft used to give himself the same treatment in the movies after somebody punched him. The cold water hurt the sore spots on my cheek and jaw. Or it might have been Jimmy Cagney who soaked his face. One of those guys I shouldn’t pick as a role model.

I rinsed a washcloth in the water and spread it on Tony Flanagan’s forehead. He was holding firm on the living-room floor. I lifted his head, slipped a pillow under it, and raised the end table off his shoulders. Tony’s jaw looked whole and unbroken, but I didn’t envy him the headache that would greet his awakening.

Out in the kitchen, I poured three inches of Wyborowa in a glass with ice and took it to the chair that Sol Nash had so recently vacated. I sipped, watched a vein throb in Tony’s neck, and contemplated my lame try at putting pressure on Charles Grimaldi. I’d disturbed him sufficiently to send Sol and Tony on a mission to retrieve the invoices but not enough to make him cut a bargain with me. Hadn’t nudged him close to a deal. The vodka nipped at the inside of my mouth. Tony’s punches must have torn something in there. I’d take another crack at Grimaldi. Give him an irresistible reason to trade with me. This time out, I’d be sneaky clever. Somehow put Grimaldi in a corner. Tony gave off blubbering noises and opened his eyes. I swallowed a long tug of vodka. Tony’s eyes were glassy, but he managed to fix his gaze on me.

“Here’s the good news, Tony,” I said. “Sol thinks you’re a hell of a driver. The bad news is he fired you.”

Tony got on his feet without a wobble.

“Fired?” he repeated.

“That’s what the man said.”

“Guess I should of kicked you,” Tony said.

He asked for a drink of water, and when he finished it, he left my apartment. He was wearing his straw hat.