Masters Of Noir Vol Iv Part 5

Macalay stood at attention.

"He's not your favorite prisoner, eh?" Inspector Strane took out a cigar, handed it to the P.K.

"I got no favorite among the cons," the P.K. said, heavily. "A nestful of snakes, the whole bunch. I'd like to pump poison through the cells."

Strane said: "Well, if there weren't any criminals, we'd both be out of jobs."

The P.K. chuckled his heavy, belching chuckle. "A thought. Need this boy any more, Inspector?"

"No," Inspector Strane said. "But think it over, Macalay."

"Hold that boy outside, Strauss," the P.K. said. "I want to talk to him.... "

Strauss snapped his fingers at Macalay, who about-faced and marched out with the guard. Outside, Strauss sat down on a bench, staring at the convict-clerks; Macalay started to sit down next to him. Strauss snapped his fingers. "Attention!"

After awhile Inspector Strane came out, putting on his hat. He never glanced at Macalay, standing stiffly at attention.

One of the clerks, a little nance Macalay couldn't remember seeing before, was giggling at him, for no apparent reason. By the time the P.K. sounded his buzzer, Macalay was considering violence.

Strauss snapped his fingers again-he was really a natural to turn out just like the P.K.-and Macalay marched back into the office, stood at attention in front of the desk.

After awhile the P.K. looked up. "All right, Strauss." He waited till the screw had left. Then his sour gaze went up and down Macalay. "So you didn't tell that city d.i.c.k anything."

"No, sir."

"Pretty anxious for you to talk. Wanted me to bribe you."

"Sir?"

"Give you a laundry job so you'd talk. Yah! Why should I? What did these cops ever do for me, except send more renegades in here to make me trouble? I wouldn't do a city inspector a favor if he paid me!"

Macalay waited. So Strane had tried and it hadn't worked. So- "Yeah!" the P.K. snarled again. "I never liked you, Macalay. I don't like cons, and you're the worst kind. Aren't you?"

"I don't know, sir."

"But I got you trained," the P.K. said. He ran a finger over the desk, inspected it for dust. "You don't talk to cops, and that's because I trained you. You're a real con, now. You know what that inspector gets a year?"

Macalay felt very tired. He said: "No, sir."

"Twenty-three hundred bucks more than I do. And he gets to go home at night, not live in a lousy stir. And he gets to go to dinners with all the big shots in town, and get up an' make speeches about how we're putting down crime, an' all."

Apparently the P.K. hated cops as well as cons. Macalay wondered how he felt about civilians. Probably hated them, too, because they didn't have to take state jobs. Probably hated himself for that matter.

"Yeah," the P.K. said, "that inspector sure went off with a bee in his high hat. You, Macalay. I'll transfer you, but where I want to transfer you. You think you got brains enough to hold down an office job?"

"I could try, sir," Macalay said, and held his breath.

"Yeah. I'll have you transferred. You start tomorrow. Can you type?"

"Yes, sir." This was too d.a.m.n good to be true.

"Good, boy, good. A big boy like you in with the f.a.gs. Be nice."

Macalay nodded imperceptibly. The s.a.d.i.s.tic sonofab.i.t.c.h wanted to see him and Hanning tangle. He wanted to see two cons knife one another. His own perverted pleasure was all the sonofab.i.t.c.h ever thought about.

The office job was okay. Only the P.K.'s office-the fancy one where he did not interrogate prisoners-was air conditioned, but there were fans in all the clerical rooms, and, as winter came on, heaters. There were washbasins where the convict-clerks could wash their hands if they soiled them on the carbon paper; there were pots of coffee sent up from the kitchen whenever they wanted them, because the office staff could do a lot for the other convicts, could transfer their cells or their work-a.s.signments.

Several of the clerks were punks, pansies, girl-boys; these were the various phrases the prison world used to describe them. They flirted with the normal men on the convict-staff, and two or three couples of clerks were "married." Of course it was a cinch for a clerk to see that he shared the same cell with his beloved. But in addition to all this, they were cons. Especially vicious ones. The limp wrists and the wiggling behinds didn't make you forget that.

The arrival of Macalay, a new man in the office, had given the pansies a great big old thrill, as Macalay put it to himself. One of them had presented him with a personal coffee cup with his name painted on it in the fluid they used to correct mimeograph stencils; another had put flowers on his desk, and a third had given him a chair pad, hand-knitted.

But when he didn't respond to their attentions, the girl-boys relaxed back into routine, and left him alone. Quizzically, he noticed that inside himself he rather missed the fuss they'd made over him, and, shuddering, he told himself he had to finish this up quick, make his play before he slid down the easy chute of convict thinking.

So he concentrated on Hanning.

It was a thing he could do well-hate Hanning. The convict part of him and the copper part of him could hate Hanning equally.

Hanning didn't bat an eye when he found Macalay in the office. He didn't allow himself to be stared down. What Hanning might be cooking up for him, he had no way of knowing. But he was wary, even as he knew Hanning to be wary of him.

He found out something right away: Hanning was "married" to one of the file clerks. Somehow or other this surprised Macalay; it changed his opinion of Hanning from sheer hatred to something pretty close to contempt. Still, he worked on how he could put this information that he'd uncovered about Hanning to use.

For two weeks he didn't speak to the squealer. Then the time for the annual report to the Governor came up, and the office staff were put on overtime. It meant they had to eat dinner, at least, in the office, while the rest of the population got supper in the mess halls. The P.K.'s whole career depended on those reports; if anything went wrong with them, the Warden might stop writing his book, the Deputy Warden might stay home for a while, and the P.K.'s life would be wrecked. So nothing was too good for the clerks who made out the report.

Macalay searched and searched, and finally found an opening. There was a nice little thing in the annual mess report he could use. But, instead of going right to the P.K. with it, he waited. That night he took his supper plate over to Hanning's desk. "Hi, boy."

Hanning looked up, startled, his face an angry white.

"I don't want these mashed potatoes," Macalay said. "I'll swap them for your string beans." Macalay made the swap quickly with his fork. Then he pulled up a chair and sat opposite Hanning. He said: "Brother, I was sure out to get you." He forked overdone beef into his mouth. "When a guy first gets out of that Hole, he's like an animal. h.e.l.l, man, if you hadn't yelled, I was gonna do it myself. You probably saved my life, yellin' when you did."

Hanning was getting back to normal. "Well, yeah, that furnace. We'd've all croaked in a little while, and the P.K.-he woulda found some way of covering up."

"That's right," Macalay said, and went on eating. "You holding that against me? You know-about Russ?"

Hanning shook his head, his eyes glistening with relief. "That b.a.s.t.a.r.d?" he said shrilly, in his eagerness to square things with Macalay.

Macalay dropped it then, but he kept on talking to Hanning once in awhile-just casually for a couple of days. At the end of that time he gave Hanning's sweetie-they called him Piney-a knitted m.u.f.fler Leon's mother had sent him.

Then Macalay went to the P.K. He was very careful to stand at attention while he talked. "Sir, about the mess hall report."

The P.K. growled, but it wasn't the growl he'd used at previous interviews. This one took place in the polite office, too. "What about it?"

"I notice the Princ.i.p.al Keeper says that food costs went up three percent in the last year."

"Yeah?"

"I went over to the library and looked it up. Overall food costs in the country went up eight percent. Instead of apologizing, the prison can claim an actual reduction in costs of five percent."

The P.K. looked pleased. But he hated to be nice to anyone. "Yeah?" he said. "I can claim it, but can I make it stick?"

"I want to make a chart on it. A graph."

"Hey, that's all right. Yeah, you do that."

"I'll need some help. I'll have to go talk to the steward, and the chief cook. Get the real dope. Make it look professional. I could do it myself, but it'd take me a week. Two guys could get it all done in half a day."

"Okay. Take any of the clerks you want."

So the next morning found Macalay and Hanning in the kitchen. Macalay had worked it smoothly; Hanning's last suspicion was gone. He should have known all along that a squealer would also be yellow. Hanning behaved like any other greedy weakling let loose in the kitchen; went around nibbling stuff, b.u.mming coffee, flirting with one of the fry-cooks till he got a steak broiled in b.u.t.ter.

The kitchen activity was rising to the noontime peak. Lunch had to be gotten out; three thousand cons had to eat. n.o.body paid any attention to anybody else.

Macalay got a piece of rag out of his pocket; it was used to dust typewriters, but this one was fresh. He slipped a boning knife from a butcher block, wrapped the rag around the handle, moved it up and down a couple of times to remove prints, and palmed it under the clipboard he was taking notes on.

He said: "Hanning, you got to help me a couple of minutes."

Hanning was talking to his friend, the fry-cook. "Aw, Mac ... "

"You've goofed off all morning. I'll have to bring one of the other clerks back with me after lunch if-"

"All right, all right."

Macalay led the way to a meat box. If Hanning had any suspicions left, they must have disappeared when he saw how casually Macalay let him take the rear. They walked into the box, and Macalay gestured with his pencil hand; the other held the clipboard and the knife. "We gotta make a count of those carca.s.ses," he said. "You go along and call out to me, lamb, beef, pork, whatever they are. Only take us a minute."

Hanning stepped forward towards the chilled meat. Macalay kicked the heavy vault door shut, and put the pencil in his pocket.

He said: "Turn, Hanning. Turn and take it."

Hanning turned, his mouth open to say something. Then he saw the knife, and his mouth stayed open. But the color ran out of his face. He was standing by a big side of mutton, and his face, which had been the color of the red meat, ran down the scale until it just matched the suet.

"You think you were going to squeal and get away with it?" Macalay asked. "You got soft in the head, just because I talked easy to you."

Hanning's Adam's apple was jerking up and down like there was a fish hook in and somebody was playing it with a reel.

"Go on and yell," Macalay said. "These boxes are soundproof."

"You-you-"

"Let me do the talking," Macalay said. "You're trying to say I can't get away with it. You're wrong. n.o.body saw us come in here. And in this cold, your body'll stiffen so fast, the docs'll never be able to say what time you got it. And I got alibis for every minute of my time-from when I checked with the steward out there, and him with one eye on the clock that tells him when to serve lunch, till ten minutes ago, when your friend Piney's gonna swear I was in the office with him."

"Piney ?" Hanning asked. Blood-maybe the blood that had drained out of his cheeks-was flooding the whites of his eyes, tracing red veins across them. "Piney's gonna-"

"Piney don't love you any more," Macalay said. "n.o.body loves a squealer. Anyway, Piney wants a guy who can look after him. Dead men don't."

He raised the knife, holding it in front of his chest, fist around the wooden handle, hand turned over. He walked towards Hanning.

And it was hard for him not to hurry, not to step forward fast and let the knife do the work. The dirty squealer! It wasn't right that a snitch should live in the world of decent cons!

The knife would do it. It was sharp and thin, worn down to a sliver of the finest steel. It would go in the soft s.p.a.ce between the breast bones and slide up, easy as taking a drink, up to the left and into the heart, and there'd be one squealer less to stink up the world.

Macalay fought it back, made himself go slow, slow for effect, slow for the big one, the play that he'd suffered for; in the fish tank, in cells, in The Hole, in the concrete block plant....

Slow, he told himself, slow to scare him, not fast to kill him. He's a squealer and a yellow belly and he'll break right down the middle. Take it slow, slow ...

Then the mutton-fat face split, and Hanning was screaming: "Don't kill me! Lemme go, I can give you some dope you can use. You were a cop." He was playing his hole ace; every con had one, fondled and held onto, for just such a time. "It could do you good. Yeah-yeah, it could."

Macalay hesitated. This had to be right, this had to be acting like no guy on the screen had ever done. His voice had to be hard and contemptuous. "What you got? You got something on the P.K.? You going to tell me he's a swish?"

"It could maybe spring you," Hanning screeched again. "I know the guys who-" he stopped.

Macalay's heart began to pound, hard. But he had to keep that sneer on his face, in his voice. "Still squealing, huh?"

"Russ knew the ones pulled that loft job," Hanning said. "His brother got it on that job. Ya-ya, just like that buddy-cop of yours. I'm levelling with ya. Russ told me when we first saw ya. Told me who-" He broke off.

"What good'll that do me?" me?" Macalay asked. He moved the knife forward; it touched Hanning's s.h.i.+rt, just below and to the right of the number sewed on the pocket. "What Macalay asked. He moved the knife forward; it touched Hanning's s.h.i.+rt, just below and to the right of the number sewed on the pocket. "What good, good, squealer?" squealer?"

"I can give you names and dates and where to pick 'em up," Hanning said. "I got it all. You wanta get them, don't you? They killed that cop pal of yours. You wanta get 'em don't yuh ?"

"Yeah," Macalay said. "Yeah, I want to get them. Start talking. An' it better be right, because if it ain't, I'll still be in here, and so will you."

He s.h.i.+fted the knife to his left hand, under the clipboard, and started writing as Hanning babbled.

He could sneak a letter out with the noon mail that went from the office. Inspector Strane would get it tomorrow, and come get him.

He'd be out soon-a free man, a rich man ... But, h.e.l.l, it would be a pleasure to kill Hanning when the squealer got through squealing. It sure would. And maybe necessary now, to keep Hanning from squealing on him. In any case, he'd have to travel fast and far to get beyond the clutch of the grapevine.

Suddenly, Macalay threw the knife away, hard, into the far black depths of the icebox. It landed in the sawdust, barely made a noise. Looking at Hanning, crouched, panting, the refrigerator light glinting off his cold sweat, Macalay wondered if it was going to be as hard living what the hundred grand as it had been getting it.

THE FLOATER by JONATHAN CRAIG

She was a small girl, and she looked even smaller, lying there at the river end of the vast, empty pier. A tugboat captain had sighted her body off Pier 90, radioed the Harbor Precinct, and a police launch had taken her from the water and brought her ash.o.r.e. There was a chill wind blowing in from the Hudson and the pale October sun glinted dully on the girl's face and arms and bare shoulders. The skirt of her topless dress was imprinted with miniature four-leaf clovers and horseshoes and number 7's, and on her right wrist there was a charm bracelet with more four-leaf clovers and horseshoes.

A sergeant and three patrolmen from the Uniform Force had arrived in an RMP car a few minutes before my partner, Paul Brader, and I. They had just finished their preliminary examination of the body.

The sergeant glanced at me and then back down at the girl. "They'd didn't do her a h.e.l.l of a lot of good, did they? The lucky symbols, I mean."

"Not much," I said.

"How old do you figure her for, Jim?" Paul Brader asked.

"Eighteen, maybe," I said. "No more than that."

"Well, we've got a homicide all right," Paul said. "She sure wasn't alive when she hit the water. You notice the skin?"