The Tough Guys

"Some silly woman said I tried to kill myself. She said I jumped. I explained that when I felt myself go I did launch myself out to fall between the tracks."

"They accepted it?"

"Yes. Otherwise I would have been held for observation."

"Smart thinking. Why didn't you say you were pushed?"

She looked up slowly. "I . . . was afraid. It isn't always easy to do certain things when you're afraid."

"Yeah," I said. "I know. What name did you give out?"

"Ann Lowry," she told me, and her eyes were squinting now. "You're asking an awful lot of questions about me. Who are you?"

"Phil Rocca, kid. I'm a nothing."

When a long moment had gone by, she asked quietly, "All right, then. Who were you?"

All of it came back like a breath of fresh air. The old days. The long time ago. The quick excitement of life and the feeling of accomplishment. The spicy competition that was in reality a constant war of nerves with all the intrigue and action of actual conflict. Then maybe Rooney's or Patty's for supper, to gloat or sulk depending on who won.

I said, "I was a police reporter on a now-defunct journal, a guy who once had a great story. But an editor and a publisher were too cowardly to print it and because I had it I had to be removed. So I was framed into prison. Nobody went to bat for me. I took seven years in the can and the paper and the story is no more. So here I am."

"I'm sorry. Who did a thing like that?"

"A guy I dream about killing every day but never will be able to because he's already dead."

She took in the squalor of the room. "Does it have to be this way?"

"Uh-huh. It does. This is all there is, there ain't no more. Not for me. And as for you, kid, there's only one question more. The BIG WHY. Somebody's trying to finger you out, and the last time they're playing guns. It doesn't get that big without a reason. You're a money dame with money clothes and you wind up in the tenement district in front of two guns. Where were you headed?"

She had to tell somebody. Some things are just too big to hold in long. "I was going to meet my father. I had . . . never seen him."

"Meet him here? In this neighborhood!"

"It was his idea. I think it was because . . . he was down and out. Not that it would have mattered. All my life he took good care of me and my mother. He set up a trust fund for us both even before I was born."

"Why didn't you ever see him?"

"Mother divorced him a year after they were married. She took me to California and never returned. She died there two months ago."

"I'm sorry."

Her shrug was peculiar. "Perhaps I should be too. I'm not. Mother was strange. She was always wrapped up in herself, and her ailments with nothing left over for anybody else, not even me. She would never speak to me about my father. It was as if he had never even existed. If it weren't that I found some of her private papers, I'd never have known what my real name was."

"Oh? What was it?"

She squinted again. "Massley. Terry Massley."

That terrible thing in my stomach uncoiled and pulled at my intestines up into the hollow. I seemed to glow from the sudden flush of blood that a heart gone suddenly berserk threw at a mad pace into the far reaches of its system.

I was so tight and eager again it almost made me sick. I got up, made another trip back to the sink, and ran the bowl brim full with cold water, washed down, and soaked my head clear. Then when the pounding had stopped I pulled in a deep breath and looked at myself in the mirror. Dirty, unshaven, eyes red with too much whiskey and not enough sleep, cheekbones prominent from not enough to eat. And I could smell myself. I stank. But in a way I felt good.

Over my shoulder I saw her. Woman—big and beautiful. Her name was Terry Massley.

And Rhino Massley was the guy who had me socked away for seven years.

Rhino had been a smart mobster with millions in loot. He was supposed to be dead, but things like that could be arranged, especially when you have millions.

And now Terry Massley was going to meet her father and, from the kill bits that had been pulled, there was mob action going on and that pointed to a big, wonderful possibility.

Rhino was alive and I could kill him myself!

I stared at my eyes, watching them change. Coincidence, I thought, ah, sweet, lovely coincidence. How I've cursed you and scorned you and declaimed you in the name of objective news reporting. And here you are now knocking at my door. Thanks. Thanks a bunch.

She was puzzled. "Do you feel all right?"

"I feel great," I said. "Would you like me to help you find your father? Coming from the coast you don't know anyone else, do you?"

She shook her head.

"Okay, I know the neighborhood. I'm part of this sewer life and I can move around. I even know tricks that could make me king of this garbage heap, if I wanted it. If your old man is here, I'll find him for you. I'll be glad to. You'll never know how glad I'll be to do it."

She didn't move quickly at all. It was with a deliberate slowness as if she were afraid of herself. She stood up, took a step toward me and slowly sank to her knees. Then she reached up and took my head between her hands and her mouth was a sudden wild, wet fire I had never tasted before and was burning a madness into me I had never wanted to feel again.

I pushed her away and looked at her closely. There was no lie in what she was saying to me. She was saying thanks because I was going to help her find her father.

But I had to be sure. After all this time I couldn't afford to lose a chance at what I wanted by taking one.

I said, "What brought you to this neighborhood to start with?"

The letter she handed me had been typewritten, addressed to her Los Angeles home.

It read:

Dear Terry,

I have just learned of your mother's death. Although we have never met, it is imperative we do so now. Take your mother's personal effects with you and stay at the Sherman the week of the 9^th. I will contact you there.

Your Father

"He didn't even sign his name," I said.

"I know. Businessmen do that when their secretary isn't around."

"This isn't the neighborhood to meet businessmen with secretaries," I reminded her. "So he contacted you. How?"

"A note was waiting for me when I got there."

"How'd you sign the register?"

"Ann Lowry." She paused. "It . . . was the name I had had all my life."

"Sure. Then how'd you get the note?"

"A man at the desk asked if anything had been left for him. When the clerk leafed through the casual mail I saw the one with Terry Massley on it."

"What did it say?"

"That today at 11 o'clock in the morning I was to walk from Eighth Avenue westward on this block and he would pick me up on the way in a cab."

"How would he recognize you?"

"He left a cheap white suitcase with a red and black college pennant pasted on either side. It was extremely