Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 1, February 1961

The other one was shorter, heavier and the brass knuckles glinted on his right hand. He had a wide, slavic face topped with a blond crew-cut. He looked as poised and as competent as his companion — but not as impassive. His lips were parted in a grin of anticipation.

Delaney angled to his left, away from the booth, towards his car. As the two men converged on him, Delaney dropped to the pavement, landing half on his side, on hip and shoulder as the swarthy one made his lunge. Delaney’s foot came up under the knife thrust in a savage, driving kick. The toe of his shoe landed solidly in the knifer’s groin.

In an almost continuous motion, Delaney rolled and pushed from the pavement, coming up inside the vicious hook of the brass knuckles. He caught the right wrist of the man and twisted it behind the man’s back, forcing the arm up, forcing the big body to jack-knife as muscles and tendons were wrenched and torn. At the same time, Delaney cupped the back of the man’s head with his free hand.

Delaney’s face twisted in a grimace of ferocity as he threw his whole weight against the man, rushing him across the pavement, shoulders and head down to slam into the nearest gas pump. The pump clanked and gave off a dull, sickening crump under the impact. The thug’s body sprawled grotesquely at the base of the pump as Delaney stepped back.

Two gas station attendants, who had deserted the nearby grease rack when the action started, stood ten feet away. They stared at Delaney, at the thug lying by the pump, at the other writhing on the pavement. Their eyes were wide and scared, their mouths open in shocked amazement. One of them drew a long, unsteady breath and asked, “Jesus, mister, where did you go to school?”

“In a place too rough for these jerks,” Delaney snapped.

The big blond hadn’t moved. His head was broken and his face lay in a slowly widening pool of blood. He would lie there, Delaney decided, until the cops picked him up for a free ride to the morgue. The knifer was on his hands and knees, his arms rigidly braced, his head hanging between them, his body wracked with pain. His face was the color of wet cement and saliva drooled in long, elastic threads from his open mouth as he breathed in hoarse, agonized gasps.

A woman on the sidewalk, who had watched the action with unbelieving eyes, began to scream. Her voice rose in a thin keening sound above the traffic noise to break and rise again.

“You better call the cops,” Delaney said. He walked to his car and drove out of the station. Nobody tried to stop him.

The building was on the east side of Cahuenga, and Delaney looked it over as he drove slowly past. It was painted a dark, decorators gray, and the large windows on each side of the entrance had been replaced with glass brick. Next to it, on the north, and separated from it by a narrow passageway, was a vacant building. Beyond that, and extending to the end of the block, was a drive-in restaurant. Delaney parked his Chrysler in front of the vacant building and walked back.

The lettering on the door read FILM ENTERPRISES and inside was a small lobby filled with cheap reception room furniture. A counter faced with combed plywood ran the length of one side.

Behind the counter was a sallow face with a receding chin above a prominent adams apple in a scrawny throat. The face owned a pair of spaniel eyes, separated by a knife-blade nose, and red, over-ripe lips. The face was topped by black, kinky hair plastered to an under sized head.

Delaney rested his elbows on the counter and rolled a wad of paper back and forth between the palms of his hands. He leaned forward confidentially and said:

“So I’m in a hotel room in Phoenix, and this guy’s showing me some pictures. Girlie pictures.”

Spaniel eyes wet his lips nervously and looked at Delaney. He asked, “Are you fired?”

“Girlie pictures,” Delaney repeated firmly. “Hot stuff.”

“You must be off your rocker,” spaniel eyes was watching Delaney’s hands.

The wad of paper began to get unwadded. It was green and it had a pattern with a greenish white border. It was like a conjurer’s trick: an edge of the pattern showed, then a little more. Then a numerical figure in one corner — only the figure couldn’t be read because the paper curled back over itself to show more pattern. It was tantalizing.

And spaniel eyes was fascinated.

Delaney said, “High class, too. Not like the trash that comes out of Nogales or Tia Juana. Beautiful stuff.”

Spaniel eyes could read the figure on the paper now. It was slowly emerging from between Delaney’s hands — rising tenuously above them, turning and twisting. Spaniel eyes nervously wet his lips again. He swallowed, and his adams apple bounced in his throat threatening to choke him. He asked hoarsely:

“What’re you trying to say, mister? Whatcha want?”