Have Gat—Will Travel (2 page)

There had obviously been some heavy petting going on. There was plenty of liquor in sight. Probably they were all half plastered, and there was a heavy sweet smell that indicated there were a few marijuana smokers scattered around. Liquor and marijuana make the punks bigger, smarter, tougher.

I stood inside the room for only a few seconds as hostile eyes stared at me, then the door slammed behind me and the silence ended. Three of the guys who'd stood up when I barged inside walked toward me, and the one in front, a short, stocky youngster with the sweet face of a child who spends his evenings looking at filthy postcards, said "Beat it, mister. This is a private racket." Another, with a thin, pimpled face and bright red lips, said. "Get lost; vamoose; disappear."

There were several other remarks, all equally clever. The girls present made it worse, because male punks, like those around me, always get tougher and more "clever" in front of their women — like guys kicking sand at the beach. And the women looked like the type who'd love it. Half a dozen were in jeans or slacks, others in tight dresses.

They didn't like having their party interrupted. I couldn't help thinking that Pam and her boy friend must not have liked it either, last night. I looked at the hard young faces of the three kids standing a yard away, glanced around at the other male faces and they were as vicious and ugly a collection as I'd ever seen in one room. Each time I looked at one of them I wondered if maybe he had beaten Pam, wrapped his fingers around her throat. Any one of them looked capable of it — and one or more of them had probably done it.

The short chunky kid and the red-lipped one on his left put their hands flat on my chest and shoved me toward the door. I could feel my face getting hot. It's simply part of the way I'm made; nothing in the world gripes me more than for a man to push me, shove me around — and now these brats were trying it.

"Keep your hands off me," I said.

Ratface was on my left. "Who do you think you are, Lumphead?"

I looked at Ratface and reached for the wallet in my inside coat pocket. "I already told you," I said.

Maybe he thought I was reaching for something else, maybe he just hoped to scare me; he was standing with his hands behind his back over his hip pockets, and he brought his right hand halfway from behind as I pulled the wallet out. When he spotted the wallet he put his hand behind him again, but not before I saw the reflection of light on the long-bladed knife he must have carried in a hip-pocket sheath. He was a sweet little underprivileged kid. I sure felt sorry for him.

I flipped the wallet open and showed him the photostat of my private detective's license, then showed it to the three other kids near me. They weren't impressed. "Yah, a fake cop," Ratface said, and one of the others made a yak-yak-yak sound. There was a little harsh laughter. I looked at Ratface.

"Let's start with you," I said. I pulled the snapshot of Pam I'd taken from Mr. Franklin's album out of my pocket and handed it to him. I didn't say anything, but waited to see what he'd do.

He looked at it. He kept looking at it. Finally he licked his lips, squinted up at me. "So what's this for?"

"You know her?"

"Nah. Should I, Lumphead?"

"Pass it around," I told him. "Give everybody a look."

He kept squinting at me, and for a few moments I didn't think he was going to do it. Then he shrugged. "So why not?" He showed the snap to the three punks alongside me and they shook their heads silently, then Ratface walked to the nearest chair, gave a young couple there the picture and mumbled something. The short chunky kid near me walked over to Ratface and they started whispering together, glancing occasionally at me. The other two joined them in a few seconds. I walked to the rear wall and leaned against it while the photo made the rounds. I wanted to be where I could watch all the faces — but mainly I wanted that wall at my back; I didn't like the way this was going.

T
here was a steady rumble of conversation; a lot of lips curled at me when the kids looked my way. The boys started moving around, gathering together; in half a minute all the girls were grouped around one of the couches and the guys were in two groups at the far side of the room. They talked softly, looking at me and then laughing, as if they were building up to something, working themselves up. Most of the male punks had drinks in their hands.

I didn't like the rumbling at all, because these were simply young hoodlums — just as bad as old hoodlums only younger. If they felt like it they could gang up on me and maybe split me open, but I had to be polite. They were products of their environment. No more so, oddly enough, than everybody else, including me, so I couldn't work up much sympathy for them.

Ninety-nine out of a hundred teen-agers — or grown-ups — you run into are fine people, but there's still the one per cent or less that doesn't belong. There are good kids and bad kids, good men and bad men, but when they shoot you in the head, you're just as dead whether they were born in a mansion or a slum, use a Magnum or a zip gun. And I guess I'm the kind of guy who looks at the finished product of our civilized jungle instead of the manufacturing process. I'm not the kind of guy who says to the cannibal gnawing on my leg, "Bless you, my son; I realize you're a product of your environment."

Finally all the little cannibals had seen Pam's photo, but nobody had seen her before. That was odd, because a picture of her had been in today's papers. And if the ones who had raped Pam, murdered her, were here — I wondered what was going on in their minds now.

Ratface left his pals, picked up the snapshot and walked over to me. He handed me the photo and then put his hands into his hip pockets again. "You satisfied?" he asked.

"Uh-uh. I still want to see Chuck."

He took the knife out of his pocket, making it obvious this time, and pared a tiny sliver from one of his thumbnails.

All the other male punks stood across the room looking at me. One of them tossed something shiny from one hand to another. At first I couldn't tell what it was, but then I saw it was a set of homemade knuckles probably made from a garbage can handle, with sharp pieces of steel projecting from it, steel slivers that could slice a man's face into shreds. A few other kids, including Ratface's short chunky friend, had their hands in their pockets.

"Beat it," Ratface said. "Now, Lumphead. I mean it."

I was getting awfully tired of this little punk telling me what I was going to do. "Listen, you pint-sized hood," I said, "quit flapping that nasty tongue of yours at me or —"

He interrupted, "Or what? Hey" — he turned and looked at the guys behind him — "he don't wanna leave." He motioned with his hand and the whole bunch of them walked toward me. They came slowly; the one kid had his knucks on his right fist, others still had hands in their pockets.

I put my hand under my coat, but hesitated; I didn't pull the gun out. You can shoot an Al Capone when he's big Al, but it's not considered proper when he's still Little Al. I remembered Sampson warning me that I'd be in plenty of trouble if I started slapping "kids" around. I was reaching the point, though, where I soon wouldn't give a damn; and if any kid came at me with a knife or knucks, it was quite likely I'd shoot him in the head.

I wrapped my fingers around the gun butt and pressed my back against the wall. "Hold it right there," I said. My voice had tightened up on me a little. "So help me, you punks get any closer I'll forget that you're children."

They kept coming. I started to slide the gun out — and right then I heard a car outside screech around the corner with its horn blaring. The car slid to a stop in front, still honking. The atmosphere in the room changed. The dozen or so punks stopped a couple of yards from me, some grinning and poking each other. Ratface trotted toward the door and was joined on the way by Shorty, the chunky kid who seemed to be his pal. They both hurried out. It seemed the boss had arrived.

I
n a minute the kids came back in, cocky expressions on their faces. Ratface winked at the others. Chuck was here; he'd fix me. I heard footsteps coming up the walk; that would be Chuck, but there was the fast tap-tap of high heels, too. Chuck came through the door first, and if there was a woman behind him, I couldn't see her. If there had been a diesel locomotive behind him I wouldn't have seen it.

As Samson had said, the guy was big.

The group of punks near me started milling around, paying less attention to me now, and as Chuck waved at everybody he got a chorus of "Hi, Chuck," and "Where ya' been, Chuck?" And "Hey, Chuck, this big lug's givin' us a hard time."

He looked at the knucks on the kid's hand, and at another kid with something metallic half out of his pocket. "Put that hardware away," he said. Then he walked across the room and stopped in front of me.

"What's the trouble?" he asked.

He was about half an inch taller than I, but he was so broad-shouldered and slim-waisted that he'd looked even taller in the doorway. His shoulders must have been three or four inches wider than mine, and his arms were long, too long. Wiry black hairs stuck up from the back of his hands and wrists and sprouted over the neck of the white T-shirt he wore under a brown coat. He wasn't a bad-looking guy — not what I'd expected at all.

"No trouble," I told him. "Not yet. Just asking questions."

He grinned. His voice was soft, pleasant, as he said, "Who asked you to ask questions?"

"Mr. Franklin."

"Franklin?" he said steadily. "Don't know him. So you better go right out the front door, and right back where you came from." The voice was still pleasant, but the grin was a little tight. Something was bothering me, about this guy; I thought I knew him from somewhere, but I couldn't place him.

"We ever meet before?" I asked him.

"Nope. We probably don't run in the same crowd."

I looked around at the kids and I said, "Apparently not."

And because I looked around I saw the girl — or rather the woman, because by no stretch of imagination could she be classed as a teen-ager. Looking at her suddenly like that was almost the same as getting kicked in the head.

She was a tall, platinum-haired dish with a hard, brassy-but-pretty face that seemed to have half a pound of paint on it, and she had no modesty at all. She could have lost half of her curves and still have been shapely, and I knew the curves were hers because she was wearing a pale blue off-the-shoulder blouse and a tight skirt. She walked across the room toward us. The strap of a big, brown leather bag was looped over her right shoulder, pulling the blouse out of line.

She stopped alongside Chuck, looking at me. Seeing her this close, hazel eyes with thickly mascaraed lashes, and all the rest, I was starting to think that if she'd scrape off most of the gooky paint, relax a little, and wear another shoulder bag on the other side she might not be half bad — but then she opened her mouth and spoiled any favorable impression I might have been getting.

"Chuckie," she said, "who's the creep?"

All she needed was chewing gum she could pull out of her mouth between thumb and index finger. It was that kind of a voice. High, scratchy, twangy, and if a voice all by itself can be stupid, that voice was stupid.

"Yeah," said Chuck. "Before you leave, who are you?"

I went through the wallet routine, pulling my coat open so he couldn't help seeing the .38. The license photostat didn't impress him any more than it had impressed the kids. He spotted the gun, raised an eyebrow and said, "Detective Special, huh? Real big man's gun." He glanced again at my license. "Well, what do you know? A slewfoot. An April-fool copper."

The platinum blonde giggled nasally.
"Oh, Chuckie!" He was slaying her.

And I guess he got carried away by her stupid admiration, because he said, "Let's see the heater," and reached toward my shoulder for it. I let his finger touch the gun before I swung my open right hand and chopped him just under the bicep with its edge. I knew it hurt him and almost paralyzed his arm. He got so mad I thought his eyes were going to pop out.

That was okay. I wanted him mad. I wanted him boiling. I said, "I don't show the gun to people unless I mean to shoot them." I reached into my pocket and pulled out a picture of Pam and handed it to him before he could slug me. "I just dropped in to see if you know this girl," I said. "Do you?"

His jaw muscles were jumping and he was trying to work the fingers of his right hand, but he took the picture. He didn't look at it immediately, though. He stared at me, wiggling his jaw muscles till he'd worked the anger out of his face. He said huskily, sarcastically, "Glad to cooperate with a slewfoot."

He got his face nice and composed, glanced at the picture, and his face uncomposed all over again. He sort of jerked and his lips twisted, then he looked at me with anger flushing his face. "You rat," he said. "What you showing me her mugg for? I read the papers, Slewfoot. What you been doing, bothering those kids about it? So that's the Franklin who told you to snoop, huh?" He tossed the picture away, angrily. "I think I'll bust you one. What you come here for?"

"You don't know her, huh?"

"No, you —"

"Never saw her?"

"No."

"Go ahead," the brassy blonde said. "Hit the snooper, Chuckie."

Too bad, I thought; I could have liked her. Chuck had his fists balled up, and when they were balled they were lethal weapons.

"Listen, Slewfoot," he said. "I'll count up to ten. Be out of here when I finish or you'll get carried out."

I almost gave him an argument, but when I looked around I saw the dozen or so young cannibals ready to eat me alive. I'm pretty big, and I'm an ex-Marine crammed full of judo and the gamut of unarmed defense, but it was small consolation to know that if they all ganged up on me, I might get half a dozen before they massacred me. Maybe Chuck alone could massacre me.

He started counting. What the hell, I thought, I'd stirred them up. I shrugged and took a step toward the door. That brought me up right alongside the blonde.

"Some moxie," she said in the twangy voice. "Some tough muzzler you are."