A Shroud for Jesso (3 page)

The tall guy opened the door. He took the card Jesso had brought, and that was all. He hardly nodded when Jesso wished him a good morning.

“Remember me, friend? The clothes tree.”

“This way, please.”

“How’s Porker, friend?”

“Mr. Kator is waiting.”

The next room wasn’t large, but Jesso didn’t see Kator right away. He sat hidden in a high-backed chair, his small hands folded in his lap. The thick neck was wedged into a stiff collar, and Jesso had to walk around the chair before he could see the man’s face. Then Kator was out of his chair with an easy movement.

“You are Mr. Jesso,” he said. He held out his hand. When Jesso took it he was surprised by the strength of the grip. “Now that you will be working for us temporarily, please be seated and listen closely.”

Kator might just as well have left out the “please.” His voice was clear, machine-like. The English was so perfect that Jesso was sure that Kator spoke another language, one that he must like much better.

Jesso sat.

“Now that you are working for me, I will give you all the necessary leeway to do your job. However, I require a report of every step you take. The nature of your job and my interest in its outcome—“

“What’s the job?”

“Did you understand my instructions?”

“Sure, Kator. Sure. What’s the job?”

Jesso had been talking fast. The way he was starting to feel about Kator, it helped to talk fast.

Kator pulled up his chair and turned his head right, then left. The stiff collar made a scraping sound on his neck.

“A member of my organization has disappeared. You are to find him, Jesso. His name is Joseph Snell. He is, in fact, hiding out from me, apparently under the impression that I wish him ill. I know he is in New York. However, I do not know how long he will stay here. You can see it is imperative that he be found quickly. Those, in brief, are the facts. Find Joseph Snell, inform me of his whereabouts, and your job is completed.” Kator stopped.

“That’s it?” Jesso lit a cigarette.

“Yes. How do you propose to start?”

“I’ll start with you. What’s your business?”

Kator blinked. “I fail to—”

“If I don’t know what your boyfriend Snell’s been doing, how can I look for him in the right places?”

“It will be sufficient for you to know, Jesso, that I am a businessman. A businessman with far-flung obligations, and Joseph Snell is one of my associates.”

“Why do you want him?”

“Mr. Jesso.” Kator turned his head with that slow squeeze of the neck. “I will tell you what you need to know, and I will decide what you need to know I regard any questions as impertinence.”

For a moment Jesso forgot all about Gluck and what might happen. For a moment, he forgot that he was in the middle of a squeeze and that it would take more than a punch or a push or a shot to get it all back to where he wanted it. Then he held still. He leaned back in his chair and blew smoke slowly. He concentrated on just that, and Kator. What got him was the way Kator had said it. He had said it just so; not to be insulting or to act big, but just so. Because Kator felt he was talking to a bug. There probably wasn’t a man on this earth that Kator didn’t think was a bug.

Jesso kept sucking on his cigarette. When he figured his voice was going to be steady, he leaned forward again.

“I’m going to ask what I need to know. I’m not a divining rod, Kator, but I got the job to find your flunky, and as long as I do your gumshoeing for you, you open up and answer. Or get someone else.”

Kator sat still, waiting.

“Who’s Snell?” Jesso asked.

“An associate of mine.”

“Why’s he hiding?”

“I remind you, Jesso—”

“The hell with that!” Jesso was up now. “Let me remind you of something. If Snell’s on the lam because you’re gunning for him, that’s one kind of job. If he’s got something you want, that’s another. I wanna know if he’s laying for me ready to kill, or ready to argue, or just lying there scared stiff.” Jesso took a deep breath. “So let’s have some answers.”

“Joseph Snell is most likely scared stiff, as you call it, and I want him found because I must speak to him.” Kator raised his small hands and put the fingertips together. “Whether he is likely to take a shot at you, that is something you may tell me about after you’ve found him.” Kator shifted in his chair. “Now then, what else do you need to know?”

“Has Snell got any friends in town?”

“Really, Jesso. We’ve explored that angle.”

“Has he?”

“No. He has been with me for a number of years. We met in Europe and his ties in the States were severed long ago.”

“How long?”

“The early thirties. In fact, he used to know a man called Bonetti. I mention the name because you and this Bonetti are in a similar—uh—field.”

Jesso started to pace the room. “Hell, Bonetti’s dead. He died—Wait a minute.”

Jesso had forgotten about Kator and Gluck, about the stupid way this punk job had been thrown at him. He wasn’t thinking of any of this because now he had started to work. Jesso went to the phone and dialed long-distance.

“Give me Las Vegas, the Sagebrush. I want to talk to Mr. P. Carter…. Yeah, person to person. And call me back.” He gave his number and hung up. Next he called Murph, who was repairing the carburetor on one of Gluck’s cars. Murph got the call in the basement garage.

“Murph? Jack. Listen. Put out the word I want a guy that’s on the lam. He’s from out of town. His name’s Joseph Snell, might be using his own. Now, this guy’s an outsider, and—Kator, what’s Snell look like?”

Kator had been watching without a word. He gave an involuntary start. “Short, thin black hair. His hands tremble, a condition he has. Eyes blue and somewhat protruding. He—“

“That’s good enough. Murph? Listen,” and Jesso repeated the description. “Call the usual places and let me know when you hear something, Murph…. To hell with his carburetor. Let him get a mechanic … No, right now, and get to it.”

Jesso hung up. He stared right through Kator, and there was a concentrated frown on his face.

“Do you propose to conduct your search from my telephone, Jesso?”

“Why, you short of money?”

“I’m trying to appraise your methods.”

Jesso put his hands in his pockets. “Look, Kator, why’d you come to Gluck for this job if you don’t think we can do it?”

“I didn’t. It was Mr. Gluck that suggested the arrangement.”

“What?”

“You are surprised? My original business with Gluck had to do with other matters. I have a ship in the East River and my business required special docking procedures, and Mr. Gluck’s—uh—unique influence over docking matters—“

“You mean Gluck dreamed up this job in the first place?”

“No. The job was there. I mentioned my efforts to find this associate, and Mr. Gluck suggested that you might help.”

Not until then did it occur to Jesso just how badly Gluck wanted him out. That grinning bastard even went out of his way to hunt up a bum job for Jesso.

The phone rang, but Jesso didn’t move. For a moment he felt pushed into a corner, squeezed from every side by Gluck, the thing he stood for, the big, invisible strength of the syndicate.

“Jesso, the phone is ringing.”

He reached for the receiver and said, “Yes, hello.” It sounded a little sharp.

“I am ready with your call to Las Vegas. Go ahead, please.”

“Hello. That you, Carter?”

“Jackie, how are ya? You’re hardly home and already—”

“Listen close, Paul. I got business. You remember Bonetti?”

“Bonetti?”

“Yeah, yeah, Bonetti. Twenty years ago. You’re old enough to remember.”

“Oh, Bonetti! Sure, I remember him.”

“You knew him pretty good, didn’t you?”

“A little business here and there.”

“So listen. He had a punk in his crowd called Snell. Joseph Snell.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Sort of short, popeyed.”

“Never heard of him, Jackie.”

“All right, all right. Snell was in his crowd, though. Who’s still around that Snell might know?”

There was silence for a moment and then Carter said, “Bonetti’s dead.”

“I didn’t ask that, damn it!”

“There was Pickles, but he’s on the rock.”

“Bonetti had a brother, didn’t he?”

“That’s right. But, Christ, he must be seventy or something. Besides, he never hung around much. Did the fencing, is all.”

“And kept a hideout for the boys, didn’t he?”

“That’s right. But he must be over—”

“Never mind. What happened to him?”

“Christ, Jackie, I wouldn’t know.”

“Who would? Think, Paul.”

“He had a daughter. Cook’s the married name.”

“Here in New York?”

“I think so. At least, five years ago I remember—”

“O.K., Paul, thanks a million.”

Jesso hung up. He turned to Kator, who had lit a cigar and stood by the window watching Jesso.

“I need a phone book, Kator. Manhattan first.”

“To your left, in the drawer.” Kator rolled the cigar between his lips and watched Jesso.

There was a long string of Cooks, and Jesso felt disgusted before he started. Then the phone rang. “This is Murph. May I speak—“

“It’s me, Murph. So?”

“I checked around by phone, Jackie, and so far nothing. Nobody’s seen anything like that Snell guy around. And I meant to tell ya, Jackie, Gluck came down and the car wasn’t ready. So I tried to explain to him how you—“

“To hell with Gluck. What else?”

“I sent a few guys checking the flops and got some names for you. Names of guys what used to keep a hole in the wall for special guests.”

“Let’s have it.”

“Well, there’s that farmer Cook, out near Nyack.”

“You say Cook?”

“Yes, Jackie. He’s in New Orleans right now, due back in a week. Then there’s Murrow, Able—sometimes, anyway—another Cook, Jenowitch—“

“That’s enough. Stay at Gluck’s place and I’ll be right over.”

“O.K., Jackie, but I wanted to tell you, Gluck was sore when his car wasn’t—“

“Forget it. And wait for me.”

Jesso hung up. This job was going to be over so fast that Gluck was going to have sleepless nights thinking of bigger and better ways to get under Jesso’s skin.

“Where are you going?” Kator was still by the window.

“To find your man. I’ll phone you.”

“Just a moment.” Kator was in the middle of the room when Jesso turned. “You will take one of my men with you. As I explained to you earlier—”

Jesso stopped at the door. He made it short. “I work alone. Send one of your monkeys and you won’t find your man for weeks. I’ll see to that.” He slammed the door.

The other Cook lived in Brooklyn. After Jesso had taken Murph’s list, he decided on the Cook in Brooklyn first. Murph had finished with the carburetor in the meantime, so Jesso took Gluck’s car.

The address was a store that said, “Notions.” The dim insides hung full of dusty dresses, and everything looked twice as cheap where a naked bulb made a glitter on the boxes of fancy buttons. When Jesso came in, a fat woman with an apron over her coat was scratching a fingernail over the plastic eye of a button. “No, thanks, dearie, it ain’t what I want,” she said. Her other hand dropped something into her pocket. “No, dearie, this ain’t the right color,” she said, and left through the door.

The other one didn’t look any better. She watched Jesso walk up to the counter. When the glare from the bulb hit his face she said, “What do you want?”

“Buttons,” Jesso said.

She patted her hair. It was a rumpled gray and she kept patting it as if that were going to make a difference.

“The buttons I’m after are blue. Popeye blue, Mrs. Cook.”

She stopped patting. “How’d you know my name?”

“Your father told me.”

She leaned her face closer and Jesso saw wrinkles stretch in her neck.

“You’re lying. He ain’t left the back in years.” She straightened up again and folded her big arms. “What do you want, copper?”

Jesso laughed. Then he stopped and put his hands in his pockets. “Where’s Bonetti?”

She still look rattled. “Who’s that?”

“Your old man, in the back. He ain’t left the back in years, you said.”

She was stupid. “Who’s Bonetti?” she said again.

Jesso shrugged and walked through the curtain in the back. It was even darker there. He stumbled over an empty carton that lay on the floor and hit his leg against a sewing machine. Then he stood still, trying to get his bearings. Tissue paper crackled under his feet and there was a smell of burned coffee.

“He’s a copper,” the woman said from the curtain.

“Oh, no, he ain’t.”

Jesso turned, looking for the cackly voice. Then he saw Bonetti. He sat all sunken in a wheel chair, his old man’s jaws chomping in a constant tic, and there was a big.45 in his hand. It trembled a little, but the aim was good enough.

“Call the police, Ann,” Bonetti said.

Jesso kept his hands down, turned slowly.

“Go ahead, Ann,” he said. “Gluck’s going to like that. And Snell.”

But Gluck didn’t mean a thing to Bonetti and he ignored the name Snell.

“Go on, Ann,” he said. He kept working his jaws.

Bonetti’s daughter stepped around the sewing machine and grabbed the phone off the hook. “Police,” she said.

When she was connected with the police she gave her name and address, and asked to have a man sent out right away, because her daddy had caught a prowler and was holding a gun on him. She hung up and turned to Jesso. “Smart guy,” she said, and worked her mouth the way her father was doing it.

“That’s right,” Jesso said. He stood still and watched the old man’s gun. The muzzle was making short, trembly arcs, the safety was off, and one bony finger held the trigger the way it ought to be held.

“Lemme reach for a smoke,” Jesso said. He waited for an answer.

“See if he’s clean, Ann.”

“He’s clean,” Jesso said, but the woman started to pat his sides, without ever getting in the way of the gun.

“So smoke,” Bonetti said.

Jesso lit up and let them watch. He could tell they were getting puzzled.