The Death of Lorenzo Jones (18 page)

Way after midnight, when they finally left, Hook noticed a police tail pull out behind his Cord.

He drove directly to Robin’s aunt’s house, stopping only at the corner news stand for the late edition. In the house, Lockwood
opened the
Daily Mirror
to page two.

There they were, in separate photographs. F
UGITIVE
G
IRL
S
URRENDERS IN
A
RMS OF
B
EAU
. Oh brother.

The story, thanks to Doug Sheer, went on about how such a
lovely
couple couldn’t have done the things the police suspected them of doing.

Robin was annoyed when she saw her picture. “God, that’s my Plainville High graduation photo. I hated it!”

While Robin was reading the article, Lockwood noticed something funny. The lights were on in the back room. Hadn’t he turned
them off just before leaving?

He rose quietly, so as not to alarm Robin, and walked toward the door. He pulled his gun out. No more getting hit in the head,
Hook thought.

He took a few tiny steps into the other room and saw someone bloody, garish, and dead on the carpet.

“Oh no,” he gasped. He pushed the bedroom door all the way open so that anyone behind it would be caught against the wall.
Then he leaped around to look.

No one.

Lockwood went over to the body. It was small and had sneakers on. Under it, he saw a spreading pool of blood.

He knew who it was, without even turning the child’s lifeless body over. Oh God. Oh goddamn.

Now they’d gotten Stinky, too.

Lockwood bent down next to the sixteen-year-old. He felt his carotid artery, up near the kid’s neck. There was a pulse!

“He’s still alive. Call an ambulance!” Lockwood yelled.

To her credit, Robin kept her cool. While she dialed, he turned Stinky’s limp form over and found the wounds—deep knife gashes
in the stomach.

He ripped a piece off Stinky’s sleeve to make a compress against the bleeding. The kid was barely clinging to life, but he
made a noise.

“Uhhhh….”

“Easy there, Stinky. It’s Hook. An ambulance is on the way. Listen, kid, you’re going to be all right.”

“Yeah, sure, Hook.”

“Stinky, who did this to you?”

“Don’t—know,” he gasped. “I heard two guys talking at the hangars—said—they want to jump—you here. F-first they waited for
y-you there. Y-You never came.”

“What did they look like?”

Stinky’s face grimaced in pain. “Don’t—know—I was hiding in closet—heard them. One was tall, hair 1-long, parted in middle.
Other short in b-big brown coat—they were gonna kill you, H-Hook, so I had to—warn you.”

“Don’t talk, kid. I know who they are.” Lockwood could picture the two of them working the little kid over. The rats.

The lousy, scum-sucking, pig-faced, pea-brained gangster bastards had done this, and they didn’t deserve to live.

“The b-big guy tried to stop the 1-little one who s-stabbed me. They must have g-got here first, before me—I r-rode my bike.
The d-door was unlocked a-and I came in and they j-jumped me, Hook.”

“Okay, kid, okay. Easy, save your strength.”

Lockwood heard the scream of an ambulance in the street below.

“Robin, go down and get them up here fast. The desk clerk might stall them or something.”

Robin ran out of the door. “I’ll get them.”

Stinky moaned and grimaced again. “I-I’m gonna be a pitcher, maybe—s-someday—”

The kid was getting woozy and delirious. Loss of blood Hook tried to make the compress do more of a job, but he suspected
internal bleeding.

“I—I heard them say they would go to Sty-Styson’s fence place—something—something like that, to see the b-boss.”

“Stysons?”

“Y-yes. That’s all.”

Hook grabbed Stinky’s arms; the kid’s eyes were rolling over. “Stinky! Do you mean Stymie’s? Stymie the fence?”

“Yes. That’s it! They—went—to a guy—n-named—Stymie to see—b-boss—”

The kid breathed out but didn’t breathe in again.

Enraged, Lockwood shook him violently. No go. Stinky’s eyes rolled up in his head. The kid’s life was gone.

The ambulance attendants took Stinky away. Hook just sat and stared at the blank wall.

Robin sat on the floor next to him, her arms wrapped around his leg. Tears slowly ran down her cheeks.

It had always bothered Lockwood that he couldn’t figure how and through whom Wade the businessman had hired these goons. Now
everything fell neatly into place.

Stymie. Stymie was a fence. A slimy, sniveling little water rat who chewed crackers in his yellow teeth over in his crooked
pawnshop on the West Side, hard by the river.

Lots of times Stymie was the receiver of stolen merchandise that Lockwood had to recover for Transatlantic.

The word around town was that if you wanted to take out a contract or find a safecracker you looked up Stymie. For a fee you
got a name and phone number.

So Wade must have asked around. And when you asked around, Stymie’s name came up. Wade hired the goons to do his dirty work
so he wouldn’t have to get his dainty little fingers dirty.

Now Half-Pint and Iron Man were going to meet the boss—meaning Wade—at Stymie’s, unless Lockwood was dead wrong. Probably
to tell him they had botched the job on Hook and killed a kid instead.

Lockwood was just standing up and reaching for his hat to go to Stymie’s when Early and Knapp walked in.

“Killing kids now, Hook?” Early asked. He tsk-tsked.

“Get the hell out of here, cop. I’m in no mood to play with you.”

“Well, we want to play with you, Lockwood. You and this dame here are under arrest for suspicion.”

“You can’t arrest anyone for
suspicion.”
Lockwood glared at them.

“Let’s see now. We got you. We got a body. The two of youse is out on bail—why not? Cuff Hook, Knapp. For the dame I don’t
think we’ll need them.”

Lockwood might have punched his way out, but two more, beefy cops walked in just then. He sighed as the cuffs were once again
snapped around his wrists.

With Early between them, Robin and Lockwood rode in the back seat of the patrol car. Knapp drove. The other cops followed
in a second car. Jesus, Lockwood thought, was he Public Enemy Number One now?

Early smiled. “No fancy lawyer is going to spring you now.”

“Don’t be so sure,” insisted Robin. “We didn’t do it, and you can’t hold us.”

“Watch me,” Early retorted.

Lockwood had to leave, and right now. A raging voice was screaming inside him: Get out of here! Get away, get to Stymie’s,
and get that lizard Wade.

“Robin,” he whispered, while Early was leaning forward to talk to the cop in the front seat. “Make a loud noise, like you’re
in pain.”

Robin screamed with all her might, scaring even Lockwood. Early turned toward her as she pretended to faint. Lockwood grabbed
the door handle, opened the door, and leaped.

Since they had just rounded a curve, they weren’t going very fast. Still, it was a hard landing.

Hook couldn’t break his fall with his hands or arms, for he was cuffed behind his back. But he took the fall just like a roll
from his old gymnastics class. He hit with his shoulder and immediately turned end over end like a kid doing somersaults.

He scrambled up onto the sidewalk as bullets whizzed by inches over his head. He ran down an alley. He knew this part of town
and quickly lost his huffing and puffing pursuers in a maze of basements and backyards.

Lockwood probably looked funny sitting with his hands up under the back flap of his jacket as he rode the subway. But better
to look ridiculous than to have the other passengers see his handcuffs. Ziggy in the machine shop on Twelfth Avenue cut the
cuffs off.

He hoofed it to Radio City and called Hank, the garage-man, from around the corner.

“Hank, loan me your old LaSalle. I’ll pay you a fiver. You know that spare .38 I gave you? Right. I’ll give you the keys to
the Cord as collateral. Yes, I’m in a jam. Thanks, you’re a real pal. Bring it around to the Rexall on 48th and walk away
from it with the key left in the ignition. Thanks a million.”

Hank’s ancient LaSalle handled like a truck and had little acceleration but it climbed its way onto the ramp of the Viaduct
Highway along the Hudson River. He exited at the next off ramp and headed toward Tenth Avenue.

The cops didn’t have any idea that Lockwood was thinking of coming to Stymie’s place, so why would they watch there? If anywhere,
they would be up around Wade’s, thinking he would go after him first.

Lockwood parked a block from the boarded-up pawnshop that was Stymie’s headquarters and cut the motor.

He walked quickly up the block of deserted factory buildings. He moved close to the walls and slipped into the narrow alley
alongside the shuttered store. He didn’t see any light from inside, but that didn’t mean anything, for there were several
back rooms. He wasn’t sure of their layout though.

He took the .38 Hank had left in the LaSalle out of the holster in his waistband and proceeded carefully alongside the building.
He was looking for a side window or a door he could pry, any way to get in unobserved.

It didn’t take him long to find a filthy back window, but it was locked. He peered inside. It was totally dark, but the little
light from the alley showed a room apparently used for storage. Good.

He used his gun butt, wrapped in his handkerchief, as a hammer and broke in easily by pushing in a pane of glass and unlocking
the window.

Rats scurried around his feet as he lowered himself in. He was in a dark room, a storage area full of trunks and cartons.
He heard voices. He went over to the door and opened it just a crack to see who was speaking. He found himself peering into
a dimly lit room.

Pay dirt. Half-Pint and Iron Man Lang, the big goon! There was a third figure in the darkened corner, standing over somebody
in a chair. He moved the door just an inch more to get a better angle.

It was Amanda, hogtied in a chair. Her dress was ripped and pulled down so her breasts were exposed. And so were the burn
marks on them from cigarettes. Half-Pint was puffing hard on another, wreaths of smoke enveloping him.

The three men were arguing. They all seemed to speak at the same time, and the acoustics of the place were such that Lockwood
couldn’t make out who stood in the shadows.

A shaded lamp hung from the ceiling, casting eerie shadows around the room. Lockwood saw tears streaming down Amanda’s cheeks
and dripping onto the tight gag the bastards had stuffed in her mouth.

But Lockwood didn’t want to move just yet. He wanted to know how many and who he had to deal with. Still, he would have to
move in if they started to burn Amanda again.

The voices of the argument separated out, and Lockwood heard Half-Pint: “I say we burn her a little more before we remove
the gag. That way she’ll talk. Come on, I’ve had no fun like this since Chicago.”

“No,” insisted Iron Man. “Don’t hurt her no more. Take the gag off her.”

He moved towards Half-Pint with his arms outstretched like some kind of movie monster. Half-Pint pulled a shiv, snickered,
and jabbed the air in front of Iron Man’s face.

“Come on, Iron Man, come and get stuck like the big pig you are,” Half-Pint invited.

Iron Man stopped. The other guy suddenly spoke.

Lockwood recognized the voice. He would always remember that slippery reptilian rasp.

“Let Half-Pint have his fun.”

It was the snake, Cyrus Wade. Amanda’s eyes were fixed in horror on him.

Iron Man insisted, “No. It’s
not
fun. I don’t torture broads. Let this one go, I say.”

Dear old Iron Man, thought Lockwood. He’s going to make my work much easier.

Iron Man made a lunge at Half-Pint, grabbed a tiny wrist, and squeezed the knife loose. But Iron Man didn’t live long enough
to finish squeezing.

Wade pulled out a revolver and fired twice into the lug. Even that hardly affected Iron Man. He let go of Half-Pint and turned
on Wade with fire in his big eyes. Wade backed off and fired once more. This shot hit Iron Man right in the forehead. The
back of Iron Man’s head opened up and his long dark hair turned red. He dropped, shaking the room as he hit the floor. Amanda
pushed her chair back.

Wade stepped into the light, picked up Half-Pint’s shiv, and handed it back to him.

“Now, cut little cartoons into her breasts. You know, not deep, but deep enough to make up for the money she made me give
her. Then we’ll remove the gag and see if she’ll tell me where the thermos is.”

Lockwood was taken aback. Was that it? Had Amanda found the thermos at the crash site? Had she been holding it and blackmailing
Wade?

“After she talks,” Half-Pint asked, “then what? Can I use her, boss? There are a lot of things I always wanted to do.” Amanda’s
eyes cast wildly around the room as if searching for some way out.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Wade tittered. “But make sure she’ll talk first. You have to give dear Amanda here so much pain that
she’ll talk even though she knows we’ll kill her when we get what we want.” Amanda strained at her bonds. “This bitch has
drained my bank account long enough. Look at her squirm! You might move that shiv of yours around in her lower areas, too.
We have time. Stymie gave us the place till tomorrow.”

“Sure, boss. I can do that.” Half-Pint smiled and worked a toothpick around in his drooling lips.

He went up to Amanda and tickled the girl’s throat with his blade. She pulled back as far as she could.

Lifting the knife away from Amanda’s throat, Half-Pint asked Wade, “How do we know she’ll tell us the
truth
about where this thermos jug is?”

“She’ll tell,” Wade said. “If you hurt her enough.”

The way Half-Pint’s face lit up at the words “hurt her” made Lockwood sick. He dried his palm on his trouser leg.

“The doc talked, didn’t he?” Wade said. “Even though he knew we were going to kill him as soon as we got the prescription.”