“A wop,” Breeze said.
“A what?”
“Boy, are you glad?” Breeze said.
“You are going to tell me or are you just going to sit there looking fat and complacent and watch me being glad?”
“We like to watch a guy being glad,” Breeze said. “We don’t often get a chance.”
I put a cigarette in my mouth and jiggled it up and down. “We used a wop on him,” Breeze said. “A wop named Palermo.”
“Oh. You know something?”
“What?” Breeze asked.
“I just thought of what is the matter with policemen’s dialogue.”
“What?”
“They think every line is a punch line.”
“And every pinch is a good pinch,” Breeze said calmly. “You want to know—or you want to just crack wise?”
“I want to know.”
“Was like this, then. Hench was drunk. I mean he was drunk deep inside, not just on the surface. Screwy drunk. He’d been living on it for weeks. He’d practically quit eating and sleeping. Just liquor. He’d got to the point where liquor wasn’t making him drunk, it was keeping him sober. It was the last hold he had on the real world. When a guy gets like that and you take his liquor away and don’t give him anything to hold him down, he’s a lost cuckoo.”
I didn’t say anything. Spangler still had the same erotic leer on his young face. Breeze tapped the side of his cigar and no ash fell off and he put it back in his mouth and went on.
“He’s a psycho case, but we don’t want any psycho case made out of our pinch. We make that clear. We want a guy that don’t have any psycho record.”
“I thought you were sure Hench was innocent.”
Breeze nodded vaguely. “That was last night. Or maybe I was kidding a little. Anyway in the night, bang, Hench is bugs. So they drag him over to the hospital ward and shoot him full of hop. The jail doc does. That’s between you and me. No hop in the record. Get the idea?”
“All too clearly,” I said.
“Yeah.” He looked vaguely suspicious of the remark, but he was too full of his subject to waste time on it. “Well, this a.m. he is fine. Hop still working, the guy is pale but peaceful. We go see him. How you doing, kid? Anything you need? Any little thing at all? Be glad to get it for you. They treating you nice in here? You know the line.”
“I do,” I said. “I know the line.”
Spangler licked his lips in a nasty way.
“So after a while he opens his trap just enough to say ‘Palermo’. Palermo is the name of the wop across the street that owns the funeral home and the apartment house and stuff. You remember? Yeah, you remember. On account of he said something about a tall blond. All hooey. Them wops got tall blonds on the brain. In sets of twelve. But this Palermo is important. I asked around. He gets the vote out up there. He’s a guy that can’t be pushed around. Well, I don’t aim to push him around. I say to Hench, ‘You mean Palermo’s a friend of yours?’ He says, ‘Get Palermo.’ So we come back here to the hutch and phone Palermo and Palermo says he will be right down. Okay. He is here very soon. We talk like this: Hench wants to see you, Mr. Palermo. I wouldn’t know why. He’s a poor guy, Palermo says. A nice guy. I think he’s okay. He wanta see me, that’sa fine. I see him. I see him alone. Without any coppers. I say, Okay, Mr. Palermo, and we go over to the hospital ward and Palermo talks to Hench and nobody listens. After a while Palermo comes out and he says, Okay, copper. He make the confess. I pay the lawyer, maybe. I like the poor guy. Just like that. He goes away.”
I didn’t say anything. There was a pause. The loudspeaker on the wall put out a bulletin and Breeze cocked his head and listened to ten or twelve words and then ignored it.
“So we go in with a steno and Hench gives us the dope. Phillips made a pass at Hench’s girl. That was day before yesterday, out in the hall. Hench was in the room and he saw it, but Phillips got into his apartment and shut the door before Hench could get out. But Hench was sore. He socked the girl in the eye. But that didn’t satisfy him. He got to brooding, the way a drunk will brood. He says to himself, that guy can’t make a pass at my girl. I’m the boy that will give him something to remember me by. So he keeps an eye open for Phillips. Yesterday afternoon he sees Phillips go into his apartment. He tells the girl to go for a walk. She don’t want to go for a walk, so Hench socks her in the other eye. She goes for a walk. Hench knocks on Phillips’ door and Phillips opens it. Hench is a little surprised at that, but I told him Phillips was expecting you. Anyway the door opens and Hench goes in and tells Phillips how he feels and what he is going to do and Phillips is scared and pulls a gun. Hench hits him with a sap. Phillips falls down and Hench ain’t satisfied. You hit a guy with a sap and he falls down and what have you? No satisfaction, no revenge. Hench picks the gun off the floor and he is very drunk there being dissatisfied and Phillips grabs for his ankle. Hench doesn’t know why he did what he did then. He’s all fuzzy in the head. He drags Phillips into the bathroom and gives him the business with his own gun. You like it?”
“I love it,” I said. “But what is the satisfaction in it for Hench?”
“Well, you know how a drunk is. Anyway he gives him the business. Well it ain’t Hench’s gun, you see, but he can’t make a suicide out of it. There wouldn’t be any satisfaction for him in that. So Hench takes the gun away and puts it under his pillow and takes his own gun out and ditches it. He won’t tell us where. Probably passes it to some tough guy in the neighborhood. Then he finds the girl and they eat.”
“That was a lovely touch,” I said. “Putting the gun under his pillow. I’d never in the world have thought of that.”
Breeze leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. Spangler, the big part of the entertainment over,
