1971 - Want to Stay Alive (21 page)

***

Rodney Branzenstein got out of the police car, followed by Lepski and Jack Hatchee.

“All right, you fellows,” Branzenstein said, very much in control of the operation, “just show me where you think this Indian is and leave it to me. I know just what your Chief wants. If it is Toholo, I’ll take out my handkerchief and make as if I’m mopping my brow.”

Lepski had many hates: among them were rich Corporation lawyers who owned Rolls-Royces and lived in ten bedroom houses.

To Lepski, Branzenstein was like a matador’s cape to a bull. “Mop your . . .what?” Lepski asked.

Branzenstein regarded the lean detective and recognised the hostility in the hard, blue eyes.

“Brow . . . forehead . . . the top part of my face,” Branzenstein said sarcastically. “Like this.” He took out an immaculately white handkerchief and passed it over his forehead. “Are you with me?”

Lepski hated him even more.

“Yeah.” He turned to Hatchee who was watching this scene with amusement but with a wooden face. “I’ll go ahead, Jack. The nineteenth stall on the right?”

“That’s it.”

Lepski walked away, mingling with the crowd. He began to count the stalls. At the nineteenth there was a white man talking to a fat Indian and nearby a young Indian. Lepski looked searchingly at the young Indian as he passed, imprinting his features and the way he was dressed on his police trained mind. This could be Poke Toholo, but he would have to wait until Branzenstein identified him.

After giving Lepski time to get clear, Hatchee led Branzenstein along the waterfront. After they had weaved their way through the crowd for some hundred yards, Hatchee stopped.

“The stall is right ahead, sir,” he said. “You see that bollard? The stall is opposite.”

Branzenstein stared at the bollard, then nodded. He was suddenly assailed with doubts. He began asking himself what he was doing out here in the burning heat working for the police. Goddamn it! After all he was one of the most successful . . . what was he thinking? . . . the most successful Corporation lawyer in the City and somehow he had been persuaded into trying to identify a lunatic Indian! He could be walking to his death!

Seeing Branzenstein suddenly lose colour and was hesitating, Hatchee, who knew the signs of fear, said quietly, “That bollard just ahead, sir.”

Branzenstein found he had come out in a cold sweat. “Yes . . . yes . . . I’m not blind!”

“Okay, sir. Lepski will be covering you. Lepski is the best shot on the force, sir.”

Hatchee hoped this white man might be comforted to know he was being protected, but it worked the other way. The very idea he was being protected increased Branzenstein’s fears.

So they thought there could be shooting! Good God! Branzenstein was on the point of calling off the operation when he saw this elderly Indian was regarding him, his black eyes calm, but probing.

He pulled himself together. He couldn’t let this Indian know how frightened he was.

“Fine,” he said huskily. “I’ll get going,” and he started towards the distant bollard.

He had to force his way through the crowd. The noise, the shouts of the vendors and the raucous voices of the tourists heightened his tension. He reached the bollard.

Opposite the bollard was a line of fruit stalls. His heart thumping, Branzenstein paused. He was suddenly too frightened to look at the stalls.

Instead, he turned and stared across the oily water of the harbour.

Watching him, Lepski groaned. Could this fat slob be chickening out? he asked himself.

Lepski was standing in the shadow of an archway that led to the better fish restaurants along the waterfront. The smell of frying fish made him hungry. He realised he hadn’t eaten a decent meal in the past fifty hours.

He forced his attention back to Branzenstein. What was the matter with the creep? He was acting like a television subject on the screen for the first time.

He watched Branzenstein turn and look at the fruit stalls. He saw him stiffen, stare, then take out his handkerchief and wipe his forehead.

It was the corniest performance Lepski had ever seen: so corny it attracted the attention of the tourists who reacted as a crowd will react when someone stares up at an empty sky: almost instantly there are hundreds of upturned faces.

Lepski cursed under his breath.

Poke Toholo was leaning against a crate of oranges. Jupiter Lucie was making a bargain with the fruit buyer of the Spanish hotel to supply the hotel with eight crates of oranges a day. Their bargaining had become bitter. This wasn’t Poke’s business. He kept looking at his cheap wristwatch.

By now Chuck must have collected all the envelopes.

But could Chuck be trusted?

Five envelopes . . . two thousand five hundred dollars I Poke picked up an orange and squeezed it as he thought.

It had been a good idea, but the colour of his skin had forced him to use Chuck and the girl. He knew once he used them, the money was automatically in danger.

He recalled the moment when he had been waiting for Chuck to bring him the money and when Chuck had come into the room. The sudden expression of fear and shock on Chuck’s face when he had stood in the doorway had warned Poke that Chuck could betray him.

How easy it would be for Chuck to drive away in the car with this next lot of money.

Poke felt the juice of the orange running down his wrist and he realised he had squeezed the orange flat while his thoughts tormented him. He dropped what was left of the fruit and wiped his hand on the seat of his jeans.

Lucie and the fruit buyer had completed their deal. They were now smiling and shaking hands.

Poke looked across the crowded quay at the oily water of the harbour.

The oil on the water made a rainbow of floating colours. Then he saw Branzenstein.

Poke immediately recognised the fat, handsome man. When Poke had worked as a barman at the Fifty Club he had had to endure this man’s arrogance and his patronising tolerance for Indians. Branzenstein had always been polite to him and Poke had resented this more than the way the other members of the Club had treated him. He had listened to Branzenstein sounding off to the other members that “After all, non-whites are human.”

Poke remembered Branzenstein talking in a loud voice to Jefferson Lacey who despised coloured people.

‘You have to admit they are hardworking and industrious. Can you imagine how this club could survive without them? I like them. They’re nice people. What’s that? Look, Jeff, that is a stupid argument if I may say so.’

‘Make them members of this Club? We wouldn’t want Negroes here either, now would we?’

With smouldering hatred, Poke watched Branzenstein’s uneasy antics.

The Toholo family were Catholics. Before Poke left home, he always went with his father to Sunday Mass.

Kneeling in the dimly lit church with its awe inspiring, flickering candles, Poke watched his father, kneeling at his side, through his laced fingers as he pretended to pray. The peace on the old man’s face as he looked towards the altar filled Poke with despair. This was a peace he would never know.

He recalled a sentence a priest had used when delivering an uninspired, hurriedly delivered address.

And then came the kiss of Judas: the time accepted gesture of betrayal.

Poke watched Branzenstein look directly at him and he knew Branzenstein had recognised him. He watched him take out his handkerchief and wipe it across his face and he knew Branzenstein was betraying him.

The crooked cell in Poke’s brain sparked like the white flare of an exploding flashlight bulb.

He looked quickly to right and left as a wild animal will look when it senses danger. He knew instinctively that somewhere out of sight, the police were waiting for this signal.

Jupiter Lucie was busy writing in his order book. The fruit buyer, satisfied with his bargain, was walking away.

Lepski saw Branzenstein flourish his handkerchief. So this Indian was Toholo! He switched on his radio.

As he did so, Poke slid his hand under the shelf of the stall and his brown fingers closed around the butt of the .38 automatic. His thin lips came off his teeth in a savage snarl.

Glancing up, Lucie saw the mad, murderous expression on Poke’s face and he dropped his notebook and cringed away. Lepski was saying into the microphones: “Branzenstein has identified Toholo. Over for action.”

Branzenstein had done what Terrell had asked him to do. He began to walk away. He was shaking a little and still frightened. This was now up to the police, he told himself. This was something he would never do again.

But as he kept walking, moving through the crowd, he suddenly realised he would be able to dine out on this story for weeks. He began to imagine how his friends would react as he recounted how he had helped trap the Executioner.

It was at this moment as he was beginning to relax and preen himself at the thought of impressing his friends when a .38 bullet smashed into the back of his head.

***

Listening to Terrell’s instructions, Lepski had taken his eyes off Branzenstein for a brief moment. He heard the shot, looked in time to see Branzenstein fall and his eyes shifted to where Toholo had been, but the Indian was no longer there.

Lepski was caught in two minds. Should he report what had happened or go after Toholo?

In this brief second of hesitation, the Indians, working at the fruit stalls and who had seen what had happened, made enough confusion to allow Poke to slip away.

In another second the waterfront erupted into panic, screams and jostling Indians, apparently terrified, who ran to and fro, creating more panic.

Lepski saw it was hopeless to go after Toholo even if he knew which way he had gone. The heaving barrier of people between him and Lucie’s stall was now impassable. Two Indians, pretending panic, overturned a rival’s fruit stall and oranges began to roll in waves around Lepski’s feet.

He switched on his radio and reported what had happened. Back at headquarters, Terrell and Beigler listened to Lepski’s commentary.

The two men stared at each other.

Beigler had never see his Chief fazed and now looking at Terrell’s sudden white face and shocked eyes, Beigler realised this big, solid man could be fazed.

“The waterfront is sealed off, Joe?” Terrell asked as he got to his feet.

Beigler stood up.

“It’s sealed off.”

“Then we go in and flush him out,” Terrell said. He pulled open a drawer in his desk and took out a .38 police special and harness. He took off his coat and slid on the harness.

“Look Chief,” Beigler said uneasily, “I’ll go. Someone has to stay here. There’ll be calls coming in . . . and . . .”

Terrell stared at him.

“I’m handling this field operation,” he said quietly. “You stay here. I sent a friend of mine to his death. This is a personal thing,” and he left the office.

Beigler hesitated, then contacted Lepski on the radio.

“The Chief’s coming down, Tom,” he said. “He imagines he’s responsible for Branzenstein’s death. In the mood he’s in, he could walk into a bullet. You get it?”

“I’ve got it,” Lepski said and switched off.

***

Poke felt a surge of vicious satisfaction run through him when he saw Branzenstein fall. This was the moment to go into hiding. Even as he was pulling the trigger, he decided what the next immediate move was to be.

As Branzenstein dropped, Poke ducked low, shoved Jupiter Lucie out of his way and darted into a small junk shop not four yards from the fruit stall.

This junk shop was run by an eighty-year old Indian who sold everything from bows and arrows, strings of beads to alligator skins. He was one of Ocida’s contact men. It had been Ocida’s money that had financed the junk in the shop. He was one of the many pairs of eyes that kept Ocida informed about what was going on on the waterfront.

This old Indian’s name was Micco. He was sitting in the doorway of his tiny shop, stringing glass beads onto a thread when the shooting occurred.

As Poke darted past him into the darkness of the shop. Micco pushed his long needle into the box full of beads, collecting eight more beads to go in the thread.

He knew in a few minutes the waterfront would be swarming with police.

He had seen the shooting. This had been a stupid, bad act, but it had been done by an Indian. He knew about Poke and his racket. When he had first heard about it, it had amused him and he had nodded his approval, but now Poke was showing how sick he was and this began to worry Micco, but Poke was still an Indian.

Micco was a close friend of Poke’s father. Micco pitied the old man because he was too honest. He knew how the old man would suffer when he heard what had happened. Sooner or later, Poke would be caught. This was inevitable. Still, Indians had to protect each other. When the police finally came to his shop, as he knew they would, he would stare up at them and put on his idiot’s face and pretend to be deaf. After all he was eighty years old. Indians of that age were expected to be idiots and deaf.

As Poke went swiftly to the back of the shop and opened a door that led to the upper storey he was feeling very confident.

The waterfront was a warren of escape routes. There were roofs, cellars, tiny, smelly rooms, steep, dark stairs, more tiny rooms, other roofs, alleys, brick walls into other alleys, fire escapes to more roofs and then to lower roofs, skylights into passages lined by doors that hid cupboard-like rooms where the Indians lived when not making a living on the waterfront.

Poke knew all this. Some months ago, an instinctive feeling to survive had urged him to reconnoitre the whole of the waterfront. He had set about the task as a man will plan a long, complicated journey with maps, figuring mileages, deciding whether to take this road or that road.

The Indians never asked questions. Some of them were puzzled by the way Poke investigated their lodging houses, by the way he climbed to their roofs, by the way he ran along the smelly alleys, but it wasn’t their business . . . maybe the boy was crazy. They had a living to make . . . so why bother?