NEW GUY ON THE BLOCK

BY

JACK BLUDIS

(This story first appeared in the Private-Eye Writers of America anthology Mystery Street, edited by Robert J. Randisi.)

***

Baltimore, Maryland 1946

"Bail bonds, tattoos, rubber goods, and hot dogs," said the fancy-lettered sign in the front window of Sammy's Place. Inside there was a lot more, including the pervading aroma of hamburgers, fried onions, and the old grease that went along with them.

I had no idea which of Sammy's many enterprises netted him the most cash, but I suspected it was the bail bonds. I had just started as a private investigator, and for the last month, he had been calling me to locate some of his bond skips so that his strong-arm guys could bring them in.

Sammy, short and overweight, leaned back in the swivel chair behind the desk in the rear of his establishment. Even from there he had a good view of the foot traffic on 400 Block of East Baltimore street, with its strip joints, dirty bookstores and penny arcades. He chewed the stub of his cigar, with dark brown spit sloshing around in his mouth. Miraculously, he kept it from dripping down to his Hawaiian shirt. 

"Get him out of here!" Sammy yelled passed my ear.

I turned to see a blond-haired drunk in a rumpled suit stumble to the counter. He looked straight up at me, and the short-order cook made a sudden transition to bouncer. He ushered him out the front door, tumbling him to the sidewalk. He came back wiping his hands in his filthy apron as if the drunk had contaminated him.

"This one's murder," Sammy said, regaining my attention. "But you're a smart guy. It's worth a hundred bucks for you to find him."

In 1946, a hundred bucks was a lot of money. It was just short of what I was getting for a full week's advance as a private investigator. Sammy gave me fifty on the other cases. I located all three skips in less than two days, but they were pretty easy, just punk kids who showed up at their mothers' houses.

         He gave me a quick thumbnail of the story, and I commented: "I thought it was an unwritten law? If you find a guy in bed with your wife and you kill them--you're in the clear. Right?"

         "Not if he tells his people he was gonna catch 'em at it. The 'unwritten law' only counts when it's a surprise."

         "Oh." At thirty-one I was learning something new every day, especially after being out of circulation with war in Europe. The only thing I knew for sure was that I had a living to make. Catching wayward husbands and wives and looking for people and things seemed a better way to do it than working at my brother's butcher stall in the Lexington Market.

         "Who said he was going to catch them?" I said.

         "Ask the cops." He shrugged and told me that Vincent was a partner with Bennie Traveler in a strip joint called the Wannasea. It was pronounced, "Wanna see ya."

         "This one sounds a little tough for me. Maybe I'll pass." I didn't think it was a good idea to mixed up with murder.

         "If you don't do this one, you can forget anymore work from me. Maybe you can even forget being a private dick -- at least in this town."

         Owning any business on the Block implied influence with organized crime. I thought about ignoring his threat and taking my chances, but I didn't want to test him. Besides, I had no other jobs going, and I needed the hundred bucks.

         "OK," I said. "You got a picture?"

         "I knew you was smart." Sammy reached into his top middle drawer and pulled out a glossy photo of some guy in a tux.

"Looks like a singer," I said.

         "He was, before the war. Name's Chip Vincent. His face is kind of messed up now, but you'll recognize him. Here's everything I got on him."

Sammy turned over the eight by ten photo, and while he printed out some information with the stub of a pencil, I remembered that the double homicide happened just before my first job with Sammy.

         "He doesn't live far from the club," I said, looking at the address. "Is that where he caught the wife?"

         "That's it. If you get him by Sunday, I'll give you fifty extra."

         "That's only a couple of days."

         "If you want the bonus, you'll have him in."

         I wanted the bonus.

***

         Night people are easier to catch in the daytime, but you have to talk to their friends and associates first, and that's usually in the evening. I stopped up at the Central Branch of the Pratt Library to check the newspapers for the past month. I picked up some new detail and verified what I remembered about the case. Then I went home and took a long nap.

When I came back to the Block, it was nine-thirty. The war was over almost a year, but the street was still crowded with sailors out of Bainbridge and soldiers out of Meade and Hollibird. Some of them were mustering out, and some new ones were in training to replace the guys who hadn't come home yet.

Bouncers, who doubled as barkers were in front of most of the clubs shouting out their individual and sometimes raunchy versions of "Girls, Girls, Girls."

One barker grabbed my sleeve, but I brushed him off. The rest just shouted out their pitch. Some gestured toward the glossy photos behind the club windows, which usually showed women with pasties over their breasts and long, slit skirts that showed the full length of a leg. A staggering redhead stopped in front of me and asked if I wanted a good time.

"I'm having a good time," I said, and I walked around her.

I had managed to catch a wad of gum on the sole my shoe, and I ground it off onto the curb in front of the blue-mirrored façade at Wannasea. I glanced at the hand-printed sign that somebody pasted at the bottom of the wartime poster of Uncle Sam pointing. "Yes, We Want to see you!" it said.

Like most of the clubs on the Block, they had live music--piano, base and drums. On the runway behind the horseshoe bar was a slightly overweight cutie stripping out of something that once upon a time looked like an evening gown.

I slid up on one of the tall stools and ordered a bottle of National Bohemian Beer. There were six other guys at the bar, along with four women, but nobody at the tables. I wasn't there a minute, when a tiny, straw-haired blonde slithered between me and the stool to my right, and rubbed her breasts against my arm.

         "Ah'm Charlene, you want some company?" she said. She dragged out the words in the thick accent of West--by God--Virginia.

"No thanks, I'm looking for an old army buddy, name of Chip Vincent."

"You know Chip?" She was still trying to be casual, but she glanced over at the gray haired bartender when I mentioned the name.

"We were together at the Bulge," I said. The papers said he had been decorated during the European Campaign, and just about everybody was involved at the Bulge in one way or another, so I took a guess.

"He ain't been around for a while, but maybe I might could keep you happy while you're lookin'."

"Maybe so," I said. "You know him?"

"Sure." The game was to keep me occupied while the bartender made her a drink and put it on my tab. I kept an eye on him, making sure it wasn't the twenty-dollar bottle of champagne he was working on. When the guy put together a phony mixed drink, I figured I'd put it on Sammy's expenses. He might balk, but Charles "Chip" Vincent had skipped on big bail, and Sammy stood to lose a lot of money if somebody didn't track him down.

"How is he?" I said.

She waited until the bartender put up a glass of ginger ale with ice and a cherry. She stirred her drink, while he stepped away. "He's good . . . I guess."

"Is it true what they say?"

She spoke very quietly. "He didn't kill no wife."

"Why do the cops think so?"

"I ain't gonna talk about that." She looked toward the bartender.

"Is that Traveler?"

"Sure is. And if I was to tell him what your askin', you'd be in all kinds of trouble." 

"Is that so?"

She took a deep breath. "Now if you was to buy me a bottle of champagne, we might could go into one of them dark corners."

"I don't want to know that bad." I knew she worked for a percentage on the phony champagne, but I had an uneasy feeling about being there.

"OK," she said, but I could tell that she wanted to talk as much as I wanted to listen.

I tasted the Boh from the bottle and looked straight ahead.

"You really one of his old army buddies?"  

"Why would I say it if I wasn't?"

"Chip needs help," Charlene said. She held the glass to her lips so Traveler couldn't see her talking.

"Where is he?" I said, feeling like a traitor.

"Don't know," she said.

"You do tricks?"

Her face flushed so red it showed through her makeup. "Uh, no. But . . . uh . . . I date."

"Good. What time do you get off?"

"If I don't get called by the boss. I'm usually on the street by two o'clock and thirty minutes."

"Maybe I'll stop back," I said.

The way I figured it, the management had already made me as no good in one way or another, and the chances of me talking to her again in Wannasea weren't very good. While I was thinking about that, and with me not so much as glancing at him, Traveler put up bottle of Champagne with a glass for the lady.

         I peeled off a ten-dollar bill, dropped it to the bar, and started to walk away.

         "Hey, pal. You gotta pay for the champagne!"

         "There's enough for the drinks and tips for both of you. Put the champagne on the next sucker."

         "Hey!" Charlene called, pretending indignation.

         When I reached the front door, the barker-bouncer blocked my way. He was half-a-head shorter than me but at least that much wider. If I knew the routine, he was carrying at least a black jack. I was carrying a .38, but neither one of us would use it unless the other showed first. 

         "Where you goin', pal?"

         "You don't want trouble from me," I said, looking straight at him.

         "I don't?"

         "No."

         Somebody behind me caught his attention. Then he said, "OK," and let me slide by him.

I glanced over my shoulder twice as I strolled up the Gayety Burlesque Theater. Lili St. Cyr was making one of her few appearances in Baltimore, and I figured it was a good way to kill time. After a couple preliminary acts, barkers came through the audience selling 8x10 glossies of the star. They were selling "dirty" magazines and "dirty story books" too but they were only risqué. The real dirty stuff was sold nearby from under the counters in the bookstores and magazine stalls. Sammy even sold some of it, especially the nude glossies wrapped in cellophane.

There were a couple of preliminary acts, then Lili St. Cyr did a kind of reverse strip, by getting out of a bathtub and getting dressed. She did it in such a way that it was far more exciting than the strippers who made that final little move of slipping their G-string to their thigh, and going naked below the waist. It was the only time I ever saw Miss St. Cyr, but it was also one of the few strips I actually remember. Even now it's like a picture going through my head.

After the show, I made it a point to stay away from Sammy's. At two a.m., I sat near the window in a different hot dog joint drinking coffee and watching the front door of Wannasea. I saw my own reflection inside the window, but I also saw the blond guy who had been thrown out of Sammy's this morning. He had cleaned up, and he was nursing coffee at the counter. 

At about two-twenty Carlene, in a yellow dress and a red cotton coat stepped onto the sidewalk. She looked around, confused for a moment. Then she walked east on Baltimore Street. A half-block later, a guy wearing a sports jacket grabbed her by the arm. Any woman, whether whore, lady, or schoolgirl, was fair game on the Block at that time of the morning.

"Ah don't think so, honey. Not tonight," she said.

"Come on," he said. "Twenty bucks."

"Sweetheart!" I said.

"Hi!" she said, as if the word were all H's, and she beamed a smile at me.

The guy in the jacket looked at me. His eyes were glazed over, but he thought he knew trouble when he saw it. "I didn't know this was your, uh . . ."

"My girl friend, right. I'm here now."

"Oh," the guy said, and he stumbled away.

"You want to go get some breakfast," I said.

"Y'mind if we get a cab?"

***

         Charlene said nothing until the cab stopped at a place just west of downtown that was alleged to be a tavern owned by Babe Ruth's father. The waitress brought us our coffee before Charlene even looked up at me.

"He didn't kill her, you know."

         "You told me that."

         "They want him dead."

         "Who wants him dead?"

         "Traveler. If Chip does time up to Greenmount Avenue, Traveler gets it all."

What Charlene called "Greenmount Avenue" was the location of the State Penitentiary and the City Jail, just a few blocks north of where we were.

  I nodded and looked down into my black coffee. I recalled the old saying about not looking a gift horse in the mouth, but I also remembered the one about being aware of Greeks bearing gifts.

"Why are you telling me this?" I said.

"'Cause I don't want nothin' to happen to Chip. He's a good guy." Her speech had cute lilt. I'm a sucker for those southern girls, or maybe it's mountain girls. I can hardly tell them apart.

"You in love with him?"

She didn't answer. Then she went back to another subject. "Why you lookin' for him?"

"For his own protection." It was only half a lie, because if what she said was true, he was probably in more danger on the street. "Where is he?"

"You're working for Sammy ain't you?"

Apparently, my expression had given something away, because her eyes widened. "You are a rotten bastard. Do you know that?"

I knew it.

She pushed back from the table and started for the door.

"Hey," I called, but she kept walking.

I left two dollars and started after her, but by the time I reached the sidewalk the same red, white and blue taxi was pulling away from the curb with her in it.

***

         I knew from my friend Detective Vyto Kastel that there were seven individuals who, in one way or another, had an interest in every business on the block. Either they owned it, were part owner, or accepted a fee from the owner for protection against everyone, including the vice cops. Traveler, who I had heard about in other regards, might be one of them, so I called Vyto at home. Friend that he was, he didn't give me any crap, even at three in the morning.

         "He's slime," Vyto said, referring to Traveler, "but he ain't that far up the ladder."

We had been together on the streets of the Central District before the war. He got wounded early and came back to become a detective. I was back six months after V-J Day. By that time all the police jobs were filled, and I was on a waiting list.

         "I thought he was a singer?"

         "Yeah, he was a good singer too, but one thing led to another and before you know it, he was breaking skulls and working into a partnership with Traveler."

"Skull breakers don't usually get married do they?

"He was still a singer when that happened."

         "Is the States Attorney going to push for murder one?"

         "Maybe two counts of aggravated manslaughter. He killed them both you know."

         "He caught 'em in bed."

         "He knew they were going to be there."

         "That's what Sammy says . . . What did you find in his house?"

         "Not a thing except the bodies, the suspect, and some clothes he didn't wear the night of the murder."

         "Papers said you had the gun?"

         "He threw it out the window and into the river."

         "How'd you know that?"

         "Anonymous tip."

         "Middle of the night tip? Interesting."

         "Somebody walking along on the other side of the water saw him toss it. The bullets are from the same gun. Looks like a GI souvenir. We got everything we needed. The house ain't even a crime scene anymore."

         "Was he mixed up in anything?"

         "How do you mean?"

         "Prostitution? Gambling?"

         "You know the Block. Who's not mixed up with one or the other? And now we're getting drugs, but I don't think it's that."

I thanked him and I hung up.

***

         Kastel telling me that Vincent's place was no longer a crime scene was like an invitation to look. The two-story brick row house on Front Street was a few blocks away from the Wannasea. It backed up onto the Jones Falls River, a narrow waterway that was little more than a sluice for garbage.

         I was uneasy as I approached the house, but not about what was inside. A vague thought in the back of my head told me there was something else I should be aware of. I reached across the single marble step and knocked on the door. I looked both ways on the street, but all I saw was an old lady sweeping a sidewalk two blocks away. No one answered the third knock, and it was easy to get in. A head breaker should have better locks.

         I eased into the living room, which showed a dim blue through the paper window blinds. The dining room and kitchen on the other side of the enclosed stairs glowed almost gold from the back blinds, putting a shine on the linoleum-covered floors. 

If he had shot them in bed, the murder scene would be on the second floor. So I climbed the narrow stairs, stepping lightly where I thought the steps would be nailed to the supports. I reached the landing and looked both ways. There was nothing in the tiny front room except a vanity dresser with a large mirror and a chair. A double bed would have made it impossible to move in there. The shades in the long bedroom at the back of the house were up, and everything was bright.

         Somebody had taken the sheets from the bed, but there were bullet holes in the mattress, along with two bloodstains about the size of basketballs. The rest of the blood was smeared in streaks. There was a crucifix on the wall over the bed.  

Apparently, Chip Vincent had come to the top of the stairs, taken three or four quiet steps, and let them have it up close, blam, blam, blam. How many blams, I didn't know, but I wasn't looking for evidence of murder. The cops already had what they needed.

I crossed the room and looked out the back windows. Somebody could easily throw a gun into the river from there.

         "Who the hell are you?" said someone behind me.

I turned and recognized Vincent from the glossy. He wasn't as pretty as in the photo, and he wasn't as young either. His right cheek had been crushed at one time or another, and he seemed almost sightless in that eye. He was pointing a revolver at me.

         "I'm working for Sammy. I've been trying to find you." It was what I planned to say all along, but not under these circumstances.

         "That son of a bitch would sell his own grandmother," Vincent said.

         I had no doubt about that, but what I said was "Do you want to come in with me?"

         "Hell no! You told me who you're working for, but you didn't tell me who you are."

         "Oh," I started to reach for my wallet.

         "No, no!" He waived the revolver.

         From the light coming through the back windows, I saw that he had no shells in the cylinder of his gun, but I kept my hands up as a matter of deceit.

         "Name's Ken Sligo. I'm a private investigator, and pretty new at it. I just got back from Europe."

         "Ain't that a coincidence. Me too." 

         "So your wife was one of those bad girls?"

                   "Yeah, but I didn't kill her or the guy."

         "Everybody says so?"

         "Everybody says so because I found them. I called the cops too. And first thing they did was lock me up."

"They found your gun in the river."

         "Not my gun."

         "So why did you skip?"

         "People follow you, and you start to get suspicious, especially after they take a couple of shots at you. That's all I needed to run for cover."

         "Look, Vincent. I've got no beef with you. If you didn't kill your wife, that's fine, because it probably means you won't kill me. But I'm getting paid to do a job. So why don't we--"

         "That bastard Sammy. He gets me out on bail, then he sets me up."

         "You know the rules. You skip, and Sammy comes after you. You can't blame the guy, he put up good money and he don't want to lose it." It was argument for argument's sake, because I had some other ideas that were just about to be verified.

         Behind him, someone peeked around the wall from the stairway. It was exactly who I thought it might be, the blond guy who had been thrown from Sammy's yesterday. He was carrying a sawed-off shotgun, and I could see by the angry look that he intended to use it.

         "Look out!" I shouted.

         The blond guy thought I was warning him, and he looked behind him. I lunged past Vincent and pushed the double-barreled shotgun up and away, and it blasted off, slamming the wall with shot and scattering plaster onto the mattress along with the splintered crucifix.

         If Vincent got killed here in front of me, I would be the major witness to the bounty hunter's argument of self-defense, and I wasn't going to let that happen.

With his empty revolver, Vincent swung his arm in our direction. He could only be going for a kind of self-orchestrated suicide, I thought as I twisted the shotgun in the blond guy's arms and wrestled him to the floor.

"You've been set up," I said.

"No crap!" he said, and the shotgun blasted off again, this time under the bed, with shot pinging at the springs and bouncing all over the linoleum. The blond guy reached under his coat, but when he saw Vincent's revolver point-blank at his nose, he slipped his and away and let his arm slump to the floor.

I went up on my knees and looked up at Vincent. "Let me take you in."

"Get his gun," Vincent said.

I reached inside the blond guy's coat and pulled the automatic from his shoulder holster.

"You're working for Sammy, aren't you?" I said

"You dumb bastard," the blond guy said, but I didn't think so.

"There are no shells in your gun," I said to Vincent, as I rose to my feet.

The blond guy tried to get up, but I put my foot on his chest and aimed the .45 at his face.

"Sammy'll get you for this," he said.

"Sammy might fire me, but he won't get me."

Sammy had been setting me up to be his witness in the death of Chip Vincent from the first time he hired me. That was why he gave me the easy jobs right after Vincent was arrested, and it was why he insisted that I take this one. He didn't need me to find anybody. His strong arms knew as much about finding skips as I did. Sammy had just eased me along, waiting to use me for his big kill.

"You looked at me a little too close in Sammy's," I said to the blond guy. "And you followed me too close. It took me till now to figure out why."

I glanced over at Vincent. "I'll take you in. You'll get a much better shake."

"You got the gun with bullets," Vincent said, and he smiled. "But make damn sure you take me to the cops."

"Sammy set you up. Traveler wanted the whole business for himself, right?"

"He wanted my half. Traveler don't even own half anymore. It's in hock to Sammy, and he can't make it up."

I took the thirty-eight from Vincent. I broke it, verified there were no shells, and slipped it into my jacket pocket. He tied the blond guy to the springs of the bed with his shoestrings, and we left the house. I knew he'd break free before the cops came back, but it kept him out of our way for a while.

"You gonna keep his .45?" Vincent said, as we walked the three blocks to the Central Police Station. I had a gun in both pockets and another on my hip.

"Not if he's got a permit," I said.

"Fat chance."

That's what I thought.

The cops took a while but they finally got Traveler and the blond guy in a murder-for-hire scheme. Vincent's wife was Traveler's girl friend and she was two-timing both of them with another of Traveler's creditors. 

Chip Vincent was exonerated, but for whatever reason, they couldn't put Sammy in jail. A lot of people knew he was in on it, but there was no proof. All I had was an hunch that the blond guy had come into Sammy's that first morning to get a look at me, but hunches didn't fly in court. Maybe Sammy just paid the right people. He even gave me a bonus for the quick track. I might be wrong about his involvement, but I didn't think so.

I still work the Block now and then, because wayward husbands often make the trip there. I don't work for Sammy anymore though, and he's still slime.

© Jack Bludis, 2001

Mystery Street commemorates the 20th anniversary of The Private Eye Writers of America. This one-of-a-kind collection features original stories set on some of the world's most notorious streets-and written by some of the world's best-known mystery writers, including:

Jack Bludis • Max Allan Collins • Loren D. Estleman • Carolina Garcia-Aguilera • Jerry Kennealy • Patricia McFall • Maan Meyers • Deborah Morgan • Warren Murphy • Percy Spurlark Parker • Marcus Pelegrimas • S.J. Rozan • Dan A. Sproul • Tom Sweeney