No one would ever accuse Roger Kowalski of being a genius, but he noticed everything that went on around him. He had to. It was his main talent, and despite their friendship it was the main reason Big Mike kept him around. If there was something odd or unusual or out of place in his field of vision, he noticed it, remembered it, and could give a detailed description of whatever had caught his attention days later.
When he left the office to get Mike’s sandwich, he saw the rusty old Ford Thunderbird parked across the street a few doors down, but since it was in front of a known house of ill repute, he figured one of the girls had an early appointment. He also saw the fat old homeless woman limping around across the street, but the area had a revolving cast of homeless people wandering in and around and through it, so he’d noticed her but had thought nothing of it.
The Haitian girl behind the deli counter recognized him and smiled. “The usual, Mr. Roger?”
“You got it, toots. Two extra-longs, a two-liter soda, and a big bag of chips.”
“Thank you, sir! Coming right up!”
As Roger left the sub shop and turned onto the street where Big Mike’s office resided, he saw that the T-bird was gone. It was then that he realized that he hadn’t heard the old car drive up earlier. A car that badly painted and boasting multiple dents but which ran quietly usually meant trouble.
He walked as normally as he could with the load of sandwiches, chips, and soft drink. He also shifted them so he could get to the Browning nine-millimeter semi-auto he carried under his left shoulder. Nothing else in his field of vision seemed out of place, so he walked down the steps to his boss’ office and pushed open the door.
With the pistol in his hand, he looked around the front room. There was a fresh stain on the carpet in the middle of the office which looked like blood, but it wasn’t big enough for someone to have bled out there. He let the door slam behind him, stepped to his right, and called out, “Boss? I got lunch.”
He heard a deep sigh from the next room, followed by the clicking of a pistol being decocked. “Ski?” Big Mike called. “Come on back and give me a hand with this.”
‘This’ turned out to be a bullet hole in Big Mike’s left butt cheek. Without asking any stupid questions, Roger put the food on Mike’s desk and opened the first aid kit. He cleaned the wound as best he could, stuffed sterile cotton in it, and taped a thick gauze pad over it. The only response from Mike as Roger worked was an occasional hiss of indrawn breath.
“You’re gonna need a doctor, boss,” he said. “That bullet needs to come out. I think it’s in there pretty deep.”
Mike turned and gave him a deadpan look. “Oh, you think it’s in there pretty deep, huh? Well, Doctor Kowalski, you’re right, it’s in there deep. And it hurts.”
“Oh, I bet it does, Boss.” Roger put away the kit and helped Mike pull up a pair of sweat pants to replace the blood-soaked slacks. “Uh – mind if I ask you a question?”
Mike sighed. “Go ahead.”
“How long will we be gone?”
Mike frowned at him. “That’s your question?”
Roger nodded. “Somebody shot you, Boss. You’re too good with a gun to shoot yourself, especially there, and that forty-four magnum would have torn your whole butt off. This wasn’t a hit or you’d be dead. You didn’t get off a shot, so whoever it was surprised you.” He shook his head. “Somebody waited till I was gone to come in. This had to be about information. And you’re still alive, so you gave them something good enough to satisfy them, which means that somebody else will know about it soon, which means we can’t stay here.”
Mike nodded. “Yeah, that’s about it. We gotta get going.”
“Now? Shouldn’t we wait until a doctor can look at your – your wound?”
The bigger man almost smiled. “We’re going to Gotham City, just across the river. I know a doctor over there who’ll fix me up, and he’s only about an hour away.”
“Then what? The boys on this side of the river’ll find out what happened and come lookin’ for us, and I don’t wanna be around when they do.”
“I know a guy who knows a guy who has a legit bar. We can get work there, hide out in plain sight, like.”
“Legit work? Mike, are you thinkin’ straight? The Boss will find us inside a week!”
Mike began the laborious process of standing up without bending overmuch at the hip. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, Ski. The Boss is gonna have his hands full real soon. C’mon, help me out to the van. I’ll watch while you pack up our necessaries.”
*****
Lois made it back to the bathroom in her crummy hotel room before she threw up.
She retched until there was nothing else to hurl, then bent over the toilet with dry heaves. She finally relaxed enough to slide to the sticky floor and cry.
She’d shot a man. And she hadn’t flinched at it. She’d just pointed the revolver and pulled the trigger and bang! A man had a bullet in his hip, one she’d put there. She hoped he wouldn’t die of either infection or loss of blood.
But she’d had to do it. She’d had no choice and she knew it. There was no other option open to her. Big Mike wouldn’t have talked to a reporter, assuming he’d even have let her leave alive, and just the threat of the pistol would have done nothing. The disguise and the shooting were necessary evils.
So her reaction had to be due to her illness. She was finally showing some real symptoms of the pancreatic cancer eating away at her vitals. She had to rest and get something to eat, and since she’d barfed up all the liquid in her stomach she needed to drink some fluids. The antacids she’d brought with her should help, too.
Now she had another name and another location. Either Big Mike hadn’t known who the Boss was or she hadn’t been able to scare him enough to tell her who it was. But Alan Robertson, criminal attorney and certified public accountant, was her next target. All she needed to do was find him, get him alone somehow, then pull out her pistol and “convince” him to give her the next animal above him in the food chain.
First, though, she needed food, drink, and rest. Working undercover was more stressful than she remembered, and the added tension of having no backup was starting to tell on her. Now that her illness was beginning to bring her down, she needed to speed up her schedule.
But the pillow was so inviting and the bed so welcoming, and she drifted into the arms of Morpheus almost as soon as she achieved horizontalness.
*****
Clark handed the driver two twenties and got out of the cab, which was gone in a cloud of tire smoke before the back door closed completely.
Clark didn’t blame him. This was not the kind of neighborhood anyone would choose to live in if there were any better options, and it was probable that the only worse option was an address in Suicide Slum.
Big Mike’s office address was four houses from the corner where the cabbie had dropped him off, so he set off down the street in that direction. Before he’d taken ten steps, though, the door opened and a normal-sized man appeared with a suitcase in either hand. The man trotted up the steps and tossed the luggage into a cargo van, then he looked in either direction along the street.
When he saw Clark he froze in place.
Clark decided to smile and wave. Big mistake. The guy panicked and yanked a pistol from under his coat and let off two wild shots in Clark’s direction, neither of which came anywhere close. Clark ducked behind an old Chevy pickup parked against the curb and waited.
He heard the man stage whisper, “Mike! Someone’s out here! We gotta go right now!”
“How many?” came the reply.
“Just one!”
“One? Come on, Ski, you know better than that! The Boss isn’t gonna send one guy to take us down!”
“Then who is he? Why’s he here? He don’t belong here, I can tell!”
The quality of the second voice changed. Clark looked around the tire to see a much larger man struggling up the steps with a duffel bag in one hand. “Gee, I don’t know, maybe you could – “ the last two words were delivered in a loud growl “ – ask him!”
“Oh. Yeah. Hey! Buddy! You okay?”
Clark lifted his eyes and peeked over the hood of the pickup. “Yeah, I’m fine. You didn’t come anywhere near me.”
“Yeah, well, you caught me by surprise. Want me to try again?”
The big man spoke again. “Cut it out, Ski! Right now!” The big man who Clark assumed was Big Mike called out, “Hey, mister, come on out. You’re safe.”
Clark rose slowly to his full height. “You’re sure? I don’t want your partner to correct his aim.”
“Naw, he ain’t gonna shoot at you no more! Are you, Ski?”
The man called Ski sighed and put his pistol back under his jacket. “No, I won’t shoot. But what’re you doing here? I still say you ain’t from around here.”
“I’m looking for Lois Lane, a reporter for the Daily Planet.”
Both men frowned in obvious puzzlement. Big Mike said, “Tell me what she looks like.”
“She’s about five-foot-six, brunette with shoulder-length hair, slender, mid-twenties, very attractive and very determined.”
Ski laughed. “Ain’t nobody like that been around here, mister! If she was here I mighta kept her!”
Clark nodded. “Okay. Can I give you my card so you can call me if you do see her?”
Mike shook his head and hobbled to the van. “We’re pullin’ up stakes, mister. If she comes around here we won’t see her cause we won’t be here.”
“I understand. My name’s Clark Kent. If you happen to see her, please call me at the Daily Planet. I won’t tell anyone where I got the information.”
“Silence of the press, right?” said Ski.
Clark smiled. “Something like that. Thanks for your time, guys. Have a good trip.”
“We will. Bye now.”
Clark watched while Ski helped Big Mike ease himself into the passenger seat. The way the big man was holding his leg stiff bothered Clark, so he decided to take a closer look.
When he saw the bullet wound he took off running.
“Okay, Ski, let’s whoaaaaahhhaaahh!”
“Who shot you?” Clark demanded.
Ski yanked out his pistol again and pointed it at Clark’s face in the driver’s window. “Hold it right there! I won’t miss this time!”
Clark snatched the weapon out of Ski’s hand and held it down beside his leg, outside the van where Ski couldn’t reach it. “Look, all I want to do is find Lois Lane! I think she shot you!”
Ski pulled the invisible trigger on his missing pistol and yelped. “Hey! Gimme back my gun!”
“Not until you tell me who shot you! Now talk! Who was it?”
“Some guy from a rival gang,” answered Ski. “They was three or four of ‘em. They woulda killed Mike if he – “
“No.” Everyone stopped and waited for Mike’s next words. He bit his lower lip, then said, “It was some fat old bag lady with short blonde hair. I thought she’d fallen down outside and she suckered me and shot me.”
Ski looked at him as if his favorite hockey player had just announced that he intended to start playing girls’ volleyball. “But – but you – you said – “
“I din’t say nothin’, Ski, I just let you believe it. Sorry, man.”
Clark reached in and tapped Mike on the forearm. “You said a fat old bag lady shot you? Couldn’t she have been wearing a disguise?”
Mike shrugged. “I guess so, but I couldn’t tell. She looked like any old homeless woman with a cart for a closet to me.”
“No!” cried Ski. “No, she was – it had to be her car – she was drivin’ a rusty Ford T-Bird! Had, um, Kentucky plates and a busted right taillight. What paint was still on it was dark blue, but it was red before that. And the car had an old Landau roof that was coming apart.”
Clark’s eyebrows rose. “You sure about that?”
Mike nodded. “If Ski says that’s what he saw, that’s what he saw. Ski, did you see her in the car?”
“No. But the car was parked in front of Julie’s place when I left, and it was gone when I came back.”
“Where’s Julie’s place?”
Ski pointed at the large house across the street and down a few doors. “There,” he said, “the one with the green doors. You know, like that old song, the Green Door? ‘Cept in the song it was a speakeasy and that’s a cat house.” He glowered at Clark. “Now can I have my gun back?”
Clark dropped the magazine out of the pistol and worked the slide to eject the round in the chamber, then lowered the hammer. He reached in and tossed the pistol, single bullet, and the magazine onto the luggage in the back of the van. “Take off, guys. Try not to get shot again.”
Mike nodded and pointed forward with one finger. “Let’s go, Ski.”
Roger wailed, “But I gotta get my gun back!”
“Why, so he can take it away from you again? You can pick it up when we get where we’re going. Now put this thing in gear and get me to that doctor!”
Grumbling under his breath, Roger attacked the ignition key and slammed the van into gear. He left enough rubber on the street to coat a pair of cheap tennis shoes.
*****
Julie peeked out the window and frowned. There had been what she’d thought was a shot about fifteen minutes ago, and just then she’d heard two more she was sure were gunshots. Since none of them had hit the house, she risked a look outside.
A well-built man was standing beside a van, arguing with Mike and Roger, who were inside the van. After some gesturing from all three of them – but no more shooting – the van roared off, leaving the good-looking guy in the charcoal suit and slightly dorky glasses standing in the middle of the street.
Poor guy. He looked like a little lost rabbit. Oh, well, rabbits usually didn’t live long around the wolves who hung around this part of town. It was a rough place full of rough men and nasty women. Julie prided herself on being one of the nastier women around, but she took great pains to conceal her true nature.
Especially to good-looking rabbits who came to her door with wallets stuffed with lettuce. She watched as the rabbit headed directly for the house’s front door.
The knock was more assertive than Julie had expected, so she stopped in her office and secreted a nickel-plated thirty-two automatic in her bra. The weapon was well-hidden, and no man had ever discovered it was there unless she’d wanted him to find it.
She opened the door to the end of the security chain. “Yes? Whom shall I say is calling?”
The man lifted up an ID card of some kind, but Julie ignored it. If this was a raid, it was just about the dumbest one ever to send just one guy. If he was a potential customer, all she cared about was the color and amount of his money.
“I’m looking for a woman. She’s – “
“Well, darlin’,” she drawled. “you done come to the right place. Come on in and we’ll ease your weary mind.”
She unhooked the chain as the man said, “No, I’m looking for a particular woman. She’s about five-six, blonde, a bit heavy, and she was driving an old blue T-Bird. The car was parked in front of your building for a while earlier today.”
“Oh.” Not a customer, then. Maybe he was looking for a runaway girlfriend? But the description didn’t fit any of the girls working at the house. “Sorry, mister, I ain’t seen her.”
“But did you see the car? It’s really important, miss.”
The form of address surprised her. No one had called her “miss” for years, and it angered her for a moment. Then she realized that this man was just trying to be nice to her, whether society said she deserved it or not.
“Um, I dunno when the car left, but yeah, it was here earlier. I didn’t see a woman drivin’ it, though. Sorry.”
He sighed. “That’s okay. It was a long shot anyway. Thanks for trying.”
Such a good-looking rabbit, she thought.
He turned to go and she called out, “Wait! Maybe one of the girls saw something. Come in for a minute.”
The man followed her into the house with only the slightest of hesitation. Julie raced up the stairs and opened door after door until she found one of the girls awake. “Shelly, did you see anyone driving a blue T-Bird this morning?”
Shelly lit a cigarette and blew out a lungful of carcinogens. “Blue T-Bird? Yeah, I did. Thing ran real quiet, like it had a new muffler and a well-maintained motor.” She glanced at her watch. “Fat blonde got in and left about twenty minutes ago, heading downtown.”
“Thanks. And no smoking around the customers! You know the rules.”
Julie turned away before she could ‘officially’ hear Shelly’s expected reply of “Yeah, yeah, stick a tampon in it” and ran down the stairs again. “Mister! There was a fat blonde girl driving the car. It was headin’ towards downtown when it left here. That help you?”
She was rewarded with a thousand-watt smile and a gentle touch on her hand. “It sure does! Thank you so much, Julie!”
He turned and stepped toward the door, then stopped and dug into his pants pocket. “Wait. Here you go.”
She looked at the pair of twenties in his hand and felt ashamed. “No, no, that’s okay, I really didn’t do anything.”
“You gave me valuable information on a story I’m working.”
“Honey, I don’t get paid for talking.”
He smiled again and nodded. “Then how about you take your – your girls on a picnic? On me. I insist.”
She hesitated, then took the cash. “That’s – thank you. You’re very generous.”
“Not at all. My name’s Clark Kent and I work for the Daily Planet. If you need any help a newspaper can give, don’t hesitate to call me.”
He held his first and second fingers on his right hand together and gave her a quick salute with them, then all but jumped out the door. When Julie looked out the window, he was already half-way down the street and looked to be gaining speed.
She blinked and he was out of sight. That was one fast-running man!
Then she chuckled and shook her head. He was gone like a scared rabbit and she hadn’t even kissed him!
It didn’t matter. It was time to get the girls awake and moving. The doors to Julie’s place opened at six, and she didn’t want any of her customers to leave for someone else’s dubious charms.
Still, it would have been nice to just sit and talk with that guy who’d just left. Julie had the feeling that he’d be a perfect gentleman.
She shook her head and frowned. Like any guy would hang around her for anything other than what he could take from her. She’d known too many men for that to happen.
Julie sighed and turned toward the stairs again. It was time to get the girls up and ready for business. And she had to air out Shelly’s room again. Some customers were real particular about cigarette smoke.
She crumpled the two twenties and slipped them into her pants pocket, and any thought of a picnic with her girls evaporated like water on a hot griddle.
