Mickey Spillane

Death of the Too-Cute Prostitute

Chapter One

I came out of the cellarway to the street corner and stood there while the rain bit into my face. It was cold and wind-whipped, but it was good. It had a fresh, clean smell, and the rivulets that ran down into my collar had a living feel about them.

Behind me the little guy in the substreet doorway said, “See you,” and threw a friendly wave.

I winked at him. “Thanks, Mutt.”

“Sure, anytime,” he said, and slipped the door shut.

Across the street a cab disgorged a passenger, and when I whistled the driver fingered an okay sign, swept around in a screaming U turn, opened the door for me and took off again in a seemingly single operation.

The crowd was coming out of the Criminal Courts Building now, the photogs in front holding their cameras under their coats while they yelled and waved to the press cars at the curb to look awake. Behind them were the vultures who made the spectator’s seats home, and from their outraged clacking you could sense that they were annoyed at not having something to feed on.

The cabbie looked forward to take it all in, then half turned his head to ask over his shoulder, “You been at the trial, Mac?”

I leaned back against the cushions and stared at the ceiling. “I was there,” I said.

“He gonna sit in it?”

“Not this time.” I cranked the window all the way down to smell the fresh air again. “Take me to Sixth and Forty-ninth.”

Ahead the cabbie seemed to stretch up to meet my eyes in his rear-view mirror and when he spoke his voice was almost out of control.

“What!”

“Sixth and Forty-ninth,” I repeated.

Unbelievingly, the driver shook his head. “No... I mean about the trial. What’d you say?”

“You heard me.”

“Yeah, but what’d he do... cop a plea? Or did they knock it down to second degree?”

“Nothing like that at all, friend.”

The cabbie stretched again, trying to make contact with my eyes, but it was too dark and the mirror too small. He fidgeted, then: “Well, come on, Mac, what gives? All you’ve been hearing this last week is that trial. Papers. Radio. TV. Everybody I pick up hashes it over. So what happens. He escape or something?”

I waited a second before I said quietly, “You might call it that.”

“Brother!” There was a degree of awe in his voice.

I said, “The jury turned in a not guilty verdict.”

This time he whistled between his teeth and said, “Brother,” half under his voice.

“You don’t like it?”

With a typical New Yorker’s contempt for what was already past news, he shrugged and shoved a cigarette in his mouth. “Hell, who cares? Me... I just can’t see how they figger, that’s all.”

“No?” I waited a second, then added, “Why?”

A one-sided shrug almost explained it. “Look,” he said, “the guy’s a cop who’s supposed to run down a big fish, only when he catches him he takes a pay-off instead. Then when he gets tagged with the loot in his pocket he’s suspended from the department and while he sweats out an investigation he makes big noises about getting the fish who fingered him.”

“So.”

“So he makes the noises stick when he shoots up the guy he started out to get legally. He sure picked a big one to burn down.”

“He did?”

“Listen, that Leo Marcus was a real front-marching big wheel. Brother, six slugs in the puss he gets and all head on. No face yet.”

The cab careened around a truck, knifed to a pole position at a red light and waited impatiently. The driver reached up to readjust the mirror so he could see me a little better and sucked on his butt until the cab was blue with smoke.

“Sure can’t figger it out though,” he repeated. “It was open and shut all the way around.”

My voice was real cold now. “It was?”

“Why, sure. They catch him on the spot, his gun, his belly full of booze, witnesses to the beef and no two-bit witnesses either. How’d he get out of it?”

“The jury said not guilty.”

“Man, man! I bet that judge did take the hide off’n them jurors. Would I sure like to have heard that”

“He tore them up.”

Up front the driver began to laugh a little. “Their angle I can see now. The jury, I mean. Sure, I can even understand ’em. And you know, I don’t mind a bit. That Marcus took plenty of my loot when he was running the old cab protection racket. Yep, I can sure see their angle now.” He grinned into the mirror. “You too?”

I leaned into the corner, away from the eyes. “You tell me.”

“They figure he did a public service. So big that they let a fractured killer cop out for an airing. So now let him shoot the rest of ’em up.”

I closed the window up against the rain, leaned forward and handed a bill across the back of the seat. “I’ll get out here.”

“But you wanted...”

“This is fine.”

The cabbie’s fingers felt the bill as he eased over toward the curb, batted the flag and clicked a quarter change out of the box on the dash. He stopped, then turned to pass the change over. It took a second, then something happened to his face that made it tighten around the mouth and he had trouble getting enough breath to say, “You’re... Regan.”

I nodded. “That’s right. The killer cop.”

“Hell, Mac...”

“Forget it. Keep the change.”

I walked three blocks north, leaning into the sharp sting of the rain, and on 49th turned east until I reached Donninger’s. It wasn’t much of a place; a few food specialties and the drinks were good, but what made it tick was its place on the grapevine and the dial phone at every wall table.

It was still too early for the supper crowd, but the day bunch from the tabloids were lined up at the bar swearing at editors and policy makers over the one for the road. It was tomorrow’s news that was important, not today’s. Today’s had been shot down and buried in ink, then folded into neat paper caskets to be handed over to the procession that would follow it avidly. Only the unborn news-child of tomorrow was important.

I walked behind them, flipping the water from my hat brim, squinting until my eyes could adjust to the cool darkness of the place. Jerry Nolan was in the far booth, crouched over a plate of spaghetti, a late paper in his hand. I looked for his partner, Al Argenio, but didn’t see him.

I said, “Hi, Jerry.”

He didn’t even look up. “You’re poison, Regan.”

“Personal or departmental?”

A frown wrinkled the corners of his eyes, then he sat back and glanced up at me, the mark of his trade plain on his face. Sgt. Nolan, detective division. The law. And nothing was really important except the law. He pointed the paper at the chair opposite him. “Sit down, Regan.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m not being friendly. We just have to square some things away.”

“That’s going to take doing.”

“Yeah.” His eyes got narrow. “I don’t see how, but it’ll get done.”

I started to grin at him. It had been a long time coming, but at least I could still find some funny things left

“Don’t clown around about it, Regan. It’s no joke.”

The tight, stiff feeling I had had so long seemed to ooze out of me, a painful, swollen abscess of emotion finally gently bursting, still leaving the toxin, but obtaining relief.

I said, “That’s not right, Jerry. It is a joke. A damn big joke at that. Here the department didn’t bother to press an investigation on the graft charge because the brass figured me for a gone goose. I was a dead man to them.” My grin got bigger. “Now a charge will look ridiculous. They’ll have to say I took money that led to my committing a murder that never happened. The papers will really go for that one.”

“Maybe.”

“What do you think of it, Jerry? You think the jury loused it up?”

I knew what he wanted to say but he had too much cop in him; too much respect for the “due processes” to spell it out. The paper tapped against the edge of the table with a monotonous rhythm. “I have no quarrel with the jury. You know that.”

“Or the judge’s blast at them either?”

“That’s right.”

“Then you think the jury did a bum job?”

“That’s right.”

I leaned on my arms and watched him across the table. “Why do you think the jury turned in that verdict?”

The frown came back across his face again. “I don’t know.”

“Then guess.”

His eyes crawled up my arm until they were searching mine. “You had a good lawyer, Regan. He pulled out all the stops. Despite every piece of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, the jury couldn’t figure you as gunning down Marcus. They chose to disbelieve four sober, blue ribbon eyewitnesses, a ballistics expert, a fingerprint expert, a lab report on the extent of your sobriety and a few other facts like a paraffin test and a cab driver’s sworn statement that he took you roaring drunk from a bar to Marcus’ house sounding off that you were going to kill the guy for getting you booted off the force. Just great, isn’t it?”

“You forgot something, Jerry,” I told him.

“Like what?”

“Like maybe they believed my side was the right one.”

Cold cynicism was in the set of his mouth. “Sure. Like they really believed you didn’t know a thing from the middle of your big drunk until you woke up in a cell a day and a half later. Sorry, Regan, but there’s no logic in it. I think the jury decided the thing on the obtuse moral factors. Marcus was a big time hood. He had several previous convictions, had been tried and acquitted twice on murder charges, had been accused of being important in the drug traffic and at the time of his death was about to appear in court on tax evasion charges. Somehow, using that line of reasoning, twelve supposedly intelligent persons decided you were really a white knight after all and that the dragon really needed killing and you were sent back to the round table with a clean bill of health.”

“Okay, Jerry, think it out any way you like. Only tell me this. Do you really think I knocked him off?”

“I think this, Regan. You could have. You’re capable of it. It wouldn’t surprise me if you did. Not even a little bit.”

“All right, one more question. Do you think I took a bundle from Marcus to suppress evidence?”

The scowl left his face all at once. “If I did I wouldn’t be talking to you now.” He rapped the table with the flat of his hand. “But you’re still poison until after the investigation.”

“Investigation my neck! They going to call Marcus back as a witness? All they had was his complaint and five lousy grand your partner said he found in my room.”

Nolan said quietly, “He found it there.”

“Who cares. It was a plant. You know what I’m going to do, Jerry? I’m going to claim that bundle. If they can’t prove it was Marcus’ dough and I grafted it they’re going to hand it back on a platter. One way or another I’m going to shove something up somebody.”

Jerry fingered a pack of butts from his pocket and tapped one out on his hand. “You come all the way here to tell me this?”

“Not exactly.” I held out a match to his cigarette. “I was framed somehow. Real neat job. I don’t know why or how, but I was framed.”

“So’s every con in Sing.”

“But they’re not outside to prove it.”

“Go on.”

“I’m going into this one, kiddo. Somebody’s going to wind up big and dead.”

“You’re not a cop now, Regan.”

“You are.”

“And right now I’m not shooting anybody. You’re crazy man. You’re all gone. Four months in detention and you’re all gone. What kind of notion have you got in your head that you’re going out and shoot up somebody? That’s hop talk, guy.”

I grinned at him. “Jer... somebody’s dead already. Marcus. Somebody framed me for the kill and a murderer is running around loose.”

“The department will take care of that.”

“Uh-uh. They just tab me for a lucky killer, that’s all. They won’t be looking too far for somebody else.”

“What do you want from me, Regan?”

“A little information, that’s all. The details of the bit never came through the walls of my cell.”

“Like what?”

“Later I’ll think of things. Did the hack company replace the cabbie who drove me to Marcus’ place?”

His mind clicked back, fastened on it, and he said, “Guy Rivera? No, he still works the stand outside the Climax where you got tanked up.”

I looked at him, grinned a little bigger and stood up.

Nolan said puzzledly, “That all?”

“For now. Tell Argenio I said hello.”

Jerry glanced past me and a heavy voice with a snarl in it said, “Don’t bother. Just keep walking.”

I kept some of the grin on for Al, a nice toothy grin, and said, “Hi, slob.”

The muscles along his jaws and neck jumped, but that was all. “You want me to move you on out, Regan?”

I was feeling too damn good and it showed. I said, “Remember the last time you tried it?”

His neck twitched again and he didn’t say anything, but I knew he remembered all right. I waited long enough so he could have time to try once more if he felt like it, and when he didn’t I said so-long to Jerry and walked out.

I got off the Seventh Avenue subway at Sheridan Square and went up into the rain again. The cleanness was gone now and the thick drizzle seemed to hold in all the wild smells of a city that had run hard all day. The streets had a greasy appearance, barely able to reflect the few lights still flashing along the Village at this hour. I turned my collar up, then cut across the street and headed down toward the Climax.

In its day it had been a flash spot and the histories of two great trumpets and the world’s hottest sax had begun right here. But now all were dead, and on the relics the tourists had built legends and a purpose in keeping a gaudy gin mill operating.

I walked past it to the cab stand at the corner where three hacks edged the curb patiently and nudged the driver in the first one awake. He came to with a sleepy grin and started to reach back to open the door.

“Thanks anyway,” I said, “but I’m looking for Guy Rivera. He here?”

He sat up and pawed at his eyes. “Guy? Oh... yeah.” He waggled his thumb over his shoulder. “The last one down. Little feller.”

I slipped a buck in his hand. “Here, go back to sleep.” He grinned back and tucked the bill in his shirt pocket.

Guy Rivera had his head down reading the pink edition of a tabloid by the map light under the dash. I said, “Rivera...” and his head jerked up. He squinted, trying to see my face. “Yeah?”

I moved into the light and when he saw me little concentric arcs grew at the corners of his mouth. “Listen, Mr. Regan...”

“Don’t get nervous, Guy. I’m not on your back. Mind if I sit in the cab?”

He shook his head, but his mouth stayed tight. I opened the door, climbed in and leaned back against the seat. I said, “You know why I’m here?”

His tongue wet his lips down and he coughed into his hand. “Look, you know what I said at the trial. So I said it and that’s it. What’d I do?”

“You were on the stand no more than ten minutes, Rivera. You made a statement of fact that you picked me up here, drove me to Marcus’ place and all the while I rambled on about killing somebody. You weren’t even cross-examined.”

Rivera coughed again and nodded jerkily. “And it’s the truth. What’d you think I could say. Hell, Mr. Regan, why’re you picking on me, now. You got off. You...”

“I said I wasn’t on your back.”

“Then whatta you want from me?”

“A couple of minor things that never came out at the trial. Let’s ask them now.”

“Sure.”

“You remember everything that happened?”

“How you expect me to forget? Here I drive you out so you can...”

“Drop it. Let’s start at the beginning. Where were you when I got in the cab?”

“In the front spot. Chick and Dooley were right behind me.”

“And I came out and got in the cab?”

“Yeah.”

“I was supposed to have been pretty drunk.”

He fidgeted in his seat and tugged at the shift lever. “Well, you got in. The place was closing up. You weren’t the only rum dum coming out.”

“Think hard, Guy. Who put me in the cab?”

“How do I know! Hell, you know how it is. Drunks all over the place. Somebody gives them an arm in. All the time it happens.”

“I never get that soused, friend. Who was doing the favors?”

He shoved the lever away from him and twisted around. Worry and fright were stark things that drew thin lines down the lean cheeks and a fine bead of sweat wet his forehead. “I don’t want to make trouble, Mr. Regan.”

“You won’t.”

“Well... they didn’t let me say much at the trial. Just asked a few questions. But when... that... happened I kept thinking about it, me being so close to it. Hell, I could even have stopped it if I knowed. You come out of there with a bunch of people, but some broad stuffed you in the cab.”

“Broad?”

“Yeah. Now I didn’t see her face good because I wasn’t looking, see? But she was a redhead. Looked real. Only thing I remember is her pocketbook. I thought it was binoculars first, then she opens it and drags out a pack of smokes so I knows it’s her pocketbook. Big letter B in gold on one side. While you’re getting in she asks you if you still want to see-some-rat-and-what-was-his-name. That’s when you started mumbling about Leo Marcus and how you’d kill ’im. She asks where he lived and you told me. Top of High Street, you said. Big brick house. She made you pay in advance with a fin so I took you there, all the time talking about this Marcus.”

“How come you didn’t refuse the fare, Guy?”

“Ah, it was drunk talk, Mr. Regan. You know how it is. Guys talking to themselves. Sometimes it’s worse if you refuse. Then there’s real trouble. Anyway, I took you there.”

“Right to the door?”

Rivera made a face. “Naw. To the curb. You got out and just stood there. That’s when I drove away.”

“I was in pretty bad shape?”

“I’ve seen worse. Not often, though.”

I said, “Rivera... there’s a steep flight of stone steps going up to Marcus’ front door. You think I could have made it?”

He squinched up his face again and hunched uncomfortably. “Maybe you weren’t so bad off, after all. Sometimes...”

“I didn’t ask that.”

For a few seconds he didn’t say anything, then quietly, “No.” He swiveled around in his seat and gave me a searching look. “You know what’s got me, Mr. Regan?”

“What?”

“I’d say you were so stiff you couldn’t see to you-know-what. How you could pump six slugs into a guy’s head is beyond me.”

“It’s beyond me too.”

“Whatcha going to do now, Mr. Regan?”

“Find the girl.”

“I’m gonna tell you something.”

“What?”

“I ain’t never seen her again.”

“You said you didn’t see her face.”

“I know, but all the redheads I seen so far around the joint I know. This one I didn’t know. See?”

“You’ll keep looking?”

“Sure. So long as there’s no trouble.”

“You won’t get bothered.” I reached for a bill in my pocket and he waved it off.

“This is for friends, Mr. Regan.”

“Okay. If you want me leave a call at Donninger’s. You know where it is?”

“I know.”

“And thanks, Rivera.”

“Anytime.”

The bartender at the Climax wore a stitched nameplate that read “RALPH” in red caps on his white mess jacket, a busy little guy with all the touches of a long time pro. He didn’t see me come in, but rather felt my presence behind him and turned with a “What’ll you have?” smile.

It lasted only a second, then it was gone and he nodded coolly and said, “Evening, Mr. Regan.”

“Hello, Ralph.” He waited for my order. “Tall ginger,” I told him.

He set it up, his eyes wary, and when he took my change started to turn away.

“Come here, buddy.”

He turned around, frowning. “I got nothing to say to you, pal. Nothing. Just keep off me, or I’ll call in for a prowl car.”

I looked at him for a long time. Too long for him. He almost dropped a glass he was wiping. “That could be a mistake, buddy.”

He worked his mouth, then muttered softly, “Okay, whatta ya want?”

“Talk.”

“You already heard everything I got to say.”

“Somebody else was asking the questions.”

“Well I got nothing else...”

I cut him off. “Let’s say I want an opinion, huh?”

Ralph glanced around nervously, but nobody else was at the bar. “Like what?”

“You remember everything that night I was here?”

He shrugged and scowled. “I remember you getting stoned.”

“Not quite.”

“Whatta ya mean! I see you...”

“You saw me stoned, not getting stoned. There’s a difference. You remember what you served me at the bar here?”

“Sure. You had a couple rye and gingers. Hell, I knew who you were then from your pictures in the papers.”

“Two drinks didn’t stone me, friend. I came in here sober, remember?”

Ralph didn’t like what I was getting at a bit.

I said, “You testified I was drinking here for about three hours until the place closed up. But all you actually saw me have was two drinks.”

“Listen, Mr. Regan, I work drunks. When I see a drunk I know...”

“How’d I get so drunk, buddy?”

Suddenly his face got red and tight lines stood out in his neck. His breath came out in a hiss. “If you think I slipped you a mickey, pal, you’re crazy. Real crazy. You...”

“I went back to a table,” I said softly. “I was sitting with Stan The Pencil. I was asking questions and he was able to answer some. He took me to another table and introduced me to a couple of local characters...”

“You was with Popeye Lewis and Edna Rells. Artists. I can...”

“I know who they are, friend.” I paused, then: “Who waited on that table?”

“Spud. That’s his section. But don’t think he fed you anything, Mr. Regan. That old man has been here ten years and worked this neighborhood all his life. He’s square all the way.”

I grinned at his loyalty. It seemed out of place in a gin mill. “Just curious, Ralph. Just curious. You remember anything about a redhead who joined the table?”

He shrugged. “Who looks at redheads? Here they’re a dime a dozen.”

“One helped me into the cab. She was a stranger here.”

“If she didn’t drink at the bar, then I don’t remember her.”

“Call Spud over.”

He shook his head, annoyed at the whole routine, but walked to the end of the bar, scanned the back room, then waved. A minute later a grey-haired waiter in a tired tux worn thin from too many pressings came in, smiled and waited patiently for a complaint or compliment. On a second studied look he recognized me and glanced to Ralph for an explanation. The bartender shrugged and pointed his thumb at me.

“You remember me, Spud?”

He nodded. “Yessir.”

“You remember the party that night?”

He made a small gesture with his shoulders. “I remember some. I had a party at every table that night.”

“But you’ve had reason to remember this party, Spud. With all the publicity and having it start right here I bet you’ve thought back on it plenty of times.”

When I stopped and waited he shuffled his feet and fidgeted. “I gave it some thought,” he finally admitted.

“Who was at the party?”

He stared at me blankly a moment, thinking. “Popeye, Edna, then Miles Henry came in with them two pictures of Popeye’s that the boss bought and then a lot of people came over to look at the paintings.”

“I remember the art work,” I said. “Seems to me that’s about the last I remember.”

The old man didn’t believe me at all. His eyes tightened at the corners and his face reflected the cynicism the years had built up.

I said, “Do you remember me being drunk or sober then?”

“Mister,” he said, “I wasn’t paying attention to anybody being either way. In this business nobody ever gets more sober with each drink, they only get more drunk. I watched it happen but I didn’t pay attention to it, otherwise when I see pictures of drunks smashing up people with their cars or shooting their kids in bed I’d maybe start drinking myself because it’s partly my fault. So for you, I don’t remember anything. Later on I noticed you all shook up because you were a quiet drunk and at that stage them’s the kind to watch out for because the fuse was lit and with another few you’d be roaring. I’ve had some of ’em go for me when they were like that and now I watch for it. Sure I remember you then, and later too because you were crocked like hell and couldn’t hardly walk and everybody was laughing at you.”

It was quite a speech. I ran over it in my mind before I asked him, “Who was everybody?”

Again I got that noncommittal shrug. “There was a crowd at the table then.”

“You know them?”

“Nope. Stan The Pencil had gone to make book in the other joints and Popeye and Edna stayed with the boss the rest of the night. You had a bunch of strangers with you. That’s the way it goes here. Parties. Always parties.”

“Who footed the bill?”

“You paid by rounds. Everybody had money on the table in front of them. You too.”

“Remember a redhead at the party? She carried a handbag that was shaped like a binocular case.”

“Sure,” he said.

I didn’t interrupt him. I let him reach for it himself. “A big beautiful job and she was all over you. She got you outa here when we closed up.”

Inside my chest I felt all tight and my mouth had a dry feel. Quietly, I said, “Who was she?”

Then the tightness turned into an inaudible curse. Because he gave me that shrug again and said, “I don’t know. Just some broad.”

I fished four bucks out of my pocket and split it between the two of them. “Thanks. If you see her around, give me a call. I’m in the book.”

Ralph just nodded. Spud looked thoughtful a moment, fingered the two bucks in. his hand, then looked at me purposefully. “Mr. Regan...”

“What?”

“I don’t think you could’ve bumped that guy.”

“Why not?”

“All my life I worked drunks. I know what they can do. You couldn’t see to bump anybody that night.”

“That’s what I tried to tell them, Spud.”

He had something else to say but didn’t quite know how to get it out. Finally he said, “I’ve known plenty of crooked cops, Mr. Regan. I hated their guts.”

“Go on.”

“Did you take a payoff from Marcus?”

“No. That was a framed job.”

The grin on Spud’s face was a friendly one.

“What did you expect me to say, anyway?”

“I could’ve told if you were lying, Mr. Regan, I’ll let you know if I see her again.”

You find friends in funny places, I thought. I watched him leave, then walked outside and down the subway where I caught a train for my apartment.

Chapter Two

George Lucas grew up on the same street I did and was all set to break into the mob when he took time out to count the cost and figured it too high. Instead, he worked his way through school and became a criminal-law lawyer. But he still looked like a crook and half the time he acted like one. His record in court was imposing. He could out-shyster the shysters anytime and if he could stick a needle up the DA.’s tail he’d take the case free.

When I walked into his office he grinned crookedly and said, “I had an idea you’d be around.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, Regan. It was just a feeling. You did okay in court. How could you afford Selkirk and Selkirk? That’s big time.”

I sat down and tossed my hat on his desk. “They came free, Georgie. Monty Selkirk figured he owed me a favor. I let him pay it back.”

“You got his kid off the hook one time, didn’t you?”

I shrugged. “He wasn’t involved. It was a phoney blackmail attempt.”

“Good to have buddies like that. Always have something working for you that way.” He flipped open a box of cigars, offered me one and when I said no, lit up himself. “So what’s with you today, Patrick?”

“Something up your alley.”

“Let’s have it.”

“You familiar with my case?”

“Everything, boy. It’s home town news, you know.”

“Yeah.” I leaned back and stuck out my feet. “Well, just to review you, I was assigned to the Leo Marcus thing. We’d picked up a rumble that he was back in the extortion racket among other things.”

George nodded and sucked on the cigar. “I heard about it He was getting up there.”

“He was there, friend. He ran the organizational operation along the Atlantic coast from New York to the toe of Florida. He set up a string of motels with organization money for one thing, used each unit as a local headquarters and clearing house and did it so nice and legally he couldn’t be touched.”

“Smart,” George said. “The new method. Keep it legal.”

“He didn’t quite make it. I had a tipoff that would have wrapped up the entire deal. It took eight weeks, but I had a dossier on Leo Marcus complete with incriminating evidence that would have blown the operation sky high. Just before the end of the investigation I met with two of the commissioners at a midtown hotel so they could pave the way for us to hit the operation without tipping off the papers. That night they saw what I had and knew what it meant.”

“That was your mistake, hey, kiddo?”

I nodded. “That was it. They knew I had it and when I couldn’t produce it again I was cooked. That made the money plant look real.”

George pointed with the cigar. “About the loot...”

I laughed at him. He still sounded Brooklyn. “The loot, friend, was five lousy G’s. An anonymous call to HQ said I sold out and Argenio hit my flat where he found a package of fifty one-hundred-dollar bills supposedly hidden in my closet. I was held, I couldn’t come up with my file and couldn’t account for the cash. Open and shut”

“Just like that?”

“That’s the size of it.”

“They didn’t take your departmental record into consideration?”

“Give them a break. They tried. I have a lot of friends around, George.”

“You’re not lacking in enemies, either. So go.”

I went. “I probably could have stood off the charges. The second mistake was in getting mad.”

“You always were like that, Patrick. Even when you were a little kid I used to tell you to take it easy. Think you’d listen? Hell, no.”

“So I wanted to know who put the finger on me. It came down through Marcus, but I wanted to know who passed the word. I was working the stoolies when I got tagged.”

“Like how?”

“Like I was slipped a mickey and steered out to Marcus’ place.”

“And there it ends,” he said around his cigar.

I nodded.

“You were lucky,” he told me. “One thing, you just can’t always figure a jury. You talked it up enough before Marcus got killed. You know how many guys... cops yet, heard you say you’d put so many holes in him he’d look like a screen door?”

“That was talk. You know damn well how it goes.”

“Sure, but it got done. Man, six shots in the kisser that knocked him kicking into a fireplace so that he’s half cremated before they find you both.” He leaned back in his chair, blowing smoke up toward the ceiling. “Until they found the finger that was shot off him they weren’t even sure it was Marcus. Of course, the dentist they ran down made it positive, but for a while they were shook. Hell, you... if it was you... did everybody a big favor. The cops should be happy.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Your gun. Your prints. Paraffin test. You’re there out drunk. You made threats. You had a great motive. It’s pretty strong, Patrick.”

“Was pretty strong, remember?”

He grinned and nodded. “Selkirk’s a good lawyer. So what do you want from me?”

“My five grand. It was impounded. There might be a technicality or two involved, but since I have the name, I want the game. That five G’s Argenio found is mine, right?”

George’s face got real bright. “An interesting thought, Patrick. You played the ponies, hit a goodie, now spill out the tax and it’s yours. I think it can be arranged.”

“Then arrange it. Whoever planted that loot is financing his own funeral.”

He leaned forward, the concern on his face showing in the tight lines around his mouth. “This might louse you up in the department.”

“The hell with ’em. They can’t do anything but clear me. But I want that cash.”

“Sure, Patrick, I’ll get it for you. Anything else?”

“Yeah, one thing. Represent me at the departmental trial.”

“Sure, but what about meanwhile?”

“You know me, Georgie boy. I’m nobody’s slob.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. You packing a rod?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Later?”

“If I have to.”

“Like I said,” he repeated. “What about meanwhile?”

“I want my badge back. They’ll probably try to shuffle me off to some obscure division, so make a deal. I’ll keep nice and clean and out of everybody’s way. Otherwise I’ll really raise a stink. They’ll know what I’m talking about.”

“So do I, kid. The picture’s clear. You’re just asking for a bucketful of trouble and an early death.”

“Didn’t I always?”

“You did. That you did. You’re such a damn big target it’s a wonder you ever stayed alive this long.”

I picked my hat off his desk and slid it on. “Take care of me, Georgie boy.”

“Just like the old days,” he said.

I nodded. “So now I got a mouthpiece. Fine comedown for a cop.” I grinned at him. “Just like the old days.”

Jerry Nolan always ate Saturday lunches at Vinnie’s. The menu was wop clam chowder with all the breadsticks you could eat stacked up like cordwood in the middle of the table. Vinnie automatically dished up a plate for me and had it at the table as soon as I sat down. When I said hello he nodded, the reserve plain on his face. I was something he wasn’t used to. Ordinarily everything would be black or white, but now something was grey and he wasn’t used to it.

“You’re taking a long time,” I finally said to him.

He paused, a half a breadstick heavy with butter halfway to his mouth. “What are you getting at?”

“You. Your damn insistence upon the letter of the law all the way. By now you should figure yourself for a sanctimonious bastard in a departmental sense.”

His face tightened and he bit into the breadstick, waiting.

“The law, buddy,” I said. “It proved me innocent. Remember? You’re the one always sounding off about the sanctity of the law. Now the law has acted. I’m clean. Come off it. Like you tell everybody else, don’t figure yourself bigger than the law so that when the law acts you refuse to accept the verdict.”

His neck reddened and he bent his face toward his plate. His eyes flicked up momentarily and he nodded, trying to conceal a self-conscious smile.

“Okay.”

That’s all he said, and I knew everything was all right again. Nolan was a funny one, a hell of a tough cop, but square all the way. His hatred for hoods was a terrible passion but nothing compared to the way he felt about crooked cops. He had had a hard time swallowing the thing that had happened to me, but now it was dead and buried.

I said, “I picked up something.”

“New?”

“To me, anyway. A redhead helped me into a cab that night.”

“She wasn’t there when you got out. You took that ride alone,” he reminded me. He spooned his chowder up again, then: “You weren’t followed, either. I questioned Rivera about that myself. He was positive.”

“The redhead set up the address. Damn it, I had been mouthing off about Marcus and she had me driven there.”

With a patient gesture he put his spoon down and wiped his mouth. “I know, Regan. I heard it all. I’m not stupid. I checked out everything that night personally. I didn’t pass any of it on because there was nothing conclusive. It’s pretty typical of people who have been drinking to help another drunk into a cab. Nobody makes sense. Everybody’s at the ha ha stage. The driver gets paid and goes along with things. Any cabbie will drop a drunk off at an address. He won’t get wrapped up over it.”

“This didn’t come out at the trial.”

“I said it was inconclusive. You had enough against you. I didn’t have to make it any worse.”

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure.”

“You overlooked one thing.”

“Now I know.”

“All right, tell it to me,” I said.

“You were slipped a mickey sometime that night.”

“Thanks for realizing it. You know why?”

“Sure. So you could kill off Marcus.”

I shook my head. “You know damn well that would be a stupid trick. I was too far gone to do anything. I was set up for a conviction and you know it. Anybody that drunk would have the cops asking questions long before a jury would.”

Nolan leaned back in his seat and reached for his cigarettes. When he had one lit he said, “You know the ingredients in a mickey?”

I nodded. “Sure. Generally chloral hydrate. For the knockout kind, anyway.”

“That’s right. But the restriction on its use is that it knocks you out or doesn’t knock you out. If you went under you wouldn’t be able to act of your own volition. However, during the war the Germans came up with a new one. A simple formula change brought the desired results, but when certain initial effects had worn off, the subject had physical action without mental control and no later recollection.”

A small fire started deep in my belly. “Go on.”

“It was called Sentol. It allowed a person to come out of a stupor, perform an act, then go back into a stupor again.”

“This didn’t come out at the trial,” I said coldly.

“I realize that. Again, it was inconclusive. When you were found you were given the usual balloon test for drunks. The percentage was against you. The kind of a dosage you could possibly... and I said possibly... have been given, would have allowed you to drink enough to genuinely get drunk, at least enough to go past the critical percentage point in your blood. By all known tests, you were chemically drunk.”

“So why this sudden slant?”

“Ted Marker, up in the lab, is probably only one of the few familiar with Sentol. Occasionally he tests for it. Unfortunately, too much time had passed for a positive result, but what he found was curious.”

“Being curious and uncovering facts are pretty far apart.”

“Sure, but that’s as far as he got. The analysis showed a couple of indications of the presence of Sentol. It was a bare possibility.”

Then I realized just how far out on a limb they had gone for me. In one way I could have been victimized by that damn drug, but just as surely I could have killed Marcus.

He let it sink in, then went on. “Sentol, from what Ted knows about it, was originally called a ‘conscience remover.’ Properly administered, it allowed you to fulfill the desires of the primary passions like love or hate or fear. In your case it would be hatred. You wanted to kill Marcus so the drug removed any restrictions on you for doing so.”

“That is,” I said, “if it was administered.”

“Of course.”

“Now things are getting a little too obvious, aren’t they?”

Nolan shrugged, dragged in deeply on his cigarette, letting out the smoke in a controlled grey stream. “There are only two possibilities. One... you killed him. Two... somebody else did and arranged very elaborately for you to be the patsy.”

“That makes me pretty important.”

For a few moments Jerry sat there studying the ash on his cigarette, then he turned those cold eyes on me and said, “Just what did you have on Marcus?”

His tone was a patient one. Waiting was nothing new to him at all. I said, “You remember when I was assigned to Marcus?”

He nodded and pulled on the smoke again. “I knew that you had been assigned, but not the nature of the deal.”

“Orders came from the top. Only six people knew that I was to concentrate on Marcus. I could work in my own way and nobody was over me directing the operation. There was a limited fund made available so I could buy information if necessary and if I had to work outside normal jurisdiction I was guaranteed quick cooperation with other departments. It was set up pretty much like with the Parker kidnapper and the Small-Greenblatt spy thing.”

“I remember them both.”

“In brief, Leo Marcus’ operation was the result of the heat put on the Syndicate ever since the Apalachin raid. The Syndicate couldn’t function as a unit and rather than have it fall apart into fragments that would be difficult to reassemble later, they set it up into sections that would operate individually until they were ready to bring them back under one head again.

“Marcus had the choicest bit. He had the money spots from New York to Miami and you know how he ran them. He was a strong-arm character right out of the Capone books but shrewd enough not to get caught. My opinion is that he was the most vicious hood the Syndicate ever had and he didn’t get knocked off any too soon.

“Anyway, I waited him out. I had the law of averages working for me. Along the line he made a couple of mistakes and before he found out about them and covered up, I found out about them and had him cold.”

“For instance,” Jerry prompted.

“He killed a kid in a drive-in down in Georgia. He was drunk and there was a girl involved. He fractured the guy’s skull with a billy and the girl ran off in a panic. Leo’s companion in the car, a small-time local hood working for him, did Leo a favor and found the broad and scared her off. I found the hood. It didn’t take much to persuade him that Leo didn’t like live witnesses to a murder and he talked up nicely. He even went further... he gave me the sap Leo had used on the kid complete with prints, the kid’s blood and hair particles, signed a statement and promised to testify at the trial, although with the evidence at hand it wasn’t necessary. He was held in the local jail, word spread fast, and the next day he was dead of food poisoning with nobody able to explain how. But like I said, his death wasn’t quite necessary.”

“So you had to go,” Nolan said.

“Something like that. Or else they had to get the information I had.”

“Why didn’t you turn it in while you had it?”

“Because the deal wasn’t set up that way. The commissioners knew it and didn’t ask for it. The procedure had already been established. They just saw what I had, that’s all. That was enough.”

“What did you have on the operation?”

“In general, a breakdown of Atlantic system. Leo’s unit owned and operated a string of motels, all nice and legally complicated. Each place was a drop where the mob did business. What facts I had on individuals weren’t worth pressing. That would come later. The primary job was to outline the operation so a team could move in for the big kill later.”

“And now it’s gone,” Nolan said dryly.

I shrugged. “I could duplicate it from memory, but what good would it do. By now the system has changed completely. The only real bit then was the murder evidence that would have sent Marcus to the hot squat.”

He snubbed the cigarette out and waved to Vinnie for more coffee. “The Brotherhood is getting pretty nervous. Their big wheels aren’t supposed to be getting messed up in two-bit kills.”

“It happens,” I said.

“But only once, Regan. They get touchy about those things. Nobody is indispensable. If a wheel is likely to make trouble for the mob, then out he goes. Look what happened to Dutch Schultz when they thought he was going to knock off Dewey.”

I sipped at the coffee, staring at him across the cup. “I know. I was thinking about that. And like the man said, therein lines the puzzle.”

Nolan frowned and didn’t answer me.

“Never before did they bother to get so damn elaborate about it. Always it was just a few rounds from a chopper.”

He put his cup down and wiped at his mouth. “Sometimes it’s worth while, especially if they got a tailor-made patsy like you seemed to be.” He grinned when he saw my mouth go tight and added, “Now what do you want from me? You didn’t come here to rehash most of what I already knew.”

“Who tipped Argenio?” I said.

He seemed to stiffen under his coat and finely drawn lines showed at the corners of his eyes. When he looked at me it was with annoyance. “You know anonymous tips, Regan.”

“Sure, but not on a cop with a good record.” I waited a second then said, “Why the sudden push?”

He nodded soberly and sat back, still not liking the talk. “This is under the hat, kid. The tip was made to our office. Argenio took it, called the commissioner because the tipster said to do it, and the commish in person directed Argenio to get to your place.”

“The call go through the switchboard?”

“That’s right, but it wasn’t monitored. It came in at eleven-ten p.m., and Jackson, who was on the PBX, had too many calls going to monitor any single one.”

“Neat, wasn’t it?” I asked him.

“Let’s say effective.”

I sprung it on him quickly. “What do you think of Argenio?”

He didn’t like it. His face showed as much. “Fourteen years on the force, he did all right. He has three commendations.”

“I have twelve. That wasn’t the question.”

Nolan leaned forward, his hands gripping the edge of the table. His voice was quiet, but had a hard edge. “Look... he’s my partner and has been for two years. He’s covered me in a lot of tight places plenty of times. What do you expect me to say?”

“That’s what any partner is supposed to do. For all those heroics he draws a regular wage. Now answer the question.”

I saw his fingers relax and the indecision come into his eyes. “I don’t know. He’s a hard apple. He’s hard on everybody and he’s harder on himself. You tangled with him once.”

“I knocked his damn ass off,” I said

“Okay. He’s strange, let’s say.”

“Susceptible to a bribe?”

“Plainly, no. I know that he was offered some big loot, but he wouldn’t touch it.”

“You don’t like him, though, do you?”

“No,” Jerry said, “I don’t like him. Nevertheless, that doesn’t change matters. He’s a damn good cop with nothing against him and there are others that I feel the same about so an opinion like mine isn’t worth anything. What are you getting at, anyway?”

“He seemed to move pretty fast, busting into my apartment to follow up an anonymous tip.”

“He was ordered to.”

“I could have been contacted. I wasn’t that hard to find.”

“The stuff was gone and he found five grand in unexplained dough.”

“He didn’t figure a plant?”

“Damn it, Regan, we all figured a plant. It was too pat. Maybe we could have done something if you didn’t go off on a bat and...” He paused, shook his head and nipped another butt out of his pack.

I said softly, “You’ll keep looking around?”

He nodded, lighting the cigarette. “I’ll look around.”

I finished my coffee and climbed out of the booth. When I reached for the check Nolan waved me off, his face still impassive. I said, “If you want me, leave a call at Donninger’s.”

His mind closed on the name, remembering the phone number from other contacts we had made there. “What will you be doing?” His voice was the wrong tone. It wasn’t cop to cop any more.

I said, “Something new has been added, remember?”

“Oh?”

“Somebody had to take Marcus’ place.”

I wasted the day doing legwork around some of the old places, but things weren’t the same any more. In a way I was still a cop, but a cop under suspension isn’t quite a cop and there was more lip than talk. I let it go for a while and the wise guys knew what it meant. If the suspension didn’t stick I’d be back to talk to them again and there were going to be some sore faces around. To people like that you talk better with your hands than your mouth. A few still had impressions of the last time we had to talk and rattled off some, but not enough to steer me onto a direct line.

Time. It all took time. You don’t go after the big ones overnight. I let it be known around that I was still looking and those who saw my face knew just how badly I wanted somebody. They knew what would happen when I found that somebody and they knew that I wasn’t going to stop looking for anything or anybody.

The word would go around and nobody would like it a bit, but there wasn’t a thing they could do about it at all. Except one thing.

Somebody could make sure I got killed.

When I got home I was tired and dirty and needed a shave. I climbed under the shower and soaked the dirt and sweat off, shaved without drying down, then wrapped a towel around me and went outside to the kitchen for a cold beer and a sandwich.

For a while I stood there eating, watching the traffic go by on the street below. For a change it was a quiet evening. Before the night was over the chart said there would be from nine to fifteen unexplained deaths, three murders of passion, several hundred cuttings and probably a dozen nice clean shootings with the persons involved apprehended before morning. Rapes, muggings, burglaries numerous, but unnumbered on the chart.

What the chart didn’t show was the subtle creeping thing that was the soft kill. Voters who supported corruption and taxpayers who paid for it. Out there in the evening the big ones who constituted the royalty of vice were getting dressed to preside over their dominions. The serfs would pay hidden tribute by name dropping. Their direct overlords would pay direct tribute in different ways. In a way, everybody paid a tribute and if you didn’t like it there was a place to put it. You know.

Whoredom was dead in the city, the papers said. The administration had announced very solemnly that aside from those pursuing the world’s oldest profession along the street and an occasional call girl working limited operations, generally apprehended, that organized whoredom was dead, dead, dead.

Why didn’t someone tell them about Madison Avenue’s Miss Mad? She published a brochure of her wares and for a thousand bucks you got pictures and backgrounds of three hundred and seven of her “models.” Her name was Madaline Stumper... Miss Mad to the trade... and she lived in the good seventies with a million a year coming in. She paid off half that million to the Brotherhood and another quarter of it to certain ones in the city. But what the hell, anybody can live on a quarter million a year, can’t they?

For five years the bright boys have been trying to track down the marijuana traffic and make feeble excuses when they can’t ring the bell. Hell, everybody close enough to the business knows about Hymie Reeves seeding out abandoned farms in Orange County with the stuff and going in at the right time to harvest it. If a cow gets drunk on the loco weed the farmers generally attribute it to “fallen apples” and let the cow sober up. If somebody spots it growing it gets chopped down in a burst of civic pride and glory with pictures in the local papers. If nobody sees it grow, Hymie comes in at the right time with a pickup and harvests it out on a dark night and makes a bundle. It’s only a weed. No cultivating. No care. It mixes with the sumac, grows like crazy and is an invitation to ride the horse that comes later. Great. Just great.

And on the waterfront the big H comes in like on a pneumatic tube in a department store and so long as the right people get paid hardly anything gets tipped. The fraction of all the stuff that gets stopped by the cops is really only a diversionary tactic to satisfy, an understaffed agency and satiate the press. But the tips are for real and the boys go in. They pick up the stuff and it’s worth the raid, but meanwhile a hundred times as much goes though and what’s lost gets written off just like in business.

The soft kill. Like a gorgeous, wonderful, but syphilitic whore.

Behind me the phone rang and I snapped out of all the things I had been thinking. I put the beer down and picked it up. The voice on the other end said, “Mr. Regan? This Mr. Regan?”

I couldn’t place it at first. “This is Regan.”

“I told you I’d call, Mr. Regan. This is Spud, from the Climax, remember?”

“Oh, sure, Spud, what’s up?”

“I found the redhead, Mr. Regan. Rivera backs me up on it.”

Across the room from me there was a mirror and when I looked into it I was grinning. There was no reason to grin at all and looking at the reflection was a peculiar thing. I was grinning, but I couldn’t feel it on my face at all.

I said, “Where, Spud,” and tried to keep the excitement out of my voice.

“Tonight’s paper,” he said easily. “Two pictures in the News. Front and page three. She was found dead in the river. The cops say an apparent suicide.”

Suddenly the hot feeling in my gut went away and left a tightness and when I looked back in the mirror I wasn’t smiling any more at all.

I said, “Thanks, Spud.”

And he told me, “My pleasure, Mr. Regan. I hope you can still do what you have to do.”

“I will,” I said, and hung up.

Chapter Three

The front page was a body shot over a caption showing the police launch in the background and a pair of cops laying out the still wet figure of a woman. The story inside was accompanied by a full-face photo of a lovely girl in her late twenties with soft, flowing hair curling down around her shoulders highlighting a sensual, full-lipped smile. The picture was one taken from a wallet she had in her suit jacket and the brief news account stated that she was identified as Mildred Swiss from her Social Security card and driver’s license. No cause was given for the drowning, but the police suspected suicide and were checking all Missing Persons reports and looking for the next of kin.

I studied the face again, closer this time. The photo was more than a simple snapshot. The clarity was unusual and the posture too professional for an amateur job. And there was that thing about her mouth and the provocative slant to her eyes.

Not everybody was riding my back. Van Reeves in the records section and I had had too many contacts for him to pull out the stops and hedge on things like this. One time he had been caught in a trap too and knew what it was like. He was glad to hear from me and told me so.

I said, “Favor, Van.”

“Listening.”

“A girl was fished out of the river last night. Redhead named Mildred Swiss.”

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“Any request on her I.D. come through your department?”

“Not yet. Should it?”

“Eventually. They probably sent her prints directly to Washington, but see if she was listed as a cabaret performer in the city. She looks the type.”

“Will do. Can you hold on?”

“Sure.”

Van didn’t take long. He came back, picked up the phone and I could hear him rustling sheets of paper in his hand. “Got it, Regan. She’s a naturalized citizen of Polish origin with an unpronounceable last name. Last address is in the Fifties, but it won’t do you any good because they tore all that section down for a new hotel and she never renewed. Parents deceased, no listed relatives.”

“Who sponsored her into the country?”

“Parents. Home in Linden, New Jersey, where they died. Looks like they got here during the war and sent for her later. I’ll have to pass this on.”

“Anything in the other files?”

“No criminal record in this city. Something may turn up somewhere else. What are you thinking of?”

“She’s a type, Van.”

“Hunch or you know?”

“Just one of those things. Thanks.”

“No trouble. Glad you put me on it. Call anytime.”

“It’s nice to know you still have friends,” I said.

“Nuts. You’d be surprised. Now you’ll have more than ever.”

“Sure,” I told him sarcastically and hung up.

After so many years you begin to read the signs. You can see things in expressions and make the nuances of oblique fact channel themselves into paths nobody else would ever notice. It was part of being a cop and a part that nothing but experience and a tiny, ingrained feeling could give you.

Mildred Swiss looked like a type and her background had the little hooks you could hang certain probabilities on. She had steered me into a murder rap and now that it had come unglued, she was dead. Lucky coincidences just don’t come that often. The laws of chance are too strange, too varied.

I grinned and sucked my breath through my teeth, knowing that someplace out there in the crosshatch pattern of the city somebody was sitting and waiting, guts churning with anxiety because I was loose and I’d be looking. He’d be playing a big game and the stakes were absolute.

There was no coming back from the dead.

That was the absolute.

She occupied a suite of offices that took up a corner of the fourth floor of the new Galton-Mead building on Madison Avenue, an exclusive address catering only to the finest tenants or those prepared to pay an exorbitant rental.

Each door bore the gold-lettered name, Sturvesent Agency, a respected firm that handled some of the highest fashion models in the business and worked with nothing but the leading magazines in the field. Six leading movie stars and a few dozen big TV names had come from the Sturvesent list

So did a lot of others who never gained national prominence.

The Sturvesent Agency was a supplier of the fanciest call girls in town too.

A long time ago Madaline Stumper had started in a small way. Luck and diligent enterprise had gotten her to the top, but that curious quirk of nature that drew her into being a madam at nineteen had kept her in the sex business from then on, working at an executive level among the biggest business in the world, with friends in high places and an income that didn’t show in the tax forms.

It was a cute operation. In this crazy world some said it merely filled a demand that would always be there, catered to accepted organizational procedures and was as much a part of business as the clients who requested the services of her stable.

One thing about Miss Mad. She ran both ends with identical and remarkable efficiency. She had never taken a fall, and although she had been questioned on several occasions, a battery of high-priced lawyers quashed the whole thing and had her loose in a matter of minutes. All the department ever got were a few leaks, a word here and there that was too second hand to process and an idea of what she was up to. No disgruntled customers ever registered a complaint and no amount of undercover work ever pointed a condemning finger her way.

I walked in to where the silver blonde was sitting behind a polished mahogany desk, a full-bodied woman in her early thirties with eyes that could pick you clean in seconds and tabulate before you crossed the thick nylon rug from the door.

Her smile was friendly, but there was a frigidity in her eyes that said she could smell gun oil on me and see the hole in my wallet where the badge used to be pinned. She said, “Yes?” Nothing more. It was enough.

“Tell Miss Mad I’d like to see her. Pat Regan.”

Her eyebrows went up slowly, querulously, an unspoken challenge.

“We’re old friends,” I told her.

In a way we were. We had graduated from high school together and twice back in the neighborhood I had pulled a guy off her back who had been trying to make her the hard way and twice I had wound up bloody and sore.

Whatever was in my voice made a lie out of my grin. The receptionist wet her lips with the tip of her tongue and she didn’t push the matter. She spun the dial of her phone, held the husher mouthpiece up close so I couldn’t catch the conversation, then put it back and said, “Her secretary will be right out.”

“Thanks,” I nodded.

For five minutes I had time to watch the traffic. They came and went through the many doors, tall, emaciated women with necks that reminded me of what Mr. Guillotine thought of when he mechanized the chopping block. They all looked hungry, their cheekbones prominent, dresses and coats nipped in around hourglass waists, hair piled in the latest fashion and all flat chested as hell. Only a couple wore wedding rings and it was easy to see why. In bed it would be like having a few loose pipes aboard.

But not all of them were like that. Two happy, well-fed types came bouncing in, deliberately displaying a lot of flesh money-tailored in the kind of clothes that would turn any man inside out, pushed through the gate and went into one of the offices.

Before they came out the pert kid in the green dress tapped my arm and said, “This way, Mr. Regan.”

We went through a long corridor behind the other rooms, then turned and she opened a door. I thanked her, stepped inside and looked across the room at the stunning sight of the woman I used to fight over and said, “Hello, Mad.”

She was a composite of all the world’s beauties until you reached her eyes, then you saw in the great depths of those almost-black orbs that matched the silky sheen of her hair the vast depths of a cavern that held an unknown life of their own.

Only for a second did they seem to fill up with what should have been there in the first place, then whatever it was receded a little... there, but not showing all the way. Her mouth was a flower that blossomed red, accented by the white of even teeth, and one corner had a tiny grin to it. “Regan. Well, well.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“Not really. I’ve been reading about you.”

“Hasn’t everybody?”

Madaline Stumper stood up and held out her hand to me. No matter who she had working for the agency, they could never touch her. Her grip was firm and warm, mocking sincerity in her hello. Beneath the black dress she was a woman of physical beauty rarely seen any more. High breasts that dared you with every curving line, taut stomach muscles that ebbed and flowed like a tide into generous thighs that held a fluid, hungry stance unknowingly deliberate, a gesture she had ever since she was a kid.

I let go her hand and dragged a chair up with my foot, waited until she sat down and slouched into it. “You’re looking damn good, kid.”

She let the grin go wide a moment. “What a choice of words. The other day the president of A.T.P. took an hour to tell me the same thing.”

“I haven’t got the time.”

“You never did,” she said.

“So I wasn’t much for words.”

“Just fighting,” she smiled languidly. “Was it for a good cause?”

“I thought so at the time.”

“And now?” she asked purposely.

“Time marches on. We all change.”

Her eyes flashed with that look again and there was a sadness there. “It’s too bad. Maybe some things can’t be helped.”

“Maybe they can.”

“Oh?”

I watched her a good ten seconds, then asked, “Ever know a redhead named Mildred Swiss?”

“I read the papers.”

“I didn’t ask you that.”

“Regan...”

“Just say yes or no.”

“Can it be that simple?”

I knew what she was getting at. I pulled out my wallet, let it dangle open so she could see the pinholes in it and the impression that my badge had made against the leather after so many years of being compressed there. I said, “Let me put it this way. I know about the agency and I know about the sideline. If I wanted to I could probably break the thing, but there’s never been a demand for it so I’m not pushing. If we got on you there would be so much hell to pay with the pressure that would come on from the power circles it wouldn’t be worth the effort. I’m not here officially and frankly, I don’t give a damn what you do with your time and energy. It’s a sophisticated world these days, they tell me. Nobody gets the scarlet letter pinned on any more and what used to be condemned is currently condoned. Maybe it will get better and maybe it will get worse. It isn’t my job to buck the trend. I just do what I’m told to do and do it damn well. At the moment I’m trying to do something on my own. I asked you a question. It doesn’t go down in the files and I’m not saving up information until later.”

“You are a wordy bastard after all, Regan.” Her mouth opened and she laughed at me pleasantly. “All right, yes. I knew her. She didn’t work for me.”

“True, kid?”

“True, Regan.”

“How did you know of her?”

Madaline shrugged and pushed back a wave of raven hair from her face. “Things come to me. One has to know the competition even if they’re small operators. I can make out quite a list like her from memory.”

“Whore?”

“Not the usual variety. She was on call with the Mays setup until the District Attorney broke it, then she was seen around working independently.” She frowned, then added, “Not really working at it... more like she was looking for something solid.”

“Marriage?”

Madaline nodded noncommittally. “Inwardly, they’re all like that, I think.”

“What about you?” I prodded, grinning.

Her eyes held steadily on mine. “I thought about it once. It would never have worked. I’ve seen too much of the raw thing.” The black deep was there again before she looked away.

“Anything work for the Swiss girl?”

“Not that I know of. She settled into an apartment and was kept on the side by Ray Hilquist.”

“The bookie?”

Madaline bobbed her head. “Confidante of millionaires. Probably the biggest in the area until he died in that accident.”

I didn’t bother telling her that it wasn’t an accident. It looked that way because it was planned that way and no evidence could prove differently, but to a pro the thing smelled of murder and the books were still open on it. High finance bookie operations were syndicate business and somewhere along the line Ray Hilquist had soured out.

“What was she doing before she died?” I asked her quietly.

Again, that little shrug. Madaline said, “I didn’t follow her career. She probably passed on into other hands.” She turned her head and looked at me, a funny expression on her face. “I can ask around,” she said. “Shall I?”

I got up and put on my hat, unconsciously hitching up the service revolver that wasn’t there any more. “I’d appreciate it,” I said. I walked to the door, stopped and turned around. “Lunch sometime?”

Madaline grinned at me like she did the time I took the guys off her back. “I’d appreciate it,” she repeated in my own solemn tones.

On Saturday George Lucas met me outside the building where they had the departmental hearing with that same crooked grin and handed me the large manila envelope holding the five thousand dollars somebody had made me a present of for the favor of committing murder. “We had it made, buddy.”

“The commissioners didn’t think so.”

“Okay, so you’re on suspension until the details of the missing Marcus files are cleared up. At least they’re only attributing it to negligence. The most you can get is a reduction in grade and a beat in the wilderness.”

“Five grand isn’t worth it.”

“You forgot my ten percent.”

“So deduct it.” I held the package out.

He didn’t touch it. “I already did,” he laughed. “Now can we get down to business? How about some chowder at Vinnie’s?”

A cab took us there and Vinnie gave us a table at the back of the room. We were the only ones in the place. I was wondering if Jerry Nolan would show up, but it was still a little early for him.

George held out his package of butts and I shook my head. He lit one up for himself and sucked in a haze of smoke. “How was the plant made in your apartment, Pat?”

“No trouble. Commercial type lock. Whoever got in used a key.”

“Who has access to yours?”

I grunted at him and rubbed the stubble on my jaw. “I went all over that. Two possibilities. Somebody had a regular passkey that bonded locksmiths use or an impression was made from my own. It’s on the same ring as my car keys and when I park it and use a department car I forget the damn things sometimes.”

George’s eyes half shut. “Argenio?”

“Why not?”

“You think he’d go that far?”

I shrugged, thinking about the way he hated my guts. “He wouldn’t be the first one.”

“That puts him on the take.”

All I did was look at him.

“Nobody’s ever laid anything on him,” he said.

“Argenio smells bad,” I told him.

“Say it slowly.”

“He enjoys the rough stuff. I’ve seen him deliberately... oh, hell.”

“Go on.”

“It’s nothing I can explain.” I stared across the table at him. “Remember Welch, the cop on the south side we called the Dutchman?”

“How can I forget him.”

“So he killed six or seven guys. Line of duty stuff, but he enjoyed it. Later he went too far with his pleasures and wound up doing time. Argenio’s like that.”

“You can’t prosecute on suspicions, friend.”

“Maybe I’ll frame him,” I said.

“I wouldn’t put it past you.”

I grinned at his tight expression and said, “Maybe I won’t have to. My nose tells me he’s not a square cop. One day he’ll fall. Just don’t sweat me, Georgie. I won’t louse it up. Now let’s get with the business.”

I took an hour to give him the details of what I had lined up on Marcus’ operation and the probable way they could set it up again. I had lived with it so long I was thinking like them and could almost see the rearrangement. George let me finish, taking it all down and stored his notes in his pocket.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll get on it. Your loot ought to buy enough help to make it easier. Call me every once in a while.”

“Don’t worry.” He laid a bill on the table to cover the check and walked out.

When he was gone I dialed Jerry Nolan at his office, and when he was on I said, “Regan, Jerry.”

“I heard the results of the trial.”

“Not over yet. They’ll have to kick the negligence bit out What I did was S.O.P. and you know it.”

“I hope the commission does. What’s up?”

“Get me copies of the body shots of Marcus. I’m at Vinnie’s.”

“Hell, man, you saw them,” he said.

“So I want to do it again. I’m thinking straighter now.”

Jerry let out a resigned breath over the phone. “Okay, stay there. Give me a half hour.”

Twenty minutes later he was sitting where George had been and I had the eight-by-ten glossies spread out in front of me. They weren’t very pretty. Four different angles were covered, the details clear in every one. All six shots had taken Leo Marcus in his face, the first one blowing off the pinkey of his left hand as he tried to protect himself from his killer in that last second. Blood, brain, bone and hair were splattered against the fieldstone of the fireplace and the rest of him was lying in the remains of the fire that had cooked the top part of his torso to charred remains.

“Nice job,” I commented drily.

Jerry looked at me, his face tight “We would have bought the mistaken identity bit if it weren’t for the finger. It was stuck under the mantle. Two teeth from his plate were smashed into the log and three others with part of the plastic work intact were on the floor. In this case it was a special job and identifiable. The oral surgeon who did the work gave us an absolute position and our lab confirmed it”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Nothing else he could be identified by?”

“Hell, who needed it? No... nothing. No surgery, no broken bones, but if you don’t think we didn’t go all the way, get this. We brought in two of his broads. They took a damn close look at his privates and confirmed. You like that bit?”

“No.”

Jerry gave an exasperated snort. “Why not?”

“When they saw him before he was in a highly emotional state.”

“Oh, balls.”

“That’s what I mean.”

I sat there looking at the mess that had been Leo Marcus, the mess that I had made. There was no remorse, just the antagonizing feeling that I hadn’t been alive enough to know what I had done because if it had been me I would have wanted to see every damn slug splash into his fat face, the same goddamn face that had broken others with a single look and had winked more into sudden death because they had displeased him. That one face had hooked kids into the big H, steered the unknowing into the bright eyed things that knew all the answers and died early by their own hands, squeezed too many into shapeless forms whose minds were his... people, but not by the standards I knew.

“Jerry...”

“What?”

“I wish it had been me.”

“You sure it wasn’t?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It wouldn’t have happened so fast. I would have destroyed him slowly then let the law take care of him in that terrible, tantalizing way it has until he sat there crowded up against the arms of the big chair in Sing with the hood over his head and the electrodes on with all the witnesses watching and hoped he could hear them puke when the top of his head started to smoke from the juice going through him. No, it wasn’t me.”

“I know,” Jerry said. “Now I know.”

“You do? Why?”

“Because you aren’t capable of simple murder. I’ve seen you smoke out killers before. You lived with this one too damn long, Regan.”

“I’m still living with it.”

“Then give me the answers.”

I shuffled the photos like cards and stacked them and handed them back to him. “Somebody’s on top of Marcus. His time was up. They wanted him out and they got him out. I was the sucker to take the heat off them. It didn’t work.”

“Who, Regan?” Jerry asked me. His face was a blank mask, a professional mask no different from the one the punks saw in the interrogation rooms.

“Find out. That’s your business. I don’t carry a badge any more.”

“Or a gun?”

“I might do that. The hoods don’t mind. The punks take pleasure in it. The proper civilians terrified by the stupid Sullivan Act and forgetting they have the protection of the Constitution unrestricted by jerks are too obsessed by legal interpretations to pack one when they should may be like that. But not me, Jerry. I’m not a proper civilian any more.”

“You haven’t been kicked off the force.”

“You’re damn right.”

“Stay cool, buddy.”

“Like hell. You know better. We can’t exist cool, can we? Somebody has to move. It’s my neck on the block.”

“So you processed it. If anybody was in a position to know who was on top of Marcus, it’s Patrick Regan... you. Something had to show. He was hand picked by the rest of the Syndicate... he worked his way up, proved his worth every damn inch of the way and was a power. You don’t blast power out that easily. They have their own machine inside the big one and coups d’état aren’t easy.”

“For someone it was,” I reminded him.

“You’re crazy,” he said.

“That’s what the D.A.’s lad tried as a last resort when the trial was on.”

“Shit.”

“What else is new?”

To keep calm, Jerry grabbed at his butts, lit up a smoke and deliberately sat back looking at the ceiling. “Give me one idea,” he finally mused.

“Did Van Reeves contact you about the Swiss broad?”

“Uh-huh.”

“She was the redhead, buddy.”

His eyes came down from the ceiling and searched my face. “Now you tell me.”

“Last contact was Ray Hilquist. She lived with him.”

“You son of a bitch. Where do you pick it up?”

“I’m fighting for my life,” I said. “Remember?”

Jerry took another pull on the cigarette, his features thoughtful now. “Hilquist and Leo Marcus used to be tied in together. Just little things. Nothing worth pulling them for, but they were close.” He wasn’t looking at me now. He was reviewing the records mentally, pulling out the files in his mind the way cops do, remembering the little things that count. “They had a split once,” he told me. “A broad was involved. Word got out that the wheels in the Syndicate called a meeting and pulled them back together, otherwise it was an ‘or else’ deal. They didn’t like some twist interfering with business. No sweat after that. Too much action was involved. You have posed an interesting thought, Regan.”

“Keep on it.”

“I will.” He leveled his eyes at me. “But you stay cool,” he said as he got up. “When you’re thinking you scare me.”

“I’ll scare a lot of people before it’s through,” I told him.

Chapter Four

Stan the pencil wasn’t hard to find. Like all the rest, he had his money rounds; the habituals with the two bucks, the fivers, the ten spots who waited for him in the right places to pick up their cash and slap it on the nose of some nag running the circuit. To him it was a living, two fifty a week with a few weeks in the workhouse when the administration needed a patsy to pad the news reports.

All expenses paid and his wife and kids supported while he was staring at the bars wondering when the legislature would legalize off-track betting like the people wanted despite the pious claims of the backwards-collar gooks and the political slobs who went their way.

I found him at The Shamrock making his book in a cheap pad, his eyes too suddenly round at what he saw in my face. I said, “Talk, Stan. Let’s take a table somewhere.”

“Look...”

“I’m off the force, Stan, but I can still break you in little pieces. Here and now. Your choice.”

“So all right. Talk. It’s cheap.”

I grabbed his arm, pushed him to a table and called for a couple of beers. When the waiter brought the steins I sipped the top off mine and put it down and watched the wet circles it made on the table top. “You were there that night, Stan.”

“Was I called as a witness?”

“Nope.”

I let my eyes drift up to his, feeling the air go through my teeth again. “You’ve been around, boy. You know the ropes and the angles. Nothing gets past your kind. I thought nothing did through me, but something did. What was it?”

“Look, Mr. Regan...”

“Think, buddy. It’s your arm. Left or right first?”

Stan The Pencil was scared. His throat bobbed convulsively and a vein in his temple throbbed too damn hard. “Mr. Regan... it was like they said. You got looped. Hell, I’d do what I could if...”

“There was something. I came in that bar sober.”

“You had a headache. You was eating aspirins.”

“I’d just bought them, Stan. An unopened box at the drugstore on the corner. I had six. It’s an occupational hazard.”

“So I didn’t see nothing. No kidding, Mr. Regan...”

“Who slipped me a dose?”

He could hardly keep his hands folded in front of him. “Honest, Mr. Regan, it was like you had too much. So who was there? Them crazy artists, Popeye Lewis and Edna Rells, they ain’t done nothing. Who could louse you up? You know old Popeye. He got nothing going for him except his paintings and fifty million bucks he hates. That nutty Edna he lives with is just as bad. All that loot and they shack up in a garret even if he does own the whole joint. He won’t live off nothing his old man left him, just what they make with that crazy smear they sell. Me, so what did I do? Make a few contacts? I thought it was a good party.”

“Where did the redhead come in?”

“Who knows?” he said. “Dames were all over the place.”

“You saw her?”

“I saw plenty of broads. She latched on when you started the big pitch. Come on, Mr. Regan.”

“How long have I known you, Stan?”

“Like maybe five years.”

“Ever get yanked?”

“Hell, you weren’t on that detail.”

“Phones were all over the place,” I reminded him. “I could have assigned it anytime.”

“All right, all right. You were square. What you want from me, anyway?”

“The redhead.”

Stan The Pencil’s hands were in tight knots, the fingers twisted together. “Like she drifted over. You pitched, she caught. I cut out about then. I don’t know from nothing. I told them all that.”

“You know her?” I watched him closely.

He caught the funny look in my eyes and said, “I know her now. Not before. I seen it in the papers.”

“Let’s think back.”

“What for?”

“Leo Marcus and Hilquist.”

“Mr. Regan...”

“Stop bullshitting me.”

His face got sullen and his eyes dropped to his hands.

I said, “What’s the racket talk?”

“Some broad,” Stan said softly. “This gonna hurt me?”

“No.”

“Marcus fixed it. What difference does it make now?”

“Because I got fixed too,” I said.

Very simply he looked up and said, “I’m more scared of them than you, Mr. Regan. What now?”

“Nothing, buddy,” I said. “You can blow now.” He hadn’t told me anything, but he’d think he had and he’d be different later.

I got out and walked. My apartment was fifteen blocks away but I had to think about it. A month gone sitting on a bail bond because they wanted to get it over with in a hurry, the eyes of a guy who had been close friends looking at you speculatively, the hatred of the press and the animosity of the public because they thought a hard-working career cop took five grand instead of his life’s work. Nuts.

The rain started in a gentle mist at first, working up to a great gout that caught me on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-ninth and when I walked through it, ignoring all its malicious fury, developed a rumble with heat lightning in the west that growled its displeasure at me.

I said, “Drop dead,” toward the sky and kept walking while people watched curiously. Screw them too, I thought. If they knew who I was, they’d spit. The killer cop. He had gotten away with murder.

Well, thank somebody for twelve good men and true who had bought the story.

I hoped they were right.

There was still a chance they weren’t.

I went over it again, knowing the odds I was up against. I reached the apartment and studied the old brownstone from the outside, realizing that anybody could get inside there. Hell, for a pro, you could get anywhere. A key was easy to get. I inserted my own in the lock, turned it and pushed the door open. It was only a three room flat you could expect a bachelor cop to occupy, nothing special no matter how hard you looked. The only extravagance was the wall safe with nothing in it outside a will, a birth certificate and two diplomas, compliments of the butcher downstairs who thought I needed more security. The Marcus file had been stowed in the false bottom of the rectangular bottom of the waste basket by the old desk I used, a nothing place an ordinary housebreaker would have missed and a pro looking for the right thing in the right place found. The five grand was in a new place, too damn obvious, an area above the unpainted pine that formed a ceiling in the bedroom closet.

It was newly cut and that was what had made it all the more damning.

Out of curiosity I checked the apartment. The signs of white dust from the print teams the department sent in were still showing on the furniture, wisps here and there like an untidy woman would make from powdering after a bath, the stigmata of the professionals taking care of their own. Or frying him if they had to.

I lay down on the bed, listening to the air going out of the mattress with a soft hiss and closed my eyes, thinking of how nice it was to sleep and be away from it all. There was a sweet smell of pleasure there, a sensual odor of the far-off things that could never be attained for someone like me and sleep was the utmost pinnacle of desire. It was a gentle, wafting breeze that talked to me from way down deep and out of the downy fluffiness of it all I could hear a strange voice that had turned us into the wild assed bastards they couldn’t beat with all of the Nazi deviousness and the man kept saying, “They’ll try anything. If it’s foreign to you, cut out and run. Shoot. No matter who. Blow out your breath and get away. They have chemical warfare to offset our superiority in noxious gases. They want you. Remember... YOU. You have information. They’ll do anything. They’ll do...”

My eyes opened on his words as if I were years back in a different place and I remembered the rules. I cut and ran, hit the door, opened it and lay face down in the empty doorway gasping for breath while my senses came back to me.

I was lucky. It had all seemed so nice. Like freezing to death in the snow when you thought you were nice and warm all the time. I found the unlabeled can under the mattress that had been activated by my weight. A simple thing that could have been a shaving cream container or a deodorant spray if it hadn’t been a deadly sleep inducer from which I never would have awakened.

After the windows were opened and the odor gone, I stuck the can in the refrigerator, locked up and dropped into the sleep I should have had in the beginning.

Somebody really wanted me dead in the worst way.

Even when you’re a cop with a cloud over you, certain avenues are open. I took the canister up to the lab, where Sergeant Ted Marker looked at it before turning it over to the other specialists, letting me sit in the big chair by his desk while we waited for the analysis report.

For me, they did it fast. Ted’s assistant came back in an hour with the can and an elaborate report. Ted studied it a moment before laying it on his desk, then read it over again to be sure. “German compound,” he finally said. “We called it FS-7, Roderick Formula.”

“What’s that mean?”

He peeled off his glasses and looked at me. “Nerve gas. Unassuming and deadly. The trap was cute. You’re supposed to be dead. What’s inside you, Regan?”

“I’m motivated.”

“Stop the crap.”

Ted let a smile flicker across his usually glum face. “It was set up very easily. Like all aerosol bombs, small pressure sets it off. It was put under the springs of your bed. You pushed the button yourself.”

“I’m glad I didn’t have company.”

“The value of being a lonely bachelor,” he smiled.

“Knock it off.” I leaned forward in the chair. “It isn’t a domestic compound?”

“I haven’t seen it since ’45. One of the end products of the Nuremberg trials. It was exposed there.”

“Like Sentol?”

“You think a lot, Regan.”

“I’m supposed to,” I threw at him. “What about the container?”

“German surplus. Somebody has access to unauthorized supplies. Outside of what was released to our own agencies, this stuff was all supposed to be destroyed.”

“Somebody had a sense of the future,” I grimaced.

His answer was quick. “Why?”

“To take care of people like me.”

He nodded, looked at the report a moment, then came back to me. “Some have a great sense of timing. They think ahead. They can wait.”

“How could they get this stuff?”

Ted made a gesture with his shoulders. “How do the punks get guns?”

“That easy?”

“That easy. Money can buy almost anything.”

I got up and put my hat on, thinking of the five grand somebody had left in my room. “Almost,” I said.

Al Argenio came in as I said it, a small box in his hand. He hadn’t shaved that morning and his face had a hard, swarthy look, a guy who had been up all night. He was all badge, gun and efficiency, and he gave me a hard leer and said, “What are you doing here, bum?”

He thought I was going to walk past him and ignore the remark. It was the second mistake he made with me. I laid one on those black chops of his that slammed him into the wall with a glassy stare in his eyes, awake enough to hear what I said but not awake enough to do anything about it. “Watch your tongue, slob,” I said.

The others looked at me, hid their grins and didn’t stop me from going out. None of them liked him either.

Downstairs, I used the pay phone to call the Murray Hill number. The one in the book got me to the PBX board, but the old badge number and the tone of voice got me Miss Mad on a private phone, that cool voice with the throaty timbre saying hello with that little tinge of anticipation I had hoped to hear and I said, “Regan, sugar. We alone?”

“I hope so.”

“Lunch?”

“I hope so.”

“You won’t get shook? A cop isn’t exactly a company president.”

“In your circles I wouldn’t be considered great company for a date unless it was in the line of duty, would I?”

“My circles aren’t the old ones right now, honey... so it’s a date. The Blue Ribbon on Forty-fourth?”

“You never change, do you?”

“Why should I, baby?” I asked her. “About two-thirty... the crowd will be gone.”

The crowd was gone, but the regulars were there, saw her come in and join me and grinned in appreciation. She went through the bar, crossed into the booth behind Angie and sat down in the chair he held out for her.

“How many years has it been, Patrick?”

“Maybe twenty-five.”

“The first time you ever asked me out to lunch before.”

“Would you have accepted before?”

Something had happened to her eyes. The bottomless well wasn’t there any more. “You’ll never know,” she said. “Shall we wait to eat or talk now? I know it isn’t a cruise for you.”

“Let’s keep it like between old friends. You’re easy on the eyes and it makes talking a pleasure.”

“Okay, old friend. Just don’t ask me one question.”

I anticipated what she had in her mind and said, “Like what made you get into the racket in the first place?”

Madaline nodded sagely. “I might decide to tell the truth for a change. I never have before. The others all expected nice scandalous statements tinged with sensuality they could savor with all the gusto of a gourmet and I fed them what they wanted to hear. The truth is very simple and quite sordid.”

“Then save it until you’re ready.”

She watched me, her fingers toying with the napkin, “You’re probably the only one who would understand it.”

The waiter took our orders then, brought a pair of drinks to sip at while we waited for the duckling he had suggested and I lifted the glass in a silent toast. “To now, Mad.”

She winked, sampled the drink and put it down slowly. “I have news for you, Regan.”

I waited.

“Let’s call it hearsay. No confirmation. For your information I put the question to some of the kids and it didn’t take them long to come up with some oddball facts.”

“Like what?”

“Ray Hilquist may have set up Mildred Swiss, but she wasn’t completely cooperative. She had been seen around with Leo Marcus in out-of-the-way places while she was supposed to be keeping Hilquist’s bed warm.”

“What the hell did Leo have to pull in a broad like her?”

Madaline pursed her mouth and shrugged. “Who can tell about women, Regan? Maybe they like most what they can’t have.”

“You know the Syndicate stepped in and cleaned up the deal?”

She nodded gently and picked up her drink. “That’s the strange part.”

“What is?”

“Leo was much bigger than Hilquist. It should have gone in his favor if there was a squabble.” She drank, put the glass down and asked me, “Ever consider that?”

“I gave it a thought. Maybe they didn’t figure little Millie Swiss was right for their top man. Okay for Hilquist, but something Marcus wouldn’t miss after a while.”

“Possibly. They use computers in the rackets these days.” Then she shook her head again, her face thoughtful. “I don’t buy it. I’ve seen too damn much. I know those people...”

“Oh?”

She said, “It was in the last couple of weeks before you shot... before Marcus was killed he was seen with Mildred Swiss. The kids told me it looked like love... all quiet and cozy, stars in her eyes, hand holding under the table and that sort of garbage. She was still in the apartment Hilquist had... the lease was paid in advance and he had left her enough spending money to keep her going for a year anyway after he died.” Madaline grinned at me. “She was a lucky little twist. Most of them don’t make out that well.”

“A cozy situation,” I said. “If Marcus did go for the broad he could have arranged Hilquist’s accident, then took his time about moving in so no finger gets pointed at him.”

“You’re forgetting one thing,” she said.

“What?”

“The wheels in the Syndicate don’t like intramural rivalries. They’d go after anybody acting independently of their instructions, especially if it would jeopardize their operations.”

“That only leaves two conclusions then,” I said. “Either it was an accident or they arranged for it to happen.”

“What do you think, Regan?”

“I don’t know. It’ll all too damn pat.”

Before we could get into it deeper the waiter brought the lunch in and set down the plates. At the same time a foursome drifted by, picked the table next to us and sat down, so we relaxed into casual conversation, finished and went back out to Forty-fourth Street, where we waited for a cab.

I flagged one down and helped her into it, keeping my eyes off the flash of white that showed above the nylon hose momentarily, and she grinned when she spotted my prudishness. I said, “Check it out further if you can. I’ll be at the apartment this evening and you can reach me there.”

Madaline made a kiss of her lips and nodded. “Sure. I like to pay off my obligations.”

“Go...”

“Uh-uh... none of that talk,” she laughed.

Popeye Lewis and Edna Rells had been playing at the common-law marriage game for a long time. In the beginning they had been part of the freedom loving sect who had a distaste for permanent ties and decided to try it on for size until it was over, but after four years it still wasn’t ended and they had taken on all the semblance of old married couples without the benefit of law.

The building Popeye had bought with the millions he inherited was the only dip into the estate his father had left him. The renovations came out of his earnings as an oil painter and it was hurting him to be successful. He and Edna would rather have lived as true peasants. Between the two of them they had a five-figure annual income, a crazy sex life and were the envy of the phonies who ran down their talents at the same time they cultivated them for their whiskey handouts and fabulous parties.

Popeye waved me in, a brush between his teeth and his beard clotted with paint. Edna was studying a half-finished canvas, standing beside a full length mirror with a smock thrown over her hastily. I knew she had nothing on under it. The picture was a profile nude of herself and she was her own model. She was irritated at the interruption, stamped her foot with impatience and grinned, “Why the hell should I be bashful on your account, Regan? You know what a naked woman looks like?”

I glanced at the picture. “Now I do.”

“Then go talk to Popeye,” she told me. With a hitch of her shoulders she tossed the smock off and went back to studying herself in the mirror and putting the impression down on the canvas. She was quite a woman. Quite. But somehow there was no indecency to it at all. It was like looking at a bowl of fruit. Not really... but something like that.

Popeye ignored it all and popped open a can of beer and held it out to me. “I was going to send a card of congratulations, Regan. I didn’t know if you’d appreciate the joke.”

“Wouldn’t have mattered.”

He pushed over a bar stool and wiped it off. “Sit down. What’s the word?”

“The redhead.”

“Ah, yes, the redhead.”

“It didn’t come out at the trial.”

“One of many that night, my boy. What about her?”

“She’s dead.”

“So I heard. Spud mentioned it in passing this morning.”

“You saw the papers?”

“I did and she was there.” He drank half the can off without a stop, took a deep breath and went on. “You were riding high, that night, buddy-o. I played it down on the stand... just answered the questions, but if I didn’t know you better I’d say you were mainlining for the first time. I never saw you like that before. What the hell happened?”

“You think I killed Leo Marcus?”

“Regan, I couldn’t care less... but no. You talked it up a lot, but you’re too square for that kind of action. Where’d you really get the load?”

“Somebody goosed me with a mickey.”

“Who? That kind of stuff doesn’t go at the Climax. Not with a cop, even for a joke.”

“It wasn’t a joke.”

Popeye dumped the rest of the beer down, opened another can and offered me one. When I shook my head he said, “Why were you there, friend? That wasn’t your beat any more.”

“Al Argenio used to go with a hatcheck girl from the place.”

“Ah, Helen the Melons. Quite a spoonful. Size forty-four chest. They weren’t simpatico, kiddily. He used his badge to bump the opposition out of the way and that old Helen the Melons didn’t like. She craved attention and appreciation of her superabundant mammaries. That was her come on, her stock in trade, her excuse of the un-necessity of education and her hope for the future. She did great with casual trade, but to get close to her you’d have to stand behind her or be crowded out of the way. Now you give me Edna there, who is only a simple thirty-eight...”

“Go up a stick,” Edna said without taking her eyes off the mirror.

“True artist type,” Popeye smiled.

“What happened to the melons?”

Popeye nursed his beer again and grunted. “Too much Al Argenio. She asked for a transfer. Nobody told poor Al... he wasn’t the popular type... but she’s over in Brooklyn at the Lazy Daisy inhaling at the natives.”

“What’s this transfer bit?”

He put the can down and picked up a cigarette. His eyes were suddenly sober. “You know the Climax?”

“How?”

“Check the ownership. Like it’s a Lesbian joint mostly and the squares come in for a look and pay the freight. It cracks a big nut. One of the many holdings in the hands of that abstraction you people call the Syndicate.”

“Who passed that on?”

“My lawyer who’s beating his balls off to get me straightened out. He has me followed, tries to prove I lead a life not conducive to a solid citizen who owns most of three corporations and can draw on a fat bank account. He just don’t know, man. He shows me where I hang out in a den of iniquity run by a nest of thieves. He wants me back in grey flannel suits attending board meetings.”

“I thought Stucker owned the Climax.”

“You aren’t hep, old boy. Maybe it looks like he does, but he pays off to some funny people then. I’ve been around there a long time and it was Leo Marcus’ boys who made those weekly visits. But just don’t try to buck the system. It’s liable to explode on you. They have accountants and machines and front men all making up to a tidy little sub rosa government that pulls a lot of weight. You see what it cost you for prying.”

“You seem to know a lot, Popeye.”

“I got big ears, a lot of talkative friends and a sharp insight into this wild world of money-hungry denizens. Why do you think I pulled out of it?”

“Everybody to their own taste.” I looked at him, flipping the empty can into a trash basket. “You never finished with the redhead.”

“So she was there. So were a lot of others. You were quite a card.”

Edna Rells stepped out from behind the canvas, a lovely naked figure with a paint streak just above her navel and a brush tucked in her hair. “With all the crowding, Spud couldn’t get to the table. She took the tray and served the drinks. One belt later and you were all over her.”

“Thanks, sugar.”

It had been as easy as that. She was planted there or had followed me there. She picked the right time and loaded me. I picked up my hat and pushed myself off the bar stool. “See you around,” I said. “I appreciate the talk.”

“What talk? You came here to discuss art,” Popeye said solemnly.

I looked at Edna who twisted her hips and threw a bump at me with a leer. Only the brush came out of her hair and left a smear across one ample nipple when it fell. “Yeah, art. I’m all for it. You guys are nuts.”

The redhead, Leo Marcus and me. Somebody had missed the boat in planning the State’s case. They should have tied in the redhead and I would have been on the death list at Sing Sing. The D.A. could have made it look like we were in it together to knock off Marcus, that in my hatred I had somehow recruited her. Now she was out of it altogether and if they wanted to build a new case they could try it on me for size. Sooner or later the D.A.’s boys would be asking questions, they’d have some answers to Mildred Swiss’ past and they’d be asking me where I was when she was dumped.

So... where was I? My contacts had been limited. I had been walking and thinking. I was ready to be a patsy again. I needed an alibi, but before I could nail it down I had to find out when she had died.

I waited until I saw Ted Marker come out of the building and followed him from across the street and half a block back to the subway station, made sure none of the others were around and caught up with him as he was buying tokens from the attendant on the platform. He could have used his badge to go through the gate for free but never bothered to. I came up beside him, got two tokens and said, “Wait for me, Ted.”

He nodded curiously, went through the turnstile and stood behind the crowd of commuters. We went three stops and upstairs to a bar and grill where everybody was watching the last inning of a ball game and ordered a pair of beers at the counter.

“What’s it about, Pat?”

“How’d the make go through on Mildred Swiss?”

“Checked right out.”

“They establish the time of death?”

“On the nose. The Medical Examiner’s autopsy report checked with a watch in her pocket that had stopped. Five-fifteen.”

“Why was the watch in her pocket?”

“Because the clasp had been broken.”

“It was daylight then,” I said. “They don’t usually go in during the day. Not female suicides. They think about their hair and their clothes and the water isn’t a good prospect for death. It’s filthy with garbage and sewerage and stinks.”

“That’s suicide. She was murdered.”

I looked at him.

“Fingernails broken from where she clawed somebody apparently. Her hands had been well manicured. She had a bruise on her head that could have knocked her out. There was a hairdressing appointment on a card in her wallet for the next day. She made the date by phone and didn’t seem disturbed at all.”

“It figures. One odd thing.”

“What’s that?” Ted asked.

“Why didn’t the body sink?”

“Simple. She was hung up on a piece of driftwood, a plank with one end waterlogged had nails that snagged her clothes. She wasn’t in the water very long at all.”

Mentally, I checked the time. I had been in the apartment all that while and nobody had seen me come in or spoken to me until I had gotten Spud’s message. It didn’t have to be planned that way, but it could put me back in the hot water again. The other alternative was that somebody wanted Mildred Swiss dead, just plain dead and quickly.

Ted finished his beer and said without taking his eyes from the TV: “Where do you fit in, Regan?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I’m feeling your line of thought.”

“Not good, is it?”

“Uh-uh,” he told me. Then: “I asked some questions about that sleep gas. It took a while, but a smart boy in Washington provided some answers. Right after the war a batch got into this country mixed in a surplus deal. They couldn’t pin it down, but there was a shady aspect about it. About ninety percent was recovered from the Ross and Buttick Warehouse where it was stored by a company who imported it among other things. Bensilee Imports. Legitimate firm operating since 1919.”

“Who broke it down?”

“The O.S.S. discovered the stuff missing, then Washington moved and working with our department located the stuff. It was taken out to sea and dumped. Lot of publicity on it when it happened. They were afraid some kids would get into the stuff thinking it was DDT or something. The citizenry sent in truckloads of stuff for inspection, but none of it was that FS-7 derivative of the Roderick Formula.”

Another little piece, I thought. Publicity alerted the public to the potential dangers of the stuff, but it could have aroused the curiosity of other parties to its potential for their own activities.

I said, “Any deaths attributed to its use?”

Ted Marker turned his head and said, “I was wondering when you’d ask. The man in Washington said there were two prominent Syndicate defectors who died mysteriously from undetected causes. It’s a possibility, but wasn’t detected. In each case the M.E. wasn’t familiar with FS-7. Only the prominence of the dead men kept it open.”

“And if I had died it would have looked like a natural thing... nobody would have shaken the room down and probed under the bed for a can until the landlord or a new tenant did... or the guy who planted the stuff came back. It could have been easy... he could have posed as a reporter, a new tenant... anybody.”

“Cute. Again I say you were lucky.”

“Nope... just filled with natural instincts.” I finished the beer and waved to the bartender for another round. “They figure out where the redhead got it?”

“Roughly. The tide was incoming, the rate of drift and time of death put it in the dock area around the Forties... providing the plank that held her didn’t get snagged along the way. In that case it would have happened farther up. Anyplace along there you find traffic, drifters... well, hell, you know the area. Even in daylight it could have been arranged.”

“Yeah, sure,” I agreed.

Ted looked at his watch and I knew he was anxious to get going. “One more thing. I read everything available on the Sentol product. One thing it doesn’t induce... in fact, inhibits it... is a person under its influence passing out.”

“I was out cold when they found me there.”

“That’s what I mean. Sentol keeps the user awake like the goof balls the truckers use, but acting in strange directions.”

“Positive?”

He nodded, his face grim.

“In that case I did it all on my own... that what you’re thinking?”

“What do you think, Regan?” he asked me.

“A factor has been missed somewhere. Thanks for the time. Let’s go.”

Chapter Five

I bought a barbecued chicken at the delicatessen and brought it up to the apartment for supper. I hadn’t taken time to clean up the place and it was beginning to look like a Harlem hovel with dirty dishes and damp towels all over the place. There was a note in my box, hand delivered from George Lucas, that I opened when I got the chicken on the table that simply said, “Give me a call.”

When I tried his office the number didn’t answer, so I sat down to the chicken, giving him time to get home. The light on the electric coffee pot blinked red, a signal that it was finished, so I rinsed out a cup and poured it full, sitting with my feet propped up on the table and a dripping drumstick in my fist.

That was when the bell rang. Before I opened it I took the.45 automatic I had liberated after the war, checked the load and held it ready. I had to hold the chicken leg in my teeth to unlock the door and swing it open.

Madaline took all of me in with one sweep of her eyes, started a laugh, then stifled it behind a grin. “All you need is a cutlass to look like Blackboard,” she said.

“His name was Teach. Captain Teach.”

“Okay, brains. But you sure do take a big mouthful.” I yanked the chicken down and closed the door behind her. She took one look around and shook her head in disgust. “So this is how a cop lives,” she said. “Can’t you afford any better?”

“I’m not on the take, Mad. It’s okay when it’s clean. Who needs more?”

“You do. Why didn’t you ever get married?”

“I sort of forgot to. Now who would have me?”

She smiled again, pulled up a chair at the table and reached for the other half of the chicken, pulling it apart delicately. “How much money have you got in the bank?”

“About twenty-two hundred bucks.”

“Your life savings,” she stated. “Get a woman who needs it.”

“Forget it, kid. When I get a woman it’s because she needs me and I need her. I still like the old-fashioned relationship.” I poured her some coffee too, then sat back down again. “I didn’t expect company.”

“You said to call.”

“There’s a phone.”

“Quit being so damn proud. Nobody recognized me. Your reputation is still intact... and enhanced if anybody did see me come in. How often do you get a broad in diamonds and minks into this garret, anyway?”

“Not more than twice a week.”

“Sure,” she laughed. “The chicken’s good.” Through a mouthful she added, “I have news again.”

I sipped at my coffee, watching her. Something had changed in her eyes.

“There’s a Jane Doe who had known Mildred Swiss since she came here. Both came from Europe and wound up in the same business. She saw Mildred the day she died... about noon time. They chatted for ten minutes on the street, walked a few blocks together and during that time Mildred gave the impression that she was going away for a trip. She was planning on an extensive wardrobe and couldn’t help rubbing it in a little.”

“She say who with?”

“As I said, it was a hint... an impression the girl got. She was elated, talked amiably, but that was all.”

“Who was the girl? If she was the last one to see her alive the police...”

“I said she was a Jane Doe, remember? This is off the record, Regan.”

“What’s the rest of it?”

She took another bite of chicken and threw the bone down on the wrapping paper. “You’re a shrewd one, Patrick. The Jane Doe wanted to talk more, but Mildred didn’t have time. She was getting ready for a date.”

“With a killer.”

“Quite possible.”

I put my cup down and tilted back in the chair. “Sooner or later something happens to most of them,” I said. “Doesn’t it make you sick? You’re in the racket up to your pretty neck.”

A cloud seemed to pass over her face and she looked down at her hands. When she decided to look up she said, “Then let me give you the answer I never gave anybody else. Yes, I’m in it. I went into it with my eyes open because it was the only answer to feeding an old man who was an alcoholic, paying medical expenses for an invalid mother and supplying the needs of seven other kids in the family. It was a deliberate move and I knew the right person to set me up.”

“You could have gotten out. You did change the nature of the business.”

“There was one thing that didn’t change. I saw what happened to too many girls. I saw where they went and how they ended up. By keeping my hand in I was able to direct more of them out of it in time. Oh, hell, Regan... I know what you’re thinking. I was still involved, but I got to know the right people and had enough going for me so that I could kill any heat that landed on the kids who got to know too much. There are those who say prostitution is better controlled. Funny enough, I’m not one. I’d like it abolished, but as long as the damn public demands it the authorities accept it and the bastards behind the scene control it, I’ll stay in where I can do some good when the time comes. That’s my story, buy it or not.”

“I’ll buy it Mad,” I told her. “It might not be my way, but I’ll buy it.”

She reached over and put her hand on mine. “Thanks, Patrick. I was hoping you would.” Her hand was warm, the pressure gentle and it was like the time she had thanked me silently in school when I came in chopped up after the fight, when she had done the same thing when I was at my desk and nothing more. It had been enough for me then. “Now... will you do me a favor?”

“Sure...what?”

“Let me clean up this fleabag.”

I grinned at her. “Be my guest.”

Downstairs I picked up two six packs of beer and brought them up and was content to sit there and watch the incredible efficiency of a woman used to service and attention doing the dirty work I could hardly face up to myself. She seemed to enjoy it, too, humming snatches of songs from the war years, laughing at the little things I said, content to let me sit and think while she let the years of luxury wash off her so that she was a kid again.

When she turned around her face was flushed, shiny with beads of sweat and her eyes were bright with living. The place was clean, too. She brushed away a wisp of hair that had fallen across her face, looking more lovely and younger than I had ever seen her.

“Better?”

“Perfect, doll, perfect. Do I pay you day wages?”

“A shower will do. I feel like a mess.”

“You look good to me.”

She grinned. “You’re just saying that because it’s true. Put some more coffee on.”

While I filled the percolator I heard the shower running. I had a crazy warm feeling I never had before, like being part of something nice, something I never knew I wanted before.

The pot stopped bubbling as the light blinked red and I was pouring two cups when she came out of the bathroom. Someplace she had dug out my big old beach towel and had it draped around her like a sarong, another wound around her head turban fashion. She smelled of soap, and warmth radiated from her. One lithe leg jutted from the slit where the towel was knotted at her hip, the flesh firm and silky smooth, still showing a summer tan, the graceful curves swelling from a full calf into a thigh that blossomed with muscular maturity. The top of the towel was reluctant to conceal her breasts, trying to hold fast while each breath made it slip from its position until she almost swelled out of it.

We stood like that for what seemed a long time, looking at each other, seeing all without ever breaking that single, intense stare. Years ago it had happened too. We were young then, unaware of what was happening, knowing something had changed without being able to name it.

The first step we took together, touched with mutual desire, then her mouth was a rich, ripe furnace that melted into mine with a low moan of something too long suppressed and she pressed against me, her body feeling for every inch of me. The thrust of her body burst the tie of the knot in the towel and it dropped unnoticed at our feet, then I had all the womanly texture of her in my arms, under my hands, taking everything she was offering.

I picked her up, deliberately stopped at the threshold of the bedroom door where she smiled up at me with the dreamy eyes of a bride, then crossed to the bed and laid her down gently.

Outside the noise of traffic dimmed and a slow rain began to beat against the window. Thunder rumbled across the roof of the city and the soft yellow of heat lightning brightened the room momentarily every once in a while. It was only when the wind shifted and the rain slanted in the half open window and sprinkled across the bed did we notice it. Unconsciously, I looked at my watch. Three hours had gone by.

“Time, Regan?”

“Plenty of time, kitten.”

“It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it?”

“Years and years.”

“Will it ever happen again?” There was an expectant catch in her voice, a hushed quality as though she said more than she had wanted to. The hesitant fear was there in her face, but she had to wait for my answer now that it was asked.

I said, “We’re funny people, you and I. Maybe we found something.”

“Can we be sure?”

I touched the wild swell of her breasts and felt her quiver beneath my fingers. “Are you asking me... or yourself? Something would have to change. I can’t.”

“No... you shouldn’t. I’m sorry, Regan. I never should have said it. The words... just spilled out. I’m not something to be proud of.”

“Why not?” My words were sharp, said from between teeth held too tightly together. “I’ve seen people die, kid. I’ve helped them fall. I’ve pulled the trigger. I’ve been there and back so who the hell am I to look back and pass judgment. It’s now and later that counts. Not the before part.”

Madaline came to me with the fierce possessiveness of a tiger, saying things I knew she had never said to anyone else before and heard them repeated back to her. Her nails bit into my skin with frenzied delight, her body engulfing me with new, supreme love.

The phone ringing wakened us with its insistence until I rolled out and picked it up. “Regan?”

“Yeah?” It was George Lucas’ voice.

“Where the hell have you been. I left a note and...”

“I just got in.” I lied to save making excuses.

“Well, buddy, I want to see you. Important”

“Now? It’s two a.m.”

“It’s your money, Regan. I said it was important.”

“Okay, name a spot.”

George named a bar on Sixth Avenue, and I told him I’d be there in thirty minutes. Madaline murmured when I shook her and opened her eyes. “Get up, Mad. Something’s come up. I don’t want you here alone.”

“Oh, Pat...”

“Somebody tried to kill me here the other night. Let’s not make it easy for him if there’s another try.”

Her eyes came wide open and I told her about it. She didn’t take more than a few minutes to get dressed. I shrugged into my coat, slipped the.45 into my belt and held the door open for her. She started to step out into the hallway when I realized the mistake I almost made and slammed her back with a sweep of my forearm. She hit the wall, fell as I jammed the door shut and dropped beside her.

No noise. Just two tiny holes showed in the panel at waist level and something chunked into the wall at the other side of the room. Madaline’s mouth was open with surprise as I said, “Somebody turned the light out in the hall.” Then she saw the holes in the door and nodded abruptly.

I reached up and flipped the switch off, blanketing the room in darkness. “Stay there,” I said. I felt the knob, turned it and eased the door open. Whoever was out there saw the motion and there was another almost silent plop, but I caught the wink of a muffled muzzle blast and triggered off a single shot at the pinpoint of light. The tremendous roar of the.45 split the night apart and feet pounded the stairs below with the heavy tread of someone in headlong flight. The door downstairs opened and slammed shut, but I didn’t follow, knowing it could be a cute trap. He could have eased back behind the stairwell and be there waiting. I went inside, got my flashlight, poked the beam through the banister to search out the area, and when I was certain it was empty, went down and turned on the hall light.

Madaline joined me at the door, still shaking with fright “What happened?”

“Another try. This time with a silenced gun. One of us is a target.”

“One of...”

So she wouldn’t be any more frightened than she was I said, “Me, most likely. Nobody knew you were here. They tried for me before. They’re running scared now.”

“Pat...”

“Let’s go, Mad. He won’t stay around now.” I waited for someone to show, listening for a siren in case one of the neighbors had heard the shot and called it in, but either the walls were too thick or nobody cared. I flagged down a cab, gave him the address of the bar and climbed in. Madaline squeezed my hand, forced a smile and didn’t say anything. I could still feel her trembling.

George had a corner of the bar to himself and the frown he wore turned into a grin when he saw Madaline and he held out his hands to her. “I’ll be damned. Like a class reunion. How the heck are you, Madaline?”

“Scared. Good to see you again, George.”

He looked at me and I roughed him in on what had happened. When I finished his eyes were narrow and hard. “The pressure is on, Regan. It can hit from any direction now. You’re too much of a threat. What the hell is it you know?”

“A lot of things. Not much of anything.”

“Well, I have something. Your money brought in some talk.” He glanced at Madaline.

“It’s all right,” I said. “She’s part of it with us. All on the same side.”

“Before he died, Leo Marcus set up the Syndicate’s new system. You had the old setup torn apart and the Syndicate got on his back for it. They held him responsible and dropped it in his lap. He had to get clear. Some way, he heisted the proof you had which put him back in the catbird seat with the Syndicate. Now here’s the kicker. The top dogs in the organization took a jolt when they had their lawyers check on the reorganization plans. Leo Marcus had taken their money and built himself a separate little world with it. Most likely he planned to get the dough back in the pot before the loss was discovered, but he didn’t act fast enough. They found it out and put out a contract for his kill that was accepted by a pair of hoods from Chicago.”

“When was this?”

“The closest I could figure it was three days before Marcus died. That gave them time to reach New York and pull the job.”

I shook my head. “They don’t work like that and you know it. They generally take a couple of weeks to lay out the kill.”

“Unless...” George started to say.

“Unless what?”

“They played it scientifically. They’re pros and they saw a way to move fast. They tried to take the heat off themselves and the mob by setting you up. Hell, you were on suspension and burning up to get to Marcus and they couldn’t ask for a better sucker. You were handy and they hung it on you in a hurry. The Syndicate would have liked it that way.”

“There’s a hole in the story.”

“Where?”

“The big boys wanted their money back too.”

It was George’s turn to shake his head no. “Not in this case. They could afford to let it go. They’d get it back in other ways, but they wouldn’t care about it that much. A guy with a million doesn’t miss a dollar. It’s the principle of the thing. They don’t want to establish any precedents by letting somebody in the organization get off with company funds.”

“Damn,” I said.

“There may be a contract out on you too, Regan,” George said quietly. “Where do we go from here?”

I tossed down the beer the bartender brought and said, “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

“What?” George frowned.

Madaline gave me a quick glance.

“I’ll call you at the office, George. Stand by in case there’s trouble.”

“The departmental trial is tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there,” I told him. I threw a bill on the bar and took Madaline by the arm and steered her outside. George had just grunted and called for another drink.

From the outside phone booth at the corner of Broadway I called Jerry Nolan and told him to meet me down at the diner near the precinct house. He swore and grumbled, but said he’d be there in fifteen minutes. When he got out of his car he was wrinkled and half dressed, a leather jacket thrown over his pajama tops. “You’re a bird, Regan. I don’t know why the hell I’m doing this.” He looked at Madaline, recognition in his eyes. “What’s she doing here?”

“I asked her, Jerry.” I reached for her hand and he saw it.

His shrug said a lot of things. “Sure. What’s up?”

“Where’s Argenio?”

“Home in bed if he’s smart. He was on the Scipio thing all day.”

“Things ought to be quiet inside. Nobody should ask you any questions. I want you to check the M.P. reports.”

“Who’s missing?” he asked me.

“That’s what I want to find out.” I explained it to him quickly and he scowled.

“You got any idea how long that will take?”

“Maybe you’ll be lucky.”

“Damn it, Regan, I could be at that two-three days. Supposing it isn’t on the reports?”

“Then check the skid row bunch. They’re all permanent fixtures and somebody should know.”

“Suppose it isn’t this city?”

“Get cooperation from the other departments. We’ve done it before.”

He rubbed his hand over the stubble on his jaw. “You think it’s possible?”

“Don’t you?”

“Could be,” he nodded. “So it’ll cost me some sleep and plenty of hell at home. The wife’s complaining about the hours now and I’m not even bucking for promotion.” He nodded good night to us and walked inside.

Madaline looked at me and said, “Can I ask what that was all about?”

“Better you don’t know, sugar. Not now, anyway.”

“Flatfoot,” she grimaced pleasantly.

I saw a cab cruising and waved to it, got inside and gave the driver my address. Madaline raised her eyebrows at me. “Short night.”

I nudged her with my elbow. “It’s polite to wait until you’re asked.”

When I paid off the driver I waited until he was out of sight, made sure we were clear and went into the vestibule. I was finished taking chances. The light was on, the way was cleared and I had the.45 in my hand. Madaline’s feet followed mine to the landing and I held her to one side while I opened the door.

My apartment was empty.

I closed and locked the door while Madaline shucked out of her jacket, then got a knife and icepick from the kitchen, found the three holes where the slugs had imbedded themselves in the wall and worked for twenty minutes prying them out without doing too much damage.

Madaline looked at the squashed lead pellets in the palm of my hand and touched their flattened surfaces with a forefinger. Not much was left of them. “Will a comparison test prove anything?”

“Ballistics expert?”

“I read a lot.”

“I’m not interested in the gun, Mad. They’re easy to get. It’s the silencer and certain new chemical tests that will add things up.”

“All right, my inscrutable friend, play games, excite my curiosity. I have ways of getting even, you know.”

I dropped the slugs on the table and held my arms out. She came to me easily, her mouth tilted up, and her eyes were brand new, brand new. “Don’t ever do that,” I said.

“No... I never will, Regan.”

Chapter Six

The morning shrouded the city in a pall of mist that dripped down the windows and laid a slick on the streets. A fog smelling of factory refuse and polluted river water crept in from the west, touching everything with its clammy fingers.

It was a death day out there. You could see it and feel it and taste it. It was the old man with the scythe taking his seat in the coliseum to watch the bloody action he knew would be there.

People hurrying to work had their heads down against the damp, eyeing each other suspiciously, dodging the sharp points of umbrella ribs and snarling over their shoulders when they were almost impaled. The tires of the cars hissed against the pavement and the taxis moved impatiently searching for riders. It wasn’t bad enough for anyone to fight for their services yet and the drivers jockeyed toward the corners hoping to catch one of the undecided by stopping in front of them.

I grabbed one and packed Madaline in it and told the driver her office address, telling her I’d call later. She didn’t want to leave, but realized she couldn’t stay and kissed me goodbye gently, her fingertips caressing my face as she did. “Is it for real, Regan? Am I fooling myself?”

“It’s for real, baby.”

“Then there will be some changes made, darling,” she told me. “I’ll see you later.”

The next cab past stopped for me and I told him where to go in Brooklyn.

Nobody was at the Lazy Daisy club except a porter who was carrying out the cartons of empty bottles and accumulated night’s trash to the garbage cans beside the building. At night the place would be a garishly lit hangout for the wild money and the slum crowd from across the bridge looking for excitement, but by early daylight it was a drab, peeling slop-chute with all the earmarks of a sucker trap for the tourist trade.

The porter made me with one look and tried to get out of the way, but I yanked him back and said, “Don’t duck, pops. I don’t want you and there’s no squeal.”

“So what’cha want? I ain’t...”

“Helen the Melons. She works here. Where does she live?”

The old guy shrugged. It was none of his business and she wasn’t important enough to clam up for. “She got a pad at Annie Schwartz’s house. Two blocks over.” He gave the street and told me to look for the sign, then went back to his work after almost spitting on my shoes. He didn’t like cops either.

Annie Schwartz was a beer-bloated woman with too-yellow hair and bad teeth who took one casual glance at me and spat out, “Cop.”

“Right, Annie.”

“Don’t try rousting me, mister. This place is clean.”

“Enough to stand an inspection from the fire department? Or how about a review of...”

“What’re you after?”

“Blonde named Helen who works at the Lazy Daisy.”

“Upstairs. Number three.”

I walked past her and up the creaking stairs, found the door with a metal 3 tacked to it and knocked. Nobody answered and I tried the knob. The door swung inward on a wall of heavy perfume hanging in the musty air and the gentle rumble of Helen’s snore.

She was stretched out on a bed completely naked, the covers kicked to one side, her mouth open and slack. Her nickname described her well. If she had been larger topside she would have had to walk on all fours. I pulled the covers back over her and shook her awake, listening to her mouth obscenities.

Finally, her eyes focused on me, her mind worked up a tirade to throw at me, then she recognized me and tried to shrink down beneath the blankets. Her voice was almost a whisper. “Regan... what... I didn’t...”

“Don’t sweat it, Helen.”

She got a little more nerve then. “What right have you got to... listen, you got a search warrant or something? You looking for...” Then she saw the expression on my face and whimpered.

“What’s your deal with Al Argenio, Helen?” I asked her quietly.

“Al? What’s it to you?”

“If I ask you again it’ll be the hard way. No trouble making a nice soft twist like you speak up. You should know that.”

Helen tried to swallow but her mouth was too dry. She shook her head trying to get the meaning of things and failed. “Nothin’s with him and me. So he chases after me alla time. I got tired of it. Alla time breaking things up when I got somethin’ goin’ with somebody who’s got some dough. A dozen times I got a guy who’s willin’ to spend it on me and he steps in and busts it. Alla time promises from him and that’s all. I got tired and told him to blow. Him and his promises. Thinks he’s gonna make it big and gimme what I want. Like hell. He ain’t gonna make nothin’. So whatta I get? Lousy stocks he gimme for a present. Thinks they’re hot stuff and it’s paper. If he’d blow it on the ponies he might make it, but them damn stocks. You wanna see what he gimme? Look in that top drawer.”

I took her advice and pulled open her dresser. A bundle of blue certificates held together with a rubber band were in the corner. Oil, gold, uranium stocks issued by strange-sounding companies were in the packet, all paying for somebody’s exploratory work and a paid vacation. Buddy Al had a vice, all right. There were thousands like him that kept the sharpshooters in Cadillacs and fancy apartments.

“He find you yet?” I asked over my shoulder while I jotted down the stock names.

“If you did, he will. Now I got more trouble. He wants me he better come up with somethin’ real. Right now I got a guy...”

“Save it,” I said.

As I went out she yelled, “You tell him...”

But I shut the door on her and went back downstairs. Annie Schwartz was waiting with her fat arms crossed over her heavy chest trying to force a scowl through the fat wrinkles that seamed her face. “Quick, wasn’t it?” I said.

Once I got back to Manhattan I called Jerry Nolan at the precinct station and asked him how he was making out.

He sounded tired and irritable. “Nothing in the files here. I’m checking out the departments upstate and in Jersey but it’s going to be a while before I get anything.” He paused, took a breath and added, “How long can this thing wait?”

“It can’t, Jerry. Stay on it. Argenio there?”

“He came and went.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Just curious. I’ll call back later.”

I held the receiver down, dropped in another dime and dialed the Police Academy building. The officer at the PBX board who took my call told me Argenio had left a few minutes ago. I said thanks and hung up without giving him any more information.

Then I stood there and grinned a little bit. The bits and pieces were falling into place very neatly.

Going past the guys who worked in the lab wasn’t easy. Until the trial that afternoon was over I was still a suspended cop better to stay clear of, no matter how good my record had been. A few nodded hello and two stopped to talk a minute, but most discreetly ducked out of the way and left me alone.

Ted Marker was over by the window, picking the charred remains of clothes from a cardboard box that was labeled as having come from a burned vehicle. I said, “Hi, Ted.”

He grinned and pushed the box away. “You got plenty of nerve, Pat.”

“For this job I need it.” I reached in my pocket and took the slugs out I had dug from my wall and held them out to him.

“Comparison job?”

“Nope. Chemical analysis of the powder and metal.”

“Against what?”

“They were fired through a silencer. Unless it was cleaned thoroughly, which is unlikely, the same traces will be on the silencer.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Where’s the gimmick?”

I told him and watched the funny expression come over his face. “You’d better be sure, Regan.”

“What can I lose? You can get to it, can’t you?”

“No trouble. It makes me feel squeaky, that’s all.” He looked at the slugs again, his mouth tight. “What can it prove?”

“A link in the chain.”

I went to turn away when I saw his books on the shelf. One had a slip of white paper marking off a page and I caught the word SENTOL on it. Ted said, “All the available information is right there.”

“And you don’t think it was Sentol?”

He gave a slight shrug. “You never should have passed out. I told you that. Not unless you had a bellyful of aspirin.”

I swung around. “What?”

“Aspirin has a nullifying effect on the stimulant effect of Sentol.”

“Ted,” I said. “I had six aspirins before I went into the Climax that night.”

His eyes tightened up again. “You sure?”

“Hell, I can prove it. I bought them and took them right there in the drug store on the corner of the block. The clerk gave me a drink to wash them down.”

“That could have done it, then. But where did anybody get that damned drug?”

I let out a small laugh. “I bet I can guess. Want to work it out with me?”

“Damn right.”

“When they found the FS-7 at the Ross and Buttick warehouse, see who was on the detail. The records of assignment are available. Then check and see if any Sentol was in that consignment.”

Ted gave me a startled look and snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute, Regan. For that last part I don’t have to look. I remember it because we tested it in the lab. I was on vacation, but I saw the reports my assistant made out. Damn, I had forgotten about that.”

“Then get on the first part.”

“Will do.” He paused, cleared his throat and said, “The trial’s today, isn’t it?”

“This afternoon. Three o’clock.”

“Check back afterwards.”

“Either way it goes?”

“Either way.”

I reached George Lucas’ office just before noon and caught him at his desk going over his arguments in my behalf at the trial. He looked up, waved me to a chair and said, “We got a rough one here.”

“Argenio going to appear?”

“He doesn’t have to. His signed report is enough.” He put his pencil down and stared at me. “Why?”

I told him what I thought and watched him absorb it with interest. When I was done he said, “You’re taking long chances with guesswork.”

“It fits.”

“Wait till it’s proven.”

I threw the notes I had taken from Helen the Melons’ room on his desk. “How can I get some fast advice on those stocks?”

“Try your other lawyers, Selkirk and Selkirk. They’re in that business.”

“Give them a call.”

I listened while George put the call through and rattled off the list. There was a short wait while the elder Selkirk fed him back the information, then he hung up. “They said don’t buy in. It’s junk. Goes at a high price and brings back nothing. Like trying to pull an ace out of a deck with one try. Occasionally one comes through, but the odds are against it, sucker stuff.”

“What was the stuff worth?”

“About twenty grand worth in that list. That all?”

“As much as I know about.”

“The trap is tightening,” he smiled mirthlessly. “You think there’s more?”

“You can ask around. He might have a safety deposit box. If you want I know a guy who owes me a favor and wouldn’t mind going through his place looking for it”

“Don’t take the chance.”

“Maybe we won’t have to.” I got up and reached for his phone. “Mind?”

“Help yourself.”

I told his secretary to get me Jerry Nolan at the precinct station and perched on the desk while I waited for him to answer. He came on and said, “Nolan here.”

“Regan. What’s new?”

“Nothing. Now let me eat my lunch.”

I said, “You remember the dentist that confirmed the false teeth he made for Marcus?”

“Dr. Leonard Shipp. Now can I go eat?”

“Sure. See you later.”

I hung up and told George I’d be back in an hour to go over things with him. He wanted me to stick around, but there wasn’t enough time left any more. Things were beginning to move and I had to keep them going. I found Dr. Shipp listed in the directory and grabbed a cab to his West Side address, made him leave a patient to come out and talk to me, smelling of whatever was going on in his sterile white-tiled room.

He was a tall, angular man with impatient eyes behind his bifocals, annoyed at the interruption and wanting to get it over with quickly. He was the type who took the word “Police” at face value and didn’t bother to ask about a badge.

“You had Leo Marcus as a patient for some time, didn’t you?”

“I thought that was all over.”

“Other pertinent details have come up.”

His head jerked in a curt nod. “Mr. Marcus was a patient for some years. I extracted all his teeth and made the plates for him. There was no doubt about it. They were specially made and quite expensive. In fact, I made two sets for him.”

“Oh?”

“Very common procedure. A lost or broken set can be very embarrassing.”

“No difference?”

“They were identical.”

“Thanks, doctor.”

I left him and went back outside. One thing I knew. I had seen all of Leo Marcus’ personal effects when they escorted me through his house to have me reconstruct my actions as far as possible, and there were no other plates among them.

Regardless of George’s advice, I contacted Walter Milcross at the run-down hotel he called home, a four-story corner building on Eighth Avenue that was due for demolition soon. He was in and working on the junk jewelry he palmed off to the tourists as hot merchandise worth a lot more than the asking price, trading on people’s naturally larcenous instincts. From the color TV and the new suits hanging in his closet he was doing pretty well at it.

A long time ago I had gotten him out from under a bum rap with a lot of off-duty work and he never forgot it. When I told him I wanted him to go through Argenio’s apartment he looked a little startled, but figured that it would be an easy job as long as nobody was there. A quick check with headquarters got me the information that Al was out in Freeport, Long Island, processing some detail of the Scipio case and wouldn’t be back for a few hours. That was enough for Walter. I told him what to look for and if anything else turned up that didn’t look kosher, to hang on to it. Walter dropped his tools, picked a jacket from the closet, tucked a pair of gloves in his pocket and walked me downstairs to the corner where we split up.

I looked at my watch. It was almost one o’clock.

Overhead the grey sky that seemed to cut the taller buildings off at their middle rumbled like a tank being split and the rain filtered down to wash the arena clean enough for the slaughter to begin. I walked across town to George’s building and went up to his office. He hadn’t come back yet, so I went into his office and picked up his phone.

But Jerry Nolan had gotten back. The tiredness had gone out of his voice, replaced by a guarded tone. “Got something this time, Regan. Guy from Jersey City who answers the description is missing. He was an itinerant stevedore who went heavy on the booze. Just before he disappeared he was flashing a big roll around, but never said where he got it”

“How close does it fit?”

“Perfectly. He had a medical record on file with a local doctor, but no identifiable physical characteristics. His prints were in the F.B.I., file from having worked the shipyards during the war. There are police photos in the mug books and some newspaper full-length shots taken when he was arrested in a barroom brawl over there.”

“It’s coming, Jerry.”

“You know what I feel like?”

“I know.” I said softly. “It stinks. It always does.”

Whatever it was, it rose up in me, that hot, tingling feeling that was pure hate. My hands were wrapped into tight knots that would hardly come loose to dial another number. It was me they wanted, but it wouldn’t be me they’d get. The whole skein was coming unraveled, laying itself out so you could see it in its entirety and not hidden inside a tight ball of fluff.

Ted Marker answered my ring and I knew that he had come up with it even before he said, “It checked, Regan. I found the gimmick where you said it would be and the chemical analysis nailed it. The detail assignments were in the files and he was there, all right. Do I pass this on?”

“Not yet, Ted.”

“Why, Regan? Damn it, we can’t let him go roaming...”

I stopped him. “Because that doesn’t get me out, that’s why.”

“Hell, they can’t try you again. They...”

Once again, I cut him off. “One more call to make. I have to find that stuff I collected on Leo Marcus. It’s the only thing to shake off the negligence angle they’ll slap me with at the trial. I want it all straight and in the record.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Safe enough. In George Lucas’ office.” I hung up.

George Lucas came through the door and piled into his chair behind the desk. He saw my face and drew back at what was written there. “Regan...”

“It was Al Argenio who took that shot at me. He got the silencer from one of the exhibits of confiscated weapons at the Police Academy and tried to pot me.”

“Proof?” he asked simply.

“Availability. He was seen coming out when he returned it to the case.”

“But he probably wasn’t seen doing it. He’d make a point of that.”

I shook my head and looked out the window. “He was assigned to the detail that searched the warehouse where the FS-7 and the Sentol was uncovered. He got hold of some of the stuff and delivered it to the right people for a price.”

“Conjecture, Regan.”

Slowly, I turned my head and looked at him. “He had made a broad a gift of stocks worth twenty grand.”

George leaned back, not wanting to get too close to me for some reason. “He was on the force long enough to save that much if one of his investments did pay off. It’s not impossible and it’s damn near unprovable. He could claim that money came from anywhere.”

He was saying things that put a sour taste in my mouth. “It was a vice with him. Some have it for gambling... cards, the ponies... some have it for dames or liquor... he was one of the funny ones who got eaten alive by playing the stock market. It was a joke around headquarters. His paper was always turned back to the financial page.”

George shook his head. “If he wore gloves when he shot you a paraffin test would show nothing. Loose stock investments would show nothing. It won’t hang together, friend.” He cleared his throat and went on. “If he boobytrapped your place with that sleep gas you’d need witnesses. Argenio is as much a pro as you are. He knows all the angles. He wouldn’t let himself be seen. No, Pat, the only thing that will save your tail is finding that Marcus evidence in his possession.”

“I’m waiting for something on that,” I said. But that sinking feeling was there nevertheless. George was right. It wasn’t enough, after all. I got up and stared out the window peering through the rain at the little people going to their seats to see the circus, not knowing what show was about to play and not caring either. Any show was good enough. Tomorrow the papers would headline it and they’d have a vicarious thrill at having been in the same locale where it had happened.

The phone rang sharply and George picked it up. He said something then turned to me. “For you, Pat.”

I said, “Hello?”

“Walter Milcross, Mr. Regan. I’m down the street from his place. Easy job, but I didn’t find nothing. Couple of stock certificates I lifted, but none of them papers. The place was clean. I would of spotted any place he stashed them only nothing showed.”

All the life seeped out of me. “You’re sure now, Walter?”

“You know me, Mr. Regan. Nothing in that place that even was off color outside the finger in the ink bottle.”

“What?”

“Yeah, crazy, ain’t it? I poked in this here inkwell... people stash keys in them for safe-deposit boxes sometimes thinking nobody wants to get dirtied up with ink and I pulled out a finger. A real one. Damndest thing I ever saw.”

“Where is it, Walter?”

“In my pocket wrapped up in an envelope. Like maybe he’s queer for fingers? I knew a guy once...”

“Bring it over here, Walter. You give it to George Lucas.”

“Sure, Mr. Regan, but about them papers... you want me to...”

“You did enough, friend.”

I hung up. The hot feeling was back. I didn’t need the rest. George sat there patiently while I dialed Ted Marker. I told him what I had and told him to contact Jerry Nolan with the information. George heard it all and his face had a sickly white pallor around the nostrils. Then Ted said, “Pat... Argenio got back about an hour ago. He was in the file room and saw the papers with the detail assignments on them and wanted to know what it was about. Edson didn’t know what was going on and told him I had requested them. I already checked around for Argenio and he’s nowhere to be found. Edson said he looked like he was ready to kill somebody.”

I dropped the receiver back slowly, my teeth grinding against each other. “He got wise,” I said. “He’s on the run.”

“Where can he go?”

“Not where I can’t find him.”

“The trial’s in an hour.”

“Screw the trial. Get it postponed.”

“Maybe you’d better spell it out slowly for me, Pat.”

“Marcus took the Syndicate for a bundle. He proved his worth by getting Al Argenio to search my place for my documents and plant that money there.”

“Argenio was being paid off by him?”

“For a long time, apparently. Who knows what favors he did. He was in a position to do plenty here and there. One of them was spotting the potential of the Sentol and the FS-7 when he was on the warehouse detail. He delivered some of it to the Syndicate through Marcus. Trouble was, he blew his wad on bad investments and always needed more. Once he was hooked by those guys he was in all the way.”

“Go on.”

“While I was under house arrest, Marcus used the Syndicate money to refinance the operation along the east coast. Or at least part of it. A big chunk went to his own use. He thought he could cover it later, I guess, but they don’t take chances when that much is involved and double checked his accounts. When he came up short he was put on their dead list and a contract to eliminate was given to a couple of out-of-state hoods.

“Marcus got wind of it someplace... he probably had his own informers inside the organization, and had to cut out so both the law and the Syndicate would be off his back. He lined himself up a pigeon that looked just like himself physically. Remember... he had no outstanding physical characteristics. He was big and fat, bald and toothless, but no scars, tattoos or bone breaks.”

“That would take time, Regan.”

“Money would buy out enough time. Anyway, he found his pigeon. He promised him something, got him in his house, waited for his plan for me to go into operation because I was big mouthing about getting back at him for putting me on the hook, knowing I’d make the perfect patsy... and there I was.

“Hell, I wasn’t hard to follow. I made no bones about what I was doing while I was on suspension. Maybe it was Argenio who tailed me, maybe somebody else. I’d like to think it was Argenio, the bastard. Marcus had been cozy with Mildred Swiss and primed her for the job. He had her standing by to feed me that Sentol. Most likely he promised her the moon and she fell for it...a trip to Europe with him and all the trimmings. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, but goes along with it, anyway.

“At that party Popeye Lewis and Edna Rells threw I was ready, the timing was perfect and I was suckered. I had one thing on my mind... to get Leo Marcus before the department trial came up. Once I had gotten dosed the idea really took hold and I ran off at the mouth but good. The only lucky break I had was taking six aspirins earlier. It offset one of the effects of the Sentol. Maybe I would have killed the guy who was made up to look like Marcus, I don’t know. I do know I was supposed to have been found there still conscious but appearing drunk with a gun in my hand.

“Anyway, I got up those steps and was admitted inside. This part I don’t remember. All I know is what did happen. I could have been carried in. When I couldn’t do the job somebody... either Marcus or Argenio... took my gun and pumped six bullets into the decoy’s face destroying everything he had. My gun was put back in my hand reloaded, then fired so a paraffin test would show a positive. A burned log and a dumped slug would never be found. They threw the body face down in the fireplace so the flames would burn the prints off his hands, smashed up an extra set of Marcus’ dental plates and scattered the bits around and let it lie.”

“What about the finger?” George asked me.

I got up and paced between the desk and the window. “That was Marcus’ unfortunate accident. When the guy saw what was happening he put his hand up to protect himself and a slug took the pinky off his hand. That part was going to show when they examined the remains. A finger was missing, because Argenio found it and kept it They had to leave a finger there for the police to find.”

George looked sick again.

I said, “There are doctors around who have lost their licenses who would do the job for a price. Marcus would know them. One came up, amputated his finger, a shot was fired at the end to make it look like a bullet had done the job and the finger was wedged under the mantle. In fact, it even made the case for Marcus’ death better. One of his own fingers was there for the nearly irrefutable proof of his death.”

“But the finger was in Argenio’s place.”

“Insurance, George. Al played it smart. He kept the decoy’s finger and Marcus would have to keep him alive. They were both eyewitnesses to a murder they had planned and executed. Marcus had plenty on Al, now Al had the key to keeping Marcus in line and feeding him with the money he needed from the new enterprise Marcus had arranged for.”

George nodded. “Then we find the doctor who did the job and...”

“The hell with the doctor,” I said. “I want the other two, Argenio first.”

“He can’t get far.”

It was done. Tied up. I grinned, picked up the phone and dialed Madaline’s office number. She was going to be glad to hear the news. While I waited for the call to go through I told George, “Get on the other phone and start calling. There isn’t time for that damn trial.”

He nodded and left for the outside office as the voice on the other end said, “Sturvesent Agency, Miss Stumper’s office.”

“Pat Regan calling. Madaline there?”

The voice hesitated, then said, “Why... no. Isn’t she with you?”

I had to force out the words. “Is she supposed to be?”

“But... an hour ago... there was a call from downstairs. They said it was a policeman friend of hers who wanted to see her. She said it was you and she probably wouldn’t be back.”

Damn it all to hell! The scene had come bright and clear in his mind and now he was pushing the destruct button. “Check that call back and get a description of the person who met her. Don’t let anybody leave there until I get there. Got that?”

The urgency in my voice froze her, then she said, “Yes, sir.”

At my belt the weight of the.45 was like a living thing talking to me and I ran out of the room. George was talking on the phone and I stopped him. “He has Madaline.”

“Who?” George looked startled.

“Argenio. Call my office and have Jerry Nolan get an APB out and a squad working. Give him the details I gave you and hold onto that finger when Walter gets here.”

“Pat... where are you going? Damn it, Pat, you can’t...”

But I was out the door by then.

Chapter Seven

The call had been made in the lobby of the building, relayed through the receptionist. There was no doubt about it. The description the woman at the desk gave me fitted Al Argenio, except for his pleasant manner, but he’d have to put that on to make the act effective.

He had come up behind her when she came out of the elevator and neither the woman nor the starter heard what he said, but the uniformed starter saw him take her by the arm and go outside to where a cab was waiting at the curb with the occupied flag down.

I had the receptionist put me through to headquarters and got Jerry on the line. For the sake of listening ears I turned away and kept my voice down, but it took a lot of effort. All Jerry could say was, “What the hell’s going on, Regan?”

“Just listen, Jerry. I’m at the Sturvesent Agency building on Madison Avenue. Argenio got wise and beat me here. He grabbed Madaline, hustled her into a cab and took off. Alert all the cab companies and have their drivers check their trip sheets.”

“How can they pull them in? They haven’t got radios. Most don’t break for the garages until four.”

“Then put out a call to all prowl cars to look out for them. Get word to the subway guards and the tunnel and bridge attendants, but tell them to be damn careful. He’ll do anything now. He’s killed before and he won’t stop at anything. She’s his shield and a warning to me.”

Jerry tried to make it sound easy, but there was an edge in his voice. “He wants back at you, Regan. He’s not planning to keep her alive.”

“I know,” I said. “Get with it.”

“We’ll do all we can.”

I looked at my watch. He had an hour’s start. And an hour can get you pretty far from the city. One way or another, I had to locate the cab that waited for him. On the street pedestrian traffic was going by in a thin stream, hugging the walls of the buildings, leaning into the rain. The braver ones stood at the curb waving fruitlessly at cabs already filled. None were cruising. When any stopped to discharge passengers others were right there to fill it up again.

Madison Avenue. The center of the advertising world. The middle of everything, I thought, and I was trapped in the center of it like a helpless old lady trying to get across an intersection during the rush hour. Thousands of people were in the buildings all around me, preparing to talk commerce to the world via the medium of TV and radio and I couldn’t locate a single cab for another hour yet. At four they’d break and start a new shift and I’ve had to wait until then.

Think, Regan. Think or she’d be dead.

I waited for the light, crossed over and half ran two blocks down to the modern concrete structure that housed a major network studio. The head guard was a retired sergeant from the 4th Precinct I knew and when I briefed him, he led me upstairs to the right man.

Steve McDell handled special news bulletins for the radio network of the company, got my story down in thirty seconds, checked with headquarters and put the item on the air himself. Any cabbie who had picked up a fare from Madaline’s building was requested to report in immediately. When he finished the broadcast he said, “It’ll go out every two minutes. Let me contact the other networks in case the guy’s tuned into another station.”

“If he’s got a radio on,” I said.

“Most of them have those small transistors up on the dash these days when there isn’t one installed in the car,” he reminded me.

McDell flipped a switch and popular music swept into the room over a wall speaker, the continuity broken every so often by a taped rebroadcast of the announcement. Right after the third one the phones started and he answered them. “Reporters calling in,” he said. “What do I tell them?”

“Nothing. They’ll get a statement from the police.”

He passed the message on, hanging up when they became insistent. Then one phone to his right obviously reserved for special calls blinked on, the red light on its base flicking furiously. He picked it up, talked a moment and turned back to me. “The other network. They have your cabbie on the line.”

I grabbed the phone out of his hand. “This is Pat Regan, Police Department. Put him on.”

There were a series of clicks as the connection was made, then a guttural voice said, “You the guy I should talk to about that call?”

“That’s right.”

“I just now caught it. I picked up a fare there today.”

“How many?”

“Two... big guy and a good looking woman. He flagged me down on Forty-first, had me drive there and wait, then we went out to Long Island City. I let him off right by the B.M.T. station.”

“They take the train?”

“Nope.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I turned around at the next block and they was still there trying to find another cab, that’s why. I can tell you this... they ain’t gonna get none there. It’s raining like hell and all the cabs is filled. The taxi stands are empty and traffic’s pretty heavy. Plenty of people waiting. You know how it is.”

“Okay, thanks. We’ll pick it up from there.”

Steve McDell was looking at me anxiously. “Any help?”

“They’re in Long Island City. I have to get there.”

“Need a staff car? One’s standing by downstairs.”

I grinned at him. “Then let’s roll.” My ex-sergeant friend was caught up in the excitement like an old fire horse smelling smoke. I told him, “Call it in for me, will you?”

“Glad to, Pat.”

“Get a cruiser to pick us up to clear the way. There won’t be time for red lights. And tell the other networks to wipe out that broadcast. If he hears it he might jump the gun.”

He caught my meaning and reached for the phone as Steve McDell and I ran out to the bank of elevators, grabbed one before the doors closed and rode it down.

The rain had turned late afternoon into near-dusk, spiked by headlights of cars picking their way through the traffic. Store fronts and office windows put on a garish display of opulence as if all were well with the world. The police cruiser met us two blocks away, cut in front and angled east, threading the way through the flow of cars with its siren.

When we reached the subway station twenty minutes later another police car was already there, parked behind a cab whose driver was talking excitedly to one of the patrolmen. I introduced myself and the cop pointed to the cabbie. “We got the call to ask around and he said he picked up a couple who answered the description of the pair.”

I went over to the driver who waited anxiously. “Describe them.”

He did. It was Argenio and Madaline, all right. “Dropped a fare off right at the station here,” he told me. “They got in and I took ’em down to the Marco Bottling Works. That woman, she was scared, that’s what I told myself. Figured like he was her husband caught her roaming. Neither one of them said nothin’ while they was driving.”

“They go inside?”

“How could they? The place is locked up. I was wondering about it because I thought they got out at the wrong place and would need another hop somewhere else, but when I stopped at the red light at the next block I saw them in the mirror crossing the street.”

“This isn’t a residential section,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. So where could they go? Hardly no cabs take fares from down there unless there’s a direct call. Guys in the factories, they use the subway or got their own car pools.”

Another prowl car pulled up and the cop beside the driver hopped out and came over. “The dispatcher’s standing by for instructions.”

“Blanket the area,” I said. “We might have to do it building by building. Keep it quiet... if he knows we’re this close he’ll kill the woman.”

“I’ll call it in,” he said and went back to the cruiser. The other cops got in their cars and swung out into traffic.

McDell was waiting for me, leaning out the window. “Anything you want me to do?”

“You’ve done enough. Stay out of it for now. If there’s a story I get it to you.”

“Watch yourself, Regan. Glad I could help.”

“Thanks,” I said. The cabbie was still standing by and I got in his hack. “Take me there,” I instructed him. “Cut down the street they took. I want to look it over.”

His nod was eager and he didn’t bother putting the flag down. This ride was on the house, one of the things he had wanted to do all his life. If he had known all the details he might not have been so eager. The place they had left the cab was only seven minutes away. He pointed out the building, then turned left up the street he had seen them entering. Both sides of the block were flanked by structures housing small industries and businesses that couldn’t stand high overhead.

Three times I had him stop when I got out and asked a few loiterers grabbing a smoke in the rain if they had seen the two of them. All I got was a negative. We kept on going, crossed the next intersection and I tried a newsstand that was behind dirty, fly-specked windows. The fat little guy behind the counter said no; until five o’clock when the factories let out nobody ever came by the place after the one o’clock lunch hour, specially on a day like that.

I was going to leave until the sallow-faced kid leafing through the comic books near the entrance muttered, “One guy came in,” he muttered. “Bought cigars.”

“That was this morning,” the counterman said, annoyed. “Put them damn books down if you ain’t gonna buy none.”

Absently, I said, “Who?”

He tossed the books back and shrugged. “That guy with the bum hand. Got it bandaged. He got cigars.”

I should have remembered. It was one of the things I hadn’t had time to check before the stuff was stolen from me. Leo Marcus had used a building somewhere in this neighborhood for a drop when he was running the protection racket. “Big fat guy?” I asked him.

“Something like that. He was a baldie.”

“What was with the hand?”

The kid looked up at me curiously. “He had it all wrapped up like it was broke or something.”

“Ah, don’t pay any attention to him,” the counterman said. “He talks off the top of his head.”

I took out a buck and passed it to the kid. “Buy those comic books. You earned them.”

Outside, night had closed in all around us. The rain was a driving thing with clawing fingers that bit right through you, but I didn’t mind a bit. The cabbie was reluctant to go until I told him to find a phone and call in my location, then he took off down the street and turned right at the corner. I walked north, looking at each building as I passed, knowing that when I saw the number it would register. The pattern was clear now. Argenio was in and he was going to use all the forces at his command to get out. He couldn’t do it alone any more, knowing damn well how the department would work. Every known avenue would be cut off if he tried it alone and he wasn’t up to dying slowly on the long walk to the hot seat. He had another organization with their resources to use now. Marcus could provide a way out, knowing Al had the finger that would hang a murder charge on him. One thing Al didn’t know. The finger wasn’t where he had left it. Later he’d try to pick it up. He might even have made it if a little professional crook like Walter hadn’t known the right places to look.

I kept walking.

A couple of faces peered out the windows at me curiously. Trucks rumbled past, the drivers intent on getting through the rain.

A wino was sprawled in a doorway, sleeping, oblivious to the wet.

The sky laughed deep in its belly and spewed another mouthful on the city.

And I saw the number 1717 and knew I was there.

It was an old dilapidated building with the front windows boarded up. No lights showed in the upper stories and the front door was locked. I went through the front door of the ornamental ironworks place next to it and an obliging guy in a canvas apron let me out the back. There was a communal area there filled with trash, a path through it leading to the electric meters on the outside of the wall. The one on the 1717 was buzzing and when I checked the rotor inside by the light of a match it was turning slowly. The place wasn’t empty as it looked. Somebody was using power up there.

Above me I could barely see the vague outline of the rusted fire escape. It was within reach, but I knew the noise it would make if I tried to pull it down. Rather than try it I felt my way along the wall, found the framework of the back door and felt for the knob. It turned easily, but an interior bolt held it fast. The place was buttoned down tight, but it was to be expected. If Marcus had arranged for the place to be a hideout he wouldn’t take a single chance at all. Any means of entry was probably guarded with an alarm system and probably up there he had another escape exit ready if he had to use it.

One window shone dully in the light close by. Time was ticking off too fast, and I couldn’t go probing for other ways of getting in. I stood there trying to decide what to do and the sky was ripped apart by a brilliant streak of lightning. Then I knew what I was going to do.

When the thunder came with a shocking crack of sound I rammed my elbow through the pane and no fall of glass could be heard above the reverberation of nature at all. I picked the shards out of the frame, and when there was room to get through, felt for the wires of the signal system, located them and slid inside.

Leo Marcus should have updated his alarm setup. It was the old style dependent upon the raising of the window to activate it. I stood inside getting used to the deeper darkness, the.45 cocked in my hand. Little by little I felt my way across the room and into another, careful where I placed my feet so that a stray sound would carry upstairs.

One room opened into another filled with stored furniture I had to edge around. Once I had to hold a stack of chairs that nearly toppled, then I got them balanced again and circled to the door. I pulled it open slowly, tuning the squeaking of the hinges to the rumble of traffic from the street. Enough light came in the front windows to outline the hallway and the staircase that led to the floors above.

I stayed close to the wall where there would be less chance of hitting a creaking board, taking every other step, diminishing the chances of touching one wired to the alarm circuit. My hand felt for trip wires, found one and I stepped over it, grinning silently in the darkness. Other people knew the tricks too.

I looked into one room on the second floor where all the desks were, the windows painted black, then didn’t bother with that floor at all. I went up the next flight, ran into a duplication of the trip wires down below and got over them. Once a board creaked ominously and I paused, waiting to see if there would be a reaction.

None came and I knew why it didn’t.

From someplace on the next floor came the muffled sound of a woman’s screams and it covered any sound I made getting to the top. She screamed again and I located the sound behind a steel door studded with rivets, a barricade only a dynamite charge could break down.

My mouth muttered impotent curses and I didn’t give a damn any more. I struck a match, saw another door at the end and ran down to it. Behind the steel she screamed again and somebody laughed. I recognized Argenio’s voice.

This door wasn’t steel. The tongue of the lock on the inside ripped loose from the dry rotted wood when I threw enough pressure against it and I shoved it open, then closed it behind me. Another match reflected off a black painted window and guided me to it. I found the alarm switch at the top of the frame, threw it into the off position, unlocked the catch and pried the window up.

Under the window a four-inch ledge ran the length of the building. Not wide enough to walk, but enough to give me one vital step that would put my hands within catching distance of the fire escape that was outside the other room.

I hated to do it, but I needed the cover. I didn’t know what they were doing to her or what it cost her, but I needed another scream wrung from her mouth. I waited, poised, heard that muffled laugh, barely audible, then the piercing note of a scream that barely reached me.

I jumped.

For a second I thought I’d lost it, but my fingers hung on and I dragged myself up and over the rail and reached for the.45 before it could fall out of my waistband. I stood there outside the window and she screamed again. The sound barely penetrated. I struck a match, saw myself reflected in the black of the window, but through a scratch in the paint saw the planks that covered it from the inside.

The entry had to be quick. There had to be a diversion, enough to rattle them. Surprise was gone now, but a diversion would work. One of the steel slats that formed the floor-work of the fire escape landing was loose at one end and it only took a minute’s work to work it loose, one end breaking with a shallow hook on it like a crowbar.

From his seat in the coliseum, the old man with the scythe roared with pleasure at my tactic in trying to beat the game and applauded with a clap of thunder. I got the curved edge between the two windows, snapped the catch when he clapped again, then eased the window up.

The bell went off inside, a high-pitched, tinny sound that came from outside the room. Through the crack in the boards I saw part of a man run past, heard the stifled curse, then kicked the board in with my foot and ducked my head into the opening to stare at the hideously grinning face of Al Argenio.

For a fraction of a second time had ceased, but in that millisecond he read my eyes and saw everything come apart and knew that there was nothing left unknown at all. He had her tied to a chair with her clothes torn from her body and had been giving her a sample of the things he had always taken pleasure in and now enjoyed even more, trying to force confirmation from her just to be sure the game had been played out the old way, and ready to kill her when he was certain of it and start a new one behind Marcus.

But I hadn’t told her anything and she hadn’t been able to talk. Now I was telling him things. Silently. The Sentol, the FS-7, the silencer, the finger in the ink bottle... and now it was over. He read the whole message in my eyes and fired from the hip.

He didn’t even come close. The.45 punched a hole at the bridge of his nose and left a stream of matter from the floor to the wall and he was whipped onto his back by the force of the impact, dead before his body hit the boards.

It only took a couple of moments to kick a hole through the opening, wrenching the boards loose. Downstairs somebody was yelling for somebody else to call the cops and a beam of light flashed up to where I was going through the slats.

Only one fluorescent light hung from the ceiling casting a bluish pall over everything. The blood that oozed from Madaline’s mouth had a purple tinge and the welts across her breasts and shoulders from the leather strap he had used were a dark maroon. Her eyes were dull, glassy with pain and fatigue, then she recognized me and the light came on behind them.

To one side a door stood open where Marcus had disappeared, but I wasn’t chasing him now. He wasn’t going anywhere. Outside in the city the sirens had begun to sound the last chord and they’d know who to look for.

I dropped the gun in her lap and began working at the knots in the rope that held her. “Easy, honey. Relax.”

First one untangled, then another and her arms fell limply to her sides and I knelt down and started on the ones that bit into the flesh of her thighs and calves.

She squirmed, went rigid. I looked up to tell her not to fight against the pressure, then I saw her face. Fear had drawn it tight and her mouth was half open in a soundless yell of warning.

Leo Marcus said from the doorway, “All right, Regan, just stand up and turn around.”

I swung my head and saw him, the gun in his good hand, the bandaged one held clutched to his stomach. His eyes were wild and alert, his mind racing. I let my hands drift over my head and stood up, taking a step to shield Madaline from his fire.

They’ll be here soon, I kept thinking. I could hear them coming. He could get me, but they’d get him. At least she’d stay alive.

Marcus could read my face too. “No good, Regan. There isn’t enough time.”

“There’s no place to go, Marcus.”

“I have a way out,” he said simply. “It’s been prepared ahead of time. I’ll be on my way while they’re still trying to figure this one out.”

“They know, Marcus.”

“Do they?” His eyes mocked me.

“They have that finger to prove it.”

He made a vague gesture with the gun. “Anybody can lose a finger. Don’t forget... they have mine, too.”

Damn him anyway! He was right. It wasn’t conclusive.

“I like this approach even better now.” He glanced at the body of Al Argenio, then back to me. “Now he’s out of the way. You two had a shoot out, that’s all. Incidentally, this is his gun. I think it will work very nicely. Everybody knows of the hatred between you two. The woman was the crux of the matter. She was caught in the middle when you shot each other.” He laughed softly. “A simple matter of putting a gun in his hand. Even my former... er, associates will buy the picture.”

“You’ve had it, Marcus,” I said, stalling.

He shook his head. “I should have done this a long time ago. It would have saved a lot of trouble to do it right there in my own living room.” He raised the gun and sighted along the barrel.

Her whisper was almost soundless. “Move, Regan.”

I took one step as the shot burned past me, tugging at my coat. Somehow the.45 slug from the rod she held squeezed in both fists tore the gun from his hands taking fingers and all, leaving a great, gouting stump dangling from his coat sleeve.

Leo Marcus looked down at the obscenity that had been a part of him a second ago, opened his mouth in what started to be a great bay of absolute horror and collapsed in the agony of frustration and pain.

The sirens were close now. They were stopping and voices were yelling instructions. I took the gun from her hand, put my arm around her and got her to her feet. Her coat was in the corner, and I draped it around her as they were coming up the stairs.

In the doorway Leo Marcus’ life ran out of him in a swampy pool of arterial blood and nobody was going to know anything except what I wanted them to know.

Madaline’s face was still ashen white, but the color was coming back into it. Outside I heard Jerry Nolan’s voice calling for axes to smash down the door. She said, “Is it over, Pat?”

I kissed her gently and shook my head. “No, kitten, it’s just beginning.”

Content

Mickey Spillane
Death of the Too-Cute Prostitute

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven