The Mugger (4 page)

The bulls of the 87th Squad, no matter what else they agreed upon, generally disagreed upon the comparative worth of the various stool pigeons they employed from time to time. For as the old maid remarked upon kissing the cow, “It’s all a matter of taste,” and one cop’s pigeon might very well be another cop’s poison.

It was generally conceded that Danny Gimp was the most trustworthy of the lot, but even Danny’s staunchest supporters realized that some of their colleagues got better results from some of the other birds. That all of them relied heavily upon information garnered from underworld contacts was an undisputed fact; it was simply a question of whom you preferred to use.

Hal Willis favored a man named Fats Donner.

In fact, with Donner’s solicited and recompensed aid, he had cracked many a tough nut straight down the middle. And there was no question but what Clifford, the mugger with the courtly bow, was beginning to be a tough nut.

There was only one drawback to using Donner, and that was his penchant for Turkish baths. Willis was a thin man. He did not enjoy losing three or four pounds whenever he asked Donner a question.

Donner, on the other hand, was not only fat; he was Fats. And Fats, for the benefit of the uninitiated, is “fat” in the plural. He was obese. He was immense. He was mountainous.

He sat with a towel draped across his lap, the thick layers of flesh quivering everywhere on his body as he sucked in the steam that surrounded him and Willis. His body was a pale, sickly white, and Willis suspected he was a junkie, but he’d be damned if he’d pull in a good pigeon on a holding rap.

Donner sat, a great white Buddha, sucking in steam. Willis watched him, sweating.

“Clifford, huh?” Donner asked. His voice was a deep, sepulchral rattle, as if Death were his silent partner.

“Clifford,” Willis said. He could feel the perspiration seeping up into his close-cropped hair, could feel it trickling down the back of his neck, over his narrow shoulders, across his naked backbone. He was hot. His mouth was dry. He watched Donner languishing like a huge contented vegetable and he cursed all fat men, and he said, “Clifford. You must have read about him. It’s in all the papers.”

“I don’t dig papers, man,” Donner said. “Only the funnies.”

“Okay, he’s a mugger. He slams his victims before he takes off, and then he bows from the waist and says, ‘Clifford thanks you, madam.’”

“Only chicks this guy taps?”

“So far,” Willis said.

“I don’t make him, dad,” Donner said, shaking his head, sprinkling sweat on to the tiled walls around him. “Clifford. The name’s from nowhere. Hit me again.”

“He wears sunglasses. Last two times out, anyway.”

“Cheaters? He flies by night, this cat?”

“Yes?”

“Clifford, chicks, cheaters. All Cs. A cokie?”

“We don’t know.”

“C,
you dig me?” Donner said. “Clifford, chicks…”

“I caught it the first time around,” Willis answered.

Donner shrugged. It seemed to be getting hotter in the steam room. The steam billowed up from hidden instruments of the devil, smothering the room with a thick blanket of soggy, heat-laden mist. Willis sighed heavily.

“Clifford,” Donner said again. “This his square handle?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, dad, I grip with a few muggers, but none with a Clifford tag. If this is just a party stunt to gas the chicks, that’s another thing again. Still, Clifford. This he picked from hunger.”

“He’s knocked over fourteen women,” Willis said. “He’s not so hungry anymore.”

“Rape?”

“No.”

“No eyes for the chicks, this Clifford cat, huh? He’s a faggot?”

“We don’t know.”

“Big hauls?”

“Fifty-four bucks was tops. Mostly peanuts.”

“Small time,” Donner said.

“Do you know any
big-time
muggers?”

“The ones who work the Hill don’t go for chewing-gum loot. I’ve known plenty big muggers in my day.” Donner lay back on the marble seat, readjusting the towel across his middle. Willis wiped sweat from his face with a sweaty hand.

“Listen, don’t you ever conduct business outside?” Willis asked.

“What do you mean, outside?”

“Where there’s air.”

“Oh. Sure, I do. This summer I was out a lot. Man, it was a great summer, wasn’t it?”

Willis thought of the record-breaking temperatures that had crippled the back of the city. “Yeah, great,” he said. “So what about this, Fats? Have you got anything for me?”

“No rumble, if that’s what you mean. He’s either new or he keeps still.”

“Many new faces in town?”

“Always new faces, dad,” Donner said. “None I peg for muggers, though. Tell the truth, I don’t know many hit-and-run boys. This is for the wet-pants nowadays. You figure Clifford for a kid?”

“Not from what the victims have told us about him.”

“Old man?”

“Twenties.”

“Tough age,” Donner said. “Not quite a boy, yet not quite a man.”

“He hits like a man,” Willis said. “He sent the one last night to the hospital.”

“I tell you,” Donner said, “let me go on the earie. I listen a little here and there, and I buzz you. Dig?”

“When?” Willis asked. “Soon.”

“How soon is soon?”

“How high is up?” Donner asked. He rubbed his nose with his forefinger. “You looking for a lead or a pinch?”

“A lead would suit me fine,” Willis said.

“Gone. So let me sniff a little. What’s today?”

“Wednesday,” Willis said.

“Wednesday,” Donner repeated, and then for some reason, he added, “Wednesday’s a good day. I’ll try to get back to you sometime tonight.”

“If you’ll call, I’ll wait for it. Otherwise, I go home at four.”

“I’ll call,” Donner promised.

“Okay,” Willis said. He rose, tightened the towel about his waist, and started out.

“Hey, ain’t you forgetting something?” Donner called.

Willis turned. “All I came in with was the towel,” he said.

“Yeah, but I come here every day, man,” Donner said. “This can cost a man, you know.”

“We’ll talk cost when you deliver,” Willis said. “All I got so far is a lot of hot air.”

Bert Kling wondered what he was doing here.

He came down the steps from the elevated structure, and he recognized landmarks instantly. This had not been his old neighborhood, but he had listed this area among his teenage stomping grounds, and he was surprised now to find a faint nostalgia creeping into his chest.

If he looked off down the avenue, he could see the wide sweep of the train tracks where the El screeched sparklingly around Cannon Road, heading north. He could see, too, the flickering lights of a Ferris wheel against the deepening sky—the carnival, every September and every April, rain or shine, setting up business in the empty lot across from the housing project. He had gone to the carnival often when he was a kid, and he knew this section of Riverhead as well as he knew his own old neighborhood. Both were curious mixtures of Italians, Jews, Irish, and Negroes. Somebody had set a pot to melting in Riverhead, and somebody else had forgotten to turn off the gas.

There had never been a racial or religious riot in this section of the city, and Kling doubted if there ever would be one. He could remember back to 1935 and the race riots in Diamondback and the way the people in Riverhead had wondered if the riots
would spread there, too. It was certainly a curiously paradoxical thing, for while white men and black men were slitting each other’s throats in Diamondback, white men and black men in Riverhead prayed together that the disease would not spread to their community.

He was only a little boy at the time, but he could still remember his father’s words: “If you help spread any of this filth, you won’t be able to sit for a week, Bert. I’ll fix you so you’ll be lucky if you can even
walk!”

The disease had not spread.

He walked up the avenue now, drinking in the familiar landmarks—the
latticini,
and the kosher butcher shop, and the paint store, and the big A&P, and the bakeshop, and Sam’s candy store there on the corner. God, how many ice cream sundaes had he eaten in Sam’s? He was tempted to stop in and say hello, but he saw a stranger behind the counter, a short, bald-headed man, not Sam at all, and he realized with painful clarity that a lot of things had changed since he was a carefree adolescent.

The thought was sobering as well as painful, and he wondered for the fiftieth time why he had come back to Riverhead, why he was walking toward De Witt Street and the home of Peter Bell. To talk to a young girl? What could he say to a seventeen-year-old kid?

He shrugged his wide shoulders. He was a tall man, and he was wearing his dark-blue suit tonight, and his blond hair seemed blonder against the dark fabric. When he reached De Witt, he turned south and then reached into his wallet for the address Peter had given him. Up the street, he could see the yellow brick and cyclone fence of the junior high school. The street was lined with private houses, mostly wooden structures, here and there a brick dwelling tossed in to break the monotony. Old trees grew close to the curbs on either side of the street, arching
over the street to embrace in a blazing, autumn-leaved cathedral. There was something very quiet and very peaceful about De Witt Street. He saw the bushels of leaves piled near the gutter, saw a man standing with a rake in one hand, the other hand on his hip, solemnly watching the small, smoky fire of leaves burning at his feet. The smell was a good one. He sucked it deep into his lungs. This was a lot different from the crowded, bulging streets the 87th Precinct presided over. This was a lot different from crowded tenements and soot-stained buildings reaching grimy concrete fingers to the sky. The trees here were of the same species found in Grover’s Park, which hemmed in the 87th on the south. But you could be sure no assassins lurked behind their stout trunks. That was the difference.

In the deepening dusk, with the street lamps going on suddenly, Bert Kling walked and listened to the sound of his footsteps and—quite curiously—he was glad he had come.

He found Bell’s house, the one in the middle of the block, just as he’d promised. It was a tall, two-family, clapboard-and-brick structure, the clapboard white. A rutted concrete driveway sloped upward toward a white garage at the back of the house. A flight of steps led to the front door. Kling checked the address again and then climbed the steps and pressed the bell button set in the doorjamb. He waited a second, and the door buzzed, and he heard the small click as he twisted the knob and shoved it inward. He was in a small foyer, and he saw another door open instantly, and then Peter Bell stepped into the foyer, grinning.

“Bert, you came! I don’t know how to thank you.”

Kling nodded and smiled.

Bell took his hand. “Come in, come in.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Jeannie’s still here. I’ll introduce you as a cop friend of mine, and then Molly and me’ll take off, okay?”

“Okay,” Kling said. Bell led him to the open doorway. There were still cooking smells in the house, savory smells that heightened Kling’s feeling of nostalgia. The house was warm and secure, welcome after the slight nip there had been in the air outside.

Bell closed the door and called, “Molly!”

The house, Kling saw immediately, was constructed like a railroad flat, one room following the other, so that you had to walk through every room in the house if you wanted to get to the end room. The front door opened into the living room, a small room furnished with a three-piece sofa-and-easy-chair set that had undoubtedly been advertised as a “Living Room Suite” by one of the cheaper furniture stores. There was a mirror on the wall over the sofa. A badly framed landscape hung over one of the easy chairs. The inevitable television set stood in one corner of the room, and a window under which was a radiator occupied the other corner.

“Sit down, Bert,” Bell said. “Molly!” he called again.

“Coming,” a voice called from the other end of the house, an end he suspected was the kitchen.

“She’s doing the dishes,” Bell explained. “She’ll be right in. Sit down, Bert.” Kling sat in one of the easy chairs. Bell hovered over him, being the gracious host. “Can I get you something? A glass of beer? Cigar? Anything?”

“The last time I had a glass of beer,” Kling said, “I got shot right afterward.”

“Well, ain’t nobody going to shoot you here. Come on, have a glass. We’ve got some cold in the Frigidaire.”

“No, thanks anyway,” Kling said politely.

Molly Bell came into the room, drying her hands on a dish towel.

“You must be Bert,” she said. “Peter’s told me all about you.” She gave her right hand a final wipe and then crossed to where
Kling had stood up and extended her hand. Kling took it, and she squeezed it warmly. In describing her, Bell had said, “Molly’s no slouch—even now, pregnant and all.” Kling hated to disagree, but he honestly found very little that was attractive in Molly Bell. She might at one time have been a knockout, but those days were gone forever. Even discounting the additional waist-high bulge of the expectant mother, Kling saw only a washed-out blonde with faded blue eyes. The eyes were very tired, and wrinkles radiated from their edges. Her hair had no luster; it hung from her head disconsolately. Her smile did not help, because it happened to be a radiant smile, which served only as a contrast for the otherwise drab face. He was a little shocked, partly because of Bell’s advance publicity, partly because he realized the girl couldn’t have been much older than twenty-four or twenty-five.