Death Cries in the Street Read online

  DEATH

  CRIES

  IN THE

  STREET

  A SUSPENSE NOVEL

  SAMUEL A. KRASNEY

  CHAPTER 1

  IT HAS BEEN said that New York never sleeps. That is an untruth. New York does sleep—only it keeps one eye open. At these times the streets of the city have a silence all their own. There’s a broodiness to it, a sensitivity, a feel of power and noise and motion all under wraps, waiting to be unleashed.

  On West Twenty-third Street the winds come up from the docks, skip around the corners like rowdy urchins even on Indian Summer days early in September, and ripple through the cluttered street.

  It was Wednesday morning. Along the river the haze had lifted and the overhead ramp of the West Side Highway already was visible from Tenth Avenue as Mrs. George Simpkins started her daily walk along the silent street. It was the same at six A.M. each day except Sunday. The Sabbath she had off.

  Every weekday at five-thirty Mrs. Simpkins was awakened by the Little Ben alarm clock. She doused water in her face from the sink in her room, got dressed and became a body in motion, missing all the joys of life but none of its sorrows as she started her daily walk to the Eighth Avenue subway.

  Mrs. Simpkins was a soul in revolt with no banner to follow. Fifteen years ago Mr. George Simpkins, after two years of marriage, had taken off for work one morning and had never come back. She was a deserted wife. After fifteen years, it still rubbed sore.

  Men and liquor. The first she’d had for only two years; the other never. But the only sedation for her ulcer was the set knowledge that both went together and both were evil.

  West Twenty-third Street, along which she walked with hurrying steps, was in the Chelsea district. A neighborhood where dock workers live, and merchant sailors, when they still have their pay, gravitate to the sandstone boarding houses which line its sidewalks. When the seamen are stranded and penniless, they still bed down in Chelsea—in the doorways, behind the trash cans, sometimes in the gutter. All of which was known to embarrass the tenants of the few high-rent apartment houses that recently had been built in the district and were tolerated only because nothing could be done about their existence.

  To Mrs. Simpkins the winos and the street sleepers were an annoyance rather than an embarrassment. But she’d have been tormented without them. Without those snoring, unshaven figures on the sidewalk Mrs. Simpkins would have lost one of the most important things in her life. The catalytic agent which each morning started her on her theme song of existence—self-pity.

  “Bums!” she said as she walked along looking eagerly for them. “Bums and drunks. That’s all I get out of life.” And each morning upon the sleeping men she wreaked her revenge for the conspiracy of Fate. She shouted at them; kicked them; woke them up. A thin angular woman with a harsh, lined face and fuzzy hair pulled straight back in a bun; all elbows and arms and knees; she prodded at the prone figures with the umbrella she carried even on clear days, her shrill tones nagging at the silence of the street.

  Nobody paid attention, not even the derelicts. But Mrs. Simpkins had her crusade, and it was the only thing that made life bearable.

  So, when she saw across the street the man in the blue suit lying stretched out on the sidewalk under the neon sign which read “Joe’s Bar,” she noted subconsciously that the time in the jeweler’s window still gave her a few minutes in which to make her local train and scurried eagerly across Twenty-third.

  “It was like the handa God forced me to go over to that poor man,” she said later. “Like maybe there was something I could do to help him…”

  But Mrs. Simpkins never could be honest with herself. She didn’t realize there was only one reason she crossed that street. To her—a woman to whom everything was either all white, like in church, or all black, like in sin—the man under the bar-and-grill sign spelled out a complete story.

  She kicked at him with an unbalanced lurch, her toe exploring the loosely sagging cloth of the man’s sleeve and the tip of her umbrella prodding at his ribs. “Get up,” she intoned, “and seek God’s will! Rise, bum, and become a man!”

  His silence mocked her, made her shriller, more vehement. Her toe and umbrella point were sharper and more vicious. “Get up, bum! A respectable woman goes to work at this hour of the day, you can get up!” Her rage fed upon self-righteousness. “No-good stinking bum! Up!”

  The paper across the man’s face—a footprint-smeared New York Times—stirred and then slid off to the side. Mrs. George Simpkins’ nose wrinkled as she took in the dark turtleneck sweater, the street-dirtied suit and the scuffed shoes. She leaned down to slap his face.

  But her hand froze in mid-air and small bubbling sounds rose from her lips. Her myopic brown eyes focussed on the sightless black ones which glared at her for blocking out the infinite sky. She saw the pulp of what once had been a man’s face, smashed out of shape. What once were features were now only a twisted raw mess of purplish-red flesh and broken bits of whitish bone.

  Mrs. Simpkins shrieked. Her scream, “God save me! Murder! Help!” whistled shrilly on an ascending note until it was stopped when the upheaval of her stomach caused a sudden lack of breath.

  Quiet, sleeping Twenty-third Street stirred lazily as the cry threaded through the sandstone-front houses. The thin noise didn’t even break into the dreams of the people still abed.

  It was still Wednesday morning when Mrs. Simpkins wanted a cop. Naturally, she couldn’t find one. So she ran along Twenty-third Street looking. Five blocks north, on Twenty-eighth between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, the houses were almost identical as those on Twenty-third. There were the big sandstone fronts broken by high outsize and out-of-date windows; the worn steps were flaking, crumbling away until definite patterns were outlined, channels in which so many people for so many years had stepped that no one remembered the days when these same dwellings were the epitome of high and prosperous fashion. The high-ceilinged rooms inside had been broken up, sublet, each with a sink and a bed, a dresser and a chair. These were boardinghouses.

  In the second house from the corner, on the even-numbered side of the street, two men were cornered like caged animals within the confines of a room in the front—up the stairs and first door on the right. One strode unmarked but steady channels—back and forth, again and again.

  “Prelim,” said the smaller one, “you don’t sit down I’m gonna clout you one.” His voice growled from deep in his throat.

  The big man kept walking, steadily, stiffly. “Ricci,” he asked in his rumbling voice, “why don’t he come? Where is he? I need him. My head! It’s killin’ me.”

  Desperation was in his movements. His muscles were knotted, jerking his long arms in tight to his body; his hands clenched. The nails bit into the palms purposely as if by applying pressure outside he could relieve the pain which knifed him from inside.

  “My head!” he moaned. “My head, Ricci. It’s hurting—”

  His body rocked from side to side, the large torso weaved like a ship in a strong sea as he walked the length of the room past the two beds, to the window, then back, past the two beds to the sink in the corner. “My head,” he moaned, in a crooning singsong of pain, “Ricci, my head!”

  “Go soak it!” The little man snarled. “Sonofabitch! You big tub! You and your goddam head! You get on my nerves. Cut it out.” This was Ricci, Dancer Ricci, he liked to be called. He was small, about five feet six inches. His face was narrow, looked elongated, its thinness stretching from the slicked-back hair to the pointed, almost bone-sharp, chin. The eyes were dark burning brands in the pallor of the face. The nose was a slender line riding almost directly down the center; classic; Grecian in shape, coming to a nostril-lifted
halt over the thick, sensually curved lips. He was handsome, but there was meanness to his features. It became accentuated as he spoke. He had the nervous tenseness of a man who had committed an act that frightened him. It was almost as if he knew what was happening down on Twenty-third Street.

  “Cut it out, I tell you! I need him too. But I ain’t going off my rocker. I’m waiting patiently—”

  “But you don’t know, Ricci,” Prelim complained. “You don’t know how it is to have your head squeezed out. I’m in a wringer, Ricci. I’m in a wringer—” His hands shook as if he had lost all control, as if a chill wracked his body and was caught in his nervous system.

  Preliminary Haskins was a big man. He stood over six feet five inches tall and everything was in proportion. His shoulders were massive, wide, rocklike structures of flesh and bone. His head was big and balding on top where the hair also was turning grey. He was far from handsome with his wide cheekbones, one eyebrow reddish blond, the other almost indistinguishable, a scarred-over lump of flesh that had been broken, gashed wide and grown together by itself. The skin of both eyes, between the lids and the eyebrows, was hung over, puffed with scar tissue, drooping, held up by the lids themselves and the lashes, but lending a semi-squinting appearance to his face. The rest of his features had been mashed out of the same mold. The nose was twisted to one side so that one nostril looked larger than the other; the mouth was crooked, a tooth appeared from it on the side from which his face had been pushed. Only his jaw was straight and unmarked. His face was turning jowly; it was mottled from the scars.

  Preliminary Haskins looked as if somebody had been using the side of his face for a punching bag. And that’s about what had happened.

  His last fight had done it. He had been overmatched. That one fight had torn his face apart and started bells ringing in his head. It had happened five years before and since then his face had grown back together somewhat but, on occasion, the bells still rang.

  “I’m tellin’ ya,” he groaned, “I’m gonna go nuts! Where is he?”

  The big man lived up to his word. He threw out his hands, grabbed one end of a bed and lifted the whole thing up, slammed it against the wall. He grabbed the mattress, bedclothes, coverings, everything, and heaved them aside, flinging them against the wall of the room where Dancer Ricci sat in one of the chairs. The little man rose angrily. But Preliminary was past caring. There was a sheen to the big man’s eyes; his features were contorted; his hands were ten fingers of muscle reaching for something to destroy, something to hit back at, something to fight off and beat away the pain in his head.

  He turned to Ricci.

  “Dancer,” he begged, panting, saliva running down the side of his jaw, “where is he?”

  “Keep away!” Fear glistened in the little man’s face and a threat sounded in his voice. “Keep your hands away from me, you crazy bastard. Or I’ll cut ya! I’ll cutcher heart out, you punchy club fighter—”

  “I was good!” Haskins yelled. “I was good! A good boy. They was bringin’ me along. I’da done it too. I’da taken the champ. I can still take him!” He moved forward with a shuffling step, his hands out in a boxing pose.

  Ricci was like a striking snake. Quick, darting, venomous, and the tongue of steel was a warning in his hands—an eight-inch blade held straight out, with the elbow crooked for leverage. “Stay away, ye big bastard or I’ll cutcher throat—”

  The knock at the door broke it up. They both moved together, side by side, as though nothing previously had happened.

  “It’s him,” Prelim laughed, a happy, hysterical sound that waited, like a kid for a present. Ricci smiled and licked his lips.

  They watched the door. Not the knob that a man would turn to enter, but down further, the crack between the door and the floor. There was a rustle of paper and something white was shoved through.

  Prelim Haskins moved surprisingly fast for such a big man. He had it in his hands. A small envelope; sealed. He ripped one end open so that a little key, a terminal-locker key, fell out on the bed. Ricci grabbed it and held it high. His face reflected a fierce gladness, an anticipation, as he waved it high.

  “This is it! Ho-ho! What a ball today—”

  He kissed the key as if it were a religious symbol.

  Preliminary’s fingers couldn’t stand still. “C’mon, Dancer,” he urged, “let’s go get it…”

  “No,” the Dancer said, still tapping his measure on the floor, “you can’t come. Look at you. You’re comin’ apart. You stay here. It’ll take only a few minutes.”

  “I can’t wait,” Haskins wailed, “I need it now.”

  Ricci reached into his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief with a knot in the corner. He held out a red capsule. “Here’s a seconal. It’ll hold you maybe ten minutes.”

  Haskins almost dropped it, he was so eager to get it into his mouth. His head still hurt, but already the pain was abating, as if just the thought of the capsule could dull it.

  He closed his eyes, a satisfied look on his face as he waited for the effect.

  “Dancer,” he asked, “why do we always have to pick it up? Why can’t he bring it?”

  “That’s the way he wants it. An’ we got no kick. I take out the stuff in the locker an’ leave in what we got. It’s a good trade. Especially like now. When we ain’t got nothin’ but a sad story—”

  Dancer looked at his roommate and laughed. Funny what a little pill or its absence could do to a big hulk like Prelim. He pushed open the door and walked into the hall.

  He was still laughing and didn’t see the little girl until he stumbled against her.

  She was about eight years old, small, with a pert round face, childish bones and body, all legs and arms. She shook her flaxen hair, pushed it out of her face after his body banged against hers and drove her to the wall.

  “Oh, I’m sorry Mr. Ricci…” She apologized as a well-trained child does even when it’s the adult who is wrong.

  “T’sall right, kid.” He helped her up, then stooped down, brushing the front of her body, letting his hand linger, pressing it tighter than necessary to shake loose the dust which had smudged her dress. He stood up again, his hand around her shoulder and he squeezed her against his hip.

  “All right now?” His question was in a husky voice. She was too young to think that he’d been anything but affectionate and friendly.

  “Sure, Mr. Ricci.” She grinned. She started for the door he’d just left. “I’m going to see Mr. Haskins. He’s gonna show me his scrapbook about prize fighting.”

  The Dancer stopped her. “No. You better not go in right now. Prelim’s asleep. Yeah, that’s right, he’s asleep.”

  She looked at him with wide, serious blue eyes. “Maybe I’ll wait until he wakes up.” She squatted down near the door, excluding Ricci from her life, already lost in a world of her own, which each little girl has when she talks to her doll.

  Ricci looked at her slight figure again. He licked his lips like a hungry cat.

  There was a fierceness about him as he turned and ran out the front door.

  CHAPTER 2

  IT WAS STILL Wednesday morning. The spreading pink-greyness of dawn had sharpened with the brittle edges of a rising sun.

  Mrs. Simpkins found her cop in a squad car parked outside the Horn and Hardart Automat on Eighteenth Street and Eighth Avenue.

  Mrs. Simpkins was incoherent, breathless, shock-stunned and stuttering. The cop thought she had lost her keeper.

  While Mrs. Simpkins’ irrational behavior was convincing the policeman that she needed a one-way ticket to Bellevue Hospital’s Observation Ward, Dancer Ricci had made the short trip to pick up his package and rejoined Preliminary in their one-room hangout.

  With eager hands they ripped open the package, and a few minutes later the Dancer was sitting, completely nude, on the stained cover thrown carelessly across the bed. His foot jerked in time to a tune running through his head.

  Preliminary, stripped down to a pair of soiled shorts
, shuffled around the room in worn gym shoes in an uncoordinated, yet graceful, dance of the ring.

  Ricci’s face was alive with an orgiastic smile. He was sitting in bed, drooling staccato phrases—“Hot damn! That’s it! Hottam! ’At’s it! Hoddamatsit!”—as hundreds of beautiful, naked women writhed seductively at his feet, pleading with him to look at them. He was the All-Seeing on his throne, above all human beings, men and women, skies, stars, moons, suns, trees, grass. They owed him allegiance. They were his slaves. His slaves, dancing to the songs of love and incest and rape and violence which he wrote in the blood of his subjects. He lolled on his gold and silver throne, his ten pairs of eyes looking out in all directions, and each of his fingers was a hundred tentacles to caress a different body as his subjects writhed with joy at his exclamations—“Hot damn! That’s it! Hot-tam! ’At’s it! Hottamatsit!”

  Preliminary Haskins was punching his way around the bed. He was beating the Champ into a bloody pulp with his pile-driving blows. He saw the lights of the arena spread out into spotlights flashing back and forth across the face of billboards which reached right to the solid black sky, outlining his name in letters fifty feet high—“PRELIMINARY HASKINS FIGHTS TONIGHT.”

  Ricci was a twenty-foot-tall Supreme Lawyer, Judge and Reincarnation of the Highest God of All as he lashed madly at the soft bodies of his beautiful slaves tied to the legs of his throne, their satisfying blood dribbling rivulets from the blows of his thousand whips. They fought against their bonds to kiss his hundred feet.

  Haskins was pounding his hands against the walls of the room. He had the Champ backed up against the ropes, covering up, hiding behind the big gloves. Prelim was tossing witticisms over his opponent’s shoulder to the newspapermen and the fight mob that crowded the ring curtain to urge him on and shout encouragement.

  And Dancer, the Supreme Master of All the Universe, lifted his whole dreamworld up between his two hands, his mouth working the spittle between his teeth, as the women, beautifully small, crying creatures, dribbled from his fingers to be trampled and crushed beneath his massive toes.