Chalk Line Books is an imprint of The Devault-Graves Agency, Memphis, Tennessee.

The names Chalk Line Books, Devault-Graves Digital Editions, and Lasso Books, are all imprints and trademarks of The Devault-Graves Agency.

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Original edition of Night Squad, copyright © 1961 by Fawcett Publications, Inc. Published by Gold Medal Books, New York. The Secret Squad (Illustrated), copyright © 2014 by The Devault-Graves Agency, Memphis, Tennessee. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without the permission of the publishers.

ISBN: 978-0-9896714-2-2

Cover design: Cerny Beran

Title page design: Martina Voriskova

Illustrations: Martha Kelly

CHALK LINE BOOKS

Chapter 1

At 11:20 a fairly well-dressed boozehound came staggering out of a bootleg-whiskey joint on Fourth Street. It was a Friday night in mid-July and the humid heat was like a wave of steaming black syrup confronting the boozehound. He walked into it and bounced off and braced himself to make another try. A moment later something hit him on the head and he sagged slowly and arrived on the pavement flat on his face.

Three local muggers bent over the boozehound. One of them went through his pockets and got the wallet and the loose silver. The others took the wristwatch and the cufflinks and the tie clasp. Then the first mugger happened to look up and saw Corey Bradford standing under a lamppost on the other side of the street.

“Hey you,” the mugger called to Corey. “You got any plans?”

Corey didn’t answer. He stood looking at the three muggers. They’d moved away from the unconscious boozehound and were grouped near the curb, gazing at Corey and waiting for him to say or do something.

He remained silent. He didn’t budge. His expression was placid, showing only a mild acceptance of what was happening.

The first mugger called to him, “Well, what’s it gonna be? You just gonna stand there?”

Corey shrugged. He didn’t say anything.

The three muggers looked at each other. One of them said, “Come on, let’s walk. He won’t do anything.”

“He might,” the first mugger said. “He just might.”

Then the third mugger spoke up. “Say, what is all this? Who is he?”

“Name’s Bradford,” the first mugger said. “I know him, he lives around here.”

“Is he trouble?”

“He could be. I’ve seen him work.”

“He got a badge?”

“Not now,” the first mugger said. “They took it away a month ago.”

“Then what the hell are you worried about?” the third mugger said fretfully. “Come on, let’s shove—”

“No, wait,” the first mugger said. “I wanna be sure about this. I better talk to him.”

“Talk about what?” the third mugger said louder. He was getting annoyed. “What’s there to talk about?”

“Just wait here,” the first mugger said. He walked slowly across the street. He came up to Corey Bradford and said, “All right, first I’ll tell you this—you don’t worry me. You don’t worry nobody now.”

Corey shrugged again. He inclined his head slightly and let out a little sigh.

The mugger moved closer and said, “Without that badge you’re nothin’. You can’t blow no whistle and you can’t show any hardware. Ain’t a move you can make and you know it.”

Corey’s eyelids lowered slightly, lazily. And a dim, lazy smile drifted across his lips. He looked at the mugger and didn’t say anything.

The mugger frowned. He bit the corner of his mouth, then muttered, “Another thing you can’t do. You can’t rat. You wouldn’t rat. Or maybe you would. You’re just hungry enough—”

Corey didn’t seem to hear. He’d turned his head and was looking at the unconscious boozehound on the other side of the street. He murmured to the mugger, “You hit him hard?”

“Just tapped him.”

“With what?”

“Blackjack,” the mugger said. His frown deepened and he took a backward step, carefully, slowly. It was a defensive maneuver and he knew it and it bothered him.

Corey went on looking at the fallen man on the other side of the street. He murmured to the mugger, “You hit him too hard?”

“For Christ’s sake, I told ya. Just a light tap. He was ready to pass out anyway. Won’t even raise a lump.”

Just then the boozehound was starting to regain his senses. He stirred, rolled over, got to his knees and crawled a little. Then he lifted himself to his feet and walked around in a circle, and finally sat down on the pavement. He looked all around him, then looked up at the black sky and said loudly, clearly, “I’ll tell you what the trouble is. The trouble is, we just can’t get together, that’s all.”

The mugger said to Corey, “You see how it is? He’s all right. He won’t need no stitches, he won’t need nothin’. I tell ya he’s in good shape.”

“What did you take from him?” Corey asked.

“Whaddya mean, what did we take? What’s that to you?”

Corey showed another lazy smile. He closed his eyes for a moment, as though he was getting somewhat weary. Then his eyes half-opened and the smile faded. He looked directly at the mugger and waited.

The mugger shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “All right,” he said. “All right, Corey.”

“So what did you take?”

“The wallet,” the mugger said. He gestured toward his two associates on the other side of the street. “They got his watch and some other things. The watch is strictly drugstore. The entire haul won’t bring us more than—”

“Let’s see the wallet,” Corey cut in.

The mugger took another backward step.

“Come on,” Corey said slowly, wearily. “Come on—”

“You louse,” the mugger said. “You louse you.” He took the boozehound’s wallet from his pocket and handed it to Corey. There was a five and seven ones. Corey took six singles and returned the wallet to the mugger.

The mugger put the wallet back in his pocket. He looked Corey up and down. Then he turned toward the curb. As he stepped off the curb he turned again, faced Corey and said, “You know what’s gonna happen to you? One of these days you’re gonna get all mashed up. They’ll hafta scrape it up and put it in a sack—”

Corey wasn’t listening. He was lighting a cigarette. The mugger crossed the street and joined the others and the three of them walked away. The boozehound remained sitting there on the pavement, mumbling incoherently. Corey walked over to him and lifted him to his feet. The boozehound leaned heavily against Corey and said, “I’ll tell you what the trouble is.”

“No, I’ll tell you,” Corey said. “You got mugged. They took your last penny.”

“Is that a fact?” the boozehound asked mildly. He gazed past Corey and said, “I guess it brings up a problem. It’s a good seven miles from here—”

“Where you live?”

The boozehound nodded. Then he grimaced and felt the back of his head. Corey took the six dollars from his pocket, peeled off three and handed the bills to the man. “For cab fare,” Corey said. He turned to move away.

“Hey, thanks,” the boozehound said.

Corey was walking away.

“Thanks,” the boozehound called to him. “No kidding, thanks a lot. You’re really all right.”

“Yeah,” Corey said aloud to himself. “I’m very nice. I’m the original Joe Wonderful.”

He walked a few more steps and then, thinking about the boozehound and making a bet with himself, he stopped and looked back. Sure enough, the deal was thirst instead of transportation. The boozehound was weaving slowly but purposefully toward the door of the juice joint. So the three beans go to the houselady instead of the cab driver, Corey thought, and allowed himself a philosophic smile. He was remembering the boozehound’s statement, “—trouble is, we just can’t get together.” And what that means, he told himself, is simply—we just can’t get together on what’s right and what’s wrong.

Now he was walking again, headed in the direction of a certain social center known as the Hangout. The back room of the Hangout was always active on Friday nights and the action was stud poker. Let’s get there fast, he urged himself, and his hand drifted to the trousers pocket where the three dollars mingled with some sixty-five cents in coins. It was all the money he had to his name.

***

Corey Bradford was thirty-four years old. He stood five nine and weighed one fifty-five. His hair was light brown, his eyes were gray. He seemed to be slightly the worse for wear, in recent weeks he hadn’t been eating regularly. What little cash there was went mostly for cigarettes and alcohol, the emphasis on the alcohol. It wasn’t because he was worried or depressed. He was never really worried or depressed, not consciously anyway. It was solely because drinking alcohol gave him something to do. He was out of work these days and there was nothing else to do.

Some five weeks ago they’d kicked him off the police force. He was a plainclothes man attached to the 37th Precinct and they caught him accepting a handout from a houseman. It wasn’t carelessness on Corey’s part; he was always very smooth and he timed every move. It wasn’t treachery, either. He was on friendly terms with all the neighborhood hustlers and scufflers, the numbers writers and unlicensed hooch sellers, the professional females and dice-table bankers. When he was nabbed, it was due solely to the persistence and drive of certain investigators from city hall. There was a campaign going on, aimed specifically at badge-wearing shake-down artists, and Corey was one of many who got busted.

He took it with a shrug. It was bound to happen sooner or later. For three years he’d been getting away with it, but he always had a feeling that one fine day they’d spot him and grab him and take away the badge. When it finally happened, it came almost as relief; the badge was a kind of hindrance, an annoyance. It was like itchy underwear. And aside from the discomfort, it sometimes hit him harder, drilled in deeper. The shining metal face of the badge would somehow come alive. It would look up at him and it would say quite solemnly, who do you think you’re kidding?

At times he managed to evade that question. At other times he felt obliged to reply. Without sound he’d say to the badge, what the hell, jim—we ain’t tryin’ to kid nobody; we sure ain’t out to cause grief or suck blood. It’s just that we wanna live and have fun and be happy; and we wish all others the same.

That ain’t no answer, the shining metal face would say. You’ll hafta do better than that.

So then he’d squirm just a little, with perhaps the slightest trace of a sigh. He’d wait a moment, looking off to one side, getting his thoughts lined up in order. Well now. I’ll tell ya, he’d say to the badge, his eyes patient and kind as though he was dealing with someone on the square side, someone who just didn’t know the score. You see, it’s like this—it’s a very poor neighborhood, the folks here get hardly any breaks at all. I know that for a fact, I was born and raised in this layout.

The deal is, jim, there’s an acute shortage of funds. So let’s take whiskey, just as an instance. A legitimate bottle, a fifth, it’s four dollars and up. The contraband booze, the cooked corn and goat-head, you get it for a dollar a pint. Of course sometimes it’s poison, but those times are very seldom. Maybe one batch out of five thousand, and you’ll admit that’s a tiny percentage. Chances are, when you drink the homemade juice you won’t be sick the next day. I’ve never had a hangover from the corn or the goat, and that’s more than I can say for some well-known legal brands.

Or take gambling. You get paid forty to sixty a week and you got a wife and four-five kids to feed. You just ain’t got the cash it needs to speculate in the stock market. You can’t afford the transportation that will take you to the tracks where the horses run, or join them certain private clubs that are never raided. The membership lists include big names and the big names have the pull and the cash, and that’s what counts—only that. So you live in this neighborhood and you wanna gamble. Only thing you can do is play the numbers or pull down the shades and get out a deck of cards. Of course that makes you a lawbreaker, what they call a culprit. Well anyway, you wanna gamble, you gotta have your mind at ease, you gotta be sure they won’t come bustin’ down the door and breakin’ in through the windows. Only way to be sure is to make a deal with some badge-holder.

Another thing, the girlies, the professionals. I don’t mean the teasers, the phoneys who drink up all your money and actually it’s nothing but tea in shot glasses and later they get their cut from the bar owner. And I don’t mean the ones who clip you, the ones who roll you, the ones who get you hurt in some room where Danny comes out of a closet and puts brass knuckles on your jaw. I don’t mean them; I mean the real professionals who give you your money’s worth and you walk away satisfied. You wanna know somethin’, jim? You figure it on the law of averages, them real professionals are more on the plus side than the minus. You can list them in the same groove with the street cleaners and the garbage collectors and the workers in the sewers. It all amounts to the same thing—they’re needed. It’s what’s known as performing a necessary function. And don’t give me no argument; it’s a matter of statistics. If it wasn’t for the professionals, there’d be more suicides, more homicides. And more of them certain cases you read about, like some four-year-old girl getting dragged into an alley, some sixty-year-old landlady getting hacked to pieces with an axe.

The badge made no comment.

So then he went on with it. He said to the badge, I tell you, jim, I know what I’m saying. With all them creeps and freaks and maniacs that walk around loose these days, it’s a downright misfortune there ain’t more houses where they can go and pay their money and let off steam. Because then nobody gets hurt.

All right, the law says no. But I’d like to have a shiny new dime for every pro skirt in this neighborhood who’s pulled the rescue act time and time again, selling him whatever kind of relief he needs to prevent him from going out and doing something weird. Is that good enough for you?

No, the badge said.

You got me labeled bad?

Strictly, the badge said. You accept payoffs from lawbreakers, you’re worse than they are.

But listen to me, will you? He begged the badge to hear him out. It’s only with the little things, the harmless mischief, the gambling and white whiskey and the girlies turning tricks. Nothing more than that, believe me. I never took a shakedown from dope pushers and store robbers or boosters, and never did business with anyone I knew was really evil. All I did was try to—

Balls, the badge cut in. Don’t feed me that mush. You were out for the extra dollar, that’s all it amounts to, only that.

You think so?

I know so, the badge said.

He frowned for a moment, and almost gave it some serious thought. But serious thought was like a classroom, and he much preferred the playground. The frown became a grin and he shrugged and said to the badge, maybe you’re right, but what does it matter?

Yet even so, the grin was somewhat forced and the shrug was more or less faked. Under it, he squirmed and twisted as though trying to pull free from hard gripping shackles.

It amounted almost to a favor when they finally caught him and marched him into city hall and took the badge away.

***

Headed toward the Hangout, he kept fingering the three sixty-five in his pocket. He was walking east on Addison Avenue. It was the neighborhood’s main drag.

The neighborhood was known as the Swamp. It was on the outskirts of the big city and on three sides it was bordered by swamplands. The rows of ancient wooden dwellings abruptly gave way to a soggy terrain of gray-colored mud and green-gray weeds and pools of gray water filmed with slime. On the fourth side there was the river and Addison merged with the bridge that crossed it. On any map that showed the city, the Swamp was a tiny triangle that seemed to have no connection with the other areas. It was more or less an island.

Addison was the only two-way street. The other streets were very narrow, some of them paved with cobblestones and others with scarcely any paving at all. For the most part, the thoroughfares were alleys. The Swamp was a labyrinth of alleys, and with an excessive number of oversized cats. The cats were very rugged, but every now and then a loner would be jumped by a pack of rats, and that would be the end of him. The rats in the Swamp were extremely vicious and some of them were almost as large as the cats. On certain nights the noises of cat-rat combat in the alleys would resemble that of a sawmill going full blast.

They were at it tonight. As he passed an alley intersection, Corey heard the yowling, screeching, screaming, the almost human shrieks of agony that mixed with slithering sounds of lightning-fast four-footed action. He winced slightly and quickened his steps a little. He’d been born and raised in the Swamp, but somehow he could never get accustomed to these sounds.

Of course there’d been worse sounds overseas. He’d heard some gruesome sounds in Sicily and Italy, especially at Anzio where the enemy was up in the hills and pouring down the heavy artillery. And yet the Swamp alley sounds slashed into him deeper, stabbing through every nerve in his body and finally making explosive contact with a certain circular jagged scar very high on his thigh near his groin.

It had happened when Corey was seventeen months old. He’d been left alone in the first floor back, while his widowed mother and her latest boyfriend were out drinking wine in some joint on Addison. The baby was asleep when the rat came in. It was a huge rat, hunger-crazed, and it came creeping in from the alley, entering the room through a gap in the loose wallboards. Some moments later the tenants in the first floor front heard the screaming. They came rushing in. The rat got away, leaping off the bed and onto a chair and leaping again, went through the open window.

They tended Corey, knowing what to do about rat bite. It was a common occurrence in the Swamp. Some newly-distilled rotgut, over a hundred proof, went splashing onto the blood-gushing thigh. Then they tore the sheet and made a bandage. Inside of a week, the baby was out of bed and toddling around.

And then, when the child was six years old, another rat came in. On that occasion the boy was awake and ready and knew what to do. His mother kept certain weapons within reaching distance, in case some alley prowler happened to venture in. He snatched the six-inch switchblade resting on the chair near the bed. As the rat leaped, there was a clicking sound and the blade opened. It was timed perfectly; his aim was exact. He tossed the dead rat onto the floor, not even bothering to wipe off the blade. He went back to sleep. An hour later, when his mother staggered in, her wine-glazed eyes saw the corpse of the rat and the red-stained blade. She called the boy and he woke up. She said, “What I oughta do is bust your goddam head open. Or maybe it’s my mistake. I never shoulda told ya about him—”

She was referring to Corey’s father, who had died four months before he was born. A good man, she’d told the boy. The only really good man she’d ever known, and more than just a husband. So decent, so clean, so pure in his heart; it was a privilege just to be near him. Her man. Her Matthew.

Matthew had been a policeman. “Not an ordinary policeman,” she had told her son, “even though he’d never been promoted, even though he was listed as just another cop who walked the beat. But I swear to you, Corey, your father was one of the specials. Sure as hell he was one in a thousand. You see, boy, he was an honest policeman.”

“And I mean honest all the way. Too goddam honest for this crummy world, I guess. Something almost saintly about him, and just like they gave it to the saints they gave it to him. They played him for a sucker; they kicked him around and laughed at him. They mauled his body, slashed at his nerves, and hammered spikes into his spirit. They worked on him plenty, believe me.”

“At the precinct station they had him on the receiving end of all them scummy underhanded deals that you never read about in the papers. Time after time he’d risk his neck to make the pinch, to put the cuffs on some hood caught red-handed, guilty in spades. But it’s one thing to bring them in and it’s another thing to see them walking out free as the breeze. So you know what he did?”

“He went right on bringing them in. And what did it get him? Lemme tell you, boy, lemme tell you how it is down here in the Swamp. A policeman who works in the Swamp has one of two choices. He either goes along with the game and gets paid off to look the other way, or he gets the lumps and the bumps, the bleeding and the busted bones.”

“I tell you there were so many mornings when he came home with a bandage around his head, other mornings it would be his arm in a sling, or both eyes swollen almost shut and just as purple as plums. Mornings when he staggered in, holding his belly, coughing up blood. ‘Hit with a crowbar,’ he’d say with a shrug. And then he smiled so I shouldn’t get gloomy. But I tell you, boy, it was hard to take, them certain mornings when he came home all smashed up.”

“And then one morning he didn’t come home.”

“It happened in an alley. He was trailing some thugs and others moved in with iron pipes and baseball bats. Before he had a chance to blow his whistle, they had him down and were doing him in. How it was explained to me, they left him there when they thought he was done. But the bloodspots showed he came out of it and tried to crawl. He didn’t get far, and he was too weak to blow the whistle. He was spilling a lot of blood and finally he sat back against a fence post. The blood kept spilling and after a while the smell of it reached the rats.”

“That’s how it ended, boy. That’s what finally happened to your father, the good one, the clean one, the honest policeman. The rats got to him and he was meat for their bellies. You understand now why I gotta have the wine?”

“But I never shoulda told ya,” she said to the boy whose face was expressionless, who sat there in the bed in the semi-dark room where the wet blade gleamed red and the dead rat stained the floor. “Honest policeman,” the woman mumbled, the wine in her head causing her to stumble as she headed for a chair. “They say it pays, honesty pays,” she said louder. And then, still louder, “I’ll tell you how it pays—I’m a goddam expert on that subject—” but she couldn’t go on with it and fell into the chair. She tried to talk again, but then the wine hit her and she passed out.

The boy leaned his head on the pillow and tried to go back to sleep. He couldn’t sleep. He sat up and looked at the dead rat. He got off the bed and went to the sink and cleaned the blade. Then he tossed the rat out the window. In bed again, he heard the sounds in the alley and knew that other rats were swarming in to feed on the dead one. The sounds grew louder, they were fighting over the meat. And then the sounds were very loud and the six-year-old boy shut his eyes tightly in a painful grimace and let out a moan.

***

Now, years later, walking east on Addison and passing the alley intersection and quickening his steps to get away from the sounds, he felt a slight twinge very high on his thigh near his groin. He told himself he was remembering something but he wasn’t at all sure what it was.

He passed Third Street, went toward Second. At Second and Addison the lighted windows of the Hangout showed hectic activity inside. The Friday night drinkers were three-deep at the bar, and there was considerable jostling and scuffling. At the splintered loose-legged tables, most of the chairs were taken. Several women were skirmishing for possession of one of the tables. A hairy-chested, bulky-shouldered construction worker, wearing a sweat-stained undershirt and a yellow pith helmet, moved toward the women to break it up. One of the women knocked him down.

As Corey walked in, a little man came sailing out, catapulted by the heavy foot of the female bouncer. The little man hit the pavement with expert agility, evidently well experienced at making belly landings. He came nimbly to his feet, his face solemn as he thumbed his nose at the female bouncer.

She doubled her fist and took a step forward. The little man retreated lightly, daintily. As he stepped off the curb, he said quietly, solemnly, “There’s other places for me to go.”

“I believe it,” the female bouncer said. She pointed to the sewer opening across the street. “Try that one.”

“I’d be intruding,” the little man said. “Your parents live there.”

“Do me a favor,” she said it almost sweetly. “Come here and let me hit you once. Just once.”

The little man’s face remained solemn. He glanced at Corey, who was standing just inside the doorway. “She’s a mixture,” he said, pointing technically at the female bouncer as though she was something on exhibit. “She’s one-third Irish, one-third Cherokee, and one-third hippopotamus.”

Inhaling slowly, she made a hissing noise. She said to the little man, “You’ll get it from me some day.”

“Mechanically impossible,” he twisted the meaning around. And then, to Corey, “You ever see a rear end jutting out like that? We could use it for a two-handed game of pinochle—”

She lunged toward the little man, whose name was Carp. He moved with reflex action far exceeding that of any sluggish fish. His one-twenty pounds made rapid transit across the street and around the corner. It was no use trying to pursue him; and she walked back to where Corey stood at the side of the doorway. She was muttering aloud to herself, referring to Carp’s unique character traits, his family background, and certain plans she had for his future.

Then she looked up and saw Corey standing there. She glared at him, as though he was an accomplice in some Carp-inspired conspiracy against her. He gave her a soft smile, merely to let her know he was friendly. Her mouth tightened and she continued glaring at him.

“And you,” she said. “You’re another one.”

“I’m just a bystander, Nellie. An innocent bystander.”

“’Innocent,’ he says.” She folded huge arms across forty-four-inch breasts. The breasts were in proportion. She weighed a good two-forty, compressed into five feet six inches. There was no loose fat; it was all solid beef. It amounted to a living missile, braced and aimed, ready for any man who figured he could tamper with her and get away with it.

Corey wasn’t tampering. He let the soft smile fade, so it wouldn’t be misinterpreted. He gestured casually in the direction Carp had taken. “What’s with Carp? What’d he do this time?”

“What he’s always doin’,” Nellie muttered. “Stealin’ drinks off the bar.”

Corey sighed. “Some people never learn.”

Then he knew he shouldn’t have said that. It left him wide open for what was coming. Nellie looked him up and down. Her eyes narrowed with disdain. Her tightened lips twisted with contempt. “You got a right to talk,” she said. “As if you think it don’t show all over you.”

He shrugged, turned away and started through the entrance of the taproom.

But Nellie wasn’t quite finished with him. Her thick fingers gripped his arm. She turned him, forcing him to face her.

She said, “Lemme tell you somethin’, Bradford—”

“Drop it,” he cut in mildly. “You’ve told me before.”

“And I feel like tellin’ you again.” She held onto his arm. He moved to get away, and she moved with him. It brought them into the taproom. Again he tried to pull free, but she held on. Her grip was very tight; it was hurting him.

“For Christ’s sake,” he said. Again he tried to get away from her.

She held on. “You’re gonna listen,” she said loudly, and some drinkers at the tables turned and looked. “You can all listen,” she said to them. “I wantcha to hear this—”

And then, facing her audience, “I want it to sink in, I want you to list it and check it and remember. This bastard used the badge to steal bread from people’s mouths. They hadda hand it over; they had no choice. Pay him off or get busted; that was the way it went. And who does he do it to? His neighbors, his friends, the very folks he knows from way back, all the way back to when he was a kid. Can you top that for underhanded dealing? I got more respect for a second-story man. Even for a purse snatcher—”

“Say it, Nellie,” a skinny white-haired crone sang out. “Say it like it is, girl.”

“There ain’t nothin’ meaner or rottener than a shakedown,” Nellie said it with white-hot rage. “And get this ticket—he was always so nice and sweet about it. Knocks so softly on the door and then comes on with that greasy smile. One hand pats you on the shoulder and the other hand is out, palm open. The miserable creep; he even had them thinkin’ he was doin’ them a favor—”

“Disgraceful,” a whiskey-thick voice commented.

“Believe it,” Nellie nodded in agreement. She looked sideways at Corey and kept tightening her grip on his arm. Her face twisted in a grimace of disgust as she said to the assemblage, “You know how this makes me feel? It makes me feel like I need soap and water.”

“Then why don’t you let go of him?” someone inquired quietly, calmly. “What are you holdin’ onto him for?”

It was the little man, Carp. He stood in the side entrance, his arms folded, his head inclined, his manner that of an official observer.

“You here again?” Nellie roared at him.

“I guess we could put it that way,” Carp said. He sent a thirsty glance toward the bar, then unfolded his arms and pointed stiffly at Nellie and said to all the drinkers, “You see what’s happening there? You get the drift? She won’t let go of him because she can’t let go. It’s what we call a dynamic situation, the outward manifestations are utterly superficial.”

“Talk English,” someone hollered.

“I’ll be glad to,” Carp said politely. “In plain English, my friends, she’s hot for the man.”

Nellie let out an animal growl, let go of Corey and made a beeline for Carp. The little man played it with fox-like strategy. He waited until Nellie was just a few feet away, her hands reaching out to grab him. Then with neatness and precision he used his foot to tip over a chair. As Nellie collided with the falling chair, Carp started a circular route that took him swiftly in the direction of the bar. Knowing what was coming, the regulars at the bar reached quickly for their shot glasses and grimly held on. Others weren’t quick enough. As Carp flashed past the bar, his arm functioned with the speed of a piston. Before he reached the far end of the bar, he’d snatched and downed a double rye and a single of California brandy. Then he headed for the front door and scampered out.

Corey strolled to the bar. His hand was in his trousers pocket, cupping the combined weight of paper and metal, the three sixty-five. He took out a quarter, put it on the bar. It bought him a single shot of gin. He drank the gin, immediately wanted another, but decided it could wait. As he turned away from the bar, the thirst gave way to what was more important at the moment, the hunger for the poker-table, for delicious aces coming his way.

He moved toward the door that led to the back room. Passing the crowded tables, he was ignored like any casual table passer. They’d forgotten Nellie’s tirade and were concentrating on their drinks. But as he neared the door, he had the feeling that a certain pair of eyes were aiming at him. He stopped for a moment, wincing slightly, then continued toward the door. As he reached for the doorknob, something forced him to turn his head.

He saw her.

She was sitting alone at the table near the wall. On the table there was a half-full quart-size bottle of beer. There was an empty glass. Now she reached slowly for the bottle and poured some beer into the glass. While she did it, she looked directly at him.

“Hello, Lil,” he said.

Not saying anything, she lifted the glass to her mouth and sipped at the beer. She went on looking at him.

He blinked a few times. He said, “How’s it going?”

She didn’t answer. She just sat there and sipped more beer and kept looking at him.

“I ain’t seen you around,” he mumbled. “It’s been months now—almost a year, I guess. Or maybe longer than that, I don’t know. Where you been?”

She lowered the glass, leaned back in the chair and didn’t say anything.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “Can’t you talk?”

“Not to you.” Her voice was toneless. There was no particular expression on her face. “I have nothing to say to you.”

He blinked again. Then he started to turn away but for some reason his legs wouldn’t move.

“You don’t have to stand there,” she said. “You said hello and that’s it. That’s all it calls for, just a hello.”

He stood and gazed at her. This ain’t easy, he thought. It’s like playing checkers with someone who knows all your moves before you make them. She won’t give you no openings at all.

And what makes it tougher, he told himself, she’s still got it, all of it. That face. That body. She’s something, all right. But there’s nothing you can do about it. All you can do is stand here like a goddam idiot and give yourself a bad time.

Lillian had dark brown hair, medium brown eyes. Somewhat heavy in the breasts and hips, her body was nonetheless enticing, wasp-waisted and solidly put together. She was an exceptionally good-looking woman.

Lil was twenty-six. Some five years ago she was married to Corey Bradford. They hadn’t stayed married long. It lasted a little over a year. The split-up was caused by his drinking. At that time he’d been wearing the blue of a beat-walking policeman, and for some reason that he couldn’t understand he was drinking very heavily. She begged him to stop, then she warned him to stop. And finally one night when he went over the edge with the rams, she chased him down Addison as he dashed toward the river, intending to jump in. He didn’t jump in. What stopped him was the sound behind him, the thud as she hit the ground. She suffered a bruised knee, a severely twisted ankle, and a miscarriage. It was a serious miscarriage. There was considerable pain and some complications and it almost did her in. On his knees beside the bed he held her hand and made a sacred vow that he’d stop the drinking. A month later he was crazy drunk again. That ended it.

He watched her now as she poured more beer into the glass. He frowned slightly, at first not knowing why. Then gradually it came to him. There was something out of kilter in this picture.

He said to her, “What’s this with beer?”

She didn’t reply. She sipped at the foam, then took a long drink.

“I never saw you drinkin’ beer before,” he said.

Lillian put the glass down. She gave him a look that said, So what?

“All I ever seen you drink was a lemon pop or a milk shake or just plain water,” he said. “How come you’ve switched to alcohol?”

She shrugged, looking away from him. As if he wasn’t there, and as though she was talking aloud to herself, she said, “It gets to a point where it just don’t matter.”

His frown deepened. “What kind of an answer is that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and then she looked at him. “I honestly don’t know.”

He gave her a side glance. “Come on, Lil. Tell me—”

“Tell you what?”

“What’s happening? What’s wrong?”

She opened her mouth to say something, then shut her lips tightly. Again she looked away from him.

He leaned toward her. “Tell me, Lil. Let it out. It’s better when you let it out.”

“Is it?” And then her eyes aimed directly at him. “How would you know?”

He winced slightly. He had no idea what she meant by that, but whatever she meant, it went in deep. It cut like a blade.

He backed away, and mumbled clumsily, “Is that all you’re gonna tell me?”

“That’s all,” Lillian said.

There was a heaviness in his throat. He tried to swallow it. He said, “I hate to see you sitting here alone.”

“I’m sitting here alone because I want some privacy,” she said. She shifted in the chair, turning away from him. For a moment her hands rested limply on the tabletop. In that moment he noticed something. It glimmered bright yellow on her finger. It was a wedding ring.

“Is that for real?” he asked, pointing at the ring.

She took her hands off the tabletop, folded them in her lap and didn’t say anything.

Corey stared at her. “Well, whaddya know,” he murmured. “I guess it calls for congratulations.”

“Don’t bother,” Lillian said tightly.

He smiled thinly, lazily. He was about to say something but just then he sensed that someone stood directly behind him. Turning slowly, he faced a tall man who had thick, curly black hair, rugged features on the wholesome and pleasant side, and the physique of a discus thrower. The man appeared to be in his middle thirties. He wore working clothes. He said quietly to Corey, “Take a walk.”

“Who are you?” Corey said.

“I’m her husband.”

Corey looked off to one side. He murmured, “Says he’s her husband. That’s what he says.”

“That’s the way it is,” the man said. He moved closer to Corey but then Lillian was on her feet and she moved in between them. She said to the man, “It’s all right, Del. He knows me.”

The man looked at her. “He does?”

She said quickly, “Yes, I told you about him. I was married to him.”

“Oh,” the man said. And then, to Corey, “Sorry, bud. I didn’t know.” He smiled pleasantly and held out his hand and Corey took it. They introduced themselves. The man’s name was Delbert Kingsley.

He was very pleasant. He invited Corey to sit down at the table. Corey thanked him and refused; then smiled at the two of them and turned away, walking toward the door that led into the back room.

Chapter 2