EYEHEARTZOMBIES

I’m surprised Lucca didn’t smack me around on jobs like that. We’d had others like that before; jobs where I got a little overzealous. I had that problem a lot when I was younger and I think the excess killing always grated on Lucca a bit. The others, the ones in my crew, never really seemed to mind, but Lucca was from the older generation. The guys that really did everything with style. The guys that weren’t stupid when it came to creasing someone.

After Lucca retired, I kind of hung low for a few months. I didn’t really want to do any dangerous jobs without him; he was a big guardian angel of sorts. I just didn’t feel as safe or comfortable without Lucca. I guess that makes sense, though. He was there for so many of the deadly shake-ups.

Max, by this time, was back from college. Had been for a few years, actually. He had graduated with a major in Accounting, I don’t remember what degree. Bachelor’s, I think, but it could have been a master’s. He had minored in English or Creative Writing or something like that. I could never keep it straight. He tried his hand at writing. He did a few stories for the fiction rags; got one published in forty-one, if I remember right. At this time, somewhere around 1943, he was working on “the great American novel” or some such noise. I never paid it much mind.
Whatever it was he was working on or doing, he had gotten a lot better. He seemed a lot more relaxed and comfortable around people now. He’d always been kind of a loner, one of the kids to stand off to the side while everyone else has fun. College helped him a lot with that, apparently. I don’t really know what it’s like; I was always one of the ones right there in the middle, in the thick, doing what was there to do.

Max and I started hanging out again. That’s what I’m trying to get at. We’d go out for coffee or a drink. I introduced him to blues and jazz at some of the little nightclubs around Manhattan. Working for the Mob is great, as I think I’ve said before, but there’s a big pay difference between keeping the books and spitting the bullets. I don’t think Max was jealous of the money, not in the end, but I don’t think it helped, either.

Anyway, we’d hit the clubs and drink a little booze. Scotch was Max’s poison of choice. I was more of a beer man myself. Just loved the taste and the…the ritual of it. Go somewhere and have a beer. Drink it fast to get drunk or just sip on it, like a baby’s bottle, to make the night stretch out in front of you.

Well, Winter turned into Spring, which has a habit of becoming Summer. Summer stuck around until Fall and then we’re back at the beginning, freezing our nuts off in Winter. A few more years went by like this; I got back into the swing of offing the bad guys — well, badder. I was no angel — and Max stuck around the offices, doing the bookkeeping. He also started playing the numbers for the Mob, working as a bookie. I don’t know how many low-income morons I had to go rough up ’cause they forgot to buy food for their family ‘fore they bet it on some glue bag of a horse.

This was also around the time that Detective Dan showed up. Oh, man, he was a humdinger of a detective. He was one of them private eyes. The kind that insecure housewives hire to see what’s keeping their husbands so late at work. Someone got iffy on our numbers business and set Dan to sniffing. He had too good of a nose on ‘im, cause he found out more than he wanted.

I remember the first time I saw him. He was sitting on a park bench in the little green spot they called a park across the street from one of the office fronts. He was blindingly obvious, sitting there in his brown overcoat, thumbing through a paper with holes cut into it. But, no matter how bumbling he was, he still found us. I don’t like that kind of luck.

I walked over to him that day. Sat down on the bench next to him. He glanced at me for a second, looked back through his paper, then seemed to remember where he had just seen me. He pulled away from me.

“Hey. Hey. Easy, buddy. Slow your roll,” I said quietly to him. I put a hand on his arm to keep him grounded. “Just sit down and let’s have a little gab, you and I.”

He sat down again, still holding that stupid hole-y paper up in front of him. I swatted it out of his hands and it floated away on the breeze. “Now, who are you, jim?”

He looked at me, I could see some fear in his eyes…and also some madness. Dan wasn’t afraid of me, not really. He didn’t think he could be done in by some thug. Certainly not. “My name is Dan Horowitz,” he said, calm and cool. “Who are you?”

“My name’s not important,” I said. “Your name, though, is. Dan Horowitz. Doesn’t sound familiar. Why are you sitting here, watching that building, Dan?” I pointed to the front.

“There’s stuff going on in there that shouldn’t be,” Dan replied, still as cool as could be. He’d make Cab Calloway look nervous. “And I’m here to find out what.”

“Oh, there is, huh? And you are, huh? Well. What kind of ’stuff,’ Dan?”

“Gambling. And I think drugs and prostitution. And I bet you’re one of their thugs, aren’t you? Some two-bit gangster with a gun and nothing else. Why don’t you go fight the Germans, if you want to kill people? I don’t get you guys. Always going for the easy life. Never want to work for anything.”

“Work? You call this work? Sitting your ass on some bench to watch an office building? Come on, Dan. You’re just as low-life as we are. You’re not in Germany, getting killed. Besides, I don’t owe this country nothin’. If I wanna get killed, I’ll go. But so far, I like breathin’. And if you don’t spill, you’ll be doing a lot less of that soon.” I had slowly pulled my snub-nosed pistol out of my docker’s clutch holster and pressed it against his ribs. He squeaked a bit at the touch of the barrel, but he kept his cool for the most part.

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Dan said, quieter and little more frazzled this time. “I don’t have to say nothing. I can’t say nothing. I’m under a contract.”

“Oh, and contract, huh? A hit? Are you here to kill someone, Dan?” I poked him with the gun.

“No. No. Nothing like that. I’m here to find out what goes on. Some people hired me to find out what goes on. That’s all. Just to find out. I don’t think they like what happens here. I think it…it infringes on their business. But I don’t know.” He started to get a bit panicked, so I pulled the gun away from him. Last thing I wanted was to have to shoot some guy on a bench way out in the open. It’s hard to get away with that, what with all the blabbermouth “good citizens” around.

“Some people, huh? What where they, Dan? Italians? Some wop hire you to keep an eye on us so he can gun us down later? That’s as bad as shooting us yourself, Dan.”

“So there is something!” I think he didn’t mean to say that. He let it slip and I could see it panic him even more. The mindlessness flew across his face a second after the words came out of his mouth.

“No. There’s nothing, Dan,” I said, firmly. “Nothing at all. You want to get up, Dan. You want to get up and turn around and go back to whatever seedy little office you have. I don’t want to see you around here and you don’t want me to see you around here, neither. So get out of here, Dan. Get out and don’t come back.”

He nodded at me and I slipped my gun back inside my jacket. I didn’t put it in its holster, though, just in case. You can never tell how crazy a guy is. Not from a five minute meeting, at least. He stood up, checked his hat, and turned around with his hand out.

“Nice meeting you,” he said, sunny as could be. In shock, I shook hands with him and muttered something to him. He nodded, turned, and walked down the street before hailing a taxi cab. I watched him go, then put my gun away and went back inside.

I called Ray and let him know we had a tail in this part of the city.