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Where the hell was my hat?
I squinted around in the too-bright light. No hat. That made me mad. I liked that fedora.
No, I wasn't thinking straight, but after the whack I'd gotten I was doing pretty damned good.
Staggering down the maze, I found my now rumpled topper on a crate along with my first candle. Its wax was still soft, not more than five minutes had passed since the attack. Damn, I hurt worse than a lousy five minutes' worth of unconsciousness. Someone had blended the items into the general junk. Add a little dust and they'd stay lost in the background for years.
Was that the plan for the missing Jerome Schubert? I looked at the mountains of tarp-shrouded boxes with fresh unease, and listened hard, but no sound of a heartbeat came from any of them. Good if he was alive, really bad if he was not.
Off to the side on the bare cement floor lay a woman's shoes. They might have been my client's new mules, but female footwear all looks the same to me. I thought I'd recognized her tone in that gasp and brief scream. Perhaps she'd followed me. When I got clobbered, she sensibly ran. If she was anywhere near I'd have heard her.
Farther into the basement, then, where there was at least one bad guy who'd already decked me. No chance that he would get a second try.
I was still armed, my .38 Detective Special snug in its shoulder rig, but if Dorothy was down here I was reluctant to start slinging lead, however much someone deserved it. This place was full of alternative weapons, though, and in two seconds I had the reassuring weight of a genuine Louisville Slugger in one hand. For all I knew it could have been the same hunk of wood applied so effectively on my shins and skull.
Which still hurt. I limped along until the faint lub-dub of a heartbeat teased at my eardrums.
Not far ahead.
Loose-limbed and dazed, Cooley lay in the glare cast by another hanging bulb that had been left on. As I came within his field of view his eyelids flickered with awareness but no real conviction. He looked the way I felt, which was damned awful. Someone had lambasted him good, which was tough luck for the guy. At the same time I wondered what he was doing here. His heartbeat told me he wasn't a member of my particular union, so he couldn't have been following the scent of blood.
I set the bat and candle to one side, patted down his pockets, and found a flask. Plenty of people had gotten into the habit of carrying one during Prohibition. Back during my non-blood-drinking days I'd done the same. His was silver-plated with a cap that doubled as a shot glass. Nice. I dribbled half a finger's worth of hooch in and held it to his lips, careful not to move his head. He wouldn't thank me for that.
The smell of the stuff was about as appealing as gasoline, but I still felt an urge to take a sip as well. Fresh blood was my only poison now, but I could wait.
Cooley choked down his booze and grimaced.
"Who's the bad guy?" I asked. "Becker?"
He growled.
"Where is he?"
Another growl, accompanied by his right hand flapping once against the floor. I took that to mean Becker was not too far ahead.
"Is Dorothy with him?"
"Do
I gave him another shot of firewater, pulled a tarp from something, and covered him to the chin. Maybe I don't feel it much anymore, but it had to be cold down here. His eyes flickered again, puzzlement crossed with I wasn't sure what. Some of these tough guys don't know how to react to common decency.
Snagging up the bat and snuffing the candle, I moved on, trying to be quiet by going on the balls of my feet. In my own ears I sounded like a stampede. At least someone was leaving the lights on ahead.
Before long I picked up the faintest mutter of voices. The speakers were around a corner made of thick support pillars and shelving. Some of the stuff must have been down here since before the Spanish-American War.
A man and woman were arguing, the tones intense.
I peered around a final obstacle.
Becker was faced away from me, arms down stiff at his sides, hands clenched, a baseball bat in one fist. Sometimes I hate being right.
Dorothy, flatfooted without her shoes, was backed into a dead end, this part of the maze stopped by a brick wall. For all that, she looked defiant and sounded dangerously angry. "Tell me where he is."
"You need to get out of here," said Becker. It had the tired cadence of repetition.
"Not without my husband."
"You go back upstairs and don't say nothin' to—"
In the time it took them to make that exchange I'd slipped behind Becker and with remarkable restraint lightly swatted the back of his head with the slugger, using just enough force to rattle him. He dropped, stu
Dorothy stared at me, mouth wide open, big brown eyes popping.
I gri
"I thought he'd killed you! When you fell and didn't move and—"
"Not even close. Where's Jerome?"
That jarred her from further questions about my miraculous recovery. "I don't know." She looked down at Becker, eyes going hard. "Yet." She picked up his bat and hefted it.
"Let's just get out of here, find your father, and…"
She shook her head. "My problem, and I will take care of it."
I heard the scrape and scuff as someone approached. Cooley rounded the corner, wobbly, but with his gun in hand. He took in the little scene, scowled at Becker, then holstered the gat.
"Cooley," she snapped, "where's Jerome?"
He started to shake his head, then stopped, one hand half-raised to touch the sore spot. He must have known better too, and turned it into a shrugging gesture. "Do
"Why would I know?" I asked, surprised.
"I hear stuff. You get results an' no one can figure out how. You seemed to be on top of things."
Only partially, after I'd picked up on the scent of blood. Clearly he'd missed my ignominious retreat up the stairs away from the big bad dark below. The rest had been luck. The sour kind. My head…
"You followed him, and I followed you," said Dorothy. "And Becker was here already. Jerome must be here too, right?" She looked to me for concurrence.
I stalled, using the moment to sniff the stale air for blood—nothing—and listen for a fourth heartbeat in the immediate area. The three that were present would mask its sound. "We'll have to search."
"This place is too big, and I'm in a hurry. Slap it out of Becker."
"What?"
"You heard me."
I'd have thought she'd seen one too many Cagney movies but for the fact she was her father's daughter. "Uh… well…"
"You're not going sissy on me, are you?"
Cooley stepped in to rescue me. "He can't, Dot."
"Why not? I hired him."
"He's friends with Northside Gordy. Your pop works for him, but in a sideways kind of direction. If you have Fleming beating up one of your pop's guys, that could make for trouble. Big Louie would have to retaliate on this guy, and then Gordy would have to retaliate on Louie."
She steamed and stewed, but offered no counterargument, just a single contempt-laden comment. "Politics."
"Yeah," I said. "Sorry."
"All right. Will it start a gang war if you two just tied Becker up for me?"
We consulted with a wordless exchange of looks. "We can do that," I said.
"Yeah, we can do that," Cooley echoed.
He was pretty gray in the gills. I was a little better recovered and did the honors after finding a coil of rope.
Dorothy was specific about how she wanted Becker immobilized. Being in no condition to object, he was soon wrapped tight in a hemp cocoon. While I was busy Dorothy found a stack of folded tarps and dragged them down, filling the air with dust. She and Cooley sneezed, but I was immune so long as I didn't breathe.