I went up to the third floor and another poorly lit, dreary hall, to a gray-painted door next to the metallic 3-A hammered into the nearby woodwork. I rapped once.
Lou Sapperstein let me in. He smiled tightly. He had the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, his red and blue striped tie loose around his neck. He was sweating, face beaded, loops of sweat on his shirt under his arms. His glasses had slid down some on his considerable nose.
“I was getting worried,” Lou said, quietly, stepping out into the hall, closing the door partway behind him.
“Guzik sent for me,” I said. “I had to drop by St. Hubert’s for a chat.”
“Gosh, I wish I could’ve been there; sounds like a swell way to cap off your day. What did that fat little monster want, anyway?”
I told him; told him about Drury busting Guzik, too. And about the sawed-off that had fired when the cops tested it out.
“What do you figure-they switched guns?” Lou asked.
“That, or unjammed it, then fired it. Either way, it’s an obvious attempt to make me look dirty.”
“Well, it won’t take.”
“Maybe. What’s been going on?”
Lou shrugged. “I kept it friendly for a while. I found Bill in bed. He’s got a bad cold.”
“I know. He’s been passing it around the office. But this is the first day he’s gone home sick.”
“Right. We just talked for a while. Then after I gave your girl that message, out in the hall pay phone, I came back in and had Bill sit up at his little kitchen table and have a beer with me. Then I pulled his arms behind him and handcuffed him, and he got pissed off, strangely enough. Really chewed me out, for a while there. For the last hour he’s been less indignant and more solicitous.”
“Well, let’s see what he has to say to his boss.”
“His boss,” Lou snorted. “Hell, I was working suspects over with a rubber hose when you were in diapers.”
“Maybe so, but Tendlar didn’t give you a fucked-with sawed-off and send you into battle.”
“Good point.”
We went in. Tendlar, a medium-size guy in his mid-thirties, was sitting, barefooted, in his gray and white striped pajamas on a wooden chair that Sapperstein had pulled out into the middle of the small room; he looked a little like a convict strapped in the electric chair. His hands cuffed behind him, he was otherwise in no discomfort, except psychological. His baby face was made incongruous by a heavy beard-his five o’clock shadow was midnight black at this point-and his eyes were small and dark blue. Bloodshot dark blue at the moment.
“Heller,” Tendlar said; his medium-pitched voice was hoarse from pleading with Sapperstein for several hours. “You can’t believe I’d sell you out.”
“Bill,” I said, pleasantly. “You used to be a cop. How can you expect me to trust you?”
I glanced around the small, shabby room. You could play a game of poker in here, if you didn’t invite more than five players. A cloth-covered brown couch and a cloth-covered brown (but not matching) easy chair and a couple of wobbly end tables were all the furniture in the room. Under my feet was a green Wilton carpet with about as much nap as Sapperstein’s skull. Between a closet door and a Murphy bed was an alcove archway, through which a dingy kitchenette could be seen, with the small table from which Sapperstein got the chair Tendlar was trapped in.
“You want a beer, Nate?” Sapperstein asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“He’s had three of my beers,” Tendlar said, almost pouting. “Hasn’t let me have a one. It’s warm in here.”
The room’s window was open, but the cracked green shade was drawn. He was right. It was warm in here. I took off my suitcoat. His eyes widened at the sight of the shoulder-holstered nine millimeter. Tendlar knew I didn’t carry it often.
“Sapperstein’s a hard man,” I said with mock sympathy, loosening my tie. “I don’t know how you’ve held up under this torture.”
Then, just to be a bastard, I gently slapped the rubber hose with one hand into the palm of the other.
Tendlar gave with a twitch of a one-sided smile.
“I don’t buy that,” he said. “You’re not the type.”
“What type, Bill?”
“The type of cop who’d use a rubber hose on a guy.”
“You know something, Bill, I’ve been a cop of one sort or another for a long time. And I’ve learned one thing in all those years.”
Tendlar swallowed. Smiled bravely. “Yeah, and what’s that, Heller?”
I smiled. “You never can tell about people.”
And I smacked him across the left shoulder with the hose.
He groaned, and it was a little loud.
“Now, Bill,” I said, “if you’re going to make noise, I’m going to have to find a dirty sock to stick in your mouth. I don’t think you’d like that. So you’re going to have to keep it down.”
And I hit him again, across the other shoulder.
He howled, but softly.
“That’s better. We don’t want to wake the neighbors- although I got a feeling this isn’t the kind of building where the cops get called in, much, even if there is a disturbance.”
Tendlar sat there crying, eyes squeezed together, tears rolling down his face. But quietly. He’d gotten the idea.
Lou, who’d come back from the kitchen about midway through all this, handed me a sweating bottle of Pabst. I took a couple of swigs.
“How’s Bill holding up?” he asked.
“Not so well,” I said. “I don’t think anybody ever fed him the goldfish before.”
“Fuck you, Heller,” Tendlar said.
“You know, I had a couple of tough coppers from East Chicago feed me the goldfish, once. Back in ’34, it was. I puked my guts out. I cried my eyes out. And I could barely walk for three days. And the bruises-God, the colors my skin turned. You wouldn’t see that many shades at high noon in Bronzeville.”
“I didn’t sell you out,” he said.
I slapped him hard on the right thigh with the hose.
He made a soft crying sound. Then he coughed some. He did have a cold.
“As a guy who used to be on the cops, Bill, you know the whole routine. Good cop, bad cop. We’re not going to insult your intelligence. We’re not going to subject you to that old wheeze. But we are going to do a variation on good cop/bad cop that we think you’ll appreciate.”
I took another swig of beer and handed the hose to Lou.
“We’re going to both do bad cop,” I said, and Lou whapped him across his other thigh.
“I didn’t sell you out! I didn’t sell you out.”
I grabbed him by his pajama front and looked him right in his beady blue eyes, which were dancing with fear, which was just how I wanted them.
“Listen to me, you little cocksucker. You sent me wading into deep shit, this afternoon. You handed me a jammed-up shotgun, knowing I’d take it into a mob hit getting carried out on our client. But what concern was that of yours? You probably figured you’d never see me again, not alive, anyway. Well, I’m alive, and you’re dead. You’re fuckin’ dead.”
And I yanked him, by his wadded-up pajama front, to one side, hard, and his chair went crashing on its side to the napless rug. Fortunately, the chair didn’t break, and Tendlar didn’t, either, at least nothing important. I set him back upright. He was shivering and he was weeping. His nose was running. Those summer colds are the worst.
“You’re dead unless you talk,” I said through my teeth. “Who bought you. Guzik?”
He was shaking his head side to side, face slick with tears and snot, lips pulled back, teeth showing, and it was not a smile. “I don’t even
