I turned my cab into 25th Street, off Second Avenue, a few blocks from the East River—I’d just taken an old-maid schoolteacher home and was cutting back to the main drag—when my headlights caught the six of them.
There were five kids, all in black leather jackets, and a guy with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. The kids had him up against the wall of a clothing factory, and they were clipping him in the head and belly with those bricks. I roared down the street at them, going over the sidewalk to keep them in the beams, and honking my horn like mad.
When they heard me, they backed off, and the guy fell on his face. They thought that was a good deal, thought they could finish him quicker that way, and went back at him.
The kids started stomping him in the groin when he tried to struggle to his knees, then they kicked his head. They were wearing heavy army boots, and the guy on the sidewalk started bleeding. I could see it all as clearly as if it were daylight.
They must have figured they’d done all they could to the guy, because they bent down trying to get the briefcase off him. I saw one of the kids bring his foot down full on the guy’s wrist.
I screeched the cab to a stop right beside them and hauled my Stillson wrench off the floor.
Then I was out the door and around the cab. “Hey!” I yelled, not actually thinking it would do any good, but what the hell, at least it would keep them off that bleeding slob on the sidewalk.
Two of them came at me, both with bricks in their hands. Those kids weren’t sloppy street-fighters. They knew what they were doing. I’m a big boy, almost six-two, and they could see that; one came in high, the other low. The other three were busy breaking the guy’s wrist, trying to get that briefcase off him.
The first kid was a puffy-nosed character, with long brown hair combed back into a duck’s-fanny hairdo, and he swung his brick the long way, aiming it at my chops. I swiveled a hip, and tossed a foot out. He stumbled over it, and I only hesitated a moment before chopping him with the wrench. I didn’t much care for the idea of clobbering a kid, but I saw the size of that brick, and my mind changed itself so fast!
The wrench caught him alongside the head and he yowled good and loud. Then he went down, spilling into the gutter just as his buddy smashed me in the middle with his brick!
It felt like someone’d overturned a cement wagon on me. The pain shot up my body, ran through my nerves, tingled in my fingertips, and numbed my legs, all at the same time. What a shot that kid was!
I spun aside, before he could get leverage for a second pot at me, and kicked out almost wildly. It was my numbed leg, and I wasn’t quite sure what the damned thing would do. But it caught him on the knee, and his almost handsome face screwed up till he looked like I’d ripped out his liver. I took a short step and chopped him fast with the flat of my hand behind his ear. The kid moaned once and went down on one knee. I used my good leg and brought a knee up under the chin. A K.O. real fast; he went the way of his buddy.
I started to spin halfway around to get the other three. All I saw was the guy lying there, bleeding like a downed heifer, and two of the kids tearing that briefcase off him, swearing like Civil War veterans. I had about a half-second to wonder where the third punk was; then I found out real fast.
He was right beside me, with a sockful of quarters. They must have been quarters. Pennies wouldn’t have put me to sleep that quickly. One full-bodied swipe.
I went down, and everything was ever so black.
Coming out of it was sicker than going down. I remembered when I had come to in the field hospital five miles from the front in Korea. I’d thought I was in a long white corridor, and somebody was calling my name, over and over, echoing down that long corridor of my mind for ever and ever.
That’s what it was like. Someone was standing over me saying, “Campus, Campus, Campus,” over and over again, and it was echoing in my head so loud.
I screwed my eyes shut as tight as I could, and right about then the little man turned on his trip hammer inside my skull. He was mining for gray matter, and I thought sure my brains would tumble out of my ears. “W-water,” I managed to gasp.
A shadowy thing extended a tentacle, and there was a glass of water on the end of it. When another shadow propped me up, I let a little of the water slop into my mouth, and slowly my eyes sank back into my head. They cleared and I looked up into a four-day growth of beard.
The growth was on a cop. I shut my eyes carefully; the last thing on this Earth I wanted to see was a cop. “Go away,” I muttered, getting a nauseating taste of my own raw-blood lips.
“You’re Neal Campus, right?” he asked. His voice matched his face. His face had been hard, rough, and grizzled. I looked up at him again.
“I wasn’t doing more than fifty, so help me god!” That was when I realized I was in the hospital. “What the hell am I doing here?” I almost shouted. I tried to sit up, but someone on the other side of the bed that I hadn’t seen before pushed me back.
I tossed a look at the guy—it was an interne—and it must have been a pretty vicious look, because he let go quick. I sat up again. “I said what the hell am I doing here?” I was so confused, I didn’t realize I was fainting again till they all slid off my vision, and black gushed into my head.
The next time I came up the cops were gone and it was semidark in the room. The sterilized odor almost made me puke, and I came upright on the bed, clawing out.
They pushed me back—or I should say she pushed me back. It was a nurse. As sweet and virginal-looking a thing as Johns Hopkins ever issued.
Her voice floated to me, almost detached from her body. “You’ve had a nasty spill, Mr. Campus. Take it easy now.” I let her push me back without any trouble.
“How—how long have I been here?” I asked. My throat was dry as an empty gas tank.
“Three days, Mr. Campus. Now just lie back and take it easy. Doctor Eshbach said you were coming along nicely.”
Three days. I’d been in the hospital three full days. Suddenly, faces came back to me. Three. Three days. Three faces on three hoods. A puffy-nosed kid with brown hair, slightly pudgy. An almost handsome kid with a Barrymore profile and sleepy eyes. A kid with buck teeth and a crew-cut—bringing an argyle sock full of coins down on my head.
They were so clear in my mind, I felt I could reach out and touch them. I tried it. She took my hand. Then I peeled off again.
This time the cop was clean-shaven, but it didn’t help his general appearance much. He said he had been to see me two days before—which made it five I’d been in the hospital—and that his name was Harrison, operating out of Homicide. I don’t quite know how I knew he was a cop, because he wasn’t in uniform. But I knew. He was stockily built, square and almost immovable looking. His face was a pasty white, broken by dark shadows and black, bushy eyebrows. He looked like a short stack of newspapers.
Harrison wore glasses—the old thin-rimmed wire kind—but it didn’t distract from his ferocious appearance. There was something in the rock-ribbed squareness of his jaw, the snapping expression in his flinty eyes, that instantly made me aware this cookie wasn’t playing games.
They must have told him I was ready for visitors; he hurri-caned into the room, slung a chair away from the wall and banged it down next to the bed.
“You’ve been able to conk out of answering a few questions for five days now, Campus, but they tell me you’re okay today. I suggest you answer fast and straight. There’s an electric chair waiting if you don’t!”
He spat it out fast, without any room for niceties or subtleties. He meant it. I didn’t know what he was talking about, though.
“Why the chair?” I was surprised at my voice; it was a duck-rasp. It rattled out like hailstones and fell onto the floor.
He worked his jaw muscles. The guy looked like he was trying to hold back from belting me. I didn’t know why he was so damned angry—I hadn’t done anything but get clobbered! Then he told me why they had the chair greased and waiting.
&
nbsp; “Pessler was dead when we got to him. His head stomped into raspberry jelly and three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of uncut diamonds missing. I was sent down there, Campus, and I saw that guy. He looked real bad.”
I’ve seen and dealt with a lot of cops. The ones that gave me tickets, and the ones that took my statement at accidents; the ones that broke up tavern brawls and the ones that hauled me in with MP bands on their uniforms. I’ve seen them mad and indifferent, annoyed and savage. But I never saw one like this Harrison.
“Look, fella,” I said, “maybe you better back off some and let me in on what this is all about. All I know is that five kids were clubbing a guy, and when I tried to help him out, I got smacked for my trouble.”
“Maybe that’s what you wanted it to look like,” he shot back at me.
I could feel my face getting red, like it does when I’m boiling, and my duck-rasp had a real waspish tone. “Now you come patty-caking in here trying to whipsaw me and scare me with tales of the fry-seat. I don’t much care for it! So unless you got something logical to say, or a charge to make, or a warrant to back you, or you want to talk more civilly, beat it. I don’t feel so hot right now.” I turned toward the wall.
Instead of cowing him, it got him all the madder. He grabbed me by the shoulder, yanked me back facing him. He was all the harder looking.
“Listen, Campus, this isn’t any catered affair! We’ve been having trouble with this bunch of juvie hoods for six months now, and we’ve got a hunch they aren’t figuring out three hundred thousand dollar muggings on their own. We’ve got a hunch someone is ringing these jobs for them—and we’ve got a hunch the guy that’s been spotting for them is you.”
His finger was in my face. I felt like biting it, but I didn’t. His arm looked too big behind it.
“Nurse!” I hollered, and the sweet young thing appeared as though by magic. “Haul this character off me, or call my company to send me a lawyer. I’m supposed to be an invalid, aren’t I?”
She shrugged her neat shoulders, made a futile motion with her hands and said, “Doctor Eshbach said it was all right for Lieutenant Harrison to speak to you. Nothing I can do.” She shrugged again and promptly disappeared at a wave from Harrison.
“She on strings?” I asked sarcastically.
“Okay, Campus,” Harrison chimed me off. “Now you got the word, let’s have a few answers.” I pursed my lips. My head was splitting, and I rather thought I’d gotten a concussion, though they hadn’t mentioned it. But it was better to get this cop off my back early, and just lie back—till I could catch up with those punks.
Oh, I’d decided to get them. That was settled in my mind by the time I started talking to Harrison.
“Shoot,” I said.
“Yeah,” he answered nastily, “that too.” He reached into his topcoat pocket and brought out a little black notebook. “I’ve got to warn you, it says here, that anything you say may be used against you, and…” He went on like that, the usual patter, all in a bored tone of voice. I told him to can it and get his questions over with.
“What do you know about the mugging of a guy named Tanen-baum? A rug importer. About two months ago?”
I looked at him blankly. Then a memory stirred. “That was in the papers. Got robbed of close to fifteen thousand dollars, didn’t he? On the way to pay someone for a big shipment of goods, wasn’t that it?”
“Unusual you’d remember the exact amount, that long ago,” Harrison shot at me.
“I’ve got a good memory—any law against that?” I drove back at him. He lowered his bushy brows in anger, and his glasses slid an inch down his nose.
Then the grilling started for real. About halfway through, another cop came in—a detective—and he went at me when Harrison was taking five.
I managed to piece the story together. It was interesting and made me all the more anxious to get the hoods that had plastered me. The story ran something like this:
About six months before, big robberies and muggings had started cropping up, all of them pulled off by trained teenage punks in black leather jackets—the juvie set. One guy had been shot through the head with a zip-gun .32, another had been knifed in the chest a couple of times, this Tanenbaum had lost an eye when they’d stomped him—and now Pessler, a diamond merchant, was dead.
It appeared to the police—and I could easily see why they were casting out for such unlikely suspects as me—that someone was ringing for the pack. And a cabbie was as neat a sentry as they could hope for.
Particularly since they’d found a couple of diamonds, raw, uncut, and pretty, nestling in my pants cuff.
“A plant!” I yelled when they popped that to me.
“Maybe,” Harrison answered.
“Maybe, hell,” I jumped back. “Look, I got a good record. I’ve never had any trouble more serious than a locked bumper. Now why the hell are you trying to pin this thing on me?”
He didn’t have to say it. I could read it in his eyes. He was being crucified like a voodoo doll, from Downtown. All the way up the line, they were getting hot pants. From detective to lieutenant, to inspector, to chief, to D.A., even up to the mayor—all of them were roasting. To pull the pan off the flame, they’d decided to temporarily fry a guy named Neal Campus. Because I’d been there, I looked good, and I had a couple of blue-whites in my pants cuff.
“Look, Harrison,” I said, a little more quietly, “I know you’ve got it rough, but don’t try to hang any of this wash on my line. I’m clean and you know it. Now if it’s just that you’ve got to make a pinch to shut the papers off, then find someone else. Because you know damned well you haven’t got a shred of a case to take before a jury. You’ll look like a sap, and I’ll sue you for ten years’ pay.
“Those diamonds were planted on me just to throw you off, as they have. Now if you want a line on what happened—as much of it as I saw—maybe I can fish that out for you. But otherwise, I’m not your boy.”
We went around and around for a while longer, and then they asked me, “What did these kids look like?”
“I didn’t see their faces,” I answered, smoothing the sheet across my lap. “Too dark.”
Harrison leaped up, the chair fell over, he was bellowing at me, “You were up over the curb, Campus. You must have had them dead in your spots. If you’re telling the truth, and haven’t got anything to hide, why are you holding out on us?”
They were damned mad, and I didn’t want to rub them any more. I clammed, and put on the honest-to-god-I’m-not-holding-back attitude. After a while, they took it for straight talk.
I didn’t want to turn them loose on those kids just yet. If those kids had planted the diamonds on me, they must have wanted me for a patsy. They probably didn’t realize I’d gotten a good look at them. I’d had enough guys shoving me around in Korea, and I’d learned to dislike it real intense. Now, to have anybody start shoving me in my own city—that was too much.
I wanted a crack at them before Harrison and his squad got to them.
It took them an hour and a half to pump me dry. Or at least to pump me what they thought was dry.
They got up to leave. Harrison clapped a battered porkpie down on his head and stood up. “That’s it for now, Campus. We don’t have anything really solid on you yet, but it’s still smelly, some of the dodges you’ve handed us. So take it true when I tell you not to leave town, or the fare you run up on that hack of yours may pay off in a trip to the fry-seat.”
He wasn’t kidding, and it was easier just to shut my eyes than to try reassuring him. I wasn’t leaving town.
They left, and all I could see, with my eyes shut, were three young hoods. I was going to get out of this hospital in another week, and I wanted them. Bad.
Liggett, the dispatcher, caught me on the way out one morning about a week after I’d been released. I’d been out for a week, and asking plenty of questions around town—if anybody knew the kids I’d described. Nobody had, of course, but I hadn’t given up.
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sp; I’d had a bit of a time getting my cab back, but I threatened to get the union on their tailpipes, and they slapped me back on schedule fast. They didn’t like the idea of a cabbie suspected of murder tooling one of their crates around, but they liked the idea of the union beating around their ears even less.
That’s why it bothered me when Liggett stopped me at the garage check-out.
“Neal!” he flagged me, and I pulled over, outside the garage.
Liggett was a short man, with washed-out eyes, and a look that said, “Three years from now I can ditch all this crap and settle back on my rosy-red pension.”
I lit a cigarette, waiting for him to check off the last two boats out of the pool, and come over. He walked with a slight limp from the days of the hack wars. “Neal, there was somebody asking after you last night—phone call.”
My ears perked up. “Who?”
“Didn’t offer any references. Just wanted to know what route you were working—obviously knew but nothing from cab policy in this town—and when you were finished. Said he was a friend and wanted to toss you a juicy out-of-limits fare. Also wanted to know where you lived.”
“Tell him?”
Liggett rubbed the back of his neck reflectively. “Where you live? No. When you were off? Yes. The former because I didn’t think it was any of his biz, the latter because he said he wanted to hire you to ferry him out to Newark Airport. Thought he might be on the level. After I’d told him, though, I wondered why he didn’t know your address and what time you’re off, if he was such a big buddy.”
I pursed my lips, then stuck the butt back in my mouth. “Thanks, Lig,” I said. “If anybody starts checking me out in the future, play it close. There may be a couple people don’t want me to go on breathing. I’ve maybe been asking the right questions in the wrong places.”
“That mugging business still?” he asked.
I nodded and tossed the hack into first, punched the starter. Then I thought of something. “Hey, Lig.” He walked back, leaned against the window. “Any other way they can get my address uptown?”