Ben said, “You’ve never forgiven him, have you? He broke your heart, and that’s what makes this deal so sweet for you.”
The sweaty swish said, “Truer words never spoken, doll. And godddd, it was torture selling boys to him.”
Ben said, “Vengeance is sweet, baby-cakes. You get your shot at the Rock, I get mine at the schmendrick Getchell.”
In your faigeleh-finagling dreams, you fucking–
The sweaty swish said, “You’re sure we can’t get hurt on this?”
Ben said, “Nix. My camera guy set up a breakaway set at the Fine Arts. If the Rock takes the fuzz back there, they won’t find the room he told them about. It was all strictly clandestine. My camera guy let your boy in the theater, and none of the theater chumps know that any of this happened.”
The sweaty swish said, “Vengeance is mine, sayeth both of us.”
Ben said, “Especially me. See, I gave Getchell that tip on Don Jordan’s whore racket, and I called Don and clued him in that Getchell was onto his biz. Now, Don Jordan is a bad hombre to flick with. He killed lots of guys in the Dominican Republic, and he’s tight with this spic gang–the Apaches–out in Boyle Heights. I think it’s safe to say that Danny Getchell’s days are numbered.”
I swirled sweat off my face and popped an eye up to the pintsize pinhole. Ben said, “And look, call it penance. I’ve done a shitty thing by exposing our kind of people, but now I’m doing all of us a mitzvah by taking Getchell out.”
“Penance”? “Our people–“?
Ben leaned in and kissed the sweaty swish on the lips. He said, “Later, Lover,” and languidly loped out the door.
I crashed out of the closet–crazily out of control. The sweaty swish saw me. He swirled and swung a switchblade out of his pocket.
He pirouetted and pounced. I closed the closet door, swiveled, and swung it at him. His switchblade swiped wood. He swung off balance. I swatted at his knife hand and kicked him in the kidneys and the cojones.
He clipped the closet door. I clotheslined him and claimed his knife off the floor. I clamped down on his neck and kicked out his legs and laid him out on the linoleum.
I pinned him prone and swicked sweat beads off his beak with my blade. I said, “Sing, shitbird.”
He coughed and caught some breath. He hemmed, hawed, and hummed in hyperventilation. He stopped and stared at me. He got hip to the hard hophead hate I had for him and put it all out prestissimo.
“It all went down today. You tipped off Ben to my operation, which he’d heard rumors about for years. Ben told me you’d ratted me out, but why blow a potentially sweet partnership when we could work breakaway-bedroom jobs and snag some big people? I wanted to put some hurt on Rock, and Ben and I both wanted to nail you for all the gay folk you’ve messed with.”
I leaned in laceratingly low. “So this was a scandal squeeze on the Rock. Pay, or see yourself in Whisper.”
The sweaty swish said, “Yes.” I said, “How much were you going to squeeze him for?” The sweaty swish said, “Twentyfive G’s.”
I leaned in lower and laughed. “Rock doesn’t have it. I heard he took a bath on a real estate deal.”
The sweaty swish swung a sweet smile at me. “Then look for the Rock on the cover of the June 1958 issue of Whisper.”
WHISPER WINS WICKED WAR OF WORDS! THE HUSH-HUSH HEGEMONY WIPED OUT WITH A WHIMPER!
I blinked. The sweaty swish blindsided me blindingly fast.
He landed a left on my lips. He ratched a right to my chin. A knee bit my balls and bounced me backward.
The sweaty swish swung to his feet. I flattened myself to the floor, grabbed his two fat Florsheims and watched him fly back where he’d been. He landed on linoleum, lurched upright, and laughed. I lobbed my knife and lanced him in the larynx.
4
I punked out and panicked. I left the sweaty swish larynx-lashed and laid out in lurid state. I ran from the hellacious homo-cide.