Hang by Your Neck Read online

  “Blonde, huh?”

  The slap on the door wasn’t knuckles. The slap on the door was metal on wood and it stopped him in the middle of “Blonde, huh.”

  “You expecting company?” he said.

  “No. You?”

  “No.”

  Metal hit wood again. I opened the door in the midst of the upraised arm of young Adam Polk, the patrolman on the beat, glistening with cop’s buttons and sweat on the forehead and the reverse end of a service revolver like a brandished tomahawk for a pioneer haircut.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “The Inspector—”

  The Inspector came past him. Polk closed the door.

  Chief Inspector Sam Kelcey: spread-shouldered and very tall, maybe six five, frost-white wavy hair over a lithe figure and a tight brown bony face, strong-jawed and smiling. Chief Inspector Sam Kelcey: the man in charge of the many milling people, boss man over Broadway, the guy responsible for law and order along Big Street and its environs—the old White Way, the Gay White Way, the Gray White Way—the street of the pineapple joints and the coconut juice, the cheesecake and the roll collar, the swelled head and the snap brim, the ledger and the scratch sheet, the million-dollar deal over a herring and the fast proposition over draw-one-black; and all the characters: the touts, the books, the crooks, the madams, the madmen, the showgirls, the boygirls, the bad girls, the birdies, the vultures, the gypsies, the dypsies, the doodles, the hard boys, the con boys—the whole commotion.

  “Trouble,” the Inspector said, taking off his hat and gloves. “Johnny, I’ll do what I can for you. I suppose you can square it.”

  “You bet,” Johnny said. “Only what are you talking about?”

  I said, “Just a minute, Inspector. This guy’s drunk.”

  “Pamela Reeves, I’m talking about,” the Inspector said.

  “That’s trouble,” Johnny said. “Any time.”

  “Inspector, the guy’s drunk.”

  “Shut up.”

  Johnny pushed past me. “What about her, Inspector?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “How?”

  “Dead.”

  “What the hell’s going on here? Everybody get bit by the same bug? Or have I got the pink elephants? Maybe she’s in my apartment, too?”

  “That’s right, Johnny.”

  “What?”

  “Wait a minute, Johnny. The guy here says you’re looped. Look, Johnny, you and I have had our little altercations; we’ll probably have a lot more. You’ll square this, I suppose. But right now, take a cop’s advice, in your condition—clam up. If you talk now, you’re talking in front of law, with the wise guy over here, God’s visitation Chambers, as an additional witness. So keep buttoned up till we get downtown, and you’ll call your lawyer—and after that, you do as you please.”

  Johnny the Mick came back to me, patted my arm. “I get it, palzo. I wish to beg your pardon. A thousand times. Five thousand times, if you know what I mean.”

  “Sure, Johnny.”

  “That extra four thousand. That will be the subject of discussion one of these days. Right now I don’t blame you. We’ll make a deal on that, huh? We’ll settle it. You know Johnny.”

  “Sure.”

  “What the hell goes?” the Inspector inquired.

  “Nothing,” Johnny said. “Business deal. Me, I always got business deals. Remember me, Inspector?”

  Kelcey said, “And most of the time you’re on the right side of the ball. Maybe this will make you feel better. I saw your partner tonight; your last business deal panned out perfectly. So, in case you were preparing to lam out of town while a guy was making up his mind, you don’t have to lam. The guy made up his mind—like you wanted him to.”

  Johnny beamed. “Good. Smart. Inspector, I would like to shake your hand.”

  They shook hands, little Johnny and the big Inspector.

  I looked at the young patrolman with the pistol in his hand like it was chewing gum from off the sticky side of the movie seat. “Mr. Polk, this is the modern way of making a pinch. That is, when the pinchee is a big shot. Put the gun away, it’s incongruous. Any minute now, we break into ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ “

  The young cop grinned, embarrassedly.

  The Inspector said, “You wouldn’t like a mouthful of fingers, now would you, peeper?”

  Johnny said, “Lay off him. Don’t worry, Pete.”

  “Me? I’m not worrying. You worry.”

  “Not me. First off, that dame is a nut. Second, she’s got a key to my place. So … have a drink, Inspector. It’s on the house.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  Johnny had a small one. There were only small ones left. “What?”

  “Can I talk to the guy alone, Inspector? For a minute?”

  “No.”

  “Johnny. The bag—it was open when I got there. You had a—I think—”

  “If you’re talking about I had a gun—”

  “Yes. I put it back in there.”

  “I don’t worry. It’s in there? Swell. That’s where it was. That bag wasn’t locked with a key. Look, if this wild woman goes into my place, opens my bag, uses my gun and shoots herself—I still don’t worry. First, I wasn’t there all day, and second, as far as I’m concerned, that bitch is past history. I mean, I’m not breaking out into tears because she’s knocked off, which I would have done, once upon a time. You hear, Inspector? I wasn’t there all day.”

  “You were,” the Inspector said.

  “Who?”

  “You, Chambers. You just came from there.”

  “Now, hold everything, Inspector, if you please.”

  The Inspector pointed at the suitcase. “That the bag?”

  “What bag?” I said.

  “Oh, what bag? That’s the way it’s going to be?”

  “That’s the bag,” Johnny said.

  “Okay, Polk. Take it. And don’t get your fingers all over it. Okay, lads. Let’s go.”

  “Me too?” I said.

  “You bet your sweet life.”

  “Me?”

  We went.

  Downtown to the pokey.

  2

  The night was warm and clear and soft and the stars looked very good in the heavens, especially in retrospect. A clerk took most of our essential statistics and a custodian took most of our personal belongings, and then the night was barren and there were no stars; there was only an ample cell and a cot and a washstand, and a disgruntled private detective in his shirt sleeves, open-collared and pacing.

  I didn’t pace long. I had hardly established the rhythm when the attendant showed up.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said.

  I almost didn’t stop pacing.

  A soft-voiced attendant polite along the corridors of a cell-block is about as improbable as the angel Gabriel doing bebop on an oboe in the corridors of hell. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said.

  The guy was slimmer than a starved soubrette, but tall, bent-over tall, with narrow shoulders and a protruding head and vague blue eyes and a sprout of corn-loose hair waving against his baldness.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked him.

  “Nothing. I’m the man here, sir, the—er—turnkey. I mean, if there’s anything you wish, if there’s anything within reason, please don’t hesitate to call upon me. It is my duty—”

  “Nottiby!” The boom was Kelcey down the corridor. “Nottiby!”

  “Excuse me,” he said, and went away.

  Now I started walking again, and nobody disturbed me. Except me. I didn’t like it one little bit. I didn’t like getting mixed up in this kind of shindig with everything smooth and no strong-arm and a polite inspector and a polite attendant and pleasantries between the arresting officer, an inspector no less, and the suspect, as big a shot as ever was a firecracker in New York. No, sir. Like that you could get hit in the head, and like that you could get caught up in a lot of switches, and like that there could be two ends playing
against the middle, and you could be the middle. Like that, it could very well be.

  I walked up to the bars and I started making with the jangle music in the age-old manner of everybody who has ever been on the wrong side of a cell door.

  “Let me out of here!” I yelled.

  That was silly.

  I went back and I lived alone on the edge of my cot with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, till company came. Company was Kelcey with a stenographer.

  “Let’s get some facts down,” he said. “Let’s get them down, huh?”

  I dictated my facts: I was parked in my tepid bath, reading a newspaper with my feet up over the far edge, when I was startled by Johnny the Mick, dropping in to ask me to run an errand—

  “Startled,” the Inspector said. “What do you mean, startled? The guy didn’t just fall in from nowhere.”

  “Oh, yes, he did, Inspector.”

  “Now, look, beetle-head.” He snapped his thumb at the stenographer. “Strike that out.” He started again. “Now, look, Mr. Chambers, how, exactly, did Mr. Mikvah make his entrance? Let’s do it in order. He rang your bell and—”

  “No, Inspector. He just dropped in while I was taking my bath.”

  “You mean you had left your door open? Were you expecting someone?”

  “No, Inspector—twice. If you will recollect, Inspector, our Johnny has a facility with locks.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, yes.”

  “He just did his magic on the lock, and there he was—in my bathroom.”

  “I see. Go on.”

  I dictated my facts. The guy had sent me for his valise, period. I had seen the blonde, period. I had seen the gun, period. I had put the gun in the valise and I had lugged it back to the guy like the guy had asked me in the first place. Period.

  “Why?” the Inspector said.

  The stenographer scribbled.

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you appropriate this weapon?” Inspector Kelcey talking for the record.

  “Well, sir, it was, I’d say, an impulse.” Peter Chambers talking for the same record.

  “Do you frequently get such impulses?”

  “No, sir. Nor am I frequently in such circumstances.”

  “Can you explain it, Mr. Chambers?”

  “Well, sir, the suitcase was open, and the gun was on the floor, very near it. I suppose, on the impulse, I felt it belonged in it, so, naturally, sir, I put it in, without actually thinking about it.”

  “What?”

  “The gun. Into the suitcase.”

  Inspector Kelcey waved his hand at the stenographer to stop. “ ‘So, naturally, sir, I put it in,’ “ he mimicked. “Strictly a phony bastard, aren’t you, a wisened-up phony bastard. It’s a good thing …”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He stood up. “Okay. That lawyer you’ve been yapping about. That Lew Dickman. I called him for you. He’ll be down here first thing in the morning. Okay?”

  “It’s not okay. I want him now.”

  “You out of your mind? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I know what time it is, Inspector.”

  “Is that meant to be a crack?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you like this bastard? Be nice to people. Why don’t you appreciate it when a person’s nice to you?”

  “I don’t want anybody being nice to me. I want my lawyer.”

  “You’re getting your lawyer.”

  “I want him now.”

  “Shut up.”

  “No, sir. I’m being illegally detained.”

  “Illegally detained. You don’t need a lawyer, bub, you know all the words yourself.”

  “I know those words.”

  “How about suspicion of murder? You know them?”

  “I know they don’t apply to me, Inspector.”

  “That’s what’s racked up against your name in the book, peeper. So who’s detaining you, and how illegally?”

  “Inspector,” I said, “is this a rig?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You guys fixing to push that dead blonde over on me? I’m a big boy, now—”

  I got a rapid hand large against my mouth. My lips pushed numb against my teeth.

  “Be nice to a guy,” the Inspector complained. “They’re all alike. Look, big brain, I don’t think you’re stupid enough to go out shooting people for people, not yet. I’ll tell you something, off the record. We know from the doorman when you got there, and we know she was shot maybe eight hours before that. But I’ve got a flock of my boys out on this, shaping it up, and I don’t want a lout like you loose and around to mess it up. I know you guys. Understand?”

  “Well …” I said.

  “That make you feel better?”

  Stiff-lipped I said, “Much better,” and I meant it.

  “Okay.” He nudged the stenographer. “Let’s go. And you be a good boy. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Parker,” I said. “I want Parker.”

  They clanked out of there. They locked the door behind them.

  “Parker,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Parker.”

  “Who’s that? Another lawyer?”

  “Louis Parker.”

  “Who the hell is Louis Parker?”

  “Detective-lieutenant Louis Parker.”

  “Who? Louis? Louis Parker?” He reached a hand in and grabbed my shirt. He had me smack up and smarting against the cell bars. “You holding anything out, you little—”

  If that was the way to get Parker, that was the way to get Parker.

  “Parker,” I said.

  “Talk, bum.”

  “I’ve got nothing more to say. To you. There’s only one guy in this whole department I know I can trust.”

  “You don’t know anything about this mess. Who the hell do you think you’re kidding?” He let go my shirt collar. “Okay, maybe there’s some little nonsense you’re holding out. We may as well have your side complete. Okay, you get Parker. Stick around.”

  I stuck around.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I dozed.

  I slept.

  I opened my eyes to the black patch of night hung against the bars of the small square window, and then to Parker, good Parker, wide-grinned, on the other side, leaning on the cell door.

  Beamishly he said, “Well, look what we got here.”

  “Louis. Louis, boy. Am I glad to see you.”

  “Son,” he said, “how do you manage it?”

  I stretched, arranging my aching bones. “Louis.”

  “Boy, you got the gift. Wait a minute. I’ll get you out of this can. We’ll talk in a conference room. I’ll send out for coffee. Boy, you look like a used-up pair of pajamas.”

  He went away and I was lonesome watching him go, bulk-shouldered and keg-necked, black hair short and perpendicular. I marched my cell and I rubbed my calves and I pulled at the bones of vertebrae like I was rowing a stand-up boat, and then he was coming back, with a small gray-faced, shuffle-footed guard, and I heard him ask, “Where’s Nottiby?”

  “Sick. We sent him home. Cramps in the belly. Guy drinks over an ulcer, what do you think? I’m fillin’ in, cat-nappin’. That’s a guy we ought to get rid of.” He yawned, snaggle-toothed, opening the door. “He’s yours, Lieutenant.” He shuffled out of vision.

  Parker was a cigar-festooned, unmalicious imp, delivering a blink-eyed detective out of bondage. “Boy, you certainly got the gift.”

  I put an arm over his shoulder. “Thanks, Louis.”

  “Don’t mention it. Let’s go say hello to Johnny. He’s four cells up, they tell me.”

  “Drunk as a coot.”

  He turned from under my arm on his shoulder, facing me. “Don’t ask me to spring him out of his clink. Not even for recess in the conference room. Johnny ain’t doing so good, not especially good. I’m afraid Johnny boy is all caught up with. You can
kiss another client good-by.”

  “Not Johnny the Mick, Lieutenant. That guy’s got more wires in this town—”

  “No more wires, Petie.” He was downpitch in voice, earnest: no imp now, all cop. “He’s fixed for the big wire upstate, Petie, all fixed. You simply cannot get away with murder, not too often, I don’t care how many politicians you know, and this time Johnny went to work on society. It’s not a guy full of bullets on a lonely road in a stopped car with a prison record and a lot of bad-boy boy friends.”

  “Louis, lad, the guy’s too smart.”

  The cigar perked. “We got Johnny squared away for the chair, detective. So keep your face smiling and your mouth buttoned. We’re just going by for greeting.”

  But there was no greeting.

  And there was no reply.

  There was only a vapid grunt of shock.

  Two vapid grunts of shock. Mine and Parker’s.

  The cell was empty.

  No Johnny the Mick.

  2

  Parker’s hoisted eyebrows flattened to bushy quivering. His eyes wrenched from mine. He pulled the cell door. The cell door obliged, creakingly.

  “Open,” I said.

  “Shut up. Quiet.”

  I shut up. I was quiet. We walked the cell. We patted the cot. We looked under the cot. That is all you can do in a cell. That ends the search. We closed the cell door on the other side of us, creaking. Parker said, “This I don’t get. I don’t know. It don’t smell good.”

  “Stinks,” I said, “is more appropriate.”

  “I’ll go check. You play ball, huh?”

  “How?”

  “I’ll put you back in your cell. I don’t want to call the attendant. I don’t want to call anybody. I just want to check this, quick. Maybe they just got him out of there for a change of cell or something.”

  “Would they leave the door open?”

  “No, they wouldn’t, not unless it’s just for a couple of minutes, like I took you. I’ll go check. You play ball.”

  “How?”

  We reached my cell. He opened the door and I went in and he pushed it shut, but not locked. “Like this,” he said. “I don’t want to call the attendant. Right now, I don’t want to call anybody. Understand? So play ball. Stay in there. It’s you and me, you know. Between you and me, we don’t need no locked doors.” He smiled, winked, waved a fist, and went away.